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ILLINOIS 

CLASSICAL 

STUDIES 

VOLUME XII. 1 

Spring 1987 

J. K. Newman, Editor 



Patet omnibus Veritas; nondum est occupata; 

multum ex ilia etiamfuturis relict um est. 

Sen. Epp. 33. 1 1 



SCHOLARS PRESS 

ISSN 0363-1923 



ILLINOIS CLASSICAL STUDIES 
VOLUME XII.l 



©1987 
The Board of Trustees 
University of Illinois 



Copies of the journal may be ordered from: 
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ADVISORY EDITORIAL COMMITTEE 



John J. Bateman David F. Bright 

Howard Jacobson Miroslav Marcovich 

Responsible Editor: J. K. Newman 



The Editor welcomes contributions, which should not normally exceed 
twenty double-spaced type4 pages, on any topic relevant to the elucidation of 
classical antiquity, its transmission or influence. Consistent with the 
mamtenance of scholarly rigor, contributions are especially appropriate 
which deal with major questions of interpretation, or which are likely to 
interest a wider academic audience. Care should be taken in presentation to 
avoid technical jargon, and the trans-rational use of acronyms. Homines 
cum hominibus loquimur. 



Contributions should be addressed to: 
The Editor, 

Illinois Classical Studies, 
Deparunent of the Classics, 
4072 Foreign Languages Building, 
707 South Mathews Avenue, 
Urbana, Illinois 61801 

Each contributor receives twenty-five offprints. 



Preface 



The University of Illinois was founded in 1867 in the twin cities of Urbana 
and Champaign. The following item appeared in the Champaign -Urbana 
News-Gazette earlier this year: 

Robert W. Mayer, professor emeritus of finance at UI, supplies an 
interesting sidelight on the series devoted to choice of Urbana-Champaign 
as site for the institution. 

He writes, "Back in the 1920s and 1930s, William Abbott Oldfather 
was professor and head of the department of Classics in the College of 
Liberal Arts and Sciences. Like all his LAS colleagues, he smarted at the 
way in which the various departments in the College of Agriculture and 
Engineering invariably enjoyed de facto priority over his at budget-making 
time. 

"A man of incisive wit, however, he had the satisfaction, from time to 
time, of reminding the assembled University Senate that his was the only 
department explicitly cited in the University's Charter. Then, as now. 
Agriculture and Education were colleges, not departments, and there was no 
department of 'mechanic arts'; and all the 1867 Charter said about the 
institution's mission was that it should 'provide education in agriculture 
and the mechanic arts, not to exclude the classics'." 

Little changes over the years. Professor Oldfather's experience — and his 
consolation — ^are ours today. 



Once again grateful thanks are due to Mrs. Mary Ellen Fryer for her 
painstaking care with our contributors' texts and the problems of "desk-top" 
publishing. Frances Slickney Newman has exercised her usual unceasing 
vigilance over both form and matter. 

J. K. Newman 



(Lii^^^i^ 



Contents 



1 . An Unnoticed Allusion in Theocritus and Callimachus 1 
SIMON GOLDHILL, King's College. Cambridge 

2. Circe and the Poets: Theocritus IX. 35-36 7 
HUGH PARRY. York University. Ontario 

3. ApoWonius' Argonautica: Euphemus, a Clod and a Tripod 23 
STEVEN JACKSON, Trinity College. Dublin 

4. Heteros lis eimi: On the Language of Menander's Young Lovers 31 
FREDERICK E. BRENK, S.J., Pontifical Biblical Institute. Rome 

5. Reconstructing the Beginning of Menander's Ade/p/io/ (B) 67 
MARK D AMEN, Indiana University 

6. Polybadiscus and the Astraba of Plautus: New Observations on a 
Plautine Fragment 85 
RADD EHRMAN. Kent State University 

7. The Weapons of Love and War: A Note on Propertius IV. 3 93 
MICHAEL B. POUAKOFF. Hillsdale College 

8. From Separation to Song: Horace, Carm/Vw IV 97 
DAVID H. PORTER. Skidmore College 

9. Ovidian Shakespeare: Wit and the Iconography of the Passions 121 
JUDITH DUNDAS. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

1 0. The Psychology of Uncertainty in Senecan Tragedy 135 
VICTORIA TIETZE. Westminster College. Pennsylvania 

11. De Sublimitate 30. 1 : An Overlooked Pointer to a Date? 143 
J. K. NEWMAN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

12. M. Minucius Felix as a Christian Humanist 157 
MICHAEL VON ALBRECHT, University of Heidelberg 



13. The Miracles of Cyrus and John: New Old Readings from the 
Manuscript 169 
JOHN DUFFY, University of Maryland 

14. A Note on Diogmitae 179 
C. P. JONES, University of Toronto 

15. Where Did the Emperor Lurk? HA, Hadrian 16. 3 181 
BARRY BALDWIN. University of Calgary 

1 6. Vainglorious Menippus In Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead 185 
JOEL C. RELIHAN, University of Dlinois at Urbana-Champaign 



An Unnoticed Allusion in 
Theocritus and Callimachus 

SIMON GOLDHILL 



The relative chronology of the major Hellenistic poets and also of poems 
within each poet's corpus is a subject where modem scholarship is forced to 
admit considerable uncertainty. Although it is a generally — and, in my 
view, rightly — held opinion that there is an extremely important degree of 
cross reference or significant interaction between different texts and poets of 
the period, it has proved highly problematic to use the perceived 
relationships between particular texts to demonstrate with any certainty 
influence between poets or respective dates of composition (as, for example, 
the disagreement of scholars on the priority of Theocritus' or Apollonius 
Rhodius' treatment of the Hylas story shows).^ In this short article, I \yant 
to point to what seems a significant echo between passages in Callimachus' 
Aitia prologue and Theocritus' first and seventh Idylls not commented on in 
the editions of either poet. It has become a communis opinio that the 
prologue of the Aitia was composed late in Callimachus' life, perhaps even 
as a prologue to a collected edition of his work (and thus later than 
Theocritus' Idylls)? Since the evidence is far from certain on this matter, as 
with other aspects of dating, I shall consider the relationship between the 
passages in question in two ways, first as a Callimachean echo in 
Theocritus and then as an echo of Theocritus in Callimachus. This 
primarily heuristic method of argumentation is not put forward with the 
expectation of finally clarifying the question of dating; but rather with the 
aim first of pointing out this unnoticed interplay, and second of showing the 
constant difficulties of using such echoes to prove priority or influence. 
Indeed, when the allusion, as here, can be brought under the rubric of 

^ For a recent study of our knowledge on Callimachus and Apollonius, see M. Lefkowitz, 
Zeitschriftfiir Papyrologie und Epigraphik 40 (1980), 1-19. On Apollonius and Theocritus, see 
especially A. Kohnken, Apollonios und Theokrit (Gotlingen 1965). For a general, traditional 
view on chronology see T. B. L. Webster, Wiener Studien 76 (1963), 68-78. 

2 See e.g. R. Pfeiffer, Callimachus U (Oxford 1949), pp. xxxiii-xliii; E. Eichgrun, 
KalUmachos und Apollonios Rhodios (Berlin 1961), pp. 64 ff.; and, especially, P. Parsons, 
Zeitschriftfiir Papyrologie und Epigraphik 25 (1977). 49-50. 



2 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Umkehrung, it might seem the very nature of the allusive technique that 
allows it to be read in this double manner. 

It has often been argued that the description of the cup in Theocritus' 
Idyll 1 has a certain programmatic value for Theocritus' pastoral poetry .^ As 
with the shield of Achilles in the Iliad (with which the cup is often 
compared and contrasted), we are offered a particular sort of picture of a 
particular sort of world."* Each of the scenes on the cup has been thought 
indicative both of the nature of the pastoral world described by Theocritus 
and of the Xenxoc, style of his Hellenistic poetry — especially in the way that 
the depiction of the cup (in contrast wi^ the shield of Achilles) offers a 
series of small-scale, unheroic fragments with no pretensions to a holistic 
picture of the world. 

The third picture of the small boy is especially interesting with regard 
to a "poetic program. "^ The scene of the vineyard itself echoes descriptions 
of vineyards at vintage time on the shield of Achilles and the Hesiodic 
Scutum,^ but is turned from any heroic associations to a picture of a light- 
hearted robbery of the child guard's grapes. It is of course the figure of the 
boy which has attracted most attention in terms of the programmatic nature 
of the ecphrasis. Callimachus writes that the Telchines say that he 
composes his verse naXc, axe {Aitia fr. 1. 6). This idea of writing like a 
child, coupled with the poetic associations of the verb tCKzkzi' (like other 
words of weaving^), and the "grasshopper" (which has been seen as a version 
of the famous Callimachean desire to be in his verse a cicada rather than an 
ass') have led critics to see in the picture of the boy weaving a grasshopper 
cage^° a typically allusive Hellenisl 
Callimachus in parallel poetic interests. 



' Most recently, D. Halperin, Before Pastoral (Yale 1983); e.g. "The ivy cup is not only an 
emblem for the range of subjects in the Idylls in general but for the thematic structure of bucolic 
poetry in particular" (p. 182). See also G. Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals (Washington 
1967), pp. 28 ff.; S. Walker. Theocritus (Boston 1980), pp. 30 ff.; C. P. Segal, Poetry and 
Myth in Ancient Pastoral (Princeton 1981), pp. 25-46. 

^ On the ecphrasis as a world picture, see P. du Bois, History, Rhetorical Description and the 
Epic: from Homer to Spenser (Cambridge, Mass. 1982). On the shield of Achilles as world- 
picture, see e.g. 0. Taplin, "The Shield of Achilles within the Iliad" Greece & Rome 27 (1980), 
1-21. 

^ On the significance of children in Hellenistic poetry and art, see T. B. L. Webster, 
Hellenistic Poetry and Art (New York 1964), pp. 158-62; G. Giangrande, "Th6ocrite, 
Simichidas et les Thalysies," L'Antiquite Classique 37 (1968), 496 ff.; T. Rosenmeyer, The 
Green Cabinet (Berkeley 1969), pp. 55-59. 

* See A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus (Cambridge 1950), ad loc, who notes also the echo of II. 
XVm. 561. 

"^ See e.g. Pindar, 01. 6. 86-87; Nem. 4. 94. 

^ ■ucpaweiv (see e.g. II. HI 212 and L5J* {xpaivco, m. 2); poOTxeiv (see e.g. Hes., fr. 34). 

' Aitia, Prologue 29-32. 

^° On the cage, see Gow (above, note 6) ad loc, but on aKpi6o9f|Kav rather than 
dKpi5o0f|pav, see K. J. Dover, Theocritus (London 1971), ad loc. 



Simon Goldhill 3 

There is a further cross reference in this passage which has been missed 
by critics and commentators. Callimachus in the Aitia Prologue demands 
that his skill or wisdom as a poet should not be judged with a Persian 
axoivcx; (17-18): 

KpivexE], \ir\ oxoivQ) IlEpoiSi xf|v oo<pir|v. 

It is with a oxoivo(;, however, that Theocritus describes his boy as 
"fitting together" the cage (and e(pap|i6^eiv is apphed by Plutarch to poetic 
composition, 1^ as the uncompounded verb is often used^^). Where 
Callimachus uses axoivoq in its sense of a land measure, Theocritus uses the 
term from that key passage in the Aitia prologue in the different sense of 
"reed" or "rush/'^^ In other words, there can be read here a characteristic 
Hellenistic Umkehrung — an allusion to one poet by another which inverts 
or reuses the earlier material in a pointed or witty manner. "Judge not my 
poetry with a Persian oxoivoq" writes Callimachus, "I write like a child" — 
but Theocritus gives us a poetic image of a child who is weaving and fitting 
together his grasshopper cage precisely with the axoivoq. 

The only other use of axoivog in the genuine poems of Theocritus is 
also in a passage concerned with poetics, namely, v. 133 in Idyll 7, another 
poem which has often been regarded as a key programmatic statement, albeit 
one about whose tone and attitude critics have argued endlessly.^"* After the 
exchange of songs (51-127), and the presentation of the XaY©p6>.ov to 
Simichidas (128-30), the travellers (in a transition of extraordinary 
abruptness) turn, and in the space of a single line (132) find themselves in 
the midst of a locus amoenus (132^6). The first description of this poetic 
bower is ev xe paGeiaiq / aSeiai; oxoivoio x«^ewioiv eK^ivBriiieq. 
Lykidas turns off (aTto KXiv ac. 130) and Simichidas with his companions 
lies down (ejcAAvGriiiei;) on a bed of sweet axoivoq in the locus amoenus. 
One allusion here that has been rightly noted by commentators is to Homer, 
Od. V. 462-63: 

6 5' £K Jioxa^oio X,iao6elq 
oxoivcp ■ujiEKXivGri, Kuae 5e ^eiScopov apo-opav, 

where Odysseus finally reaches the shore of Phaiacia. Here the locus 
amoenus is the end of a significant part of Simichidas' journey — an image 



"Plut..£ro/.769C. 

^^ See LSJ^, ctpjio^eiv, I. 5 for numerous examples. 

*' On the sense of oxoivoq see S. Hatzikosta, A Stylistic Commentary on Theocritus Idyll 7 
(Amsterdam 1982), ad 133. Hatzikosta surprisingly does not mention K. Lembach, Die Pflanzen 
bei Theokrit (Heidelberg 1971), who discusses oxoivoi; on pp. 37-38. 

'^ See Segal (above, note 3), pp. 1 10 ff., for general discussion and bibliography — to which 
may be added N. Krevans, Transactions of the American Philological Association 1 13 (1983), 
201-20; H. Berger, Jr., Classical Antiquity 3 (1984). 1-39; E. Bowie, Classical Quarterly 35 
(1985), 67-91. 



4 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

associated with the discovery of an (intellectual) insight^^ — ^^d it ends at a 
pastoral harvest festival (even if Simichidas does not "kiss the grain-giving 
soil"). Indeed, there are numerous echoes of the Odyssey particularly in the 
final sections of this poem, ^^ and the final two lines with their mention of 
the planting of one's winnowing fan seem to refer to the famous prophecy 
of Teiresias concerning the ultimate end of Odysseus' journeying. 
Simichidas' journey to the pastoral festival ends with an echo of the epic 
wanderer's prospective travel towards his mysterious final goal.'"' The echo 
of Odysseus' arrival in Phaiacia as Simichidas enters the pastoral bower 
may, then, be significant. But, as Fritzsche noted in 1870 (when 
Callimachus' line was "fr. 481 Schneider"), the determination of axoivoq as 
feminine by Theocritus may in itself be an erudite comment on 
CalHmachus' use of the term.^^ Beyond this, however, could the reference to 
the term from a key passage of Callimachean poetics and Theocritus' own 
first Idyll be significant in the opening line of a description which goes on 
to invest the landscape with a certain poetic force (as many critics have 
noted)? It is the nymphs, who earlier were described as forces of poetic 
inspiration (91-93), that Simichidas addresses (148-50); near by the 
chattering cicadas (Callimachus' self-description) toil (e'xov tiovov, 139), as 
Lykidas had said of his poetic composition e^ETiovaaa, 51; bees (142) are 
flying around (bees are images of poetic inspiration for Pindar in particular, 
and in this poem they bring honey to the singer Comatas' lips [84-85]); so 
too the song-birds sing (aeiSov, 141) and the dove moans (eaxeve, 141) and 
the holy water — a symbol of poetic inspiration for Callimachus in 
particularly — burbles (KeA,dp\)^e, 137). It seems scarcely sufficient to say 
with Giangrande that this lengthy description is merely a simple and direct 
way of saying that there was singing in the pleasant surroundings of the 
festival.^ More precisely, especially with regard to Callimachus' use of 
oxoivoq and Theocritus' own use of the term in Idyll 1, it is quite 



1^ See Segal (above, note 3), pp. 116 ff., especially pp. 127-29, who comments on the 
association of road imagery and the programmatic force of the poem. See also, in general, O. 
Becker, Das Bild des ^eges und verwandte Vorstellungen imfruhgriechischen Denken (Hermes 
Einzelschriften 4 [1937]), and A. Kambylis, Die Dichterweihe und ihre Symbolik (Heidelberg 
1965). 

'^ See in particular U. Olt, "Theokrits 'Thalysien* und ihre literarischen Vorbilder." 
Rheinisches Museum 115 (1972). 134-49. 

1' See Segal (above, note 3), pp. 158-60, who discusses this image. This aspect of the final 
lines is not mentioned in Ott (above, note 16) nor in the debate between Giangrande (above, note 
5), 493 ff. and Lasserre, Rheinisches Museum 102 (1959), 307 ff., on the meaning of the last 
two lines. 

^* A. Fritzsche, Theocriti Idyllia (Leipzig 1870), ad loc. oxoivoq may be either masculine or 
feminine. Herodotus, the only previous author to use the word extensively (sixteen times), 
appears to use only the masculine, but the feminine occurs cerlamly at Aristophanes, fr. 34 
(TtX-EKXTiv oxoivov), and later several times (e.g. Dioscorides 4. 52). 

^^ See Kambylis (above, note 15), pp. 1 10-24. 

^ Giangrande (above, note 5) 491-92. 



Simon Goldhill 5 

insufficient to assert that "I'idylle en question ne peut contenir . , . aucune 
allusion symbolique a la po6sie de Th6ocrite sous forme de metaphores 
auditives ou v6g6tales."^^ Rather, the arrival in a place whose very elements 
are composed of images of poetry and poetics is in a precise way a fitting 
end to Simichidas' journey with its discussion and display of poetry and the 
ironic echoing of the Hesiodic Dichterweihe. Perhaps axoivoq is the first 
hint of the specially charged nature of this description of the locus amoenusi 
The adjective a5eia<;, then, about which critics have debated at some 
length, may have also a further connotation .22 For abxx; is regularly used 
by Theocritus (as by other Greek poets) for the pleasantness of song, and 
specifically to link the world of nature and the world of song.^^ The 
opening oi Idyll 1 draws the parallel precisely: 

a5\) XI x6 \^fl9'uplo^a Kai a Tiifuq, ainoXe, xfiva, 
a Jioxl xai<; Ttayaioi, |ieX,{o5exai, a5\) 5e Kai ixt 
avpio5e^. 

Is, then, the "sweet reed" in Idyll 7 also an expression to be read in terms of 
Theocritean poetics? 

These are the only two uses of the term oxoivoi; in the genuine poems 
of Theocritus.^'* In both cases, it can be seen to have been chosen for a 
pointed and witty effect in an allusive manner typical of the relations of 
Hellenistic poets with each other and the tradition of past poetry. In Idyll 1, 
it adds a specific and clever point to the image of the boy; in Idyll 7, it may 
add a further subtle aspect to the complex interrelations of the locus 
amoenus and the journey of Theocritean poetics. In both cases, the allusion 
to an expression of Callimachus by Theocritus marks the continuing 
interplay of these two poets. 

What significance, however, is there in this echo if we assume the more 
conventional view of Callimachus as writing after Theocritus? The 
prologue to the Aitia not only sets out to justify what has since become 
known as "Callimachean poetics," but also aims to do this through a 
network of allusions to other poets and, in particular, as it would seem at 
least from the present state of our knowledge, to Theocritus among his 
contemporaries.^ His rejection of the grandeur of the heroic world and 
adoption of the imagery and metaphoric structure of the pastoral world can 



^^ Giangrande (above, note 5), 491. 

^ Critics debate whether it means "sweet-smelling" (e.g. P. Monteil, Theocrite [Paris 1968], 
ad loc), or "soft to the touch" (e.g. Hatzikosta [above, note 13], ad loc, who has an extended 
discussion). 

^ See e.g. H. Edquist, Ramus 4 (1974), 101-14 for a discussion of a.?^c, in Theocritus. 

^ It also occurs at 21. 11 and 23. 29, both of which poems are generally regarded as 
spurious. At 21. 11, it is used of fishermen's nets (ex oxowcov XxxPvpivBoi); at 23. 39. it is 
used of the spumed lover's noose (Xuaov xaq oxoCvco jie). 

Bowie (above, note 14) in particular has recently emphasized the need to remember the 
important influence of the many lost contemporary — and earlier — works. 



6 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

be seen interestingly to match Theocritus' poetic principles and practice of 
Xenxot-nq. But within this general parallel interest between the two poets, 
specific word plays of the one poet may reverse and manipulate the language 
of the other. Callimachus develops an image of himself writing like a child 
(6), but wittily reverses Theocritus' child guard's material of composition. 
Theocritus' oxoivo; with its rare feminine gender changes significance with 
the addition of nEpai5i. With the characteristic Hellenistic interest in scale 
and distortion of scale, part of a key Theocritean image of >.e7it6xti<; is 
turned by Callimachus to a sign of the very grandeur of style that he is 
rejecting. On this reading, Callimachus' use of axoivoq is seen as a 
significant echo of a contemporary poet, a further Umkehrung. 

What conclusions can be drawn from this interplay of language? A 
particular term is adopted by both Theocritus and Callimachus in passages 
concerned with poetics, but in different ways. It can be shown moreover 
that the echo has significance and relevance whichever poet or poem is 
assumed to have priority. It could be argued that there is a source elsewhere 
on which both Theocritus and Callimachus draw.^*^ It could be argued that 
the term may have appeared with such a charged connotation elsewhere in 
the lost poems of either poet, and thus the allusion may need to be seen in a 
more diffuse way than I have claimed. Even if either of these arguments 
could be shown to be true, the shared metaphorical vocabulary of 
Callimachus and Theocritus in passages concerned with poetics is marked. 
The example of oxowoc, shows again how the texts of the Hellenistic poets 
are to be read always in relation to contemporaneous and past texts, but also 
how these relations are unlikely to be simple.^^ 

King's College, Cambridge 

^Indeed J. K. Newman has argued ("Pindar and Callimachus," /C5 10 [1985], 181-82) that 
oxoivoq in the Callimachus fragment may echo Pindar, Dithyramb 11, (p. 72, Snell-Maehler), 
where the poet rejects oxoivoteveia doi8d. oxoivoxevTiq is used several times by later 
commentators on poetic matters: it is used for "extended" songs {q.a\iaxa) by Philostratus (Her. 
19. 17), for ewoiai by Eustathius (946. 8) and twice of "extended" rhetorical KcoXa by 
Hermogenes (/nv. 1. 5; 4. 4). 

^ My thanks to Neil Hopkinscm, whose help enabled me to improve this paper. 



Circe and the Poets: Theocritus IX. 35-36 

HUGH PARRY 



The Theocritean Ninth Idyll ends with a rather curious claim: "Those whom 
the Muses regard with favor Circe does not harm with her potion" (35-36).* 
Commentators on the passage have little to say, but two rather different 
kinds of interpretation have emerged somewhat fitfully. According to the 
first, song is an antidote to the cares of life. But that hardly meets the case 
in the Ninth Idyll; everyone, poet and audience alike, can be cheered by the 
minstrel's art, whereas Theocritus singles out a blessing available only to 
the poet. 

A scholiast points the way toward another line of interpretation. 
Theocritus, he suggests, alludes (aivixxetai) to Homer's account of the 
contrary fortunes of Odysseus and his crew in their adventures with Circe. 
Odysseus survived Circe's magic because he was "wise" (ao(p6v) and "beloved 
of the Muses" (Moi5oai<; (piA,ot)|iEvov), while his crew succumbed because 
they were neither.^ In other words, Circe represents a universal threat 
against which only the |io\)aiKoi may prevail, for they live under a special 
kind of divine dispensation: "Der Sanger steht unter dem Schutz der Cotter, 
auch eine Kirke kann ihm nichts anheben."^ Theocritus would not be the 
only poet to claim the protection of a divine shield, but the claim and the 
scholiast's gloss give rise to a number of questions. In what sense are the 
Muses protective deities? How can Odysseus be adduced as a paradigm of 



^ Few critics now believe that the poem is authentic: see A.S.F. Gow, Theocritus, vol. 11 
(Cambridge 1952), pp. 185 ff. But see also Qaude Meillier, "Quelques Nouvelles Perspectives 
dans L'fitude de Th6ocrite," Revue des Etudes Grecques xciv (1981), 318-24, on alleged 
problems in the text. I shall continue to refer to the author as Theocritus. If the text reads 
Ya9ev»oiv rather than yaSdioai (see Gow, p. 192), there will be a change of emphasis — "those 
the Muses regard with favor rejoice: those they do not, Circe harms" — but not of essential 
meaning. 

^C. Wendel, Scholia in Theocritum Vetera (Leipzig 1927). 

' Erich Kaiser, "Odyssee-Szenen als Topoi," Mus. Helv. 21 (1964), 200. R.G.M. Nisbet and 
M. Hubbard declare that "conventionally \he gods protect the good man and the poet," without 
suggesting what may lie behind the convention and the connectitm (A Commentary on Horace: 
Odes Book I [Oxford 1970], p. 262). Gow (above, note 1), p. 192, like Fritzsche before him. 
cites Tibullus III. 7. 61 without comment, but that passage explicitly refers to Ulysses, not to 
poets. 



8 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

the poet's fortunes? And what precise threat does Circe pose, to heroes and 
poets alike? 

Answers circle around the complex issue of ^lavia. "Madness" 
fascinated the ancients. It also puzzled them, but they consistently Unked it 
with disassociation; Circe's power served as one of their mythical examples 
of the threat of psychic disintegration. Particularly vulnerable are "heroic" 
princes, since heroism reaches perilously high and wide; and those fired by 
the energies of the creative imagination. At the same time, only poets and 
princes have access to certain Odyssean resources that alone can ensure 
survival. This, at least, seems to be the tradition which the Theocritean 
verses echo, even if the poet in this instance recalls the myth more as a 
rhetorical flourish than as an article of faith."* 

But cannot Theocritus have meant simply, "song (the Muses) comforts 
the poet beset by life's cares (Circe)"? If "cares" can comprise life's most 
exacting challenges that put us all on our mettle, then this interpretation of 
Circe is attested in at least one passage. Tibullus, commending Messalla as 
an even greater hero than Ulysses, cites the latter's exemplary conquest not 
only of Circe but also of his many other adversaries (III. 7. 52-81). He 
gives us a condensed version of the entire apologos, he refers neither directly 
nor indirectly to Muses, and he grounds his hero's triumph in his audacia 
(52) and his labor (81). The great man surmounts all obstacles, Circe 
among them. But it is one thing to generalize Circe's potion by making of 
it a typical challenge facing the hero throughout his labors. It is another, 
for example, to pair Circe and Medea as sorceresses whose draughts offer the 
despairing lover an alternative to the consolation of his Muse (Tib. ll. 4. 
55; cf. Theoc., Id. II. 15 ff.). And it is yet another to isolate Circe 
altogether in a context of poetry, attack, and defense. As the scholiast 
realized, Theocritus' image sends us directly back to Odysseus' encounter 
with Circe, and only Circe. The Homeric scene as a self-contained episode 
became a favorite topos in later literature.^ It served various rhetorical 
purposes, but always central to the topos was the theme of labor and divine 
support combining not only to overcome danger but to end in delight. The 
hero frustrates Circe's designs. More than that, he finds the means to enjoy 
her charms to the full, and without penalty. Circe is a special kind of 
"care." 

We shall return to Circe and the hero's divine aid. As for the 
interpretation of song as alleviation of care, it is valid for such passages as 
Horace, Odes I. 32. 15, where the poet speaks of song as a lenimen,^hut 

* On Theocritus and the Muses, see Frederick T. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court (Leiden 1979), 
pp. 48 ff.; also Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet (Berkeley and Lost Angeles 1969), 
pp. 146-48. 

' See Kaiser (above, note 3), 201-03. 

* Cf. Apoll. ^od.. Argon. III. 897 ff. On poetry as performance to alleviate harsh emotions, 
see Gilbert Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals (Harvard 1967), pp. 7 ff. On the application of 
this kind of interpretation to Idyll XI, see K. J. Dover, Theocritus: Select Poems (London 



Hugh Parry 9 

falls short in Idyll IX. Theocritus says that Circe oiSxi . . . SaXriaaTo, 
"does not harm" (gnomic aorist), with her potion the man favored by the 
Muses. The Muses here do not help the poet cope with distress, they 
prevent him from being harmed. The Odyssean echo is appropriate: 
Homer's hero did not find consolation that alleviated or cured a condition of 
existing pain; he drew upon heroic qualities that enabled him to master a 
new threat and finally enjoy its source. Song as consolation anyway runs 
into the question, rarely addressed but crucial to the present study, of what 
distinctive blessings Uie Muses bestow on the poet. By the "Muses" 
Theocritus cannot simply mean "song." The consolations of song are 
available to everyone, for any frazzled soul can turn to a Qzloc, doiSoq to 
cheer him (Hes., Theog. 98-103). The therapeutic properties of a poem, 
from simple lyric to full-scale epic, may include its soothing rhythms, its 
didactic content (for example a cautionary or inspirational message), the 
opportunities it affords for identification with examples of heroic humanity, 
and the redemptive power of its mythological symbols. But what are the 
Muses for the poet, and the poet alone? 

There is one form of consolation open only to the bard, namely the 
power to sing when all other faculties are in decline (e.g. Aesch., Ag. 72- 
82, 104; Eur., H.F. 638^0, 673-79), but that can hardly be the meaning of 
Theocritus' verse. Nor can the benefit described by Callimachus: "those the 
Muses look upon favorably when young they do not abandon when their 
locks turn grey" (Ep. 21. 5 ff.); that is, true talent is innate and endures (cf. 
Hor., Odes IV. 3. 2). We need to know what the Muses actively do to 
protect the poet. 

What does "by the Muses" mean when we hear of Sappho as Mo-doaic, 
exxpcbvoK; ia)p,evri xov eptoTa? Does she comfort her condition with song? 
With any song? Or does "by the Muses" mean "by virtue of being a poet"? 
Our informant, Plutarch, paraphrasing Philoxenos, had more than distraction 
in mind, for he says first "she speaks things truly mixed with fire and 
through her songs gives expression to the heat from her heart."^ At issue is 
how the poet "gives expression to" (dvacpepei) her passions in the form of 
song, and so obtains relief. In the course of time, certainly by the 
Hellenistic period, the Muses became unambiguously metaphorical,^ an 
aspect of the poet's inner resources. The concept of the Muses as part of the 
poet's self might even be reflected in the Ninth Idyll, if there is any method 
in the comparisons that precede the reference to Circe: "as the cicada is dear 
to the cicada, the ant to the ant, and the hawk to the hawk, so to me the 
Muse and song" (31-35). These comparisons are of the type "like prefers 



1972), pp. 173 ff. On the larger implications of poetiy as therapy, see Bennett Simon, Mind 
and Madness in Ancient Greece (Ithaca 1978). pp. 87, 115, 147. 283. 

■^ Plut.. Am. 762 ff.; cf. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, 822. 

* The foundation study of this development is J. Croissant's, m Aristote et les mysteres (Paris 
1932). See too Steele Commager. The Odes of Horace (New Haven 1962), pp. 2-10, 17. 



10 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

like,"^so confirming the likeness of poet and Muse; which is to say that 
they are mirroring accounts of the one creative imagination. To claim that 
the Muses favor and protect the poet is to imply a special power within him 
that enables him to overcome certain problems. Manifestly, a poet may fail 
in his declared aim, for example to beguile the beloved into reciprocal 
passion. Yet every "successful" poem is, however tragic its theme or 
unresolved its crisis, by definition a solution of some sort. We must 
distinguish, then, between the ostensible problem, which may remain 
intractable, and the problem which the Muses always help the poet solve, 
precisely because he is a poet. 

Something of a consensus has emerged in the considerable literature on 
the love-sickness of Simaetha in Idyll II and, especially, of Polyphemus in 
Idyll XI, to the effect that they solve their problems by "working through" 
them (a Freudian concept) in cathartic song.^° The Cyclops is hardly 
distracted or consoled; he sings of his love without cease for much of the 
poem, and it is a painful experience. And, like many another ancient wooer, 
he fails to seduce his beloved through sweet flattery seductively packaged. 
What in fact happens is that by means of the Muses he scotches his ^lavia, 
and so, for the moment at least, comes to his senses (XL 72). In what 
manner is this happy outcome attributable to the Cyclops' Muse? 
Polyphemus succeeds to the extent that Theocritus creates for him a 
harmonious song. That the song is harmonious few would deny; it is 
therefore enough for our present purpose to draw attention to two moments 
which particularly suggest that "by the Muses" means in the Cyclops' case 
"by virtue of being a poet." Early in the song we hear that Polyphemus 
(pdp^iaKov E\)pe (17, "found a cure"). The verb evpioKeiv can refer to any 
kind of discovery, not least of a generalized solution (e.g. Id. II. 95) or of a 
medical cure (e.g. Soph., El. 875). It can also, in simple or compound 
form, express the notion of poetic invention, as in Pindar's finding "a path 
of words" (01. 1. 110) and in Plato's description of Tynnachus' paean as 
Evpriiid 11 Mo-uacov (Ion 534d). Since Theocritus follows (pdpiiaKov ei)pe 



' See Gow (above, note 1). pp. 191 ff. 

^° Although a recent trend is to argue that Polyphemus is not really cured (the issue may be 
more semantic than substantive): see Edward W. Spofford, "Theocritus and Polyphemus," 
American Journal of Philology 90 (1960), 22-35; R. Schmid, "Theocritus 11. The purblind 
poet," Classical Journal 70.4 (1975), 32-36; Meillier (above, note 1), 325-27. Dover (above 
note 6), pp. 173 ff., echoes the long-standing view that Polyphemus "soothed his pains." He 
cites Id. X. 22 ff., but this passage is clearly a happy love song to sweeten agricultural toU. 
Ettore Bignone, Teocrito (Bari 1934), pp. 201 ff., finds in Idyll XI a sequence familiar in tragic 
drama, a crescendo toward limite di follie before the moment of sudden catharsis that 
inunediately follows. E. B. Holtsmark emphasizes the Cyclops' Apollonian act of self- 
discovery ("Poetry as Self -Enlightenment: Theocritus 11," Transactions of the American 
Philological Association 97 [1966], 253-59). (On therapy as self-knowledge, see Simon [above 
n. 6], pp. 141-43). See also Anna Rist, The Poems of Theocritus (Chapel Hill 1978), pp. 
102-04; and P. T. Griffiths, "Poetry as Pharmakon in Theocritus Idyll 11," Arktouros: Hellenic 
Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox (New York 1979), pp. 81 ff. 



Hugh Parry 11 

immediately with aeiSe ("he began to sing"), we are encouraged to hear an 
allusion to poetic invention. What Polyphemus discovers is a cpdp^aKov. 
The term is most appropriate in a text that echoes medical practice,^ ^ but it 
also suggests song as a spell, an £7taoi6Ti (cf. Callim,, Ep. 46. 1), a 
construction of magically compelling power that works inexorably on the 
singer himself, bringing him to his senses and so curing him of his fiavCa 
(XI. 72). 

Toward the close of the poem an editorial comment sums up how the 
Cyclops' (pdp|i,aKov works: "and so he enoiiiaivev" his passion (80). The 
verb noi)j,a{veiv, "to shepherd," carries the associated meanings of "soothe," 
"beguile," "cheat" in a number of passages; so LSJ interpret its use in the 
Eleventh Idyll. But, as Gow noted, the meaning "keep under control" or 
"guide in the right way" is also surely present.^^ \^ vj^w of the Cyclops* 
occupation, we take seriously the pleasant pun in the verb's literal meaning. 
As early as Homer tioi^ltiv, a shepherd, served as a metaphor for kings (e.g. 
//. n. 243), denoting a power to master, order, control what would otherwise 
be inclined to behave randomly, and so chaotically. This is also the 
characteristic power of poetry itself. Just as (pdpjxaKov evpe is followed 
by d£i6E, so £7ioi}iavvev is followed by |io\)oia6cov (81 ff.).^^ We 
remember that vonoq ("strain") and \o\x.6c, ("pasture") are etymologically 
related as expressions of order. What Polyphemus "shepherds" is his erotic 
Havia, achieving through his art an awareness of his proper place in the 
scheme of things (Galatea belongs to the sea, he to the land) and emotional 
equilibrium. 

Again, however, we confront the question of what, if anything, 
distinguishes Polyphemus from other aiUng lovers with remedial music at 
their disposal. Cannot his audience experience passions similar to his and, 
through the power of his song, find similar release? Does Polyphemus' 
cathartic experience really enable us to understand how the poet himself is to 
be understood as specially blessed? 

It does only if we concentrate on the poet's creative experience itself as 
something denied, even vicariously, to his audience. It is an essential 
paradox of art, as Aristotle well knew, that it does not obliterate painful 
experiences, but turns them into beautifully tolerable forms.^'* If that 
paradox is, or usually is, a source of gratification for the listener, it is 
crucially and excruciatingly redemptive for the inspired imagination that 
brings art into being. Not that the ancients knew a great deal about what 

^^ On medical imagery in the Idyll, see especially H. Erbse, "Dichtkunsl und Medizin in 
Theokrils 1 1 Idyll," Mus. Helv. 22 (1965), 232-36; also Meillier (above, note 1), 325-27. 

^^ Gow (above, note 1), p. 220. For a fuU consideration of possible meanings of 
Jtoinaiveiv, see Pierre Monteil, Theocrile (Paris 1968), p. 139. 

'^ The verb noinaiveiv is closely linked with the poet's task at Pind., 01. 11. 8-9: m jiev 
ajietepa yXAooa Ttoijiaiveiv e9eXei (a reference to praise without envy). 

a yap atixa Xyjiripax; opcojiev, tovtcov xaq eiKovai; xac; jidXioxa fiKpiPcojievaq 
Xaipojiev Gecopoiivxa; {Poet. 1448bl0). 



12 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

inspiration is, nor that we are much wiser than they. But, as Bennett 
Simon has well observed, "Greek culture stood in awe of creativity."^ ^ 
Systematic thinkers tried, perplexedly, to articulate a ^aviaof inspiration 
that is somehow not a disease but a blessing. And artists found a series of 
powerful images, of which the encounter between Odysseus and Circe is 
one, to express their intuitions about something that mattered greatly while 
remaining largely incomprehensible. 

The Eleventh Idyll makes a number of points, at least indirectly: that 
art as process is therapeutic and mysteriously so; that the poet's pain, even 
thoughts of suicide and fear of death, are inseparable from the poem's beauty 
and the pleasure it gives; that the poet redeems the pain by finding a shape 
to "work it out"; that the result is, for the poet, self-knowledge and 
emotional stability. At the same time, the Cyclops is not cured forever. 
As lovers, he and Galatea illustrate the fluctuating pattern of erotic flight 
and pursuit (cf. Id. VI. 6-19). And as poet, Polyphemus succeeds here as he 
failed before and might fail again; poetic "cure" can be only temporary, since 
each act of creativity is an opening of oneself to a new chaos and a new 
struggle to transform it into art, and so to redeem it. And yet, as long as he 
proves himself to be a no\r[x-{\c,, a "maker," the poet is more sure of 
salvation than the rest of us. Or so the artists themselves believe. Mr. 
Graham Greene is surely not the first, nor Mr. Philip Larkin the last, to 
wonder how those without a creative gift survive the assaults of a |iavia 
that is inescapably part of the human condition, and yet also, for good as 
well as ill, a special power in the artist's imagination. In the Eleventh Idyll 
song is both a symptom of the Cyclops' problem (13 ff.) and the means to 
resolve it (17 ff.). This apparent contradiction has puzzled some 
commentators,^^ but it is an instance where the Muse reveals several sides of 
her ambiguous nature. The Greeks used the same word, ndQoq, for "what 
happens" and for "emotion," that is, for the event and for the feelings it 
gives rise to; these in turn generate the urge to compose. "Epcoq as the 
object of song is the clearest example — external force, internal response, 
painful experience rehearsed, the impetus to "compose."''' The Cyclops' 
song is erotic |iav{a rehearsed and therefore relived. It is also the ^ovia of 
inspirational energy forged out of pain. And it is the drive to compose 
marshalled against the forces of dislocation. 

There are therefore different levels at which a poem may be said to 
succeed. The poet who fails in his ostensible object, for example to win the 
affections of his beloved, may at least claim that his song has served him as 
an anodyne. But he may, like Medea and Tibullus, admit that not even that 

^^ Simon (above, note 6), p. 150. 

^^ On the double role of song, see Ph.-E. Legrand, Etudes sur Thiocrite (Paris 1898), pp. 
70-75. Gow too (above, note 1), p. 21 1, finds the contradiction intolerable. 

^"^ "Love makes poets" (Eur.,^. 663; see Gow, above, note 1, p. 209, on Nicias' version). 
On the broad question of emotion and art, see Horace: formal en'un Natura prius nos intus ad 
omnemlforlunarum habitum . . . /post effert animi molus inlerprele lingua {AP. 108-1 1). 



Hugh Parry 13 

measure of consolation can always be achieved (Apoll, Argon. III. 948 ff.; 
Tib. II. 4. 15).^^ But we must not confuse thematic and aesthetic success. 
Sometimes they coincide, for example in tragedies like Oedipus the King^^ 
which explore sickness and its cure. Very often, however, lyric art in 
particular relishes the irremedial condition of its sentiments. The Eleventh 
Idyll is a song of sickness and cure, but if it resembles tragedy it does so as 
an amusing parody .^^ One of the reasons why the Muse cures here rather 
than merely deadens the singer's pain is surely because it is offered to a 
doctor familiar with medical processes and used to thinking of disease and 
cure,^^ while also himself "beloved of the Muses," a "scion of lovely- voiced 
Graces" {Id. XI. 6; XXVIII. 7). The Cyclops' song is both the rehearsal of 
pain and the means to its cure. It fails in its ostensible object, the seduction 
of Galatea, yet succeeds anyway because Polyphemus hits on the secret of 
poetic invention. The Idyll is a striking example of poetry's peculiar ability 
to triumph over itself in creating apixovia:^^ in Longinus' words xexvTi 
brings to order the poet's "nature," his (pvoiq, in its sublime form eKPoX-q 
To\) 5ai|iovio\) TTveviiatoq, "transportation by divine energy" (II. 1-2, 
XXXIII. 5). 

The Muse, then, can mean "song" as a delightful experience able to 
reduce care. More profoundly, the Muse can personify the creative 
imagination, something unique to the creator. Ancient iconography often 
places the Muse, whether song or inspiration, in an agonistic setting. In 
particular, she keeps her favorites free from harm, on more than one 
occasion shielding them against the designs of Circe. Circe's classic 
encounter is with Odysseus in the tenth book of the Odyssey. It is an 
encounter that has nothing to do explicitly with the Muses, but the 
scholiast's suggestion that there is a link is well founded. Later accounts 
merely made the link explicit. 

As the Odyssey represents it, Odysseus' visit to Aeaea is one in a series 
of scenes that test the hero's identity against less or more civilized 
experiences and describe his triumphs. That the divine help he receives 
suggests "double determination" is an argument that today scarcely needs to 
be documented. Ancient commentators went further, reducing the Homeric 
gods to personifications of the hero's inner qualities, and could do so 
without fatally violating the spirit of the original. A critical tradition 
interpreted Hermes as \6yoc, and the moly he gives Odysseus as dpexri or 



'* And cf. Theoc., Id. in, where the poel remains dejected, despite the hopeful example of 
Atalanta and Hippomanes. 

*' Bignone (above, note 10), p. 202. 

^ E.g., the motif of suicidal despair of Id. m. 53 ff. ("Ill lie here and die") becomes "111 tell 
[my mother] my head and feet hurt, so she may suffer as I suffer" (XI. 67-71). Vergil's Second 
Eclogue (69) provides a more serious parallel. 

^^ See Gow (above, note 1), p. 219, on a(p\>a6eiv at 71. 

^Longinus calls composition a kind of "apjiovCa of words" (XXXIX. 3). 



14 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

X6yo(;.23 Which is to say that the hero's success against Circe is one 
example of the theme that runs through the entire Odyssey and indeed 
ancient culture, order as the supreme virtue. The erotic focus in this episode 
is unmistakable, to the extent that later accounts took Circe as a type of the 
"bewitching" hetaira and the crew's submission as e^ riSovfiq cxXoyux.^^ We 
may add that Odysseus not only tames, he finally benefits from what was 
for his crew merely an enormous threat, the sexual energy of a beautiful 
goddess who would turn her victims into fawning beasts. The hero 
triumphs because he applies against female wiles the Odyssean qualities of 
foresight, preparation, resolve, and masculine aggression (his drawn sword 
representing, not for the only time in ancient art and literature, both martial 
and phallic energy). 

If there is a connection with art, it begins with the fact that the hero 
Odysseus is also no mean poet {Od. XI. 368).25 Hesiod's account of the 
relation between the Muses (specifically Calliope) and princes is not as clear 
as it might be {Theog. 77-93).^^ He atuibutes to PaaiXei<; the gift of wise 
speech from which flow wise judgments in court. Beyond that, we may 
think of the extraordinary nature of heroic energy, comparable to artistic 
energy, and of the not rare conjunction of the two in the same man. We 
recall not only soldier-poets like Archilochus, but the heroization of 
Sophocles (and the perhaps heroizing belief in Vergil's magical powers that 
sprang up after his death). Both Achilles and Odysseus sing as well as act. 
The latter, the very ideal of the civilized man, better exemplifies the 
connection. As hero he must harness the energies of a Circe to his own 
advantage and to the larger demands of civilized life. As poet he must 
remember the past in all its painful details and reassemble them in song, 
shaping its enormous energies, again in the interests of personal and 
communal order. The Muses' associations with apiaoviaapply at each 
level. Odysseus' skills as a poet reflect his larger ability to embody the 
value that is centrally espoused, threatened, and restored throughout the 
Odyssey. Two images may be particularly relevant here: the oath that he 
forces upon Circe, since the oath is a delicate instrument of rational, 
civilized life, yet grounded in and guarded by the Furies, those embodiments 
of chthonic power; and Odysseus himself, "bound" as he enjoys the 
immensely threatening and atu^active song of the Sirens, master of himself 
and of the music.^^ 



^ See Kaiser (above, note 3), 208-10. 

^ See Kaiser (above, note 3), 201, 203. Servius says of Circe {Aen. VII. 19): haec libidine 
sua et blandimentis homines inferinam vitam deducebat. 

^ A later tradition has him offer "spells and binding songs" to help the Cyclops in his 
courtship of Galatea: see Dover (above, note 6), p. 174. 

^ See M. L. West. Hesiod: Theogony (Oxford 1966). pp. 181 ff. 

^^ Homer is silent on the Siren's instrument of death (one supposes shipwreck and 
cannibalism); he speaks only of the danger of their "voice" and "song" {Od. X. 236; cf. 472). 



Hugh Parry 15 

Odysseus' visit to Circe's isle resembles, in origin probably was, a 
crossing into Hades itself,^^ and it is its chthonic center that makes the Circe 
episode particularly relevant to notions of art. When Plato describes the 
poet as EpM.T|vev(; tcov GeSv (Ion, 534c), we are reminded that Hermes was 
not merely a glorified messenger boy,^' but the personification of what 
connects chthonic, mortal, and Olympian realms of existence and of the 
relevance of this connection to the mediating role of seer and poet.^° At this 
level, the contest between Odysseus and Circe takes on pointed significance 
as a contest between Hermes and Circe: 6e6<; against Geoq, magic against 
magic, power against power. Circe is a singer, a spellbinder,^^ and a source 
of information who knows all about the Sirens and all about Hades. She is 
a 0E6<;yet one completely remote from the rational imperatives of 
Olympian structure. Her locale is lepoq {Od. X. 275), "infused with power," 
but totally isolated, her palace a demonic parody of the civilized palace. 
What she threatens is to transform. Unlike his crew, Odysseus does not 
"forget his homeland,"^^ he is not changed from man into beast, he does not 
become "unmanned" in intercourse^'^ (dvTivopa, X. 301). This erotic 
imagery of dislocation may also remind us that disassociation lies at the 
heart of triumphant |iavia in all its forms. One either avoids it, or one 
encounters it in some way and survives it. Heroes and poets must take the 
second route. It is Hermes who ensures Odysseus' salvation. He is also a 
Geoq, like Circe chthonic and magical in some degree but also, unlike Circe 
and like the Apollonian Muses, Olympian, rational, constructive. Not 
surprisingly he becomes a patron god of poets. 

The contest between Odysseus and Circe occupied no slight place in tfle 
ancient imagination and was entirely relevant to notions of art. We 

^ See Ch. Mugler, "Circe et la Necessity," Annates de la Faculti de I'Universite de Nice 
(1979), 59-65. 

^ See FJ.M. De Waele. The Magic Staffer Rod in Graecoltalian Antiquity (Ghent 1927), 
p. 32. He compares //. XXIV.33 ff.; Od. V.28 ff.; 24. 1 ff., but Circe and the magic moly 
establish a unique context relevant to magic and art. See Norman O. Brown's argument that the 
pre-Homeric herald was a "sound maker" like the bard, that the origins of song and poetry are 
likely to be found in the intoned formulae of magical incantations, and that it is not surprising 
therefore to find a deity who is at once herald, magician, and patron of poets {Hermes The Thief 
[New York 1947], pp. 31 ff.). 

^ Horace calls the poet sacer interpresque deorum (AP. 391), and vir Mercurialis {Odes 11. 17. 
29 ff.). Commager (above, note 8) notes that all the gods who protect Horace — Mercury, 
Bacchus, Faunus — have something to do with poetry (p. 342). 

'^ Od. X. 221. Tibullus emphasizes the point: [Circe] apta vel herbislaptaque vel cantu 
veteres mutare figuras (HI. 7. 62-63; cf. Verg., Eel. 8. 70). In Ovid she sings spells "learned 
from Hecate" {Met. XTV. 44); and her rival for Picus is Canens, "Singing Girl" {Met. XTV. 337 
ff.). 

^■^Od. X. 236. If your homeland no Itmger exists for you, your identity no longer exists, so 
it is vital that Odysseus "remember" it (X. 472). The danger of forgetting also reminds us that 
the power of the singer is precisely to remember (the Muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne) 
and so preserve the meaning of the past and the identity that is rooted there. 

^^ Because of sex with a goddess, but more generally because all sex threatens impotence with 
loss of semen: see Anne GiacomeUi, "Aphrodite and After," Phoenix 34. 1 (1980), 16-19. 



16 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

considered earlier the passage in Tibullus where Circe submits to Odysseus' 
audacia, a fate she shares with many others. There is a more telling parallel 
in Horace's Epistles (I. 2. 23 ff.) which identifies Ulysses' enemy as only 
Circe and the Sirens, and which speaks more nearly to the poet's task. 
Prdaux reads the emphasis here as entirely on Circe,^ although the Sirens 
too (unlike the Cyclops) are wholly appropriate to represent dangerous 
energy confronted, mastered, and enjoyed. Horace does not give Ulysses a 
supporting deity, but the Homeric paradigm is implicit. In Pr^aux' view, 
Horace here puts in relief "la sauvegarde accordee par Mercure aux sages," a 
subtle indication of Horace's own devotion to Mercury as god of a certain 
kind of intelligence vital to the poet.^^ What is at stake? It would be too 
much to expect that the question of creativity which fascinated but perplexed 
thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus should be made articulate in 
poetry, however discursive. There are times when Horace defines poetry as a 
soothing art, a lenimen {Odes I. 32. 15). However, he so often imagines it 
as a saving force, even a life-saver, that one may legitimately find in it more 
than consolation. He tells us that in childhood the gods enabled him to 
sleep safe from "vipers and bears" {Odes III, 4. 9-20). These clearly are 
threats in the imagination, witnesses to an acutely disturbing sensitivity in 
the child's psyche but one tempered by a powerful capacity to achieve 
tranquillity. Here is the making of the poet 

As an adult, Horace still talks of protective gods: di me tuentur {Odes 
I. 17. 13), but in this same ode it is Faunus who is singled out, the god 
elsewhere called guardian of Mercurialium virorum {Odes II. 17. 27-30). 
Mercury himself assists the poet, saving him at Philippi {Odes. II. 7. 13 
ff.), while this god's lyre is said to be able to stay swift rivers and calm the 
immanis . . . ianitor aulae {Odes III. 11. 14-16). More generally it is the 
Muses who shield the poet: it is they, now, who protect him from the 
falling tree and death at Philippi, and who also ensure him safe passage 
should he journey over the insanientem Bosphorum or other wild regions 
{Odes III. 4. 21-36). Such adult "monsters" include autobiographical 
details, but even these are mythologized to the level of Cerberus, "enemies" 
rising in the imagination yet at the same time becoming part of the poem's 
redemptive form and a source of its delight. One of the poet's correlatives of 
disorder is the wolf, lupus {Odes I. 22. 9), a word perhaps akin to lussa, 
"madness."^^ Critics are divided on whether it is love or song that saves the 
poet on this occasion,^'' but the lover-poet is scarcely a divisible concept in 
such poems. It is singing of the beloved {dum meam canto Lalagen) that 

^ Jean Pr6aux, Q. Horatius Flaccus: Epistulae, liber primus (Paris 1968), p. 52. 

^^ Preaux (above, note 34), ibid. 

^ Nisbet and Hubbard (above, note 3) compare the lion in Dioscorides (AP. VI. 220), who 
is chased off by a pure priest of Cybele with his tambourine (pp. 261 ff.). But the image of the 
wolf may have a sharper point, if the etymology is sound: see Simon (above, n. 6) who also 
notes the parallel of "berserk" and "bearskin" (pp. 68; 209, n. 38). 

^ On the history of the argument, see Nisbet and Hubbard (above, note 3), pp. 261 ff. 



Hugh Parry 17 

does the trick. This ode is an exemplary poem about the man who is 
integer vitae scelerisque purus. What ars aspires to is integritas. We might 
be reminded of the integri fontes in which the Muses of Lucretius (I. 927 
ff.; IV. 2 ff.) and of Horace {Odes I. 26. 6) rejoice. Apart from the allusion 
here to waters uncharted before by Roman poets,^* there is also the 
suggestion that the waters of inspiration are a mysterious source of both 
energy and wholeness. 

In the Epistle Horace gives advice to a young man embarking on the 
study of philosophy, reminding him that Ulysses defeated his bogies by 
application of virtus and sapientia (17). While the explicit context is 
philosophy, the philosophical and poetical lives were always intimately 
associated in Horace's mind;^' each requires that order triumph over the dark 
forces of disorder, however alluring these might be. In the Epistle he 
describes Circe as domina meretrix (25). This is the topos of the hetaira as 
a symbol of what stands aggressively between the philosopher or poet and 
his goal. Tupet equates Circe's potion here with "d^raison,'"'^ to which we 
would add that Circe herself is a madness not to be avoided but absorbed — 
the trained colt and hunting dog retain their animal energy (Ep. I. 2. 62-67), 
the tamed Circe her sexual attraction. Horace has the Muses save the 
mighty Octavian, guaranteeing the boon of peace and so "re-creating" him 
(recreatis. Odes III. 4. 40), nourishing him within the Pierian cave before 
his rebirth as the incarnation of Rome's new, peaceful destiny."*^ The 
struggle gives way to, redirects its energies into, the heroic, philosophical, 
and poetical forms of victory. 

We do less than justice to Horace and to the tradition if we interpret tHe 
poet's multiple enemies as merely the turmoils of life against which poetry 
serves as a kind of anodyne. AH the threatening images are extremely 
violent, the strange violence of nature and of the bestial; all are given full 
expression by the poet, and all, not least Circe, are finally transfigured by 
poetry's ordering power ."^^ They point to a kind of chaotic and awesome 
energy that Plato called \iavia Mo\)aa>v (a paradox we shall take up 
shortly). But did Horace really believe that such jiavia lay at the heart of 
his own craft? "Madness" remains an ill-defined concept, especially in the 

^ See Commager (above, note 8), pp. 1 1, 327. 

' Terms like virtus, pietas, and sapere can cany both moral and aesthetic force in Horace: see 
Commager (above, note 8), pp. 328-30, 341; also R. W. Johnson, The Idea of Lyric: Lyric 
Modes in Ancient and Modern Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1982), pp. 141 ff. 

^ Ann-Marie Tupet, La Magie dans la Poesie Latine (Paris 1976), p. 329. 

*^ Commager (above note 8), p. 195. 

*^ See Commager (above, note 8), p. 327, on Odes U. 19: "animal energy submiu to a 
principle of order." On the Horatian perception of the dangers of following inspiration {Odes HI. 
4. 5-8), G. Williams claims that it is merely because his subjea matter is new and difficult — to 
treat political matters in verse (Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry [Oxford 1968], p. 70). 
Elsewhere Williams attributes to Horace a universal law of life, but does not extend it to his 
poetics: "bmte force, devoid of judgment, produces its own destruction," in The Third Book of 
Horace's Odes (Oxford 1969), p. 50. 



18 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

context of creativity,'*^ but it is one of antiquity's favorite terms for poetic 
inspiration. Horace, however, explicitly rejects the "mad" poet (yesanus; 
quifurit) as merely insane, and by the same token incompetent, taking issue 
with Democritus who would exclude sanos poetas from Helicon. And he 
cites Empedocles as an example of an "inspired" poet who took the concept 
of his divinity so seriously he leaped into Etna to prove it. Good riddance 
to him, says Horace (A.P. 296 ff., 464-66). A number of critics have 
emphasized the role of "natural talent" (ingenium) and hard work (labor) in 
Horatian art and believe that the concept of manic inspiration is irrelevant, 
indeed antithetical, to it.'*^ Others disagree. Brink, for example, has argued 
that Horace's image of the mad poet is a caricature and that in Horace 
himself must be "a generous measure of the quality so caricatured." The 
mad poet's verses are "lethal . . . not only to himself but to the 
community," which is to say that Horace was acutely aware, for all the 
ironic distancing of his poetic voice, of the "safety device" of ars that 
restrains the poet from destroying himself.'*^ 

The truth of the matter eludes us, mostly because the nearness of 
inspirational madness to pathological madness remains an intuitive rather 
than proven concept and seems to apply in different degrees to different 
artists. But ancient and modem terminology points stubbornly to an 
identification. Even so cool a poet as Horace is at least intellectually aware 
of it, and in his most lyrical poetry resorts to pregnant imagery to express 
it. The subject of jxavia is vast and complex, but is inescapably linked to 
unusual states of mind. The author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems 
observed: "A// [my italics] who have achieved eminence in philosophy, 
politics, poetry, or the arts are demonstrably ^EXayxoXiKoi" (Prob. 953a); 
he specifies the insanity of such heroes as Heracles and Ajax, and the 
"atrabilious" disposition of such lesser men as Empedocles, Plato, and 
Socrates. Nietzsche found the explanation of such widespread ^izhiyxoXia 
in the particular conditions of Greek culture, especially the fanatical and 
defensive Greek preoccupation with the ideal of rationality.'*^ But the 
legendary fates of Orpheus, torn to pieces by Maenads with their discordant 
song, his lyre overcome (Ovid, Met. XI. 3-20), Sappho, Empedocles, and 
Lucretius also imply an ancient perception of melancholy and self- 



*^ See Simon (above, note 6), pp. 148-51. 

** Especially Commager (above, note 8), pp. 24, 27, 45, 49. Ovid, himself a most 
calculating poet, has Sappho sing that she weeps and bums, then deny that she can fashion a 
song in this mood! (Heroid. XV. 7-10, 13 ff.). Nisbet and Hubbard tend to emphasize the 
conventionality of Horace's odes and find humor everywhere: e.g., Horace "humorously" calls 
himself a vir Mercuriaits {A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 11 [Oxford 1977], p. 286; cf. 
106 ff., 115). 

*^ C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry: the 'Ars Poetica' (Cambridge 1971), pp. 421-29; also 
Horace on Poetry: Epistles Book II (Cambridge 1982), pp. 316, 327, on madness and creativity 
in the "higher" forms of poetry, for Horace, lyric. 

^ See Simon's discussion (above, note 6), p. 43. 



Hugh Parry 19 

destructive violence in the artistic personality^^ (we may compare such 
modem examples as Strindberg, Virginia Woolf, John Berryman, and Sylvia 
Plath). If the Muses protect the artist, they do so only as long as he 
continues to be a TioiTitriq. The battle must be won time and again, and for 
some victory is never inevitable. Circe sometimes wins. 

Ancient thinkers could scarcely avoid noting the relevance of iiavia to 
a large number of conditions, including inspiration. They found a common 
link in the notions of "possession," and "disassociation," and it is no 
accident that Euripides' Bacchae is about ecstasy, pathological madness, and 
art.'*^ Nor that ordering power, Bacchic ecstasy, and disintegration unite in 
the prototypical figure of Orpheus. Nor that Socrates resorts to Bacchic 
language when he describes the current of ecstasy that flows from poet to 
performing rhapsode to audience, emphasizing madness, possession, and 
disassociation.'*' An example of transforming power is the ^avia Mo-oocbv 
{Phaedr. 244b). Plato interprets the divinity of the Muse as her enormous 
energy rather than her ability to create order — more like the horses than the 
charioteer. This energy is brought to heel by "craft" (texvti) and "self- 
control" (ococppoavvTi) grounded in true knowledge.^^ But of course energy 
and order are images that divide the indivisible, the unfathomable 
complexity of the creative imagination. The Muse herself can represent the 
sweeter or wilder side of creativity, its Apollonian form or its manic energy. 
She is the ambiguous power of every 0e6(;,^^ For Plato she is the |xav{a to 

*' See C. Bailey on the legend of Lucretius' death, and his conclusion: there is "nothing in 
the poem which makes . . . morbid depression {insania) impossible" {Lucretius: De Rerum 
Natura [Oxford 1947], p. 12). Whether or not the poet took a love-philtre (wittingly or 
unwittingly) and whether or not he committed suicide, il is hard not to link the legend with the 
theme and tone of his poetry: cf. Staiius' docti furor arduus Lucreti {Silv. 11. 7. 76) and the 
ambivalence oi furor as inspiration or madness. Sappho's suicidal leap for love of Phaon at least 
suggests that only with difficulty did she "heal love with the Muses" (above, note 7). 

See especially R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus (Cambridge 1948), 
p.l85; Simon (above note 6), pp.115, 147, 150; C. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' 
Bacchae (Princeton 1982), pp.22 1-23, and pay^im. 

"*' E.g. jiaivonevot; (Jon 536d; cf. Phaedr. 241a; also Lx)nginus VIII.4); poets compared to 
Bacchants (Jon 536a; Longinus 111.2, Vin.1,4); Kaxexonevoi {Ion. 533a, 536d); melic poets ovk 
en-cppoveq ovxeq {Ion. 534a; cf. eK(ppcov, 534b; ek oauTOu Yiyvp, 535b). Simon (above, note 
6) talks about the bard and the blurring of the self s boundaries, with special emphasis on the 
narrative and tragic poets: "within himself the dramatist must find an Archimedean point 
somewhere between cold sobriety, controlled ecstasy, and a frenzy bordering on madness" (p. 
159; cf. p. 283); he calls the madman a "dramatist manque" (p. 147). 

^^ Plato's more general psychic opposites are expressed in vovv Kal oaxppocruvTiv avt' 
epaxToq Kai fiavCac; {Phaedr. 241a). For oaxppoveiv as the antithesis of madness cf. Ajax on 
his return to sanity: fmeiq 8e noK; ow Yvcoo6|ieo6a ococppoveiv; (Soph. Ai. 677). 

^* Ancient uneasiness over the Muses' ambiguity is hinted at in several ways. The blindness 
of the poet (Demodocus, or the bard of Chios) is an ambivalent sign. The distress of Penelope 
{Od. I. 340-42) and Alcinoos {Od. VIII. 538) that the bard's art can cause less pleasure than pain 
reminds us that the ordering power of art can sometimes depend, delicately, on external 
circumstance. Tradition made the Sirens, those most dangerous singers, daughters of 
Melpomene and Achelous. Homer and Ovid represented the Muses as no less ruthlessly jealous 



20 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

be controlled. For Horace and Theocritus she is the shaping hand that 
brings form out of formlessness, the mistress of Circe and oUier symbols of 
dangerous but necessary unorder. 

The singers in Theocritus are shepherds. Theocritus may have 
"invented the herdsman figure as a self-conscious and witty, half coterie poet 
and entirely rustic — a magnificent impossibility."^^ 3^ fj-om Enkidu in 
Gilgamesh to David in the Bible to Paris in Greek mythology, the shepherd 
has been able to represent a "marginal" figure in imaginative art, a bridge 
between the wildness of nature and the ordered life of the city. The poet too, 
a epnT|VEt)<;. spans an awesome distance between what is at first chaotic and 
threatening and what finally is organized and pleasurable; that is, between 
"divine" inspiration and the ordering function of the same imagination that 
shapes the poem into its beautiful form. Is it an accident that David rose 
from rural shepherd boy to urban musician king? Or that Hesiod, whatever 
his real chores as farmer, was "pasturing his flock" when the Muses first 
appeared to him on a lonely mountainside? Callimachus many centuries 
later preserves that detail, in passages that perhaps urge aspiring poets to 
model themselves on Hesiod \Aet. 2; 112, 4-7). Apollo himself served as 
herdsman for a while. The pastoral genre, where nature and civilization 
meet in the figure of the learned herdsman-poet, has roots in that tradition. 
The "magnificent impossibility" of the Theocritean singing shepherd both 
reflects the complexity of the mythical imagery and affectionately cocks a 
snook at it. Similar half-conviction, half-parody might lie behind the 
herdsman-poet's reference to Circe and the Muses. While Theocritus may 
have grasped the relation of this image to creativity no more securely than 
Horace did after him, the appearance of the image in both poets at least 
attests to the enduring force of the tradition. 

That in the Odyssey Circe changes only bodies is a measure of the 
typical Homeric relationship between identity and corporal condition. In the 
fifth century and beyond, the myth speaks to Circaean transformation on 
many levels, not least the potentially dislocating energies of all intense 
experiences, out of which we must shape the structures of our response. 
Artists are more vulnerable since they react with abnormal intensity to such 
threats, merging the formlessness of each experience with the formlessness 
where art begins. Paradoxically, however, this very merging inaugurates the 
"difficult" task of bringing to order (vno v6|iov td^ai) the energies of the 
imagination (Longinus XXXIII. 5), the shaping of experience into 
redemptive beauty. The hero too may find himself blessed by the Muses, 
and the Theocritean scholiast does not hesitate so to describe Odysseus. At 



of their dignity than any other god (//. 11. 594-600; Met. V. 662-76). And Plato's fiavia 
Mouacbv is a mixed blessing; on Plato's ambivalence, see W.J. Verdenius, "Plato's doctrine of 
Artistic Imitation," in Plato: A Collection of Essays, ed. Gregory Vlastos (New York 1971), 
pp. 259-62. 

^2 Griffiths (above, note 4), p. 113. 



Hugh Parry 21 

the same time, the scholiast draws our attention in the encounter between 
Odysseus and Circe not only to the poetic qualities of the hero but also to 
the heroic qualities of the poet in his struggle to create art and preserve 
identity. The artist transcribes life in the imagination and so masters and 
redeems it: the lyre of the Muses tames the )iavia of the Muses. 

Such, at least, is the intuitive understanding of creativity that lurks 
behind the discourse of ancient thinkers and the images of ancient poetry. 
The scholiast, not unreasonably, found in the Homeric encounter between 
hero and sorceress a paradigm of the Muses' power. Supported by the 
Olympian god of magic, later a patron god of poets, Odysseus "beloved of 
the Muses" overcomes the chthonic goddess of magic, avoiding 
disintegration and achieving a delightful conclusion. The fortunes of his 
crew "entirely bereft of Muses" are a disquieting reminder of what happens 
when the center fails to hold. 

York University, Ontario 



Apollonius' Argonautica: 
Euphemus, a Clod and a Tripod" 



STEVEN JACKSON 



In the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, the Argonauts had all but 
reached home by their most circuitous return route from Colchis, when 
Argo was driven by a fierce storm towards the African coast, and, after a 
portage of nine days and nights carrying Argo across land, they finally found 
themselves surrounded by the shoals of the Tritonian lagoon (IV. 1537 ff.). 
Orpheus suggested that they should take out the tripod which Apollo had 
given Jason, and offer it as a gift to the gods of the land, who might 
consequently be induced to help them. At once, the god Triton, son of 
Poseidon, appeared before them in the disguise of a young man called 
Eurypylus, a native of Libya. He offered them a clod of his country's earth, 
which Euphemus gladly received on the Argonauts' behalf, Euphemus 
explained their plight, and Triton / Eurypylus directed them how to avoid 
the dangerous shoals and escape the confines of the lagoon. They embarked 
and rowed the ship towards the sea, as Triton / Eurypylus disappeared 
beneath the waves, tripod and all. But the Argonauts felt warmth in their 
hearts, for, at last, one of the gods had come to them, and helped them, 
Jason immediately sacrificed a sheep on board, and this time Triton appeared 
in his true divine form, and hauled Argo well out to sea. 

A few days later, after Medea's triumph over the bronze giant Talos (IV. 
1638 ff.)^ and Apollo's help in guiding the Argonauts through pitch 
darkness at sea by the light of his golden bow (IV. 1694 ff.),^ Euphemus had 
a dream which he succeeded in remembering (IV. 1731 ff.). In the dream, he 
was holding to his breast the clod that he had received from Triton, and he 
was suckling it with milk. The clod suddenly turned into a virgin, and he 



*I wish to thank Professor J. M. Dillon of Trinity College, Dublin, for his advice and 
encouragement during the preparation of this article. 

' Possibly inspired in ApoUonius' mind by the "Colossus of Rhodes" statue. 
Possibly another contemporary allusion by ApoUonius, this lime to the great Pharos 
lighthouse. 



24 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

passionately made love to her. She said she was a daughter of Triton and 
Libya, and the nurse of Euphemus' children. She told Euphemus to give her 
a home with Nereus' daughters near Anaphe, and, in time, she would 
welcome Euphemus' descendants. When Jason heard the details, he 
remembered a prophecy of Apollo's, and told Euphemus that he should 
throw the clod into the sea, and from there grew the island of Calliste. 
Euphemus' descendants (the poet explains) first lived in Lemnos, until they 
were driven from their homes by the Tyrrhenians.^ They emigrated to 
Sparta, and, later, from there to Calliste under the leadership of Theras, who 
named the island Thera after himself."^ 

What factors induced Apollonius to recount this episode, and what 
method of selectivity did he use to create his version? 

Pindar (Pyth. 4) also recounts the meeting at the Tritonian lagoon 
between Triton / Eurypylus and Euphemus, who, on receiving the clod from 
the former, even overshadows Jason in importance at this particular time. 
But, in the Pindaric version, the clod is accidentally washed overboard one 
night at sea, and Medea makes the prophecy at Thera {Argo'^ next port of 
call) that Euphemus will lie with foreign women (i.e. the women of 
Lemnos, named by Pindar at v. 252), and his descendants^ will eventually 
emigrate, via Sparta, to colonize Calliste (Thera). Furthermore, descendants 
of the colonists at Calliste will in turn settle in Libya and found Cyrene 
{Pyth. 4. 13-69 and 251-62). If, Medea continues, Euphemus had placed 
the clod safely in the holy cave at Taenarus,^ the Euphemidae would have 
ruled Libya within four generations from then, but, now that the clod was 
lost, they must wait until the seventeenth generation. Pindar makes no 
mention of the tripod. 

The fullest extant version of the tripod story is to be found in 
Herodotus (IV. 179). The story concerns Argo after she was built beneath 
Mount Pelion, but before she sailed to Colchis. Jason put on board a 
hecatomb and a bronze tripod intending to sail round the Peloponnese to 
Delphi; but sailing round Cape Malea he was driven by a storm off course 
to Libya. He found himself aground in the shallows of Lake Tritonis. Here 
the god, Triton, son of Poseidon, came to him and offered help in return for 

^ For a discussion of the Tyrsenoi, Etruscans and Tyrrhenians in Lemnos, see J. Boardman, 
The Greeks Overseas (London 1980), pp. 85-86 and 272, n. 21 1. The reader may also refer to 
'idi\aime.sVT\eAnch,KleiriasiatischeSprachdenkmdler (Berlin 1932), pp. 143^5. 13: "Die Stele 
von Lemnos." 

^Scholia Ap. Rh., IV. 1750 (C. Wendel, Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium Vetera [repr. 
Berlin 1958], p. 327). 

* According to Sch. Find, ad Pyth. 4. 455b (A. B. Drachmann, Scholia Vetera in Pindar i 
Carnuna 11 [Leipzig 1910], p. 161), Euphemus lay with Lamache, who subsequently gave birth 
to a daughter, Leucophane. These, the scholiast continues, were the ancestors of Arisloteles 
(Battus), from whom king Arcesilas IV of Cyrene was descended. Pindar had dedicated Pyth. 4 
(and 5) to Arcesilas. 

^Taenarus was Euphemus' home, and he had a wife there, Laonome, sister of Heracles, 
daughter of Amphitryon and Alcmene; see Sch. Pind. ad Pyth. 4. 79b (Drach. 11, p. 108). 



Steven Jackson 25 

the tripod. The tripod being duly handed over, Triton declared that the 
descendant of the Argonauts who acquired the tripod would found thereabouts 
one hundred Greek cities. 

This tale has nothing whatsoever to do with the original Argonautic 
saga. In the earliest tradition, Argo goes straight to the Pontus after the 
launching. The story belongs to the later seventh century B.C. when the 
Greeks were colonizing the Libyan coast.*^ Cretans were concerned in this 
colonization,* and the tripod tale in Herodotus finds its origin in the 
Argonautica of Epimenides the Cretan. There can be little doubt that the 
story of the tripod was an innovation of Epimenides^ to establish a Cretan 
connection with the epic Argonauts, both through the Cretan colonization 
links with Libya, and by his taking Argo directly to Libya past Crete.^o 

Pindar's ode is dedicated to king Arcesilas IV of Cyrene, and it is in his 
honor that the lyric poet has related both the king himself and his subjects 
to their remotest ancestors the Argonauts. Pindar's unique transfer of the 
Argonauts' visit to Lemnos from the outward journey to the return is a 
literary device he uses to emphasize the close link between the Argonauts' 
union with the Lemnian women and the foundation of Cyrene. Pindar must 
have gleaned his knowledge of Cyrene's foundation- myth from prominent 
Cyrenaeans themselves.^ ^ The first founders of Cyrenaica must have been as 
eager as the early settlers of the Black Sea region to connect their genealogy 
with that of the epic Argonauts. This they achieved by linking the mention 
of Lemnos in the Iliad}'^ with the history of the Euphemidae and the events 
in Lacedaemon and Thera. No doubt they also took advantage of Euphemus' 
inclusion in a catalogue of Argo's crew by Hesiod. Hesiod is the type of 
cataloguing poet who most probably included a list of the Argonauts in his 
work. That he did is suggested by the scholiast to Apollonius: 



^Boardman, op. ct'r., pp. 154 ff. 

^ Cf. the Cyrenaean version of the foundation of Cyrene in Herodotus IV. 154 ff. For Cretan 
settlers in Cyrene, see Herod. IV. 161. 3. 

' This seems a most reasonable assumption when one considers that Herodotus says nothing 
of Argo as ccMitinuing her voyage to Delphi without the tripod. This suggests that the holder of 
the tripod does not require the sanction of Delphi for success in his enterprise. The relevance of 
this suggestion becomes clear when one remembers that the fragmenU of Epimenides show 
vehement hostility towards Delphi's claims. For a discussion of this Epimenidean antagonism 
with Delphi, see G. L. Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry (London 1969), pp. 81-82. 

*° Cf. the Argonauts' visit to Crete (and encounter with Talos) immediately after they have 
left Libya in Apollonius' poem (IV. 1636-93). 

^^ We know, for instance, that Pindar had met Arcesilas' brother-in-law Carrhotus at Delphi 
{Sch. Find, ad Pyth. 5. 34 [Drach. 11, pp. 175-76]). Carrhotus had asked Pindar to compose two 
odes in honor of his chariot victory at the Pythian Games. As an Aegid Pindar was related to 
the royal famUy of Cyrene and could treat them as equals; see C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford 
1964), p. 138. We know, too, that, shortly before his meeting with Carrhotus, Pindar had 
entertained Damophilus at Thebes {Pyth. 4. 299). For further details about Damophilus at 
Cyrene and Thebes, see Bowra, op. cit., pp. 137 ff. 

>^//. Vn. 467-71; XXI. 40-41; XXIH. 746-47. 



26 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

oijte "O^TlpO(; ovxe 'HoioSoq ovxe ^epeKv8Ti(; (3 Fr. 110 J) 
XiyoMCSi xov "I(pikXov ov^-nenXevKevai 'Apyova-otaiq.^^ 

By introducing the Taenarus element in Medea's prophecy at Thera, 
Pindar cleverly explains why Libya was not colonized earlier by Greeks. 
Wishing to compose a story in Pythian 4 with the emphasis on Thera and 
on the genealogy of the Euphemidae, he quite naturally selected Euphemus 
himself as the link he required.^'* Euphemus, he knew, was a bona fide 
member of the original crew of Argo. Pindar had a Hesiodic catalogue of 
the crew before him, as indeed, I believe, did Apollonius. 

We also know that Hesiod mentioned the parentage of Euphemus, 
saying that he was the son of Poseidon and of Mekionike: 

Tl oiTi 'YpiTii n\)Kiv6<pp(ov MtikiovIkt|, 

11 xexev E-ucpTi|a.ov yau\6x(o\. 'EvvoaiYaicoi . . . 

This Eoee of Mekionike appeared in the Great Eoeae}^ A scholiast's report 
that Hesiod brought the Argonauts to Libya'^ can most likely be ascribed to 
the Mekionike-Eoee. The Libyan episode must have been a Cyrenaean 
addition to the Argonautic legend. For why should Hesiod originally have 
concerned himself about Libya in an Argonautic context at all? We know 
that Eugammon, a sixth-century Cyrenaean epic poet, said that Odysseus 
and Penelope had a son Arcesilas.^^ This was an obvious attempt to claim a 
Cyrenaean role in the heroic cycle. It is probable that the Libyan episode 
was invented by a poet of the same school.^^ It would seem likely that 
Pindar used the Mekionike-Eoee, which had accepted the Cyrenaean 
mythology, as a vital source for Pythian 4; and here too Pindar found the 
clod story. 

That the clod story is not a Pindaric innovation can be borne out by the 
fact that Eumelus of Corinth appeared to use a similar scenario when telling 
his version of the Corinthian foundation-myth. It seems that, according to 
Eumelus, the mythical founder of the city Aletes {i.e. "the Wanderer," 
signifying Corinth's foundation by invaders) first consulted the oracle at 
Dodona and then went ahead wi^ Zeus' blessing. The proverb hixzxa\ 
Kal p©A.ov 'AXtittjc;, scanning as the last part of a hexameter, is definitely 



^3 Sch. Ap. Rh. I.45^7a, p. 10 Wendel = R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Fragmenta 
Hesiodea (Oxford 1967), fr. 63. p. 40. 

I'* The scholia debate {Sch. Find. adPyth. 4.306. [Drach. H, pp. 138-39], and 455 d. e. [D. p. 
161]) why Euphemus and not another member of the crew-Periclymenus. for example, the other 
son of Poseidon mentioned in Pyth. 4. 175-received the clod. The simple answer is that Pindar 
must select Euphemus for the sake of Arcesilas his descendant. 

^^ Fr. 253, p. 124 Merkelbach -West = SchTind. ad Pyth. 4. 36c (Drach. H, p. 102). But see 
also fr. 241 note (p. 1 18 M-W). 

^^ Fr. 241, p. 118 M-W = Sch. Ap. Rh. IV. 259. pp. 273-74 Wendel = fr. 65, p. 35 in B. 
y^yss, Anlimachi Colophonii Reliquiae (repr. Berlin 1974). 

^^ See Huxley, op. cit. (above, note 9), pp. 168-71. 

1* Cf. M. L West. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford 1985), pp. 86-87. 



Steven Jackson 27 

associated with this story, and is most likely a fragment of Eumelus.^^ 
Possibly, then, Eumelus also found inspiration for his clod story in the 
Mekionike-Eoee. 

Interestingly, Pindar retains the oracular element by telling the clod part 
of his story through Medea's prophecy at Thera. Apollonius also retains 
this particular element when he makes Jason recall a prophecy of Apollo's 
and, in the light of this, instruct Euphemus as to what he should do with 
the clod. The reasons for this Apollonian variation will be discussed below. 
But the Aletes story does suggest that the telling of the clod story in the 
form of a prophecy was not entirely Pindar's own invention, as M. L. West 
has recently claimed.^ 

Some scholars^' have argued that Pindar could not have used the 
Mekionike-Eoee, since the lyric poet says Euphemus is the son of Poseidon 
and Europa {Pythian 4. 45). But this does not necessarily preclude the 
Mekionike-Eoee from having been Pindar's source. Despite his regular 
adherence to his Hesiodic source, Pindar was not averse to departing from 
the original in the occasional detail where it suited his context. R.W.B. 
Burton demonstrates quite clearly how Pindar in his third Pythian, telling 
the story of Coronis, is at variance with Hesiod for his own artistic 
purposes.^ 

Why, then, the genealogical change in Pythian 4? Perhaps a clue can 
be found in the scholiast's remarks on Pindar's reason for calling Thera 
"holy" at lines 6-7: 

'lepav vaoov tt^v 0T|pav ox>x a.n'kSiq ovo^idl^ev, aXX' oxi 
Kd5)io(; Kaxot ^ritTiaiv E{>p(onri(; xt[<; abzX<pT\q oxeXXo^evoq 
TipoaopiiioGeiq xfi vT|ocp dvcKxiae OooevScovo^ xai 'AGrjvdc; 
iepov avxoGi, toe, loxopev ©eotppaoxoi; (©eoxptiaxoq?).^'' 

Here we find a connection between Poseidon, Europa and Thera, the colony 
of the Euphemidae. As in Pythian 3, Pindar surely has changed a detail of 



" Cf. J. B. Salmon. Wealthy Corinth (Oxford 1984). p. 38. 

^ West, op. cit., pp. 86-87. West is right, however, in remaricing that a similar technique of 
presenting the story in the form of a prophecy appears in Pyth. 9. But the scholiast on the ninth 
Pythian states ctno 8e 'Hoiac; 'HaioSov xfiv ioxopCav 'iXa^zw 6 niv6apo(; {Sch.Pind. ad 
Pyth 9. 6a [Drach. E, p. 221] = fr. 215, p. 109. M-W). 

21 Cf. C. Robert. Die griechische Heldensage 3, 1. p. 859. 

^ R.W.B. Burton {Pindar's Pythian Odes— Essays in Interpretation [Oxford 1962], pp. 83- 
84) compares details of Pyth. 3 with a fragment of the Eoeae (fr. 123 Rzach = fr. 60. p. 39 M- 
W = Sch. Pind. ad Pyth. 3. 52b and 3. 14 [Drach. E. pp.70-71. and 65]). and shows three 
differences: (i) the wedding-feast for Ischys and Coronis is a public affair in Hesiod. but 
Coronis, according to Pindar, does not wait for such festivities, thus emphasizing her sinful 
passion; (ii) Ischys is a Thessalian hke Coronis in Hesiod. but, in Pindar, he is a stranger from 
Arcadia, a distant land, thus making her offense even worse; (iii) in Hesiod, a raven tells Apollo 
the news, whereas, in Pindar, Apollo simply knows what she has done, Pindar thus "advertising 
the omniscience and infallibility of the Delphic god." 

23 Sch. Pind. ad Pyth. 4. lOf (Drach. E, p. 98). 



28 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

his Hesiodic source, this time to bind more closely together the links 
between the Euphemidae and their descendants at Cyrene, the Battiads. 

Apollonius follows Pindar in naming Euphemus' parents as Poseidon 
and Europa (I. 179-81) probably for much the same reason as Pindar. 
Apollonius' original reason for including the Libyan episode must have been 
because of Euphemus' links with the African continent. This particular 
Argonaut had a special place in the hearts of the Alexandrians, and his 
omission from the piece would not have passed muster with Apollonius' 
audience.^ 

However, there was no need for Apollonius to place emphasis on 
Cyrene itself. So, unlike Pindar, Apollonius left the Lemnos visit in its 
traditional position on the outward journey, and ignored the Taenarus 
element completely. 

An important Apollonian variation from the Pindaric version appears in 
the poets' respective telling of the clod part of the story through a prophecy. 
Pindar did it through Medea's prophetic words at Thera, while Apollonius 
makes Jason the instrument of prophecy. This is because Apollonius is 
using the Libyan episode to make a very different point. The Apollonian 
scenario is one of reconciliation between the gods and the Argonauts. It is 
the end of their punitive and circuitous journey in all senses. Jason and his 
entire crew now know and understand their mistakes, and from the minute 
they set up the tripod in dedication to the gods of the land the reconciliation 
process begins. This is the first time since the murder of Apsyrtus that the 
Argonauts have treated the gods with due respect and reverence, or themis. 
When Triton appears disguised as Eurypylus, this is also the first time since 
the sacrilegious slaughter that one of the gods comes to the Argonauts' aid. 

The tripod tale of the Cretan Epimenides was used by Apollonius only 
in its bare essentials, that is, the meeting at Lake Tritonis between the 
Argonauts and Triton, son of Poseidon, who received from them a tripod. 
The meeting, of course, was later recorded in the Pindaric version, but the 
idea of the tripod itself was one which Apollonius could, and did, use 
cleverly to his own advantage. It would serve as a literary device to 
introduce his reconciliation scenario. The god could hardly have helped the 
Argonauts unless they had repented in the first place. The Argonauts, by 
offering the tripod to the god as a mark of repentance, allowed him in turn 
to give them the clod as a sign of forgiveness. It will be noted that in the 
Epimenidean version Triton offered Jason help, //"he would give him the 
tripod — ^a subtle but very significant difference. Triton's gift of the clod in 
return for the tripod, which had been duly offered and dedicated to him, forms 



^ Cf. J. F. Carspecken, "Apollonius Rhodius and ihe Homeric Epic." Yale Classical Studies 
13 (1952), 35-143. Carspecken suggests (46-47) that Euphemus holds an "intentionally 
emphatic" position in the Apollonian catalogue of heroes because of his popularity at 
Alexandria. 



Steven Jackson 29 

an exchange symbolic of the interrelationship which had to exist between 
gods and men. 

Moreover, we find a further demonstration by Apollonius of this same 
striking symbolism in his presentation of what I will call the Eurypylus / 
Triton equation. Whereas, in Pindar, the god only appears in the guise of 
Eurypylus, in the Apollonian version he afterwards emerges in his own true 
form. Apollonius is the first to portray this metamorphosis. It is only 
when the Argonauts see him walk into the water carrying the tripod, and 
totally disappear beneath the waves, tripod and all, that they realize they at 
last have been helped by a god. In immediate response, Jason sacrifices a 
sheep over the stem, and prays; whereupon the god Triton emerges from the 
depths in all his glory, an awe-inspiring sight, vividly described by 
Apollonius (IV. 1602 ff.). Once clear of the lagoon the Argonauts spent 
that day on shore, and built altars to Poseidon and Triton. By presenting his 
audience with Triton, firstly disguised as the mortal Eurypylus, and then 
appearing as his immortal self, Apollonius is showing clearly the close 
interrelationship which inevitably exists between man and the gods, 
something which Jason and his Argonauts have now learned to respect and 
to revere. 

Whether Pindar was the first to equate Eurypylus (a very early king of 
the Cyrenaic land)^ with the god Triton is a moot point. The scholiast says 
that he was.^^ But it is more likely that this obvious conflation of two 
separate tales appeared first in the Mekionike-Eoee. Apollonius, of course, 
knew the truth of the matter. However, for us, the important thing to 
notice is that Apollonius decided not just to maintain the Eurypylus / Triton 
equation but to extend the notion by the metamorphosis described above. 

By reintroducing the clod story after the Talos and Apollo episodes, 
Apollonius makes certain that the Libyan visit with its message of 
reconciliation acquires great emphasis, particularly as it is also the final 
episode in the poem. 

Pindar's invention of the clod as suddenly being washed overboard by a 
freak wave was irrelevant to Apollonius' purpose. So, Apollonius provided 
an invention of his own, namely Euphemus' dream. The dream motif suited 
the context of the man / god interrelationship which the poet was trying to 
portray. The subsequent prophecy by Jason, rather than Medea, shows 
Jason's return to themis and final reconciliation with the gods before the 
Argonauts arrive home. 

The Libyan episode of the Argonautic saga, then, has origins and 
sources which are by now rather obscure to us, but the evidence we do have 
is more than sufficient to show us how variable and adaptable Apollonius 



25 See Sch. Ap. Rh. IV. 1561 c, p. 322 Wendel = Sch. Find, ad Pyth. 4. 57 (Drach. H. p. 
105). Also. L. Malten. Kyrene (Berlin 191 1), pp. 105. 1 14 ff.. 131. 
^Sch. Find, ad Pyth. 4. 37 (Drach. H. pp. 102-03). 



30 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Rhodius was in his creative selectivity, and how he integrated this method 
of creative selectivity with the results of his own innovatory powers. 

Trinity College, Dublin 



Meter OS tis eimi: On the Language of 
Menander's Young Lovers* 

FREDERICK E. BRENK, S.J. 



Confronted with Menander's virtuosity, the flowery exuberance of Plutarch 
knew no bounds {Comp. Arist. et Men. 854 A-B):^ 

6 5e Mevav5pO(; jiexa x^'P^'^'^v ^dXioG' eavxov avxdpKTi 
TtapeoxTixev, ev GedxpoK; ev SiaxpiPaic; ev a-oiiKoaioK;, 
ctvaYvooona Kai \i6Br\\ia xal ctycoviaiAa KOivoxaxov wv f^ 'EXXctq 
evr|voxe KaXoJv Jiapexcov xtiv noirioiv, 5eiKvv)(; o xi 5ti koI 
onoiov Tiv apa Se^ioxriq X-oyo-u, enioiv dnavxaxooe |iexd neiGotx; 
dcpvKxot) Kai xt\po\)\itvo(:^ OTtaaav dKofiv Kai Sidvoiav 
'EXX.T]viKfi(; (p(ovfi(;. 

Now Menander, along with the grace of his verses, has above all offered 
himself as totally sufficient, in theatres, in discussions, in symposia, 
having provided a poetry which is the most universal reading, instruction 
and competitive drama of all the beautiful things Greece has produced — 
demonstrating what skill with language really is, convincing in all he 
touches, and delicately controlling every sound and shade of meaning in the 
Greek language. 

It is consistent with this that, within the apparently stereotyped and 
stylized portrayal of young men in the fragments, no more than faintly 
reflected in the languid or boisterous adaptations of Terence and Plautus, 
there are individuating touches in character drawing that reveal the poet's 



* The original inspiration for this article came from a National Endowment for the 
Humanities Seminar in Menander and Roman Comedy conducted by Professor William S. 
Anderson of the University of California at Berkeley. Professor F. H. Sandbach of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, graciously read earlier drafts of the present text. I must of course bear 
responsibility for any errors remaining. Thanks are due as well to anonymous reviewers, and in 
particular to the skillful and meticulous editing of Professor Newman. The Greek in the title 
was stolen from Chaireas of the Dyskolos (65), and given a meaning that is totally unwarranted. 

' Plutarch, Moralia V. 2. 2, ed. B. Hasler (Leipzig 1978). p. 4. Hasler compares the wording 
of Thuc. n. 41. 1, where Pericles in the Funeral Oration is praising the agile versatility of the 
Athenian. Evidently Plutarch found this Periclean ideal realized in Menander's style. 



32 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

creative genius. In this paper, only the most prominent survivors will be 
considered.^ 

I. Sostratos and Gorgias in the Dyskolos 

There is a good deal of contrast in the language of the two. Handley, 
Sandbach and others have observed the flexibility of Sostratos' urbane 
speech and the stilted rigidity of attitude and expression in Gorgias.^ 
Gorgias does not exactly speak in maxims, but his thought is sententious 
and his mind operates in curious antitheses (271-73, 280-83): 

eivai vojiii^co Jiocoiv dvGpcoreoi^ ey© 

TOiq t' GV)fUXO\)OlV XOiq T£ JipaTTOVOlV KaKwq 

7tepa(; ti xovtov Kai jiexaXXaynv xiva, 

xoiq 5' evSeSx; Jipaxxovaiv, av ^iiSev kokov 

noicooiv djiopovvxeq, tpepcooi 5' evyevox; 

xov 5ainov', £l(; Jiicxiv nox' eXiSovxaq xpovcoi, . . . 

I, indeed, for all men, believe there to be / both for the prosperous and 
those faring ill / a limit to this and some turn-around, . . . 

For those faring less well, if nothing evil / they do, despite being without 
means, and bear nobly / their daimon, in time establishing credit. . . .^ 

In Gorgias' speech here, Sandbach notes a slightly comic formality and 
pomposity underscored by the strictly regular rhythm of much of the verse 
and the elaborate period of thirteen lines, ending, however, in anacoluthon.^ 

^ At a very late stage it was possible to consult the invaluable dissertation of J. S. Feneron, 
Some Elements of Menander's Style (Stanford 1976), directed by T. B. L. Webster (hereafter 
referred to in these notes as Elements). K. J. Dover, "Some Abnormal Types of Word-Order in 
Attic Comedy." Classical Quarterly 35 (1985), 324-43, attempts in a highly technical treatment 
to distinguish comedy from control texts of tragedy, comedy and inscriptions, and is not directly 
concerned with distinaions between individual speakers. 

^ W. G. Amott, "The Confrontation of Sostratos and Gorgiais" Phoenix 18 (1964), 110-23, 
sees the character portrayal of the Dyskolos as fairly sophisticated, but without the complexity 
and sympathy of the later plays (111): see also "Menander Qui Vitae Ostendit Vitam . . . ," 
Greece & Rome 15 (1968). 1-17. S. M. Goldberg, The Making of Menander's Comedy 
(Berkeley 1980; hereafter = Making), feels (p. 90) that the play is unable to create the type of 
dramatic tensicMi found in the later plays, but that it is incipient. 

'*See Amott. Greece & Rome (above, note 3), 14-15. E. W. Handley. The Dyskolos of 
Menander (London 1965), p. 184, takes Gorgias' language as financial. Alain Blanchard, Essai 
sur la Composition des Comedies de Menandre (Paris 1983), p. 81, note 54, thinks the argument 
here is logical, but clumsily put (against Sandbach in A. W. Gomme, F. H. Sandbach, 
Menander: A Commentary [Oxford 1973], p. 179). Amott comments on Gorgias' monstrous 
period that collapses into clumsy anacolutha: "Moral Values in Menander," Philologus 125 
(1981), 215-27. — ^In order to clarify the Greek styles of the young men, the translations have 
been made very literal in certain respects, with consequent loss to familiar English. 

^ Amott's article. Phoenix (above, note 3), discusses the language of the two young men. See 
also F. H. Sandbach. "Menander's Manipulation of Language for Dramatic Purposes," in 
Menandre: Entretiens de la Fondation Hardt sur I'Antiquiti Classique 16 (Vandoeuvres-Geneve 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 33 

There are in fact seven antitheses between lines 271 and 287. The ^lev of 
274 is widely separated from the 5e of 280.^ This rather subtle construction 
of Gorgias' speech might at first sight appear similar to Sostratos' 
persuasion of his own father to accept Gorgias as his son-in-law (797-812).'' 
But the formal, apodeictic language betrays rigidity of mind and a simplistic 
understanding of complicated problems suitable both to a rustic and to a 
young man.^ Commentators in antiquity already noticed that Menander 
frequently rounds off a narrative passage with a gnome.^ This is not the case 
with those of Gorgias. The incongruity between form and content, 
sentiment and speaker, is again one of the essential marks of Menander's 
refined humor. 

There is another curious opposition between language and thought. 
Though the substance of Gorgias' speech is highly moralistic and in a sense 
theological — the relation of temporal prosperity to ethical conduct — he 
continually uses the language of i\)xr[: xolc, x' evxvxovoiv, xSi |iev 
ETjT-uXovvTi, T-qv x-uxTjv, Tov Stti^ov', xov SiEVT^xEiv. In the early 
Hellenistic period, however, t^xti generally expresses blind chance without 
regard to the gods or moral activity,^^ 

In contrast with the rigidity of Gorgias' speech, the flexibility of 
Sostratos' has often been remarked. Both use sententious or proverbial 
language, but for different purposes. At 797-812 Sostratos, who has 



1970) (hereafter = FH), pp. 1 1 1-37; A. G. Katsouris, Linguistic and Stylistic Characterization. 
Tragedy and Menander Goannina 1975), pp. 1 14-19; and Goldberg, Making, p. 79. 

^Sandbach notes (FH, p. 1 17), that the nf|Te . . . \a\xc used by Gorgias at 284-86 appears 
only 6 times in the poeU Sikyonios 176 is in a messenger speech modeled on Euripides, Orestes 
866-956, and thus represents formal rather than informal style. Feneron (Elements [above, note 
2], p. 99) agrees with Sandbach in finding Gorgias one of the most consistent speakers in his 
fondness for antithesis, and observes a lack of emotional color in his use ofploke, as defined in 
note 35 below. 

^ See Sandbach, FH, pp. 1 18-99. Feneron, Elements, p. 10, finds only two examples of real 
antistrophe in Menander, both emphasizing a positive / negative antithesis: Dyskolos 833-34, 
where the verses end in a^iov, and 338-39, where the verse ends in exe and the sentence in 

^ Sandbach (FH, p. 118) believes Gorgias only uses the trite oaths vf) Aia and jia Aia. He 
attributes n6<jei5ov at 777 to Sostratos. On this matter, see now K. J. Dover (above, note 2), 
328-32, who notes that oaths are not very usual in tragedy; and the very extensive treatment in 
Feneron, Elements, pp. 65-81, and 141-47, especially p. 67. He notes that Sostratos uses 22 
oaths, while Gorgias and Knemon have only 8 each. M. H. de Kat Eliassen, "The Oaths in 
Menander's Samia," Symbolae Osloenses 50 (1975), 56-60, argues that, with the exception of 
vr\ Aia, oaths are frequently used for humorous effect, e.g. jict tov 'AnoXXw in Samia 309, 
455, 596, when the speaker is lying (56). On swearing by Adrasteia (Perik. 304; Samia 503), 
see Sandbach, Commentary, pp. 485, 599. 

' N. Holzberg, Menander. Untersuchungen zur Dramatischen Technik (Niimberg 1974), p. 
82. 

'° Feneron (Elements, p. 35) notes this paronomasia as stylistically appropriate to Gorgias 
and Habrotonon (Epitrepontes), that both are applied etymologically and emphasize only the 
words in question, but that Habrotonon 's is less formal, more intelligent and artificial: . . . 
Tp6<pino(; /tpeiponevov . . . ("master/. . . reared," 468-69). 



34 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

decided to marry Knemon's daughter, realizes the need to secure acceptance 
for her relatives. His speech to his father is relentlessly tailored to this end. 
His special pleading that friends are worth more than money, designed to 
win an argument, ends (8 11-1 2) with the proverbial 

TioXXoJi 5e KpeiTTOv eoxiv e^<pavTl(; <p{X,o(; 

Ti n^o\)io<; dpavTji;, ov ah xaxopv^aq exec's- 
Better by far is a friend in sight / than wealth unseen, which you keep 
buried.^ ^ 

The mutability of prosperity is a theme identical to that of Gorgias in 
his speech, but the language Sostratos employs corresponds to the 
pragmatic, non-theological world of business in which his father operates. 
Prosperity is dependent on tv^ti, the vagaries of luck. There is always the 
possibility that one may slip, or as the Greek puts it "stumble." Also 
characteristic of Sostratos' speech, in opposition to the third-person 
moralizing of Gorgias, is the use of the second person, occurring 18 times 
in the short passage and even concluding the final adage.^^ 

II. Moschion in the 5a/mfl 

The perfection of the role of adopted son may be seen in the Samia. 
Menander's gift for variation is also evident. We found in the Dyskolos, not 
an adopted son, but something close, a stepson who lived independently of 
his stepfather. In the Adelphoi an adopted boy is raised by his uncle. In 
this play, Moschion's mysterious origins focus our attention on his 
overriding concerns — ^adoption and his introduction into a life of luxury. 

The dramatic technique of the Samia is utterly different from that of the 
Dyskolos. In contrast to the speeches of Sostratos in the earlier play, the 
speeches of Moschion in the Samia are filled with introspection and 
elegance. There are daydreams, and speeches rehearsed but never delivered. 
The expository value of the speeches and dialogue is clearly subordinated to 
the expression of complex feelings and the subtle interchange of minds. 
Indirection, omission, and verbal hints become more important than explicit 
statements. Of about 900 lines in the Samia, apparently 370 were given to 



^^ The distinction for tax purposes in Athenian law between "visible" and "invisible" 
property makes Sostratos' adage more pointed. See the note by Amott, Menander I (Cambridge, 
Mass. 1979). p. 319. 

'^ Feneron {Elements, p. 100) considers the "absurd" number of oaths used by Sostratos as 
designed to represent unrestrained emotionalism. However, in general, he finds no prominent 
stylistic features, but rather variety, informal structure and minor qualifying parentheses. He 
cites E. W. Handley (above, note 4, p. 248, ad w. 683 seqq.), and Sandbach, FH (above, note 
5), p. 137, to contrast Sostratos with Gorgias (p. 101). 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 35 

monologue.^^ Sandbach sees the monologue as composed with assured 
mastery, an indication of technical maturity. He particularly points to 
Menander's habit of letting the speaker reveal more about himself than 
intended.''* The characters not only have greater depth, but are genuinely 
more humorous. 

Menander dispensed with a prologue, and opened instead with a 
monologue, perhaps for the sake of greater realism, but also with the aim of 
immediately bringing the central character on the stage and directing the 
audience's attention to the problems as the young hero sees them. 
Logically, the monologue should contain the information necessary for the 
understanding of the play: Moschion's adoption, his unusual relationship 
with his father, caused by the introduction of the Samian hetaira into the 
home, the rape of a neighbor's daughter by Moschion, the birth of a child, 
or removal of a child by Chrysis— assuming her parturition (a debate among 
scholars) — and the substitution or introduction of Moschion's child. '^ 

Menander has handled this, however, in a highly subjective way. The 
speech, while conveying the essential facts, takes us fully into the young 
man's mentahty, as explicit and implicit details, omissions and repetitions 
lay bare his soul. First, the whole exposition is set in terms of Moschion's 
fall from grace (fmdpxT|Ka yap, 3), and his partial attempt to make matters 
right.'^ Beginning with his relationship to his father, he passes over his 
adoption lightly.'^ Instead, he stresses the luxury of his upbringing, and the 

'^ D. M. Bain. Menander. Samia (Warminster 1983), p. xxi. J. C. B. Lowe, "Note* on 
Menander," Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin 20 (1973), 94-95. regards the Samia as 
slightly longer than the Aspis. 

'* Commentary, pp. 542-43. On Moschion. FenercMi, Elements, pp. 117-19. 

The meaning of line 56 is uncertain. Sandbach prints etiKxeiv , but Austin and Amott 
prefer (eT>eKev. This engenders a dispute among scholars over Chrysis. Sandbach 
(Commentary, p. 555) believed that the child died, but others (C. Dedoussi, T. B. L. Webster, 
K. Gaiser) denied its existence: see K. Gaiser, "Die 'Akedeia' Menanders." Grazer Beitrdge 5 
(1976), 112 and note 33. Sandbach has returned to a defense of his position recently: "Two 
Notes on Menander (Epitrepontes and Samia)," Liverpool Classical Monthly 1 1 (1986), 158-60. 
He would now reconstruct lines 54-56 as: 

TO n]ai6{ov yevonevov eiXricp' ow n6Xa\ — 

ano] Tav)xon.dxo\) 6e aujiPePriKe Kal fidXa 

tic, Kaip6]v — r\ Xpvaii;- KaJlo^nev towxo ydp 
with ziKr\<f>' as first, not third person (Gaiser). He argues convincingly that Chrysis and Plangon 
must be suckling the child, that MoschicMi had no intention of later claiming the child as his and 
Plangon 's, and that Chrysis was probably using the child as leverage for support of herself by 
Demeas. 

1^1. Gallo. "MENAND. SAM. 1 ss.S.," Museum Criticum 18 (1983). 199-201. would 
improve Sandbach's text of Samia 1-3 to the following: 

]nep[ 
].ve- xi XvTitiaai jie 6ei [ 

66]'uvTip6v eaxiv x\\ia.p^r\Ka ydp. 

'^ Line 10 poses several problems: see Sandbach. OCT and Commentary, p. 546. 
Following Kasser. Sandbach now believes that about 11 lines are missing at the beginning of 
the play, in which Moschion might have spoken of his adoption. E. Keuls. "The Samia of 



36 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

impression he made upon society in an extravagant display of wealth (IS- 
IS): 

. . . TCOl xoPHY^^v 5l£<p£pOV 

Kal tfii] (piXoTifiiai- Kvvaq napetpe<pe noi, 
iJiKo]\)(;* ecpvXdpxTiaa Xa\inp5)C,- . . . 

... as choregos I excelled / sjid in generosity. He raised dogs for me, / 
[horse]s. I was a splendid p/iy/flrcAo5. . . . ^^ 

This past glory contrasts with his present state of shame. His 
relationship with his father is not revealed as one of mutual love, but (in 
Sandbach's reconstruction) one in which the father is viewed as his 
"benefactor" (e-uEpyeJtei yap xamd ^i' o-u (ppovovvxd tico, 9), to whom 
appropriate external sighs of thanks have been given.^^ Both shallowness of 
character and some redeeming features are displayed, but in the light of the 
boy's own self-justification and value-system. 

In the second part of his monologue, Moschion turns to the 
relationship of Demeas and the hetaira. This must have been a startling new 
development for him, both disrupting the claim he had on his adoptive 
father's affection and introducing temptation into his own life, if not 
threatening the relationship between father and son completely.^ Menander 
exquisitely presents this in the words of the youth. He does not speak of 
Demeas' love for Chrysis, but rather of sexual desire, excused as something 
human: 

laiiiaq exaipaq eiq eniBv^lav xiva 
eX,9eiv EKeivov, npayii* xomc, dvGpcoTtivov. 

Into some passion for the Samian hetaira I that one came, something 
perhaps human. 

Concentrating on Demeas' real or imagined shame (eKpvTcte tout', 
tiiox^vet', 23), and on his conceabnent of the matter, Moschion conveys 



Menander. An Interpretation of its Plot and Theme," Zeitschriftfur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 
10 (1973). 1-20, stresses the adoption motif. 

^* The position oi phylarchos apparently involved more leading of parades than military 
action: see Sandbach, Commentary, p. 546; Blanchard (above, note 4), p. 128, note 16; Bain, 
Menander, Sainia, p. 113. The ephebeia is discussed by S. Humphreys, "Lycurgus of Butadae: 
An Athenian Aristocrat," in J. W. Eadie, J. Ober, eds. The Craft of the Ancient Historian. 
Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr (Lanham, Maryland / London 1985), pp. 206-09. 

^' The importance of the term Koojiioq applied to Moschion is examined by H. J. Mette, 
"Moschion. 6 Koomoc;," Hermes 97 (1969), 432-39. 

^ On the need for visible signs of understanding, see H. D. Blume, Menanders "Samia" 
(Darmstadt 1974), p. 13; on the paratragic Amyntor / Phoinix theme, P. Rau, Paratragodie 
(Zetemata 45 [Munich 1964], p. 195); on the brilliant subjectivity of the monologue, N. 
Holzberg, Menander (above, note 9), p. 33. Goldberg {Making, pp. 94-95) analyzes Moschion 
as egoistical, cowardly and foolish, unable to see the implications of his actions or to take 
responsibility for them. The conflict between father and son as a theme is discussed by R. L. 
Hunter, The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge 1985), pp. 103-05. 



Frederick E. Brenk, SJ. 37 

his own reasoning at the time, that unless his father "got control of her" 
(av ^iT] yevTiTai xr[q kxaipac, iyKpax-qq, 25) Demeas might suffer from 
the rivalry of younger men for her affection. 

In the final section of the monologue, Moschion explains the rape with 
the greatest delicacy. We would expect a description of the girl and of his 
admiration for her beauty (as we find with Sostratos in the Dyskolos), then 
acknowledgment of the force of passion and a mention of the regretted act of 
violence, followed by the embarrassment caused by the child, the promise to 
wed the girl, and the introduction of the baby into Chrysis' house. In fact, 
the explanation, after a lacuna of 22 lines, is more complex. Menander sets 
up a relationship between the mother of the girl (Plangon) and the Samian, 
perhaps as an explanation of Chrysis' later willingness to assist in the 
situation. There follows mention of the Adonis festival, which offered 
occasion for the rape. Moschion suggests that, but for the noise caused by 
the women, he would have slept on innocently, and never have committed 
the shameful act. When he comes to the essentials, he moves from 
admission of his own shame, to the pregnancy (47-49). The sequence is "I 
am ashamed" / "she got pregnant" — as though he were unwilling to mention 
the preceding biological process, then returned to it but only as if to a 
necessary afterthought (49-50): 

. . . TOAJXO yap 9pdoa(; Xeyco 

Kttl TTIV JtpO XOVtOV Tipa^lV, . . . 

. . . For by noting this, I mention / as well the deed before that, . . . 

Self-revelation is thus clothed in an almost conscious attempt at self- 
justification.2i The highly impressionistic and subjective quality of this 
dramatic narrative is in accordance with some of the best Hellenistic 
narrative style, but it also admirably suits the character portrayed, with its 
good intentions, but also instability and tendency towards rationalization 
after the fact.^^ 

Moschion's other speeches reveal the gulf between the monologues and 
dialogues of the Dyskolos and those of the Samia. His contemplated suicide 
at 86-95 has to be seen in the light of his rehearsal of speeches delivered 
only to the empty air: 

Po]u>.o^al 
Xd]poi(; 
Y]dp dGXimepov 



^* S. Ireland notes comic inversion in the prologue: "Menander and the Comedy of Dis- 
appointment," Liverpool Classical Monthly 8 (1983). 45-47; cf. E. Keuls (above, note 17), 5. 
The problems with text and meaning here are discussed by Sandbach, Commentary, pp. 
545-46, and de Kat Eliassen (above, note 8), 61-65. A. G. Kalsouris, Linguistic and Stylistic 
Characterization. Tragedy and Menander (above, note 5), p. 105, notes the aristocratic 
vocabulary. Lowe (above, note 13) would prefer ox' to oi^ at v. 48, a suggestion made by Post 
and supported somewhat by Terence, Andria 638 and Plautus, Epidicus 166-68. 



38 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

IndvTcov • o\)K dndy^onai xaxv; 
p]r\z(iip ji6vo<; y^P 9iX6cppovo(;. 
joxepoq ei^' ev ye xoit; vvvi X^byoK;. 

d]TteX9a)v el<; epTiniav tivd 
yu|iv]d^o|i' • o\) ydp netpioc; dycov eaxi |ioi. 

... I wish . . . 

. . . you might take . . . 
... for most wretched . . . 
... of all. Should I not hang myself on the spot? 
... a speaker alone and of one kindly disposed, 
more <miserable?> am I in the present discourses. 

. . . going off into some wilderness . . . 
I intend to [train]. For no small contest lies before me. 

When Demeas (135-36) complains about the bastard son brought into 
the house, our knowledge of Moschion's feelings of insecurity over his 
origins and status in the family lends intelligibility and humor to his 
otherwise high-minded and moral statement, worthy of a philosopher, that 
character, not birth, makes one a bastard (139^2).23 Moschion's statements 
about birth are, of course, special pleading, triggered by the same defense 
mechanism that made him reticent about the events leading up to the girl's 
pregnancy.^ His elegant diction contributes even more to the impression 
that the medium is the Menandrean message. 

Menander continually demands inference from the audience listening to 
Moschion's speeches. An example is the humorous monologue in Act V 
(616-40), where Moschion toys with the idea of running off somewhere as a 
mercenary in order to punish his father. In its elaborate diction reminiscent 
of tragedy, this monologue recalls the opening soliloquy. The purpose 
again is not primarily to give factual information to the audience, but to 
reveal the character of the youth. It takes Moschion some time to master 
his rhetorical self. In the meantime, he indulges in a series of meditative 
starts and stops, notional possibilities opening and closing, punctuated by 
words denoting mental states (vTieXapov, evvovc, ywo^ai, ^a^ipdvco 
Xoyio^ov, E^EOTTiKa v\)v teXeox; Efia-uxoti Kal jiapco^-uiiiiai acpoSpa) 
and guilt (Ti|j.apTriK£vai) (616-29): 



^ Moschion could not have been legally adopted at Athens since he was a foundling of 
unknown birth: see Sandbach, Commentary, p. 473; A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens. 
The Family and Property I (Oxford 1968), pp. 87-89; D. M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical 
Athens (London 1978), pp. 99-108. Sandbach doubts that the situation was any different at 
Corinth. MacDowell notes that the adoption was not really for the benefit of the son but for the 
parent — care in old age and continuance of the oikos after death (pp. 100-01). 

^ See W. G. Amott. "Moral Values in Menander," Philologus 125 (1981), 215-27, who 
seems however not to notice the bias in these lines. Sandbach {FU, p. 1 17) observes that the 
construction here, built around jiev . . . 8e, is paralleled in Gorgias' lines at Dyskolos 170-87. 
See also Sandbach, Commentary, p. 559. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 39 

iyio Toxe n.ev fj^ eixov alxia(; ^dxT|v 

eXevGepoq ytv6\itvoq r\yanr\oa xal 

to\)9' Ixavov evT^xtm' e|iai)xcc)i yeyovevai 

vjteXaPov ax; 5e ^aX,Xov evvo'0(; yivo^ai 
620 Kttl Xa^pdvco Xoyia\i6v, e^eoxriKa vvv 

izXioic, e|J.ai)xo\) xal Ttapco^vmi-ai a(p65pa 

e(p' oi(; ^i' 6 jiaxTjp •uneXapev rmapxTiKevai. 

ei |iev KaX&q ovv elx£ td Tiepl xtiv vopriv 

xai |j.f) xoaavx' riv e|J.Jto5a)v, opKO(;, TtoGoq, 
625 xpovo?» O'0VT|9ei', oi^ eSovXcviitiv eyco, 

o\)K dv Tcapovxa y' civxk; Tjixidoaxo 

av)x6v ^e xoiovx' ouSev, dX,X' dreocpSapei^ 

ex zr\c, 7i6X,eco(; dv ektcoSmv ei(; Bdxxpa tioi 

Ti Kaplav 5iexpipov alx|id(^{ov eKei- 

I then from the accusation I falsely endured / being Uberated, was well 
content, and / that in this a great enough stroke of fortune had occurred / 1 
supposed. But now as I become more self-possessed / and take account, I 
am / quite beside myself and irritated mightily / over where my father 
supposed that I had sinned. / If then all were well — the business of the 
girl — / and not so much were in the way — the oath, longing, / time, 
habit — by which enslaved was I, / not to my face could he again have 
accused / myself, me, of any such thing, but vanished / from the city, out 
of the way, to Bactra somewhere / or Caria, I would bide, shouldering the 
lance there. 

Sandbach notes that he begins with colloquial language, then becomes 
more rhetorical.^^ But he ends with the Homeric aix^id^cov. Menander-has 
other fun. The expression xd nepi tt^v Kopriv is rather curious in a poem 
concerned with love, and the monosyllabic noi and the adverb ekei at the 
ends of the last two lines quoted, which form the crescendo of the first half 
of the monologue, are humorously deflating. Other touches of humor may 
be the positioning of Eycb at the beginning of 616 and the end of 625, the 
unexpected meaning of TiyaTiTiaa in 617, the skewed parallelism of 
E^iTioStov (624) and EK7to6cbv (628), and the reversal of the expected order of 
Caria and Bactra. One can add such expressions (referring to his father and 
the Samian) as (26; 47-48): 

hn' dvxepaoxmv ^eipoKicav evox^Tiaexai, 
by rival lad-lovers he will be mobbed, 
. . . loco^ 5' aiox^vo|4.ai 



^ Commentary, p. 618. Feneron, Elements, p. 1 17, regards Moschion's language as difficult 
to analyze, but remarks on its variety and avoidance of rhetorical devices, though asyndeton is 
prominent in the opening speech. He regards lines 616-40 as Menander's most notable use of 
amplification, basically consistmg of doublets, and with "nothing said once if it can be said 
twice" (p. 118). 



40 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

. . . o^(0(; aiox^vo|iai.^^ 

. . . perhaps I am ashamed / . . . still I am ashamed. 

Moschion, in spite of all his practice, is no Demosthenes. Rather, 
with subtle parody and sympathy, Menander used Euripidean language in 
gentle satire of the pretensions of the ingenuous aping the speech of the 
educated. ^ 

in. Moschion and Polemon in the Perikeiromene 

The Moschion of the Perikeiromene is cut from quite a different piece of 
cloth. He is lecherous, gullible, and given to boasting, though later in the 
play he begins to win our understanding, or at least our sympathy. 
Menander employs the adoption theme again, but his clever use of variety 
this time centers our interest on a mother as step-parent rather than on a 
father .28 in the usual Menandrean parallelism, he is contrasted with his 
opposite, the soldier Polemon. He certainly shows traits suited to a 
delicately introspective youth, but Menander also provides a surprise by 
transferring to him many of the features of the alazon we expect in the 
soldier.29 At home in a military play, the transference blends quite naturally 
into the spoiled character. 

Alazones are also deluded about women, and this too is characteristic of 
Moschion. When his sister, who has recognized her long-lost brother, 
kisses him, he presumes it is due to his irresistible attraction. Somewhat 
mal a propos he swears by Athena, virgin and patron of the military, that he 
must follow the course of destiny. His language is marked by the most 
flamboyant terms (304): 

TTiv 6' 'ASpdateiav ^.dX,ioxa vvv ap[. . .npooicov]©. 
Adrasteia now then indeed [I bow before]. ^ 



^The interpretation of these lines is very difficult: see Sandbach, Commentary, p. 550. 
Menander may be teasing with the words of Eteocles (Phoenissae 510): npoq 5e toio6' 
aiaxwvonai. For Euripidean overtones in the aiSox; theme, see S. Jakel, "Euripideische 
Handlungsstrukturen in der Samia des Menander," Arctos 16 (1982), 21, and A. Pertusi, 
"Menandro ed Euripide," Dioniso 16 (1953), 34, 40. He takes (39) line 632 (6 rf\c, efiTi<; vwv 
KiSpioi; y\ai\ir\c, "Epcoi;) as Euripidean (frr. 136, 269, 431; Hippolytus 350 ff.). 

^W. S. Anderson, "The Ending of the Samia and Other Menandrian Comedies," Studi 
Classici in Onore di Quintino Caudella II (Catania 1972), edd. S. Costanza et al., pp. 155-79, 
especially pp. 111-19, shows how Menander exploited the characters of Moschion and Demeas 
to produce a rather unexpected and unpredictable ending for the Samia. 

^ On Moschion, Feneron comments {Elements, pp. 113-14): "the accumulation of grand 
effects. ..." On Polemon: "... probably the most consistently emotional young man in 
Menander" (p. 115). 

^So W. T. MacCary, "Menander's Soldiers: Their Names, Roles, and Masks," American 
Journal of Philology 93 (1972), 282. He cites as names in the extant fragments: Thrason, 
Thrasonides, Thrasyleon, Bias, Polemon, Stratophanes, and Kleostratos. 

^ For the oath by Adrasteia, see above, note 8. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 41 

Inflated, bombastic, military language, typical of the alazon, is used by 
Moschion in addressing the slave Daos (e.g. 217-20). But he ends this 
sally with language befitting a mommy's boy (295-96): 

. . . no\) 'oxiv r\ ixti^tip, £^e 
. . . Where's my mother, me^^ 

However, what constitutes the uniqueness of Moschion is the skillful 
mixture of military bombast with the rhetoric — or false rhetoric — and 
introspection of more noble-minded youths.^^ This can be recognized in the 
long speech at 526-50, constituting a sizable part of what remains of the 
third act.^^ He begins with alazon language (528-29), but shifts to a 
previous moment of disillusion, introduced with an expression of his 
lamentable condition.^ The lines recall the Moschion of the Samia (532- 
36): 

TioXXwv yeyovoxcov aOXicov Kaxct xov xpovov 
xov vvv — <popa yap yiyovE xoviov vvv koXti 
ev djiaoi xoiq "EX,A,t|oi 6i' o xi br\ Jioxe — 
o\)5eva vop.i^(o xwv xocovxojv aGXiov 
av9p(ojiov ovxcoq iaq e|ia\)x6v ^fiv eyoo. 

Of many wretches begotten in this time / now — and a fine harvest of this 
now exists / in all of Greece, for some strange reason or another — / none I 
account of all the lot so wretched / a mortal to live, as my very self. 

Sandbach comments on the unusual artificiality of the word order.^^ Most 
striking is the dislocation of the personal pronoun eyo) in the last line 
quoted. Though Menander likes this position of eycb for his young men, 
the word order here is an unparalleled tour deforce. 

'' Feneron {Elements, p. 114) notes the "artificial rhetoric" of the three rising tricola, 
culminating in the unique circumlocution ei(; x6 npooSoKav exovai no*; (297). 

'^Moschion is described by Feneron {Elements, pp. 44-45) as employing rhetorical 
"homoiokataikton and homoioteleuton" in Perikeiromene 313-14: 
eiaiovT* £v>9\)(; cpiXiiofli. 8ei ji*. avaKtf|oao9* oXqj, 
Eii; TO KoX.aK E'oc iv xpaniaQgx, ^fiv xe npoq Tau-CTiv ctnX&c;. 

He notes that Moschion only has 57 fuU lines, but displays a clear style in them, "the most 
likably ridiculous . . . accumulation of 'grand' effects . . ." (pp. 113-14), and further that, as 
Moschion becomes unsure of himself, his style begins to break down, changing to paratactic, 
short units, parentheses and shifts of thought (p. 137, note 86). 

'^ Sandbach {Commentary, p. 510) points to the recoUeaions of Aristophanes, Euripides and 
Demosthenes in lines 527-36. 

^'Goldberg {Making, p. 50) observes how, by allowing Polemon to retain a simple and 
impetuous nature, but transferring the alazoneia to Sosias (and in the Misoumenos to Daos and 
Moschion), Menander is able to retain the comic potential of the alazon play. 

'^ Commentary, p. 511. Feneron {Elements, p. 14) designates Thrasonides and the 
Perikeiromene Moschion as the main characters employing ploke (the repetition of a word, 
especially in different cases, for purely emotional effect). He sees it as adding fomialily. Two 
of his examples are in prayer form. Moschion (532-35) uses it in a grand, traditional manner 
(p. 15). 



42 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

From bombastic abuse of an abortive attempt by the soldier and his 
friends, accompanied by the hetaira Habrotonon, to abduct the girl Glykera, 
Moschion suddenly shifts into introspective speech reminiscent of tragedy. 
Katagelos, ridicule of others, turns to recognition of his own helplessness as 
he realizes the slave's treachery, and the true reason for the girl's arrival in 
the house. This is certainly one of the finest comic passages in the 
fragments of Menander, set in the subjective, stream-of-consciousness style 
used for the Sarma Moschion. It is perhaps of note that both Moschions are 
described as practicing speeches intended for their parent. 

In the recognition scene, Moschion's egocentricity reappears. Even if 
successful, his courtship of the girl would hardly have been in the best 
romantic tradition. Other comic youths seldom win their brides in a 
completely honorable fashion, but Moschion's conduct leaves even more 
than usual to be desired. One would, however, expect an expression of joy 
at the reunion with one's long-lost sister. Menander's gentle touch of irony 
and unwillingness to totally redeem a character at the end of a play appear in 
Moschion's unexpected reaction to the discovery of his sibling — a tragic 
expression of grief at his misfortunes (777-78): 

el 5e YEyevTitlai tout', ctSeXcpri 5' eot' i\n\ 
aiSxTi, KoiKiot'] E<p9ap^' 6 S-uox^xtiq eyto. 

If this has happened] and sister she is mine, / I'm ruined [uttterly,] o luck- 
less me! 

Of all Menander's young men, Polemon is the most inarticulate. He 
must be persuaded by Pataikos to dismiss his irregular crew, which is 
accompanied by the hetaira Habrotonon, and probably inspired by the slave, 
Sosias. He is slow to grasp that Glykera is not his "wife" as he terms her 
(ya^iexTiv yuvaim, 487, 489). He resorts to shouting at Pataikos, knows 
little about legal procedure, and, when at a loss for words, suggests hanging 
himself. Only seven lines long, his speech nevertheless is a masterpiece of 
ethopoiia (504-10): 

O-UK oT8' O Tl 

X-eyoo, not xf\v ArinTitpa, tiXtiv otJtdY^onai. 
rX-OKcpa |j.£ KaxaXEXoiTie, ■Kaxaki'kovn.i \iz 
rX-oxepa, ndxaiK*. dX,X,' einep oiSx© ooi 6oKei 
Ttpdxxeiv — o\)vti9t|q TioBa yap koi JtoX,XdKi(; 
XeXdX.TiKaf; avxfii npoxepov — e^cov hxaXiyoM, 
TcpeoPcooov, iKexe-oca oe. 

I know not what / to say, by Demeter, except that I will hang myself. / 
Glykera — me she has left, she has left me — / Glykera, Pataikos. But if 
you approve / the move, you were her friend, and often / chatted with her 
before — go and converse, / be my ambassador, I beseech you.^^ 

^ Related by E. W. Handley, "Rccenl Papynis Finds: Menander," Institute of Classical 
Studies Bulletin 26 (1979), 82, to Epitrepontes 126 (302S). He sees the repetition as a 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 43 

Some other lines reflect the simplest thought and expression. Lines 
507-10, the coda to the outburst about Glykera, end in anxious 
impetuosity. Menander spices Polemon's speech only with the faintest 
aroma of military language. Perhaps Une 513 is to be categorized as such: 

aiSxTi 'oxiv r\ acoxTipia xo\) JipdyM^axo^, 

This is the salvation of the affair. 

A peculiarity of his speech is a certain ambivalence in the diction. In the 
lines that follow (514-16): 

kyca yap ei xi tccojiox' tiSiktix' oXcoq — 
El }J.f| SiaxeX.© ndvxa <piX,oxi|j.ou|i.£vo(; — 
xov k6o|xov a\>zr\c, ei GecopriaaK; — 

I, if I have ever injured her in any way — / if I continue not in everything 
to treat her lavishly — / her finery if you could just observe — 

the (piXoTi^ovjievoc; of 515 both means "to treat lavishly" and "to strive for 
honor." Thus there is a very special and appropriate double entendre of the 
military and the romantic. Menander again reveals himself as a master of 
variation, skillfully alternating word-position, repetition and tenses. His 
language is studiedly beautiful, but apparently stylized rhythms and 
rhetorical flourishes, with a chiasmus unusual in the poet, convey a sense of 
the spontaneous expression of inarticulate grief. The phrasing reduces 
Polemon's complaint to its barest essentials: 

rX-VKEpa ^e -KazaXtkoxnt, KaxaXeXoiite ^e 
rXiiKepa, ndxaiK*. 

The poetic, but exaggerated, use of liquid sounds in alliteration, the 
repetition, including that of the beloved's name, and the obviously rhetorical 
effects contribute to a pathos a. I'outrance, constituent of the scene's 
humor.^^ Menander has used these tricks both to produce elegant verse, and 
yet to produce also an effect of military ungainliness in the realm of Eros. 

Some other peculiarities of Polemon's speech deserve attention. At 519 
he adduces the expensive clothing given Glykera as a reason for forgiveness. 
A soldier's mystification with women's fashions could have belonged to the 



characteristic device for expressing great emotion. D. Del Como, "Alcuni Aspetti del 
linguaggio di Menandro," Studi Classici e Orientali (Universita di Pisa) 24 (1975), 1-48, takes 
the repetition to represent "popular eloquence," following E. Fraenkel, "Two Poems of 
Catullus," Kleine Beitrdge zur klassischen Philologie 11 (Rome 1964), p. 119. 

^' Feneron (Elements, p. 13) regards this type of phrasing {kyklos) as indicating loss of 
emotional control (see Demeas at Samia 465: Mooxi«>v, ea n', ea jie, Mooxitt)v) 
unbecoming to an old man, and possibly loss of dignity where a woman is concerned. 
Thrasonides {Mis. AlO) and Polemon (Perik. 506-07) would be similar cases. "Glykera" was 
used in Glykera, Misogynes and Perik. The invented story that she was Menander's mistress is 
discussed by Amott, Menander I (above, note 1 1), p. xvii. 



44 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

alazon language of Middle Comedy, now redirected to less obvious ends. 
But he adds an allusion to her height (x6 ^leYeBoq, 52 1).^* This is the 
language not of the lover so much as of the recruiting officer. 

At 975, in the midst of love's desperations— though speaking to the 
maid Doris, and therefore with some persuasive intent — Polemon is ready to 
"snuff himself out" C^^v' eiiauTov dnoTivi^aini). The principle of 
transferring the traits of the lovers to the soldiers underlies the Misoumenos 
as well, yet this phrase is peculiar to Polemon. The term used by the more 
delicate Moschion of the Samia is "hang myself quickly" (ovk dTidy^ojiai 
xaxt); 91). Towards the end of the play, his friend Pataikos urges him to 
forget his military nature, lest he do something rash (1016-17): 

x6 XoiKov eniXaGot) oxpaxicbtii^ [©v, iva 
nponzxkc, jiotiotik; ^Tl5e ev [ 

For the remainder, forget you [are] a soldier [so that] / a rash deed you may 
not perform, not even one[ ^^ 

In his reply, Polemon echoes Pataikos' words (1019): 

naXiv ti Jipd^o) npontxic,; . . . 

Again will I do a rash deed? . . . 

The tone of the utterance depends on the director and actor. If 
pronounced timidly, it could humorously contrast with the expected 
impetuosity of a soldier. Even though Agnoia in the prologue warns the 
spectator that Menander intends to undercut this expectation, Menander 
playfully toys with such a contrast throughout the play. 

IV. Thrasonides in the Misoumenos 

Unfortunately, the fragments of the Misoumenos are even less extensive 
than those of the Perikeiromene, but they are sufficient to reveal a world of 
difference in the treatment of the soldier. Though in the beginning of the 
plays the situations of Polemon and Thrasonides are similar, their initial 
actions are not at all alike.'*^ In the Misoumenos, the girl turns cool 
towards Thrasonides on the presumption that his possession of her brother's 
sword is proof Thrasonides has killed and despoiled him. There is no 
preliminary act of violence leading to remorse of the kind that triggers 
Polemon's expressions of violence against himself. Thrasonides' initial 



^ Amott (Greece & Rome 15 [1968], 16) demonstrates the improvement in technique here 
over that used in the Dyskolos for Sostralos. 

" W. W. Fortenbaugh, "Menander's Perikeiromene: Misfortune, Vehemence, and Polemon." 
Phoenix 28 (1974), 430-43, takes 1016-17 to mean that Polemon should literally give up a 
military career. More likely is his relinquishment of the military ethos that has caused so much 
of his trouble. 

'•*' On Thrasonides, see Feneron, Elements, pp. 112-13. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 45 

attitude is rather one of reflection. Pacing back and forth in the rain in front 
of the house, he puzzles over the girl's conduct and his own reaction. Only 
later does he contemplate suicide. 

A further contrast is to be found in the modes of self-extermination 
considered by the two soldiers. In his conversation with Pataikos in Act III 
of the Perikeiromene, Polemon looked forward to death by hanging, a 
solution to life's problems normally employed only by tragic heroines. In 
fact, Polemon uses the same word (dTidylop-ai, 505) as does the highly 
theatrical and not very military Moschion of the Samia, except that 
Moschion is more decisive (ot)K d7idY|o|iai taxt); 91). Later, in Act V, 
speaking to Doris, he uses the word dnonvi^ai^i (iv' eiia-OTov 
dnoTtvi^aim, 975), which probably means "hanging," though in the 
Dyskolos and the New Testament it means "drowning.'"*^ 

The threatened suicide of Thrasonides, however, which is somewhat 
more essential to the plot, is less trivial. At some point in the play, 
probably in Act II, the hero asks someone, undoubtedly Getas, for a sword. 
Getas' felicitous non-compliance, leading him to remove all the swords from 
the house, forestalls Thrasonides, who then sets about recovering the girl's 
affections by less spectacular means. But later, in Act IV, Getas reports a 
scene in which Thrasonides again hints darkly at suicide. Krateia's father, 
Demeas, has come to rescue his daughter. Thrasonides threatens, in the 
presence of Krateia and her father, to take his own life. This is at least the 
implication of 309. Despite the self-serving nature of the threat, and the 
later ransom of Krateia without serious consequences for Thrasonides' 
continuation in this life, the self-destructive tendency is based on more 
reflection and applied to two different situations. These developments in the 
plot can hardly be suspected from the opening monologue. 

In that monologue, Menander adapts the discourse of the paraclau- 
sithyron to the soldier, who thus of necessity acquires greater eloquence. 
But the speech is undercut by infelicities of language similar to those of 
Polemon. The overall texture or matter is quite different, resembling in 
tone neither that of Polemon nor of any other young lover we have seen 
(A1-A14): 

w Nv^ — oi) yap b\\ re^eiaxov 'A(ppo5iTTi(; ^lepoq 
^etexek; 6emv, ev coi xe nepi xovtcov "koyox 
jiXeiaxoi X-eyovxai (ppovxi5e(; x' epcoxiKai — 
ap' dX,Xov dvGpconcov xiv* dGXioixepov 
topoKac;, ap' epwvxa SuaJcoxfKoxepov; 
Jtp6(; xaXc, enauxov vvv GxipaK; eoxtiK* eyoo, 
ev xcoi oxEvconcoi nepvreaxw x' avco Kdxo) 

^' See Sandbach, Commentary, p. 526. WilamowiU conjectured a.nr\xx,d[a\\ for line 988. 
On the "attempted" suicide, see fr. 2 (Arrian, Diss. Epicteti 4. 1. 19) in F. H. Sandbach, 
Menandri Reliquiae Selectae (Oxford 1972), p. 182, and his Commentary, p. 440; E. G. Turner, 
"I: New Literary Texts." in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Vol. XLVffl, M. Chambers. W. E. H. 
Cockle, J. C. Shelton, E. G. Turner, eds. (London 1981), p. 19. 



46 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

ta|i<poxepa<; jaexpi vuv iieoovoiiq com axe56v, 
e^ov KaQt-dbtiv, xt[v epoaneviiv e'xcov. 
nap* t\io\ ydp eoxiv ev5ov c^eoxiv xe |ioi 
Ktti Po\)Xo)aai xo\j9' coc, dv eji^aveoxaxa 
epcbv xiq, OX) Tcooc) 5'- ■ujiaiSpicoi bi |ioi 
Xei|i.[cbvo(; 6]vxo(; eaxiv aipexcoxepov 
£axTi[K£vai] xpe^ovxi Kai XaXovvxi aoi ^^ 

O Night — for you Aphrodite's greatest share / possess among the gods, and 
in you cases about these things / most are pleaded, and the anxieties of 
love — / any other of men more miserable, / have you seen then, a lover 
made more pitiable by fate? / Before my doors now stand I, / in the narrow 
passage pacing up, down. / As you approach the mid-point of your 
course, / when I could be sleeping, my beloved holding, / for within my 
house she is, and the p>ower have I / and desire this as would most 
maddenedly / some lover, but do it not. Under the sky I / in this storm find 
it more preferable / to stand trembling and chattering to you. "^^ 

At first sight, it appears that Menander has seriously adapted the 
romantic outburst of excluded or frustrated lovers in ancient comedy, though 
they exist more in Latin exaggerations than in the sober fragments of the 
Greek poet."*^ In reality, he has deftly and almost unnoticeably combined 

"^ The text given here was first published by E. G. Turner, "The Lost Beginning of 
Menander, Misoumenos": Proceedings of the British Academy 63 (1978) (Oxford 1978), pp. 
315-31. It has now been published with a few small changes in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 
(above, note 41). Some objections and modifications to the text were offered at A29 by P. G. 
McC. Brown, Classical Review 30 (1980), 3-6. See Turner's reply, "Menander and the New 
Society of his Time," Chronique d'Egypte 54 (1979), 1 16. However, in the later redaction in 
Ox. Pap. XLVin, he is sympathetic to the reading naK]dpiO(; (Rea), suggested by the 
determination of the characters as ]a(^}OC, (see note ad loc, p. 15). This weakens the suggestion 
of R. F. Thomas ("Menander, Misoumenos A28 — A29," Zeitschrift fiir Papyrologie und 
Epigraphik 45 [1982], 175-76) that the reading for 29 should be [cri) 6fi noXeji]apx6(;, rather 
than cri) xi^ijttpxo?. based on the earlier understanding of the text as Japxoc;. 

^^ The discovery of POxy 3368 established the text at A4, thoughpreviously Handley had 
brilliantly arrived at the correct emendation ap* aXX.ov dvGpamov xiv' dGXicoTepov. 
Sandbach's emendation here "knokXo\, dvGpconcov tiv' dGXiortepov would have made an 
unusual — though possibly humorous — invocation. Sandbach actually took "AnoXXov here as 
a mere exclamation {Commentary, p. 443), influenced by Plutarch, De cupid. div. 525A. In 
support of ap* dXXov M. Fantuzzi, "Menander Misoumenos A4," Zeitschrift fUr Pap-^rologie 
und Epigraphik 48 (1982), 66, had cited Theodoridas. fr. 10 (Snell), lines 1-4, for ei6ei; xiv* 
dX,Xov, where the Sun is addressed in negative rhetorical interrogation, and Euripides, 
Epigrammata 1 (D. L. Page, Epigrammata Graeca [Oxford 1975], p. 44, vv. 478-81). V. Citti, 
"Men. Misum. A8,** Atene e Roma 28 (1983), 73-74, sees an aUusion to Sappho 168 BV 
jieaaai 6e vuKxet;. Other discussions of the passage are: J. M. Jacques, "Le debut du 
Misoumenos et les Prologues de Menandre," in U. Reinhardt, K. Sallmann eds., Musa locosa 
(HUdesheim 1974), pp. 71-79, esp. 74-76; and J. Blundell, Menander and the Monologue 
(Hypomnemata 59 [Gotlingen 1980]), p. 73 — who however seems to miss the humor. 

^ P. Flury, Liebe und Liebessprache bei Menander, Plaulus und Terenz (Heidelberg 1986), 
pp. 50-52. The tragic aspects of meter and diction were observed by T. B. L. Webster, "Woman 
Hates Soldier: A Structural Approach to New Comedy,*' Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 
14 (1973), 292-93. More recently. G. Davis, "Ovid's Metamorphoses 3. 442 ff. and the 
Prologue to Menander's Misoumenos," Phoenix 32 (1978), 339-42, uies to show that the mock 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 47 

elements from the elegant desperation of youthful lovers with the laughable 
use — or misuse — of language by the glorious military .'♦^ Sandbach notes 
that the opening speech, metrically appropriate to the dignity of the tragic 
stage, is in fact a recollection of a speech in the lost Andromeda of 
Euripides, and is similar to the opening words of Electra in Euripides' play 
of that name."^ However, substantial differences from the two Moschions 
reveal that Menander, while creating a totally different type of military 
speech from that of Polemon, has remained true to the military ethos.'*'' 

In the Samia, Moschion's monologue at 616-40 easily fits the 
situation. Devoid of platitudes, it is marked more by understatement than 
by its opposite. Similarly, in the Perikeiromene, Moschion's speech is 
restrained. The exposition of his lamentable condition is made in flowing 
and natural language, with a play on a9Xio<; in the positive degree (535). In 
the Samia, Moschion also avoids describing himself as "most wretched." 
But in the Misoumenos, Menander certainly intends some parody through 
features such as the halting end-stopping of the lines, the useless internal 
rhyme, and the jerky final bisyllabic or monosyllabic words. Particularly 
noticeable are lines 6, 7 and 10: 

npbq xaiq ep.a\)xov vvv 6\)pai(; eoTTjK' eyco . . . 
ev tS>i axevconwi jcepijiaxS x' avco Kotxco . . . 
Tcap' e|aoi ydp eoxiv ev5ov e^eoxiv xe |aoi . . . 

The thirteenth line seems awkward.'** The accumulation of com- 
paratives, two of which fall into the same end-of-line position, is unusual, 



tragic style of the prologue was the model for Ovid's Narcissus. Goldberg (Making, p. 52) gives 
allusions to the paraclausithyron theme before Menander: Euripides, Cyclops 485-502; Plato, 
Symposium 183a; Aristophanes, Lysist. 845-979. Eccles. 960-76. R. L. Hunter's discussion of 
paratragedy in Menander (The New Comedy [above, note 20], pp. 1 14-33) concentrates on the 
Aspis. 

*^ See F. Sisti, "II soldato Trasonide, owero la comicita del 'rovescio'." Sandalion 5 (1982), 
97-105; esp. 98-1 10. S. Ireland, "Prologues Stnicture and Sentences in Menander," Hermes 109 
(1981), 178-88, points out that the initial appearance of a character in Menander has him 
speaking with more complex language than later on. But the parody here seems clear. 

^ Feneron (Elements, pp. 6-9) interprets anaphora as the sign of extreme emotion. On 
occasion, it is marked by tragic meter as well. There is a touch of humor in it, exploited to 
"type" cooks; e.g. Alexis, fr. 174 (Kock). He notes it here at A1-A2 and A4-A5 (p. 8). 

' E. G. Turner, "Menander and the New Society" (above, note 42) seems to overlook this 
point (108-09). He does not accept McC. Brown's changes (above, note 42) for Afiy. A33-34 
(113-14). 

*^ Feneron (Elements, p. 39) notes Sostralos' lines (Dysk. 571-73) ending in . . . 
Havxevoojiai / . . .TtpooeiSxo^ai,/ • • .(piX-avOpoMieiioonai where, after entering dispirited, 
he recites his lines with "fresh courage and pompous avowals." On rhyme in general, see 
Feneron pp. 36-44, who treats it as resembling the use of tragic meter, which often 
accompanies it (p. 43). After Demeas of the Samia with 25 rhymes, he regards the two 
Moschions and Sostratos as the characters fondest of this device — "a feature of their general 
pomposity." 



48 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

an effect heightened by the superlative at 1 1 and the final comparative in 13. 
The incidence of unimportant words at line-ends is quite high, and the 
occurrence of . . . iyd) . . . noi . . . \lox there suggests egocentricity and 
naivet6. The last word of the invocation, ooi, makes things even more 
ridiculous. The endings for three of the last five lines become ^oi, ^loi, 001.^*9 

Menandrean prologues, syntactically more complex than the other parts 
of the drama, contain a great amount of subordination, a practice learned 
from Euripides. Apparently the purpose is rapid condensation. By contrast, 
the elementary syntax and end-stopping in Thrasonides' prologue is 
remarkable.^^ The meter is tragic, sparing of resolution, though resolution 
is frequent in both Menander's and Euripides' prologues. The lack of 
resolution here suggests a lack of ease and polish.^^ In effect, Thrasonides 
speaks the language of an alazon, containing traits of the youths frustrated 
in love, but all underdrawn. Symptomatic of this attitude is the opening of 
the play at night, a device successful enough to be repeated.^^ 

A more extravagant style appears in the passage already mentioned from 
Act III, where Thrasonides braces himself to meet the girl's father (259- 
69):53 

TiaxTip KpaxEia^, <pT|i<;. eXtiX-uG't 
vvv f\ |j.aKdpiov r\ TpicaGXitoxatov 
5ei^ei(; ^le tcav ^(ovxwv andvxoov yeyo^o'^*^- 
ei ^ifi Yctp o\>xo(; SoKindaei ne, Kvplcoc; 
5(ooei xe xavxiiv, oTxexai 0pao(ovi5Ti(;- 
o \ir\ yevoix'. aXk' eiaioa^iev ovKexi 
x6 xoiovxov eiKd^Eiv yap. ei5evai 5e Sei 
r\\ia.q. OKVTipax; koI xpe|i(ov eioepxoixai. 
^avxe-oeG' t^ \\fvxr\ xl \io\>, Texa, KaKOv. 
5e5oiKa. peX-xiov 8' djta^d7i[avxa xjriq 
olr|oeco(; Jiax;. xa\)xa 9a^)^doal^l 5' dv. 

The father of Krateia, you say, has come [ / Now either blessed or thrice 
most miserable / you will prove me of all living things, begottten. / For 
if he will esteem me not and in due form / give her, done for is 

*' The introduction of Getas at A15 is now taken to be a certainty, based on POxy 3368 with 
a marginal note at this line (Turner, "New Literary Texts" p. 3). However, the letters are not at 
all clear, though sigma seems to appear at the end, and the manuscript contains no other 
marginal names. An ending at A14 to Thrasonides' speech gives more emphasis to the absurd 
(101, HOI, ooi separated by eiijiaveataxa and alpexcoxepov, the latter recalling the two 
comparatives earlier in the speech. 

5°S. Ireland (above, note 44), 183-85. 

'^C. Prato in C. Prato, P. Giannini, E. Pallara, R. Sardiello and L. Marzoua, Ricerche sul 
Trimetro diMenandro: Metro e Verso (Rome 1983), pp. 35-36. 

^^ M. Colantonio, "Scene nottume nelle commedie di Menandro: noU al Pap. Oxy. 2826," 
Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 23 (1976). 59-64. 

^'A. Borgogno, "Per il testo di Menandro {Aspis 380; CUharista 94-95; Misumenos 259-61; 
fr. 471 K6.)," Prometheus 6 (1980), 231, argues for mxvxTl to fill out line 259. based on Aspis 
213-15. The interpretation of the last lines of this passage is extremely difficult. See 
Sandbach, Commentary pp. 454-55. for a discussion of the problems. 



Frederick E. Brenk, SJ. 49 

Thrasonides. / God forbid. But let us enter, for no longer / such conjecture 
but to know behooves / us. Shrinkingly and trembling I enter. / My soul 
prophesies, Getas, something evil. / 1 am still afraid. Better once for all 
than this / suspicion in some way. But these things I would marvel at. 

He describes his condition in extreme terms, with use of final assonance 
(260-61): 

vvv •q jiaKapiov r{ xpioa9Xi(oxaxov 
Sei^eii; ^e toav ^(ovtoav ajidvtcov yeyovoxa. 

Nor does he shy away from the pathetic use of the third person (263): 

oixexai 0pao(ovi8r|(;- 
or \h&plurale maiestatis (265-66): 

el5evai 6e 5ei / Tina^. 

Like a hero from Homeric song, he differentiates his organ of thought from 
himself, even if not in Homeric terminology (267): 

^avx£■ue9' r\ vf\)x(\ ti fiov, Texa, kukov. 

In the manner of a Hellenistic philosopher he speaks of his suspicion as an 
oiesis. The extent of this pomposity reflects the alazon origins of Thraso- 
nides, though the phrasing of 260-61 is characteristic as well of non- 
military lovers. 

This manner of speaking, though in a slightly different form, is 
reflected in his reported words in Act IV (305-10), importuning Krateia: 

. . . "dvxipoXw, Kpdxeia, oe, 
nf| \C £YKaxaA,iJiT|i(;- TiapGevov a' eiXriq)* eycb, 
dvfip exXriSriv Trpwxo^, Tiydniiod ae, 
dyan©, <piXca, Kpdxeia <pi?ixdxr|- xi aoi 
A.\)jfnp6v eoxi xcav nap' e|a.o(; xeGvriKoxa 
Tievcei |i* edv jx' eyKaxaXl7tT\i(;." . . . 

You, Krateia, I beseech, / please do not abandon me. A girl, you I have 
taken, / first been called your spouse. I loved you, / love, hold dear, 
Krateia dearest. What do you / find so dreadful in me? As a dead man / 
you will hear of me, if you abandon me.^^ 



The aspect of the perfect continued to be strong through the Ptolemaic and Roman 
periods. But the perfect here could refer to Thrasonides* possession of the girl, rather than to the 
girl's virginity, as held by some scholars. See K. L. McKay, "The Use of the Ancient Greek 
Perfect Down to the Second Century A.D.." Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin 12 (1965) 1- 
21, and "On the Perfect and Other Aspects in the Greek Non-Literaiy Papyri," ibid. 27 (1980), 
23-49, esp. 42. F. Bommann notes that once in Menander (fr. 568.5) e^co has erotic 
connotations, but claims ("II prologo del Misumenos," Atene e Roma 25 [1980], 159-60) that 
Krateia must still be a virgin, referring to A9: tfjv epto^evTiv excov. 



50 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Here we find short, simple, asyndetic utterances, but not without art. 
Two similar phrases — |j.t| p.' iyKaxaXim\\.q, eav ^' iyKaxaXim\\<; — 
have a framing effect. There is the nuanced repetition of KpdtEia, 
following a two line interval, with rhyme ayanSi, (piXcb, Kpaxeia 
(piXxdxTi, and with hammering away on the second person at the ends of the 
lines in oe, ae, aoi, but not without variations (a'. . . eyoi, . . . 
xeGvTiKOTa). Moreover, the isolation of TEGv-qKoxa (309) pushes it into 
stark contrast. This speech suggests comparison with that of Polemon, for 
example, the lines (Perik. 506-07): 

rX-uKcpa ^e KaxaXeXoiTte, KaxaXeXoure ^e 
rX,\)Kepa, ndxaiK*. 

In Polemon's lament, there is a touch of playfulness in the use of the 
name Glykera, as though the days of wine and roses were now over. 
Thrasonides utters the name Krateia plaintively, hinting at the immovable 
force resisting his imprecation. 

We already saw that Polemon's (piXoxi^ot>|ievo<; was ambiguous. 
Thrasonides' dvxiPoA.(o, is equally ambiguous. At 305, it implies a lovers' 
quarrel: 

. . . "dvTiPoXm, Kpdxeia, oe, 
HT| ^' eyKaxaXiTCTm •" 

But the verb is Homeric (Iliad XVI. 847): 

xoiovxoi 5' £1 Ttep fioi eeiKoavv avxepoXriaav 

K twenty such had against me come 

There is a mock epic touch. Though dvxipoXw is of course frequent in 
comedy for "entreat," "beseech," in the mouth of a soldier, the direct 
descendant of an epic warrior, it and the masculine sound of the name of the 
girl have an incongruous effect. 

Coloring Thrasonides' speech elsewhere are other touches suggesting 
the language of a romantic alazon rather than the usual cultivated youth. 
For example at A43, where he explains Krateia's contempt, the exaggerated 
alliteration niaei . . .]|ie |iioo(;. (Get.) w MMyvfixi a. goes beyond the 
bounds of serious diction. His language here may be compared with a 
similar line of the theatrical hetaira, Habrotonon, in a flamboyant passage 
(Epitrepontes 433): 

6eiov 6e |iioei ^llao(; avGpcorcoc; ne xi. 

Divine the hatred with which the man hates me, somehow. 

The phrasing at A85-A89 resembles that of the love-sick youths, with 
rhetorical asyndeton and climax in (piXoviKiav 7i6vo[v] ^avi[av (A87) and 
with the assonance (piX[xdxTi, (pi[Xxaxoq (A86, A88) binding the words 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 51 

together,55 The exaggeration and clumsiness, presenting a soldier out of his 
depth in the expression of romantic feeling, humorously contribute to the 
delineation of his ethos.^^ Finally, the mutilated soliloquy at 360-90, 
where Thrasonides confesses that he refrains from alcohol so as not to reveal 
his secret, contains (if the reconstruction is correct) an awkwardly repeated 
word (. . . (p[Epeiv . . . (pepco;) and clumsy metaphor (X.([0o]v v|/\)xtiv 
(p[epew, 360).^'^ 

Thrasonides shares some traits with the Moschion of the Perikeiro- 
mene. For example, though characters normally speak of "door" in the 
singular, Moschion, like Thrasonides in the prologue to the Misoumenos, 
or the goddess Agnoia in the prologue to the Perikeiromene (154), uses the 
high-sounding plural (299). Like Thrasonides, Moschion has some less 
impressive lines such as (298-99; 346-47): 

(Aa.) 7cop£^)oo^al. 

(Mo.) nepiTiaxcov 5e jrpoo|j.evm oe, (Aae), TipooGe xwv Gvpwv. 

(Daos) I will depart. 

(Moschion) Walking about, I will await you <Daos> before the doors. 

Aae; Trepuiaxevv noeiq \it JiepiJiaxov nokitv xiva. 
ctpxicoi; nev o\)[k dX]Ti[9e(;, v\>\> 5e XeXaXtiKat; ndXiv. 

Daos? You make me walk an exceedingly long walk. / A moment ago not 
the truth, but now you have babbled again. 

The effect of the alliteration would easily be heightened by a good actor.^^ 

V. Stratophanes and Moschion in the Sikyonios 

The fragmentary nature of this play complicates the reconstruction of the 
ethos and language of the soldier, Stratophanes, and the youth, Moschion. 
Even so, much is revealed. Like Polemon in the Perikeiromene, the soldier 
has a foil in the youth, who this time, however, is the soldier's brother. 
Like Moschion in the Perikeiromene, this one also labors under a mistaken 
impression — here, that the soldier has kidnapped the girl he loves. Little of 
Moschion's part survives, but obviously he would have been quite different 
from the other two Moschions we have seen. His speech in Act V (396- 
410) is simple almost in the extreme, with the twice repeated "Moschion" at 
396-97 in his address to himself. The simple language adds a touch of 

^^ At least this was Sandbach's interpretation. However, Turner, following H. Lloyd- Jones, 
now prints <pi[X,o<pp6va>i; at A88, "to avoid repetition of (piXxaxoc," ("New Literary Texts," p. 
18). 

^ The new fragments appear to substantiate MacCary's views ("Menander's Soldiers" [above, 
note 29], 285) that Thrasonides has touches of alazoneia but is essentially a sympathetic 
character. 

^' This is highly conjectural. Line 360 reads: eoxco oxleYleiv jie Kal X,i[9o]v yvxTlv 
(p[epeiv. 

* Feneron too {Elements, p. 30) would see the assonance here as mock grandeur. 



52 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

humor and quiet pathos. He explains that he must not look at the girl — 
while pointing out her physical merits to himself — and that he must be his 
new-found brother's best man (napo/riao^ai StjXovoti [404], an allusion to 
the custom whereby the "best man" drove the bride and groom to their new 
home on a mule or ox-cart, with the bride sitting between the two). His 
reflection on the happiness of his brother is typical of his simple, 
straightforward style (400): 

. . . a5eX96(; 6 yanajv ^aKotpioc; k.[ 
. . . your brother the bridegroom, fortunate [ 

This speech, though consisting of fourteen lines with defective endings, 
is nonetheless sufficient to reveal the halting style more typical of a soldier 
than of the spoiled only son normally met among these comic youths. The 
first nine lines may be cited (397-405): 

vvv o\)5e npoopX.e\|/ai oe, Moaxi<o[v, exi 

Tipoi; XTiv KopTiv 5ei- Mooxv«v[ 

Xe\)icn o<p65p', c\)6<pQaX\x6q eox' — o\)5e[v Xiyziq- 

abzXcpbc, 6 ya\i5iv iiaKOtpioq k.[ 

oiov yap — ox)xo(;, exi Xiyeic,; ovavx[ 

Ttpayii' eox' ereaiveiv x«piv ev.[ 

aXk' ov)K epw yc" V^^ Yctp oxavooov[ 

napoxf\oo\iai StjXovoxi koI k[ 

xp(xo(; [|A£x'] a\)x©v, av5pe(;, ov 5v[vTioo^ai 

Now not even for you to gaze upon, Moschion, [still] / upon the girl is 
right. Moschion [ / Fair indeed she is, with beautiful eyes, — [you are 
talking] non[sense]; / your brother the bridegroom, fortunate [ / for such — 
you there, still ulking? / One must praise the grace in [ / But I will not 
say it <or: "I am not in love"> / I will ride along, obviously, and <make 
up> / a threesome [with] them. Friends, W will] not [have the strength . . . 

The few lines elsewhere, for instance at 274-79, do not contradict this 
picture of halting diction and simplicity. He uses a commonplace idiom at 
278 (Ttpayji' i^ixaC,z[, 278; cf. Tipay^i' eox' later at 402). Nothing of 
the flamboyant, melodramatic speech of the Samia Moschion, the elegance 
of Sostratos or swashbuckling alazoneia of the Perikeiromene Moschion 
appears. 

In spite of their differences, Moschion and Stratophanes have much in 
common. Stratophanes, in fact, seems the victor in the contest of banalities. 
The simplicity of his language anticipates the theatre of the absiu^d. He 
surely wins no prizes for originality. His reaction to the news of his 
mother's death typifies his style (124-26): 

(©T].) KOI oKvGpamoq Epxexai. 

(Itp.) HT| XI o^)^P£PTl]Kev r\\iv/, Iluppta, vewxepov; 

^fl yap y\ HT|xrip] xeGvriKe; 
(nVPPIAZ) Tiepvoiv. 



Frederick E. Brenk, SJ. 53 

(Itp.) oiiAoi- Ypav(; oq>65p' tjv 

fTheron) He comes with a grim look. 

(Stratophanes) Surely nothing has [happened to] us, Pyrrhias, a new blow? 

Don't tell me my mother] has died? 
(Pyrrhias) A year ago. 

(Stratophanes) Alas! She was quite an old woman. 

Stratophanes' appearance elsewhere in the fragments is limited to brief 
moments in Acts IV and V, in the last of which we have a speech of eleven 
consecutive lines. His simplicity is perhaps indicated by the very large 
number of half lines: 10 out of 12 which can be reconstructed out of 120- 
52; 3 out of 7 in 272-310; 7 out of 8 before an 11 line speech in 376-95. 
Something of his simplicity may be seen in his one-line reaction to the 
revelation that Moschion is his brother. 

6 Mooxvcov d6eX<p6^ Efio^ eo[Tiv, jidxep; 
Moschion [is] my brother, [father? 

In the reconstruction, the sequence of two initial trisyllabic words 
followed by three bisyllabic produces a halting, surprised effect which could 
easily be enhanced by a skilled actor. We might contrast these with the 
lines of Moschion in the Perikeiromene on the revelation that the object of 
his desires is his sister: a melodramtic speech of five lines, with accusatives 
and infinitives, a conditional clause, and a flowery self-lament (774-78). 
Perhaps significant for his ethos is Stratophanes' speech at 385-96. It 
consists of rather lengthy sentences and clauses, but they are basically 
imperatives with their objects strung out after them. As though to say a 
soldier expresses himself best in commands, Menander allows orders to 
predominate elsewhere as well.^^ 

In the reconstruction, the speech begins with a staccato command (385- 
86): 

Aova^, 
Jiai, Tiai,] Aova^, tppdoov elaiwv npoq MaXBdiaiv 

Donax, 
boy, boy] Donax, say, going in to Malthake 

and leads into a series of details about boxes and pack asses, such as we 
might expect from an army officer. It ends rather as it had begun, with an 
emphasis on command (395-96): 

Ktti xo\)(; ovotx;. xavxa Xiy\ iyai[ 
evx£{►^o^' a-bzbc, zaXka xcai x.f 

and the asses. Mention these things. I[ 

will petition myself about the other things to the [, . . 



^ For example, lines 141, 145. 146. 147. 383. 



54 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Notable as well is Stratophanes' swearing by Heraklcs (158), normal for 
a soldier, and contrasting with the picturesque supplication of the 
Perikeiromene Moschion to Adrasteia (304) and, if the reconstruction is 
accurate, the hollow echo of Moschion's final words at 273: 

(7M0IXIQN) xovq, dv5pano5ia'ca(; dnaYaYei[v \)\i.a.z, eyco — 
(?Itp.) Tinac; ov; 

(?Moschion) Lead away the slave dealers, [I bid you. 
(?Stratophanes) Youus?^^ 

This general pattern of halting simplicity, but with an officer's self- 
possession and imperious style, is accompanied by a total lack of alazoneia. 
There are, however, two exceptions. The hyperbaton at 125, where |iti ti 
. . . and . . . vecbxepov are widely spaced, is notable. The other exception 
to the normal banality of expression is at 136-37: 

TiXfie nepi xovxcov dredvtcov ^loi tot' e\)8\)(; ypdmiata 
Tf|v TE xov naxpbc, teX-evxtiv a|i.a XEyovt' eic, Kapiav. 

There came, for me, about all these things then, straightway, letters — / of 
my father's death telling — at the same time into Karia. 

The translation necessarily exaggerates the hyperbaton, which is a more 
natural feature of the Greek language. Yet the effect is so pronounced and 
untypical of Stratophanes' speech elsewhere that it suggests a teasing 
Menander satirizing his soldier. But, more probably, wishing to enhance 
the emotional effect of Stratophanes' reaction to the touching news of his 
parents' deaths, he turned to ttagic diction with its overtones of nobility and 
pathos. 

VI. Special Criteria: Periods, End-stop and Hyperbaton 

A more specific investigation into the styles of Menander's young men, 
revealing greater differences, can put them into better perspective. Three 
useful criteria are periods, end-stop and hyperbaton. The periodic structure 
and hyperbaton are in fact quite extraordinary in the case of the non-military 
youths, while end-stop seems to have been employed to characterize the 
soldiers. Any conclusions here are of course weakened by the fragmentary 
nature of the plays, with their uneven line-distribution, and the chance 
survival of monologues, where the elevated style is more likely to appear. 
Even so, the criteria serve a purpose in distinguishing the tenor of particular 
speeches. 

One of the early studies of Menander's style singled out enjambment 
and the paratragic manner as key methods of individuation. However, 
enjambment was regarded as colloquial, belonging to low or secondary 



Supplement to 272 by Austin. Many think Stratophanes threatens Smikrines here. 



Frederick E. Brenk. S J. 55 

characters, and "absolutely lacking in the principal ones." The paratragic 
style was viewed solely as an attempt to elevate the diction and seriousness 
of the passage.^ ^ Other suggested criteria for testing the speech of the 
characters are connectives in continuous discourse, the use of subordination, 
and hyperbaton.^2 Asyndeton seems to be involved with the attempt to 
reproduce more faithfully the realism of the oral style, in passages 
contrasting with the more literary prologues .^^ 

Another approach has been Uie study of assonance, verbal repetition, 
oaths and meter.*^ There is a close relationship between the language and 
versification of Euripides and Menander. Stricter, more severe meter was 
used by Menander for lower-class persons (Daos in Epitrepontes 240-69) or 
less cultivated ones (Gorgias in the Dyskolos), or apparently for comic 
effect (Moschion, Samia 616-40). In contrast, Demeas' speech at Samia 
206-82 has a large number of resolutions, as do Menander's Euripidean 
prologues.^^ 

More elegant speakers use their periods naturally and effectively, as 
many scholars have noticed. Sostratos in the Dyskolos has quite a few 
(309-13, 384-89, 525-28, 666-69, 673-77, 798-800, 800-02). The first 
(309-13) is well constructed, ending with the verb and containing variation 
in the subordinate phrasing through the use of a conditional clause followed 
by a participle. The second (384-89) has a long introductory condition 
(including a long participial clause), with the important word ^laKocpiov at 
the end. In a narrative passage, we find another period (525-28) with the 
verb appropriately stationed at the end for suspense and emphasis. At 666- 
69 there is a short period, cleverly constructed, with repetition of oaths and 
an important word positioned last, but as though it were an afterthought 
(^iiKpou). Sostratos has two short periods at 798-800 and 800-02. In the 
first, an important word (^exaSiSotx;) appears at the end of the periodic 
clause, while in the second he finishes with toiStcov tivi, perhaps to 
enhance the contrast with . . . dva^icoi xivi in the next line. There is a 
great deal of variety in the introductions of these sentences (condition, 



^^ S. Zini, // Linguaggio del Personaggi nelle Convnedie di Menandro (Florence 1938), p. 
120. 

^^ Sandbach (F// [above, note 5], p. 138) thought hypeibaton so usual in verse that it might 
pass unnoticed in Menander "and be more frequent than I supposed." 

^^ See D. Del Como (above, note 36), 46. 

^ J. S. Feneron, "Some Elements of Menander's Style," Institute of Classical Studies 
Bulletin 21 (1974), 81-95 points to assonance and end-rhyme in Sostratos' speech {Dysk. 571- 
73), paronomasia and end-rhyme in Gorgias' {Dysk. 253-54), and gives statistics on rhymes 
used: Demeas (Samia) 25; Sostratos (Dysk.) and Moschion (Samia) 11; Gorgias (Dysk.) 5; 
Moschion (Perikeir.) 4 (81-84). Because of the brevity of the Perikeir. fragments, the four 
rhymes here may be quite significant. On assonance in general see also Feneron, Elements, pp. 
27-64 (paronomasia, 31-36; rhyme 36-46). 

" C. Prato, introduction to Ricerche sul Trimetro di Menandro (above, note 51), pp. 22-23. 
32-34, 36. 



56 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

participle, indicative, command) and in the conclusions. No one pattern 
predominates. 

The language of the two Moschions, though similar to that of 
Sostratos, contains a touch of affectation. The Perikeiromene Moschion 
uses the periodic mode to express his lamentable condition in lines 532-36. 
This elegantly constructed sentence begins with a genitive absolute, 
followed by an interjectory sentence, and concludes with a main clause in 
which the two important and grammatically connected words are positioned 
respectively at the beginning and end of the line. The Samia Moschion in 
his initial monologue employs a long period at 19-22, on the distressing 
introduction of the Samian into his father's house. Variety is achieved by 
having the period follow a two-word sentence (riv K6a^io<;), and is itself 
followed by three short, impetuous main verbs. The suspense is cleverly 
increased by two interjectory sentences explaining his devotion to details and 
the leisurely pace he intends to pursue. Two phrases {la\iiaq eTa{pa<; at 
the opening of 21, and Ttpayfi' I'aox; dvGpcoTiivov at the closing of 22) 
seem to have been positioned deliberately. The major point, the father's 
passion for the Samian, is followed by a parallel philosophical reflection on 
the weakness of human nature, with a slight chiastic effect. The 
circumstantial background of his fall is introduced shortly in periodic 
fashion (41-43), contrasting with the paratactic mode used to express his 
shame (47^8), and the declaration of the essential, Plangon's pregnancy, 
given in a stark three-word indicative sentence (49). 

In Act V, the long period opening Moschion's speech at 616-40 is 
noteworthy for its positioning of the subject ey© at the beginning of the 
sentence, with the verb (vneXapov) at the end and at the first position in 
its line (616-19). The next sentence, a continuation of the first, is slightly 
periodic, with the important verb fi|iapTT|Kevai reserved for both the end of 
the sentence and line. 

This is followed by the most elaborate period to be found in the 
expostulations of Menander's young men, that in Moschion's proposal to 
embrace the rigors of the mercenary life in order to confound his father 
(623-29). A neatly balanced contrary to fact condition, with two conditions 
in the protasis, one introduced by ei |xev and the other by Kal ^t|, is 
followed by a bifurcated apodosis, the first part introduced by ov)k av and 
the second by aXX\ Interspersed between the conditions is a relative clause, 
followed by two participles towards the end of the last three lines. All this 
in complex but natural speech reflects the delicate attention to words and 
phrasing apparently typifying Moschion's "rehearsals." Throughout, 
important words are situated at the beginnings or ends of enjambed lines. In 
contrast to the sophistication of these speeches, Thrasonides' monologue has 
no periods and virtually no long introductory clauses. In contrast to 
Moschion's speech, the extremely long speech of Demeas in the Samia 
contains only a brief stretch (238^W) in the periodic mode. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 57 

The halting Polemon has only two periods. One at 507-09 is 
awkward, with an interjectory sentence ending in two imperatives and 
another verb, in asyndeton. Even this sentence was probably designed to lay 
bare the limited scope of Polemon's rhetoric, with interruptions and 
inconsistencies rather than true periodicity. The second, unfinished sentence 
at 514-16 consists of two unpolished conditional clauses followed by 
another condition, with ei after the object of its verb. Here again, Menander 
probably wanted to portray ungainly interruption rather than the periodic 
style. 

Next to Polemon and his lack of elegance, Gorgias has some periodic 
sentences, though uttered with difficulty. The slightly periodic sentence at 
234-38, in which he admonishes the slave Daos, is slowed down by 
unnatural word order. There is a long speech on tvxri at 271-87 with four 
fairly long sentences — or three, if one is taken as part of the same sentence. 
In the only one which is periodic, the final word (xiva) is curiously and 
ineffectively positioned. 

The employment of end-stops to suggest awkwardness in expression is 
another possible criterion for analyzing the styles of the young men. The 
opposite of end-stopping, enjambment, can be understood as necessary — that 
is, grammatically required to complete the thought; or unnecessary — 
additions made to complete an otherwise independent thought. If one takes 
end-stopping in a looser sense, then the feature is quite pronounced in the 
opening seven lines of Gorgias' speech at 271-87, but not noticeable 
thereafter. It characterizes the excited words of Polemon at 512-17, but is 
absent from the more reflective speech at 981-88. However, end-stopping 
is most prominent in the opening monologue of Thrasonides (A1-A15). 
The hero begins with three elegant — and slightly absurd — lines in a period 
followed by six or seven end-stopped lines. But he recovers to close the 
address with a graceful, though not very complex, period, marred by the 
infelicity of \io\. and aoi completing its first and third lines. The pronouns 
HOI and aoi are popular among monosyllables for closing lines, but here 
seem deliberately combined for humorous effect, as, perhaps, also in the 
Perikeiromene Moschion's speech at 584-89. Elsewhere in the same speech 
(526-50), we find jioi, ey© and e^iov closing the lines. 

This curious use of weak monosyllabic words characterizes Thrasonides' 
language elsewhere. The last four lines of A1-A15 contain the pattern: . . . 
HOI, . . . E|i.|i.aveatata, . . . ^loi, . . . alpexw-cepov, . . . aoi. In a later speech 
at 259-69, we find . . . 5ei, . . . z\r\c„ and, most astoundingly, at the 
conclusion of the speech the counterproductive . . . av {lOLXixcL 
0at)|idoai^i 5' av).<^ Attempted elegance falls delightfully on its face as 

* The termination of a line with the particle av is not unparalleled in Menander, appearing in 
Dysk. 814 (Kallipides, the father of Sostratos); Epitrep. 903 (Onesimos, the slave of Charisios); 
Samia 301 (Pataikos); and fr. 568. 2 (Sandbach). However, in Dysk. 814 it forms an 
interjectory phrase {nax, ^ctp av;). Samia 301 and fr. 568 use it with enjambment. The only 



58 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

periods alternate with broken thoughts and end-stopped lines. The tendency 
towards end- stopping appears as well in the speech at 259-69. 

The final criterion, hyperbaton, can be found in the more "profound" 
speeches of the characters. One of the first studies dedicated solely to 
Menander's style was quick to notice the change from a more natural to an 
elevated tone, signaled by the introduction of a few stilted words (e.g. 
Perikeiromene 486), or the change from tragic to commonplace (e.g. as 
Moschion begins to reason more coolly at Samia 634-35). 

Hyperbaton may be defined as the inversion of the normal word order. 
The inflected nature of Greek, with the modification of nouns by adjectives, 
allows a much less rigid structure than English. It is, however, not always 
so easy to determine the amount of parody or humor intended. Greek word 
order is also different from that of English, especially in a periodic 
tendency — ^the positioning of verbs and other words at the end of a clause or 
sentence. A word may become emphatic if followed by less emphatic ones, 
such as enclitics like p.oi, aoi and so on. Enjambment too may give a word 
emphasis if the following word in the next line is unemphatic.^"^ Obviously 
much could depend upon an actor's interpretation, and scholars might not 
agree on what actually is hyperbaton. 

Some earlier critics of Menander seem to have missed the humor of his 
paratragic style. For example, the recognition scene of the Perikeiromene 
contains the longest piece of poetic diction in the extant corpus, contrasting 
with the plain language of Moschion in the second half of his speech at 
526-50 (200 lines back). Moschion's more elevated style, with the reversal 
of expectations in the paratragic mode in the acknowledgment of his new- 
found sister (774-79), serves as a humorous transition to the stichomythia. 
It is even possible that at 788 Pataikos' words on the separation of the 
children: 

nSi; ovv exwpioBiiT' art' dX.>.riXcov 5ixa; 

How then were you separated from each other in two? 

are a deliberate echo of Euripides' description of the division between heaven 
and earth:^* 

EJiei 5' excopiaGrjoav dA.X,T|Xoov 5{xa 
after they were separated from each other in two 



strict parallel then is with the language of the low-class Onesimos. The number of 
monosyllabic words ending lines is quite limited in Menander: a few verbs or verb forms: 
Xpr|, 6ei, ei, ^v, oSv, ov; connectives: 8e, Kai, TJ, jiev, ydp; emphatic panicles: ye, 6f|, 
vf|, vai, jifiv, ouv, vvv; personal pronouns, the definite article and forms of ei<;: fiOTJ, fioi, 
(le, ov, oov, oe, aoi, xou, xriv and z\c„ ev; interrogatory or indefinite particles: no\i, nov, 
Ttoi, Ttoi, no) ; and a very few nouns like yfiv, jtai. 

^ I am grateful to Professor Sandbach for this observation. 

^ Sandbach, FH (above, note 5). pp. 126-27. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 59 

Even so, Moschion's line at 793 with its monosyllables and strong caesuras 
seems to play off colloquial thought and phrasing against tragic meter: 

6^oc)^OKev zT[i iiTixpi. no\> nox' eim yriq,; 

He has sworn to my mother. Now where in the world am I? 

A mock tragic opening for a character, or at least one in the elevated style, 
seems typical for Menander. The introduction of Knemon's daughter in the 
Dyskolos runs (189): 

oi|j.oi xdXaiva xSv en&v eya) kokSiv 
Alas! Wretched in my, am I, ills. 

She then relates the great tragedy of her bucket falling down the well. 
Inversions of word order found elsewhere in Gorgias' lines contribute to a 
slightly stilted diction. Here, the poet's humor would best be appreciated by 
his own literary coterie, nursed in the tragic style of the Dionysian theatre. 

The word order of Gorgias, only slightly less natural than that of 
Sostratos, contains distorted word patterns primarily in speech openings, 
such as (234-38; 271; 289): 

e5ei ae, vq Aia, 
xov xfji KopTji Tipooiovxa, (Aa'), ooxk; Jtox' tJv, 
iSeiv xot' e-oSuq, xovxo xov Xoinou xpovow 
eineiv 9' ojiox; (j.r|5£t(; nox' avxcv oyexai 
7ioiot>vxa- 

You ought, by Zeus, / the one approaching the girl <Daos>, whoever he 
was, / to have seen, then, straightway and "that, in the future" / to have 
said, "no one should again see him / doing." 

civai voni^o) jiaoiv dvGpcorcoK; eyo) 

to be consider for all men, I 

Epyov 5oKEi(; jioi (pauXov E^-qXcovEvai 

a deed you seem to me, base, to have desired. 

The Samia Moschion affects tragic diction at 632, where in discussing his 
reasons for rejecting the mercenary life "in Bactra or Caria" he elegantly 
describes the tyranny of love as: 

6 xr\(^ £nfi(; vvv KvpiO(; yv(o^Tl(; "Ep(0(; 
the of my — ^now lord — heart. Love 

Artificial interlocking (6 xfiq i\xx\c, vOv Kijpioq yv6i\y\\c, "EptO(;) with 
the significant word lojpioc; as a pivot and the climax in "Love" (Eros), 
along with the exaggerated regularity of meter epitomize the Menandrean 
humor of these delightful verses. But the effectiveness of the line derives 
from the consistency with which Moschion uses natural, flowing language. 
In part, this is the trendy discourse used by Sostratos and his friend Chaireas 



60 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

in the Dyskolos: variation, short paratactic verbs, participial phrases, 
contrasts, unexpected turns, interjected philosophizing. It is the uniqueness 
of the line which draws attention to it. Moreover, its starkness is partially 
removed by its grafting onto the previous one. Menander's verbal finesse 
then reflects a certain sympathy for Moschion. 

As one might expect, the most affected speaker, the Perikeiromene 
Moschion, is especially given to indulgence in hyperbaton. One can cite 
the following (295-96; 312-13; 533; 535-36; 545): 

eiaicbv 5e ^ol av, Aae, xcbv oXcov KaxdoKonoq 
TipaYndxojv yevov, . . . 

Entering, for me, you, Daos, of all — the lookout — / events, become. . . 

TTiv 5e lATitepa 
eiaiovt' e\)6u(; <piXfiaai 5ei \i\ . . . 

and my mother — / approaching, straightway to kiss, I have to, . . . 

xov vt>v — (popct yap yiyove. toutou vuv xaXri 

the now — for a crop has come about of this now fine 

ovbiva vo|ii^(o xwv xooouxtov aOXiov . . . 
avSpciMiov ovzioq ©(; eiAavxcv ^fiv iydi . . . 

none consider of all that number miserable / a man such as myself to 
UV&-I. 

apioxov ax)xoi(; Kaxa^Pmv [7cpoKe(|J.evov^^. . . 
the morning meal for them having found [lying ready 

Other lines such as 302 and 304 might be adduced. Hyperbaton with 
mock tragic effect is quite significant, appearing not only at Moschion's 
entrance, but throughout his lines. 

Since next to him Thrasonides has the highest percentage of these lines, 
one must strongly suspect that Menander has intentionally clothed 
Thrasonides in the language of paratragedy associated with the alazones of 
Middle Comedy. Among these distorted lines are (A6; 260-61; 267): 

Tipoq xai^ eiia-oxoi) vvv Svpaiq eoxtik' eyco. 

Before the — of myself — now, doors stand I, 

vuv T\ ^aKdplov T[ xpioaGXioiJxaxov 
5ei^£i(; |iE xcov ^©vxcov dndvxcov yzyovoza. 

Now either blessed or thrice most miserable / you will reveal me of all 
living things, begottten 

^lavxeveG* r\ \f^xh "ti ^ou, Fexa, Kaxov. 



® Professor Sandbach infomis me — on the basis of a reexamination of the text — ^that OCT 
jtpoKeifievov is not subsuntiated here. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S . J. 61 

Prophesies my soul something, Getas, evil. 

The meter in Thrasonides' lines here is in general suitable for tragedy, 
with little resolution, and there is a tendency towards exaggerated regularity, 
such as in 263."^° Whether this type of style had come to be strongly 
associated with soldiers is difficult to say. There is a touch of it in 
Stratophanes, especially in Sikyonios 166-67, where we would least expect 
it, since in general his style is simple, direct and soldierly. 

VII. The Young Men of Euripides and Menander Compared 

Since Menander's drama draws heavily on Euripides, the style of his young 
men can be illuminated by comparison with those of his model. ''^ Similar 
characters in the older poet are Hippolytus, Ion and Orestes in their 
eponymous plays; Orestes again in the Iphigenia in Tauris and Electra; 
Polynices in the Phoenissae; Achilles in the Iphigenia in Aulis; and 
Pentheus in the Bacchae. Periodic structure, hyperbaton, end-stop and 
certain other features in Euripides put Menander's style in better perspective. 
First, Euripides appears to avoid real periodic structure. For example 
conditional clauses frequently end rather than initiate thoughts. Lines 
frequently are made up of a steady flow, the accumulation of independent 
elements. The opportunity for a period is obvious at Orestes 82-111, in 
particular at 105. But Euripides refuses the bait there, and again in the 
Iphigenia in Tauris 947-54. Usually, Euripides' lines are rather paratactic, 
with an introductory temporal clause rather than a condition — if there is to 
be an introductory clause. Another good example of the avoidance of 
periodic structure is Phoenissae 469-96. In place of it, Euripides piles up 
shorter individual elements. In Orestes' speech in Orestes 566-70, the hero 
begins with a condition (ei yap), main verb, participle, participle, then 
concludes with another main verb and participle. At Hippolytus 618-24 we 
find: ei ydp . . . Iox>k . . . xpfjv. . . /aXk\ . . I TipiaoGai. ... It would 
have been quite possible to subordinate everything before the aXk\ 



^Valuable observations on the linguistic and metrical adaptation for different characters can 
be found in Sandbach's FH article, while observations on meter are contained in his 
Commentary, pp. 36-39. In the article, pp. 124-25, he notes that the making of position 
before mula cum Hquida appears in lines where tragic or mock-tragic tone seems to be intended. 
In the lines cited for unnatural word order here, such "tragic" scansion does not appear. (The first 
a- of TpioaGXicoratov in Thrasonides' speech at 260 is of course long by nature.) Definite 
articles generally appear in these lines, though Moschion at Perik. 545 omits one before 
apioTov. General principles are found in C. Prato (above, note 51). 

'^ The following texts of Euripides have been used: Phoen. and Ipk. Aul. ed. G. Murray, 
OCT; Hippolytus, Electra. Iph. Taur., Ion, ed. J. Diggle. OCT: Bacchae, ed. E. C. Kopff 
(Teubner); Orestes, ed. W. Biehl (Teubner); Helena, ed. K. Alt (Teubner). The Teubner texts of 
Ion (ed. Biehl) and Iph. Taur. (ed. D. Sansone) have also been ccaisulted. 



62 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Likewise, hyperbaton is extremely limited in Euripides, though there is 
some tendency for it to occur in a character's opening lines^^ Hyperbaton 
suggests pomposity, a dangerous lack of humility, or some other unstable 
character trait, though it also introduces a character in an idealized, heroic 
way. Orestes in the Electro comes upon the stage with the following words 
(83-84): 

n\)Xd5Ti, oe Y«P St] Tipwiov dvGpconcov eyd) 
niotov vo^i^co Kttl <p{Xov ^evov x' i\ioi- 

Pylades, you indeed first of men — I — / faithful consider, dear and a friend 
to me. 

A more dangerous character, Eteocles in the Phoenissae, expresses himself 
in unusual hyperbaton (504-07): 

aoxpcov ctv eX9ol^' tiXvov npbq av-zo'Xxxc, 
Kttl ynq evepGev, SwaToq oov Spaoai xdSe, 
xr\v Geojv iieyiOTtiv wat' e'xew T'upavv{5a. 

The stars' — I would come — towards the sun's risings / and beneath the 
earth, being able to accomplish such things, / the — of the gods — greatest, 
so as to possess. Tyranny. 

Introducing oneself with hyperbaton is characteristic of divine characters 
such as Dionysus in the Bacchae (1-2): 

"Hk© Ai6(; Tiaic; xrivSe ©riPaiav y^6\a 
Ai6vooo(;, . . . 

I come Zeus' son, to this Theban land, / Dionysus . . . 
or Aphrodite in the Hippolytus (1-2): 

IIoXXt) ^.ev Ev Ppoxovoi kovk dvcovuiioq 
Sect KEKX.Ti|i.ai Kujtpn; o\)pavo\) x' eoco- 

Mighty among mortals and not without name, / the goddess, am I called, 
Kypris — and heaven within. 

The Dioscuri in the Helena are more modest (1643^5): 

8iaaol 5e oe 
AiooKopoi KaXot)|i.ev, o\)(; AfjSa noxe 
exiKxev 'EXevriv 9', . . .' 

... the twin — you — / Dioskouroi — we call upon, whom Leda once / 
begot, and Helene, . . . 

Apparently more humble deities — such as Hermes amd Athena in the Ion — 
use more restrained language. Hyperbaton also appears in the address of 



^^ For a study of Euripidean prologues, see H. Erbse, Beitrdge zum Prolog der euripideischen 
Tragodie (Beriin 1984). 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 63 

mortal characters to their divine superiors, such as by Hippolytus to 
Artemis in the Hippolytus (1092): 

© (piXxaTTi HOI 5ai|x6vo)v ATixoiiq Kopri 
O dearest to me of divinities, Leto's maiden, 

concluded by his parting words (1440-41): 

Xaipovoa Ktti oi) oxeixe, JtapGev' oXPia- 
HaKpdv 6e X-etneiq paSiox; 6|xiX,iav. 

Faring well, depart thou, maiden blest. / A long — you leave lightly — 
fellowship. 

Also noteworthy is Jocasta's invocation of the Sun in the opening of the 
Phoenissae (1-3): 

^Q xnv ev aaxpOK; ovpavov xeHvcov 656v 
Kal xp^ooKoXXrixoioiv enPePoa^ 5i<ppoiq 
"HXie, . . . 

O, the — among the stars of heaven, cleaving — way, / and the golden- 
studded — ^having mounted — chariot, / Helios, . . . 

In the romantic context of Moschion's love for Plangon in the Samia 
(632), the hyperbaton humorously serves to divinize the beloved. The 
hyperbaton here suggests the exaggeratedly formal diction associated with 
divine beings in Greek tragedy, but the girl's name Plangon (wax doll), is 
not normally associated with feminine deities."^^ 

Euripides' young men use end-stopped lines, though not often. For 
example in Pentheus' speech (Bacchae 214-63), 32 out of 49 lines are 
treated in this way. In Orestes' speech (Electro 82-1 1 1), 23 out of 29 lines 
are end-stopped. In each case, this may be intended to portray youthful 
nervousness. 

On occasion, Euripides uses monosyllables to end lines, but the 
practice is limited to certain words and often followed by enjambment. In 
some instances, such as at Orestes 554 (ov)k eI'ti nox' av) and 1083 (aoi 
ye |iT|v), the words may have been considered a unit. In Orestes' speech at 
268-306, however, we find some peculiarly similar phrasing ending in 
monosyllables, where the words are not part of a larger unit, nor all that 
emphatic: . . . e.\ieXXe cpox;, . , . eKxaOeiaa 66q, . . . epTi|io<; wv (292, 302, 
206). Euripides at times concludes a line with the monosyllabic av, but it 
is always with some enjambment, such as the strictly necessary kind found 
SLlIphigenia in Aulis 966-67, where Achilles utters: 

. . . ot)K fipvcu^eS' av 



A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus H (Cambridge 1950). p. 55. 



64 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Orestes (Iph. Taur. 98) possibly ends a question with av: 

nSic, (av) ovv Xxx9o{|i.e9' av; 
T\ xa^KOxevKTa. . . , 

though something is carried over by the-fi . In fact, the Loeb editor gave it 
non-essential enjambment: 

nSic, av ovv |id6oi^£v av 
HT| 

Earlier, in the Iph. Aul. (833), Achilles had used non-essential enjambment: 

. . . ai5oijie8' av 
'AyanEiivov', ei yavoiiaev d)v ^tj jioi Scjik;. 

Thus the concluding av without enjambment of Misoumenos 269: 

xavta Ga-oiidoaim 5' av. 

is most remarkable, especially since it comes at the end of a speech. Among 
Euripides' young men, it is only paralleled by that of Orestes in the Iph. 
Taur. (98) — where there is still something of a run-on thought, and where 
the particle does not conclude the speech — and of 'Orestes in Orestes 554, 
again in the middle of a speech, and part of a very common phrase: aveu 6£ 
Tcatpcx; teKvov ouk eiT| not' av. 

Menander also had good Euripidean precedent in the frequent use of the 
personal pronoun or adjective — often monosyllabic — ending a line. In the 
Electra (82-106) Orestes ends lines with eycb, e^oi, efiov, ep.T|. In the 
Orestes a series of four lines between 281-84 ends with e^wv, E^iaiq, e|io{. 
Generally, the practice is not ostentatious, for example, in Orestes' speech at 
Iph. Taur. 939-86: . . . ^loi (949), ... hoi (965), . . . e^ie (984).^ In the 
Phoenissae (756-68), Polynices uses an alternating pattern: . . . e^riv (? 
756), . . . oov (757), . . . e^iaic; (760), . . . oov (768). AchiUes in the Iph. 
Aul. (936-45) opens with eht|, eyw, xov^iov, Eyco, Eyco. The unusual 
parallelism and alliteration of the opening words of Orestes in the Electra 
(82-83) are characterized by the first person at the end of both lines: 

rivXaSri, ai. ydp hr\ Tcp&tov dv9pco7Kov eyo) 
Tcioxov vo|i{^co Kol piXov ^Evov x' enoi' 

Though suggesting egocentricity, Euripides' usage is not, however, 
exaggerated enough to make comic figures of his characters. 

The overly stiff parallelism of Gorgias' speech in the Dyskolos has 
little precedent in Euripides. The closest parallel is that of Orestes in the 
play of that name, who in one long speech begins lines: ei h', ei |it|, ei 
HT|t', £{ ydp (270, 272, 292, 304). Less remarkable are the closing lines 
of a later speech by Orestes in the same play with the endings Exovaiv ol 
(pCXoi, ovTEq (piXoi (454-55); the oaai pi;v, oaai 5' oilph. Taur. 968-70; 
or Achilles' first words in the Iph. Aul (924-25): eaxiv ^iev, eaxiv 5e. 



Frederick E. Brenk, S J. 65 

Though Euripides employs contrast and antithesis in speeches like those of 
Hippolytus at 983-1035 of that play, or of Orestes (Electra 367^00), or 
Polynices (Phoen. 469-96), the language is most complex, and disguises 
much of the parallelism. In all these speeches, the themes (war / peace; 
wealth / poverty; women / men; chastity / sexual indulgence) would lend 
themselves to simple parallelism and antithesis. 

Finally, there are a number of word-plays, alliterations, and so on 
which even in Euripides are close to being humorous and could serve as 
models for Menander. Here, one could cite Orestes' opening in the Electra 
again (82-83): 

IIvXdSTi, oe Yap 6fi npwxov dvGpcojroav tyoa 
jiiaxov vo|ii^(o Ktti <piXov ^evov x' enoi* 

or in the Iph. Taur (11 8-19): 

. . . x^pe^v xPE^v 

onoi x^ovoc; Kpvvavxe. . . 

to depart is necessary / to where of the earth having hidden 

and (687): 

E\5<pTi|xa (pcbvei- xdjict 5ei cpepeiv Kam, 

Propitious words speak. Mine — it behooves to bear — evils. 

Achilles, whose language is sometimes infelicitous, employs the tongue- 
twisting (Jph. Aul. 936-37): 

e^iTi (paxioGeia'- ot) ydp iiinXiKew nXoKctq 
iyoi nape^co oa> tcooei xot)|i6v bi\iac,. 

once declared mine; for not to interweave intrigues / will I offer 
your husband my body. 

Less striking examples are Polynices' (Phoen. 357): 

ixfixep, <ppov©v ev kov <ppovSv d9iK6|iT|v 

Mother, quite sane, and yet not sane, I have come, 
and (371): 

dXX,' CK ydp akyoxtq dXyoq av ae 5epKo^al 

But out of sorrow sorrow again thee I behold. 

But the prize must go to Ion's delightful (Ion 641-42): 

wo9* TiSuq alei xaivoc; ev Kaivoioiv r\. 
o S'euKxov dvGpconoioi, kSv axovaiv f|, 

so pleasant always, a new face among new ones was I. / And what is proper 
in prayer for men, even if to unwilling it be, . . . 



66 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

VIII. Conclusion 

In much of Greek art, the creative artist tried to express the impact of 
universal experiences in their finest moment, at a time when youth and 
beauty are in flower. Menander's basically optimistic and hopeful outlook 
on life represents a strain of this classicism. Moreover, in the Hellenistic 
mode, he observed life "through the spectacles of literature." Not 
surprisingly then his character individuation seems to consist of a clever 
manipulation of prefabricated parts. The result is an individuation at first 
sight resolvable into mixtures of types: the clumsy, apodeictic periodicity 
of Gorgias; the flexibility of Sostratos; the mixture of paratragedy, elegance 
and ineptness in the reflective introspection of the Samia Moschion; the 
military bombast of the spoiled Perikeiromene Moschion; the paratragic 
romance combined with aphasia of Thrasonides; the more genuinely military 
clumsiness and imperiousness of Polemon and Stratophanes. 

Precise criteria, namely periodicity, end-stopping and hyperbaton, allow 
relative comparison and contrast, while minor elements such as rhyme, 
alliteration, and monosyllabic endings serve to delineate some characters. 
Though haunted by Euripides' shade, Menandrean characters preserve a 
remarkable degree of independence. Rarely imitating his youths in the 
peculiarities of their language, they at times look for inspiration toward the 
more pretentious divine personages of the tragedian. However, on occasion 
a character asserts his relationship to the Euripidean Pentheus, Achilles, 
Orestes or Eteocles. 

It is possible though to exaggerate the stereotypic elements. Menander 
seems preoccupied with developing greater realism and faithfulness to life 
than the abstractions of severe tragedy or burlesque comedy permitted — 
apparently inspired by tendencies in Euripides and Aristophanes. The 
success of his tfieatre depended on this new realism. Roles on the stage are 
animated by the breath of fresh life, the respiration of hypokritai who 
became those they interpret. In contrast to the Roman histriones who later 
imitated them, Menander's actors lived the life of his imaginary characters, 
and like them thought and spoke with ease the subtle idiom of fourth 
century Athens. Thus his youths are no mere personae, but sympathetic 
persons who fill the center stage. 

Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome 



Reconstmcting the Beginning 
of Menander's Adelphoi (By 



MARKDAMEN 



Terence's succinct statement in the prologue to Adelphoe (6-1 1) that he has 
borrowed (sumpsit sibi, 10) a scene (locum, 10) from a play by Diphilos 
and inserted it into Menander's Adelphoi (B) gives rise to far more questions 
than the few it answers.^ Why has he introduced new material into 
Menander's play? Where exactly does the locus from Diphilos begin and 
end? Were the plots so similar that Terence could add this scene verbatim 
without adapting either play, or did he have to adjust the original play to 
harmonize with the scene from Diphilos? 

The answers to the first two questions become obvious on close 
inspection of Terence's text. The reason he introduced a scene of comic 
polemic into Menander's play, which focuses on the comparison of character 
types, is self-evident: the scene adds physical humor to a less energetic, 
more "psychological" comedy.^ Since Adelphoe 2.2-2.4 (209 ff.) contains 
developments in the plot essential to the general progress of Menander's 
play, the borrowed material is probably limited to Adelphoe 2. 1 (155- 
196)."* But the answer to the third question is more problematic. In the 
prologue Terence maintains that he has translated the scene from Diphilos 
verbum de verbo (11), but says nothing of his treatment of Menander's 
original. In light of the fact that he had been accused before of taking 

^ I rely largely on the work of Elaine Fantham, "Terence, Diphilus and Menander. A re- 
examination of Terence. Adelphoe, Act U," Philologus 112 (1968). 196-216 (henceforth, 
Fantham); R. H. Martin. Terence Adelphoe (Cambridge 1976). esp. pp. 242-45 (henceforth, 
Martin); and John N. Grant. "The beginning of Menander, Adelphoi B," Classical Quarterly n.s. 
30 (1980), 341-55 (henceforth. Grant). Of earlier work I have found most helpful and 
insightful: H. Drexler. "Die Komposition von Terenz' Adelphen und Plautus' Rudens" 
Philologus Suppl. Bd. 26.2 (1934). 1-40; and O. Rieth. Die Kunst Menanders in den Adelphen 
des Terenz, (HUdesheim 1964), edited and with a postscript by K. Gaiser. 

^See Martin's introductory comments, p. 242. 

^ W. G. Amott, Menander, Plautus, Terence (Oxford 1975), pp. 49-50. 

^ Fantham, 200; Grant, 342. It is possible that the scene from Diphilos ends at 190 and that 
190-96 is Terence's suture stitching together the two Greek authors' material. If this is the case, 
Aeschinus' punning reference to freeing \h&psaltria (193-94) is Terence's free creation; see H. 
Lloyd-Jones, "Terentian technique in the Adelphi and the Eunuchus," Classical Quarterly 23 
(1973), 281. 



68 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

unwarranted freedoms with Greek originals,^ his failure to affirm that he has 
rendered both plays "word for word" raises the possibility that he was less 
than absolutely Uteral with Menander. 

Building from previous reconstructions of Menander's original sequence 
of action underlying Terence's Adelphoe 155-287 (2.1-2.4),^ I will propose 
in this article a new reconstruction of the course of action in Menander. 
Comparison of the new reconstruction to known Menandrean sequences of 
action and the reconstitution of Menander's use of the three-actor limitation"^ 
will, I hope, bring us closer to the original sequence of action which 
Terence changed in order to incorporate the locus from Diphilos' 
Synapothneskontes} 

I. Inconsistencies in Terence's Adelphoe Act II 

A high number of "inconsistencies" in this sequence of action gives 
evidence that Terence remolded Menander's plot. These inconsistencies fall 
loosely into three categories: (1) those in the dialogue, (2) those in the 
exposition and the presentation and movements of characters, that is, the 
general course of the stage action (which I will call the "design of scenes"), 
and (3) those which make the stage action of the Greek original difficult or 
impossible to reconstruct from Terence's play. 

1. Inconsistencies in dialogue. In 2. 1, the scene added from Diphilos, 
the young man Aeschinus threatens the pimp Sannio with court action over 
rights to the psaltria. He claims that, if Sannio refuses to sell her, he will 
assert her freedom in court (nam ego liberali illam adsero causa manu, 194). 
After this scene the subject of this case is never again mentioned. 
Aeschinus seems content to pay the girl's wholesale price (277). If the girl 
can be proven to be free, why does Aeschinus consent to pay at all? If she 
is not free, why does Aeschinus bring up the possibility of court action? 
This inconsistency is relatively minor, probably nothing more than a 
difference in the course of action the two Greek originals took, and Terence 

^An. 15 ff.. H.T. 16 ff., Eu. 19 ff. 

^ See naes 30-32. 

'Grant. 343 and note 5. W. G. Amott. rev. of Rieth (note 1). Gnomon 37 (1965), 261, is 
less inclined lo reconstruct the Greek author's use of the three-actor limitation from Roman 
adaptations; Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens^ (0%ford 1968), p. 154. 
shows the same hesitation. But it is clear that Menander's comedies were performed by cmly 
three speaking actors and that Terence's scene 2. 4 requires four. The three-actor limitation is 
one guideline to a successful reccmstruclion. 

* Grant's statement of methodology for reconstruction is excellent (341): "Reconstruction 
starts with the gathering of clues in the Terentian play which may indicate changes from the 
original — inconsistencies, contradictions, awkwardness in the stage action. On individual 
points, however, it is often impossible to bring convincing arguments that a particular feature is 
Terentian or Menandrian. One works rather with a group of 'facts' and builds a reconstruction 
which best accounts for them all. Often more than one reconstruction is possible and the 
differences often depend on a decision made about one particular point which limits and directs 
the possible solution to other problems." 



Mark Damen 69 

surely meant his audience to understand it as merely a young man's typical 
threat to a pimp.^ 

At the beginning of 2. 2 Syrus enters from Micio's house. Speaking 
back inside, he reassures someone, presumably Aeschinus, that he will take 
care of Sannio the pimp (209-10): 

Tace, egomet conveniam iam ipsum: cupide accipiat faxo atque etiam 
bene dicat secum esse actum. 

If Syrus is addressing Aeschinus inside, why does he offer comfort and 
reassurance to a character who has shown great boldness in dealing with 
Sannio? The Aeschinus who just walked offstage has no trouble and needs 
no help dealing with this pimp.^° This is a graver inconsistency than the 
first and must be due somehow to Terence's interweaving of the two plots 
and his rearrangement of the original action. 

2. Inconsistencies in the design of scenes: the exposition of the plot 
and the presentation and movements of characters. The proper exposition 
which Terence promises in his prologue (22-24) never fully materializes.^^ 
Micio and Demea say all they can about the background of the story, but 
they do not know the details of the abduction which the audience must know 
to understand Aeschinus' and Ctesipho's motivations and movements prior 
to their first appearances on stage. The action that follows leaves several 
important questions unanswered. 

What necessitated the abduction? What was Ctesipho's hurry? Why 
could not he or Aeschinus work out a peaceful resolution with Sannio? It is 
tempting to suppose that the same thing which later resolves the problem is 
also behind the abduction: Sannio is going to Cyprus on a business trip. 
Was Ctesipho's girlfriend to be sold abroad on that trip? In that case, the 
same situation which had earlier driven Ctesipho to despair later saves him, 
for, as Sannio himself realizes, if he takes his case to court after the time 
required for a trip to Cyprus, the judge will demand to know why he took so 
long to press charges and may throw the case out of court (228-35). 

Also, to what extent was Syrus involved in abducting the psaltrial 
Micio says that no one connected with the abduction has come home (26- 
27). Since Terence's Syrus emerges from Micio's house at 2. 2, it would 
follow that he was not involved with the abduction and has stayed home 

' W. G. Amolt (above, note 7), 257, contrasts the "freedom" and the "trip to Cyprus" motifs. 
Grant, 352, doubts the seriousness with which Diphilos (or Terence) meant the audience to take 
Aeschinus' threat to free the psaltria by legal action. Uoyd-Jones (above, note 4), 28 1 , believes 
that this is the only major inconsistency. See note 4, above. 

^°Fantham.205. 

" This, however, does not mean that Terence has made changes in Act I also. The statement 
of the Vita Terentii ("Adelphorum principium Varro etiam praefert principio Menandri") could 
mean that Varro prefened Terence's use of language and choice of phrasing or words and not the 
scenic construction, cf. Grant, 354-55: "This surely does not refer simply to the omission of a 
prologue at the very beginning of the play." 



70 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

through the night. However, he is later called the impulsor of the act (315, 
560) and Micio thanks him for the consilium^ which led to the abduction 
(368). Synis seems to be somehow indirectly involved in the abduction. ^^ 

These questions would most easily be answered in an expository 
monologue. Arnott proposes that Terence replaced a "less spectacular . . . 
monologue simply reporting the abduction" with the lively scene from 
Diphilos.'^ But a monologue by whom? Only Aeschinus knows the whole 
story, unless Syrus accompanied him on the assault against the pimp or 
learned about it from him later. On the surface it is evident only that, in 
adding the scene from Diphilos, Terence has seriously curtailed Menander's 
exposition of basic background information. 

Besides the lack of satisfactory exposition there are at least three more 
anomalies in the design of scenes in Terence's second act. First, Ctesipho's 
character lacks a satisfactory introduction.^"^ When he enters at 254, neither 
he nor Syrus explains his connection with the story. How is the audience, 
who at this point believe that Aeschinus has abducted the girl for himself, 
to know that Ctesipho is the real reason behind his brother's rash act? They 
are left to gather Ctesipho's connection to the story from his praise of his 
brother (254-59) and his conversations with Syrus (260-64) and Aeschinus 
(266-76). 

Second, Sannio's presence on stage through 2. 3 and 2. 4 poses another 
problem but may explain why Terence did not give Ctesipho a satisfactory 
introduction. If Terence has brought the pimp on before Ctesipho, whereas 
Menander had brought Ctesipho on before the pimp, Terence cannot fully 
acknowledge Ctesipho's involvement in the abduction without also 
involving Sannio in the scene. ^^ Why Sannio withdraws from the 
conversation for 24 lines (254-77), saying only eight words in aside (265- 
66), while Ctesipho, Syrus, and later Aeschinus converse about matters 
important to him, is hard to understand. The pimp has been aggressive and 



("quid istuc, Sanniost quod le audio nescioquid concertasse cum ero?") seems to rule this out, 
since Syrus appears to have only just heard about the abducticm. Grant correctly notes that, 
since Syrus has no place in Diphilos' abduction scene, Terence wrote lines 210-11 to make it 
seem as if Syrus were not involved in the abduction (as he was in Menander) and make the 
transition from 2. 1 to 2. 2 smoother. But later (315, 560) Terence reverts to the original 
situation and allows Syrus to uke credit for helping in the abduction. 

In Menander Syrus could have been present at the abduction and not have met Sannio, if he 
stayed outside the pimp's house and never came face to face with him. In this way he would 
have helped Aeschinus before and after his visit to the pimp's (as the engineer [impulsor] of the 
plan {consilium] to abduct the psaltria and later as a co-conspirator in hiding her in Micio's 
house) but not during the actual abduction. In this way he could pretend to have learned only 
recently about the matter, when he confronts Sannio (so 210-11 could in fact derive from 
Menander's play), and play the impartial mediator between Sannio and Aeschinus; see Fantham, 
205-06. 

'3 W. G. Amott (above, note 3). p. 49. 

1'* Fantham. 206-07. 

15 Fantham, 206-07; Grant, 349-50. 



Mark Damen 71 

excited throughout the early scenes. His sudden passivity, when Syrus says 
paullisper mane (253), does not develop well out of his earlier action.^^ 

Third, as Syrus prepares to leave with Aeschinus for the forum to pay 
off the pimp and do the shopping (277), he is twice held back. First, 
Sannio wants reassurance that Aeschinus will return all the money that the 
girl cost (278-80). Second, Ctesipho begs Syrus to resolve the problem as 
soon as possible so that Demea his father does not find out about the 
abduction (281-87). Neither conversation develops logically out of the 
previous action. ^^ 

Sannio should have gotten an assurance of payment from Aeschinus 
earlier (2. 1) or later (2. 4) in the act. Syrus does not control the household 
finances or hold sway over the one who does. His assurance of payment is 
worthless to Sannio, unless Syrus can persuade Aeschinus to persuade 
Micio to pay the money. The logical connections are stretched, at best. It 
would simply make better sense if Aeschinus told Sannio at one of their 
two meetings that he will convince Micio to pay for the psaltria. 

After 280, Ctesipho's fear that his father will find out about the 
abduction of the girl, while true to his nervous character, is not pertinent to 
the drama at this point, since there is less reason for him to suspect that 
Demea will find out about his love for a psaltria, if Sannio is paid and does 
not linger by Micio's house. Now that Sannio is going off to the forum 
with Aeschinus and will soon be paid, Ctesipho's fears should be allayed, 
not exacerbated. 

3. Difficulties in reconstructing the stage action of the Greek original. 
If we knew nothing else about Terence's reworking of this act, we could see 
that he had added a character to 2. 4, since there are four speaking roles on 
stage. Menander's scene would be highly problematical, if not impossible, 
to reconstruct, if we did not know there was good reason to suppose that in 
adding a new scene Terence rearranged the original sequence of action. All 
four characters (Sannio, Syrus, Aeschinus, and Ctesipho) are integral to the 
action. No one is clearly Terence's contribution to "thicken up" this scene. 
But a successful reconstruction of Menander's original design of scenes must 
take into account that Menander used only three actors to play all the parts. 

Because act breaks affect how the actors distributed roles and give 
insight into the playwright's conception of divisions in the dramatic action, 
we should also examine the possibility of an act break in the Greek original 
falling in or around this sequence of action.^ ^ The traditional divisions of 

^^ H. Lloyd-Jones (above, note 4), 281 , warns against overreading such inconsistencies: ". . . 
it is not strange that Syrus converses with Ctesipho while Sannio is present or that Aeschinus 
keeps Sannio waiting while he converses with his brother. . . ." Cf. Fantham, 206; Drexler 
(above, note 1), 24-25. 

^^ Fantham, 208: "The (act that in 284, Syrus has to repeat Aeschinus' orders and send 
Ctesipho indoors strongly suggests that there has been re-writing by Terence in this passage." 

^* Grant, 354 and n. 27. Prescott, rev. of Duckworth's Epidicus, Classical Philology 36 
(1941), 284, stresses that the problem of act divisions cannot be treated separately from that of 
distribution of roles. 



72 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

acts in Terence's play do not correspond to the act breaks of the Greek 
original, so we must reconstruct the Greek act breaks by examining natural 
breaks in the plot. The best guidelines are long, offstage journeys requiring 
considerable time, of which there are fortunately several in this play. 

In the middle of the drama, three act breaks are necessary: 

1) Syrus goes shopping after 287 and returns at 364 (a break must fall 
at 287/288 or 354/355); 

2) Demea leaves to search for Micio in the forum after 510 and returns 
at 537 (a break must fall at 510/511 or 516/517); 

3) Syrus sends Demea on an intentionally misdirected tour of the city 
at 586, from which he returns at 713 (a break must fall at 591/592 
or 712/713, or possibly 609/610). 

A final break may follow these three, unless one precedes them, since the 
total number of act breaks must be four. 

In the last act (as it is delimited traditionally) it is inconsistent that 
Syrus is drunk in 5. 1, but shows no sign of inebriation later in 5. 5 and 5. 
9. Like Chremes' drunkenness in Eunuchus (4. 5) which vanishes later (5. 
3), after an act break in the original, Syrus' return to sobriety makes it 
tempting to suppose that somewhere between 5. 1 and 5. 5 in the original 
there was an act break which gave Syrus time to recover his senses. A final 
act break after 854 not only allows Syrus time to sober up but also gives 
Demea a moment to rethink his philosophy of treating children stemly.^^ 

The two first acts by Menander which have been recovered largely intact 
also argue for a later act break (at 854/855). Aspis opens with an act of 249 
or more lines, containing five characters (including Tyche who speaks the 
prologue) and five scenes. The first act of Dyskolos contains 232 lines, 
seven characters (including Pan who speaks the prologue), and seven scenes. 
Clearly, Menander preferred to get the plot well under way before stopping 
for the first act break, and he often created suspense across act breaks by 
introducing but not resolving a new plot development.^ The tension created 
by the neighbors' hearing the news of Aeschinus' abduction resembles that 
of Daos' overhearing Sostratos' conversation with Knemon's daughter and 
running for help at the first act break of Dyskolos. It is not therefore 
improbable that the first act of Menander's Adelphoi ran through as far as 
what is traditionally labelled 3. 2 (354) of Terence's adaptation, although 
this first act is longer than either attested: 354 (Terentian) lines (less 25 for 
Terence's own prologue), seven (speaking) characters, and eight scenes. The 
addition of the scene from Diphilos, the rearrangement of Menander's 
sequence of action and Geta's protracted abuse of Aeschinus and Syrus in his 



^' Gaiser in Rieth (above, note 1) suggests that there was an act break in Menander after 854 
(5.3/5.4). Cf. G. Duckworth. The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton 1952). p. 121 and note 
51. 

^ E.g. Dyskolos Act 4/5, Dis Exapaton Act 2/3. 



Mark Damen 73 

entrance speech (299-320) may account for some extra length in the Latin 
adaptation. 

Terence's prologue (6-1 1) also supports a later act break. He states that 
Diphilos' scene came early in Synapothneskontes (in prima fabula, 9). If 
Terence knew that Menander's first act was continuous through the place 
where he has added the scene from Diphilos, his words may be a 
justification of his borrowing by an implicit claim that the new scene was 
added into Menander's Adelphoi in a place comparable to its original setting 
in Diphilos. He had done the same to an early scene in Andria with an early 
scene of Menander's Perinthia. In conclusion, I will assume that there was 
no act break in the sequence of action rearranged by Terence in order to 
incorporate the foreign scene. 

A successful reconstruction of Adelphoi must eliminate all the incon- 
sistencies noted above, or the reconstructor must show how any that are not 
removed would not seem inconsistent to Menander and cite examples of 
such inconsistencies in Menandrean plays. Before continuing I should 
discuss several guidelines which other scholars who have reconstructed this 
sequence of action have followed but which do not seem to me necessarily 
consistent with standard Menandrean practice. 

Foremost of these is the assumption that Menander's design of scenes 
in this sequence was simple.^^ Menandrean stage action tends to be fairly 
complex; that is, it often takes a roundabout way to a foregone conclusion. 
Any of his plays will show this. Menander circumvents the straightforward 
and obvious resolution of the plot often through some character trait in the 
central figure(s), such as Knemon's churlishness which prevents Sostratos' 
direct request for the hand of his daughter (Dyskolos) or Moschion's timidity 
which prevents him from confessing to his father that he has impregnated 
the girl next door and necessitates a complex ploy (Samia). In both cases 
personalities complicate a situation which could be resolved quickly and 
happily, if the characters were simply straightforward with one another. A 
successful reconstruction of this sequence in the Adelphoi should beware of 
oversimplifying at least as much as overcomplicating the problem. Since 
Menander's action tends to illuminate character, a reconstructor should also 
address to some extent the way in which his reconstruction demonstrates the 
character traits of the central figures in these scenes, particularly Ctesipho 
whose fate hangs in the balance throughout the sequence. 

Another assumption which I consider invalid is that the Syrus-Sannio 
scene in Menander was the culmination of this sequence.^^ It is neither the 
culmination of the action nor the resolution of the whole problem, but the 
turning point of this sequence which is itself the turning point in a series of 
events. The abduction is the first stage in procuring the psaltria for 
Ctesipho permanently. The second stage is forcing the pimp to sell her. 

^^ AmoU (note 3). p. 49; Fantham. 210. 

^Fanlham (214-15), Martin (p. 243) and Grant (354) reconstruct the Syrus-Sannio 
confrontation as the penultimate scene in the sequence. 



74 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

The third is convincing Micio to pay for her. Aeschinus' words of 
encouragement (266-67) would mean little to the nervous Ctesipho, if the 
second and third stages were not complete. They make better sense left 
where they are in Terence, after Syrus forces the pimp to accept payment for 
herP In general, this sequence should build toward and away from a central 
confrontation between Syrus and Sannio. It should show beforehand the 
importance of their confrontation (what hangs in the balance) and 
demonstrate afterward the resolution of this central problem (how the 
characters affected by the problem now stand).^** 

A third invalid assumption made by some reconstructors is that 
Sannio's monologue in Terence (196-208) is based on his opening 
monologue in Menander.^^ If Terence has preserved Sannio's monologue 
from Menander with any fidelity, it is not likely to be an opening but a 
bridging monologue (one linking two scenes with Sannio) which originally 
followed his scene with Syrus. In this speech Sannio is a defeated man. He 
will accept the price of the girl at cost (202, 205). He has resigned himself 
to receiving no recompense for his injuries and even recalls words which 
Syrus has yet to say to him in Terence's version: "young men must be 
indulged" (206-207/214-219). This speech also reflects the final lines of 
his scene with Syrus in Menander's play (205/280) which Terence has 
displaced to the end of this sequence (see reconstruction below, p. 77). If it 
derives from Menander, Sannio's speech should not be his entrance 
monologue but should follow his capitulation to Syrus' terms (2. 2). 

In order to clarify the final assumption with which I do not agree, I 
must address the often discussed problem of the most likely candidate for 
delivering the exposition of the plot in Menander's play.^^ An omniscient 



^ What the plot calls for and what Terence seems to have changed is the establishment of 
Ctesipho's fears before the Syrus-Sannio scene. Later in the play, during the only other 
appearance of Ctesipho on stage (4.1.-4.2), the plot follows similar lines: Ctesipho frets that 
Demea wQl find him in Micio's house (517-53) and Syrus keeps Demea from going inside by 
an elaborate series of lies (554-86). 

^Donatus' commentary indirectly supports the assertion that Ctesipho was on suge in 
Menander's play before Sannio entered. In his commentary on lines 209-10, Donatus makes an 
uncharacteristic error. Discussing tace (209), he mentions that Syrus is speaking to Ctesipho(!). 
Ctesipho has not yet been introduced in Terence's play. Micio and Demea have mentioned that 
Demea has a son (46-47, 130-31, 138-39), but do not name him. Donatus' error may be an 
innocent, incidental confusion of Ctesipho and Aeschinus, but it may also be a confusion of the 
Greek and Roman plots. Fantham (205) is right that it fits the character of Ctesipho better to 
fret over the pimp's resistance to making the deal (cupide accipiat faxo, 209). If so, this is an 
indication that in Menander there was a scene with Ctesipho prior to Sannio's arrival and it is 
further evidence that the sequence should move from the establishment of Ctesipho's situation to 
the Syrus-Sannio scene to the resolution of Ctesipho's fears. But Lloyd-Jones (above, note 4), 
280-81, warns against inferring from Donatus' mistake that Syrus must have had a dialogue 
with Ctesipho in the original. 

25 Fantham, 204-05, 209, 214-15; Martin, p. 243; Grant, 350-51, 354. 

2<5 Fantham. 211 ff.; Martin, p. 244; Grant. 352-53. 



Mark Damen 75 

divine prologuist is possible, but not necessary.^^ Although there is a clear 
lack of exposition in Terence's play, Menander does not always inform his 
audience of the full and true situation at the beginning of the play. In 
Samia Moschion delivers a prologue which apprises the audience of the 
situation at home, but they must wait until the end of Act I and the arrival 
of Demeas, Moschion's father, to learn that Demeas already intends to marry 
him to the girl he has impregnated. 

If the prologue of Adelphoi was not delivered by a deity, the fact that 
only Aeschinus knows the full story of the abduction, unless Syrus assisted 
him at some point, argues for a Ctesipho/Aeschinus scene early in this 
sequence. This has two advantages: a character who knows about the 
abduction narrates the story to a character who is eager to know about it, and 
the audience sees Aeschinus and the girl (and Syrus?) crossing the stage and 
entering Micio's house. It is an invalid assumption, however, that this 
information was brought out on the stage in Menander's play as it was in 
Diphilos'.^^ Nor is it necessary that Aeschinus deliver such information. A 
character who knows about the affair can relate it. Syrus would be a likely 
candidate, whether he actually assisted with the abduction or only met 
Aeschinus later at Micio's house, except that Micio in the scene before says 
that none of the servants who escorted Aeschinus returned to his house (26- 
27). 

As the audience will soon discover, Micio's knowledge of what is going 
on under his own roof is somewhat incomplete. He is unaware why 
Aeschinus abducted the psaltria. He does not know that Aeschinus has raped 
the girl next door and that his adopted son is soon to be a father. He says, 
just before leaving for the market, that Aeschinus had recently mentioned 
marriage, but he does not understand that Aeschinus is thinking about the 
poor girl next door who will soon bear his child, and not about "cooling 
down his adolescent passions," as Micio thinks (150-53). If immediately 
after Micio's departure Syrus (or Aeschinus) were to enter from the house 
and explain to the audience (or Ctesipho) that Aeschinus and he have been 
inside all along waiting for Micio to leave,^' the audience would see that 

^ Amott (above, note 3), p. 52: ". . . it is too easily forgotten that even when Menander 
uses divine prologues, his gods are not the sole expositors, and they have remarkably little to 
say about future events. So long as we lack papyri of the opening scenes of Terence's Greek 
models, it will be wiser to compare Menandrean and Terentian expository techniques in terms of 
content (what — and when — the audience is actually told) rather than of fonm (whether or not a 
divine prologue is used)." 

^The fact that Terence has added a scene depicting that abduction argues strongly that 
Menander's play lacked this sort of scene, or Terence would not have needed to look outside 
Menander for such a scene. He would only have had to elaborate the original, as he feels free 
to do at the end of Adelphoe (934 ff.); cf. Donatus on 938. Grant, 342, argues that the 
abduction in Menander's play "took place in its entirety off stage and was completed before the 
play began." 

^Compare Chaerea's departure from Thais' house in Eunuchus (549), after Thais' maid has 
left. He, like Syrus, has waited until the coast is clear to come out. Tliis reconstructicm also 
makes an interesting parallel with Aspis, where an opening dialogue misleads the audience who 



76 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Micio labors under several delusions. The true situation would stand in 
sharp contrast to Micio's assertion that pampered children trust indulgent 
fathers (51-54) and is surely an irony intentionally designed into the plot. 
In conclusion, there was, no doubt, some exposition in Menander's play 
between Micio's departure for the market and the beginning of the next 
sequence, but it need not be a divine monologue (Aeschinus and Syrus know 
the real situation) or even a monologue (exposition can come in dialogue, 
cf. Perinthia, Eunuchus, Heauton Timorumenos). Our best guide to the 
correct answer is what type of exposition flows most naturally from the 
opening scenes into the reconstructed sequence. 

n. Reconstruction of Menander's Sequence of Action 

Refining the work of Drexler, Rieth, and Gaiser, Fantham^o suggests 
that Aeschinus first entered with the girl. After a monologue he went inside 
Micio's house. Ctesipho walked on stage and delivered a monologue. 
Syrus came outside and found Ctesipho and informed him of the successful 
abduction. Then the pimp came on stage. Martin also reconstructs an early 
Ctesipho-Syrus scene.^* Grant reconstructs an early Ctesipho-Aeschinus 
scene.^2 

Before proceeding we should clear up two misconceptions about the 
movements and motivation of Ctesipho. There is no need for Syrus or 
Aeschinus to call Ctesipho from Demea's farm to Micio's house. His 
natural interest in the outcome of the affair will bring him in at his first 
opportunity. He left the farm just after Demea and probably shadowed his 
father most of the way. For this reason his arrival at Micio's house follows 
soon after Demea's in the scene before (1.2). 

There is also no need for Ctesipho to be told about the successful 
abduction. Surely in both Terence and Menander it is understood that he has 
found out the same way Demea did: the rumor is going around town. 
Ctesipho's joy at hearing the rumor (cf. 252-53) would make a humorous 



learn the real situation in the next scene from a divine prologue (since no one in Aspis knows 
the full truth, unlike in Adelphoi). 

30 Fantham, 208-11. 

3* Martin, p. 243, reconstructs Menander's sequence with five scenes: 

1) Ctesipho-Syrus (=generally Terence's 2. 3) 

2) Aeschinus-Ctesipho, 2661>-76a 

3) Sannio, 196b-208 

4) Syrus -Sannio (=Terence's 2. 2) 

5) Aeschinus-Syrus-Sannio. 265-66a, 276b-87 Oess 277b); then Ctesi{Ao joins the 

scene at 281. 
'^ Grant, 354, reconstructs Menander's sequence with four scenes: 

1) Aeschinus-Ctesipho-Syrus-p5a//ria (mute), 267-76a, 254-59, 262-64; 

2) Sannio. 196-98. 200. 228-35, 202-08; 

3) Sannio-Syrus, much of 209-51; 

4) Aeschinus -Syrus; Terence omitted the scene completely. 



Mark Damen 77 

contrast with Demea's earlier rage at hearing the same news (79-83). Both 
characters would attract such information to themselves, since both are 
related to Aeschinus. The only thing Ctesipho does not yet know on his 
arrival at Micio's house is where Aeschinus and the psaltria are. A meeting 
between Aeschinus and Ctesipho is not necessary to convey that 
information. Synis could tell Ctesipho (and the audience) where Aeschinus 
is and exacdy what happened at Sannio's the night before. 

An economical (but not overly economical) use of characters and scenes 
prior to Sannio's entrance would be a meeting between Ctesipho and Syrus 
who, if he were not present, at some point had learned about the abduction 
from Aeschinus. There is no need for a divine prologuist, since Syrus can 
deliver all necessary information. Terence's play does not preclude the 
possibility that Syrus knows about Aeschinus' impending fatherhood also. 
Through Syrus' exposition the Greek audience may appreciate any of the 
ironies to which they are accustomed. 

In the light of the discussion above, I would propose the following 
general reconstruction of scenes in Menander's sequence of action:^^ 

1 . Syrus/Ctesipho (? ; 254-264 : ? ; 281-283 : 209-2 10) 

2. Syrus/Sannio (210-252; 278-280 : 196-208 ) 

3. Aeschinus/Saimio (265-266; ? ) 

4. Aeschinus/Ctesipho (266-277; 284-287) 

In order to insert the scene from Diphilos Terence has displaced four 
subsections (underlined) of the Greek original and removed three altogether 
(the question marks in sections 1 and 3). 

1. A short "prologue" by Syrus, providing some exposition, probably 
opens this sequence. Ctesipho enters (254-59) and converses with Syrus 
(260-64). Syrus tells Ctesipho that Aeschinus and the psaltria are inside 
the house already. Their dialogue will disclose the rest of the background 
information on the abduction which the audience must learn. Terence has 
omitted this exposition and substituted the scene from Diphilos, which 
demonstrates rather than relates the abduction.^"^ Syrus and Ctesipho see 
Sannio coming. Ctesipho begs Syrus to chase the angry pimp away from 
Micio's house quickly (quam primum 282) before Sannio meets Demea and 
causes irreparable problems for Ctesipho {ego turn perpetuo perierim) (281- 
83). Syrus assures him that he can handle Sannio (209-10). 



The line numbers below should be taken as approximations of where Terence has spliced 
together pieces of Menander's play. Terence has probably combined some material translated 
directly from Menander, some inspired by Menander's text, and some freely invented. To what 
extent Terence's words reproduce Menander's at any point is a matter of speculation. I am 
suggesting here a reconstruction of only the general composition of the scenes and not 
Menander's exact wording. 

** P. J. Enk, "Terence as an adapter of Greek comedies," Mnemosyne HI 13 (1947), 84: 
"(Terence's added scene = 2. 1) does not relate, but demonstrates." 



78 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

2. Sannio storms forward and Menander's Syrus proves his prowess in 
dealing with pimps much as Terence's does (210-52). Having forced Sannio 
to relinquish any claim of reparation for the beating, Syrus turns to go 
inside the house and send out Aeschinus, when the pimp calls him back and 
insists that he be paid at least the wholesale cost of the girl (278-80). 
Syrus assures him he will and goes inside. Sannio bemoans his fate but 
resigns himself to receiving no recompense for his beating (196-208). 

3. Aeschinus comes out, having been sent by Syrus. He deals with 
the pimp brusquely and directly (265-66). ^^ Terence has omitted this 
section, since Sannio and Aeschinus have already had a long scene together 
and Diphilos' portrait of the young man clashed no doubt with Menander's. 
After Aeschinus agrees to pay him, the pimp wastes no time leaving for the 
forum where he can meet Micio, finish his business quickly and set off for 
Cyprus. His last meeting with Aeschinus, which ended violently, and the 
potential for more violence from Aeschinus would motivate Sannio to beat 
a hasty retreat. 

4. Aeschinus now addresses Ctesipho (266-77). The matter has been 
resolved, and Aeschinus' chastisement of Ctesipho's rash threat of suicide^^ 
rings truer at this point, where the threat that the pimp will demand the girl 
back and Ctesipho's worry that Demea will discover the real reason for the 
abduction are in fact diminished. Aeschinus urges Ctesipho to go inside and 
see thcpsaltria (284-287).^'' The sequence ends as Aeschinus, accompanied 
by Syrus, leaves for the market to pay off the pimp. 

Terence has kept scene 4, the resolution, last in the sequence, as 
Menander no doubt had it. In this scene, the younger pair of brothers are 
compared, just as at the end of the previous sequence the older pair are (the 
fathers in 1. 2 and their sons in 2. 4). The conclusions of these sequences 

^^ It is possible Terence has preserved the beginning of Menander's scene (borrowing only 
Aeschinus' entrance motivation 265-66), then cut directly to Menander's next scene. For 
another interpretation of this abrupt shift of focus, see Fantham, 207. Fantham, 209, sees an 
advantage in a reconstruction in which Aeschinus never deals with the pimp directly on stage. 
This may be overly sensitive to the presentation of a young man, who has raped and 
impregnated a young girl and recently committed a violent assault on an innocent man, and 
whose rashness and uncontrolled passions (especially for prostitutes 149), as the product of his 
adoptive father's leniency, are an important theme of the'^lay. Aeschinus need not speak any 
longer with Sannio than to do the right thing after what was unquestionably an illegal and 
unprovoked assault 

^ See Donatus on 275. 

^' Terence has given 284-86 to Syrus, where in Menander the lines probably belonged to 
Aeschinus. A final speech by Aeschinus reassuring Ctesipho that everything concerning the 
abduction is in order would make an interesting contrast with the next scene in which the 
audience learns almost immediately that Aeschinus will find trouble ahead because of his theft of 
the psallria. The juxtaposition of Aeschinus' confident handling of his brother's business and 
the revelation of his mismanagement of his own affairs (2. 4 vs. 3. 1-2) is clearly an irony 
designed into the plot which gives the audience a glimpse of Aeschinus' future troubles and 
prepares them for the very different picture of a fearful Aeschinus they will see later in the play 
(4. 4-4. 5). 



Marie Damen 79 

make an interesting contrast: the fathers argue over the correct way to raise 
children, by indulgence or discipline, and their sons display the results of 
their fathers' different philosophies. Both children are far from perfect, 
Aeschinus is rash, violent and prone to having his way at all costs; 
Ctesipho is cowardly and withdrawn, incapacitated by fear, especially of his 
own father (cf. 517-20). In consecutive sequences Menander demonstrates 
that neither philosophy brings about the intended result: indulged children 
do not confide in their parents and disciplined ones do not obey them. 

This reconstruction eliminates all the difficulties discussed above. 
Ctesipho may have a satisfactory introduction, now that Sannio is not on 
stage. Background information may be given by a character who knows the 
situation and in front of no one who may not hear it. Ctesipho's final 
words in this sequence (281-87) which do not develop well from the 
situation on stage make better sense if we understand they have been 
displaced from the opening scene of this sequence, when Sannio's persistent 
presence at Micio's house might alert Demea to Ctesipho's true situation, 
Syrus' opening words spoken back inside to Aeschinus (?) also make more 
sense if they were spoken to Ctesipho as Syrus prepared to meet Sannio 
advancing. The tace (209) which Donatus mistakenly claims Syrus says to 
Ctesipho would indeed be Syrus' response to Ctesipho's plea that he get rid 
of the pimp (281-83). Also, in this reconstruction Sannio does not have to 
remain on stage silently, while matters of utmost importance to him are 
discussed and arranged, and Syrus is not held back to discuss matters which 
he cannot resolve and which should have been resolved already. 

This sequence, the resolution of Ctesipho's affair, is balanced against a 
later sequence of the play, the resolution of Aeschinus' affair.^^ Because of 
the rumor that has spread after the abduction, Aeschinus' own troubles come 
to light and he is forced to confess his transgressions to Micio. The manner 
in which Menander designed this sequence is parallel to the earlier sequence 
as reconstructed above: 

CTESIPHO'S AFFAIR AESCHINUS' AFFAIR 

1 . Syrus/Ctesipho 1 . Syrus/Ctesipho (5 1 7-539) 

2. Syrus/Sannio 2. Syrus/Demea (540-591) 

3. Aeschinus/Sannio 3. Micio/Hegio (592-609) 

4. Aeschinus/Ctesipho 4. Micio/Aeschinus (610-712) 

1. Ctesipho is anxious about his problems. 

2. Syrus fends an intruder from the house. 

3. An older relative rescues one of the younger brothers from 
potentially disastrous problems associated with a love affair. 

4. The rescuer chastises the rescued. 



^ Martin, p. 245, points out the balance between the love affairs of Ctesipho and Aeschinus: 
"But all will be weU, for the misunderstanding over Aeschinus' relationship to Bacchis will be 
the means of bringing about his marriage to Pamphila." 



80 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Both sequences begin with a dialogue between Ctesipho and Synis. In 
the later sequence (the resolution of Aeschinus' affair) Ctesipho frets over 
the imminent arrival of Demea (517-53). If 281-83 of Terence's adaptation 
represents a piece of the dialogue in scene 1 of Menander's sequence, 
Ctesipho in the earlier sequence also worries about Demea's possible 
interruption of the action. Also, in these parallel scenes Syrus boasts of his 
ability to handle difficult characters (209-210/534-537). In scene 2 of each 
sequence Syrus successfully defends the doors of the house against a hostile 
intruder, Sannio and Demea, respectively. Each scene involves a beating. 
In the earlier, Sannio complains of his mistreatment at the hands of 
Aeschinus; in the later, Syrus complains to Demea of a fictitious beating at 
Ctesipho's hands (211-215 [and 244-245] /554-567). 

Scene 3 of each sequence resolves in short order the central problem: in 
the earlier sequence Aeschinus promises to pay Sannio, the scene which 
Terence removed since it repeated the confrontation borrowed from Diphilos; 
in the later Micio clears the way for Aeschinus to marry the girl next door, 
Hegio's niece (265-266/592-609). ^^ Both sequences end with the 
confrontation of the child in trouble and the older family member who has 
saved him from disaster. In both scenes 4 the older relative gently scolds 
his younger relation for not seeking help earlier: Aeschinus reprimands 
Ctesipho for not coming to him with his problem sooner; Micio plays an 
unkind trick on Aeschinus (he tells him that the girl next door, the mother 
of his child, is going to have to marry another man), forces a confession 
from Aeschinus and chastises him for ungentlemanly behavior and not 
seeking his (adoptive) father's aid earlier (271-276/639-^95).4o The 
closeness of the two sequences, which resolve parallel problems in the plot, 
the younger brothers' love affairs, argues for the correcmess of this 
reconstruction of the earlier sequence.'*^ 

As a final test of the validity of this reconstruction, could Menander's 
limited number of actors have performed this sequence? If Ctesipho and 
Syrus begin the sequence and Ctesipho and Aeschinus end it, where is 
Ctesipho during the middle scenes, 2 (Syrus/Sannio) and 3 
(Aeschinus/Sannio)? With three different actors playing the three roles in 
these middle scenes (Syrus, Sannio, and Aeschinus), the actor who plays 
Ctesipho must exit to take one of those parts. But the same actor can play 
Syrus and Aeschinus, since Sannio's bridging monologue allows an actor 
offstage the time to change mask and costume. If Syrus and Aeschinus are 
played by the same actor, the actor who plays Ctesipho need not leave the 



^'SeeDonatuson351. 

^ W. E. Forehand, "Syrus' role in Terence's Adelphoe" Classical Journal 69 (1973), 53: 
"Aeschinus' scolding appears distinctly ironic when one considers how he has allowed his own 
problems to go unsolved for fear of facing his father." 

*^ Also, these sequences are bordered by confrontations between Micio and Demea (81- 
154/719-762). 



Mark Damen 



81 



stage at all. The following schema shows a possible distribution of roles in 
this sequence. 



Scene 



Actor 1 



Actor 2 



Actor 2 



Mutes 



1 






Syrus42 




1 




Ctesipho 


Syrus 




2 


Sannio 


(Ctesipho) 


Syrus 




2 


Saimio 


(Ctesipho) 






3 


Sannio 


(Ctesipho) 


Aeschinus 


(Syrus)« 


4 




Ctesipho 


Aeschinus 


(Syrus) 



Ctesipho remains on stage but withdraws from the action through the 
middle scenes of diis sequence. The pimp presumably does not know him, 
since Aeschinus has abducted the girl."^ Ctesipho's silent presence casts a 
strange shadow over the drama. Every turn in the dialogue as Syrus and 
Aeschinus wrangle with Sannio would affect him deeply and add a tragic 
note to their comic haggling. His silence, contrasted with his great concern 
for a quick and happy resolution, would demonstrate the cowardice which his 
strict father has driven into him. As he does again later (538-53), he hovers 
in the background, too frightened to advance or retreat, and if he speaks at 
all, whispers panic-stricken pleas to Syrus or nervous asides to the audience. 
Ctesipho is certainly not the only cowardly character Menander created. 
Thraso, the inept soldier of Kolax whom Terence has probably substituted 
for another soldier in Eunuchus,'^^ is another memorable coward. The iindX 
sequence of Eunuchus, in which Thraso capitulates completely to others' 



*^ Presumably the two principal actors will play Micio and Demea in the previous scene, so if 
Syras comes on stage directly after them, as I suggest, the third actor must play Syrus. Since 
Sannio has a larger part in the dialogue, I give his role to the first actor, and the role of Ctesipho 
to the second actor. This assigttment is not conclusive. 

*' Since Terence's Syrus does not play a crucial role in the drama from Aeschinus' second 
entrance (265) to his departure for the market (277), it is likely that Syrus was played be a mute 
in scenes 3(?) and 4 of Menander's sequence. Also, if Syrus is a speaking role at the end of the 
sequence and the actor who plays Aeschinus has earlier played Syrus, as I suggest, it would be 
necessary for different actors to share Syrus' role in the same sequence, which seems unlikely. 

^ Grant, 349-50, plausibly reconstructs this part of the prehistory: Sannio Gike BaUio in 
Pseudolus) has only recently acquired \hepsaltria, so he does not know Ctesipho and Ctesipho 
has only recently come to know him. 

*^ Terence has certainly added Gnatho to the final sequence of Eunuchus. Whether or not he 
added Thraso also is harder to say (see W. Ludwig, "Von Terenz zu Menander," Philologus 103 
[1959], 36-38; Gomme and Sandbach. Menander: A Commentary [Oxford 1973], pp. 420-21; 
Lloyd-Jones [above, note 4], 283-84; and K. Gilmartin, "The Thraso-Gnatho subplot in 
Terence's Eunuchus," Classical World 69 [1975-76], 263-67). For our purposes it does not 
matter whether he rewrote the ending or transferred it with only minor alterations from 
Menander. The "Ctesipho" sequence of Adelphoi, as reconstructed here, is remarkably similar to 
the final sequence of Terence's Eunuchus, and for that reason Terence has altered Menander's 
sequence of action. 



82 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

wishes, bears a close resemblance to this reconstruction of the Adelphoi 
sequence:''^ 

Eunuchus (1025-1094) Adelphoi (155-287) 

Thraso (Parmeno) Coward enters Ctesipho/Syrus 

Chaerea/Parmeno (Thraso) Coward withdraws from Saimio/Syrus (Ctesipho) 
the stage action 

Chaerea (Thraso) Coward remains silent Sannio (Ctesipho) 

through an opportunity 
for dialogue 

Chaerea/Phaedria (Thraso) Coward still refuses Sannio/ Aeschinus (Ctesipho) 

to join the action 

Thraso/Chaerea/Phaedria Coward finally comes Ctesipho/ Aeschinus 
forward 

In both plays, after the coward enters in the first scene, the characters in 
the second and third scenes do not acknowledge him. His presence adds 
another dimension to the stage action without necessarily adding a word to 
the text. In Adelphoi the audience watches Syrus' and Aeschinus' dealings 
with Sannio through Ctesipho's eyes whose love affair and life hang on 
Syrus' success; in Eunuchus they watch the happy outcome of the young 
men's love affairs through the eyes of a rival whose misery counterbalances 
their joy. The management of the cowards' actions in these sequences is so 
similar, although the resolution of their fates is quite different, that these 
scenes seem to be Menandrean variations on a theme."*^ 



"* For the comparison of two similar sequences in Menander, see W. Goerler, "Menander, 
Dyskolos 233-381 und Terenz. Eunuchus 817-922," Philologus 105 (1961) 299-307. 

"''' This parallel argues, I believe, that Terence's changes in the end of Menander's Eunouchos 
are relatively minor (the addition of Gnatho presumably displacing Chaerea as the mediator 
between Thraso and Phaedria). Terence's general plot development in this sequence is likely to 
be the same as Menander's. Besides the similar management of the coward, the use of the three 
actors is remarkably similar: one actor plays the coward throughout the sequence, 
(Ctesipho/Thraso), another dominates the central scenes and delivers the bridging monologue 
(Sannio/Chaerea), and the third first plays a helpful slave (Syrus/Parmeno) and then his master's 
son (Aeschinus/Phaedria), changing roles during the bridging monologue. The differences 
between the sequences (Chaerea is involved in the last scene of the sequence, whereas Sannio 
leaves before the last scene; the coward is a negative figure in Eunuchus, whereas he is positive 
in Adelphoi) arise from the different requirements of the plots, not the handling of the sUge 
action in the sequences. The excellent way in which both sequences integrate character and 
action (or here, inaction) and the similarity of their design of scenes argue strongly that the 
sequences derive from one mind, skilled at writing action which develops naturally from the 
situation and the characters. All the evidence points to Menander, see Gomme and Sandbach 
(above, note 45), p. 27. 



Mark Damen 83 

The similarity of these sequences may have contributed to Terence's 
decision to rewrite this sequence oiAdelphoi. Only a year after he produced 
an adaptation of Menander's Eunouchos, it may have occurred to Terence 
that he should not repeat a sequence so close in structure to one crowning a 
recent success. While exploring the possibilities, Terence saw that a scene 
from Diphilos' Synapothneskontes which Plautus had fortuitously not used 
in his Commorientes would fit into Adelphoi (with minor alterations) and 
add some vigor to the action. This would not be the first time Terence had 
noticed a close resemblance between sequences in Menander's comedies {An. 
10-12). So, as he had done before, he borrowed a scene from one comedy 
and inserted it into another, but with two important differences between this 
and his previous borrowings: in Adelphoe Terence splices together the work 
of different authors,**^ and his motivation is not just to "improve the Greek 
original" but to add variety to his own dramatic corpus. It is this attention 
to the independent Roman tradition of New Comedy which raises Terence's 
drama above mere imitation of Greek originals. 

III. Conclusion: Terence's Changes 

If this reconstruction is correct, how has Terence changed the original 
sequence of action? We should note first that he has not altered it radically. 
The unfolding of the plot (and to some extent the design of scenes also) 
remains in basically the same order. Aeschinus has rescued the girl and 
brought her home. With Syrus' help, he deals with the angry pimp and 
arranges to purchase the girl. Then he comforts his brother with the news 
of the happy outcome. Finally he and Syrus leave for the market to settle 
the deal. Terence has left the Syrus-Sannio scene second in the sequence and 
the Aeschinus-Ctesipho scene fourth. 

The inclusion of the scene from Diphilos, however, precluded 
Menander's confrontation between Aeschinus and the pimp. In Menander 
this scene is likely to have come third in the sequence. By bringing 
Aeschinus on stage before Ctesipho, Terence has in effect exchanged the 
brothers' scenes (1 and 3). That is the fundamental difference between the 
Greek and Roman sequences. This shift of focus enhances the comic 
element in this sequence but distorts the presentation of Ctesipho's 
character. His long silence on stage in Menander demonstrates his timidity 
and Demea's ferocity. But it is not at all the same thing when Terence 
keeps Sannio silent on stage for two scenes. At best, we can say that his 
prior experience with Aeschinus motivates his fear of involvement in the 
stage action. But he is not a coward like Ctesipho, since he was not afraid 
to speak up in front of Aeschinus earlier in the same sequence, even when 
he was beaten for his protests. Terence's exchange of the brothers' scenes is 
quite effective in focusing attention on Aeschinus, the more interesting of 
the pair, but his exchange of silent characters is less felicitous, since his 

**Fantham, 196. 



84 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Sannio remains silent on stage because the plot demands it, whereas 
Menander's Ctesipho is silent because the nature of his character demands it. 
From this reconstruction of the Greek original it is not hard to 
reconstruct also Terence's reasons for displacing four pieces of dialogue 
(196-208, 254-64, 278-80, 281-83) from their original situations in 
Menander's sequence.'*^ He has not really displaced 197-208, Sannio's 
monologue. He has left it between Sannio's two scenes, as Menander had 
it, but since he has brought Sannio on earlier than Menander had, he has 
moved the monologue up as well. His displacement of 254-64, the 
Ctesipho-Syrus scene, later in the sequence is part of his general exchange 
of the brothers' scenes (1 and 3). He has displaced 278-80 to the end of the 
sequence to serve as Sannio's exit line, so that the pimp does not have to 
leave the stage without saying anything after Terence has kept him on for so 
long "thickening up" the stage. At the end of the sequence Terence adds, 
almost as an afterthought, 281-83, which was in Menander a central feature 
of Ctesipho's character, his fear of his father. Menander probably 
established this motivation when Ctesipho first entered in scene 1 of the 
sequence, but Terence, who is less interested in the psychology of this 
character, includes it mostly as a bridge to Ctesipho's next appearance (4. 1), 
where his fear of Demea is central to the scene.^° 

In conclusion, what is important in this study is not the reconstruction 
itself but the methodology used in reconstructing the original. In 
attempting to recover Menander's lost design of scenes, we must attend to 
Menander's style of constructing a sequence of action. This article outlines 
only one of several possible ways to reconstruct a lost sequence of action, 
but it moves us one step nearer to the original by following closely 
Menander's style of organizing dramatic action. I do not claim to have 
resolved a problem which only the recovery of Menander's original can 
settle, but this investigation opens a door for further debate on a 
methodological basis which, I hope, will prove profitable not only in 
recovering lost sequences of action but for wider analysis of Menandrean 
dramaturgy.51 

Indiana University 



^^ See reconstruction on p. 77. 

^ Grant, 349. Terence's 284-87 are probably in their original situation in Menander's 
sequence, but Terence had given 284-86 to Syrus (as a natural extension of Syrus' and 
Ctesipho's dialogue), where Menander gave them to Aeschinus (see note 37). Terence would 
have had to add only Syrus' reference to shopping (286), if he drew the speech from Aeschinus' 
final words to Ctesipho. 

^* With deep gratitude for their assistance in writing this article, I would like to thank 
Professors Douglass Parker, M. Gwyn Morgan, W. Geoffrey Amott, Elaine Fantham, John 
Grant, Betty Rose Nagle, Timothy Long, James Halpom and Frances Titchener, and Ms. Fern 
Fryer and Ms. Virginia McGuffin. All errors which remain are my own. 



Polybadiscus and the Astraha of Plautus: 
New Observations on a Plautine Fragment 



RADD EHRMAN 



Aulus Gellius (3. 3. 11) reports that at one time 130 comedies were 
attributed to Plautus; of these 20 now remain in fairly complete condition 
and one, the Vidularia, is only partially preserved. Another 32 plays 
ascribed to Plautus are represented in fragments, and in addition there are 66 
fragments from plays unidentified, seven of them dubiously attributed to 
Plautus; the titles of three other comedies are also known. ^ The fragments 
of Plautine comedy, which represent the majority of work ascribed to him, 
were once regarded as having some importance for the understanding of 
Roman comedy, but have been virtually ignored by scholars in the twentieth 
century; indeed they have scarcely even made their way into standard 
handbooks such as George Duckworth's The Nature of Roman Comedy and 
William Beare's The Roman Stage, and so have been rendered all but 
invisible. And yet, when one considers what a small percentage of comedies 
has survived — Plautus' 21 and Terence's 6 — and that the vast majority of 
Roman comedians are represented only in quotations, it becomes clear that 
there is still a fair amount of work to be done.^ Fortunately, several areas 
of Plautine comedy are reasonably well defined by the consistency of 
phenomena in the surviving plays and these can help us isolate and come to 
terms with similar elements in the fragments. One of these is Plautus' use 
of names that quite frequently indicate the nature of their bearers and their 
situations within the drama.^ It is my contention that the first of the seven 



^ Plays for which only titles exist are Anus, Bis Compressa, and Syrus. See F. Winter, Plauti 
Fabularum Deperditarum Fragmenla (Bonn 1885), 23, 27, 47. These plays are not noted in 
Lindsay's edition. 

^ In Plautus' case, therefore, only about 16 percent of the work attributed to him in antiquity 
is known to us in any stale of completion. 

^ See C. J. Mendelsohn, Studies in the Word-Play in Plautus (PhUadelphia 1907); W. M. 
Seaman, The Appropriate Name in Plautus (diss. Illinois 1939); R. K. Ehrman, "The Double 
Significance of Two Plautine Names," American Journal of Philology 105.3 (Fall, 1984), 330- 
32. 



86 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

fragments of the Astraba, a comedy ascribed to Plautus in antiquity,'* 
contains such use of a name. My immediate purpose is to re-examine this 
fragment, which has not been discussed for almost 85 years,^ for despite its 
brevity it is unusually informative on a number of matters of plot and 
character, thanks largely to its named persona', it can also be reasonably well 
meshed, I believe, with a couple of other fragments from the piece, and 
lends itself quite readily to plausible interpretation. Indeed, this will be the 
first time such a literary study has been done to the extent presented here. 
My larger goal is to show that the fragments of Plautus have life in them 
yet and still offer a fruitful field of investigation. 

Varro (De Lingua Latina 6. 73) cites two lines from the Astraba in his 
discussion of the derivation of spes: 

etiam spes a sponte potest esse declinata, quod turn sperat cum quod volt 
fieri putat: nam quod non volt si putat, metuit, non sperat. itaque hi 
quoque qui dicunt in Astraba Plauti: 

sequere adsecue, Polybadisce, meam spem cupio consequi. 
sequor hercle equidem: nam lubenter meam speratam consequor. 

quod sine sponte dicunt, vere neque ille sperat qui dicit adolescens neque ilia 
sperata est. 

It is particularly fortunate that Varro has preserved a name in this quotation; 
in the present case its reading was established by Scaliger from the polyba 
disce of the manuscripts, was sanctioned by Ritschl and generally accepted 



* Varro attributes the Astraba to Plautus twice: De Lingua Latina 6. 73 and 7. 66, in the latter 
without naming the poet but in the midst of quotations also ascribed to Plautus. Probus, or at 
least the author of the commentary cmi Vergil's Bucolics that has survived under his name (2. 23 
Keil), discussed the word astraba and noted "quo titulo et Plautus fabulam inscripsii" (see 
Schanz-Hosius, Geschichie der romischen Literatur I, § 35; cf. F. Ritschl, "Deperditarum Plauti 
Fabularum Fragmenta," Opuscula Philologica HI (Leipzig 1877, repr. HUdesheim 1978), p. 187, 
and G. Goetz, De Astrabae Plautinae Fragmenlis (Jena 1893), p. 2. Gellius (11.7. 5) indicates 
an indeterminable degree of uncertainty on the question of the play's authenticity when he records 
"idque a Plauto in comoedia, si ea Plauti est, quae Astraba inscripta est . . . ," but does not 
indicate the grounds for any doubt nor the seriousness of it; nor does he aUude to the issue at 3. 
3. 1-14, the discussion of Plautine scholarship: see Goetz, p. 5, and Winter, pp. 4 ff. The same 
lack of clarity is discovered in Nonius' statement at 69. 32, "Plautus in Astraba fabula . . . cuius 
incertum an sit ea comoedia," but, again, there is no way of knowing the degree of Nonius' 
uncertainty. However, at 62. 32 Nonius ascribes the play to Plautus with no qualifying remark 
(see note 20, below). At any rate, no substantial reason can be adduced to show that the Astraba 
was not the work of Plautus. For a full discussion of the authenticity of this and other 
fragmentary plays ascribed to Plautus, see E. H. Qifl, Latin Pseudepigrapha: A Study in 
Literary Attributions (Baltimore 1945), pp. 40-78. 

^ The last word on the Astraba, from a strictly literary standpoint, was spoken by K. 
Schmidt, "Die griechischen Personennamen bei Plautus U," Hermes 37 (1902), 389-90. Other 
works were by Ritschl, Winter, Goetz and Qift, opp. citt., but these scholars were interested in 
examining the sources and background of the fragments rather than investigating in any detail 
the literary motifs or characterizations detectible in the Astraba except in the most sweeping 
way; some of the conjeaures of Ritschl need to be called into question. 



RaddEhrman 87 

thereafter,^ However, K. Schmidt, who was the last to have spoken on the 
Astraba, objected to "Polybadiscus" on the grounds that the joining of 7ioX,t) 
and Pa5{Co> was "unwahrscheinlich." He proposed reading "Libadiscus," 
from XipdSiov, "little stream," and read "sequere adsecue intro, Libadisce, 
meam spem cupio consequi." His justification was that "Damit riickt 
AiPaSioKoq also unmittelbar mit Ixakayiioc, zusammen," referring to the 
slave in the Captivi who had abducted Tyndarus as a small boy. He noted 
also that there is a Aipdq at Ovid, Amores 3. 7, 24; "Libadiscus" was 
therefore a more likely name on linguistic grounds than "Polybadiscus." 
Still, it must be asked whether this reading is an improvement and whether 
Schmidt was in fact justified in regarding Scaliger's correction as unlikely. 
His challenge to "Polybadiscus" has never been answered. The response 
will surely lead to a fuller comprehension of the fragment. 

First, "Polybadiscus" is obviously acceptable paleographically. 
Second, it must be remembered that the Astraba was generally taken in 
antiquity to be the work of Plautus,'' and as A. S. Gratwick has recently 
remarked on the characters of Plautine comedy, "his stage-population are 
given individual names varying in formation from the possible but 
unattested (Agorastocles) to the absurd (Pyrgopolynices)."* When coming 
to terms with a name coined by Plautus, and "Polybadiscus" clearly is an 
invented name,^ the main concern is not so much with linguistic possibility 
or occurrence as a real name, as Gratwick's and other studies have 
demonstrated, but rather with its significance as an indicator, either ironic or 
accurate, of the nature of the persona to which it is attached or to his 
circumstances in the context of the comedy. For example, to use one of the 
names cited by Gratwick, "Pyrgopolynices," "frequent conqueror of towers," 
or "conqueror of many towers," although an absurd name, perhaps concocted 
from "pyrgos" + "polynices," is clearly a suitable appellation for the miles 
gloriosus; likewise "Pseudolus," "the crafty liar" (pseudos + dolus) is an 
accurate name for that deceitful slave. Now, the person addressed in the first 
line of the fragment and who responds in the second is a slave, as has long 
been recognized, since in Plautus the suffix -ISCUS or -ISCA always denotes 
a character of that station.^*' However, the single most important 

Rilschl, pp. 188 ff., and "Quaestiones onomatologicae comicae," ibid., p. 328. 

' See note 4, above. 

* A. S. Gratwick, "Light Drama: Plautus," in E. J. Kenney (ed.), The Cambridge History of 
Classical Literature II: Latin Literature (Cambridge 1982), p. 104. See note 3, above. 

' See W. Pape, and G. E. Benseler, Worterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen (Hildesheim 
1959), s. V. noX\)pd6iaKo<;. 

^° For example, Ampelisca (Rudens), Collybiscus (JPoenulus), Pardalisca (Casino), Phaniscus 
(Mostellaria), Sophoclidisca (Persa); cf. Syriscus in Menander's Epitrepontes and in Terence's 
Eunuchus and Adelphoe. See A. W. Gomme and F. H. Sandbach, Menander: A Commentary 
(Oxford 1973), pp. 310 ff. Sometimes, although there is no evidence that this is the case here, 
-ISCUS is added to a slave's name to fonm a diminutive; thus Lampadio is called Lampadiscus 
at Cistellaria 544, and at Poenulus All Milphio is called Milphidiscus. Ritschl (pp. 190 ff.) 
argues against the slave's name being Polybadio cm the grounds that such a name is unattested; 



88 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.l 

consideration for the reading of the name, after the paleographical, has yet to 
be taken into account so far as I am aware, namely that "Polybadiscus" is a 
perfectly suitable sprechender Name for the context preserved in Varro's 
quotation. The name means "the slave who walks much" which is exactly 
what this character claims to be. After the speaker of the first line, an 
adulescens according to Varro,^^ commands him, "Follow, follow closely, 
Polybadiscus," the slave replies emphatically, "Good God! I am following!" 
The particle equidem and the expletive hercle placed next to sequor, along 
with the fact that there are also Uiree cognates of sequor in two lines, make 
it quite certain that the slave really does walk a lot and that "Polybadiscus" 
is the appropriate reading here. To be sure, the suitably named slave is 
found in other comedies, such as Pseudolus, noted above, or Phaniscus who 
"reveals" the truth to Theopropides at Mostellaria 933 ff. "Libadiscus," on 
the other hand, has neither the paleographical nor the interpretative value of 
Scaliger's reconstruction, for while "much walking" fits the picture 
presented in the fragment, the idea of a stream has no apparent relevance. 
Moreover, the argument in favor of "Libadiscus" is further vitiated by the 
suggested connection with "Stalagmus." The latter name according to 
Anaxandrides {Odysseus 34K) is given in jest to a small person: ^^ 

\)\it\c, yap dA.XrjXo'oi; aei x^^'wotC^''^'. ol5' dKpiPco(;- 
av ^£v yctp fi tk; evTrpeTtriq, lepov ydHov KaXeue- 
ectv 5e jiiKpov navTeXfix; ctvGpconiov, oxaX-ayjiov. 

Since there is no evidence in the fragments as to the slave's physical 
appearance, as at Asinaria 400 ff. and Pseudolus 1218 ff., there is no valid 
reason to accept "Libadiscus" on this score. 

It is also possible to determine more about the character of the slave 
since Polybadiscus plainly exhibits another interesting, if rare, feature which 
offers a clue to the nature of the Astraba. Polybadiscus is in love, as is 
shown by his use of sperata. Varro's final remarks on the quotation confirm 
this conclusion, and although Polybadiscus' status as a loving slave has 
been briefly noted by others,'^ the matter has yet to be treated as a literary 
device. Varro has judged that, strictly speaking, neither does the speaker of 
the first line truly "hope" because he speaks sine sponte, nor is the woman 
referred to in the second line truly "hoped for" because, again, the idea of 
speaking sine sponte lurks behind speratam. As with the earlier question on 



but neither is Polybadiscus attested. Either would be a comic foimation; see notes 3 and 6, 
above. 

^^ Some earlier commentators, despite Varro's remarks, believed that this character was 
Polybadiscus' beloved. See Ritschl, pp. 189 ff. and note 18, below. 

^2 See Schmidt I. 207 f., Mendelsohn, p. 57. Seaman, p. 109. 

^' Ritschl, pp. 189 ff., established the reading meam speratam from the mea sperata of the 
manuscripts. He briefly notes in passing the idea of love suggested by Varro and also some 
parallels for this use of sperata but does not discuss the question. 



RaddEhrman 89 

the correct reading and significance of the slave's name, so this remark of 
Varro also demands careful consideration. First, Varro does not categorically 
state that spes and its cognates are in fact derived from spons* ("spes a 
sponte potest esse declinata") and, second, he also acknowledges that the two 
characters in the Astraba are not using spes and spero in a technically or, 
possibly, etymologically correct way,^"* Therefore what emerges is that 
both speakers "desire" but are unsure of their chances of success, so that it 
would be more correct for them to say that they "fear they will not succeed" 
rather than that they "hope." Nevertheless, Varro's point is that by spem 
and speratam Plautus intends to connote someone or something desired 
regardless of the degree of success that the speakers achieve. 

Unfortunately it is impossible to know what specifically the adulescens' 
spes is since the word has so many different implications in Plautine 
comedy, although the similarity in wording between the two lines makes it 
probable that spes and sperata are somehow interconnected in the plot.^^ At 
any rate, whatever his hope may have been, whether a person (the young 
man's girlfriend was Ritschl's conjecture), an opportunity or a goal, the 
chance of realizing it is fleeting and thus the tone of the speaker is urgent. 
Sperata, on the other hand, specifically refers to a woman, and the use of the 
term to designate the beloved one hopes for has parallels in the surviving 
comedies. ^^ For example, at Amphitruo 676 Amphitryon addresses his 
wife, "uxorem salutat laetus speratam suam" and at Poenulus 1268 
Anterastilis calls Agorastocles sperateP 

Slaves in love are found on occasion in the surviving comedies, most 
notably Toxilus of the Persa. There the smitten slave explains his 
condition to Sagaristio (24 ff ): 

saucius factus sum in Veneris proelio; 
sagitta Cupido cor meum transfixit. SAG. iam servi hie amant? 

And in fact the whole intrigue of the Persa centers upon Toxilus' acquisition 
of money to buy his beloved. As another instance, at Rudens 415 ff , 
Sceparnio falls in love (or rather, lust) with Ampelisca, the maid of 
Palaestra, and tries to win her favor. Polybadiscus therefore is by no means 



Goetz, 6, would add to Varro's remarks, "sed potest etiam sine sponte dicere 'spero*, si 
iocandi causa hoc dicit" 

^ Ritschl, pp. 189 ff., again with only scanty discussion, conjectured that spes stood for the 
amata of the young man. This naturally is possible but not necessarily the case here. It is true 
of course that adulescentes have girlfriends, but we do not know that spes here refers to a person 
as at Stichus 583 (see note 16, below) rather than some abstract desire or practical goal such as 
fleecing a senex or dealing with a leno. 

^^ Ritschl, p. 190; he adduces as a parallel Stichus 583, "sperate PamphUippe, o spes mea," 
but this is not a true parallel because there the parasite Gelasimus is addressing a long absent 
patron on his return rather than someone he loves. 

^ In addition Nonius 175. 1 equates, as did Varro, speratum with sponsum and quotes from 
Afranius' Fratriae (10 Ribbeck), "speratam non odi tuam." Again the idea of love is present. 



90 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

unique as a comic slave with his eye on a girl.** There is no other evidence 
to indicate how serious Polybadiscus' love is, whether real love like Tranio's 
or an infatuation like Scepamio's. However, as the examples noted show, 
sperata usually of course implies a situation more enduring than Scepamio's 
lust at first sight. On the other hand, the comic potential of a sperata as a 
recent acquaintance cannot be discounted. 

I would like to conclude with a final new observation on Polybadiscus; 
I suggest that he is a servus callidus. The adulescens calls upon him to 
follow because, as he says, he wishes to pursue his hope (whatever that may 
be), clearly indicating thereby his reliance on the slave's assistance.*^ This 
action naturally calls to mind one of the most common motifs in comedy, 
namely that the young man puts his confidence in the slave who in turn 
must be clever enough to pull his master through his dilemma. Such an 
identification is attractive for another reason, because if Polybadiscus is in 
fact the servus callidus, as the urgent commands given him make probable, 
then the fourth fragment, "terebratus multum sit et supscudes addite," 
certainly could have been directed at him, for the fragment surely denotes a 
punishment of a slave, as Ritschl surmised largely on the basis of Nonius' 
definition of exterebrare?^ In comedy the slave is the only type ever 
punished physically, and the clever slave naturally was especially liable to 
horrible tortures, or at least the threat of them, as Pseudolus, Chrysalus in 
the Bacchides, or Tyndarus in the Captivi had reason to know.^* Likewise, 
if this is a correct assumption, then the fifth fragment, "terebra tu quidem 
pertundis," also refers to the inquisition or punishment of Polybadiscus, and 
in fact both fragments are strikingly similar to the threat of punishment 
made at Mostellaria 55 ff. to Tranio, the mover of the comedy's intrigue:^^ 

o camuficium cribrum, quod credo fore, 
ita te forabunt patibulatum per vias 
stimulis, * si hue reveniat senex. 



** Ritschl thinks it likely that sperata is the maid of the spes, that is the maid of the 
adulescens' girlfriend. On the one hand, this is a possibility and is paralleled by the situation 
already noted from the Rudens and also by the carousal of Stichus with the maid Stephanium at 
the end of the Stichus (742 ff.). On the other hand, this conjecture assumes that spes is a person 
and we have seen that there is no evidence for such an identification. 

*^ Ritschl, pp. 189 ff., is surely correct in assuming that the young man is Polybadiscus' 
master. 

^° Ritschl, p. 194; Nonius 62. 32, "exterebrare est vi aliquid extorquere et scrutari aut 
curiosius quaerere. Plautus in Astraba, cum in curiosum iocaretur." Ritschl did not single out 
Polybadiscus as the servus callidus nor as the slave punished in these fragments. 

See Duckworth, pp. 288 ff., for an enumeration of the punishments, threatened or actually 
inflicted, of slaves in comedy. 

^Ritschl in his 1852 edition of \he Mostellaria in fact read "terebris hue si"; the same type of 
punishment is depicted here. Cf. Persa 28, "vide modo ulmeae catapultae tuom ne transfigant 
latus" and Mostellaria 358, "ubi . . . denis hastis corpus transfigi solet." The threat /o<iere 
stimulo (stimulis) occurs at Curculio 131 and Menaechmi 951. 



RaddEhrman 91 

The first fragment of the Astraba with its division of speakers, 
inclusion of a sprechender Name and clearly defined actions, is the most 
tractable of this comedy's remains. Indeed, it seems to shed light on the two 
fragments that refer to punishment. Fortunately, parallels from the 
surviving comedies support the conclusions presented here. 



Kent State University 



The Weapons of Love and War: 
A Note on Propertius IV. 3* 

MICHAEL B. POLIAKOFF 



Propertius' Arethusa poem is a masterpiece of wit and irony. It is full of 
pathetic hyperbole: the girl suggests that her tears might wash away the 
letters (3^), that a trailing scrawl might depict her death (or loss of 
consciousness) as she writes (5-6). Her husband, meanwhile, has travelled 
to the ends of the earth: Parthia, China, Thrace, Arabia and Britain — quite 
an accomplishment for a veteran of four years' service (7-10)! Furthermore, 
she envisions Lycotas not as a soldier like the robustus puer of Hor., Odes 
III. 2 but as too delicate to hold a weapon or to wear a breastplate. In lines 
23-24 we meet a curiously soft-skinned fighter: 

die mihi, niim teneros urit lorica lacertos? ^ 

num gravis imbellis atterit hasta manus? 

One expects that the man will fear for the woman's safety, as does Callus in 
Verg., Ed. 10. 46-49: 

tu procul a patria (nee sit mihi credere tantum) 
Alpinas, a! dura nives et firigora Rheni 
me sine sola vides. a, te ne fiigora laedant! 
a, tibi ne teneras glaeies secet aspera plantas! 

The wonderful irony is that here the girl fears for the delicacy of the man. 
Finally, whereas Arethusa disclaims her elegant Punic crimson (51), she is 
making a Tyrian red cloak for Lycotas (34). 

It is clear that Propertius has used a light and playful touch, but one 
must also recognize that a major portion of the poem's humor comes from 
Arethusa's atypical attitudes towards her husband. Margaret Hubbard writes 
that the poet has created "one of the few portraits antiquity offers of a good 
and beautiful noodle, loving, tender, and not in the least clever or 



' I wish to express my thanks to Dr. R.O.A.M. Lyne for his help and advice throughout, and 
to Professor Martin Ostwald. who kindly read tliis note in draft and made many useful 
suggestions. 



94 Illinios Classical Studies, XII. 1 

formidable."^ She properly points out the poem's lack of rhetorical logic 
(p. 143): if we take, for example, lines 7-22, we can count five different 
topics: Lycotas' travels, an expostulation on his fides, the wedding omens, 
the failure of her votives, an imprecation on the makers of weapons. That 
Arethusa is slightly muddle-headed is undeniable, but she is also, at least in 
amatory matters, quite formidable. Just as Propertius has depicted through 
Arethusa's vision of Lycotas a soldier who does no credit to Rome, so in 
Arethusa he depicts a wife whose openly expressed erotic interests are highly 
unconventional among upper-class Roman women.^ Starting with lines 25- 
28, one finds Arethusa praying that any wounds Lycotas receives be the 
result of his abrasive armor and not some girl's teeth. She is not 
particularly concerned by the fact that Lycotas has grown thin, rather she 
prays that the condition be due to his longing for her (the position of meo at 
the end of line 28 is emphatic). Camps'* has pointed out that salvo at the end 
of the poem reflects Arethusa's double concern — the safety of her husband 
and his fidelity towards her. This has already been adumbrated in line 2: si 
potes esse mens. 

It is lines 67-69 that most clearly show Arethusa's twin concerns: 

sed (tua sic domitis Paithae telluris alumnis 

pura triumphantis hasta sequatur equos) 
incorrupta mei conserva foedera lecti! 

All commentaries correctly gloss pura hasta as a Roman military reward. 
The evidence for this is abundant: see especially Servius adAen. VI. 762: 



^M. Hubbard. Propertius (New Yoric 1975). p. 144. 
It is admittedly difficult to form fully satisfactory generalizations about a given culture's 
sense of propriety, but the evidence suggests than an upper class Roman would have found the 
idea of a wife's having any control over her husband's sex life unusual if not improper. Cato 
(Plut., Cat. Mai. 17. 7) boasted that his wife never came into his arms except when it thundered. 
Plutarch elsewhere remarks that Julia's affection for Pompey was notorious (Pomp. 53. 2): 
nepiP6r|xov riv xii; Kopriq to cpiXav5pov, and in Mor. 279 e-f observes that a Roman 
wedding was consummated in total darkness, giving as possible reasons the bride's modesty, the 
husband's modesty, hiding physical abnormalities, and a sense of shame, even in lawful unions, 
Kttl xoii; vojiinoiq. Elsewhere we hear praise for AemUia. wife of Scipio Africanus. for her 
tolerance of his affair with a slave girl (Val. Max. VI. 7. 1). and learn that Octavian divorced 
Scribonia for her "moral perversity" (pertaesus morum perversitatem eius) of being intolerant of 
her husband's mistress (Suet.. Aug. 62. 2 and 69. 1). Livia was more prudent, so ran the rumors, 
and provided Augustus with virgins to deflower (Suet., Aug. 71. 1. Dio LIV. 19. 3). We might 
further note Propertius' Cornelia as a contrast to Arethusa: haec estfeminei merces extrema 
triumphi I laudat ubi emeritum libera fama rogum (TV. 11. 71-72). Granted that the situation is 
different, it is still significant that Cornelia never mentions anything even faintly erotic, and 
accepts the thought of Paullus' taking another wife with equanimity. For discussion of these 
and other documents, see J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Rorruin Women (London 1962). pp. 200 ff.; W. 
Kroll. Die Kultur der Ciceronischen Zeit 2 (Leipzig 1933). pp. 26 ff.; P. Grimal. L'amour d 
Rome (Paris 1963); R.O.A.M. Lyne. The Latin Love Poets (Oxford 1980). pp. 1-18; J. Griffin. 
Latin Poets and Roman Life (London 1985). pp. 112-41. 

** W. A. Camps. Propertius: Elegies, Book IV (Cambridge 1965), p. 86. 



Michael B. Poliakoff 95 

Pura iuvenis qui nititur hasta, id est sine ferro: nam hoc fuit 
praemium apud maiores eius qui tunc primum vicisset in proelio, 
sicut ait Varro. . . . 

and also Suet., Claud 28: (sc. Posiden spadonem) inter militares viros hasta 
pura donavit. What has been neglected by the commentators, however, is 
the common meaning of hasta as the male member. J. N. Adams^ amply 
demonstrates that "the sexual symbolism of weapons was instantly 
recognizable in ancient society," citing examples from a wide variety of 
Greek and Latin genres. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae gives five 
references for the use of hasta itself as a sexual image: Priap. 43, App., 
Met. X. 21 (codd. Laur. 29. 2, Laur. 54. 32, et al.), Zeno I. 6. 3 (=PL 11. 
315), and Aus., Cento Nuptialis 359. 17. With this in mind we can 
recognize a highly witty double entendre ending Propertius' poem. 

At first glance, Arethusa seems to make three wishes in lines 63-70. 
In lines 63-66 she begins a prayer that Lycotas stay out of the way of 
flying weapons, but only gets to the point of describing the danger. In 67- 
68 she hopes that Lycotas will have the distinction of a pura hasta — 
although a military decoration, we should note, would be difficult for 
someone to obtain who accepts the advice to avoid danger and disregard 
glory (ne . . . tanti sit gloria). In line 69, Arethusa makes her wish for 
Lycotas' pura hasta conditional upon his keeping their marriage undefiled, 
and finally, in line 70, she adds that this is the only condition under which 
she wants him to return. Thus the eight lines modulate from a plea for 
Lycotas' physical safety to one for his sexual fidelity. Lines 67-68 seem to 
break the logic of the passage, but in fact, given the double meaning of 
hasta, these lines become an important part of the psychological realism of 
the poem: Arethusa's amatory concerns mix with and overshadow her 
wishes for Lycotas' military success and safety. Just as in lines 23-28, 
where her concern for the physical hazards of the campaign yields to her 
more immediate concern for Lycotas' fidelity, the "second sense" of line 67 
is that Lycotas should keep his member undefiled by an illicit liaison. Pura 
modifying hasta is paralleled in line 69 by incorrupta modifying foedera. 
Unlike Propertius' more explicit boasting over his erotic encounter in II. 15, 
the Arethusa poem is generally more subtle, but the woman's sexual 
interests surface consistently throughout the poem.^ It would be very 
difficult to capture the nuance of the double entendre in English without 
losing the primary meaning of pura hasta as a military reward. Perhaps 



^ J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London and Baltimore 1982), p. 19. 

^ For an excellent evaluation of Propertius' use of double entendre (in IV. 9) see W. S. 
Anderson, "Hercules Exclusus, Prop. 4.9," American Journal of Philology 85 (1964), 6-9. 
Jasper Griffin (note 3, above), p. 140 observes that the veiling of the characters behind Greek 
names allows Propertius to depict a bolder, more aggressive Roman woman than he could in, 
e.g., in. 12, where the characters are the contemporary figures Aelia Galla and Postumus. 



96 Illinios Classical Studies, XII. 1 

something to the effect of "May your Regimental shaft join the parade 
untainted" would do. 

One could perhaps relegate Arethusa and Lycotas to a category of 
"fantasies on Greek themes": like Horace's Lydia and Sybaris they do not 
quite conform to the patterns one expects of a youth of military age and his 
lady. But is the Arethusa poem at all Greek, except for the names of the 
couple? Unlike that of Horace, Odes I. 8, which heavily admixes elements 
of the Hellenic world,'' Propertius' setting is utterly Roman, down to the 
household Lares (54). Moreover, Arethusa is not a hot-blooded meretrix, 
but a Roman matron, married and managing a household in the traditional 
manner. If it is valid to view Propertius IV. 3 as evoking a largely Roman 
world, then we can properly see in the poem humor that is also a piquant 
rejection of Roman attitudes and duties. Horace wrote about an army of 
tough Italian boys in Odes III. 2: Propertius' soldier, as we have seen, is 
barely capable of holding his weapons. Like the foreign princess of the 
same ode, Arethusa fears for her man, but her trepidation over his sexual 
fidelity is at least as strong as that for his safety. It appears that Propertius, 
whose apathy and contempt for res militaris is openly expressed in II. 7, II. 
15, and III. 4, has lightly and delicately asserted in Arethusa's letter that the 
claims of the life of love are the strongest ones at last. 

Hillsdale College 



'R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I (Oxford 1970). 
p. 109. 



8 



From Separation to Song: 
Horace, Carmina IV* 

DAVID H. PORTER 



for H LP. 



rmnuentur atrae carmine curae 
av. 11.35-36) 



I. Introduction 

The fifteen poems of Horace's Carmina IV, a collection published in 13 B.C.. 
are the final lyric collection of one of the most meticulous poetic craftsmen 
that has ever lived, and not surprisingly they display a degree of control that 
defies complete analysis. Only when one approaches this collection 
repeatedly and from different critical stances does one begin to appreciate its 
richness of detail, its emotional and thematic complexity, its chiaroscuro of 
contrasting tones and moods, its carefully crafted interplay of image and 
reality, and the degree to which every detail contributes to the overall effect, 
shape and movement. 

In several earlier studies I have taken what one might call an 
architectural approach to Book IV. Two of these studies have shown how 
Book IV combines the centrifugal thrust of violent contrast with the 
centripetal pull of motivic links." Thus in Book IV Horace juxtaposes 
poems lamenting the passing of time and the approach of death with poems 

*I am particularly in debt to the following three studies of Horace: E. Fraenkel, Horace 
(Oxford 1957); S. Commager. The Odes of Horace. A Critical Study (New Haven 1962); C. 
Becker. Das Spdtwerk des Horaz (Gottingen 1963). For Book IV of the Odes I have also drawn 
heavily on W. Wili. Horaz und die Augusteische Kultur (Basel 1947). pp. 354-72; D. Norberg, 
"Le quatrifeme livre des Odes d'Horace." Emerila 20 (1952), 95-107; J. M. Benario. "Bode 4 of 
Horace's Odes: Augustan Propaganda." Transactions of the American Philological Association 
91 (1960), 339-52; W. Ludwig, "Die Anordnung des vierten Horazischen Odenbuches," Museum 
//c/vc/«c«m 18 (1961). 1-10. 

Unless otherwise indicated, references in this article are to Horace's Odes. 

^ "The Recurrent Motifs of Horace, Carmina IV." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 79 
(1975), 189-228; "Motivic Transfonnation in Qassical Literature and Music," Classical World 
70 (1976-77), 257-66. 



98 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

praising poetry and its power to confer immortality (IV. 1 with IV. 2; IV. 7 
with IV. 8; IV. 9 with IV. 10), poems praising the peaceful 
accomplishments of Augustus with poems glorifying the violent wars 
waged by his stepsons (IV. 5 with IV. 4; IV. 15 with IV. 14), long and 
complex poems with short and simple poems (IV. 2 and IV. 4 with IV. 3; 
IV. 9 with IV. 10), and so on. As counterbalance to these potentially 
divisive juxtapositions the book contains a tight web of recurrent motifs 
which link the poems one to another while simultaneously underscoring 
their contrasts. Two other studies have shown how similar analysis of 
structure and motif can throw light on the interpretation of specific poems 
in the book and even on the question of whether the Vergil addressed in IV. 
12 is the famous poet.^ 

This architectural approach is surely justifiable in studying the works of 
a poet who himself in the epilogue to his first collection of odes compares 
his poetry to the pyramids (III. 30. 1 ff.), but the approach is limited in that 
it stresses static relationships within a book — the placement of poems 
relative to each other, subtle verbal and thematic links between them, 
architectural parallels between different groups of poems, and so on. I have 
already indicated that Book IV yields its secrets only to those who come at it 
from many different directions, and in the present article I adopt what we 
might, for want of a better term, call a dynamic approach, stressing not the 
static relationships within the architectiu-e of Book IV but rather its inner 
movement — how one mood or theme yields to another, how the emotional 
rhythm of the inner parts relates to that of the whole. If the architectural 
approach works from the surely correct assumption that the book was 
intended to be read and reread, to be viewed as a single entity incorporating 
an almost spatial interplay of parts, the dynamic approach works from the 
equally justifiable assumption that the book was also intended to be read 
aloud, and listened to, as an ongoing, shifting, moving entity gradually 
unfolding in time. A final assumption, of course, is that these two 
approaches effectively complement each other, that each helps 
counterbalance the distortions and limitations inherent in the other. 

II. The Dominant Rhythms of Book IV 

In Book IV as a whole there is a clear shift of mood, theme, and attitude 
from the first poem to the last. IV. 1 opens the book with war, separation 
and loss. By the time Horace comes to IV. 15, he is singing of peace, 
plentiful sharing, and poetry. The completeness of this about-face becomes 
fully apparent if we juxtapose some key lines from each poem. The 
opening lines of IV. 1 lament the resumption of wars (IV. 1. 1-2): 

^"Horace. Carmina, IV. 12," Latomus 31 (1972). 71-87; "The Motif of Spring in Horace. 
Carmina 4.1 and 4.12," Classical Bulletin 49 (1973). 57-61. 



David H. Porter 99 

Inteimissa, Venus, diu 
rursus bella moves? 

IV. 15 rejoices in the coming of peace (IV. 15. 4-9): 

tua, Caesar, aetas 
firuges et agris rettulit uberes, 
et signa nostro restituit lovi 
derepta Parthorum superbis 
postibus et vacuum duellis 
lanum Quirini clausit 

IV. 1 proclaims Horace's separation from others, from the joys of feast and 
symposium, from poetry and song (IV. 1. 29-32):^ 

me nee femina nee puer 
iam nee spes animi credula mutui 

nee certare iuvat mero 
nee vincire novis temper a floribus. 

IV. 15 ends with Horace participating with others in symposium and 
song — joyful concerns which seem far removed from the renewed wars with 
which the book began (IV. 15. 25-32): 

nosque et profestis lucibus et sacris 
inter iocosi munera Liberi 

cum prole matronisque nostris, 
rite deos prius apprecati, 
virtute functos more patrum duces * 

Lydis remixto carmine tibiis 

Troiamque et Anchisen et almae 
progeniem Veneris canemus. 

And while the poet of IV. 1 laments his loss of power (non sum qualis 
eram, 3), the poet of IV. 15 is so caught up with his subject that Apollo 
himself must check the rush of his poetry (IV. 15. 1-4): 

Phoebus volentem proelia me loqui 
victas et urbis increpuit lyra 

ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor 
vela darem. 

We shall return shortly to a fuller examination of the movement from 
IV. 1 to IV. 15, but first it is worth mentioning that Horace himself clearly 
joins these two poems one to another by a series of links, among which the 
following are only the most striking. IV. 1 begins with Horace calling on 
Venus as mater saeva (5) and ends with him declaring his inability to pursue 

^ Although this passage does not explicitly dissociate Horace from song, this dissociation is 
implicit in his separation from the festivities in which song play so large a part. Cf. also 22- 
28 — the songs and dances which PauUus, in marked contrast to Horace, can offer. 



100 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Ligurinus through the volubiles aquae (40). IV. 15 reverses the sequence of 
these motifs, beginning with Apollo's injunction to Horace not to set sail 
on the dangerous sea of epic poetry (1-4) and concluding with Horace's song 
of almae progeniem Veneris (31-32). The description in IV. 1 of the 
abundance of wealth and pleasure which Paullus possesses corresponds to 
the description in IV. 15 of the manifold joys of the Augustan era, and the 
long polysyndeton of IV. 1. \?> U. {et . . . et . . . et . . . et . . . et) followed 
by the long chain of negatives (29-32: nee . . . nee . . . nee . . . nee . . . 
nee) is closely mirrored in the similar progression in IV. 15. 4 ff. (et ... 
et ... et ... et ... et . . . et ... et) and 17 ff. {non . . . non . . . 
non . . . non . . . non . . . non). Horace's anguished prayers at the 
beginning of IV. 1 (parce precor, precor, 2) are recalled by his joyful prayers 
at the end of IV. 15 (cf. apprecati, 28), the song in which he has no part in 
IV. 1 (22-24) by the song in which he is central at the close of IV. 15. 

These and similar links between IV. 1 and IV. 15 not only enclose the 
collection in two neatly joined poems but also call our attention to the gulf 
between these poems, to how far from IV. 1 we have progressed by the time 
we reach IV. 15. I have suggested above that this movement is one from 
separation to union, from war to peace and poetry, from loss to possession, 
and it is this movement in its many ramifications that provides the basic 
rhythm for Book IV and for its inner components. 

We begin with the progression from separation to union. IV. 1 is 
above all a poem of separation, even of alienation. We have already cited 
the lines that evoke Horace's sense of separation most poignantly, but they 
are worth repeating as they sound a central theme of the poem (IV. 1. 29- 
32): 

me nee femina nee puer 
iam nee spes animi credula mutui 

nee eertare iuvat mero 
nee vincire novis tempora floribus. 

The separations that lie behind these words are manifold — Horace from 
Ligurinus, that youth to whom he is attracted but from whom he feels so 
hopelessly isolated (33-40); Horace from Paullus, the young man whom in 
this poem he commends to Venus with only half-masked envy (10-28); 
Horace from the youths whose blandae preces (8) Horace implicitly contrasts 
with his own loss of eloquence (cf. 35-36); Horace from Cinara, the woman 
who had recently died and whom Horace mentions several times, always 
with feeUng, in his late poems.'* Even to Venus herself, the embodiment of 
love and, on another level, of lyric poetry, Horace can only say abi — go 
away (7). 

By the time we reach IV. 15, in contrast, all is togetherness. The final 
scene (25-32) unites young and old, man and god, the ancient and the new, 

"The other mentions of Cinara are in IV. 13. 21-22 and in Epistles I. 7. 28 and I. 14. 33. 



David H. Porter 101 

male and female, in joyous communal song and festivity; there is no hint of 
the barriers that isolated Horace so completely in IV. 1. In place of the obi 
of IV. 1 we find Horace in IV. 15 celebrating return — the return of peace (8- 
9), the return of crops to the fields and of the Roman signa from the 
Parthians (4-8), the return of Rome to older and better moral standards (9- 
14), and, implicitly, the return of Augustus to Rome. For it is important 
to remember that behind the metaphorical separations referred to in IV. 1 and 
elsewhere in the book there are numerous literal separations which also cast 
their shadow on Book IV, whether or not they find explicit expression in it 
Augustus' absence from Rome in the years immediately preceding the 
publication of Book IV is openly and emphatically mentioned in IV. 2. 33 
ff. and IV. 5. 1 ff.; it is surely one of the separations that haunted Horace 
during this period, and just as surely Augustus' return in 13 B.C. Ues behind 
the fulfilled joy of IV. 15 and its profusion of words of return. Book IV 
thus moves not only from a mood of separation and alienation in the 
beginning to one of union at the end but also from the Uteral separation of 
Augustus from Rome lamented in IV. 2 and IV. 5 to a celebration of his 
return in IV. 15. 

Other literal separations also probably helped shape Book IV. Vergil, 
the poet whom Horace had once called "the half of my soul" (I. 3. 8) and 
with whom he had shared a long and fruitful personal and professional 
friendship, had died in 19 B.C. Another poet friend, TibuUus, had also died 
recently, as had Cinara, or what she represented (cf. IV. 13. 21-23). In 
addition, it seems that in the period following 23 B.C. there had been at least 
some tensions of a fairly serious sort between Horace and his patron, 
Maecenas; and we know that as a result of the Murena affair in 22 B.C. there 
had been a break in the erstwhile complete confidence of Augustus in 
Maecenas. From these separations there could be no complete recovery, no 
literal return which, like Augustus' return to Rome, would fully restore 
what had been lost. But several of the poems toward the end of the book 
strongly suggest some sense of healing. Horace's poem to Maecenas, IV. 
11, certainly bespeaks warm reunion as well as underlying sadness, and his 
poem to Vergil, as I have suggested elsewhere, seems best interpreted as a 
recreation in immortal verse of the easy and close friendship which the poets 
had formerly shared.^ And while IV. 15, like IV. 1, does not explicitly 
mention Maecenas or Vergil, it is significant that the song on which Book 
IV ends is one with decidedly Vergilian overtones and that, almost alone of 
Book IV, this final poem carries no reference to the ultimate separation of 
death. 

In mentioning background events behind Book IV I am not suggesting 
that the movement of the book is a literal recreation of Horace's emotional 
history during these years. We cannot know what part the deaths of Vergil 

^Classical Bulletin 49 (1973). 57-61; also La/omu5 31 (1972), 87. 



102 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

and Tibullus, the problems with Maecenas, the absence of Augustus from 
Rome played in the actual creation of Book IV; still less can we know 
whether Horace himself went through an emotional crisis in which he 
moved from a sense of lonely separation to one of fulfilled participation, or, 
if he did, what brought about the sense of restoration. What we do know is 
that in Book IV itself there is a clear progression from one mood to the 
other, and we shall see later that this progression finds reflections and 
extensions in many other aspects of the book as well. We can surmise from 
the mixture of sadness and joy, separation and reunion, in IV. 11 and 12 
something of Horace's thoughts concerning Maecenas and Vergil at this 
time, possibly even something of the progression of those thoughts; we 
have fairly clear indications in the book itself of what Horace felt about 
Cinara's death and about Augustus' absence and return; we know that in 
Epistles I Horace explicitly suggests that his days as a lyric poet are over (I. 
1. 1-12), and IV. 6 seems to suggest that the choice of Horace to compose 
the Carmen Saeculare in 17 B.C. may have been a critical step on the road to 
a renewed sense of poetic and personal vitality. In the end, however, these 
matters remain largely in the realm of surmise; what we must hold to is the 
certainty that in Book IV Horace has, for whatever reasons and from 
whatever sources, created a clear and emotionally compelling rhythm that 
carries us from alienated loneliness to joyful sharing. 

The movement from isolation to togetherness finds a clear analogue and 
extension in the movement from war and violence to peace and harmony. 
We have already drawn attention to the stress on war at the start of IV. 1 and 
to the stress on peace and poetry in IV. 15. We should add that the warlike 
beginning of IV. 1 is sustained in the military language of lines 1 ff., 16 
ff., and 38 ff., and that the peaceful character of IV. 15 is extended not only 
in the emphasis throughout on the peaceful rather than the military 
accomplishments of Augustus but also in the suggestion that universal 
peace will now reign — the separations between Roman and Roman, between 
Roman and barbarian, like the separations between the poet and those around 
him, will now heal (17-24). Furthermore, in IV. 1 Horace explicitly 
emphasizes his distance from song: it is the youths whose prayers are 
blandae (8), Paullus who is non tacitus (14), while of himself Horace says 
(IV. 1. 35-36): 

cur facunda parum decoro 
inter verba cadit lingua silentio? 

It is a dramatically different Horace who begins IV. 15 by describing himself 
as volentem proelia me loqui (1) and ends it with the word canemus (32). 
And the goddess driving new wars on a resisting Horace in IV. 1 . 1 ff. is 
replaced by a god checking Horace from even singing of wars in IV. 15. 1 
ff., the saeva Venus of IV. 1. 5 by the alma Venus of IV. 15. 31-32. 

In connection with the book's progression from war to peace and poetry 
it is worth mentioning again the possible significance of the historical 



David H. Porter 103 

background. We have already noted that the years 20 to 13 B.C. saw Horace 
move from the renunciation to the resumption of lyric poetry. The later 
years of this same period witnessed also a progression from war toward 
peace. Following the defeat of Lollius in 16 B.C. Augustus' stepsons and 
eventually Augustus himself became actively involved in the German 
campaign, an involvement which is clearly mentioned in Book IV and about 
which Horace apparently felt considerable anxiety. Augustus returned in 13 
B.C., and though actual peace was not to come for a time to the northern 
frontiers, his return was celebrated by the erection of the Ara Pads. Again 
it is only a conjecture, though seemingly a likely one, that this historical 
progression from war toward peace in 16 to 13 B.C. played some part in 
shaping the clearly parallel movement of the book of poetry which Horace 
was composing during these years. Again, however, what matters and what 
is certain, as our subsequent analysis will demonstrate, is the poetic 
progression from war to peace within Book IV itself. 

We have mentioned a third movement also, that from loss to 
attainment, from death to new life. To this movement we shall return later 
in some detail. For now, suffice it to say that IV. 1 looks back to what 
Horace has lost (non sum qualis eram) and that in particular the mention of 
Cinara reminds us of the ultimate separation of death, a separation which 
hangs heavy over many other poems of Book IV; and that IV. 15, in 
contrast, emphasizes what Horace still has, looks resolutely and with 
seeming joy toward the future, and says not a word about death. 

Between the outside poems of Book IV we can thus see several clear and 
related movements: from alienation and separation to union and 
participation, from war to peace and poetry, from loss and the shadow of 
death to recovery and joy in continued life. What do the thirteen intervening 
poems contribute to this progression from IV. 1 to IV. 15? 

Clearly there is no gradual or steady progression along any one front. 
By the time we get to IV. 8 and 9, the theme of poetry is sounding loud and 
clear, and in the same poems the threat of death has yielded to the promise 
of poetic immortality. Similarly, the alienation of Horace in IV. 1 is 
clearly breaking down by the time we come to IV. 5 and 6. On the other 
side, however, there is something of a progression in the fact that not until 
we reach IV. 15 do we complete the movement toward peace, poetry, 
harmony, life; in all of the intervening poems something of the war, the 
separation, the death of IV. 1 remains, albeit in differing degrees. If the 
progression from IV. 1 to IV. 15 is thus in no way steady, at least it reaches 
its TeXoq, its complete fulfilment, only in IV. 15; the remaining poems are 
at best only intermediate stages toward this fulfilment, stages arranged, to be 
sure, in no precisely graded order, but stages that always retain something of 
the darkness of IV. 1. 

In IV. 2, for instance, Horace's sense of separation from other persons 
and from poetry is beginning to break down (see especially 27 ff., 45 ff., 49 
ff.), and mention is made of Augustus' return and of the peace associated 



104 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

with him (33 ff., 37 ff.); on the other hand, however, war and violence still 
loom large (5 ff., 13-24, 34 ff.), death is emphatically mentioned at 21-24 
and 53-60 (cf. also 1 ff.), and the focus of the whole poem is on the gulfs 
that divide Horace from Pindar and from Antonius, gulfs which surely recall 
the central contrast in IV. 1 between Horace and Paullus. In addition, the 
poem ends on a strong note of separation — not only the separation of 
Horace from Antonius (te . . . me, 53-54) but also the poignantly described 
separation- in-death of the young animal from its mother (IV. 2. 54-60): 

me tener solvet vitulus, relicta 
matre qui largis iuvenescit herbis 

in mea vota, 
fronte curvatos imitatus ignis 
tertium lunae referentis ortum, 
qua notam duxit, niveus videri, 
cetera fulvus. 

IV. 3 suggests Horace's sense of poetic power and achievement, but there 
remain many hints of separation: the distinctions, sharply drawn, between 
Horace and other men (3-9); the reference to the envy, diminished but still 
present (16), which Horace had so keenly felt and which had divided him 
from others; the definition of his poetic acceptance in terms of the fingers 
that now point him out as someone different (22-23), a far cry from the 
communal poetry in which Horace participates at the end of IV. 15. IV. 4 
may celebrate the union of god and man (74 ff., cf. 1 ff.), of father and 
stepson (27 ff.), of new and old (37 ff.), but the poem is dominated by war, 
war from which Horace stands noticeably apart and which he describes in the 
most violent terms (note especially 9-16, 50 ff., 59 ff.). The poem may 
speak of new life out of old (39 ff., 53 ff.), but we retain more its 
ubiquitous images of death, destruction, and separation (note especially the 
sharp division drawn between Roman and barbarian [cf. IV. 15. 21 ff.], the 
poignant description of the young animal about to be torn from its mother 
[13 ff. — cf. IV. 2. 54 ff.], and the mention of Ganymede at 4). IV. 5 goes 
far toward stressing the union of Horace with other Romans in praise of 
Augustus and the precedence of Augustus' peaceful accomplishments over 
his military (17 ff.), and in these respects it is very similar to IV. 15; it 
differs from IV. 15, however, in that perhaps its most memorable passage 
deals not with union but with separation (IV. 5. 9-16): 

ut mater iuvenem, quern Notus invido 
flatu Carpathii trans maris aequora 
cunctantem spatio longius annuo 

dulci distinct a domo, 
votis ominibusque et precibus vocat, 
curvo nee faciem litore dimovet: 
sic desideriis icta fidelibus 

quaerit patria Caesarem. 



David H. Porter 105 

The joyful union envisioned at the end of IV. 5 thus remains only a vision, 
a hope shadowed by the separation, the pain, the longing, and the sense of 
distance evoked by these beautiful lines.^ IV. 6, standing near the center of 
the collection, is literally split down the middle by the movement that 
characterizes the book as a whole. In its first twenty lines we have war, 
violence, death, and separation; in its final twenty, gentleness, new life, and, 
above all, poetry (the central four lines, 21-24, provide a deft transition 
between the contrasting outer panels). The Apollo of the second half is 
similar to the Apollo at the beginning of IV. 15, the Horace at the end of 
IV. 6, happily directing his young singers, similar to the Horace at the end 
of IV. 15. But how different is the violent Apollo at the start of IV. 6; and 
how different from the peaceful world of the final twenty-four lines is the 
hell that gapes in its first twenty! IV. 7 sings of springtime and the return 
of new life in the world of nature, but it emphasizes that for man there is no 
second springtime, no return, only the final separation; and while it ends on 
a note of friendship — man for man, goddess for man, it is of friendship that 
fails to overcome death and separation (IV. 7. 25-28): 

infemis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum 

liberal Hippolytum, 
nee Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro 

vincula Perithoo. 

IV. 8 and IV. 9 emphasize poetry and its ability to confer what IV. 7 
denies — a second springtime to man. Both poems, however, contain ample 
reminders of war, of violence, of separation, of death — see, for example, 8. 
13 ff., 17 ff., 22 ff.; 9. 13 ff., 25 ff. In addition, Horace in IV. 8, as in IV. 
3, describes his poetic vocation in terms that emphasize the differences 
between him and other men (1-12), and again he explicitly alludes to the 
dividing force mentioned in IV. 3. 16 — invidia (23-24; cf. the allusion to 
the same force in the lividas obliviones of IV. 9. 33-34). Moreover, behind 
the whole of IV. 9 one senses inescapably the separations that had resulted 
from Lx)llius' military defeat in 16 B.C. LoUius' defeat probably contributed 
to the entry of Drusus, Tiberius, and eventually Augustus himself into the 
war, a fact to which the placement of IV. 9 exactly midway between IV. 4 
and IV. 14 may well be related. Horace tactfully does not refer in IV. 9 to 
the anguish and the isolation that Lollius must have suffered during the 
years following his defeat, but the emphasis on inner qualities and on 
steadfast courage in the face of a hostile world (note especially 43^4) 
certainly reveals the poet's awareness of what Lollius was enduring. The 
mixture of separation with union, death with life, in IV. 10-13 is too 
obvious to require much comment. IV. 10 and IV. 13 both begin by 
emphasizing Horace's vindictive sense of standing apart from Ligurinus and 

^Note also the poignant abes iam nimium diu of line 2 and the subjunctives of lines 25 ff. 
(cf. the more certain futures in the similar passage at IV. 15. 17 ff.). 



106 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Lyce and enjoying their suffering, but both move from this separation to a 
sense of sharing and of sympathy; IV, 1 1 and IV. 12 look forward to shared 
joys, to the renewed springtime of song, but both do so with numerous 
reminders of separation (e.g., 11. 21 ff., 25 ff., 29 ff.; 12. 5 ff., 26 ff.), 
death (11. 6 ff., 25 ff.; 12. 5 ff.), and violence (11. 25 ff., cf. the military 
language of 21-24; 12. 5 ff.). And, as we have seen, behind IV. 11 may 
well lie the tensions that had divided Horace from Maecenas, behind IV. 12 
almost certainly is the fact of Vergil's death in 19 B.C. Finally, IV. 14, like 
IV. 4, balances its hints of togetherness, peace, and immortality against 
strong descriptions of the violence of war (see especially 9 ff., 18 ff., 25- 
32) and of the divisions between man and man (Roman vs. foreigner in the 
whole first section, cf. 41 ff. and 15. 21 ff.) and between man and nature (25 
ff.). 

One aspect of the larger movement of Book IV, then, is the way in 
which the book moves ahead on different fronts from poem to poem, 
advancing on this front in one poem, that in another, always progressing 
toward the full and concerted resolutions of IV. 15 but never quite reaching 
them until the final poem. There are other ways too in which the individual 
poems contribute to — and reflect — the overall movement of the book. For 
one thing, just as the inner components of a Greek tragedy often "imitate" 
the movement of the whole play,^ so each poem of Book IV reflects one or 
more of the larger rhythms of Book IV. 

IV. 1, for instance, itself contains clear hints of these basic rhythms. 
At the beginning all is war, separation, loss, and Horace wishes for nothing 
more than to be uninvolved (abi, 7). At the end he remains isolated, but he 
now longs for Ligurinus and for the eloquence he once had; he now dreams 
of the human companionship and love he has just abjured (29-30). In most 
of IV. 2 the emphasis is on Horace's distance from Pindar and from 
Antonius: how different from him they are, how much greater than his is 
their poetry. But at the center of the poem Horace explicitly places his 
poetry beside Pindar's (27-32), and at the end he looks ahead to joining 
Antonius in shared celebration of Augustus' return. There is thus in each 
half of the poem a strong suggestion of the movement from separation to 
togetherness. Each half also suggests a movement from war and violence to 
peace: from the warlike and violent songs of Pindar (5-27; note especially 
12 ff., 21 ff.) we move to the gentle songs of Horace (27-32), from 
Antonius' praise of Augustus' deeds of war (33 ff.) to Rome's and Horace's 
celebration of his return (37 ff,). IV. 3 reflects the book's basic rhythm in a 
somewhat different way, and we shall return to it, and to IV. 7, 8, and 9, 
later. Although the basic rhythms of the book are present only faintly in 
IV. 4 itself (see below), there are clear reflections of Uiem in the progression 
from war in IV. 4 to peace and music in IV. 5, from Horace's aloof stance in 

'' Cf. my article, "Structural Parallelism in Greek Tragedy: A Preliminary Study," 
Transactions of the American Philological Association 102 (1971), 465-96. 



David H. Porter 107 

IV. 4 to his involved stance in IV. 5, from repeated mention of death in IV. 
4 to the anticipation of renewed life in IV. 5 (shadowed always, however, by 
lines 9-16). Furthermore, IV. 5 itself moves clearly from anguished 
awareness of separation (2, 9-16 — and we recall that the separation is caused 
by war) to blissful anticipation of reunion, from a memorable image of 
division (9-16) to a memorable vision of union in song (33^0). Of IV. 6 
we have akeady spoken, and little more need be said: its movement from 
war, violence, death, and separation in the first twenty lines to peace, 
harmony, new life, and union in the last twenty is too clear to require 
further comment. Of IV. 10 and IV. 13 also we have perhaps already said 
what is relevant: both begin with Horace emphasizing his vindictive 
separation from Ligurinus and Lyce, but both then move from that stance to 
one of sympathy and shared sorrow. IV. 11 and IV. 12 by virtue of their 
very genre — invitations — ^move from an awareness of present separation to 
anticipation of union, and various aspects of each poem emphasize this 
movement. Both poems insert sharp reminders of death near their 
beginnings (11. 6-8; 12. 5-8), and lines 21 ff. of 11 remind us of the 
separations Phyllis has suffered, lines 14-24 of 12 of the present separation 
of Vergil and Horace. It is from these reminders of death and division that 
we progress to the pictures of union with which both poems end. Finally, 
in IV, 14 there is a clear movement from the largely warlike achievements 
celebrated in the first 34 lines to the largely peaceful vision of the last 18; 
there is also a shift, analogous to that from IV. 4 to IV. 5, from an 
emphasis on war in IV. 14 as a whole to an emphasis on peace and song in 
IV. 15, and from Horace's lack of explicit involvement in IV. 14 to his very 
involved stance in IV. 15. 

This survey has concentrated on reflections that are largely coterminous 
with individual poems. One could also find similar reflections on both a 
larger and a smaller scale. Thus, for example, there is in the first triad of 
the book a clear progression along the lines we have suggested — from 
almost total isolation in IV. 1 to almost complete acceptance in IV. 3, with 
IV. 2 standing as a midway point in which Horace keenly feels the 
differences that divide him from others but also clearly senses ways in which 
he can share and participate. On a smaller scale we have already mentioned 
the movements of the two halves of IV. 2, and a little later in this 
discussion we shall see that several poems are structurally analogous to IV. 
2. 

For now, however, I wish briefly to mention several extensions of the 
movements we have been studying. First, in both the book as a whole and 
in a number of its individual poems there is a clear progression from what 
others do and have to what Horace does and has, from the world outside to 
the world inside. Thus in both IV. 3 and IV. 8 Horace begins with a 
catalogue of others' occupations or habits only to come around in the end to 
his own, and the movements in IV. 1 from Paullus (9 ff.) to Horace (29 ff.), 
in IV. 2 from Pindar (1 ff.) to Horace (27 ff.) and from Antonius (33 ff.) to 



108 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Horace (45 ff.), and in IV. 9 from other poets and their subjects (5 ff.) to 
Horace and his subject (30 ff.) are clearly analogous. Similarly, in IV. 7 
and 12 Horace begins with descriptions of the world at large only to move 
from there to himself and his intimate friends. The movements of IV. 6 
(Apollo in relation to others [1 ff.] -» Apollo in relation to Horace [29 ff.]) 
and IV. 1 1 (description of house [1 ff.] -» Horace and his friends [13 ff.]) are 
again analogous, and there are clear hints of the same progression in and 
between several other poems. In this repeated movement from others and 
the external world to Horace and his world there is an obvious extension of 
the movements from separation to union, from isolation to participation, 
which we have found at so many levels of the book. 

Another obviously related extension is the movement, again found in 
and between many poems, from a sense of poverty, even impotence — what I 
don't have, what I can't do — to a sense of wealth and power — what I do 
have, what I can do. Near the start of IV. 1 Horace sings of what he has 
lost — non sum qualis eram (3); at the end his theme is much the same — he 
no longer has his former eloquence (35-36), and only in his dreams can he 
grasp his beloved (37-38); in between he sings of what others have and 
what he lacks (9-32). By contrast, IV. 15 begins with the poet so caught 
up by his subject that the god himself must check him (1 ff.) and ends with 
him surrounded by the munera Liberi (26) and pouring forth with others his 
abundant song of praise; in between the poem sings of the bounties in 
which Horace fully shares. The same progression is present in many of the 
individual poems as well. In IV. 2, for instance, Horace moves from 
extravagant and self-deprecatory praise of the rich talents of Pindar and 
Antonius to modest statements of what he himself has (27 ff., 45 ff.), in 
IV. 3 from vivid description of the deeds that are not his to forthright 
mention of the accomplishments that are, in IV. 8 from the gifts he would 
give if he were rich (1 ff.) to the gifts he can and does give (1 1 ff.). IV. 5 
clearly moves from an image of loss and deprivation (9 ff.) to a vision of 
plenty (17 ff.), IV. 6 from scenes of taking away (1-20) to scenes of giving 
(21^4, especially 29 ff.), the concluding portions of IV. 11 and IV. 12 
from a sense of what has been lost (11.21 ff.; 12. 19 ff.) to a sense of what 
remains (11. 31-36; 12. 27-28). 

Implicit in both the progressions we have just examined is the 
movement from external to internal — from what others have (usually 
externals) to what Horace has (especially his inner gifts), from the world 
"out there" to the world inside a person, from the physical to the spiritual. 
This last progression is obviously present in poems such as IV. 3 and IV. 
8, but there are clear traces also in other poems and groups of poems. Thus 
we move in IV. 4-5 and 14-15 from the physical triumphs of Drusus and 
Tiberius to the largely spiritual and moral accomplishments of Augustus; in 
IV. 9 from the military accomplishments mentioned in the first half (17 ff.) 
to the more inner qualities su-essed in the second half (34 ff.); in IV. 1 from 
Paullus' material possessions (9 ff.) to Horace's inner feelings (33 ff.); in 



David H. Porter 109 

IV. 1 1 from the description of material preparations in the house to the 
inner joys promised at the end; in IV. 2 from the extravagant and showy 
brilliance of Pindar and Antonius to the quiet inwardness of Horace's poetry 
and sacrifice; and in IV. 6 from Apollo the doer of visible deeds of war to 
Apollo the giver of inner qualities (IV. 6. 29-30): 

spiritum Phoebus mihi, Phoebus artem 
carminis nomenque dedit poetae. 

The final two examples, and to a lesser degree many of the others as 
well, remind us of one other related progression within the book, one best 
defined in the technical terms of poetry: from the grande to the tenue. 
These words, whose technical significance goes back to the Alexandrians and 
especially to Callimachus (with tenue the Latin equivalent of the Greek 
Xektov), refer not just to the size but also to the spirit of poetry. They 
embody a tension between that which is grandiose and sprawling and that 
which is compact and tightly knit, between that which is powerful and 
unrestrained and that which is less imposing but more refined, between that 
which is external and obvious and that which is internal and subtle. That 
Horace, like most poets of his time, follows Callimachus' preference for the 
tenue, is clear from many of his poems^ and not least from Book IV itself. 
For in this book he constantly moves from the large to the compact, the 
violently rushing to the gently flowing, the conspicuous to the 
unassuming, and always he associates himself with the latter qualities. This 
movement from the grande to the tenue is perhaps most apparent in IV. 2 as 
we move from the swan-like, grandiose, torrential verse of Pindar to the bee- 
like, modest, gently-flowing verse of Horace, from the lofty epic poetry in 
which Antonius will celebrate Augustus to the simple but exquisitely 
described offering of Horace. But the movement is clearly present also in 
IV. 1, IV. 3, IV. 6, and IV. 8, and there are sure traces of it in other poems 
as well. We see it unmistakably in the movement from IV. 4 and 14 
(violent deeds described in long, grandiloquent, Pindaric poems) to IV. 5 and 
15 (peaceful deeds described in shorter, simpler, more Horatian poems); and 
the movements from the lengthy and Pindaric IV. 2 and IV. 9 to the short 
and personal IV. 3 and IV. 10 represent yet further variations. Furthermore, 
in the book as a whole we move from an average length of forty-five lines 
in the first seven poems to an average length of thirty-five lines in the last 
seven — a significant, if subliminal, embodiment of the movement from the 
grande to the tenue. 

* Among the relevant passages are I. 6. 9, II. 16. 37-40, and Epistles H. 1. 225; cf. also HI. 
3. 69-72 and Satires E. 6. 13-15. For a useful summary, see J. V. Cody, Horace and 
Callimachean Aesthetics (Bmssels 1976). pp. 9 ff.; also Commager, Odes of Horace , pp. 37 ff. 
On Callimachus and Latin poetry, see also W. Wimmel, KalUmachos in Rom. Die Nachfolge 
seines apologetischen Dichtens in der Augusleerzeit (Wiesbaden 1960); W. Clausen, 
"Callimachus and Latin Poetry," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 5 (1964), 181-96; J. K. 
Newman, Augustus and the New Poetry (Brussels 1967). 



1 10 Illinois Classical Studies. XII. 1 

Two final comments on this movement. First, one of its subtlest 
manifestations comes in the contrast between the opening lines of IV. 1 and 
2 and those of IV. 15. IV. 15 begins with a passage that immediately 
recalls the whole technical tradition surrounding the tenue: Apollo's 
warning to Horace (IV. 15. 1 ff.) not to embark on the seas of epic poetry 
and epic subjects has analogues not only in Callimachus himself but also in 
numerous Latin poets working in the Calhmachean tradition. In contrast to 
these fenwe-related words stand the grande-rclatod openings of IV. 1 and IV, 
2. IV. 1 begins with Venus driving new wars upon the poet — 
metaphorically, just the subject from which Apollo restrains Horace at the 
start of IV. 15. IV. 2 begins explicitly with the poet who, like Icarus, 
foolishly hazards flight over the vast seas of Pindaric poetry — an image 
obviously related to Apollo's warning to Horace in IV. 15 not to set sail on 
the treacherous waters of epic poetry. The movement of imagery from IV. 1 
and IV. 2 to IV. 15 thus further weaves into the book the movement from 
the grande to the tenue. 

Second, that the book's movement is consistently from the grande to 
the tenue and that Horace consistently associates himself with the latter 
must and should color our interpretation of those poems and those persons 
that carry overtones of the grande. The obvious preference for and 
movement toward the tenue must certainly, for instance, support those 
critics who have found an undercurrent of distaste in the Pindaric IV. 4 and 
IV, 14 and those who have detected irony in Horace's extravagant praise of 
Pindar and Antonius in IV. 2.' Indeed, Horace's rejection of the grande as 
unsuitable for himself in IV. 2 provides the necessary clue to the proper 
interpretation of IV. 4 and IV. 14. In IV. 2 he explicitly says that the 
soaring flight and rushing torrent of Pindar are not for him. Is this not a 
clear (if necessarily subtle) indication of how we are to respond to his 
obviously Pindaric descriptions of the soaring Drusan eagle in IV. 4 and the 
flooding Tiberian river in IV. 14? And as if to underline the point, he 
begins IV. 15 by having Apollo himself remind the poet that the singing of 
wars is not for him. 

We have come some distance from the rather external movements — 
separation to union, war to peace — with which we began, but I trust that the 
close relationships between the different movements we have considered are 
apparent. The progression from the grande to the tenue is obviously 
analogous to that from war and violence to peace and poetry, and the 
progression from what others do and have to what the poet does and has is 

' See, e.g., on IV. 2: W. R. Johnson, "The Boastful Bird: Notes on Horatian Modesty," 
ClassicalJournal 61 (1965-66), 274; P. L. Smith, "Poetic Tensions in the Horatian Recusatio," 
American Journal of Philology 89 (1968), 62-65. On IV. 4: K. J. Reckford, "The Eagle and 
the Tree (Horace, Odes, 4.4)," ClassicalJournal 56 (1960-61), 23-28; W. R. Johnson, "Tact in 
the Dnisus Ode: Horace, Odes 4.4," California Studies in Classical Antiquity (1969), 171-81. 
On rV. 14: L. P. WQkinson, Horace and his Lyric Poetry (Cambridge 1946), p. 86; N. E. 
Collinge, The Structure of Horace's Odes (London 1961), p. 75, note 2. 



David H. Porter 111 

as clearly analogous to that from isolation to participation. It remains to 
consider one final extension, one that involves the movement of the book as 
a whole. One senses in Book IV a Horace who is not only separated from 
other persons but who is also divided within himself. There are, for 
instance, strong hints of inner division between the aging man, all too 
aware of time's passing and death's approach, and the increasingly revered 
national poet whose composition of the Carmen Saeculare in 17 B.C. had in 
a way marked the summit of his career. One feels also a split between 
Horace the private citizen and Horace the national poet, and in the latter role 
a split between the Horace who wholeheartedly praises Augustus and the 
Augustan peace and the Horace who finds it less easy to praise the military 
victories of Drusus and Tiberius. The book also suggests a haunting gulf in 
Horace's own mind between what he once was and what he is now — non 
sum qualis eram. The very structure of the book seems to articulate these 
inner separations. At one moment Horace speaks in one role, at the next in 
another, at the next in yet another, and the rapid shifts seem merely the 
reflection of his inner fragmentation. But from these suggestions of inner 
division we move again to a sense of harmony at the end: in IV. 15 the 
many roles Horace has played seem mysteriously to coalesce, the inner 
tensions to vanish. He speaks at once as private citizen and public figure, 
as poet and lover (his last song, like his first in Book IV, is of Venus), as a 
person who happily watches past flow into present and present into future. 
It is tempting to see behind Book IV not only an experience of loneliness 
and alienation broken at last by a renewed sense of acceptance and 
participation but also a time of self-doubt, turmoil, division, yielding at last 
to a fresh awareness of personal worth, integration, and direction. One could 
no doubt find evidence in Epistles I for such an interpretation, and Book IV 
itself would seem to offer further support. We must, however, again rest 
content with what we actually have in Book IV itself — a poetic creation that 
at every level suggests not only a progression from war, violence, and death 
to peace, poetry, and life, not only a movement from the outward to the 
inward, from others to oneself, from the grande to the tenue, but also a 
healing spiritual journey from inner conflict and division to inner peace. 

III. Parallelism of Form in the Odes of Book IV 

Given the extensive parallelism of thematic and emotional movement that 
we have found in Book IV, it is scarcely surprising also to find a high 
degree of parallelism of form between the poems of the book. We begin 
with IV. 2 and IV. 4, two poems whose formal parallehsm is striking. Each 
begins with a long opening section of highly Pindaric character (2. 1-27; 4. 
1-28). Both of these opening sections contain multiple similes that 
emphasize the bursting energy and the violent sweep of their subjects, both 
involve soaring flight, death, and miUtary achievement, and both lead into a 
decrescendo to a gentler subject— to Horace's quiet verse in 2. 27-32, to the 



1 12 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

moral influence of Augustus on his stepsons in 4. 29-36 (especially 33 ff.). 
Following these initial sections both poems take off anew on subjects akin 
to their opening themes — in IV. 2, on Antonius' poem in praise of 
Augustus' military victories (cf. Pindar's poetry), in IV. 4, on the praise of 
the earlier military victories of the Nerones (cf. the victories of Drusus). 
Each of these second sections looks back in time (2. 37-40; 4. 37 ff.), each 
deals with the great leaders of Rome (Caesarem, 2. 34; Neronibus, 4. 37), 
each speaks of the light these leaders have brought out of darkness (2. 46- 
47; 4. 39^1),'° and each again leads around to a somewhat quieter close 
tinged by melancholy for a victim (2. 54-60; 4. 70-76). We note, of 
course, in this two-fold movement of both poems a double reflection of the 
book's frequent movement from violence to gentleness, war to peace, the 
grande to the tenue. 

Closely akin in structure to these two poems are IV. 6 and IV. 9. Each 
of these again falls roughly into two sections, and in each both sections 
contain at least a hint of the falling or decrescendo movement we have 
noticed in the two halves of IV. 2 and IV. 4. IV. 6, like IV. 2 and IV. 4, 
begins with war and violence (1-20) but from there moves to the gentleness 
and peace of lines 21-24. After starting again in a lofty vein but on a 
different topic, poetry (25 ff.), it again moves from there to a conclusion 
which is intimate and which, like the conclusion of IV. 2, alludes to the 
passing of time (41^4).^^ IV. 9, after its introductory stanza, moves from 
an elaborate and rhetorical description of earlier poets and their subjects 
(often warlike: 5-30) to a gentle close which, like the end of the first half 
of IV. 2, focuses on Horace's own poetry (30-34). Its second half deals 
with a different subject, Lollius, and moves from description of his moral 
qualities to a close which has some of the pathos of the end of IV. 2 (51- 
52). 

IV. 3 can be seen as a miniature version of IV. 2. It begins, after an 
introductory couplet, with a single long and elaborate sentence describing 
what Horace is not (3-9: cf. the description of Pindar in IV. 2. 5-27, again 
preceded by a brief introduction, lines 1-4), then ends the first half with a 
lovely and gentle description of what Horace is (10-12), a description that is 
strikingly reminiscent in word and tone of the passage that ends die first half 
of IV. 2 (27-32). And the second half of the poem, as in IV. 2. 33-60, 
moves from a lofty evocation of poetic achievement (13 ff.) to a humble and 
gentle close (24). 

A second, obviously related structural pattern that is found in several 
poems of Book IV is most clearly seen in IV. 7. In this poem, twelve 
opening lines of description are followed by sixteen lines which place man's 
lot against that background and emphasize the darkness of human life — 

'°Cf. alsopulcher. . . Ule dies (TV. 4. 39^0) with laetosque dies (TV. 2. 41). 
" See IV. 2. 54-55, 57-58; the passing of time is similarly focal at the end of the first half 
of IV. 4 Oines 25-36, esp. 33-34). 



David H. Porter 113 

death, separation, the passing of time. The parallelism of IV. 12 to IV. 7 is 
so precise and so apparent as to obviate further comment, and Horace 
underlines the parallelism of the poems by making them the same length 
and by beginning them with strikingly similar descriptions of spring. IV. 
11 is also parallel: again there are twelve opening lines of description, and 
again the remainder of the poem sets human life against that description and 
emphasizes separation, loss, sorrow. And like IV. 7 and IV. 12, IV. 11 also 
holds out amidst the darkness at least a hint of light: Phyllis may find 
consolation in song (IV. 11. 35-36), as Vergil and Horace may in drink (IV. 
12. 19-20, 26-28), as Torquatus may in enjoying what he has while he can 
(IV. 7. 19-20). The parallelism of these three poems goes beyond even 
what we have mentioned. In all three, lines 13 ff., those lines immediately 
following the opening description, emphatically mention the passing of 
time; all three poems contain in their fifth to eighth lines strong hints of 
death and violence — foreshadowings of the darker tone of their concluding 
portions (see 7. 7-8, 11. 6-8, 12. 5-8); all three end with explicit mentions 
of darkness (7. 25, infernis . . . tenebris; 11. 35-36, atrae. . . curae; 12. 26, 
nigrorum ... igniumy^ and with human companionship; and, most 
obviously, all three are spring poems which move from bright openings to 
shadowed conclusions. 

IV. 13 also adheres, though less obviously, to the same pattern. Again 
we begin with twelve lines describing the present situation, again we move 
from there to concluding stanzas which explore Lyce's and Horace's 
emotional reaction to the situation. The poem obviously does not start 
with spring, but its first three stanzas do contain seasonal imagery and, like 
the opening descriptions of the other three poems, do mix the dark with the 
light. Again the lines immediately following this opening description fix 
squarely on time's flow (13-16: cf. tempora in 12. 13 and 13. 14); again 
we meet fire amidst darkness in the final stanza (26-28), though the note of 
friendship is twisted here into the cruel friendship of Lyce's tormenters; and 
again the overall movement is from joy to shared sorrow over what has been 
lost.i3 

The structure of IV. 8 stands midway between that of IV. 3 and that of 
IV. 7. Its first twelve lines are closely parallel to the first twelve of IV. 3: 
lines 1-8, what others do (cf. IV. 3. 3-9); lines 9-12, what I do (cf. IV. 3. 
10-12). Like IV. 3 it then moves to a somewhat more general plane and 

^^In IV. 1 1 and 12 note also images of fire and warmth in the final sUnzas (11. 33-34; 12. 
26) and foreshadowing of their dark conclusions in lines 1 1-12 of each poem (cf. the fire image 
of IV. 11. 1 1-12, with its dark smoke, with the mood and imagery of the final stanza, the nigri 
colles of rV. 12. 1 1-12 with the nigrorum . . . ignium of line 26). 

'^IV. 10 is too short to display extensive parallelism with these others, but in its general 
movement from springtime to sadness and loss it is obviously parallel to IV. 7, 1 1, and 12, and 
its movement from derision to sympathy aligns it with IV. 13. Note how the joy at the start of 
rV. 11, 12, and 13 is in each case emphasized by anaphora {est. . . est . . .est'mW, iam . . . iam 
in 12, audivere, Lyce . . . audivere, Lyce in 13). 



1 1 4 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

ends, as does IV. 3, with the gods of poetry. With IV. 7, the poem it 
follows, IV. 8 shares a movement from the world "out there" (7. 1-12; 8. 
1-8) to "our world" — note the shift to first person plural at 7. 14 and 8. 11 
and the focus in the remainder of both poems on human mortality. But 
whereas IV. 7 emphasizes the certainty and permanence of death, IV. 8 
stresses the possibility of new and permanent life through poetry; and 
whereas IV. 7 ends on a reminder of divine and human impotence against 
death, IV. 8 ends on the opposite theme (IV. 8. 25-34): 

ereptum Stygiis fluctibus Aeacum 
virtus et favor et lingua potentium 
vatum divitibus consecrat insulis. 
dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori: 
caelo Musa beat, sic lovis interest 
optatis epulis impiger Hercules, 
clarum Tyndaridae sidus ab infimis 
quassas eripiunt aequoribus ratis, 
omatus viridi tempora pampino 
Liber vota bonos ducit ad exitus. 

Yet a third, again related, structural type appears in IV. 1, IV. 5, and 
IV. 15. The parallelism of 5 and 15 is striking at every point except the 
beginning. In 5. 17-32 we have four stanzas cataloguing Augustus' 
accomplishments, especially his peaceful accomplishments. Corresponding 
to these are five plus stanzas in 15 (4-24) containing a similar catalogue. 
Both catalogues begin with the newly productive fields (5. 17-18; 15. 4-5), 
both then mention the return of peace and morality (5. 19 ff.; 15. 8 ff.), and 
both move to a list of the foreign enemies whose threat is now diminished 
(5. 25-28; 15. 21-24). Finally, both poems end with two stanzas 
describing communal and convivial celebration of Augustus and the gods 
associated with him (5. 33^0; 15. 25-32). The poems are not parallel at 
their starts for a simple reason: IV. 5 opens with four stanzas in which the 
focus is on Augustus' absence from Rome. There is significantly no 
counterpart to these stanzas in IV. 15 — for by the time of that poem 
Augustus has returned. Instead, the memorable simile of the mother 
looking across the sea for her long-lost son (IV. 5. 9-14) is replaced by the 
related injunction to Horace not to set sail on the seas of military poetry — 
and we recall that it was wars that occasioned the absence of Augustus 
which Horace laments in IV. 5. Furthermore, the blissful but as yet 
unrealized vision of Augustus' return in IV. 5. 5 ff., with its imagery of 
sunlight and springtime, becomes reality in the literal return of the crops to 
the fields in the roughly corresponding lines of the last poem (IV. 15. 4- 

^* Cf. also the motif of light in the precisely corresponding lines of IV. 14 — Klines 5-6. 



David H.Porter 115 

The structural similarity of IV. 1 to these two poems is obvious, a 
similarity that binds them to each other despite their vast differences of tone 
and subject. IV. 1 begins with two stanzas of introduction (cf. 5. 1-16 and 
15. 1-4), follows with five stanzas describing the bounties of Paullus' 
house and way of life (cf. the bounties Augustus has brought in 5. 17-32 
and 15. 4-24; cf. also the polysyndeton in these lines of IV. 1 with that in 
IV. 15. 4 ff.), and concludes with stanzas indicating Horace's place with 
respect to that plenty (1. 29^0; cf. 5. 33-40 and 15. 25-32). We may note 
also that the pattern of all three poems, 1, 5, and 15, is similar to what we 
meet in the opening portions of 2 and 9: lengthy descriptions of what 
others do or have (2. 1-27; 9. 5-30) followed by a thoughtful indication of 
Horace's place relative to these descriptions. And this overall pattern, in 
turn, is quite similar to that which we find in the IV. 7, 11, 12, 13 group — 
external description followed by placing of selected individuals, including 
Horace, against that setting. 

We have omitted only IV. 14. Like IV. 8 it stands midway between 
different structural types. Its opening eight lines are strikingly similar to 
the opening of IV. 5 — mention of patres and citizens in the first stanza, 
association of Augustus with the sun in the second. Its subsequent 
movement from extravagant, Pindaric description of the warlike deeds of 
Tiberius (7-32) to an emphasis in the falling close on Augustus' 
contributions reminds one strongly of the similar movement in 4. 1-36, and 
its conclusion has much in common with 15. 4-24. We should, of course, 
be neither surprised nor dismayed that this poem fits no one structural 
type — or that the structural types of the book fall into several sub- 
categories. Instead, what must amaze us is that, given the extensive 
parallelism of the book and the similarities even among its sub-categories, 
its basic patterns are varied so skillfully that we are scarcely aware of just 
how parallel everything is! This variety within sameness is yet one more 
mark of Horace's artistry; it is also, we might add, a type of artistry 
frequently found among poets dedicated to the tenue. Like Mozart, Horace 
can use the same materials, the same patterns over and over again, and 
always the result will seem new, fresh, different: "always the same, but in a 
thousand different appearances."^^ 



^^ Anton Webem, Briefe an Hildegarde J one und Josef Humplik, ed. J. Polnauer (Vienna 
1959), p. 21 (a passage in which Webem, like Mozart a devotee of the tenue, is comparing his 
method of composition to the Parthenon frieze). Yet another manifestation of the parallelism of 
Book rV is the faa that in poem after poem anaphora and repetition, often involving the second 
person pronoun, appear in the final stanzas: e.g., cur . . . cur . . . cur, iam . . . iam, te per 
. . . te per in FV. 1; io Triumphe . . . to Triumphe in IV. 2; c . . .o, tut est ... tuum est in 
IV. 3; occidit, occidit in IV. 4; /« . . . te ... te, dicimus . . . dicimus in IV. 5; rite . . . rite in 
IV. 6; non . . . non te . . . nan te in IV. 7; cur. . . cur in IV. 10; quo . . . quo . . . quo, illius, 
illius, quae . . . quae in IV. 13; te seven times in IV. 14. 41-52; non six times in IV. 15. 17- 
24. 



116 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

IV. The Recurrent Motifs of Book IV 

We turn last to the recurrent motifs of Book IV. As mentioned earlier, I 
have elsewhere shown how these motifs underscore the basic themes of the 
book, emphasize the sharp contrasts between its different poems, and by 
their recurrence lend needed cohesion to the collection as a whole. These 
same motifs also reflect and support the basic movement of the book, our 
subject in this article, as the following brief survey will suggest. Since 
elsewhere I have dealt with these motifs at considerable length, here I shall 
limit myself to only the most striking examples. 

We have seen that one of the most significant aspects of Book IV is the 
way in which progressions begun in IV. 1 and reflected in many of the 
subsequent poems reach their complete fulfilment only in IV. 15. TTie same 
is true of the motifs. Motif after motif carries mixed associations, 
sometimes good, sometimes bad, in the first fourteen poems but appears 
with wholly positive associations in IV. 15. The motifs of Venus and of 
war, to start with those motifs that are prominent at the beginning of Book 
IV, are typical. In IV. 1 Venus represents all that Horace has lost, and 
while in IV. 6. 21 ff. she takes on more attractive connotations, in IV. 10, 
11, and 13 she is again associated with the losses time brings. In IV. 15, as 
we have noted, we end with a Venus who is alma and who is closely linked 
not only with Rome and Augustus but also with Horace and his poetry. 
Metaphorical wars begin in IV. 1, and many subsequent poems also bring in 
war, almost always in a destructive context; in IV. 15 this motif too reaches 
its xiXoc, — war at last is purged (8-9, 17-24). 

Other motifs behave in a similar fashion. Rivers and the sea, for 
instance, carry many different connotations in the first fourteen poems. In 
IV. 2 and 14 rivers are in violent flood, in IV. 3, 7, and 12 they are calm; in 
IV. 1 and 1 1 their flow suggests the flow of time, while at other places they 
are associated with poetry; the sea suggests danger and separation in IV. 2 
and IV. 5 — as well as also the Augustan peace in the latter poem (IV. 5. 
19). In IV. 15 these motifs also come to rest: Horace, at Apollo's bidding, 
will not set forth on the dangerous sea of poetry that celebrates war; and 
Augustus' peace includes even those who drink the distant Danube (21). 

Gifts are associated in several poems with what Horace is not (e.g., IV. 
1. 17-18; IV. 2. 19-20; IV. 8. 1 ff.; IV. 10. 1), elsewhere with his own 
poeuy (see especially IV. 8. 11-12). This motif too finds its conclusion in 
IV. 15 as Horace stands inter iocosi munera Liberi (26). This joyful 
passage is the culmination also of the wine motif, a motif that until this 
final appearance has similarly carried mixed associations. In IV. 1 wine is 
associated with what Horace has lost, in 5 with Rome's celebration of 
Augustus, at the end of 8 (in the person of Bacchus) with poetry, in 11, 12, 
and 13 largely with the passing of time and with poetry. The idea of time's 
passing, perhaps more a theme than a motif, itself carries mixed 
connotations in the first fourteen poems (for a sample of the range, compare 



David H. Porter 117 

the melancholy associations of this theme in IV. 5. 9 ff. and IV. 7. 14 ff., 
the mixed associations in IV. 2. 54 ff., the largely favorable associations in 
IV. 2. 37 ff., IV. 5. 6 ff., and IV. 6. 41 ff.), unambiguously favorable 
connotations in its final appearances in IV. 15 (4-5, 25-32). Similarly, the 
motif of return is tinged with melancholy and anxiety in many earlier poems 
(Will Augustus return safely? Why can't youthful beauty, like the spring in 
the cycle of the seasons, return to man? Does poetry alone offer such a 
return?), but is wholly joyous in IV. 15 (the return of crops to the fields, of 
the Roman standards from the Parthians, of the older morality, and, behind 
it all, of Augustus to Rome). While early poems suggest how easily 
family connections can be severed (e.g., 2. 21-24, 54-56; 4. 13-16; 9. 21- 
24; 12. 5-8), at the end of IV. 15 the family is soUdly together (27). The 
motif of song itself, which has connotations of joy and life in 2, 3, 6, 8, 
and 9, of loss and death in 1, 11, 12, and 13, reaches its culmination only in 
the canemus with which the book ends. Even the minor motif of horses and 
of riding (e.g., 1. 6-7; 4. 44; 6. 13; 11. 26-28; 14. 22-24) makes its final 
joyous appearance also in IV. 15 (IV. 15. 9-11): 

. . . et ordinem 
rectum evaganti frena licentiae 
iniecit. . . . 

Before turning in somewhat greater detail to one last motif, by no 
means the most prominent but perhaps the most characteristic of Book IV, 
let me make two comments. First, the fact that motif after motif moves 
from its many and varied manifestations in the earlier poems to a sure and 
unambiguous conclusion in IV. 15 is clearly one further extension of the 
overall movement we have been following. Just as the book at every level 
moves from separation to union, so its many recurrent motifs are physically 
and thematically divided from each other and within themselves in the first 
fourteen poems but all come together with unambivalently joyous 
connotations in the final poem. 

Second, the fact that the manifold parallelism of movement and 
structure comprehends even the minute verbal details of Book IV is further 
strong evidence that Book IV was written or at least revised with a clear 
view to its overall design, not, as some have suggested, hastily compiled 
from some new imperial poems and some leftover earlier pieces. 

We have suggested elsewhere that Horace's use of the motif of spring 
sums up Book IV's central tension between human mortality and poetic 
immortality.^^ The same motif also clearly reflects the movement on which 
we have concentrated in this article. We meet two different springtimes in 
Book IV. One is a violent, exuberant, youthful spring — the wild spring 
floods of IV. 2 (Pindar) and IV. 14 (Tiberius), the spring winds that teach 
the Drusan eagle its violent flight in IV. 4, the spring of Ligurinus in IV. 

^^ Classical Bulletin 49 (1973). 57-61, esp. 60. 



118 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

10. The other is a peaceful, restrained spring — the gentle spring of IV. 7 
and IV. 12, the spring to which Augustus is compared in IV. 5. 6, the 
springtime of Maecenas' birthday in IV. 1 1. 

The two springtimes of Book IV differ in time and placement as well as 
in character: the youthful spring always comes first, the mellow spring 
later. In actual time, the rushing, flooding springtime of IV. 2 and IV. 14, 
with the rivers still in flood, clearly precedes the gentler springtime of IV. 7 
and IV. 12, when the rivers have receded. More important, in the movement 
within the book the same order is preserved. The violent spring of IV. 4 is 
followed by the gentle spring of IV. 5 and IV. 7, the youthful spring of IV. 
10 by the more mature spring of IV. 1 1 (April — see 16) and IV. 12 (and 
then by the winter of IV. 13. 12). It is tempting also to see the violent 
early spring floods of IV. 2. 5 ff. yielding to a later springtime in IV. 3. 10 
ff.: certainly the gentle rivers there are strikingly similar to those that we 
meet in the late spring of IV. 7 (IV. 3. 10; IV. 7. 3-4): 

sed quae Tibur aquae fertile praefluunt 

mutat terra vices, et decrescentia ripas 
flumina praetereunt; 

In addition, I think we should see the violent spring floods of IV. 14 
yielding to a gentler spring in IV. 15. For what does IV. 15 describe if not 
the second spring of Rome, a notion reinforced throughout by the many re- 
compounds with their reminiscences of the similar re-compounds in IV. 7? 
Furthermore, it is in the second stanza that the crops return to the fields (cf. 
the ravaging of the fields by the spring floods of IV. 14), and we recall that 
it was in the second stanza of IV. 5 that the image of the Augustan spring 
burst forth, ushered in by the rc-compounds of lines 3-5. Given the 
extensive parallelism of the book and especially that between 5 and 15, this 
relationship is perhaps not accidental. 

Horace knows where he stands with respect to the two springtimes of 
Book IV. Before the rushing, early springtime of Pindar and Drusus and 
Tiberius he feels admiration and awe, and into the descriptions of Pindar 
there even creeps a note of envy, the same envy that Horace feels toward the 
still-burgeoning springtime of Ligurinus in IV. 10 (cf. the springtime 
image in IV. 13. 6). But Horace knows that this springtime is not his: not 
only does he no longer have the exuberance and the rushing vigor of life's 
first springtime, but also there is in that early springtime an element of 
violence, of unrestraint, with which he does not wish to associate himself. 
Instead, he embraces for himself the later, gentler, more mellow springtime 
of IV. 7 and IV. 12, of IV. 3 and IV. 5 and IV. 15. It is a springtime which 
in IV. 7 and 12 is heavy with the melancholy awareness of the swift passing 
of man's one spring but which is also filled with profound joy over the 
perpetual spring that poetry alone can grant. For the springtime of IV. 7 
and IV. 12 is strongly associated with Horace's poetry: as we have seen, it 



David H. Porter 119 

vividly recalls a passage in IV. 3 which describes the sources of his poetry, 
and it partakes of the same gentleness and restraint as that poetry. Horace 
thus turns away from the more violent springtime associated with Drusus 
and Tiberius and Pindar both because it is unattainable for him and also 
because in some respects it is alien to his temperament. 

From that lusty, youthful springtime he turns not only to the 
springtimes of IV. 7 and IV. 12 but also, in the end, to the sunshine of the 
Augustan spring. For if the spring of IV. 7, standing as it does at the center 
of the collection, above all suggests the tensions in Book IV between 
sadness and joy, death and poetic life, the spring of IV. 15 is that toward 
which Book IV moves and in which its tensions and divisions find a 
measure of repose. The springtime of IV. 15 is no ideal and eternal 
springtime of poetic immortality; rather, it is rooted firmly in the world and 
its realities, in the ongoing cycles of time with their alternation of birth and 
decay, in the pragmatism of political decisions, attempted moral renewals, 
and ritual observances; this springtime carries its reminders of human 
miseries as well as its hopes of human joys, and Horace describes it in full 
awareness that, like all creations made by and of humans, it is imperfect and 
doomed to die. But the springtime of IV. 15 is here and now, real and not 
metaphoric, present and not merely (as in IV. 5) hoped for, and that same 
Horace who so resisted Venus' renewed springtime of love and song in IV. 1 
is fully a part of it. 

The presence of alma Venus at the end of IV. 15 is the final proof that 
IV. 15 too deals with springtime: for who can read alma Venus without 
recalling the alma Venus of that greatest of all Latin descriptions of her, a 
description firmly set by Lucretius in the burgeoning rebirth of 
springtime? ^^ 

Skidmore College 

^' M.C.J. Putnam's splendid book, Artifices of Eternity. Horace's Fourth Book of Odes (Ithaca 
1986), reached me only after the present article had been accepted for publication. Given the fact 
that Putnam's approach and mine in most respects complement each other, covering the same 
group of poems but with rather different emphases, it has seemed appropriate to let this article 
stand on its own, rather than to lace it after the fact with cross-references to Pumam's book. 



9 



Ovidian Shakespeare: 
Wit and the Iconography of the Passions 

JUDITH DUNDAS 



In 1598, Francis Meres made a comment about Shakespeare which is still 
quoted by critics as evidence for Shakespeare's reputation in his own day: 
"The sweet wittie soule of Ovid lives again in mellifluous and honey- 
tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his 
sugared sonnets among his private friends."^ But this judgment is not 
simply historically significant — it is true. And what better way of 
understanding the full import of Meres' comment than to extend it to include 
the Ovidian allusions in Shakespeare's plays? 

The general context for these allusions is spelled out most clearly in the 
Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. It is part of the joke played on the 
drunken Sly that he is offered Ovidian paintings as among the possessions 
befitting a lord: 

Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight 

Adonis painted by a running brook 

And Cytherea all in sedges hid. 

Which seem to move and wanton with her breath 

Even as the waving sedges play with wind. (Ind. ii. 47-51)^ 

The other two descriptions, of lo and Daphne, similarly suggest that the 
beauty of the subject-matter is matched by the skill of the workman, both 
features Sly is ill-equipped to appreciate. 

In at least two of these descriptions, that of Venus and Adonis and that 
of Daphne, Shakespeare is himself painting with words — more sensuously 

^ Francis Meres. Palladis Tamia, 1598, p. 282. 

^ All quotations from Shakespeare's works are taken from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, 
ed. Alfred Haibage (New Yoik 1969). 

The most likely explanation for the un-Ovidian detail of "Adonis painted by a nrnning brook/ 
And Cytherea aU in sedges hid" seems to be Shakespeare's conflation of Ovid's story of Salmacis 
and Hermaphroditus with his story of Venus and Adonis {Metamorphoses IV. 306 ff. and X. 524 
ff.). But even in Ovid's version of the latter, shade is a component of the locus amoenus where 
the lovers meet: "opportuna sua blanditur populus umbra" (X. 555). On the symbolic features 
of Ovid's landscapes, see C. P. Segal, Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Wiesbaden 1969). 



122 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

than Ovid, it is true, for the Elizabethans, on the whole, tended to embellish 
Ovid's descriptions when they borrowed from him. But they thereby paid 
tribute to the Ovid whom they perceived as a painter with words, one who 
lent himself to the enrichment of their own style. When Shakespeare 
competed directly with Ovid, as he does in his Venus and Adonis, it was 
natural then for him to produce a copia on Ovid's story, bringing to light all 
that is merely implied and ringing the changes on every theme. The 
epigraph prefixed to this poem, itself derived from Ovid, indicates just that 
sense of an aristocratic and educated audience that the paintings mentioned in 
the Induction to The Shrew take for granted: "Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi 
flavus Apollo/ Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua."^ As it happens, these 
lines from the Amores appear, as T. W. Baldwin notes, at the beginning of 
the Flores Poetarum collected by Octavianus Mirandula, a standard grammar 
school introduction to the poets.'* There are no less than four direct 
allusions to Ovid within Shakespeare's plays, and each one reflects his 
grammar school training.^ 

One of these again makes a knowledge of Ovid the distinguishing mark 
of the educated man. Touchstone, in As You Like It, demonstrates his 
superiority to the country folk of the Forest of Arden by comparing himself 
to Ovid among the Goths. Addressing Audrey, he remarks, "I am here with 
thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among 
the Goths" (III. ii. 5-6). The two puns, "capricious" from caper (goat) and 
"Goths" (goats), represent the wit that only the educated would appreciate. 
Jaques, however, in an aside, caps Touchstone's allusion with the comment 
"O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!" (III. iii. 
7-8). Not mentioning the story of Philemon and Baucis by name, he 
reveals his easy familiarity with the Metamorphoses, turning the myth into 
a witty comparison.^ If Ovid here means knowledge, it is a sign of wit to 
be able to play with allusions to his works. Ironically, it sometimes takes 
the efforts of modem scholars to recover what was once part of every 
educated person's patrimony, 

' Ovid, Amores, I. xv. 35-36. "Let the cheap dazzle the crowd; for me, may golden ApoUo 
minister full cups from the Castalian spring" (trans, from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, 
p. 1406). 

'*T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (Urbana 1944), II, p. 
410. 

* The direct allusions are in: Titus Andronicus (IV. i. 42); Taming of the Shrew (I. i. 33); 
Love's Labor's Lost (IV. ii. 118); As You Like It (II. iii. 5-^). Additional allusions, without 
mention of Ovid by name, occur in The Merchant of Venice (V. i. 79-80), and Cymbeline (II. 
ii. 44-45). 

^Met. Vin. 630: "parva quidem, stipulis et canna tecta palustri." Arthur Golding, whose 
1586 translation occasionally affected Shakespeare's own phrasing, translates this passage: "The 
roofe thereof was thatched all with straw and fennish reede" (VUl. 806). According to Baldwin, 
Shakespeare used both Ovid and Golding, like other Enghsh poets of the day, who did not share 
the modem prejudice against the use of translations. Even people who could read the original 
used them. See William Shakespere's Small Latine & Lesse Greek, II, ch. XLII. 



Judith Dundas 123 

If we leave fashion aside and inquire into the rhetorical purposes of 
Shakespeare's mythological allusions, there is one word that sums up all of 
them: copia. From his schooldays, Shakespeare would have learned that 
Ovid is a treasure-house of examples for the enrichment of speech. The wit 
of the exercise Ues in choosing the appropriate myth and giving it the form 
that will suit the speaker's expressive purpose, whether it be exemplum, 
simile, metaphor, or other form of comparison. Erasmus' schoolbook on 
copia particularly recommends the use of exempla derived from the fables of 
poets; the instances he gives are the sort to be found in Ovid's 
Metamorphoses, "for they can be related both fully and briefly, if 
circumstances and propriety allow."'' His emphasis on decorum provides 
exactly the signpost we need for the direction in which to pursue our inquiry 
into Shakespeare's use of classical myth. 

As an ornament of style, Ovid's stories usually appear in Shakespeare's 
plays in the form of simile. Pictorial by their very nature, they need to be 
kept logically separate from the main argument of the speaker. Only when 
passion breaks down such logical separations does the Ovidian allusion take 
the form of metaphor. It will be simplest to illustrate the broad distinction 
with an example drawn from comedy and one drawn from tragedy. In The 
Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Morocco compares himself to Hercules in 
the contest for Portia's hand: 

But alas the while. 
If Hercules and Lichas play at dice 
Which is the better man, the greater throw 

May turn by fortune from the weaker hand. • 

So is Alcides beaten by his rogue. 
And so may I, blind Fortune leading me. ... (11. i. 31-36) 

The parallel between the pompous suitor and Hercules is humorous enough, 
but I cite it chiefly for the way the allusion appears in the form of a 
comparison: "So is Alcides beaten by his rogue, / And so may I." In 
Antony and Cleopatra, on the other hand, Antony in his defeat cries out: 

The shirt of Nessus is upon me; teach me, 
Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage. 
Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o' th' moon 
And with those hands that grasped the heaviest club 
Subdue my worthiest self. (IV. xii. 43-47) 

Antony is expressing his own rage by his development of the image, from 
simple comparison to an identification between himself and Hercules 
complete enough that, like Hercules, he would cast to the skies (not into the 

^ Erasmus, On Copia of Words and Ideas, trans. Donald B. King and M. David Rix 
(Milwaukee 1963), p. 70. 



124 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

sea, as in Ovid)^ the bringer of his distress and then end his own misery by 
destroying himself. Pictorially, the image grows to vent the speaker's 
passion; but even Morocco's more limited comparison has its pictorial 
component in the line "If Hercules and Lichas play at dice." No reader of 
Ovid can forget the memorable pictures he creates with words, and 
something of this quality accompanies Shakespeare's briefest mythological 
allusions.' 

Where such pictures play a part, it is not as allegory but as analogy, 
Ovid's images set alongside Shakespeare's immediate expression of the 
thoughts and emotions of his characters, as an enrichment of them. But a 
better term than "analogy" might be "poetic paradigm," since it includes 
both the variety of rhetorical uses to which Shakespeare puts his Ovidian 
allusions and the richness of signification contained in them. Studying 
these images then becomes less a matter of identifying their source — a 
fairly simple task in most instances — than of asking the purpose of each 
one in its particular context. Only in this way can we hope to approach an 
answer to the question of why certain plays contain so many more 
mythological images than others, what their relationship to genre might be, 
and, finally, what possible changes in Shakespeare's attitude to them are 
discernible in the course of his development as a dramatist. I shall approach 
these issues chiefly with mythological examples that imply a narrative, not 
simple references to deities, since it is Ovid's genius as a story-teller that 
must have quickened Shakespeare's own imagination. 

As paradigm, no myth is more illustrative of Shakespeare's sensitivity 
to emotional color than the story of Philomela. We are given a glimpse of 
his approach to Ovid's Metamorphoses in his early play Titus Andronicus. 
Lavinia, the ravaged heroine, turns the pages of the copy of the 
Metamorphoses given to young Lucius by his mother, until she has found 
the tale of Philomela's rape by Tereus. Titus rightly interprets the message 
she is trying to convey: 

Lavinia, wert thou thus surprised, sweet girl. 
Ravished and wronged as Philomela was. 
Forced in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods? 
See, see! 

Ay, such a place there is where we did hunt 
(O had we never, never, hunted there!), 
Pattemed by that the poet here describes 

Mel. DC. 217-18: "corripit Alcides, et terque quaterque rotatum / miuit in Euboicas 
tonmento fortius undas." R. K. Root thinks that the difference between Ovid's account and 
Shakespeare's may be attributed to Shakespeare's possible knowledge of Seneca's play Hercules 
Oetaeus, but this is by no means certain. See Root's Classical Mythology in Shakespeare (New 
York 1903), p. 74. 

' Cf. Coleridge: "The power of Poetiy is by a single word to produce that energy in the mind 
as compels the imagination to produce the picture." {Coleridge on Shakespeare, ed. R. A. 
Foakes [Charlottesville. Virginia 1971], p. 110.) 



Judith Dundas 125 

By nature made for murders and for rapes. (TV. i. 51-58) 

I could almost take as my own text the line "Patterned by that the poet here 
describes," because it sums up the part Ovid's stories play in supplying 
analogies laden with mythic significance.^^ 

Two other of Shakespeare's heroines also find in the story of Philomela 
the pattern of their own sufferings. One is Lucrece. Like Lavinia she finds 
a kind of sense in the pattern of Ovid's tale: 

'Come, Philomele, that sing'st of ravishment. 

Make thy sad grove in my dishevelled hair. 

As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment. 

So I at each sad strain will strain a tear 

And with deep groans the diapason bear; 
For burden- wise I'll hum on Tarquin still. 
While thou on Tereus descants better skill.' (1128-34) 

This stanza is followed by two more on the same theme: in one, Lucrece 
compares the knife she will use against herself with the thorn against which 
the nightingale leans; in the other, she contemplates finding out a dark, deep 
desert where, like Philomel, she may unfold 'To creatures stem sad tunes, to 
change their kinds. / Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds" 
(1 147-48). The music of her complaint might almost seem to disguise her 
heartbreak, turning it to sweetness, just as Philomel did. But Lucrece, for 
her part, may serve as the type of wronged innocence, as happens when 
Macbeth, reflecting on the crime he is about to commit, peoples the 
darkness with figures, including "withered murder," who with "TarquiH's 
ravishing strides" moves like a ghost "towards his design" (II. i. 55).^^ 

My final example is drawn from Cymbeline. When lachimo is looking 
at the sleeping Imogen in her bedroom at night, he notes, "She hath been 
reading late/ The tale of Tereus. Here the leafs turned down/ Where 
Philomel gave up" (II. ii. 44^6). Imogen reads, however, not to convey 
her plight, as Lavinia did, but to find, as it were, an image for her own 
chastity and vulnerability, like a prophetic warning of lachimo's design 
against her. Like her reading, the decoration of her room, including the 
Cleopatra tapestry, the ceiling "with golden cherubins . . . fretted," and the 
chimney piece showing Diana bathing, reflects the cultivated and 
fashionable taste of the times. Nevertheless, as lachimo notes such features 
as the andirons ("I had forgot them") in the shape of "two winking Cupids/ 
Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely/ Depending on their brands" (II. 
iv. 88-91), he intends to prove not merely that he has been in her room but 

^° Ovid's account of the place where Tereus brings Philomela in order to rape her is: "in 
slabula alta irahil, silvis obscura vetustis" {Met. VI. 521). For Shakespeare's use of the word 
"pattern" to stand for the Ovidian type of allusions, cf. the passage from As You Like It, quoted 
below, p. 130, in which Rosalind refers to Troilus as "one of the patterns of love." 

^^ In Titus Andronicus, the villain Aaron compares Lavinia to Lucretia (II. i. 108-09); in 
Cymbeline, lachimo compares himself to Tarquin (II. ii. 12-14). 



126 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

that there is something lascivious in her tastes. But for us it is worth 
remembering that George Chapman in his vision of virtuous ladies allows 
them to represent the Ovidian tales in their embroidery, "their needels 
leading / Affection prisoner through their own-built citties, / Pinnioned with 
stories and Arachnean ditties."'^ Only the literal-minded would wish to 
banish the particular realm of the imagination to which Ovid holds the key. 
If the story of Philomel is inherently lyrical and feminine, there are 
other myths that may also lend something lyrical to the dialogue. Among 
the most immediate examples to come to mind are allusions to Apollo and 
Orpheus in the romantic comedies. Even the most conventional of these 
hides an intensity of daring such as may be found in Proteus' speech on 
poetry in Two Gentlemen of Verona: "For Orpheus' lute was strung with 
poets' sinews, / Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, / Make 
tigers tame, and huge leviathans / Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on 
sands" (III. ii. 77).^^ No classical precedent has been found for the first line, 
but it appears to mean that the poet makes his music within himself, on his 
own heart strings. Wonderful as this is, there is another passage on the 
power of music that is yet more deeply rooted in its dramatic context. In A 
Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon is reminding Puck of the time they 
witnessed the flight of Cupid's arrow and saw it land on a flower, which in 
its turn became imbued with the power to make people fall in love: 

Thou rememb'rest 
Since once I sat upon a promontory 
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back. 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song. 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
To hear the sea maid's music. (II. i. 148-54) 

In this passage, myth appears, not as comparison, but in its own right. The 
character of Oberon as king of the fairies stands revealed, but more 
important, the very essence of the play is contained here. Like the Orpheus 

'^Chapman, "Hero and Leander," Fourth Sestyad, 119-21. Leonard Barkan in his recent book 
The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism (New Haven 1986) not 
only compares lachimo's "reading" of Imogen's body and her room to "raping," but also treats 
the Renaissance fondness for reading Ovid and for depicting his stories in decoration as a species 
of "voyeurism." "The voyeurism in Cymbeline refleas at once upon pagan traditions and upon 
the contemporary pursuit of them" (p. 251) . Just where does this remaric leave Imogen, who 
both reads Ovid and decorates her room with pagan and erotic figures? Balkan seems to imply a 
reductive view of the imagination as itself voyeuristic. 

'^Ovid tells the story of Orpheus in Met. X and XI. Root (above, note 8) notes (p. 94) a 
source for the detail in the second line, referring to Orpheus' power over steel and stones in Met. 
XI. 7-12 and for the fourth line, the taming of tigers, in Virgil's Georgics IV. 510: 
"mulcentem tigris et agentem carmine quercus." For the first and last lines he can find no 
classical authority. Shakespeare is extravagantly expressive in the praise of poetry, but not 
poetry simply as words, as Root suggests. Cf. Berowne's praise of love in Love's Labor's Lost, 
rV. iii. 337-38: "as sweet and musical/ As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair." 



Judith Dundas 127 

myth, the passage pays tribute to the beauty and power of music. But the 
imaginative freedom of expression is of the nature of a parergon, that 
classical conception of ornament, whereby the artist can do as he pleases, 
amusing himself to the enrichment of his artistic conception. 

What some critics, such as Douglas Bush, refer to as Shakespeare's 
more "bookish" allusions^"* may in fact illuminate, in the sense of 
brightening, a passage by reminding the listener of one of Ovid's own 
luminous stories. The richness of the allusion depends, however, on the 
richness of the play in which it appears. For example, it is one thing for 
Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona to draw a parallel between her case and 
that of Ariadne, forsaken by Theseus; it is another for Perdita in The 
Winter's Tale to refer to the rape of Proserpina in her flower catalogue. 
Julia's allusion is just that — a passing reference: 

Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning 
For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight. 
Which I so lively acted with my tears 
That my poor mistress, moved therewithal. 
Wept bitterly. . . . (IV. iv. 165-69)^5 

Covertly alluding to her own plight, Julia, disguised as Sebastian, describes 
to Sylvia a fictitious performance she gave as Ariadne, while wearing a 
gown of Julia's, with Julia in the audience. The two-line summary of the 
myth is intended as a brief characterization of the speaker's predicament. 
Pictorial in effect, it also ornaments the text, adding a grace note to the 
layers of dramatic irony. 

Perdita, on the other hand, has an immediate dramatic context for her 
allusions to goddesses as flower deities at the sheep-shearing feast; she also 
invokes a greater descriptive richness in keeping with the profounder 
conception of theme and character in the play: 

O Proserpina, 
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let'st fall 
From Dis's wagon; daffodils, 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty (IV. iv. 116-20)^^ 

^* See Douglas Bush, "Qassical Mylh in Shakespeare's Plays," in Elizabethan and Jacobean 
Studies Presented to Frank Percy Wilson (Oxford 1959). pp. 65-85. 

** As Root notes (p. 41), the word "perjury" suggests Fasti EI. 473: "dicebam, memini. 
'periure et perfide Theseu'!" The epithet "periurus" also occurs in Heroides, 10. 76, and in 
Amores I. 7. 15. It thus became tlie standard epithet for Theseus in the sixteenth century 
(Baldwin, n. pp. 424-25). 

^^ Shakespeare may be drawing on Met. V. 388 ff. and on Fasti HI. 427 ff. The longer 
caulogue of flowers in the latter is more nearly parallel, but the descriptive expressions and the 
analogy between the innocent maiden and the spring flowers is more developed in the 
Metamorphoses; hence, it is a more immediate precedent for Perdita's half -melancholy rapture: 
"quo dum Proserpina luco / ludit et aut violas aul Candida lilia carpit . . ." {Met. V. 391-92). 



128 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

The dark winter days induced by Pluto's rape of Proserpina are obliquely 
suggested as a counterpoint to the "winter's tale." But when Perdita 
continues with allusions to violets "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes/ Or 
Cytherea's breath," a longing and an almost painful sense of beauty and its 
loss speak through her words. This is not merely decorating the text, as one 
might use mythological ornament on a plaster overmantel; rather, it 
expresses the very being of the speaker, in the fullness of the tragic 
circumstances of her birth and the loss of her unknown mother's care. But if 
she has known no Ceres to weep for her, she lives and loves, and this too 
comes through the beauty of her description of spring flowers, changing the 
traditional flower catalogue into a freshly painted picture of springtime. The 
truth is that Shakespeare loved Ovid so well and was so steeped in his works 
that he virtually could not fail in his mythological allusions. They are not 
merely the product and sign of his grammar school training but of his 
response to the poetic spirit of Ovid. 

Used for praise or dispraise, as well as for the expression of other 
emotions, Ovidian allusions work largely within the affective terms of 
beauty and ugliness. Just as Perdita's allusions are to beauty, so Thersites' 
in Troilus and Cressida are to ugliness. Instead of Proserpina, he dwells on 
Cerberus; and as he snaps at Ajax, he reveals his own character as much as 
Ajax's: "Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles, and thou art as 
full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at Prosperina's beauty, ay that 
thou bark'st at him" (II. i. 30). But the savagery of Thersites' use of 
classical myth is, needless to say, not typical of Shakespeare's drama. More 
often, such comparisons are used for praise, in a way that evokes 
Elizabethan pageantry, as well as foreshadowing the court masque of the 
seventeenth century, in which kings and princes are regularly represented as 
classical gods. "Those beautiful characters of sense," as Samuel Daniel 
called them, could fittingly praise and, at the same time, hold up noble 
models for princes. ^^ The final accolade for Prince Hal before the Battle of 
Shrewsbury in Henry IV, Part I is couched in mythological terms: 

I saw young Harry . . . 

Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury, 

And vaulted with such ease into his seat 

As if an angel dropped down from the clouds. 

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, 

And witch the world with noble horsemanship. (TV. i. 104-10)^* 

" Cf., for example, my article "'Those Beautiful Characters of Sense': Qassical Deities and 
the Court Masque," Comparative Drama 16 (1982), 166-79. 

^* In fact, Perseus, the implied hero, did not ride Pegasus. When he cut off the head of 
Medusa, Pegasus sprang from her blood. For a parallel allusion in Ben Jonson, see p. 173 of 
the article cited in note 17 above. 



Judith Dundas 129 

As so often, more than one mythological allusion occurs in the same 
passage, as if Shakespeare's imagination, once released into this land of 
enchantment, must needs follow the allusiveness of one myth into another, 
as here he moves from Mercury to Pegasus. Although unjustified in terms 
of narrative, this leap from winged god to winged horse makes perfect sense 
as emphasizing the transcendent prowess of Hal. Similarly, Hamlet's praise 
of his dead father includes references to Hyperion, Jove, Mars, and Mercury, 
and sums up his perfection by referring to "A combination and a form 
indeed/ Where every god did seem to set his seal/ To give the world 
assurance of a man" (III. iv. 61-63). This is spoken in the spirit of the 
history plays, where the grand, ennobhng function of classical myth is most 
evident. 

Perhaps, however, the allusions in which Shakespeare is most uniquely 
himself, and at the same time closest to Ovid, are those that appear in his 
comedies. He might have caught this spirit from the witty detachment that 
is yet the counterpoint of the compassion and awe with which Ovid tells 
stories of the classical deities in the Metamorphoses. He might also have 
caught it from the myths used as exempla in Ovid's Amores and Ars 
Amatoria. The ease with which he introduces the myths without sacrificing 
their evocativeness appears, for example, in allusions in which not even the 
names of the mythological characters are necessary. I have already given 
one instance from As You Like It, where Jaques refers to the story of Baucis 
and Philemon. Another appears near the beginning of Twelfth Night when 
Duke Orsino alludes to the story of Actaeon: "That instant was I turned into 
a hart, / And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, / E'er since pursue me" 
(I. i. 22-24), The moralization of Ovid regularly turned this story into this 
kind of allegory, but it is significant that Orsino uses the form of a 
simile — ^"my desires, like fell and cruel hounds" — leaving no suggestion of 
an esoteric interpretation. ^^ The humor of the passage, deriving from the 
gap between Orsino's supposed passion and his "changeable taffeta" nature, 
itself militates against anything very esoteric. 

After all, what better way was there to characterize love than through 
the myths that Ovid tells? In the last act of the Merchant of Venice, Jessica 
and Lorenzo engage in a kind of playful singing match that involves placing 
themselves in the company of great lovers, with the difference that their 
love is joined to happiness. The repeated phrase "In such a night" calls 
attention to the romance of the occasion as they enjoy the evening of 
moonlight at Belmont. One example from each of the speakers will give 
the tone: 



^' The behavior of the "fell and cruel hounds" is graphically described in Ovid's account of 
Actaeon in Met. IH. 138-252; but with Orsino's interpretation may be compared the standard 
moralization given in Golding's "Epistle," Book lU, or Geoffrey Whitney's A Choice of 
Emblemes (1586), p. 15: "And as his houndes, soe theire affections base, / Shall them deuowre, 
and all their deedes deface." 



130 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Jessica In such a night 

Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew. 
And saw the hon's shadow ere himself. 
And ran dismayed away.^ 

Lorenzo In such a night 

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 
Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love 
To come again to Carthage. (V. i. 6-1 2)^^ 

Lorenzo's examples are chosen from Greek and Roman history; Jessica's 
from myth, as if in the interest of a decorum for the male and another for the 
female. And so they continue teasing each other until interrupted by a 
messenger; then Jessica puts an end to their match by asserting: "I would 
out-night you, did nobody come; /But hark, I hear the footing of a man" 
(23-24). The "out-nighting" tells us exactly in what spirit to take these 
allusions: it is as if Shakespeare were ironizing Ovid's own ironies. 

The burlesquing of classical myth has of course a long history before 
Shakespeare, but he would have needed no more than Ovid — in the Amores, 
for example — to give him the tone of such remarks as Mercutio's 
comparison of Romeo's beloved to other famous women: "Dido a dowdy; 
Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, Thisbe a gray eye 
or so" (II. V. 41). Later, we find similar reduction of classical lovers in The 
Tempest, with the cynics' reference to "widower Aeneas" and "widow Dido." 
More light-hearted are the references to famous lovers in The Merchant of 
Venice or in Rosalind's speech about Troilus and Leander: "Troilus had his 
brains dashed out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he could to die before, 
and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a 
fair year though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot 
midsummer night; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the 
Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp, was drowned; and the foolish 
chroniclers of that age found it was 'Hero of Sestos'" (As You Like It IV. i. 
88-96). Lovers' banter in Shakespeare revels in such playful allusions to 
famous examples. Even the apparently more serious comparisons of lovers 
to Hercules, such as appear in Love's Labor's Lost or The Merchant of 
Venice, are not without a touch of humorous exaggeration. 

^ Cf. Ovid, Met. IV. 99-101, where Thisbe sees the lioness: "quam procul ad lunae radios 
Babylonia Thisbe / vidit el obscunim timido pede fugit in antnim,/ dumque fugit. . . ." As 
Root notes (p. 104), Shakespeare's familiarity with Gol ding's translation may have affected his 
aaual wording, but see Baldwin, 11, p. 445 for a general caution in judging Golding's influence. 
^ Root notes (pp. 4-5 and 56-58) that Shakespeare has borrowed a passage from Ovid's 
Heroides 10, where Ariadne addresses Theseus, and transferred it to Dido: 
si non audires, ut saltern cemere posses, 

iactaue lale signa dedere manus; 
candidaque inposui longae velamina viigae — 
scilicet oblilos admonilura meil (39-42) 



Judith Dundas 131 

But the very idea of gods becoming beasts for love is both a tribute to 
the power of love and an invitation to smile. The story of Europa in 
particular appears over and over, often with a suggestion that Jupiter is 
wearing the horns as a cuckold — in Troilus and Cressida and The Merry 
Wives of Windsor, for example. But a more extended use of the image 
occurs in Much Ado, when Benedick, about to marry Beatrice at last, is 
teased by Claudio: 

We'll tip thy horns with gold. 
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee, 
As once Europa did at lusty Jove 
When he would play the noble beast in love. (V. iv. 44-47) 

Beatrice continues to play on the image with "Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable 
low,/ And some such strange bull leaped your father's cow." In contrast, 
Florizel, in The Winter's Tale, can take the same story and turn it into a 
joyous tribute to the power of love, without the mockery attaching to 
Benedick for his final succumbing to love: 

The gods themselves, 
Humbling their deities to love, have taken 
The shapes of beasts upon them. Jupiter 
Became a bull, and bellowed; the green Neptune 
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-robed god. 
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain. 
As I seem now. TTieir transformations 

Were never for a piece of beauty rarer, ^ 

Nor in a way so chaste (IV. iv. 25-33)^2 

The gradations of seriousness in Shakespeare's treatment of these myths 
is manifest in the subtle difference of handling; for instance, in the beauty 
added by Florizel's use of adjectives: "green," "fire-robed," "golden." Yet it 
is in the light of the same transformations that we must view Bottom's 
translation into an ass in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Absurdity is never far from love — that is one of Ovid's great 
contributions to the literature of love, and Shakespeare is his heir.^^ 

^ The stoiy of Eurqja is told in Met. H. 846-76, but the main source for The Winter's Tale, 
Robert Green's Pandosto, The Triumph of Time or Doratus and Fawnia (1588), contains a 
passage that more directly influenced Shakespeare here: "And yet Doralus, shame not at thy 
shepheards weede: the heavenly Codes have sometime earthly ihoughtes: Neptune became a 
ram, Jupiter a Bui, Apollo a shepheard: they Gods, and yet in love: and thou a man appointed 
to love" (Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed. Geoffrey Bullough [Lxmdon 1975], 
Vin.p. 184). 

^ In his Praise of Folly, Erasmus, under the mask of FoUy, draws attention to the absurdity 
of love (XI): "Neque vero id Venus ipsa, vel reclamante Lucrelio, unquam inf icias iverit, sine 
nostri numinis accessione suam vim mancam atque irritam esse." ("Venus herself, whatever 
Lucretius says, would never deny that she would be weakened and shorn of her power if my own 
divinity didn't come to her aid": trans. Betty Radice [Hamtiondsworth: Penguin Books 1971], p. 
76). 



132 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in his Venus and Adonis, where the 
burlesquing of classical myth can be fully developed, since here he is 
making a copia on Ovid's tale, not reducing it to a brief allusion. But 
narrative demands verisimilitude above all, and that means finding the 
human truth within the fantastic story. Classical myth is no longer used as 
vignettes to adorn and illuminate. It is now explored fully as a drama of 
human emotions. For this is the comedy of love, and the tragedy too. Wit 
can shine not only in verbal antitheses but in the development of what is 
only implied in Ovid, the reluctant Adonis and the resulting persuasions of a 
goddess who, if she does not become exactly a beast like Jupiter, is almost 
equally ridiculous in wooing a mortal boy who rejects her.^ 

The fantastic in Ovid becomes exemplary in Shakespeare — not center 
stage, except in Venus and Adonis, but matched to his own characters amid 
their social setting. The more real the characters, the more integral the 
classical allusions. He has little interest in literal metamorphosis, neither 
in the transformation of Bottom nor of Adonis.^ The latter becomes an 
excuse for Venus to say her last farewell to Adonis, not to reflect on the 
cyclical nature of life. If myth literalizes metaphor, Shakespeare prefers, in 
general, to turn it back into metaphor. 

By now it should be apparent why Shakespeare's tragedies include 
relatively few allusions to the classical myths. For him, as for Ovid, the 
myths, even when they move us to tears, seem to be touched with humor 
and delight. Where the scene moves into the grandeur of tragedy, there are 
other reasons of decorum, as well, for being chary of using classical myth: 
such allusions are not appropriate to the setting of some of his tragedies, 
such as Macbeth or King Lear — worlds too remote from Greece and Rome. 
Antony and Cleopatra, on the other hand, can fittingly accommodate some 
of these allusions, for, apart from the setting, the comic elements of the 
play encourage them, as Julius Caesar, for example, does not. Troilus and 
Cressida, another play with numerous mythological allusions, has both the 
ancient milieu and the spirit of mockery to which these myths lend 
themselves, though usually with a happier tone than here. It would appear 
that genre, including characterization, is the chief determinant in 

^In two articles, I discuss the poem and its critics. See "Ovidian Pictures and 'The Rules 
and Compasses' of Criticism." ICS 9 (1984), 267-75; "Wat the Hare, or Shakespearean 
Decorum," Shakespeare Studies (forthcoming). 

An emi^asis on psychic metamorphosis as discernible in Renaissance poetry and drama is 
currently fashionable. See, for example, Leonard Barkan's The Gods Made Flesh (above, note 
12). An interesting variation on this theme appears in Eugene Waith's "Metamorphosis of 
Violence in Titus Andronicus." Shakespeare Survey, 10 (1957), 39-49. He views Ovid's 
interest in metamorphosis as essentially concerned with "the transforming power of intense 
states of emotion" (p. 41). Waith also considers the larger issue of whether Ovid can be used 
successfuUy as a model for characterization and style in drama. Unfortunately, he ignores 
Shakespeare's dramatic poem, Venus and Adonis, which sheds a different light on the question. 



Judith Dundas 133 

Shakespeare's use of such allusions.^^ Fashion indeed may have dictated his 
choice of genre, but it could not be allowed to dictate his use of classical 
myth. For that, decorum was his sole criterion. 

And this is why iconography alone will never answer the really 
important questions about Shakespeare's use of classical mythology. What 
is in question is not the source of his images but why they appear in the 
particular form they do, in a particular context. Indeed, the mere study of 
iconography in treating Shakespeare's mythological allusions might find its 
epitaph in the words of Holof ernes in Love's Labor's Lost: "Imitari is 
nothing. So doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse 
his rider" (IV. ii. 121). His own "varying" underlines the animal instinct 
which lies behind imitation in its most literal sense. In contrast, he has 
just referred to Ovid's — Naso's — nose for "smelling out the odoriferous 
flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention." Even Holofemes knows, in 
theory, that freedom of invention distinguishes the true poet from the 
would-be poet Shakespeare appropriated Ovid as no other poet has done, 
understanding him from the inside and not merely as a schoolbook source of 
copiousness. Holofemes, on the other hand, is guilty in his similes of the 
very weakness he criticizes; his examples are as hackneyed as possible. 
Sh^espeare must have enjoyed the joke of giving the pedant this praise of 
Ovid's originality. 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

Several critics have noted that Shakespeare's mythological allusicxis are, in general, jnore 
numerous in his earlier plays, but no one appears to pay much attention to the significance of 
these allusions in relation to genre. Root, for example, reaches the patently absurd conclusion 
that Shakespeare gradually "recognized the insincerity of the Ovidian system" and found in it 
"only the material for a jest" (p. 11). Douglas Bush, more cautious, views the shift as largely 
one from an undramatic or perfunctory use of mythology to a more dramatic and integral one, 
though he maintains that Shakespeare, to the end of his career, was capable of the purely 
"bookish" or rhetorical allusion (p. 85). I see this as a false dichotomy, since it does not take 
into account the requirements of genre and decorum. 



10 



The Psychology of Uncertainty in Senecan Tragedy 

VICTORIA TIETZE 



Since the publication of Regenbogen's influential monograph, Schmerz und 
Tod in den Tragodien Senecas} it has been recognized that the emphatic 
depiction of emotion, which distinguishes Senecan tragedy from Greek 
tragedy of the Classical period, is vitally connected with Seneca's Stoic 
world-view. Several studies have shown that the passionate characters of 
Senecan tragedy, in whom the absence of ratio or reason constitutes vice 
according to the Stoic view,^ act as cautionary exempla for the instructive 
warning of their audience,^ Little attention, however, has been given to two 
aspects of Seneca's Ajfektdramen: firstly, their conspicuous emphasis on 
uncertainty; secondly, the formal methods by which the psychological 
dimension of Senecan characters is rendered exemplary. In what follows, I 
wish to address these two aspects by examining the psychology of 
uncertainty in conjunction with the formal means of its depiction through 
description. 

By means of frequent and lengthy descriptions placed in the mouths of 
his characters, Seneca gives psychology — the portrayal of states of mind and 
emotion — an emphasis and importance in his tragedies which it does not 
have in those of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.^ As a result of the 



*0. Regenbogen, Schmerz und Tod in den Tragodien Senecas, Vortrage der Bibliolhek 
Warburg 7 (Leipzig 1930), reprinted in Kleine Schrifien (Munich 1961). 

For the Stoics, virtue is perfected reason — e.g. Epp. 66. 32; 76. 10. The sapiens eradicates 
the emotions entirely and lives in a state of apatheia — e.g. Epp. 85. 3 ff., Ira 1. 16. 7 ff. Cf. 
also E. Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, trans. O. J. Reichel (New York 1962, 
reprinted from new and rev. eid. of 1 879), pp. 253 ff. 

Cf. B. Marti, "Seneca's tragedies. A new interpretation," Transactions of the American 
Philological Association 76 (1945), 216-45. especially 222, 230; N. T. Pratt, "The Stoic base 
of Senecan drama," ibid. 79 (1948). 1-1 1 ; id., Seneca's Drama (Chapel Hill 1983), pp. 76 ff.; E. 
C. Evans, "A Stoic Aspect of Senecan Drama: Portraiture" Transactions of the American 
Philological Association 81 (1950), 169-84; K. von Fritz, Antike und moderne Tragodie (Berlin 
1962), p. 47. 

Descriptions of emotion in Greek tragedy are usually brief and simple, e.g. Aeschylus, Cho. 
183 ff., 211; Pers. 987-91; 5«pp. 379-80; Sophocles. Ajax 587. 794; Euripides. Hec. 85-86; /. 
T. 793-97. Emotion tends to be revealed implicitly or through some kind of stage-business: cf. 



136 Illinois Classical Studies 

addition of this psychological dimension, we might expect the dramatic 
credibility of Seneca's characters to be enhanced. In fact, a reading of the 
plays quickly reveals that this is not so. As T. S. Eliot has put it: "In the 
plays of Seneca, the drama is all in the word, and the word has no further 
reality behind it. His characters all seem to speak with the same voice, and 
at the top of it."^ A remarkable number of the descriptions of emotion, and 
those of personal physical appearance in which emotion is manifest, portray 
a common psychology of uncertainty, which is unvaried by the suiting of 
language to character, and illustrated by the same epic similes. Seneca's 
extensive use of rhetorical description, with concomitant sacrifice of the 
development of character essential to dramatic illusion, has conventionally 
been explained as a necessary evil. It allows Seneca, as a dramatist writing 
for recitation, to compensate for the supposed absence of stage action in 
recitation drama^ by appropriating the narrative method of the epic poet.*^ I 
would like to suggest, however, that this negative view, while not invalid, 
is incomplete. With particular attention to the portrayal of uncertainty, I 
wish to counter it with a more positive view of description in Senecan 
tragedy. It is not simply a compensatory device; it affords Seneca the 



F. L. Shisler, "Portrayal of Joy in Greek Tragedy," Transactions of the American Philological 
Association 73 (1942), 277-92; cad., "The Use of Stage Business lo Portray Emotion in Greek 
Tragedy," American Journal of Philology 66 (1945), 377-97. 

^Seneca: His Tenne Tragedies, ed. Thomas Newton with intro. by T. S. Eliot (London 1927), 
p. a. 

"Whether or not Senecan drama was destined for stage performance is one of the central 
debates of Senecan scholarship. It is unlikely to be resolved given the paucity of our knowledge 
of the circumstances of recitation. The ancient evidence is collected by J. E. B. Mayor, Thirteen 
Satires of Juvenal, vol. 1 (New York 1901), pp. 173 ff. Far too little attention, however, has 
been given by studies which attempt to resolve the question (e.g. 0. Zwierlein, Die 
Rezitationsdramen Senecas, Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie 20 [Meisenheim am Glan 1966]) 
to what is meant by "performance" and how it differs in its essentials from "recitation." AU that 
can be reasonably postulated about the production (actual or intended) of Senecan tragedy is that 
it did not take place in the manner of a spectacle for a mass plebeian audience. Seneca's social 
status and express disUste for such amusements make it unlikely: cf. Epp. 7. 2 ff., L. 
Friedlaender, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, trans. J. H. Freese & L. A. 
Magnus (London 1936, reprinted from 7th enl. and rev. ed. of 1908), vol. 2, pp. 90 ff. But 
there is evidence for recitation in theaters: cf. Mayor, ibid., p. 179. If, as C. J. Herington, 
"Senecan Tragedy," Arion 5 (1966), 422-71, reprinted in Essays on Classical Literature, ed. N. 
Rudd (Cambridge 1972), pp. 444 ff., so cogently argues, such recitations involved more than 
one reciter, and given that any reciter, trained in the art oi pronuntiatio {AdHerenn. HI. 11. 19 
ff.), would have found it quite instinctive to move and gesture as he spoke, the essential 
difference between "recitation" and "perfonnance" becomes very fine. 

'Cf. Zwierlein, op. cit. (above, note 6), p. 60: "Die pedanlische Beschreibung . . . musste 
einem 2^schauer, der dies ja selbst sahe, albem erscheinen; dem Horer kann sie helfen, sich das 
Bild plastisch vorzustellcn." Cf. also E. Fantham. Seneca's Troades: A Literary Introduction 
with Text, Translation, and Commentary (Princeton 1982), index s.w. "description of what 
would have been shown on stage" and ead., "Virgil's Dido and Seneca's Heroines," Greece & 
Rome 22 (1975). 3. n. 3. 



Victoria Tietze 137 

formal means to advance a moral message in drama. Through it the 
characters are presented, tacitly, as exempla of inconstantia. 

The Stoic conception of perfect virtue, embodied in the sage or sapiens, 
is one of constantia — complete constancy of action and thought.^ Unshaken 
by any emotions, "certus iudicii, inconcussus, intrepidus" (Epp. 45. 9), the 
sapiens of Seneca's philosophical prose works is constantly contrasted with 
the morally imperfect, whose susceptibility to emotion means that their 
thoughts and actions are characterized by uncertainty or inconstantia. Hence 
it is that the protagonists of Senecan tragedy, many of whom are, or will 
be, guilty of crimes as heinous as murder and incest, are invested with a 
psychology of uncertainty. 

Their inconstantia often manifests itself particularly before and during 
wrongdoing. A scene in which the heroine urges herself to be fixed in her 
criminal purpose is common to the Medea (893 ff.), Phaedra (592 ff.), 
Agamemnon (139 ff.) and Hercules Oetaeus (307 ff.).^ At the actual 
moment of murdering Agamemnon, the uncertainty of the two culprits, 
Atreus and Clytemnestra, is described to us in prophetic hallucination by 
Cassandra (Ag. 890-91, 897-900.): 

haurit trementi semivir dextra latus, 
nee penitus egit: vulnere in medio stupet. 



armat bif)enni Tyndaris dextram furens, 
qualisque ad aras cx)lla taurorum prius 
designat oculis antequam ferro petat, 
sic hue et illue impiam librat manum. 



Thyestes, who, as we are told at the beginning of the play of that name 
(37), has been exiled for his crimes, returns to Argos with his ambition for 
kingly power undiminished. As he does so, his uncertainty is graphically 
described both by himself and by his son Tantalus (Thy. 419-20, 421-22, 
434-39): 

revolver: animus haeret ac retro eupit 

corpus referre, moveo nolentem gradum. 

Pigro (quid hoc est?) genitor incessu stupet 
vultumque vers at seque in incerto tenet. 



^ The model for this concept of virtue is the constancy and eternity of God which, as primary 
fire, will alone survive the cyclical conflagrations bringing about the end of the world: cf. Zeller, 
op. cit. (above note 2), pp. 164 ff. For similarity between the sapiens and God, cf. Prov. 1. 5, 
6. 4; Epp. 73. 1 1 , Const. Sap. 8. 2. 

^ The authenticity of the Hercules Oetaeus as a Senecan play has been questioned: cf., e.g., 
W. H. Friedrich, "Sprache und Stil des Hercules Oetaeus," Hermes 82 (1954), 51-84, and B. 
Axelson, Korruptelenkult: Studien zur Textkritik der unechten Seneca-Tragodie, Scripta minora 
Reg. Soc. Human. Litt. Lund. (Lund 1967). I include it for examination here as I find that the 
psychology and description of uncertainty plays a similar role in it to that noted in the other 
Senecan tragedies. 



138 Illinois Classical Studies 

Causam timoris ipse quam ignore exigis. 
nihil timendum video, sed timeo tamen. 
placet ire, pigris membra sed genibus labant, 
alioque quam quo nitor abductus feror. 
sic concitatam remige et velo ratem 
aestus resistens remigi et velo refert. 

Most emphatically uncertain of crimes is Atreus* murder of his brother's 
sons (Thy. 707 ff. ): 

ieiima silvis qualis in Gangeticis 
inter iuvencos tigris erravit duos, 
utriusque praedae cupida quo primum ferat 
incerta morsus (flectit hoc rictus suos, 
illo reflectit et famem dubiam tenet), 
sic durus Atreus capita devota impiae 
speculatur irae. quern prius mactet sibi 
dubitat, secunda deinde quem caede immolet. 
nee interest-sed dubitat et saevum scelus 
iuvat ordinare. 

The uncertainty which Senecan characters display both before and at the 
moment of wrongdoing is explained very clearly by a passage in Seneca's 
seventy-fourth epistle: "Hoc enim stultitiae proprium quis dixerit, ignave et 
contumaciter facere quae faciat, et alio corpus inpellere, alio animum, 
distrahique inter diversissimos motus" {Epp. 74. 32). It is just this 
disjunction of body and mind which we have seen Thyestes show as he 
approaches Argos (Thy. 419-20, 421-22, 434-39). Similarly, when 
Phaedra wishes to confess her incestuous love to Hippolytus, she finds 
herself physically incapable of uttering the words (Phaed. 602-03). Like 
Thyestes, she is impelled in two different directions by body and mind. 

The uncertainty of Seneca's tragic characters is often described 
figuratively with images. Among these, the most common is that used by 
Thyestes to describe the physical symptoms of his uncertainty: a ship 
driven off course by a turbulent sea (Thy. 438-39). Clytemnestra and 
Phaedra also compare their uncertainty to the tossing of a ship on a 
turbulent sea (A^. \3S-43; Phaed. 179-83.): 

fluctibus variis agor, 
ut, cum hinc profundum ventus, hinc aestus rapit, 
incerta dubitat unda cui cedat malo. 
proinde omisi regimen e manibus meis: 
quocumque me ira, quo dolor, quo spes feret, 
hoc ire pergam; fluctibus dedimus ratem. 

vadit animus in praeceps sciens 
remeatque fhistra sana consilia appetens. 
sic, cum gravatam navita adversa ratem 



Victoria Tietze 139 



propellit unda, cedit in vanum labor 
et victa prono puppis aufertur vado. 

Medea and Deianira, like Clytemnestra (Ag. 138-40), compare their 
uncertainty to the turbulence of the sea itself (Med. 939-43; Here. Oet. 
710-12) 

anceps aestus incertam rapit, 
ut saeva rapidi bella cum venti gerunt 
utrimque fluctus maria discordes agimt 
dubiumque fervet pelagus, haut aliter meum 
cx)r fluctuatur. 

ut fractus austro pontus etiamnum tumet, 
quamvis quiescat languidis ventis dies, 
ita mens adhuc vexatur excusso metu. 

Such imagery closely reflects that with which Seneca illustrates 
inconstantia in his prose works. Like many ancient philosophers, Seneca 
often appropriates commonplace imagery for the illustration of 
philosophical doctrine.^^ Like his Stoic predecessor, Chrysippus, he finds 
the common poetic analogy between a ship tossed on a turbulent sea a 
useful one in illustrating the uncertain condition of the morally imperfect.'^ 
At Cons. Polyb. 9. 6, for example, he describes mankind in these words: 

In hoc profundum inquietumque proiecti mare, altemis aestibus 
reciprocum et modo adlevans nos subitis incrementis, modo maioribus 
damnis deferens adsidueque iactans, numquam stabili consistimus 
loco, pendemus et fluctuamur et alter in alterum inlidimur et aliquando 
naufragium facimus, semper timemus. 

Sometimes, as at Brev. Vit. 2. 3, he compares the sinful, tortured by their 
emotions, to the tossing sea itself: 

Urgent et circumstant vitia ... si quando aliqua fortuito quies 
contigit, velut profundum mare, in quo post ventum quoque volutatio 
est, fluctuantur, nee umquam illis a cupiditatibus suis otium est. 

In the light of the moral significance attached by Seneca in his prose works 
to the image of the tossing sea and ship, the moral significance of the same 
imagery in his tragedies becomes clear. Whether characters compare their 
uncertainty to the tossing of a ship on a turbulent sea, as Clytemnestra, 
Phaedra and Thyestes do, or whether they compare themselves to the 
turbulent sea itself, as Medea and Deianira, their imagery "brands" their 
uncertainty as the inconstantia of Stoic (and Senecan) conception. 



^°Cf. my Ph.D. thesis, "The Imagery of Morality in Seneca's Prose-Works" (McMaster 
University 1985), Part. H. 

^^ Cf., e.g., Plutarch, Mor. 450d (=Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. H. von Amim lU. 
390, p. 95, 10-13); Mor. 454a-b. 453f-^54a; Epictetus. Diss. 2. 18. 29, 4. 3. 4. 



140 Illinois Classical Studies 

There are few virtuous characters in Senecan tragedy, but in one case at 
least, the certainty of the virtuous is contrasted with the uncertainty of the 
morally imperfect in terms of the same sea and ship imagery. As he 
confronts the monster which will bring about his death, Hippolytus is 
compared by a messenger to a helmsman who holds his ship steady on a 
turbulent sea (Phaed. 1072-75): 

at ille, quails tiirbido rector man 
ratem retentat, ne det obliquum latus, 
et arte fluctum fallit, haud aliter citos 
currus gubemat. 

Such imagery should remind us that, in his prose works, Seneca personifies 
Philosophy as a helmsman who "sedet ad gubemaculum et per ancipitia 
fluctuantium derigit cursum" (Epp. 16. 3). Similarly, exhorting Marcia to 
display Stoic apatheia amidst adversity, Seneca cries {Cons. Marc. 6. 3): 

regamur nee nos ista vis transversos auferat. Turpis est navigii rector 
cui gubemacula fluctus eripuit, qui fluvitantia vela deseruit, permisit 
tempestati ratem; at ille vel in naufragio laudandus quern obruit mare 
clavum tenentem et obnixum. 

The image of Hippolytus as a steadfast helmsman paints his courage in 
Stoic colors as the constantia of the sapiens, and places it in sharp contrast 
to the inconstantia of the characters who have compared their uncertainty to 
the uncontrollable tossing of a ship. 

The lengthy analyses of their emotion, illustrated with epic similes, 
with which Senecan characters provide us, do not, as many have observed, 
have the ring of truth. ^^ Apart from the fact that they all depict a similar 
state of uncertainty, their clinical objectivity and rhetorical elaboration are 
quite at odds with the kind of utterances we should expect from those 
undergoing the emotional turmoil described in them. Moreover, in light of 
the moral significance attached to the imagery with which they illustrate 
their feelings, it is clear that, with such descriptions, Senecan characters are 
made to condemn themselves unwittingly with consequent irony. Such 
description is most satisfactorily explained, therefore — to borrow a term 
from Tacitean scholarship — as a kind of authorial "innuendo,"^ ^ by which 
Seneca, the dramatist, contrives to pass tacit comment on the moral 
significance of his characters and their actions. With complete disregard for 
the dramatic credibility of his characters, Seneca places in their mouths the 
kind of psychological description ornamented with similes with which, if he 
were an epic poet, he would provide his reader in his own person. Thus 

^^ E.g. F. Leo, De Senecae Tragoediis Observationes Criticae (Berlin 1878: repr., Berlin 
1963), pp. 147 ff.; J. W. Duff, A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age: from Tiberius to 
Hadrian, 3rd ed. (London 1964). p. 208, and cf. T. S. Eliot (above, note 5). 

^' I. S. Ryberg, "Tacitus and the Art of Authorial Innuendo," Transactions of the American 
Philological Association 73 (1942), 383^04. 



Victoria Tietze 141 

when Ovid describes the uncertainty of Althaea before wrongdoing, he does 
so with the same analytical detail and elaborate image that Seneca's heroines 
use to describe themselves (Met. VIII. 465-474): 

Saepe metu sceleris pallebant ora futuri, 
saepe suum fervens oculis dabat ira ruborem; 
et modo nescio quid similis crudele minanti 
vultus erat, modo quern misereri credere posses; 
cumque ferus lacrimas animi siccaverat ardor, 
inveniebantur lacrimae tamen. utque carina, 
quam ventus ventoque rapit contrarius aestus, 
vim geminam sentit, paretque incerta duobus: 
Thestias haud aliter dubiis affectibus errat, 
perque vices ponit positamque resuscitat iram. 

If the effect of Seneca's tragedies depended on the primarily aural effects of 
recitation,^** description of emotion, and, more obviously, description of 
physical appearance in which emotion is manifest, would clearly perform a 
useful function in conveying to the audience meaning which might 
otherwise be expressed by stage action. However, I have shown that such 
description serves a more positive function in Senecan tragedy: it invests 
the characters involved with the characteristics of inconstantia. As such, we 
may compare it not only in purpose, but also in its narrative form, to the 
rhetorical device known as characterismos, the philosophical utility of 
which Seneca describes in his ninety-fifth epistle.^^ This device, as he 
explains there (Epp. 95. 65), is a description of the signa and notae, the 
signs and marks, which characterize virtue and vice, for the purpose of moral 
instruction. In his words (Epp. 95. 66): 

Haec res eandem vim habet quam praecipere; nam qui praecipit dicit 
"ilia facies si voles temperans esse," qui describit ait "temperans est 
qui ilia facit, qui illis abstinet." Quaeris quid intersit? Alter praecepta 
virtutis dat, alter exemplar. Descriptiones has et, ut publicanorum 
utar verbo, iconismos ex usu esse confiteor: proponamus laudanda, 
invenietur imitator. 

The repetitious description of uncertainty, underpinned by recurrent 
imagery, which Seneca places in the mouths of many of his characters, 
renders them apotreptic characterismoi of inconstantia. It exemplifies 
Seneca's appropriation of the narrative author's privilege to pass judgment 
on the thoughts and actions of his characters with a view to instructing his 
audience in the manner of a philosopher. 

Westminster College, Pennsylvania 



^* But whether the effects of recitation were primarily aural is not certain: cf. above, note 6. 
'^Cf. E. C. Evans (above, note 3). 169-84. 



11 



De Sublimitate 30. 1: An Overlooked Pointer to a Date? 



J. K. NEWMAN 



In an article written twenty years ago, with characteristic boldness Professor 
Georg Luck argued that this treatise should after all be attributed to Cassius 
Longinus and dated to the third century A.D.^ His conclusions have not been 
accepted by everyone,^ but perhaps a small pointer telling in favor of a later 
date at least may be derived from c. 30. 1, where the author recommends f| 
T&v K-opCcov Kal ^eyaA^onpETicbv ovo^dTcov iKkoyr\ as an aid to 
sublimity. The text is cited from the edition of D. A. Russell (repr. Oxford 
1970): 

'E7iei6Ti n£vxoi Ti xo\) Xoyov votiok; ti xe <ppdCTi<; xd nXeico 5i' 
CKaxepo-u 5i£Ttx\)Kxai, i9i Stj, [av] xoii cppaoxiKou \iipoMC, ti xiva 
^iTtd exi, Jrpooe7ll6£aoco^£6a. oxi n£v xoivov ti xwv Kvpicov Kal 
^EYaXo7Ip£K6c)v 6vo^dxcov ekXoyti Baunaaxox; dyEi Kal KaxaioiXEi 
xovq dKovovxaq Kal (oc, jcdoi xoic; pTjxopai Kal ovYYPC^PEvai kox' 
dxpov £jiixT|5£-o|ia, liEYEOoq d|i.a KdXXo(; EvnivEiav Pdpoq lox'uv 
Kpdxo<;, Exi 5£ ydvcoolv xiva, xoiq X^oyok; ©oreEp dyd^iiaai 
KaXX,iaToi(; 5i' avxfiq EJiavGEiv napaoKEud^ovoa, Kal oIoveI 
V\)XT|v xiva zoic, Tcpdynaoi <p(ovTixiK-nv EvxiGEiaa, \ir[ Kal 
TtEpixxov fi 7tp6(; EiSoxaq 5i£^i£vai. <pw(; ydp xw ovxi i5iov xor» 
vov xd KoKa. 6v6)j.axa. 

Since thought and expression are in general closely entwined, we may now 
go on to consider any areas of the theory of language not yet covered. The 
choice of impressive (K-opicov) and magnificent words has an amazing 
effect, bewitching the audience. It is a supreme goal of all orators and 



^ "Die Schrift vom Erhabenen und ihr Verfasser,"y4rc/oj 5 (1967), 97-1 13. Cf. on the later 
dating G. M. A. Gnibe, "Notes on the OEPI Y^OYY," American Journal of Philology 78 
(1957). 335-74; idem, The Greek and Roman Critics (Toronto 1965). pp. 340-42. A statement 
of the orthodox position about the date (first century a.d.) is made by John M. Crosseti and 
James A. Arieti. The Dating of Longinus, Studia Classica III, University Park. Pennsylvania 
(undated). 

^ Giuseppe Martano, "D 'Saggio sul Sublime'," Airfstieg undNiedergang der romischen Welt 
n. 32. 1 (1984). rejects Luck's thesis on p. 367. note 4. but concludes on p. 370: "Secondo noi. 
la controversia [i.e. over the date of the work] rimane subjudice, e vi rimmara fino a quando 
nuovi elementi di prova (per ora di assai ipotetica reperibilita) non interverranno a risolvere il 
problema." It is just such an 'elemento di prova' that this essay hopes to furnish. 



144 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

historians. It produces grandeur, beauty, patina, weight, strength, force, 
and over all these a brilliance that sheds a bloom on words as if they were 
the fairest sculptures. It puts a speaking soul into things. But this is 
something where my readers need no reminder. Beautiful words are indeed 
thought's own illumination. 

'Ovondxcov eK^oyn, the Latin delectus verborum, is an important task 
for the stylist, and there were at least three kinds of style. Evidently here 
the grand style is being recommended, and Kiapia and \izyaXonpzKr\ are 
approximate synonyms for "impressive" or "magnificent."^ Although 
sublimity is an effect and not a style, the author of the treatise does not 
always keep that distinction well in mind. He is inclined to sympathize 
with the doctrine prevailing among later Latin rhetoricians, and influential 
throughout the Middle Ages, in Renaissance criticism and even beyond, that 
grandeur demanded grand vocabulary. This confusion, which denies some of 
his own better insights, explains why he returns to the topic at the end with 
an attack on "low" words in c. 43, forgetting that what matters is the result 
and not the means, as Shakespeare's mastery of the monosyllable proves. 
All this has been amply documented elsewhere. Here it is enough to note 
that neither the Virgil who employed communia verba in the Aeneid, nor 
the Horace who employed unpoetische Worter in his odes nor Quintilian nor 
Macrobius — nor eventually Dante — shared this view.'* 

If he is ready to challenge these authorities, and to show that this would 
result in a poetry superior to that of Virgil, Horace, Dante and Shakespeare, 
of course "Longinus" is entititled to ask for "impressive and magnificent 
words" (what Russell calls "Noble Diction") as his fourth source of 
sublimity, and the concomitant avoidance of the vulgar; but what he is not 
entitled to do is change the meaning without notice of a technical term of 
rhetoric, where since the time of Aristotle 6v6|iata Kiapia had meant 
precisely the opposite of "impressive words." *0v6|iaxa Kt)pia are not 
unusual words employed for an effect of special beauty and force after careful 
choice, as "Longinus'" ^leyaXoTipeTifi might suggest. They are the normal, 
everyday words of ordinary vocabulary. This is why they enhance clarity 
(Rhetoric 1404b5-8): 

Twv 5' 6vo)xdTcov Ktti pimotxcov aacpfj [xev Ttoici xa K'opia . ^fj 
xaneivfiv 6e dXXct KeKoa^Tiiievriv xaXka 6v6\iaTa ogg cvpiiTai 

£V TOlt; TtEpl TIOlT^TlKTIt;. 



It does not seem possible to translate icupCcov as referring merely to the "right" words 
("'Auswahl' der passenden Worter," Luck, 1 10). Kvipia 6v6p.aTa are the right words because 
they are commonplace, as AristoUe's Taneivfi Xi^ic, {Poet. 1458a lS-20, quoted below) makes 
absolutely clear, and that is the opposite of what is being said by "Longinus". He is concerned 
with KoKd ovonaxa . 

"^See my The Classical Epic Tradition (Madison, Wisconsin 1986), pp. 244 ff. 



J. K. Newman 145 

Among nouns and verbs, those thai are normal produce clarity, while the 
other words described in my Poetics produce an elevated and adorned style.^ 

The allusion to the Poetics is to the doctrine there of the "gloss," the rare or 
archaic word that can transform a line {Poetics 1458al8-23): 

Ae^eto(; Se dpefq aatpfj koi \ir\ xa%t\VT\\i ewai. oa<pe<jxdxTi |j.ev 

ouv eaxiv t] ek tcov K-opicov 6vo^idT(ov■ aXka T^(?.n^\\r\- 

jiapd6eiYHa 5e ti KXeocpavxoc; reolriaiq xal \\ iGeveXov. ae|ivTi 5e 
Kai e^aXXdxxo-ooa x6 iSicoxiKov r\ loic, ^EviKoi(; KexpTmevir 
^eviKov 5e Xeyw yXoixxav Kal |xexa(popdv Kai cTieKxaoiv Ka\ jcdv 
x6 napot x6 Kvpiov. 

The virtue of diction is to be clear without being flat. The greatest clarity 
is got by using words in their normal meanings, but such diction is flat. 
Examples are the poetry of Cleophon and Sthenelus. Diction that is 
impressive and alters the ordinary style makes use of estranged vocabulary. 
By "estranged" I mean the gloss, the metaphor, lengthening and everything 
that departs from the ordinary. 

Aristotle's Ki5pia ovoiiaxa are therefore exactly the reverse of the 
impressive diction secured by "glosses," and therefore exactly the reverse of 
what "Longinus" means by his use of icupia ovo^iata. It shows a certain 
boldness to quarrel in this way with the master, and an even greater boldness 
to stand his terminology on its head without explanation or apology. 

The best commentaries are provided by poets and interaction with poets. 
The treatise had last been edited by Franciscus Portus in 1570, and was first 
translated into Italian in 1575 by Giovanni di Niccolo da Falgano. There is 
evidence of some influence by it on practical criticism in Lorenzo 
Giacomini's Oratione in lode di Torquato Tasso, recited to the Accademia 
degli Alterati on March 20, 1595 and published in 1596, where we hear of 
Tasso's excellence 

ne la elezzione de le parole graui dolci aspre sonore splendide signo- 
reggianti, e nel altezza e nel abondanza degli omamenti . . . con soUecito 
studio procaccio a suoi poemi altezza efficacia e leggiadria eccellente, ma 
non somma chiarezza; . . . 

in the choice of words that are weighty, charming, harsh, resonant, 
brilliant, predominant, and in the sublimity and copiousness of his 
refinements . . . with attentive enthusiasm he secured for his poems 
sublimity, effect and extraordinary grace, although not utter clarity. . . . ^ 

The repeated altezza here already alerts us to the doctrine of x>\\foq, but, 
in the same passage, Giacomini may also feel the ambiguity in Kvpioq to 

' My emphasis, of course. 

* Quoted by B. Weinberg, History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago 
1961), p. 1059, note 137. Since Weinberg calls Giacomini "an old-fashioned Alexandrian" he 
evidently overlodcs the allusion to "Longinus". 



146 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

which reference has been made. He speaks of Tasso's "parole graui dolci 
aspre sonore splendide signoreggianti." Weinberg follows a beaten track in 
translating the climaxing last word as "overpowering": but it would be 
possible to set up a series of antitheses: graui / dolci: aspre I sonore: 
splendide I signoreggianti. In this case, splendide would refer to what 
Aristotle would have called "glosses,"^ and signoreggianti (signore = Kdpioq: 
cf. Horace's dominantia, below) to the opposite of this, "words in their 
prevailing or normal connotations." Tasso certainly was in trouble with 
some critics for using the latter,* though whether Giacomini wholly 
understood the scope of his own argument is uncertain. 

"Magnificent (overpowering) words" / "words in their normal 
connotations" — what does ovoixaxa lojpia mean? It is clear what its Latin 
equivalent meant for Horace in a well-known passage of the Ars Poetica 
(234-39): 

Non ego inomata et dominantia nomina solum 
Verbaque, Pisones, Satyrorum scriptor amabo; 
Nee sic enitar tragico differre colori, 
Ut nihil intersit Davusne loquatur et audax 
Pythias emuncto lucrata Simone talentum. 
An custos famulusque del Silenus alumni. 

When I write satyr plays, Pisones, I will not confine myself to plain and 
ordinary words, or make such efforts to avoid the tragic manner that there is 
no difference between the language of Davus the slave and pert Pythias 
when she has conned Simo out of a fortune; or on the other side that of 
Silenus, even though he is the warden and servant of a growing god. 

Horace uses dominantia in the sense of Aristotle's ta K-opia (icupioq = 
dominus). In-ornata coupled with it makes it quite clear that the poet 
understands by dominantia words used in their "predominant," "prevailing" 
and hence "ordinary" meanings. Ornatus (Koafioq, KaxaoKeDTi) is exactly 
the reverse of this. Giacomini's eulogy of Tasso referred to the altezza e . . . 
abondanza degli ornamenti and, in a striking passage attesting the longevity 
of these terms, E. R. Curtius^ quotes Dante, who in the Convivio (II. 12. 
24) remarked that "e la bellezza neH'ornamento delle parole," and in the 
Inferno (2. 67) praised Virgil's "parola omata." Curtius goes on to cite a 
French textbook of 1787 (two years therefore before the Revolution) stating 
that "le style de I'orateur et celui du poete a besoin d'etre orne." In his 
remarks on the passage of Horace quoted, C. O. Brink ^^ notes an isolated 

Lumina in Latin rfietorical vocabulary: verborum et senlentiarum ilia lumina quae vacant 
Graeci <yir\\uxia, Cicero, Brutus 79. 275. Cicero's praise of Lucretius (muitis luminibus ingeni 
[= oxTmaxa b\a\o{ac,\,ad Q.fr. 11. 10. 3 [Watt, OCT p. 69]) should be compared with 
"Longinus"' cpccx; . . . tow vou quoted above. 

*E. g. with L. Salviati (Weinberg, p. 1018): cf. C. P. Brand, Torquato Tasso (Cambridge 
1965). pp. 121 ff. 

^ Europdische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern 1948), p. 78. 

^^ Horace onPoetry: The 'Ars Poetica' ('Cambridge 1971), p. 285. 



J. K. Newman 147 

use of dominantia in Horace's sense even as late as the fifth century (the 
medical writer Caelius Aurelianus). 

But 6v6}j.axa icupia are for the de Sublimitate on a par with jxeya^o- 
TTpeTcfi! This completely contradicts both Horace and the normal, Aristo- 
telian meaning of the Greek phrase in rhetoric and grammar.^ ^ Even 
Diogenes Laertius still has the normal sense (3rd century A.D.?), and of 
course so does Horace's contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 
sometimes suggested as the author of the work. 

When did this change of meaning take place, and is it widespread? After 
no example of this expression was found in the genuine Longinus,^^ a 
search of the following texts for Kvpiov ovo|ia or its oblique cases in 
"Longinus"' sense was conducted with the help of the Thesaurus Linguae 
Graecae: ^^ 

(a) From corrected texts: Alexander rhetor; Anonyma in Aristotelis artem 
rhetoricam commentaria; Anonymi rhetores; Apsines rhetor; Aelius 
Aristides rhetor; Hermogenes rhetor; Libanius rhetor et sophista; 
Polybius rhetor; Sopater rhetor; Syriani, Sopatri et Marcellini scholia ad 
Hermogenis Status; Themistius philosophus et rhetor; Aelius Theon 
rhetor. 

(b) From uncorrected texts: Adrianus rhetor; Alexander rhetor Ephesius; 
Aphareus rhetor; Aristobulus ludaeus philosophus; Demetrius rhetor; 
Diodorus rhetor; Lesbonax rhetor; Philiscus rhetor; Polyaenus rhetor; 
Timolaus rhetor. 

Of these texts, only the Anonyma in Aristotelis artem rhetoricam 
commentaria; Hermogenes; Sopater; and Syriani, Sopatri et Marcellini 
scholia ad Hermogenis Status offered evidence of Kvpiov 6vo|ia or its cases: 

\. Anonyma in Aristotelis artem rhetoricam commentaria (date unknown). 
The numerical references are to the pages and lines of H. Rabe's edition of 
Anonymi et Stephani in artem rhetoricam commentaria (Berlin 1896): 

(a) Kupia ovofiaTa Xeyei xa(; vvpioX-e^iaq. (163. 34) 

By Kvpia ovo^iaxa he means words used in their ordinary senses. 

(b) Kvpia 6v6|i.aTa Xeyei tot xaxa KvpioXe^iav Xxx|J.pav6^£va• ek 
TiapaXXfiXov 5e e^Pe to Kvpiov koI to oiKeiov ax; Ta-uTot ovTa. 
(166. 19 ff.) 



" See the entry in LSfi s. v. H. 5. 

^^AoYy{vov TexvTi 'PtiTopixTi, \n Rhetores Graeci, ed. L. Spengel (Leipzig 1853), I. pp. 
299-320. 

^' Grateful thanks are due to Professor Theodore Brunner and his staff at Irvine for so readily 
answering my query. Professor Brunner estimated from a preliminary survey that Kvpiot; might 
occur about 57,000 times in the entire TLG dau bank. It was therefore necessary to make a 
perhaps arbitrary selection in a preliminary study. 



148 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

He means by Kvpia 6v6|iaxa words used in their ordinary senses. He 
takes ordinary and appropriate in the same sense. 

(c) ormeiov 5e xo\> 5eiv ev zoiiq Jie^oiq X^oyoiq Kvpioiq ovo^aai 
Xpao6ai, 5i6xi Jidvxeq o'l jiaXaiol ptixopeq xovxoiq xP^i^vxai- 
Tidvxeq yctp 6iaX£Yovxai tixoi dX.X,riX.oi(; ovvoiiiXovoiv ev 
^£xa<popiKOi^ 6v6|iaai xal ox> Kvpiovq. (166. 24 ff.) 

A proof that it is necessary to use Kvpia ovo^axa in prose is their use by 
all the old orators. <Nowadays> everyone converses or speaks with his 
neighbor in metaphorical rather than ordinary language. ''^ 

(d) 6et)xepo(; 5£ xpono^ noicov oa<pr|veiav x6 xoiq iSioic; Kai 
Kvpioic, 6v6^.aoiv cKaoxov 6vo)i.d^eiv xai ^.fi xoiq nepiixovaiv 
•fixoi xov(; Ka9' oXcu, oiov xov IwKpdxiiv. (181. 12 ff.) 

A second way to gain clarity is to use appropriate and ordinary names for 
everything, and not periphrases or universals: for example, "Socrates." 

(e) al |iEv ov)v yXmxxai rixoi al SidXcKXOi elolv dyvcoxeq tiM-iv xal 
dyvooaxoi, xd 5e Kvpia ia|iEv 6v6|j.axa. (202. 15) 

Glosses or dialectical usages are unknown to us and unfamiliar. Ordinary 
words we know. 

Five examples also occur where ovo|xa loipiov means "proper name."^^ 

2. Hermogenes (2nd-3rd century A. D), Flepl ibzoiv Xoyoi. Cf. Hermogenis 
Opera, ed. H. Rabe (repr. Stuttgart 1969), 2, p. 5, line 80. 

exepov hz zxhoc, 5pin\)xrixo(; x6 ek napovo|Aaaiaq, o\)k e^ 
6noi6xrixo(;, oxav Kvpi© xivi 6v6|iaxi r[ prmaxi xp^od^evoi eix' 
e\)0\)q enonevoi xovxo) xpilo^oiieGa Kai ecp' oh \x.j\ Kvpiov eoxi 
TipdyM-axcq. 

A second type of sarcasm involves an unexpected play on words rather than 
punning. We use a noun or verb in its normal sense, and then immediately 
go on to apply it to something where it is not normal. 

3. Sopater (4th century A.D.). Cf. Rhetores Graeci, ed. C. Walz (Stuttgart 
1835, repr. 1968). Example (a) is from the Scholia ad Hermogenis Status 
sen artem rhetoricam. Examples (b) and (c) are from the Aiaipeaeiq 
ZTiTTmdxcov, 

(a) XeYO|iev, 6xi ouSeitoxe 5vvaxai ovoxfivai dv9opian.6<; )iti 
jipoTiYr|oa|ievov) opov 6 7ip(oxo(; ztiay\iivoc, x6 Kvpiov eaxe xov 
6v6)j.ato(;, 6 5e £vavxiO(; ex xr\c^ evavxioxrixoi; £iXr|(p£ x6 ovoiia. 
(Walz 5. 152. 27). 



^* This seems to be the sense. Cf. itaque, si antiquum sermonem nostra comparemus, paene 
iam quidquid loquimur figure est. . . , Quint. /. 0. IX. 3. 1. 



^^ This usage is attested since Polybius. See below. 



J. K. Newman 149 

Our argument is that a counter-definition must always be preceded by a 
definition. The first is drawn up to contain the normal use of the name: the 
counter-definition gets its name from its contrariety. 

(b) anb tov ToX,|ifmatO(; xo-bxov e'xei ti\v kXtioiv (xkoXo-oGov. wax' 
ei TO 6vo|i.a ek xr\c, Jipd^eax; Kax' a-uxwv Kvpiov, xal ti ti)icopia 
(letct xmv voiicov kot' avtcov Kvpia eivai 6<peiXei ctei. (Walz 8. 254. 
22) 

He takes his sobriquet from this reckless deed, so that, if a name is validly 
applied to them that derives from their behavior, their legal punishment 
also ought always to be vaUd. 

(c) r\ napaypacpvKTi ev )j,ev exei x6 Kiopiov 6vo^a• cove^e-oKxai 
5e Kttxd ev6\)5iK{av Ttdvxox; aXX,Ti xvv{, r[ \iia. xmv XoyiKoiv, t[ \im 
XQv vo|i.iK£)v. (Walz 8. 267. 31) 

A plea of inadmissibility has one normal name, but is of course combined 
in relation to the direct plea with another depending on either a point of 
logic or a point of law. 

4. Syriani, Sopatri et Marcellini scholia ad Hermogenis Status ("post A.D. 
saec. 7"). This is from Walz 4, page 400, lines 25-27: 

epo\)|j.£v ovv, oxi lidXioxa nev xm koiv© 6v6|j.axi dx; iSiw 
expT|<Jaxo- itoXka. ydp koi aXka x© xo\> yivoMq 6v6^axl one, Kvpico 
KEXpTixai. 

Our explanation will be that he has preferred to use the common name as 
proper. There are many other cases of his use of the name of the genus as 
if it were specific. 

The meaning of icupvov 6vo|a.a as "proper name," is already noted in 
LSP for Polybius (VI. 46. 10), Apollonius Dyscolus (2 c. A.D.) and 
Herodian (2 c. A.D.). This is a variant of Aristotle's doctrine that the Kupiov 
6vo|ia of anything is that by which it is normally known. The anonymous 
commentary on the Rhetoric (1. above) shows both usages. All the texts 
show that icupiov ovo^a is felt as something ordinary and appropriate 
because it defines the prevailing usage of a particular word or term. In no 
case is Kvpiov something so unusual or impressive that it could be an aid to 
extraordinary or "sublime" effects. There is thus no parallel at all in the 
texts scanned to "Longinus'" meaning. The nearest approach to that is 
actually listed by LSJ^ s.v. K-opiox;. The adverb, which for Aristotle means 
"in the normal sense," is used to mean "in a special or exceptional sense" by 
Aristotle's commentator Olympiodorus in the 6th century A.D. But even 
this is not really the same as "in a magnificent sense," \LzyaXoKpznG)c„ 
which would be needed for a complete parallel with de Sublimitate 30. 1. 

How far "Longinus" is flying in the face of tradition is shown by his 
own use at 28. 1 of tcupioXoyia to imply "words in their ordinary sense." 
This meaning was hallowed by centuries of usage in the schools. Tryphon, 



150 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

for example, a rhetorician dated by Walz to the time of Augustus, shows 
total orthodoxy: 

TH^ 6e (ppdaecoq eiSii eial bvo, KupioX-oyia xe kov xponoq. 
KvpioXoyta nev ovv eotiv ti 6ia tfii; npo)xr[C, Seoecoq tcov 
6vo|idx(ov OTi|j.aivo-uaa- oiov. . . . (Tryphon, Flepi tpoTtcov, Walz 8. 
728. 5 ff.) 

There are two categories of expression, literal and figurative. Literal 
language conveys its message by using the prime significance of words, for 
example. . . . 

The point is then illustrated by Homer, Iliad. XXIII. 634-37.^^ 

The term was used by the anonymous commentary on the Rhetoric and 
other late authors in the form KvpioXe^ia. Here, the de Sublimitate agrees 
with the rhetorical tradition as it still persisted in late antiquity, even in 
Eustathius.^'' But two chapters later, as we saw, Kiapioq parallels 
\iEyak(mpEnr\<;. Two questions arise: 

a. What triggered in the author's mind an interference so powerful that he 
reverses the normal meaning — normal even for himself — of the adjective 
K-upioq in the phrase K-upia 6v6|j.ata? This meaning is still well 
established both in Hermogenes and in the Anonyma in Aristotelis artem 
rhetoricam commentaria (and for that matter almost to the end of 
antiquity). 

b. Can this interference, whatever its cause, have occurred as early as the 
first century A.D.,^^ even in the reign of Augustus, as has been suggested 
by those who assign the treatise to Dionysius of Halicamassus? 

The answer to the second question is obviously no. How could a 
professor of rhetoric publish a treatise which, without apology or 
explanation, stands on its head the ordinary usage of a technical term of his 
art as evidenced by contemporary rhetoricians both in Greek and Latin? If he 
had been Dionysius of Halicamassus, this would be a technical term at that 
which he had himself applied elsewhere in its usual sense. What would his 
readers have made of it? Careful and comparative reading of the De 
Sublimitate shows in fact that it heralds quite a different sensibility. In the 
assessment of this, its anti-Alexandrianism must be noted. Can the critic 



^^The treatise attributed to Gregory of Corinth Gate 12th, early 13th century) by Walz (8. pp. 
763 ff.), where a similar definition and illustration of icupioXoYia occurs, is regarded by K. 
Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Lilteratur (repr. New Yoric 1970), I. p. 589, as 



" KupioA-e^ia, 624. 41; vopioXeKTeoj, 623. 36; 836. 58. See Eustathii Commentarii ad 
Homeri Iliadem, ed. M. van der Valk, 11 (Leiden 1976), "Praefatio," p. XUII with note 3. 

^^ A. Lesky, for example, following (the unnamed) Wilamowitz, is quite sure that 
"Longinus" answered Caecilius of Caleaae "in A.D. 40" {History of Greek Literature, Eng. ir. p. 
830). 



J. K. Newman 151 

who damns Apollonius with faint praise and Callimachus by indirection 
have been the contemporary of Virgil, Crinagoras, or even Quintilian? 

The answer to the first question is more complex. In the twelfth 
century, Eustathius still maintains the distinction between xpoTioXeKxeco 
and K\)pioX,eKtea). A contrary interference so powerful in the case of 
"Longinus" — the more powerful the earlier he is dated — must be caused by 
cross-cultural factors. Already Cicero speaks of certain verba as propria, as 
certa quasi vocabula rerum, paene una nata cum rebus ipsis (de Or. III. 37. 
149). The element of conventionality, urged in Plato's Cratylus by the 
Parmenidean Hermogenes, is beginning to be attenuated by such a theory. 

This feeling was reinforced by those cultures in which the yawning gap 
between "word" and "reality" was less obvious than to the Greeks. The 
Hebrew davar, for example, means both Xonfoc, and epyov, and K-opioq is the 
normal equivalent of the Divine Name in the Septuagint. "The Word(s) of 
the Lord" is a concept familiar to Jews and Christians in many senses except 
that of "ordinary," "everyday," "normal." This is to enter on a vast field,^^ 
but in fact Jewish influence has often been noted in the treatise, apart from 
the Genesis quotation (9. 9). For the Hebrew mind, the name or shem was 
as closely related to the named thing as the shadow is to the body that casts 
it.20 

To theorists of this persuasion, the eKA-oyfi icopCcov ovo^idtcov could 
not therefore be a simple matter of rhetorical effect. It was something more 
primitive, less conventional and arbitrary, since the Kt)pia ovoiiaxa are not 
so much rhetorical devices as clues to the essence of what is named, 
conferred at the time of the invention of language. The Stoics had begun to 
follow this line of thought,^' already familiar to Plato; and Philo Judaeus 
(no rhetorician) provides an extraordinary example of such confusion of 
Hebrew religious and Greek grammatical idiom. He praises the authors of 
the Septuagint, for example, for the precision of their work (de Vita Mosis 
II. 38): 

Kauoi ziq ov)k oTSev, oxi naaa ^ev 5id>.eKTO(;, r\ 5' 'EXXiivikti 
5ia<pep6vTC0(;, ovoiidxcov nXo-uxei, xaX xaiixov ev0'unT||i.a oiov xe 
jxexacppd^ovxa Kai 7tapa<ppd^ovxa oximaxioai noXXaxSx^, 
dXXoxe dXXac; e<pap)j.6^ovxa Xi^eiq; oTcep enl xa'6xii(; xr\q 
vo^o9eota<; o\> <paoi ovjiPfivai, ovvevexOtivai 5' ei^ xavxov 



" Of which the entiy s.v. "dabar" in Botterweck /Ringgren, Theologisches Worterbuch zum 
Alten Testament, 11 (Stuttgart 1977), cols. 89-133 (Bergman, Lutzmann, Schmidt), gives some 
inkling. 

^See G. Kiltel, Lexikon zum Neuen Testament, V (Stuttgart 1950), pp. 242 ff., esp. pp. 
263-64 (H. Bietenhanl); Bauer-Amdt-Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament 
and other Early Christian Literature (Chicago / Cambridge, 8th impression 1964), p. 574, col. 
2. 

Cicero, de Off. 1. 7. 23. 



152 Illinois Classical Studies, Xn.l 

K^pia K'upioK; 6v6|iaai . xa 'EXXtivikoc zoic, XaXbdiKoic,, evapfio- 
oGevta e\) |idXa toiq SriXovnevoK; npdyiiaai. 

It is a commonplace that the Greek language is uniquely rich in vocabulary. 
It is possible to translate and paraphrase the same thought in many forms 
with the help of varying words. But in the case of this giving of the Law 
that did not happen. The Greek and Hebrew were precisely correlated, exact 
word for exact word, well adapted to the revelation given. 

It might indeed be possible to translate icopia Kt)p(oi<; ovo^iaai here as 
"inspired word for inspired word," something that for an Aristotelian would 
never do. 

Philo contrasts this precision with the lubricity of normal Greek, where 
all kinds of adaptations of a single enthumema are possible. In another 
passage {Quod del. potiori insid. soleat, Cohn-Wendland [Berlin 1886], I. 
287. 26: cf. II. 95. 8) he speaks of eiKpavxiKcotdxcov Kal Kvpicov 
6vo)idxcov, "most expressive and exact words." This collocation of 
adjectives, with its graphic ("painterly") nuance, reminds one very much of 
the de Sublimitate. Elsewhere in Philo lODpiov ovojia means, not the 
"everyday name" of some object, but the "proper name" of the Lord. De 
Mutatione Nominum 12 may be adduced: 

5{5cooi KaxaxpfioGai iac, av ovojiaxi K-opico xa» "Kvpioq 6 0e6(;." 

He permits the use, as if it were a proper name, of the phrase "the Lord 
God." 

Philo approves of those [Stoic] contemporaries whom he describes as 
^TjXTjxiKol x(bv K-opCcov ovojidxcov ("scckcrs after the right names"). But, 
if the KiSpiov ovo^a was the normal nomenclature of an object, why was 
any search necessary? 

It is one thing however to find that a name expresses the essence of a 
created thing, and another that it is magnificent. But if God sanctioned the 
names, then obviously they may share (like Moses) in His reflected glory. 
Philo provides both the evidence of change from the Aristotelian meaning 
for which we are looking, and the plus that is missing in the Stoic theory. 
The de Praemiis el Poenis marks a culmination in his re-evaluation of 
Kvpioq. On section 111 (TtayKaXtoq xpTlodfievoq loic^ 6v6|iaai icupioiq 
a|xa Kal npoa<pt)£oiv: "making excellent use of the right and natural 
names"), F. H. Colson^^ lists some of Philo's varying usages of Kvpiov 
6vop.a23 and continues (my italics): 

Here the use is extended further. "Day" is Kvpiov because it expresses the 
lesson which Philo draws more exactly than "years" for instance would, and 
"number" is Kupiov because it brings out a similar lesson more exactly 

^ Loeb Qassical Library, vol. Vm (London and Cambridge, Mass. 1939), p. 457. 
^ Which may be studied in detail in J. Leisegang's indices in vol. Vn of Cohn-Wendland, pp. 
582-83. 



J, K. Newman 153 

than "a// thy days" would. Thus the phrase [i.e. Kvpvov ovo^a] has been 
made to mean something almost the opposite of what we should call literal 

Is not this nayKaXdic, the root of "Longinus"' own wrench (in Formalist 
terminology, sdvig) of ovoixaxa loipia towards ^zyaXonpEnr\ in the de 
Sublimitatet 

It is evident that with Philo we move into a different world from that of 
Horace's inornata et dominantia nomina, even though the two were, roughly 
speaking, contemporaries. But, as Colson's note shows, for Philo this 
reversal of meaning was by no means established. His thought was still 
shifting and fluid. He was still engaged in arguing a case. He certainly lays 
the groundwork for the change of meaning found in the de Sublimitate but, 
one suspects, no more than that. He was after all a speculative thinker and 
philosopher, not a rhetorical technician. He was far too conscious of his 
Jewish heritage to be so absorbed by the Greek literary achievement. 

By the time the de Sublimitate was written by one who evidently was a 
professional student of hterature of any kind, and who accords no privileged 
status to an Old Testament example paralleled with one from the Iliad, the 
traditional meaning of the phrase Kt>pia ovoiiaxa, sanctioned by the 
authority of Aristotle, hallowed by centuries of rhetorical teaching, and 
presumed by Philo's polemic against Greek glibness, must have begun, in 
certain quarters at least, to fade. Now it could mean the word that pened*ated 
to the very heart of the thing named, that gave as it were the Creator's 
perspective, "putting a speaking soul (vvxt] (p(ovT|tiKTi) into things." 
Bereshith (2. 7) related that God had breathed into Adam the breath of life, 
and that he thus became a "living soul," nepesh hajjah, in the Septuagint 
\j/\)XTi C^oa. But, in "Longinus", where the sublime artist with words 
becomes himself a kind of creator, bringing the bloom of life to his 
sculptures.^"* \fMxy\ (ptovritiKTi also seems a loaded expression, and the 
unexpected use of nepesh on the Qumran scrolls to mean "throat as the 
organ of speech" (= "speaking soul") may be dimly at work in the 
phraseology of the Greek.^ Philo had commended Moses' modesty as an 
orator, but made God answer him {De Vita Mosis I. 84): 



^The imagery is already known to Pindar. Cf. Nem. 5. 1 ff., and J. K. Newman / F. S. 
Newman, Pindar's An (Hddesh&im 1984), pp. 114-18. 

^Nepesh normally denotes in Hebrew the throat as breathing, or as eating, hungering, 
desiring, rather than speaking. But "My nepesh (= "throat" = yuxri ) roars so as to praise Thy 
name" is quoted from the Qumran finds (llQPsal9. 8) in Botterweck-Ringgren-Fabry, 
Theologisches Worterbuch zum Allen Testament V (1986), col. 553 (H. Seebass). Seebass adds 
that the verb here is appropriate to a lion (cf. Pindar's ©puaai, 01. 9. 109, with which LSJ^ 
compare LXX Ps. 37 [38]: 9). He also notes expressions from the scrolls such as "With my 
whole leb and my whole nepesh I bless / glorify TTiee." 



154 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

otpa ye oiYvoEiq, Eine, tov 66vxa ctvGpwnq) ax6\ia vai Kaxa- 
OKEvdoavxa y^'ii't'tav koI dpiTipiav kuI xf|v dnaoav X-oyiKriq 
(pcovfiq opycxvonoiiav; avxoq el|i.i iydt. 

Do you not know, he said, the One who gave to man a mouth, and who 
formed the tongue and throat and all the instrumentality of rational 
discourse? It is I Myself. 

The notion of the "speaking soul" seems very close to this.^^ 

A Hellenized Jew in Philo's tradition would understand that a \\fvxr[ 
(pcovTiTiKTi fresh from praising the Name of the Lord Most High (to ovo^ia 
KvpCoD -uvi/faTo-o) and now imitating His creative act in words could not use 
in its sublime task Aristotle's kind of ovo^axa xrupia. MeYa>,07tpe7ifi 
would alone be appropriate, since the Lord alone is great, and that is what 
KTupia would now have to mean. The implicit theory of artistic creativity 
reminds one of Pygmalion, most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
although even he neeeded the help of Aphrodite. Orthodox Jewish unease 
with the idol and even with the golem, which had no cpcov-ri, may be 
contrasted.^"^ 

The author of the de Sublimitate was not the genuine Longinus, since 
in the passage compared by Luck^* with de Subl. 30. 1 precisely the 
characteristic element is missing. For the same reason, he was not a Greek, 
even though he had received (like St. Paul) an excellent Greek education. 
He brings different attitudes to literature, as his preoccupation with the 
ultimately religious term ekplexis shows. Yet he does not for all that 
question Uie primacy or paradigmatic status of Greek literature. He was not 
therefore a culniral partisan, like Philo or even Josephus in the first century. 
He wrote at a time when traditional rhetorical ideas and even terminology 
were open to radical modification. He was not however a vox clamantis in 
deserto. He expected his readers to "need no reminder" {\vc\ koX Tiepixxov fi 
Tipoq ei66i:a<; Sie^ievai). The recipient of the treatise was obviously not 
meant to be puzzled by his redefinition of lojpioq. In Greek, the Umdeutung 
may possibly be signalled by the time of Olympiodorus, even though the 
Aristotelian meaning persisted in the Christian Bishop Eustathius (tll94?); 
and in the Latin tradition the original sense of Horace's dominantia verba is 



Isocrates had already described language as man's most distinguishing characteristic 
(Antidosis 293-94). We cannot wholly separate the Greek and the non -Greek in ideas, any more 
than we can do that in vocabulary. 

^ Cf. OT Ps. 115:4 and. in the same tradition. ei6coXa acptova. NT 1 Ep. Cor. 12:2. The 
golem, particularly associated wiih Rabbi Low in 16ih century Prague (his memory still persists 
at ihe old Jewish Synagogue there), but known long before him. was also dumb. The clay 
sparrows in The Infancy Story of Thomas, by contrast, "went away chirping" (Edgar Hennecke, 
New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhehn Schneemelcher. Volume I. Eng. tr. R. McL. Wilson 
[Philadelphia 1963]. p. 393). and this of course is the point of an anecdote that appears to baffle 
exegetes. Contrast the typically religious "amazement" that ensues in the apocryphal Gospel 
narrative. 

^ Op. cit., 1 10. citing Spengel Te%vTi 'PriTopiKTi , p. 304 = p. 558 W. 



J. K. Newman 155 

still preserved in the fifth century. An enquiry opens of wide compass, but 
for the moment what it all suggests is that we should look for as late a date 
for the de Sublimitate as is compatible with the other evidence, and for its 
author in one of the schools of rhetoric scattered during the Empire around 
the lands of the Middle East, though not too far from one land to be 
unruffled, in spite of Greek sophistication, by ruakh elohimP 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

^'Cf. ckPoXti xo\> 6ainovio\) TtvevnaToc;, 33. 5. 



12 

M. Minucius Felix as a Christian Humanist 

MICHAEL VON ALBRECHT 

I. Life, Work and Chronology 

M. Minucius Felix, a lawyer in Rome, was bom perhaps in North Africa, a 
region Juvenal calls the "nurse of barristers" (7. 148). Indeed the names 
Minucius gives to the interlocutors of his dialogue Octavius ^ are attested 
epigraphically in North Africa; moreover, Caecilius, the defender of 
paganism, mentions Pronto, who attacked the Christians, and calls him his 
countryman from North African Cirta (9. 6). Finally, the fact that the book 
has been handed down to us as the so-called "eighth book" of Amobius 
suggests that the archetype was an edition of North African authors. As for 
the date, the Octavius was written between a.d. 160 and 250, for on the one 
hand Minucius quotes Fronto (9. 6; 31. 2), and on the other hand he is cited 
by Novatian, Sixtus and St. Cyprian. There are points which support a date 
after 197,^ i.e. after Tertullian's Apologeticum: St. Jerome {epist. 70. 5) 
places Tertullian before Minucius; Lactantius, however, mentions him after 
TertuUian, but does not aim at a chronological order {inst. 5. 1. 21). Since 
Tertullian proves quite independent in many other cases, he is not likely to 
have adhered to Minucius^ so closely. On the other hand Minucius, 
provided that he is the later author, follows the same principle in imitating 
Tertullian as he does in his adaptations of Cicero and Plato."* 

The importance attached to Ciceronian and Vergilian quotations reminds 
us today more of Novatian and St. Cyprian than of Tertullian. The use of 
Ciceronian style, being typical of dialogue as a literary genre, is not 

^ Text: J. Beaujeu's edition of Minucius Felix (with a French translation and a commentary, 
Paris 1964). English translation with a commentary: G. W. Qarke, New York and Pyramus 
1974 {Ancient Christian Writers 39). 

^ A. V. Hamack, Geschichte der allchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius, 2. Theil, Die 
Chronologie, 2. Bd., Die Chronologie der Literatur von Irenaeus bis Eusebius (Leipzig 1904), 
pp. 324-30. 

^ B. Axelson, Das Prioritdtsproblem Tertullian-Minucius Felix (Lund 1941: Skrifier utgivna 
av vetenskap-societeten i Lund 27). 

* C. Becker, Der Octavius des Minucius Felix, Heidnische Philosophie und frUhchristliche 
Apologelik, Sitzungsberichte (Miinchen 1967), p. 2. 



158 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

chronological evidence; but the fact that Minucius decided to adopt the form 
of dialogue (instead of the apologetical libellus) might give us a 
chronological hint. More important are the historical reasons: The 
Christian religion has penetrated into the sphere of Roman magistrates and 
martyrdom is no longer an immediate problem but a subject of 
philosophical and literary reflection (37); such an attitude is not likely to be 
adopted in times of persecution. Minucius' remarks on the emperor and the 
Roman Empire (25 ff.) are more contemptuous than Tertullian's and more 
typical, indeed, of a period of decay. The stress laid on philosophy at the 
cost of Christian dogma makes sense only in the third century. Another 
terminus post quern might be the foundation of the Serapeum in Rome 
under the rule of Caracalla (2. 4; 21. 3). The fact that Minucius is 
spiritually somewhat close to Amobius is a further argument for dating him 
rather late, in particular under the reign of Alexander Severus, or between 
Maximinus Thrax and Decius. 

Here someone might object that Fronto's attack must have been more 
recent if it is mentioned by Minucius. The answer would be that in 
antiquity Fronto had been a well-known author for a very long time, and, 
consequently, we are not compelled to consider him a contemporary of 
Minucius. Moreover, African authors are fond of quoting their countrymen, 
even when there are chronological or ideological barriers. Consider 
Augustine's references to Apuleius. It is then that the provinces begin to 
develop a literary and artistic life of their own. Finally Christian apologists 
often answer pagan attacks only after a delay of decades, as happened with 
Origen and Celsus.^ 

II. Art and Reality^ 

It is true that the Octavius is meant to be a literary work of art in the 
tradition of the philosophical dialogue, not a mere record of a conversation 
that actually had taken place. However, the laws themselves of the literary 
genre encourage the introduction of real persons, whether they are friends of 
the author or representatives of an earlier generation. The death of a friend, 
used as an occasion on which to raise a literary monument for him, is in 
itself part of a literary tradition; nevertheless, the tradition does not exclude 
sincerity in the individual case. In general, ancient writers do not like mere 
fiction. They prefer formulating their personal experiences in terms of their 
literary experiences, and thereby conferring a more general resonance on 
them. 

^ We cannot judge of De Fato Contra Malhematicos , a book ascribed to Minucius; its 
authenticity was doubled by St. Jerome for stylistic reasons (Jerome, vir. ill. 58, PL 23, p. 669; 
of. epist. 70. 5 Ad Magnum, ed. J. Labourt [Paris 1953], T. 3, p. 214). 

^ Excellent in Beaujeu. pp. xxiii-xxxi. 



Michael von Albrecht 159 

Another question, quite independent of the problem of historical truth, 
is the assimilation and transformation of things observed and experienced 
into a literary context. Minucius draws sensitive pictures of children (2. 1 ; 
3. 5 ff.), and creates even more sophisticated portraits of adults. Octavius, 
the defender of Christianity, is a typical father, combining kindness with 
severity; his humor is generally urbane, although occasionally somewhat 
rustic (28. 9). First he challenges his partner by a slightly provincial 
Puritanism; then he converts him by philosophical arguments. On the other 
hand, the pagan Caecilius is lively, even passionate and full of juvenile 
revolt at first; then he yields in a fair way and is firmly determined to 
convert his rhetorical defeat into a moral victory over himself. We shall 
return to the surprising but realistic mixture of philosophical skepticism and 
devotion to religious tradition in his character. 

Now we have to consider how the dialogue fits into its epoch. At that 
time Christian apologetic writing in a dignified literary form was something 
new, and it made its appearance in Latin literature first, Minucius' claim to 
create a "classical" work of art, competing with Cicero and Plato, was a 
pretention unknown to the Greek apologists of that time. In that epoch, the 
Christian reUgion began to penetrate into the higher ranks of Roman society 
and strove to win an educated public. Anyone who knows the innate 
sensitivity of the Latin race in matters of language and their idolatry of 
formal perfection will understand that there were only very few educated 
Romans who voluntarily submitted themselves to the linguistic torture of 
reading the Bible in the raw Latin of Jerome's forerunners. It is obvious, 
consequently, that a book like the Octavius was in great demand as a means 
for converting the educated. 

III. Literary Genre, Sources, and Models 

Tertullian, the great pioneer of Christian Latin literature and the immediate 
predecessor of Minucius, had stood somehow in his own light. His too 
subtle paradoxes were liable to convince insiders, rather than outsiders. His 
passionate metaphorical language made his work difficult to the point of 
obscurity, the heaviest of reproaches to a Latin author. In addition, even 
benevolent readers were deterred from reading his work because of his 
sectarianism. The variety and richness of Tertullian's work show that 
Christian Latin literature was in statu nascendi, but it also reflects the 
experimental stage of the corresponding Greek literature. This stage of 
"expansion" is followed by a period of "contraction," in which Minucius 
Felix restricts himself to a limited number of subjects; as far as choice of 
models is concerned, he prefers the Latin tradition. In this case a perfect 
artistic achievement occurs earlier in Latin Christian literature than in 
Greek. Equally, at the end of the patristic epoch, we shall find a literary 
achievement unparalleled in Greek literature, the Consolatio of Boethius. 
According to the judgment of many Hellenists, Atticism exerted a disastrous 



160 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

influence on Greek literature by paralyzing its creative forces and reducing it 
to poverty. It is not up to us to decide if this is the full truth, even for the 
Greeks; Latin authors, struggling for a good style and emulating Cicero and 
other great authors, certainly undergo a strong discipline which is 
stimulating at the same time. So the rise of new classical books on 
Christian topics is favored. 

The scientific level of argument and the artistic aspects of form, as well 
as the character of language and style, depend to some extent on literary 
genre. The choice of the philosophical dialogue, not used earlier by 
Christians against paganism, implies for a Latin author competition with 
Cicero. The problem especially concerns his five books De natura deorum 
because of their theological subject, and his dialogue Hortensius because of 
its being a "protrepticus." Even the use of a proper name as a title reminds 
us of this model. The two works of Cicero just mentioned will be preferred 
by Christian readers even later. Amobius will declare that fanatical pagans 
ought to insist on burning the De natura deorum since by that book the 
Christian truths are confirmed {adv. nat. 3. 7). Augustine's first conversion 
will be due to his reading Cicero's Hortensius (conf. 3. 4. 7). So 
Minucius' choice of texts exerts an important influence on the Christian 
understanding of Cicero.'' 

Let us now enter into some particulars. The introduction, evoking the 
late friend, recalls the beginning of the second book De oratore; the 
technique of setting is reminiscent of De legibus. A dialogue which 
contains a warning against being seduced by specious arguments is inserted 
between the two speeches. This technique can be traced back to Plato 
{Phaedo 88b-90b). In addition, the Octavius follows a younger literary 
tradition^ of oratorical contest in the presence of an umpire. Only since the 
end of the first century A.D. have umpires appeared in dialogues; authors 
were either following bucolic tradition or imitating real life. We find a hint 
of it in the Tacitean Dialogus (4.2-5.2), and more elaborate examples in 
Plutarch.^ In the Attic Nights of Gellius (18. 1), one of Plutarch's friends, 
Favorinus of Aries, a renowned rhetorician of the second century A.D., acts 
as an umpire between a Stoic and a Peripatetic philosopher in a dispute on 
happiness. As in the Octavius the place of action is Ostia, and between the 
two speeches a short dialogue is inserted. Favorinus is a skeptic like 
Caecilius in the Octavius', one of his admirers is Fronto. 

By his choice of setting and his insertion of the short dialogue 
Minucius seems to emphasize his opposition to Fronto's circle. Indeed, 
Fronto, a central figure of literary life in the second century, had attacked the 

^ I. Opelt, "Ciceros Schrift De natura deorum bei den lateinischen Kirchenvatem," Anlike and 
Abendland 12 (1966), 141-55. 

* W. Baehrens, "Literarische Beitrage," Hermes 50 (1915), 456-63; Beaujeu, pp. xx ff. 

' Quaestiones convivales 1. 2. 2, 615E; 9. 15. 1, 747B; Non posse suaviler vivi secundum 
Epicurum 15. 1096F; Amatorius 3, 750A. 



Michael von Albrecht 1 6 1 

Christians, a fact explicitly mentioned by Minucius (9. 6; 31. 2). Was it a 
special speech against the Christians'^ or only an incidental attack? The 
delay of Minucius' answer, combined with the fact that Pronto is quoted 
only casually, suggests the first supposition: there is every reason to 
believe that it was a very well-known and important book by the 
rhetorician. If this is true, Latin literature gained a lead over the Greek in 
the field of anti-Christian polemics. This perspective is surprising only at 
first glance and fits without difficulty into that bilingual epoch. We may 
add as a parallel the fact that the Octavius, the first literary dialogue between 
a Christian and a pagan, was written in Latin too. 

Minucius almost exclusively uses Latin authors. Along with Cicero 
and the tradition of Latin dialogue mentioned above, Seneca is a source of 
moral philosophy. For example, in chapters 36 ff., De providentia is used 
repeatedly. I am not sure if it is necessary to suppose a florilegium of 
Seneca in order to explain the stack of references to Seneca which will be 
found again in Lactantius.^' Of course Minucius Felix also knew African 
authors, for he cites Apuleius' De deo Socrads (37. 9). 

As for Greek apologists,'^ in spite of numerous similarities of theme, 
there are almost no positive verbal reminiscences. The reason may be that 
Minucius follows a different aim. It is true that the form of dialogue was 
used occasionally in anti-Jewish polemics. (Ariston of Pella wrote a 
dialogue between Jason and Papiskos about Christ, and Justin was the 
author of a dialogue with Tryphon.) It was also used perhaps in anti- 
heretical literature,'^ but Minucius is not at all likely to have known those 
writings. Usually the Greek apologies adopt the form of the libellus, a 
request to the legal authorities to end the persecution. There is no point in 
using this form in a time of religious peace. In fact, the Octavius is more 
a protrepticus than a juridical apology. Likewise, the content of such 
apologies does not serve Minucius' purpose. Aristeides and Theophilos refer 
to unclassical sources (Jewish authors) and give lengthy quotations from the 
Bible. Tatian even attacks Greek culture. One may add that at the time the 
rather modest quality of Greek apologetic writings was not a suitable model 
for an author who laid claim to higher literary standards. Once more, it was 
a Latin author who exerted a decisive influence on Minucius in this field, 
namely TertuUian. 

^° P. Frassinetli, "L'orazione di Frontone contro i Cristiani," Giornale Italiano di Filologia 2 
(1949X238-54. 

^* P. Courcelle, "Virgile et rimmanence divine chez Minucius Felix," Mullus, Festschrift Th. 
Klauser (Munster 1964: = Jahrbuchfiir Antike und Chrislentum, Erganzungsband 1), pp. 34-^2. 

^2 Qarke, transl. p. 26. 

^^ The debate between Manes and Archelaos, for instance, was written before 350, and 
Iherefore much later than the Octavius {Die griechischen chrisllichen Schriftsleller der ersten 3 
Jahrhunderle, vol. 16, Hegemonius, Acta Archelai, ed. Ch. H. Beeson [Leipzig 1906*]. I am 
very grateful to L. Koenen for calling my attention to this book). 



162 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Greek philosophers are often mentioned by Minucius. He is also our 
only witness for some doxographical material, but, as we can infer from 
some of his misunderstandings, he had not read those authors, except certain 
passages from Plato and Xenophon. Much evidence for the history of 
philosophy was taken from Cicero's De Natura Deorum, but the purpose had 
been skilfully changed. Minucius chose the main literary form of academic 
skepticism in order to combat skepticism. Agreements between Minucius 
and Clement of Alexandria suggest a dependence on Posidonius or a similar 
intermediate source with which Minucius complemented his Ciceronian 
model. Maybe it is easier to suppose a doxographical book or a 
florilegium. The most striking fact in this survey is perhaps the lack of 
direct quotations from the Bible; there are only allusions. This is owing to 
the purpose of the Octavius, which we shall consider later. 

IV. Literary Technique 

Before labelling the Octavius as a "mosaic" and condemning it, we have to 
consider the principles which determine its structure.^'* It is only in this 
context that we can grasp the function of its imitations. According to 
rhetorical principles, two contrary standpoints are explained in two parallel 
speeches. But though both speeches are constructed roughly in the same 
way, Minucius avoids pedantic symmetry. So the Christian's discourse is 
not only longer, but Octavius goes beyond the issues raised by the pagan by 
setting them in a wider context (see especially 19-20.1; 21-24; 26.8-27). 
Since they attempt to re-evaluate such terms as "religion" and 
"superstition," those digressions prove to be indispensable. In the same 
way as the two speeches, the introduction and the setting are connected with 
the book as a whole. This intention is manifest in the striking repetition of 
crucial terms. To the pagan "religion" is a synonym for paganism, and 
"superstition" a synonym for Christianity, and yet the same words have the 
opposite meaning for the Christian. If we compare the last sentences of the 
two speeches, the words are almost identical, the meanings opposite (13. 5 
with 38. 7). The correspondence of the last sentences announces the 
conversion of the pagan. He will even be able to maintain his first 
statement, after the key words have acquired a new and deeper sense. The 
same words are stressed at the end of the preface (1. 5): Octavius leads 
Caecilius from "superstition" to "true religion" (vera religid). In its context 
this does not mean the "only true religion," but religion in the full sense of 
the word. The adjective is not merely a laudatory epithet but a 
differentiating one [similarly elsewhere, Minucius, speaking of "true" 
freedom (38), changes the traditional meaning of the word]. 

Such repetitions of key words help us to understand the unity of the 
Octavius', but they are also characteristic of the changes of the dialogue as a 

^'* C. Becker, above, note 4. 



Michael von Albrecht 163 

genre. While Cicero in his dialogues tries to be impartial (though not 
succeeding so far as Epicureanism is concerned) and does not pretend to be a 
missionary, for Minucius the dialogue culminates in the conversion; this is 
an advantage from the dramatic point of view. Thus a real change of attitude 
arises from the theoretical discussion. 

The kiss by which Caecilius pays homage to the pagan god Serapis (2. 
4) is an important link between the setting and the book as a whole. By 
this gesture the theme of the book, religion and superstition, is symbolized. 
It immediately provokes Octavius' reproach (3. 1) and ultimately the debate 
(cf. 4. 3 ff.). Finally it finds its match in Caecilius' embracing the 
Christian religion. Similarly, the key word "wisdom" occurs in the 
introduction (1. 4), the setting (3. 2; 4. 4), and at the end (40. 1), partly 
accompanied by its antonym "error." The artistic unity is enhanced by the 
elaborate framework and by the effects of perspective. There are three 
chronological levels in the preface: the present (Minucius as an elderly man 
who lost his friend Octavius), a remote past (Minucius and Octavius as 
young people), and a past closer to the present (the visit of Octavius and the 
conversion of Caecilius). Thus, the time of the dialogue is symmetrically 
framed by two more periods of time, while the friendship with Octavius 
lasted through all three epochs of the author's life. This kind of framing 
favors a sympathetic approach and aesthetic distance at the same time.^^ 

Another hint that helps the reader to understand the artistic design of the 
Octavius is given by the author, who sometimes unmasks himself. 
Obviously, the pagan's ideas oscillate between theoretical atheism and 
practical acceptance of the traditional cults. It is true that this attitude is 
psychologically probable and even typical of the mentality of educated 
people of that time, but nevertheless Octavius needs only to point out this 
manifest inconsistency in order to be sure of winning the game. Minucius 
not only notices that problem; he even stresses it in an ironical way. He 
makes Octavius ask himself if the talk of Caecilius has been muddled on 
purpose, or if it stumbles by mistake (16. 1). For a moment, the reader 
becomes the accomplice of the author who between the lines prides himself 
on his predilection for Christianity. (Compare the literary Minucius in the 
inserted talk, the one-sidedness of which was rightly challenged by 
Caecilius.) This re-evaluation of partiality is symptomatic of the change of 
dialogue as a genre from Cicero to Minucius, who gives a new orientation 
to traditional material. 

The author's design also causes important changes of form and style. In 
this respect, the passages which we can compare with Tertullian are most 
eloquent. Crude naturalism is avoided, sentences lacking in symmetry are 
harmonized, rough syntax is smoothed. Minucius is fond of dicola and 

^^ Different levels of action are also found in the setting: the serious contest is playfully 
anticipated in the world of children (cf. the vocabulary of contest and victory in chapters 3 and 
40). 



164 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

tricola, and of chiasmus and parallelism. Even more characteristic is his 
use of asyndeta with a hvely effect (3. 6; 20. 5; 7. 6; 17. 5) and significant 
hyperbata, which concentrate complex meaning into a single artistic unit 
("et illam oculorum etiam in seriis hilar itatem" 4. 2). Since Minucius 
follows the rules of classical prose rhythm very strictly, even 
monotonously, it is all the more difficult to reconstruct the text of Pronto 
he had attacked. In fact, because of his ideas on Latin style, Minucius 
cannot but change each sentence of his model. While Pronto is fond of rare 
and unfamiliar words, Minucius tries to avoid them. That applies even to 
technical terms of Christian theology. It is true that his Latin is not quite 
Ciceronian (the verb effigiare, for instance, is first attested in the writings of 
his African countryman Apuleius) and other expressions are colloquial, 
archaic, or poetic (especially in the descriptions of nature). On the whole, 
however, Minucius' language^^ is both modem and classical, both up to date 
and timeless. His liking for excessive symmetry reveals the hand of a late 
writer; yet, many expressions, pregnant with meaning and full of freshness, 
give evidence of a technique that has reached the level of art. 

The metaphors are chosen carefully; according to the missionary 
purpose, symbols that are common to pagans and Christians are found at 
crucial points of the text. In the introduction, while speaking of his own 
conversion, Minucius uses the venerable language of Greek mysteries to 
give a background for the conversion of his friends: "When I emerged from 
the depths of darkness to the light of wisdom and truth" (1. 4). These 
metaphors which are frequently used in antiquity (even by Lucretius, e.g. III. 
1) take on a new meaning when pronounced by a Christian (baptism being 
literally a process of diving and emerging), without giving offence to the 
pagan reader. 

The same may be said of the allegory of fighting, which equally fits the 
Stoic sage and the Christian martyr (37). Another example is the metaphor 
of gold proved by fu-e (36. 9; Sen., Prov. 5. 10 and NT I Petr. 1:6). If 
Octavius occasionally chooses a vulgar metaphor (28. 9), this suits well his 
being characterized as an "offspring of Plautus' race, the foremost of bakers" 
(14. 1). But the passage is also significant in itself, since Serapis, the god 
of a mystery religion competing with Christianity, is the target of the crude 
joke. The unholy flatus ventris is certainly meant to counterbalance the 
pious kiss thrown by Caecilius to Serapis. It becomes evident that in the 
course of the dialogue paganism is degraded from "religion" to 
"superstition." Likewise, the almost imperceptible process of devaluation 
of heathen philosophy culminates in the bold caricature of Socrates as a 
clown from Attica (38. 5). Equally, the strong metaphor erupit ("he burst 
out") is kept for Caecilius' utterances (16. 5; 40. 1), a feature in harmony 

1^ Valuable comments on language and style: E. Lofstedt, Syntactica, vol. I (Lund 1928, 
1956^). pp. 192, 256, 342; vol. n (Lund 1933), p. 384, note 1; idem, Vermischte Studien zur 
lateinischen Sprachkunde und Syntax (Lund 1936), pp. 74, 83, 148. 



Michael von Albrecht 165 

with his volcanic temper and the suddenness of his conversion. Thus the 
range of stylistic devices and rhetorical colors used by Minucius is by no 
means poor; just because he uses the brighter colors more rarely, their effect 
in the context is all the more striking. 

V. Philosophical and Religious Aspects 

Minucius is the only Christian apologist not to enter into Christological 
problems; he does not even mention the name of Christ. He confines 
himself to the items of monotheism, divine providence, the purity of 
Christian life, and the immortality of the soul (34. 8). We shall come back 
to the motives for this reserve. 

Like many other Church Fathers before the middle of the third century, 
Minucius is strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy, a fact due not only to 
Tertullian's impact. Chrysippus' theology and his physical interpretation of 
myths are best transmitted to us by Minucius (19. 11). He is the only 
witness for the philosophy of Persaios of Kition (21. 2). He paints the 
clearest picture of an attempt to connect the Stoic doctrine of ecpyrosis (the 
destruction of the world through fire) with the Biblical concept of the end of 
the world (34); his praise of creation as a proof of the existence of God is 
particularly striking (17). He is the only author to mention Britain as an 
example of divine providence, since the lack of sunshine there is 
recompensed by the warmth of the sea [an allusion to the Gulf Stream, 
taken undoubtedly from a Stoic author (18. 3)]. Together with the Stoics, 
Minucius thinks that in the best of all worlds everything is arranged ar its 
best and for man's best good — a kind of anthropocentric optimism that had 
seemed rather problematic to a man like Kelsos. Just like the Stoics and 
even more than Tertullian, Minucius lays stress on the fact that man is 
intimately connected with the universe and with God (11. 1; 17. 2), an idea 
he has in common with Gnostics and Middle Platonists (Asclepius 10). In 
a Stoic vein (though in opposition to the supercilious intellectual arrogance 
of Caecilius), Octavius declares (18. 11) reason and perception to be given 
to all human beings without any difference, an opinion expressed already by 
Tertullian (Apol. 17. 5-6). Moral items (such as the virtue of martyrs, 
poverty, the worthlessness of the theatre) are treated in the manner of the 
Stoic and Cynic diatribe. The idea that our hearts must be the temple of 
God and the place for true worship (32) harmonizes with Stoic (Sen., fr. 123 
Haase) and Epicurean thought (Lucr. V. 1198-1203). Another feature 
Minucius shares with these schools of thought is his so-called materialism 
in spiritual matters, the lack of ability or readiness to consider spirit as 
something totally immaterial and abstract. Although he uses Stoic 
arguments to prove the existence of divine providence, Minucius, who 
believes in free will, rejects Stoic determinism. 

Plato also plays an important role — a fact which, by the way, favors 
dating Minucius in the transitional stage between the "Stoic" and the 



166 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

"Platonic" period of patristic thought, which is the second quarter of the 
third century A.D. The short dialogue inserted between the two speeches, the 
form and content of which are influenced by Plato, is used by Minucius 
Felix to attack academic skepticism. The Christian author reverses the 
function of Velleius' "Epicurean" catalogue of philosophers (as it is to be 
found in Cicero's De Natura Deorum). Minucius gives it not only a positive 
purpose but also a new culmination by quoting Plato, who is assigned a 
place of honor among the precursors of Christianity. Finally, Middle 
Platonism seems to have exerted an influence also on Minucius' 
anthropology and demonology. 

On the whole, our author advocates a very moderate attitude toward 
pagan philosophy, more similar to Justin and Athenagoras than to 
Tertullian (not to mention Theophilus of Antioch). Nevertheless, during 
the dialogue there is some change in this respect. First, Minucius contents 
himself with stating agreements (34. 8), but he is not unaware of the 
differences (cf. 19. 15 the qualification expressed through /ere). In principle, 
the superiority of revelation is presupposed already in 19. 4 and 15; yet the 
denigration of worldly wisdom is prepared for very cautiously, with 
criticism becoming more pointed only towards the end. 

In a similar way, the concept of wisdom changes. Being a clever 
psychologist, Minucius does not insist on the paradoxes of faith, which are 
not likely to convince outsiders, but he makes the pagan Caecilius raise the 
question of "wisdom." Just because of its ambiguity, this word is a useful 
starting point for a dialogue (for instance, it has a Christian meaning in 16. 
5). Like Minucius himself (1. 4), Caecilius will get rid of his "blindness" 
(caecus, cf. 3. 1; 4. 3) and achieve wisdom and insight into truth. Because 
of this metamorphosis, the oratorical contest becomes a dramatic process, in 
the course of which the pagan unmasks his own intellectual arrogance. In 
the beginning of the contest he presumes to defend wisdom and to teach the 
uneducated, conceited Christians to know themselves. Later on, however, 
he becomes enraptured with his own eloquence and falls into a naive pride, 
which gives the lie to his talk on modesty. Seen against the background of 
Caecilius' presumption, the thesis of Octavius, which represents wisdom as 
innate in all human beings, has a specifically Christian ring (which it may 
lose if detached from its context). In this way the dialogue gains a 
philosophical meaning as an intellectual process. Hence we are supposed to 
respect the specific function of elements in their context without 
emphasizing doctrines in isolation. 

What is the role of philosophy in our dialogue? Minucius explicitly 
states that the terms "Christians" and "philosophers" are equivalent (20. 1), 
and thus he varies Plato's famous saying about kings and philosophers, in 
the spirit of Justin or Athenagoras. This alliance with philosophy offers 
considerable advantages in the discussion with paganism. On the one hand, 
a long time ago Greek philosophy had furnished several more or less critical 
approaches to pagan religion: first, the allegorical interpretation of mythical 



Michael von Albrecht 167 

persons as natural phenomena, as was done by the philosophers from the 
sixth century B.C. to the Stoics; second, the rationalistic and historical 
reinterpretation of gods as great men, as represented by Euhemerus; third, 
moralistic criticism of myths, as attested from Xenophanes and Plato 
onwards; finally, the integration of gods into a hierarchy of demons in the 
style of the Middle Platonists. 

On the other hand, there was an eminently positive argument. At that 
time most of the philosophical schools had embraced monotheism as a 
scientific theory and described piety, not in terms of ritual, but of moral 
attitude. Many educated pagans, while theoretically accepting monotheism, 
in practice stuck to polytheism. In that situation the Christians who, along 
with the Jews, were the only ones to profess a monotheistic religion, had 
every reason to share a common cause with the philosophers and to 
recommend their religion as the only one scientifically proven and 
acceptable. Far from being a representative of liberal theology, an antique 
Renan, Minucius expounded his beliefs in a rationalistic way because the 
historical situation and the mentality of educated readers imposed it on him. 
Hence, the absence of direct quotations from the Bible is no proof of 
Minucius' ignorance in theological matters; he just chooses an "exoteric" 
form of preaching to reach all people of good will. While other Christians 
usurp the role of philosophers and sophists in a more popular way, down to 
the adaptation of the philosophers' beards and their miraculous legends, 
Minucius challenges scientific discussion. 

Let us finally have a look at the philosophical and religious ideas truly 
alive in Minucius' day. Not long before him lived Sextus Empiricus. 
Thus, in the domain of philosophy, the Skeptics, not the Stoics or the 
"dogmatic" Platonists, are his real enemies. Hence the final assault against 
their alleged ancestor, Socrates. In the field of religion, neither the brilliant 
attacks against ancient Roman religion, which had long been moribund, nor 
those against Greek mythology, which had almost completely turned into 
literature, are really relevant. The dangerous rivals of Christian religion are 
first the cult of the emperor, a hazardous item that Minucius cautiously 
avoids, and second the gods of mysteries, among whom he chooses Serapis 
as the object of his derision. By dating the conversion at the grape harvest, 
a time preferred for initiations to the mysteries of Isis,^^ Minucius seems to 
give an additional hint of his polemical attitude towards a cult very much in 
favor at that time in Africa and Rome. 

VI. Tradition and Influence 

Later stories of conversions [St. Cyprian's iad Donatum 1), Augustine's,^* 

^^ P. Courcelle, Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la tradition littiraire. Antecidents et 
postiriti (Paris 1963), p. 122. 
^8 Op. cit., pp. 121 ff. 



168 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.l 

Ennodius' (334)] can hardly be understood without Minucius as a model. 
Also his reading of Cicero's De Natura Deorum and Hortensius has found 
followers. Lactantius is greatly indebted to him; St. Jerome passes 
judgment on his style; in modem times, Minucius is especially appreciated 
by Renan.^' 

The dialogue Octavius has been handed down to us as the "eighth 
(octavus) book of Arnobius" in a ninth-century marmscript (Paris. 1661), 
which is handsome but full of errors. A copy of it to be found in Brussels 
is of little use. The excerpts in a book ascribed to St. Cyprian (Quod idola 
dii non sint^^) are more helpful for establishing the text. In chapter 18. 8 
for instance, Pseudo- Cyprian supplies the original words tactu purior est, 
which are lacking in the manuscripts. 

VII. Conclusion 

Minucius opens a new era in Latin apologetic writing. Intellectually, he is 
more closely related to Arnobius and Lactantius than to Tertullian. So far 
as the content is concerned, it is less important for Minucius to answer the 
current reproaches against Christianity than to appeal to philosophical 
thought and culture in a positive sense. He is aware of the Roman tradition 
and of his educated Roman public. In dogmatic affairs, his reticence is 
equally due to his public; consequently, some generations later it is no 
longer understood. It seems high time to stress the "scientific" approach of 
Minucius' "untheological" way of preaching. He is no deist. As for the 
literary aspects of his work, it announces a first, real renaissance of Cicero's 
philosophical works. In Minucius' Octavius, Christian apologetic writing 
comes to an artistic, harmonious, almost classical form. If this happens for 
once earlier in Latin literature than in Greek, it is because of the especially 
persistent tradition of the Latin dialogue. 

University of Heidelberg 

^' Octavius, introd. e commento a cura di M. Pellegrino (Torino, Soc. Ed. Intemaz. 1947), 
pp. 49 ff. (= E. Renan, Marc-Aurele et la fin du monde antique, ed. Calmann-Levy [Paris 
192523]), p. 389. 

^ Courcelle, op. cit., thinks il genuine; usually it is thought to be later than Lactantius. 



13 



The Miracles of Cyrus and John: 
New Old Readings from the Manuscript 

JOHN DUFFY 



The Miracles of Cyrus and John, an elaborate account of some seventy cases 
of miraculous cures at the shrine of these two saints at Menuthis in Egypt, 
was written around the year a.d. 610 by Sophronius the Sophist, later 
Patriarch of Jerusalem (634-638), who lavished on this work his abundant 
rhetorical talents and produced a piece of literature nearly as noteworthy for 
its form and style as for its contents. The Miracles is one of those texts 
whose survival has depended almost totally on one manuscript, in this case 
the Vaticanus graecus 1607, an expertly written parchment codex of the late 
tenth century, which was the basis for the first printed edition by Cardinal 
Angelo Mai.^ Mai's Greek text and the Latin version were essentially 
reproduced in Migne's Patrologia Graeca^ and no other edition appeared until 
the recent work of N. Fernandez Marcos, who, by re-examining the Vatican 
copy, managed to eliminate a fair number of Mai's oversights.^ 

In a recent article I discussed some of the rhetorical aspects of the 
Miracles and showed how attention to these and other factors could 
contribute further to the task of restoring and correcting a text which has 
obviously come down to us in quite a corrupted state.'* I also noted, on the 
basis of a partial collation, that Vaticanus gr. 1607 had still (even after the 
work of Mai and Fernandez Marcos) not been fully deciphered.^ In the 
meantime I have gone through a photocopy of the manuscript and present 
here the results. 



^ It appears in volume EI of Mai's Spicilegium Romanum (Rome 1840) along with an old 
Latin translation. The greater part of the Latin version is the work of the ninth-century scholar 
Anastasius Bibliothecarius, while the first twelve miracles were translated by a less well known 
figure of the seventh century, Bonifatius Consiliarius. 

2 87(3) (Paris 1860), 3424-3676. 

^ Los Thawnaia de Sofronio (Madrid 1975). 

"* The Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1984). 41-60. 

5/fejVi.,p. 48,n. 35. 



1 70 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

In fairness it should be pointed out that not all of the instances given 
below represent misreadings on the part of the two previous editors. This 
applies especially to Mai; though he provides no critical apparatus, it is 
clear that he made a great number of silent corrections, many of them 
necessary, but not a few superfluous or misguided. Of Fernandez Marcos — 
whose main concern was apparently not the critical edition, but the 
accompanying study of the Miracles — it may be said that he relies too 
heavily on Mai. 

In the manuscript itself two correcting hands have been at work. The 
first belongs to the main scribe, who a few times corrects in the margin his 
own copying errors. The second, much later, hand has attempted in several 
places to better the text and some of these efforts are successful. Finally 
another, somewhat invisible, corrector must be mentioned. Fernandez 
Marcos assumed that the Greek text printed by Migne was identical with 
that of Mai.^ However, when one compares the two, it becomes obvious 
that numerous changes have been made in the Patrologia Graeca version. 
Who the corrector was must for the time being remain a small mystery and 
one can only speculate; it could have been a scholar working directly for 
Migne or someone who happened to have entered emendations in the copy 
of Mai's edition which later came to be used for the P.GP 

For the list that follows it should be understood that in my view the 
transmitted reading of the manuscript, unless otherwise indicated, is genuine 
and should be restored to the text. The text will be cited according to the 
miracle number, paragraph and line of the Fernandez Marcos edition. 

8.5.4 r\ av] mv 

8,5.13 SiacpvYoiEv] 6ia<pe\)Yoiev 

8.11.2 ek] ©q EK 

8.13.4 EoiKEiodv <7i>co(;] eoCkei aacpccx;. This is what the ms. has, 
perhaps as the result of a correction. 

8.14.6 EKA.'oaeax;] ekPTi-uoeox; 

8.15.3 yzyi\r\x6] yeyevvtixo, i.e. the pluperfect passive of yevvocco. H. 
Usener, Der heilige Tychon (Leipzig 1907), p. 49, n. 4, drew attention to 
this and other examples of the unaugmented pluperfect in Sophronius. 



^ Op. cit., p. 238: "Tanto el texto griego como el latino recogido por Migne es el mismo que 
Mai publico en el lome HI de so Spicilegium Romanum." 

Apart from the cases mentioned below (37.8.7; 55.2.2), it will be enough to cite examples 
from just two of the miracles: 7.2.2 ene^r|>i,axo Mai: enriXXaKTo P.G.; 7.2.4 nev Ttpoq jiev 
Mai: jiev 7tp6(; P.G.; 8.3.6 icoKXovivtoc; Mai: ia)K0JvTO(; P.G.\ 8.4.10 xoutok; Mai: tovtoix; 
P.O.; 8.5.13 opYTiv Mai: opjifiv P.O. 



John Duffy 171 

9.4.4 Kttl^] Not in the ms.; an unnecessary addition by Mai. 

9.4.5 doGeveotepa oke-otj] doGEveaTEpa) oKevei. Here and elsewhere the 
iota subscript (not in the ms.) has been added by me. 

9. 10.5 TOOOUTO] TOlOVtO 

10 title KcbcpTiaiv] Kco<pcoaiv 

10.1.1 Kpoa7toiTiaco|j.Ev] npoae7ioiT|aa)|xEv (read 7ipoa£7io{aco|iEv). Cf. 
below 24.1.1, 32.12.9 and J.T.S. 35 (above, note 4), 53-54. 

10.1.9 ETi^xTiaEv] The later hand in the ms. has added the letter upsilon 
above the line and zx)x{)xr[GE.v is a good correction. 

10.4.5 (XTiEaxpaTiTEv] dnriaTpaTitEV 

10.4.6 enX-qpano] eketiXtipcoxo 
10.4.8 okodXtikcov] Kal okcoXt|kcov 

10.5.1 E'PA.'uaEv] £pX\)Ev. Sophronius very commonly uses the imperfect, 
when the aorist would be expected. 

10.6.3 EOTTiKEi] 'iaxT|K£i (read eIottikei) 

10.8.2 Mapiav] )i.apidfi. 

1 1 title d(p' \Sv|/o-u<; neaovcriq] This phrase is a supplement. It has been 
added in the margin by the later hand with an indication that it be inserted 
after the word SiaKovov, a placing which would agree with the Latin 
version. However, the Latin wording, per fenestram altam ceciderat, 
suggests that the original may have had something more like d(p' -uxi/ri^fic; 
0\)p{5o^ moo\)OT\q (cf. 1 1 .3.2-3). 

11.1.5 ot)5£ ndvxeq] ovde ndvxzc, iaxpol Kal navxeq 

11.2.4 Xivov] >.T|vo\), i.e. Xivov. Perhaps a further correction to Xwiov is 
needed; cf. Latin lineo. 

11.3.1 oTEpo-6|j.£vov] oTEvovixEvov. In later Greek (see examples in 
Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon s.v. otevoco) the passive of this verb can 
mean "be deficient," "be in want," a fact which strongly supports the 
manuscript reading here. It may also be suggested that the adjective EpTifiov, 
which seems a little tautologous in the sentence (and is not reflected in the 
Latin), is a gloss intended to bring out the special meaning of otevoviievov. 

11.4.6 TcaiSiKalq] nai6iKoi<; 

11.4.6 EppdTci^ov] EppanC^ov (i.e. neuter present participle of £v-pa7i{^(o) 
11.5.4 ^dpxvoiv] Toiq \i. 



172 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

11.9.2 6i5aaKdX(p] xw 6. 

12.1.4 ^EV] ^T^V 

12.7.5 otyio-u] ayiov (describing Tiorripiov) 
12.9.5-6 d7ioKaXx)t>|ievo<;] ETiiKaXo-oiievoc; 

12.10.3 Kail] ^E y^fy^X 

12.10.4 SitiyyevXev] SitiyyeXXev 

12.14.3 ^itiSevoc;] |it|8ev6<;oe 

12.18.9 a-ovExpEXEv] After this in the text is written Evoq ydp ppcooEi 
Tao\) Tcov Ttapd (read TiEpl) xov vecdv £{)piaKO|i£vcov ETtpdxxExo. This 
picturesque detail was presumably passed over in silence by Mai because 
there is no sign of it in the Latin. 

13.6.7 dOpocoq] dOpcoov (read dOpoov. Cf. 27.6.4, 48.4.6) 

13.7.3 vr\<; nr\yr\q] xti TtTiyri 

13.7.4 E7t£A,aP£v] dnE^aPEV 

14.3.4 at)x6(;] a\)x6 

15.4.1 7td0£i] xa> n. 

15.6.6 o] x6 

16.4.7 ou] Kal o\> 

19.4.3 KaU] Not in ms.; superfluous addition by Mai. 

20.3.7 -OTtEp X6yox> oyKcooiv] -unEp Xoyov oyKcbaEOiv 
20.3.9 voao'u] zr{q v. 

21.3.2 Tjviaxovxo] tivixovxo (read tjveixovxo) 

22.2.8 xap{aaa0ai] Corrected in the margin to KO|i{^Eo0ai by the scribe 
himself, after xapCaaoGai had been mistakenly repeated from the previous 
phrase. 

24.1.1 npooa7ixTioco|i£v] 7ipoaE7iriaco|i£v (read TtpooETioiacojiEv. Cf. 
10.1.1 above) 

24.2.1 eoxe] eI/e 

28.6.5 dTCEOKOTIE-OOE] dTlEOKOTlEDE 

29.7.2 TiKovaEv] Corrected in the margin to EipriKEv by the main scribe 
(cf. Latin edixit) 



John Duffy 173 

29.13.1 emxepa] eKaxepa (i.e. EKatep^t) 

29.13.7 anziXT\(pe] djteiXTi\|/e (read d7iTiXEi\|/e. Cf. Latin diluit) 

30.4.10 8ia5e5o|ievcov] 5ia6v5o|xev(ov 

po 
30.12.5 (p9eipo|a,evcov] The ms. has (pBrmevcov and the correction above the 
line appears to have been made by the later hand. Read (pGi^ievcov (cf. Latin 
qui consumpti sunt). 

31.2.3 eyvvcoaKov] eY{YvcoaKov 

31.2.8 TOY ] Kttl tov 

31.6.3 £v0a] Added above the line by the later hand; perhaps it would be 
better placed after totcov (cf. Latin ad locum in quo baptisterium erat). 

32.2.12 neTOfieva] This is followed in the ms. by GdXaxxa Kal Taxoii; 
i56aoiv ev5iaix6|ieva (read -cbiieva); cf. Latin mare et quae inhabitant in 
aquis. 

32.3.4-5 npoaamov] xo\> n. 

32.7.6 6] to 

32.8.6 at)T6(;] avxov 

32.9.4 oq] 6 5e 

32.11.5 6idvoiav] 5idYvoiav i.e. 5i' dyvoiav (cf. Latin propter 
ignorantiam). 

32.12.6 and 9 6EKxiKd] SriKxiKot 

32.12.9 npooKoiTiaavxEq] np6o£7ioifiaavxE<; (read TipoaETioiaocvxeq. Cf. 
10.1.1 and 24.1.1 above) 

33.1.6 e'xei] e/oi 

33.7.3 npbq] Kal npbq 

33. 9.6 at)XTiv] olvxov (referring to 6 vtoxo<;) 

33.10.2 E-ucpriiiiaEv] EvcprmTiaEv 

34.2.13 XaxouoTiq] Xaxo\)Gr{. Read hxxo\>oi, agreeing with xoic; Ttaialv 
(cf. Latin cum nondum essent exercitatos animae sensus sortiti). 

34.2.14 Kal] XE Kal 

34.5.1 tjv^e] TjiS^Ei. Since the form occurs (in the manuscript) not only 
here, but also at 42.2.10 and twice at 60.2.9, it is probably no accident. 
Psaltes, Grammatik der byzantinischen Chroniken (Gottingen 1913), records 
an alternate, contracted form of the verb (av^w). 



174 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.l 

34.5.2 iaxi)oe] iox'^e 
35.1.5 etxppaivTi] etxppdvp 

35.8.2 eniaiq] 0tiPti<; (i.e. Qi^t\<;) 

35.8.12 ta-uTTiq] xa xavtTiq (Latin quae introrsus sunt eius) 

35.10.1 duaoepeq] 6\)ot|6£(;. Read 5\)aev6e<; (cf. Latin foe dam illam 
speciem). 

36.4.5 5ex6|j.Eva] ov) 5. 

36.5.5-6 TiapaoTpocTiTovTa . . . TrpoaESeiKvuev] TrpoaatpdcTtTovxa . . . 
7tpoe6E{Kv\)ev 

36.8.10 6e]6eKal 

36.12.6 £ia6E4d)ievoi] 6e^d|iEvoi (Mai mistakenly repeated the last 
syllable of the preceding aixrioEK;) 

36.12.9 yovv] ot)v 
36.13.8 SiaKovo-u] 6idKovo(; 

36.16.1-2 TO Tfjq . . . £A,aiov] xr\c, ... to E^aiov 

36.20.10 5i5aaKaXia] The main scribe wrote -eiaq and the later hand 
changed this to -Eiaiq (i.e. SiSaoKaXiaiq), which should probably be 
accepted; cf. Latin doctrinis. 

36.23.6 KoivcovfiGai] KoivcovfjoaC |ie. This leaves |i£ occurring twice in 
the sentence. If one has to be deleted, it should probably be the first, since 
|ie after Koivcovfioai restores the proper rhythm and is reflected in the Latin 
version communicare me coegerunt. On the prose rhythm of Sophronius 
secJ.T.S. 35 (above, note 4), 45^6. 

37.6.3 i^o-oXexo] tiPo-u^^eto 

37.7.9 SovA.Etxov] Kttl 5. (Latin et serviens) 

37.8.7 aDVTdTTEoGai] This word is not in the ms. and, since it does not 
appear in Mai's edition, we must assume that it was added by the unknown 
corrector in Migne's Patrologia Graeca. A word of the original is definitely 
missing, but it may have been rather a\)vapi9^Eia0ai, which gives a better 
rhythm and is closer to the Latin connumerare. 

37.10.5 dvfip]dTip 

37.10.6 x\>(pXo\] c*; t. Cf. 69.1.5 and Latin quia caeci. 



John Duffy 175 

37.10.1 1 Toiq v^voiq] xovc, ayioMC, x. v. 

38.3.8 E7ii5e5coKEv] e7ie6coKEv 

38.6.6 TO Tipcbriv] xa TtpcoTjv (Latin pristina) 

39.7.1 'u\c, 65uvTi<;] xaii; bhxtvzc, (i.e. -ai(;). Mai's correction is not needed, 
if we understand vnepPoXp as an adverb; cf. Latin doloribus nimium 
cruciatus. 

39.9.2 6pdaavTe(;] E5pdaavTe<; (read £5p-) 
39.10.9 Pot)X£i] PoijXti 

39.11.1 ax)toi(;] at)x6v, which should be corrected to avtS (cf. Latin ei). 
A3. 2 A 01)] ox> xV 

43.3.3 ek] t] ek 

43.3.3 xov] Not in the ms. and not needed. 
44 A A EyyiadoTiq] EyyiC,ox>ar\q 

44.4.5 (pEpovxai] KaxacpEpovxai 

47.3.4 EpxExai] The later hand corrects this to ETiavEpxExai, which should 
be considered, since it restores the rhythm. 

48.4.2 xcov] xov 

48.4.6 A.£Yovxi] A,TiYovxi 

48.5.5 Epx6|iEvoi] Epx6|x£vov (Latin asportatum) 
49.7.5 iiExayivcoaKoi] liExayiYVfooKoi 

50.2.5 c5t)|j.7tEpdaa))iEv] a\)v TiEpdvco^Ev (read o\)|iTC£pdvco|j.£v) 

50.6.8 Ti] Kai (Latin et) 

51.3.10 TtpoA^apovxac;] 7tpoKa|i(ovxa<; (read 7ipoKan6vxa<;) 

51.6.3 Qav\ia<5xbq] Gaufiaxoq 

51.6.7 avxcov] at)x6v (Latin hunc) 

51.8.9 6£] 6' al 

51.9.6 opcpavEia] -Eiav (read -£{av) 
51.10.4 Tot)xo] xovxov (Latin hunc) 
51.10.11 Se] Not in the ms. and not needed. 



1 76 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

52.5.5 dXXoTpioi] dcXXoxpioi ^ivoi xe Kal evxcbpioi (read ey-). Latin 
alieni, extranet et compatriotae. 

53.4.3 at)xa)^] -wv (Latin eorum) 

53.4.6 o^ecog] o^ecoq ol ^dpx\)pe(; 

54.2.1 MaKeScDv] ^.aKeSovcov 
54.3,9 ODvexeq] ot)VTi0e(; 

54,8.8 epEpXrixo] i^i^Xaxo. Read epepXaTixo (cf. Latin erar laesa and 

54.6.8 PeP^d(p9ai ydp xt]v 'louXiav). 

55.2.2 'Yoq . . . keA^etjo-ooi] This phrase is not in the ms. — where the later 
hand has signalled a lacuna with XE{7t(ei) — but is a supplement by the 
anonymous corrector in the Migne edition. Because of the rhythm one 
should consider substituting £7iixp£7to\)ai for Kzkzx)0\>o\. Cf. 57.3.3 KpEa 
ydp )i6axEia AxxPeiv E7iixpEV|iavxE<;. 

58.1.6 6 YEVEi Kal (ppovnoEi KoojiouiiEvoq] 6 yevei Koa|j.o-6|j.Evoq 6 
(ppovTiaEi Koa^io-uiiEvoq. Mai took care of the anomaly in the ms. partly by 
dropping the first koohoiS^ievoc; altogether. However, since the Latin 
version has prosapia ornatus et prudentia famosus, the original may have 
been more like 6 yevei KoanovjiEvoc; Kal 6 cppovriaEi 7iEpi(p'n(io<; (for 
7tEpi(pTi)j.O(; = famosus cf. 55.1.5-6). 

59 title aKoA.o7t£v6pav] aKoX,6nEvSpav 

59.5.5 xot)xo <dv>T|p{9ixoiq] xouxo vTip{0|a.oi(; (See J.T.S. 35 [above, note 
4], 59) 

60.2.9 T|\)^E . . . crovriu^E] tiv^ei . . . cruvTj-u^Ei. Cf. above 34.5. L 
61 title xov^] x6 

61.4.2 avxcbv] auxov 

62. 1 .4 xo\)<;] Kal xoxtc, 

63.1.1 'Po56nTi<;] po567rnv (Latin post Rhodopen) 

63.5.3 EKIEV] ETCIVEV 

64.5.1 Se] Se Kal 

65.4.1 ov) YPTjYopovvxi] ouk EYpriYopowxi 

66.2.3 6ti] 5£ 

67.1.8 7tpax9Eiaiv] jipa/GEioav 

68.6.3 eVtioev] ejieoev 



John Duffy 177 

69.4.3 'ETteiSri] Enei 

69.5.4 dvixvEve iaxp<6)v iaxpcov] iatpov dvCxvevev iaxpSv 
69.6.2 TtpoEYivooKe] JipoeyiYvcoaKe 

69.6.6 ek] 5id 

70.3.2 dyicov] twv ctyicov 

70.4.6 0£o\)] Tot> Qzox> 

70.11.6 To-uTO-o] ToOxo. Cf. Latin hanc . . .figuram. 

70.13.5-6 EiTtE . . . EiTiEv] EiTtE . . . EiKEv. It might be even better to 
follow the Latin {dixit . . . die) and read eike . . . eitie. 

70.15.5 ovk] o\> |iti 

70.20.5-6 6 TiXfieoq] nkv^Qoc, 

70.27.8 Xpioxw] xca \\> i.e. xptaxQ iTiaoO (Latin Chris to lesu) 

University of Maryland 



14 

A Note on Diogmitae 



C. p. JONES 



While being transported as a condemned criminal to Rome, Ignatius bishop 
of Antioch writes to the Christian community in the capital: "From Syria 
to Rome I am fighting with beasts, being bound on land and sea, by night 
and day, to ten leopards, that is, a unit of soliders" {ano I\)p{a(; iiexpi^ 
'PcbjiTiq Gripioiiaxco, 6ia yfic; Kai GaXdooTic;, vuKToq Kal fi|iepa<;, 
6e6e|i£vo(; 6eKa A,E07idp5ov<;, o egtvv oxpatKOTiKov xdy^a).^ In a 
recent note Barry Baldwin has argued that these "leopards" "will almost 
certainly have been the so-called diogmitae, a tough crowd of vigilantes or 
enforcers, hardly deserving LSTs mild description of them as 'mounted 
policemen'." Baldwin proceeds to discuss some Greek and Latin attestations 
of this word, and especially the Historia Augusta's Marcus 21. 7, armauit et 
diogmitas. "This account . . . may be authentic, given the undoubted 
existence of diogmitae at that time. Yet one has to wonder what the chances 
are of the Historia Augusta independently coming up with the only extant 
Latin use of the term outside Ammianus" [27. 9. 6]. Baldwin suggests that 
"we have here yet another small link in the chain of details that betrays the 
fraudulent nature of the Historia Augusta."'^ 

The classic discussion of the diogmitae is by W. H. Waddington, 
commenting on an inscription copied by Philippe Le Bas on the territory of 
Aezanoi in Phrygia; some refinements were added by Wilhelm Dittenberger 
in his edition of the same text. These scholars established that the 
diogmitae were a form of police, light-armed and operating on foot, attached 
to municipal officers such as the eirenarches and (tic paraphylax? In 1928 
Louis Robert discussed some inscriptions from the borderland of Pisidia and 
Pamphylia which showed diogmitae acting in pairs or accompanying 



^ Ign., Ep. Rom. 5. 1 (the best edition is by P. T. Camelot, Sources Chretiennes 10 [Paris 
1951]). 

2 Baldwin. ICS 10 (1985). 281-83. 

^ Le Bas-Waddington HI 992. whence J. Franz. Corpus Inscriplionum Graecarum 3831 a 8; 
Dittenberger. Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae 511, derives from L-W. G. Lafaye. 
Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas pertinentes IV 580 from Dittenberger. LSJ take their 
definition of "mounted poHceman" from Franz and ignore Waddington and Dittenberger: in their 
Supplement they refer to Dittenberger without changing their definition. 



180 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

eirenarchae in threes; some ten years later he was able to add a relief from 
the Smyrna Museum, several times discussed and reproduced thereafter, 
which shows a mounted paraphylax accompanied by three lightly armed 
subordinates whom Robert recognized as diogmitae^ As their name 
implies, these were "pursuers" usually employed to apprehend fugitives. It 
is inconceivable that even ten such local constables could constitute the 
"leopards" who travelled with Ignatius by land and sea from Syrian Antioch 
to Rome; these must be Roman legionaries, detached in the usual way to 
accompany a group of important prisoners.^ 

The inscription from the Aezanitis records that a benefactor of the city 
"provided at his own expense a diogmites to fight under the lord Caesar in 
the proconsulship of Quintilius Maximus" (Tiapaaxovxa tw K\)pi(p 
Kaiaapi (5x>\i.yia%ov 6icoY}i.EixTiv nap* £a\)tou Kaxot dvQuTiaxov 
K\)ivTi>.iov Md^i^ov). The context in which the Historia Augusta says 
that Marcus Aurelius "armed the diogmitae" concerns the emperor's 
preparations and departure for the German War in 169.^ Waddington, 
followed by Dittenberger, argued that the proconsul Quintilius Maximus 
was the consul of 151, who should have been proconsul in the later 160s, 
and that the inscription thus confirmed the testimony of the Historia 
Augusta. A milestone from Dascyleion now dates Maximus' proconsulate 
to 169/70, and puts Waddington's hypothesis beyond all doubt.^ In short, 
the diogmitae were neither "mounted policemen" nor "a tough crowd of 
vigilantes or enforcers," but light-armed local constables. That is why the 
Historia Augusta singles out among Marcus Aurelius' preparations for the 
German War the fact that "he also (or even) armed the diogmitae"', its 
testimony is confirmed by the inscription from the territory of Aezanoi. 

University of Toronto 



* Inscriptions: L. Robert, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique 52 (1928), 407-09 {Opera 
Minora Selecta [Amsterdam 1969], II, pp. 878-80), discussing the inscriptions now 
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum VI 688, 690, 709. Relief: Robert, Etudes Anatoliennes 
(Paris 1937), pp. 102-03 with Plate n 2, adding (p. 103, n. 1) a new diogmites from 
Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua III 305; on this relief see most recently M. Speidel, 
Epigraphica AnatoUca 5 (1985), pp. 159-60. Robert's second publication is not cited in 
Baldwin's article (above, note 2). 

^ On this function of the legionaries, T. Mommsen, Romisches Strafrecht (Leipzig 1899), pp. 
315-18. That Ignatius was not the only prisoner follows from Polycarp, Ep. 1. 1,9. 1, 13. 2 
(Camelot [above, note 1], p. 9). 

^HA.M.Aur.20.6-2\. 10. 

■^ D. French, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 21 (1976), 77-78; cf. G. Alfoldy, 
Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter den Antoninern, Antiquitas, Reihe 1, 27 (Bonn 1977), p. 
381; Bengt E. Thomasson, Laterculi Praesidum 1 (Goteborg 1984), p. 230, no. 151; C. P. 
Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, Mass. 1986), p. 165 arguing against an 
aberrant view of D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950), p. 1532, n. 6. 



15 

Where Did the Emperor Lurk? 
HA, Hadrian 16. 3 

BARRY BALDWIN 



Flow poetae scribenti ad se: 

Ego nolo Caesar esse, 
ambulare per Britannos, 
latitare per . . . 
Scythicas pati pruinas. 

rescripsit: 

Ego nolo Floras esse. 

ambulare per tabernas. 

latitare per popinas, ♦ 

culicespati rotundos. 

Latitare per is generally added to Rorus as his third line on the basis of 
Hadrian's riposte. Not all concur.^ Some delete the corresponding line in 
Hadrian, reducing each poem to a tercet. Others make Scythicas pati pruinas 
the third verse in Florus, fabricating a new fourth one; Birt's gladios pati 
cruentos has earned some favor.^ 

I am one of those who opt for retention of latitare'^ per, thereby 
preserving two quatrains but needing a supplement to complete Florus' third 



' For a repertory of conjectures with extensive bibliography, as well as editions of Florus and 
the HA, see P. Steinmetz, Untersuchungen zur romischen Lileratur des zweiten Jahrhunderls nach 
Christi Geburt (Wiesbaden 1982), p. 299; cf. H. Bardon, Les empereurs et les lettres lalines 
d'Auguste a Hadrien (Paris 1940), p. 416; J. Schwartz, "Elements suspects de la Vita Hadriani," 
Bonner Historia- Augusta-Colloquium 1972/1974 (Bonn 1976), pp. 248-49. 

Cf. L. CantareUi, "Gli scritti latini di Adriano Imperatore," Studi e Documenti di Storia e 
D.n«o 19 (1898), 150. 

^ Only here in the HA. I am not here concerned with the authenticity of these verses, most 
recently championed by Alan Cameron, "Poetae Novelli," Harvard Studies in Classical 
Philology 84 (1980), 172. Skeptics might exploit the HA'% proclivity for denouncing emperors 
(especially Gallienus) who frequent popj/uje; cf. also Tac. 4. 7, yfidete diligentius quam aetatem 
de cubiculo atque umbra in pruinas aestusque mittatis. 



182 Illinois Classical Studies. XII. 1 

line. Proposed emendations'* have been mainly geographical, although 
Bolisani^ put forward cohortes and Benario*^ paludes, both of which I reject, 
wishing (unlike their proponents) to maintain the balance whereby three 
geographical names in Rorus are answered by Hadrian with comic variants. 

Of the geographical contenders, Roesinger'' proposed Germanos, with 
more patriotism than prosody — a bacchius ("--) is surely needed to 
preserve metrical concordance between the two pieces. Costa's^ Achivos is 
absurd: Hellenic sojourn would be no hardship to the Graeculus Hadrian! 
Steinmetz toys also with Sugambros, Iberos, or Hibernos. Nothing 
inherently wrong about any of these, though Sugambri may be too 
northern, Hibemi too close to Britain, and Iber' too near Scythia, agreeing 
as I do with Clausen^^ that an eastern allusion is, for geographical 
symmetry's sake, most probable. Clausen's own proposal is Sabaeos, in 
itself acceptable enough, though I do not share his belief in Florus' debt to 
Seneca, Here. Oet. 1521-22, die sub Aurora positis Sabaeis I die sub 
oeeasu positis HiberisM 

My own tentative remedy is Syriseos, based on the following 
considerations: 

1. It consorts with the metrical structure and balance^^ of the two pieces. 

2. A diminutive, especially one used by the early writer Terence (Adelph. 
763; Eun. Ill, 775), not to mention pseudo- Virgil {Copa 1) would doubly 
commend itself to second-century taste. 



* Passing over Winlerfeld's unhelpful transferral of Brilannos down from line 2, leaving a 
blank there. 

' E. Bolisani, "Quel che rimane delta poesia di Floro, uno dei neoterici o novelli dell'eta 
adrianea." Alti dell' Istituio Veneto di Scienze, Leltere ed Arti 122 (1963-64). 48. 

^ H. W. Benario, A Commentary on the Vita Hadriani in the Historia Augusta (Chico, 
California 1980), p. 106 — not registered by SteinmeU. 

^ E. Roesinger, De scriptoribus historiae Augustae commentatio critica (Schweidnitz 1868), 
p. 4; upheld on grounds of assonance by L. Herrmann, "La replique d'Hadrien a Florus," 
Utomws9{\95Qi),m. 

* G. Costa, "Hofo e Adriano," Bolletlino di Filologia Classica 13 (1908), 254. 

' Colchian Iberi, not Spaniards, who do not suit the frequent and obtruded eulogies of them 
by Florus in his Epitome of Roman History, accepting the identification of the poet with the 
historian, a popular though disputed conflation on which I am writing elsewhere. 

^° W. V. Qausen, "Silva Coniecturarum," American Journal of Philology 76 (1955), 60-61. 

*^ More interesting is his parallel of Virgil, Eel. 1. 64-66, with that poet's counterpointing of 
Scythia with Britons. Doubters of the authenticity of the present verses might suspect a debt 
owed to Virgil by the HA. The former's concomitant reference to Africans does not help if poet 
and historian are also equated with the Florus who wrote the dialogue Vergilius orator an poela, a 
character of African origins. 

^^ To be sure, the desire for balance pervading this article is ultimately a matter of taste, 
albeit one shared by most writers on the subject; it is worth noting the symmetry of Hadrian's 
famous poem to his soul at HA, Hadr. 25. 9, admirably analyzed by R. Mayer, "Two notes on 
Latin poets," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society IQH (1976), 57-59, a study 
sadly omitted by many bibliographies on the subject 



Barry Baldwin 183 

3. In view of the subsequent palaeographically similar Scytfucas, the loss 
of at least the end of this line would be more easily explained. 

4. It takes us geographically from one imperial frontier to another. 

5. Hadrian was away in Syria and the East over a long period (c. 129- 
135), thus giving point to latitareP 

6. HA, Hadr. 14. 1, claims the emperor loathed the people of Antioch, 
chief city of Syria, thereby enhancing the diminutive force of Syriscos. 

7. The association of Syria with oil, perfume, and roses heightens the 
humor of Hadrian's popinae, dubious establishments forever branded by 
Horace {Epp. I. 14. 21) in the phrase uncta popina}^ 

University of Calgary 



^^ Some take the British allusion as pointing to a date of ca. 122 for Flonis' squib. If 
absolute topicality be thought necessary (I doubt it) to make the poem's point, then Hadrian's 
visit to Syria early in 123 can be readily substituted. Or might Florus also be evoking Hadrian's 
pre-imperial tenure as governor of Syria, where he was in 1 17 on the death of Trajan and his 
own adoption and accession (//A, Hadr. 4. 6-7)? Given the gossip surrounding his adoption and 
the role played by Plotina, latitare would achieve a sharp, indeed dangerous, point. 

'* One final point, more dubious, hence separate. The Florus who compiled the Epitome 
around this time indulges in anti -Syrian prejudice, parading it above aU at 1 . 47. 17 {Syria prima 
nos victa corrupit) in the anacephalaeosis that divided his two books. If historian and poet be the 
same person (see note 9 above), Syriscos would be an almost predictable gibe. 



16 



Vainglorious Menippus In Lucian's 
Dialogues of the Dead> 



aXka. Tcapct vcKpoiq SoyixaTa 
Lucian, DMort. 6(20).3 ("Pythagoras"). 



JOELC.RELfflAN 



Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead are known to the world in two different 
ways. The most important is through their modem descendants: they are 
part of Lucian's massive influence on Erasmus, and are frequently imitated 
in the French and German literature of the 18th and 19th centuries.^ The 
other is through the study of the literary era that gave them birth: the Greek 
Second Sophistic, its principles of literary imitation, its allegiance to 
rhetoric, and its artful irreality. Of these two I am not competent to address 
the former, except to suggest that the familiarity that Western readers 
inevitably feel when reading these infernal dialogues does much to obscure 
what is strange, fantastic, and poetic. But I take issue here with the latter, 
for the investigation of Lucian's habits of composition and use of motifs, so 
spectacularly (if sometimes tendentiously) documented by the monographs 
of Graham Anderson,^ runs the risk of reducing the study of Lucian to a 
contemplation (and sometimes a rather joyless contemplation) of a second- 
rate artist's notion of art for art's sake, and would ask us to see as the only 
content in Lucian the erection of a literary facade and the clever adoption of 
pretenses and poses. The words of critical appreciation become such things 
as "graceful," "effortless Atticism," "sophistication," and numerous 
variations that suggest that we have to do only with shadow and not with 

* An earlier version of this paper was delivered as a public lecture at the University of Illinois 
at Urbana in March 1987. I should like to thank Professor Bracht Branham for his valuable 
suggestions toward its revision. 

^Christopher Robinson, Lucian and his Influence in Europe (Chapel Hill 1979), pp. 165-97 
(Erasmus), 144-63 (18th and 19th centuries). 

^G. Anderson, Lucian, Theme and Variation in the Second Sophistic (Mnemosyne 
Supplement 41 [Leiden 1976]); Studies in Lucian's Comic Fiction (Mnemosyne Supplement 43 
[1976]); see the illuminating but unnecessarily scathing reviews by J. Hall, Journal of Hellenic 
Studies 100 (1980), 229-32. 



186 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

substance; he is the "sophist's sophist.'"* And within such monumental 
attempts at the appreciation of Lucian's work as a whole, the Dialogues of 
the Dead have commanded very little interest.^ Certainly Lucian does 
recycle his works and motifs, perpetually creating new works out of old, 
and this is nowhere more obvious than in the Underworld pieces 
traditionally associated with the Menippean phase of his literary career: 
Necyomantia, Charon, Cataplus, and Dialogues of the Dead. But the charge 
of limited invention is not an obstacle to merit. Lucian, like modem 
writers of genre fiction, sticks to his formulas; and like many such authors, 
he may be allowed to be brilliant.^ 

There is now a reaction against Anderson's approach in the name of the 
contemplation of Lucian's real criticisms of his real society.'' These 
arguments are productive in the discussion of the more topical works such 
as Alexander the False Prophet, The Death ofPeregrinus, On Salaried Posts, 
and the like. But this desire to find satire in Lucian finds little in the 
Dialogues of the Dead to excite the interest, as they are made up largely of 
stock characters, references to classical mythology and ancient history, and 
moral commonplaces.^ Underlying these studies is a belief that if Lucian is 
not a social satirist he is nothing much of interest. The point to be argued 
here is that there is in Lucian a literary value which may be savored quite 
independently of his topical interests; and that this literary value is in fact 

■^G. Anderson, "Lucian: a sophist's sophist," Yale Classical Studies 27 (1982), 91: "He is 
the sophisticated and detached virtuoso praeceptor of whatever nonsense it is his whim to 
preach." 

^ Anderson, Theme and Variation (above, note 3), p. 172: "Lucian's monotonous DMort.;" p. 
175: "He could scarcely claim to have produced any worthwhile production on the theme of 
Hades ... in proportion to the number of attempts he made to exhaust it." 

^ Anderson's Lucian may be compared to Wodehouse, who also tends to ignore the world 
around him in preference to the formulaic cultivatirai of literary novelty. Cf. Wilfrid Sheed's 
introduction to P. G. Wodehouse, Leave it to Psmith (New York 1975), p. x: ". . . the ruthless 
monomania which turned its back on two world wars and ninety years of history"; p. xiii: "This 
is a last chance to see Wodehouse among his blueprints and prototypes. The elements are 
ramshackle, as they still were in musical comedies, but they are all there, ready to be shaped 
over the next twenty years into a comedy so narrow and fastidious, so lacking in strain and the 
clown's need for approval and so ruthlessly unadulterated by other emotions that they deserve to 
be called classic art." 

' C. P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, Mass. and London 1986), provides 
a useful introduction to the trends and vicissitudes in Lucianic scholarship and the appreciation 
of Lucian's literary qualities in his Preface, pp. v-vii, and Introduction, pp. 1-5. See also the 
analysis of the Alexander by B. Branham, "The Comic as Critic: Revenging Epicurus — a Study 
of Lucian's Art of Comic Narrative," Classical Antiquity 3 (1984), 143-63; Chapter XVIII, 
"Lucien en son temps," in L. Robert, A Travers I'Asie Mineure, Poetes et Prosateurs, Monnaies 
Grecques, Voyageurs et Geographie, Bibliolheque des ficoles Fran^aises d'Athenes et de Rome 
239 (Paris 1980), pp. 393^36; and J. HaU, Lucian's Satire, Mcmographs in Classical Studies 
(New York 1981). 

^ Hall, Lucian's Satire , pp. 64-150, devotes a long chapter to "Lucian and Menippean Satire" 
which concerns itself entirely with the question of Lucian's probable dependence on Menippus, 
not literary analysis; Jones, op. cit., does not discuss the Dialogues of the Dead at all. 



Joel C. Relihan 187 

one of the best means of appreciating the degree to which he reflects the 
circumstances and intellectual attitudes of the Antonine period. I do not 
speak of what "lessons" Lucian may have to preach, for, to quote Reardon, 
"Lucian knows all the answers; and they are all 'No'."' Rather, it is the 
path by which he comes to this answer that will prove most important. 

A large part of the problem of understanding what Lucian's various 
writings are about is caused by the importation of the word "satire." Satire 
is a notoriously slippery term, and if by it we just mean comic social 
criticism we must avoid confusing a shorthand term of convenience with the 
realities of Greek literature and its genres. Resemblances between Lucian 
and Juvenal are misleading.^^ There is some verbal overlap and some 
similarity of attitude (Lucian is also unremittingly negative, with even 
fewer pieces of positive advice than Juvenal), but this cannot hide the fact 
that Lucian typically writes not satires but comic dialogues. The comic 
dialogue is the genre of the Dialogues of the Dead, and Lucian, its inventor, 
has been good enough to explain it to us in its rough outlines. 

Lucian defines the comic dialogue in terms suggestive not of verse 
satire but of Menippean satire. In a famous passage (Bis Ace. 33), a 
personified Dialogue complains of the indignities suffered at the hands of 
Lucian (here called the Syrian): he has been dragged down from heaven and 
robbed of his wings; his tragic and wise natures have been stripped away; 
things comic, satyric (that is, resembling satyr plays), and absurd have been 
mixed in; so too have lampoon, iambus. Cynicism, Eupolis, Aristophanes, 
and, worst of all, Menippus. He has been insulted and forced to play the 
fool; and the strangest thing is that he is now neither prose nor verse, but 
has been mixed up into a paradoxical mixture, a hippocentaur and a bizarre 
apparition to the audience. This mixture of disparate things is designed to 
frustrate the expectations of the audience, here described as not knowing 
what to make of what they hear.^^ Lucian's Greek may well allude to the 
Roman satura in its meaning of "medley, hodge-podge": 

Kpggiv tiva Tcapa8o£,ov KeKpafiav Kal ovxe tn\ xwv netpcov 
PePiiKa, oXKa iTCJioKevTavpov 6{ktiv ot)v9ex6v xi Kal ^evov 
<pdo|ia xoTc; ctKO-Go-oai Sokoj. ^^ 

' B. P. Reardon, trans., Lucian, Selected Works, The Library of Liberal Arts (Indiana- 
polis/New York 1965), p.xxix. See the same author's excellent chapter on Lucian in Courants 
litUraires grecs des 11' el III' slides apres J.-C, Annales Litteraires de ITJniversite de Nantes 3 
(Paris 1971). 

^° On the question of Lucian's possible knowledge of and dependence on Juvenal, see the 
appendix to E. Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London 1980), pp. 624-29. 
See also Hall, Lucian's Satire, pp. 244-48. 

^^ A similar description of the audience's confused reaction to the mixture of elements in a 
comic dialogue may be found in Prometheus es in verbis and Zeuxis; Diogenes is made to 
complain at Piscator 26 that the mixture of Menippus into Dialogue betrays Philosophy. 

Bis Ace. 33. All quouiions are from MacLeod's Loeb edition, as they are not yet available in 
his Oxford Qassical Text. 



188 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.l 

It may be added parenthetically that the admission that this genre is made up 
of such a multitude of literary influences is by itself a comic statement, 
suggesting a lack of integrity as well as a lack of noble lineage. 

It may be true that dialogue, Socratic in origin, is a vehicle for the 
search for truth in which the author no longer insists upon his own 
opinions as central to the work (so Bakhtin);'^ it may be that Lucian here 
depicts himself as a new Socrates, who was said to have dragged philosophy 
down from heaven (Cic, Tusc. V. 4. 10). But the literary form in which 
these dialogues are clothed suggests that truth itself is not to be found; that 
humor supplants truth; and central to this devaluation of meaning in 
dialogue and philosophy is Menippus. "Devaluation of meaning" here refers 
to the generally debunking attitude that the dialogues take toward the notion 
of literary authority, the possibility of enclosing truth in words, and the 
whole logocentric view of the world. If we are to speak of satire in Lucian's 
dialogues, ultimately it is intellectual satire, not social satire, that is at 
issue,^'* and Menippus, who is emblematic of some sort of dissatisfaction 
with literature and with truth, is the central figure in the Dialogues of the 
Deed. 

The study of this intellectual attitude toward writing and its 
possibilities of containing or imparting truth will tell more about Lucian's 
relation to the world around him than the analysis of topical targets. The 
fantasy of his dialogues and narratives, the literary impropriety of his comic 
dialogue, and the literary allusiveness of his compositions, all suggest an 
author reaching his conclusions by marvelous means. It is often noted that 
Lucian's values are the simple ones of common sense, championed against 
purveyors of bunkum and fraud. It is of great interest to ask why they are 
reached by such allusive, playful, and fantastic means. It is a habit common 
to Lucian's writings that an argument is so constructed as to give the reader 
no sure idea of where he stands in relation to the text.^^ And as a current 
book on the influence of Lucian on Ben Jonson observes: 

In most of Lucian's writings the values upheld are honesty and common- 
sense, not wit or learning, with the result that there is frequent disparity 
between the simple norms which he states and those which he implies 

^^M. ^dkhxm. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (ed. and trans. C. Emerson, Theory and 
History of Literature, Volume 8 [Minneapolis 1984]), pp. 133-47, provides a rich and 
fascinating description of what an eminent critic of Dosloevsky and the rise of the modem novel 
takes to be the genre Menippean satire. It is a theory finding wide acceptance in discussions of 
contemporary Menippean satires, though I would object that his definition is too broad to be of 
use in the study of the Greek and Roman works to which the multifarious modem works owe 
their generic allegiance. 

^^N.Fiyc, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton 1971), p. 309: "The Menippean 
satire deals less with people as such than with menial attitudes." 

^^ Branham, "The Comic as Critic" (above, note 7), 162, speaking of the Alexander: "Lucian 
systematically provokes the reader to consider the material at hand from humorously divergent 
perspectives." 



Joel C. Relihan 189 

through his highly sophisticated manner. Readers more influenced by the 
latter might well suspect that he took nothing seriously at all except his 
art, but the unimpeachable safeness of the norms through which he sought 
to make contact with his public could always be accepted as evidence to the 
contrary.'^ 

In fact, the Dialogues of the Dead give us valuable insight into the 
thematic function of fantasy in Lucian as well as into the nature of the 
influence of the writings of Menippus on Lucian. 

In what follows, these points will be urged: that the Dialogues of the 
Dead are essentially a recasting of a Menippean satire as a series of 
dialogues; that the characterization of Menippus differs from those of the 
other Cynics who populate the Dialogues; that Menippus is in these 
Dialogues a type of the vainglorious human character that he himself would 
and does criticize; that Menippus changes in the course of the Dialogues; 
and that these Dialogues represent Lucian's parody of the character and 
writings of Menippus, to whom he owes so much both in the creation of 
his Menippean satires and in the creation of the comic dialogue. From these 
conclusions some more general observations on Lucian's works will be 
inferred: that Lucian's reaction to living in an age of quacks, charlatans, and 
frauds is to borrow certain motifs from Menippus, who represented himself 
as a self-parodic preacher making fun of supernatural attempts to get at the 
truth; and that the distinction between Menippean satire proper 
{Icaromenippus, Necyomantia) and comic dialogue with Menippean 
influence in Lucian is that in the latter it is the author's own artfulness, and 
not a narrator's fantastic journey, that distances the reader from any serious 
point that may be at issue. 

I. The Dialogues of the Dead as a Coherent Collection 

These Dialogues are in many ways distinctive in Lucian's corpus. Even in 
an author whose art lies in recycling there can be important variations in the 
nature of composition. The Dialogues of the Dead are certainly the best 
known of Lucian's shorter dialogues, but they are distinct from the other 
three collections, the Dialogues of the Gods, Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, and 
Dialogues of the Courtesans. These latter are fairly uniformly in the nature 
of literary pastiche: famous scenes or lines of dialogue from Classical and 
Hellenistic literature become the starting point for playful and/or debunking 
retreatments. The Dialogues of the Courtesans, for example, take their cue 
from New Comedy, and each of them, on the average the longest of these 
four groups of dialogues, reads like a scene from New Comedy.^'' The 

Douglas Duncan, Ben Jonson and the Lucianic Tradition (Cambridge 1979), p. 24. 
^^ I might also add thai these observations on the human comedy, despite their ancient 
pedigree, seem the most sympathetic to the problems of human life and human emotion in the 
whole Lucianic corpus. 



190 Illinois Classical Studies, xn.l 

Dialogues of the Sea-Gods, sometimes considered the most polished and 
literarily successful of the four, are a reprise of traditional myths and their 
poetic treatments: Menelaus speaks to Proteus about the latter's 
unbelievable abilities in 4; Poseidon hears the true story about Arion from 
the dolphin who rescued him in 5(8).^* 

But the Dialogues of the Dead are not like this.^^ With the exception of 
Dialogue 26(15), between Achilles and Antilochus, who takes the former to 
task for saying that he would rather be a sharecropper's slave and alive than 
king of all the dead (Od. XL 489-91); Dialogue 11(16), in which Diogenes 
argues with the image of Heracles about the latter's double nature as 
described at Od. XI. 601-03; and three Dialogues involving Alexander the 
Great— 12(14), 13(13), 25(12)— the Underworld Dialogues seem to be based 
on the reworking of a single Hellenistic work, Menippus' Nekyia. This is 
the probable source of Lucian's Necyomantia, a Menippean satire featuring 
Menippus on a journey to the Underworld to discover the truth about life, 
from which Lucian created a number of other infernal pieces.^ Menippus' 
work may itself have contained such conversations as those with Achilles 
and Alexander. So the reader's reaction to these Dialogues is different: one 
is not being set a number of classical allusions and asked to remember their 
original contexts in the spirit of a literary excercise or game, but rather 
given a series of what may be called meditations on Menippus and death. 

If we view the Dialogues of the Dead as one Menippean satire, written 
as a series of dialogues, we raise some interesting questions: whether unity 
is somehow preserved in thirty short dialogues, not united by a plot; 
whether the loss of the narrative structure causes thematic changes; whether 
the Dialogues depend for their effect upon knowledge of the original Nekyia 
and the person of Menippus. The theme seems at first fairly 
straightforward: Death the Leveler, the theme of all of the infernal works.^^ 
But are we to take the inconsistencies in the Dialogues of the Dead as but 
another instance of Lucian's using whatever material is necessary to make 
the point of the moment (a contention frequently made in discussions of 
Lucian's sophistic and literary presentations), or is the cumulative effect of 

** In the numbering of the Dialogues, the first number represents the order of the y class of 
manuscripts whose primacy has been esublished by Mras and accepted in MacLeod's edition; the 
latter (in parentheses) represents the traditional numbering. When paragraphs are given, the 
traditional number is omitted. 

^'Robinson, Lucian and his Influence (above, note 2), pp. 21-22, discusses all but the 
Dialogues of the Dead in terms of their nature as literary pastiche. 

^ It is quite possible that Lucian's voyages to heaven, such as the Icaromenippus, are his own 
recasting of the Nekyia; and Varro too may have independently created heavenly voyages out of 
Menippus' infernal voyage. This was first suggested by O. Hense, "Zu Lucian und Menippus," 
Festschrift far Th. Gomperz (Wien 1902), pp. 185-96; and strongly argued by G. Anderson, 
Theme and Variation (above, note 3), pp. 139-40. The conclusion that we could draw from this 
is that a single work of Menippus taught Lucian what he knew about fantasy, and this would 
make a strong a priori case for a similarity of thematic effects in Lucian's fantastic scenes. 
Robinson, Lucian and his Influence, p. 17. 



Joel C. Relihan 191 

the inconsistencies part of the effect of the work? This is the theme of the 
uselessness of endeavor when confronted with the reality that is death, as 
contrasted with the efforts of those Cynics in the Underworld who feel 
obliged to preach. To put it another way: how do we reconcile Death the 
Leveler with the often repeated claims that Cynic detachment makes one a 
better corpse than the irrational longing for hfe and light? Or reconcile the 
logical arguments about the absurdity of the conventional Underworld with 
the physical fact of the existence of these characters in the Dialogues'! 
Perhaps the Cynic voice of reason is comically portrayed as yet another 
example of the pointlessness of endeavor and desire. 

Here one must take exception to the notion, forcefully put forward by 
Anderson, that Lucian deals only in types or stock characters. As Robinson 
says, in a book heavily (and profitably) indebted to Anderson's monographs: 
'The Cynic philosophers who take the stage to debunk the pretensions of 
their fellow men are all a single type, sometimes historical (Menippus, 
Diogenes, Crates, Antisthenes, even Peregrinus), sometimes invented 
(Cyniscus, Alcidamas)."^^ In fact, despite some overlap, Menippus is used 
in ways distinct from the other Cynics in the Dialogues of the Dead. First, 
Menippus is clearly the central figure of the Dialogues of the Dead', the first 
Dialogue has Diogenes telling Pollux to go summon Menippus, if he has 
now had his fill of deriding the worlds of the living, so that he can laugh all 
the more at the folly of the dead. Second, if instead of the traditional order 
we accept the order of the Dialogues as preserved in codex Vaticanus Graecus 
90 (r),23 Menippus has practically the last word. He appears in more than a 
third of these thirty Dialogues, at regular and significant intervals (1-10, 
20, 30).^'* Third, he never appears in the company of the other Cynics.^ 
Most importantly, Menippus speaks primarily to mythical creatures, the 

^Robinson, op. cit., p. 15. 

^ The leading manuscript of the y class. 

^ The traditional order would place Menippus in the following Dialogues (F's order in 
parentheses): 1(1). 2(3), 3(10), 10(20), 17(7). 18(5). 20(6), 21(4). 22(2). 25(30). 26(8). 28(9), 
the concluding dialogue of the collection being F's 24. between Minos and Sostratus. It is a 
question worth investigating, whether Menippus is presented in a more interesting way in the 
traditional order. While the latter order does not put Menippus' adventures in chrcmological order 
(Menippus on the ferry in 10 [I use traditional numbers here] should come after 1. or perhaps 
after 2). it does put the conversation between Menippus and Teiresias last (though not last in the 
entire collection), suggestive of the end of the Necyomantia. The Dialogue which would 
conclude the collection [24(30)], between Minos and Sostratus, in which Sostratus escapes 
punishment as a result of his sophistic arguments, is suggestive of the end of the Juppiter 
confutatus and of the deferred punishment oilcar. 33, and of Menippean satire in general (as in 
Qaudius' release from the punishment of the bottomless dice box in the Apocolocyntosis, and 
Constantine's escape from punishment in Julian's Caesares by recourse to Jesus, who takes no 
notice of his crimes). 

^ This fact, in conjunction with other evidence, suggests that Menippus viewed himself, and 
was viewed by others in antiquity, as a renegade Cynic on the fringes of this iconoclastic 
movement. I hope to argue this separately in an analysis of Diogenes Laertius' Life of 
Menippus. 



192 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

orthodox Cynic Diogenes primarily to mortals. The Dialogues present the 
traditional Cynics and their preaching differently from the way they present 
the character and preaching of Menippus. 

Menippus is the hero, a fantastic voyager in the tradition of Menippean 
satire. Part of the humor lies in what he sees and how he sees it, and part in 
how the reader views him. Menippus changes in the course of the 
collection. This is not to suggest that the Dialogues of the Dead are a sort 
of chthonic Pilgrim's Progress. Menippus does not change in a coherent 
way in their course, and he is not in every Dialogue. But the common 
reaction to these Dialogues, that they and their hero are unrelievedly 
depressing, their criticisms insufferable and inhumane, misses the point: 
the Dialogues present such matters ironically, and the catechizer, to quote 
the phrase, is catechized. Menippus first appears as a type of the 
vainglorious individual whose pride in personal achievement is an object of 
Cynic criticism in the Dialogues; and we can also see Menippus' criticisms 
comically portrayed in the Underworld and can see his attitudes change. 
Lucian's Underworld is populated by frauds, quacks, and philosophers; 
unrepentant sinners and unreflective potentates; bogey men and ghosts; the 
judges, guardians, and all the other apparatus of the mythical Underworld; 
undifferentiated bones and skulls; Cynic philosophers who deride the human 
desire for life; and Menippus the super-Cynic, eager to die and eager to help 
Charon row his boat ashore, rejoicing to be dead and superior to all the other 
dead, yet every so often depicted as just another pile of bones, and often 
engaged in arguments with mythical beings, trying to convince them that 
they do not exist. Depictions of the Underworld in European and European- 
influenced literature mirror the real world and comment upon it, and the 
Dialogues of the Dead are no exception. We see all the embarrassing 
inconsistencies of life in these Dialogues, but what is brought out in sharp 
relief is not life itself, but the desire to correct it, to preach and to criticize. 
For it is hard to imagine change and conversion among the dead; we scarcely 
see anyone convinced or swayed by Menippus' arguments. How can there 
be sermons to the dead, or pride in being such a preacher? And to whom 
does Menippus preach? There is no stable person to be addressed: in the 
last Dialogue, Menippus addresses Nireus and Thersites now as flesh and 
blood, and now as fragile skeletons. No doubt the living Menippus would 
have claimed to see the skull beneath the skin, but in the land of the dead he 
seems as futile, though hardly as inspiring, as St. Francis preaching to birds 
and fish. 

II. Death Comes for Menippus 

We should let the text speak for itself, but there is a problem of vocabulary: 
what the word "Menippus" means and what associations it may be expected 
to have for the reader. Menippus is known as a mocker, and one particularly 
associated with the world of the dead. One point should be made at the 



Joel C. Relihan 193 

outset, a point so obvious that its considerable importance is easily 
overlooked: in the Dialogues of the Dead Menippus is actually dead. 
Menippus dead is a remarkable thing. Marcus Aurelius in his gloomy 
Meditations uses the example of Menippus to illustrate the truth that even 
mockers have to die (6. 47): 

'Evvoei ovvexox; jtavxoiotx; ctvGpwnovq Kai rcavToicov |iev 
e7tuTi5ev|idT(ov, TiavtoSajicbv 5e eGvSv TeGvewtaq, ©oxe KaxiEvai 
xovto nexpi OiXvoxicovo(; vai Ootpov koi 'Opiyavicovoq. |iexi9i 
vvv £711 xa aX,Xa tpvXa. ekgi 6f\ jiexaPaXeiv fmaq 5ei, '6nox> 
xooovxoi }i£v 5eivoi pTjxopec;, xooovxoi 5e OE^vol <piX6oo<poi, 
'HpdK^Eixoq, nuGayopaq, ZojKpdxTiq, xooovxoi 6e iipcoec; 
npoxepov, xoaovxoi 6e voxepov axpaxTiyoi, xvpavvoi. etiI 
xovxoiq 5e E'u6o^O(;, "!rcnapxo(;, 'Apxi|iil5T|<;, aXXai (pvatiq 
o^eiai, lieyaXocppovEq, (piXoKovoi, Jtavovpyoi, ax)9d5Ei(;, avxfiq 
xf[(; EJiiKTipov Ka\ E^imEpot) xmv dvGpcojtcov ^(ofiq x^£^"<J^oi^. 

OlOV MEVlTlTtOq Kttl OOOl XOIOUXOI. TCEpl TldvXCOV XOVXCOV EVVOEI, 

oxi ndXai KEivxai. 

Meric Casaubon's morose formality captures the essence of this crucial 
passage:^ 

Let the several deaths of men of all sorts, and of all sorts of professions, 
and of all sorts of nations, be a perpetual object of thy thoughts. . . . Pass 
now to other generations. Thither shall we after many changes, where so 
many brave orators are; where so many grave philosophers; Heraclitus, 
Pythagoras, Socrates. Where so many heroes of the old times; and then so 
many brave captains of the latter times; and so many kings. After all 
these, where Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes; where so many other 
sharp, generous, industrious, subtile, peremptory dispositions; and among 
others, even they, that have been the greatest scoffers and deriders of the 
frailty and brevity of this our human life; as Menippus, and others, as 
many as there have been such as he. Of all these consider, that they long 
since are all dead, and gone.^ '^ 

It is a brilliant observation: even the mockers of life are dead, and those 
who speak of the end that is death are dead, and their death is a matter of no 
great importance. Even the task of meditating upon the transience of fame 
and the futility of endeavor ends in death. 

Yet Menippus is more than just a dead mocker in the Dialogues. Not 
only is he a character in Lucian's Necyomantia, and probably a character in 
his own Nekyia, but it also seems that in life Menippus represented himself 
as an emissary from the Underworld, come to report on the sins of humans 

^The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius, translated out of the Greek by Meric Casaubon, 
Everyman's Library, No. 9 (London & Toronto 1906) p. 69 (numbered XLII of Book VI). 

^^ The lexl continues: x{ ouv xowto 6eiv6v awxoiq; x{ 5ai toi<; \a\h' ovona^ojievoiq 
oXcoq; ev m5e noXXow a^iov, x6 jiex' dXriBeiaq Kai SiKavoavvriq eujievfi xoic; 
Venioxai^ Kai dSiKoi^ SiaPiouv. 



194 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

in order to report back to the lords of the dead. The Suda, s.v. (paioq, 
"gray," has the following entry: 

Mevinnoq 6 k-uvvk6<; tn\ xoaovxov Tepateiaq r[XaaEv ioc, 'Epivuoi; 
dvaXaPeiv oxTlM^a, Xeycov inicKonoc, d<pvxOoii tcov 
d|j.apxavo|iev(ov e^ ixbov koI ndXiv Kaxiwv OLnayyiXkzw zavxa 
Toiq eKei 5ai^ooiv. t|v dc r\ eoBfiq avxir cpaioq x^'^^v noSripTiq, 
Tiepl avxo) /^(ovTi (povviKfi, Kal niXoq 'ApKaSiKoq eni xfiq KecpaXfiq, 
e'xfov ev-ocpaaiieva xd iP' oxoixeia, e|i.pdxai xpayi-Koi, Trcoycov 
vnzp\iEyiQr[q, pdp5o(; ev xt] x^^pi Kie^vvti. 

Menippus the Cynic went so far in his hocus-pocus that he took on the 
apperarance of a Fury and said that he had come from Hades as an observer 
of sins and would go back down again to report them to the divinities there. 
This was his attire: a gray, ankle-length cloak with a purple belt around it; 
an Arcadian cap with the twelve signs of the Zodiac woven into it on his 
head; tragic boots; an immense beard; and an ashen staff in his hand.-^* 

The Suda is certainly correct in attributing this to Menippus.^^ The 
depiction of a comic Menippus (a bearded Fury in tragic boots) back from 
the Underworld corresponds to Lucian's picture of him at the beginning of 
the Necyomantia, in which he is shown with Orpheus' lyre, wearing 
Odysseus' cap and carrying Heracles' lion skin.^° 

It is easy to refer such a fantastic costume to a Cynic desire to be 
outrageous, but there is certainly an element of self-parody in this as well. 
The critical philosophical tradition speaks of this as tEpaxeia, 
"wonderworking, hocus-pocus, imposture"; it could hardly be expected to 
generate any other reaction. And it is an element of both the Necyomantia 
and the Icaromenippus, Lucian's two true Menippean satires, that the 
Menippus who returns from his fantastic voyage with the truth to preach to 
mortals is comically shown as a false prophet. At the end of the 

^ This image of Menippus the infernal observer seems to be confirmed by a fragment of 
Varro's Menippean Td<pTi MevCnnou (f539): saltern infernus tenebrio, KaKOi; 5aificov, atque 
habeat homines solUcitos, quod eum peius formidant quamfidlo ululam. 

^^ Some smaU difficulty attaches to this testimonium. Diogenes Laertius gives the same 
information, but claims it as a description of Menedemus, a Cynic whose Life follows that of 
Menippus and whose Life is the last in Book VI, which is devoted to the Cynics. It is the 
opinion of W. Cronert, Kolotes und Menedemos, Texte und Untersuchmgen zur Philosophen- 
und Liter aturgeschichte, Studien zur Palaeographie und Papyruskunde VI (Leipzig 1906), p. 3, 
that Diogenes Laertius is in error, having filled out an entry for which he had no information 
with details pertaining to Menippus. The older critics who have followed Diogenes Laertius' 
attribution are considerable, however: Riese and Wilamowitz, among others. M. BUlerbeck, 
Epiklet, vom Kynismus, PhUosophia Antiqua. Vol. XXXIV (Leiden 1978). pp. 136-37, in 
discussing the C/nic role of the e7t{aK07to<;, mentions the passage in Diogenes Laertius as 
referring to Menedemus without any acknowledgment of the problematic attribution. 

^ The ultimate source of this, as may be imagmed for a good deal of the fantastic machinery 
of Menippus' writings, is Aristophanic Comedy: in the Frogs Dionysus goes down to the 
Underworld with Heracles' lion skin thrown over his effeminate yellow robe. Of course, as an 
actor, he too is wearing tragic boots. 



Joel C. Relihan 195 

Necyomantia, for example, he comes back with the Cynic truth about life to 
the upper world through the hole of the false prophet Trophonius. It is a 
habit of Menippean satire in general to use a fantastic setting to mock those 
who have recourse to fantasy to find the truth. The way in which the 
fantasy of Menippean satire differs from that of Old Comedy is that, in Old 
Comedy, fantasy gets things done and reaches good and useful ends, while 
fantasy in Menippean satire makes such ends crumble into dust. 

A number of important points stem from this. First, Lucian has killed 
off Menippus; that is, he has taken Menippus' Nekyia and placed within it 
the dead Menippus himself as a ghost in the Underworld. Second, the 
fantastic journey of the Nekyia (or of Lucian's Necyomantia) cannot result 
in Menippus' return to the upper world.^^ Menippus is now trapped in the 
Underworld; the dialogue structure, replacing the narrative fantasy of the 
original, extended composition, reinforces this fact. Third, Menippus in his 
life and writings (insofar as they can be interpreted) made fun of the 
Underworld; it seems that he used the fact of death to terrify the living and 
make fun of philosophical rivals, but nothing indicates that he believed in 
the literal reality of the Classical Underworld. And this last point is the 
most interesting, for the Dialogues put Menippus in the company of 
fantasies that he cannot believe in, against whose existence he argues in the 
Dialogues, but who, for the Dialogues' sake, certainly exist. It is a sort of 
humor found elsewhere in Lucian, as in the dialogues on Olympus, in 
which the absurd divinities are intractably real; their ontological status, to 
use the technical term, is the comic issue.^^ Menippus the mocker is hoist 
on his own petard. The world he joked about is real, and he cannot escape 
from it; it will seek to make him one of its own. He is trapped, and his 
reason becomes ridiculous in this madhouse. 

How Menippus dies and thus comes to be in the Underworld is therefore 
of some interest, and the confusion of detail in these Dialogues suggests 
that Menippus is of two minds about his suicide. Diogenes' request that 
Pollux summon Menippus in 1(1) implies suicide; and at 20. 11 Menippus 
says that he was eager for death, and no one had to encourage him. Suicide 
is similarly implied at the end of 4(21), where Cerberus says that only he 
and Diogenes came of their own accord without being pushed. Diogenes 
Laertius reports, in a hostile notice, that Menippus hanged himself (D. L. 
VI. 100). In 2(22) he has in his sack a "Hecate's dinner;" and the Scholiast 
on DMort. 1 . 1 reports that he died of eating raw eggs intended for such a 
dinner. There is in all of this a good deal of resemblance between Menippus 

^^ Similarly, Qaudius cannot return in the Apocolocyntosis. This leads to an interesting 
conflation of the narrator as both naive observer of the comic afterlife and a comic captive of the 
afteilife. 

^^ This is best seen in the Juppiter Tragoedus, in which a council of gods listens to an earthly 
debate between an atheist and a believer, the fate of the gods hanging in the balance. The atheist 
refuses to press his advantage and the believer wins the argument. The gods breathe a sigh of 
relief, their existence unimpaired. Yet they have to exist in order to listen to the debate. 



196 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.l 

and Diogenes the Cynic, who is said to have died either by holding his 
breath, or by eating raw octopus, or by being torn apart by the pack of dogs 
to whom he was trying to distribute a raw octopus (D. L. VI. 76-77). It 
has been pointed out that the description of Menippus at DMort. 1. 1 as an 
old bald man in rags resembles the iconography of Diogenes;^^ it is very 
likely that the tales told of Menippus and Diogenes have at some point 
become intertwined,^ possibly by Menippus' own desire to be seen as a true 
disciple of the master, a claim that the rest of antiquity eagerly and 
unanimously disallowed. In death as in life, Menippus glories in following 
the example of the master. 

But Menippus jokes with Charon at 2(22) that he will have to be 
returned to life if the obol which he does not have is a requirement for being 
brought to the land of the dead. And in Dialogue 8(26) Menippus argues 
against suicide with the centaur Chiron, who longed for death because of the 
monotony of eternal life. Chiron expresses what are elsewhere considered 
the advantages of death at 8. 2: democracy (iaoTi|x(a),^^ irrelevance of 
distinctions of light and darkness, lack of physical desires such as hunger 
and thirst. Menippus answers that life in the Underworld too can be 
monotonous, and there can be no change from that; one should therefore be 
satisfied with one's lot and not think anything intolerable. Strictly applied, 
this sentiment, a properly Cynic one, would argue against suicide. Our 
surprise at hearing it from Menippus' mouth may imply more than 
carelessness on Lucian's part. 

In the Dialogues of the Dead, Menippus is trapped in a world that he 
used to make fun of. Part of the comedy here lies in the fact that Menippus 
cannot run away from a world that he never thought existed, and that what 
we see in the Dialogues of the Dead is Menippus trying to accommodate his 
beliefs to this new, bizarre, and wholly impossible world. A suggestion 
that Menippus will be surprised by the Underworld is even to be found at 
the beginning of the first Dialogue. Diogenes wants Pollux to say to 
Menippus that if he has had his fill of laughter up above, he will find even 
more to laugh at down below.^^ He adds the following strange statement 
(1. 1): 



'^ Hall, Lucian's Satire (above, note 7), p. 79. 

^ G. Donzelli, "Una Versione Menippea della Aioconou npaoK;?" Rivista di Filologia 38 
(1960), 225-76; cf. especially 270. Diogenes' alleged adulteration of the coinage of Sinope (D. 
L VI. 20-21), itself based on some sort of witticism involving the word voniojiata, meaning 
both "money" and "mores," seems to lie behind the detail in Laertius that Menippus was a 
usurious moneylender (D. L. VI. 99). 

^^ Cf. Menippus' last words in the Dialogues (according to the order of F), concluding a 
beauty contest between Nireus and Thersites (30. 2): iootijiCa yap ev a6o\) Kal onovoi 
anavtei;. 

^^ 1. 1: ei ooi iKavoj(; xa unep Ynq KaTaYeyeXaatai. 



Joel C. Relihan 197 

exei [ihf yap ev d^<plP6X,(p ooi eti 6 yiXax^ r\v xal noXv to 'ziq 
yap oX-coq oi5e xa \itza. xov piov; evxavSa 5e ov nax>cr\ pePaico(; 
yeXcbv KaGdnep eyo) vvv. . . . 

"For up there your laughter was still a doubtful thing and there was much 
of the phrase 'Who really knows what happens after life?' But here you 
will never stop laughing heartily just as I do now. . . ," 

This admits that Menippus' criticism of life above was predicated upon his 
knowledge of the way the Underworld operated, which of course Menippus 
could not truly know. One may imagine that his Cynicism was founded on 
doubt, on the fact that what happens after this life is unknowable. 
Diogenes' quotation, "Who really knows what happens after life?" is 
probably from Menippus himself.^'' But here is an opportunity to see at 
first hand, to experience reality, as it were; and Menippus will be able to 
laugh for certain, because of the nature of the Underworld as he will discover 
it. Now if the tenor of this is, "Before he saw through a glass, darkly, but 
now face to face," we may conclude that Menippus will learn that the 
Underworld really is as ridiculous as he thought it was. Death comes to 
Menippus not as a negation but as an unexpected answer. Menippus, known 
as a mocker, not a philosopher, will find Uiat the absurdities of death are a 
reality worthy of, but ultimately superior to, his mockery. 

in. Menippus and his Preachings in the Underworld 

Menippus is never shown in the company of other Cynics. Certainly 
Diogenes awaits his arrival with great anticipation in 1(1), and Menippus is 
the thread that holds the collection together. Yet Menippus and Diogenes 
never meet in the Underworld, and it is Diogenes, not Menippus, who 
functions as the exemplar of the true Cynic. It is Diogenes who discusses 
the permanence of wisdom even in Hades with his fellow Cynic Crates at 
21(11). Diogenes there lists the Cynic virtues (oocpCav, avxdpKeiav, 
dXriGeiav, TtappTioiav, eXevGepiocv); but the virtues assigned to Menippus 
at 20. 9, tellingly enough, do not include wisdom and truth (eXe-oGepiav 
Kttl Kapprioiav Kal to aXvnov Kal to yevvaiov Kal tov yiXoixa). 

There are a number of important ways in which the traditional Cynics 
are treated differently from the mocker Menippus. They are the earlier 
inhabitants of Hades and seem to have made their peace with it; Menippus is 
the newcomer, and must make certain adjustments. Furthermore, the true 
Cynics are seen, strangely enough, in a warmer and more human light. A 
few examples may be listed. First, in 13(13) Diogenes discusses the 
unimportance of material goods with Alexander the Great, who complains 
bitterly about ever listening to Aristotle, who taught him just the opposite. 
Diogenes proposes a cure (13. 6): Alexander is to take frequent draughts 

^^ Cf. Barbara P. McCarthy, "Lucian and Menippus." Yale Classical Studies 4 (1934), 12. 



198 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

from Lethe, and try to avoid the vengeful Clitus and Callisthenes. Menippus 
is never seen giving this kind of helpful advice.^^ 

Second, in 22(27), Diogenes, Crates, and Antisthenes, chuckling over 
their memories of how they mocked the dead with whom they first entered 
the Underworld, decide to gather around its entrance to make fun of the new 
arrivals, the rich who are weeping for their lost estates (22. 1): Kal yap 
av Ti6\) TO Geajxa yevoito, xox>c, fxev SaKp-uovtaq avxSiv opav, xovc, 6e 
iKExevovtoq d(pe0fivai. We see the typical and unpleasant characters of the 
Cynics in their reminiscences, but ecce miraculum! They see a new crowd 
come down, all weeping (except for children and infants). The three still 
profess to be amazed (or at least Diogenes, who is the only one of the three 
to speak from this point on) at this longing for life, and Diogenes questions 
an old man as to why he is so sad to leave the world above. There follows a 
quite unexpected conversation. The old man says that he was a ninety year 
old, penniless, childless, lame and half-blind beggar (22. 9). 

— Eixa toiovtO(; wv ^f^v riBeXeq; 

— Nai- i\b\) yap t\v to cpax; Kal to xeBvdvai 5eiv6v Kai 
(pe-uKxeov.^^ 

Diogenes thinks the old man mad, and says that he and his fellow Cynics 
should not be concerned about the young when the old have such notions 
instead of being eager for death. But the last sentence of the Dialogue has 
Diogenes urging his Cynic friends to hurry away, lest they be thought to be 
planning an escape as they cluster about the entrance to the Underworld. In 
my view the ending, and the moving statement of the beggar about the 
sweetness of life, are to lead us to think that it has come into Diogenes' 
mind at this point to try to escape, because life is sweet. There is some 
vindication of the joys of life over those who deny its sweetness in an 
attempt to make themselves some sort of comfortable niche in the Land of 
the Dead. Menippus speaks of returning to the world above only as a joke 
in Dialogue 2, when Charon complains that he does not have the necessary 
obol. 

A third point lies in the addressees of the Cynics in their conversations. 
Diogenes speaks to Alexander the Great, Crates and Antisthenes, the shade 
of an old man, and King Mausolus in 29(24). He speaks to mythical 
characters only twice; once to Pollux in 1(1), when he issues the command 
to bring back Menippus; and once to Hercules in 11(16), in a Dialogue that 
is exactly parallel to Menippus' Dialogue 10(3) with Trophonius and 
Amphilochus (in which the claims of a hero or demi-god to be present both 

^^ Menippus suggests that Tantalus drink hellebore at Dialogue 1. 2, but the advice is 
ironically meant (Menippus does not believe that the dead can drink) and Tantalus could not 
follow it even if he wanted to. 

^^ Menippus himself implies a similar conviction when he argues with the suicide Chiron at 
8. 1: CK)X fi5\) Tiv ^wvTa opav x6 (pax;; 



Joel C. Relihan 199 

in the Underworld and elsewhere are attacked as an absurdity). Menippus 
talks much more with the mythical characters of Hades. His Dialogues are 
with Hermes and Charon in 2(22); with Pluto and wealthy men like Croesus 
in 3(2); with Cerberus in 4(21), the famous Dialogue which speaks of 
Menippus' superiority to Socrates; with Hermes in 5(18), the even more 
famous Dialogue about the beauties of old that is the origin of Marlowe's 
"Is this the face that launched a thousand ships . . . ?"; Aeacus gives him a 
guided tour of Hades in 6(20); in 7(17) he tries to convince Tantalus that his 
punishment is impossible since hunger and thirst cannot exist in Hades; in 
8(26) he reproaches Chiron for his suicide; in 9(28) he derides Teiresias as a 
typical lying prophet; in 10(3) he makes fun of the false oracles of 
Amphilochus and Trophonius; in 20(10), the longest of Menippus' 
Dialogues, he and Hermes make fun of the passengers in Charon's boat; and 
in 30(25) he umpires a beauty contest between Nireus and Thersites. If we 
are to judge Menippus by the company he keeps, he is at home in a fantasy 
world, and is compelled by Lucian to face all the creatures of the Classical 
Underworld. There is some distinction, perhaps, between the agents of 
delivery and judgment (Charon, Hermes, Cerberus, Aeacus) and the more 
palpable frauds like Trophonius; even Diogenes seems to admit the power of 
the former."*^ But Menippus appears in 2(22) making fun of the myth of the 
obol required to cross on Charon's boat, and argues against the reality of the 
punishment of Tantalus, denying the evidence of his own eyes. Even if 
such mythological scenes were the essence of Menippus' Nekyia, Lucian has 
made them stand out as peculiar in the context of the Dialogues of the Dead. 
It was already indicated that the mood of the Dialogues with Menippus 
changes through the collection. This point may now be made more 
specifically through a brief look at each of his Dialogues. In Dialogue 2, 
Menippus' contempt is for both his fellow dead and for Charon, whose fare 
he refuses to pay. Charon complains to Hermes of Menippus' mockery of 
the passengers and his singing over their lamentations; we also hear that he 
helped to bale and to row. Hermes explains to Charon that this is 
Menippus, who cares for no one and nothing. Charon threatens the upstart 
nuisance, but Menippus says that he will never catch Menippus again. In 
Dialogue 3, Croesus, Midas, and Sardanapalus complain to Pluto of the 
abuse they receive from Menippus; Pluto objects to Menippus' mockery, 
here too seen as disruptive of the normal order of the Underworld. 
Menippus promises to follow these rich men with songs, abuse, and a 
refrain of "Know Thyself." Dialogue 4 has Cerberus telling what a coward 
Socrates was when he died, how he wailed and was frantic when he saw the 
abyss. Socrates was just like so many others: brave only as far as the 
entrance to the Underworld. But Menippus, like Diogenes before him, came 
down of his own accord, laughing and cursing. These three Dialogues show 

^ As Diogenes says to Alexander at 13. 3: or> yap ajieXfiq 6 AiuKCx; ovSe 6 KepPepoq 
evKaxacppoviixoq. 



200 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

Menippus at his boldest, but it is notable that in Dialogue 4, Menippus is 
asking the questions and is learning from Cerberus. Even though the 
emphasis is on Menippus' virtues, Menippus begins his education at this 
point. The Underworld also is beginning to show an appreciation of 
Menippus' qualities (through Cerberus' speech) just as Menippus begins to 
show himself a little more pliable. 

Dialogue 5, with Hermes, about the beauties of old, contains 
Menippus' bitter evaluations of the transience of beauty: he cannot tell 
Helen's skull from the rest. Hermes counters Menippus' criticisms of the 
futility of the Trojan War by saying that, had he seen her in the flesh, he 
would have thought Helen worth the effort and the toil. Menippus' 
comments become milder: he professes astonishment that the Greeks did 
not realize the ephemerality of the object of their desires. But it is Hermes 
who has the last word: there is no time for moralizing, Menippus must 
choose a spot to lie down in, and Hermes must be off. Death is an end not 
only to beauty but to discussion of its impermanence. Dialogue 6, 
Menippus' tour of Hades with Aeacus as guide and commentator, allows 
Menippus to mock Greek warriors of the Trojan War, barbarian potentates, 
and Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Empedocles. He has trouble 
picking out Socrates, as all of the dead now have bald heads and snub noses. 
Menippus praises him for knowing nothing and for pursuing his 
homosexual love affairs even in Hades. Socrates invites Menippus to lie 
down with him and Charmides, Phaedrus, and Alcibiades; Menippus 
declines, intending to go laugh at Croesus and Sardanapalus; Aeacus says he 
will show Menippus the rest another time, but Menippus says that he has 
seen enough. The genial conversation between Menippus and Socrates (6. 
6: "Good job, Socrates! Even here you exercise your peculiar skills and do 
not despise the beautiful!") shows that Menippus is not all gall and bile; and 
Menippus sees that there is another possible reaction to his new and strange 
surroundings: to give up philosophizing and practice pleasure. While this 
is not to Menippus' taste, he is learning that not all of the Underworld 
deserves his mockery. This comic Socrates is a far cry from the fraud 
Empedocles, and from the cowardly Socrates of Dialogue 4. 

In Dialogue 7, Menippus tries to convince Tantalus that there is no 
hunger and thirst in the Underworld. Tantalus argues that his punishment is 
to feel thirst even though there can be no thirst in the Underworld; 
Menippus paradoxically proposes a better drink, hellebore, and Tantalus says 
he would be only too glad if he could drink anything. Menippus' lecture on 
the nature of life in Hades is pointless, as Tantalus' punishment is both a 
fact of the dialogue and has been provided with "rational" underpinnings: it 
is not that Tantalus is thirsty, but that his punishment includes an irrational 
thirst. Menippus emerges from this as a little silly. Dialogue 8 has 
Menippus arguing with another mythical creature, Chiron, the centaur who 
committed suicide, despite his immortality, because he was tired of the 
monotony of the rhythms of life. When Menippus asks why it was not 



Joel C. Relihan 201 

pleasant to live in the light, we believe that he champions the values of 
life;'*^ and Menippus goes on to point out the monotony of death, and that 
the sensible man will not despise his lot in life. Menippus is not just 
being inconsistent, but is now shown as having second thoughts about his 
own suicide. 

Dialogue 9 has Menippus talking to Teiresias the prophet. It begins on 
an intriguing note: Teiresias and Menippus have equal sight now from 
empty sockets .''^ This is the first point at which Menippus is described as a 
skeleton, although for the purposes of the conversation this is not insisted 
upon. He questions Teiresias about his life as man and woman; Teiresias 
notes Menippus' skepticism, and when he asks whether Menippus 
disbelieves in all metamorphoses, Menippus answers that he will learn 
whether he believes on a case by case basis.'*^ Teiresias tries to explain the 
other elements of the myths told about him (how he tried to settle the 
dispute between Zeus and Hera and so on); Menippus brands him a typical 
lying prophet. It is remarkable both that Teiresias, who supplied the Cynic 
truth to Menippus in Hades in Necyomantia, is here just another liar; and 
that Menippus is so concerned with debunking such hoary myths instead of 
supplying his normal moralizing and abuse. So too in Dialogue 10, in 
which Menippus briefly disposes of the claims of the false prophets 
Amphilochus and Trophonius to be partly dead and partly alive and 
prophesying elsewhere: we take leave of Menippus for a while in these 
Dialogues with his trenchant comment: 

OoK oi5a, CO TpocpcoviE, o xi xal Xiyen;, oxi nevtoi oXoq ei vcKpot; 
avpiPoJc; op©. 

Menippus comes to learn then that everyone in Hades is dead, himself 
included. Lucian makes fun of his "dialectic" by having him argue with the 
absurdities of the Underworld. This is one of many ways in which Lucian 
distances himself from Menippus and his moralizing. When we see him 
again in Dialogue 20, others sing his praises, and are more impressed by 
his indifference to death than he is. Menippus is on board Charon's boat 
with an assortment of vain people: philosophers, kings, athletes. In a 
properly surrealistic scene they are forced to strip themselves of those 
possessions that weigh down the boat: beards and eyebrows, flattery and 
deceit. A philosopher tells Menippus to take off his "independence, plain 
speaking, cheerfulness, noble bearing, and laughter" (20. 9, MacLeod's 
translation). It is Hermes, not Menippus, who says that such things are 
easy to carry and useful for the journey ahead. Menippus does say, in a few 
brief words, that he was glad to die at 20. 11, but then asks about a noise, 
which is of people above laughing at or lamenting the deaths of those in the 

*! Cf. above, note 39. 

anaoi yap fmiv ojioia td onfiaxa, Kevd, fiovov 6e al x«>pai avtaiv. 
* 9. 3: "Hv now KUKeivaiq evroxto, ei'oonai o ti Kal Xeyovai. 



202 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

boat. Hermes says that Menippus is the only one left in peace, but 
Mcnippus says that it will not be so; dogs will howl and birds will beat 
their breasts as they bury his body. Hermes praises Menippus' spirit, but 
Menippus ends the Dialogue by urging all, including himself, on to the 
judgment: 

5iKaa9fivai Seriaei, Kai xaq xaxaSiKaq cpaoiv eivai Papeiac;, 
Tpoxovq KOI XiGo-oi; Kai yvnaq- 8t\.x^i\acxai 8e 6 eKdoxou pioq. 

The, Dialogue shows Menippus coming to accept his fate and not glorying 
in his own achievements. He still attacks bitterly the failings of others, but 
he seems to be aware of some need for moderation of the claims made for 
his own nature. 

Dialogue 30, a sort of parody of the judgment of Paris, has Menippus 
judging a beauty contest between Nireus and Thersites, the mythical 
paradigms of the most beautiful and most loathsome of men. The characters 
are now bodies and now skeletons; Thersites speaks of his hair while 
Menippus says that he cannot tell them apart, and judges them by their 
bones and skulls. It ends on a note which is the theme of the Dialogues of 
the Dead: "All in Hades are equal, and all are alike" (30. 2: iaoxiiiia yap 
ev a5o-u Kai o^oioi anavxzq). This is good news for Thersites, who says, 
"That's all I wanted to hear" ('E^tol )xev Kai touto 'iKavov). Menippus 
himself is certainly included in this generalization; his wisdom can only lie 
in realizing that his wisdom makes no difference. 

IV. Some Conclusions 

One of the more remarkable things about the Dialogues of the Dead is the 
general lack of humor at the expense of philosophical thought. The 
Dialogues do make fun of the hypocrisy of philosophers and the 
contradictions between their lives and their professed beliefs, but they do 
not show the spectacle of wrangling philosophers as did Timon's Silloi. 
And there is a very good reason for this: Death, the ultimate reality in these 
Dialogues, itself is an answer to all important philosophical questions."*^ 
Theory has no place in this world of revealed truth: as Pythagoras is made 
to say, in the touching line quoted as the epigraph to this article, "Among 
the dead there are different beliefs." The focus of the Dialogues is solely 
Menippus and his beliefs: they do not show philosophers learning the 
answers to their questions, but rather Menippus learning the unimportance 
of knowing the right answer all along. Two exceptions prove the rule. 

** Agathias Scholasticus, Anth. Pal. XI. 354, suggests the path not taken in Lucian. In it, a 
student asks a teacher to teU him the meaning of life (referring to the immortality of the soul 
and related issues). The teacher, refusing to commit himself to any position, says that death, 
the separation of soul and body, will answer all the student's questions, and intimates that 
suicide is the quickest route to the answer. 



Joel C. Relihan 203 

First, at 20. 11, Hermes asks a moaning philosopher the reason for his 
distress; the latter answers that he thought that his soul was immortal. 
Hermes rightly sees that the philosopher is primarily distressed by the loss 
of his soft life above, but the more interesting implications of the notion of 
the mortality of the soul are not explored (Is there a difference between a 
soul and whatever animates these corpses? How are we to explain the 
ancients who talk in the Underworld unless some sort of immortality is 
implied? Does the word "soul" imply a blissful existence?). Second, 
Dialogue 11(16), between Diogenes and the ei5coXov of Heracles, is a 
pastiche of the passage from the Nekyia of Odyssey, XI. 601-04, in which 
we are told of the difference between the image of Heracles which inhabits 
the Underworld and his real self, which is on Olympus. The comic 
philosophical discussion which follows, on the distinction between soul and 
image, and the possibility of Heracles' having two souls, is the only 
philosophical discussion in the Dialogues of the Dead, and it does not 
involve Menippus."*^ It seems to be the only one of these Dialogues in 
which a fantastic creature could plausibly be argued out of some belief; the 
image of Heracles is all that exists, though it still resists being disabused of 
its belief that another part of himself Uves gloriously elsewhere. Just what 
the nature of the image is remains unexplored. 

The only philosophical position presented, defended, or parodied in the 
Dialogues of the Dead is that of Cynicism itself; specifically, Menippus' 
peculiar application of it. It is shown to be true and not true, meaningful 
and meaningless, a cause for hope and a cause for despair. This seems to be 
part of a general desire on Lucian's part to create works of comic criticism 
that do not allow the reader any one fixed or certain vantage point, or any 
privileged attitude or point of view.'*^ But it is also perfectly reasonable that 
such memento mori pieces show the intractability and inconsistency of our 
ideas about death; and that they convince us that life, being all that we have, 
and despite its abundant follies, its transience, and its idols of pride and 
power, is better than death. Menippus the Scoffer is swallowed up by Death 
the Leveler, who humbles even those who lived in contempt of death. 
Perhaps in life Menippus pointed to the land of the dead as reason why 
people should reform in the land of the living. But Lucian turns Menippus 
into a preacher to the dead, and Menippus here uses his best arguments on 
the nighunare creatures of fantasy, demonstrating to phantasms that they do 
not exist, despite the fact that in death all are equal. Menippus and the 
frauds and fantasies that he mocks are one in the world of the dead. We 

*^ For a complete discussion of the various ancient interpretations of this passage and their 
philosophical implications, see J. Pepin, "H6racles et son reflet dans le ndoplatonisme," Le 
Nioplalonisme, CoUoques Intemationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris 
1971), pp. 167-92. 

^ As demonstrated in the case of the Alexander by Branham, "The Comic as Critic" (above, 
note 7), esp. 161-63, speaking of its narrator as "divided against himself." 



204 Illinois Classical Studies, XII. 1 

laugh at those preoccupied with death as well as with life. Some truth may 
lie in the contemplation of the fate of Menippus in an Underworld both 
absurd and frustratingly real. At the beginning of the Dialogues, Menippus 
was merely dead. By the end, he has been buried. 

And in this way the writings of Menippus in general may be set 
against the background of the second century. Lucian learns from 
Menippus, the self-parodying preacher and searcher for absolute truth, the 
folly of looking for and preaching absolute truth. In topical satires Lucian 
makes fun of all the pundits who have a shortcut to the truth: philosophers, 
magicians, religious frauds, quack doctors, and writers themselves. In his 
comic dialogue he sets up his own writing, highly allusive and playful, as a 
vehicle not designed to communicate ultimate truth. He may be a literary 
gamesman,"*^ and his art may lie in not taking himself too seriously; but in 
the Second Sophistic not taking oneself too seriously is a sign not of 
weakness but of strength. Lucian does not succumb to the notion of the 
holiness of authorship; but in ways that are subtle, and in their own way 
magical, he calls attention to the rift between the sophistication of his style 
and the simplicity of his conclusions. Lucian sees himself as a preacher, 
and parodies what he would preach, lest anyone mistake preaching for truth. 

At the end, a few words of praise for the Dialogues and an attempt to 
repair the strange neglect that has befallen them despite their fame. They are 
a true work of genius, repaying each rereading, and it is their fantasy that 
makes them so. The Dialogues of the Dead ask the reader to imagine a 
discussion between a corpse and a dog, between skeletons, between gods and 
men, on the topics of truth, reason, and life. These fantasies are in 
themselves quite arresting, but this is self-destructive fantasy. The fantasy 
does not, as we would expect, serve to make clearer some point about the 
real world, unless the point is that dogmatism and truth are as impossible 
above ground as they are below. The discussions seem to take place in the 
upper air, until some infernal detail drags them down to the world of make- 
believe. It is crucial that the reader acknowledge that these Dialogues are 
absurd, and then make the imaginative leap that would associate that 
absurdity with the real world. The calm elegance of the language, the 
smoothness and even the banality of the commonplace ideas, and the human 
emotions that peek through the surface of the argument: all these combine 
to make a bewildering and exciting sort of fantasy, and ultimately a real 
depth of thought, that can only be satisfactorily paralleled from a modem 
author. No one passage from ihe Dialogues of the Dead conveys the sense 
of the whole that may be felt as one reads them; instead, let a quotation 
from Italo Calvino's Le Cittd Invisibili (Invisible Cities) suggest the beauty 
of Lucian's Underworld: 

*^ Duncan, Ben Jonson (above, note 16), p. 21. 



Joel C. Relihan 205 

Non c'e citta piu di Eusapia propensa a godere la vita e a sfuggire gli 
affanni. E perch6 il salto dalla vita alia morte sia meno brusco, gli abitanti 
hanno costruito una copia identica della loro citta sottoterra. I cadaveri, 
seccati in modo che ne resti lo scheletro rivestito di pelle gialla, vengono 
portati la sotto a continuare le occupazioni di prima. Di queste, sono i 
momenti spensierati ad avere la preferenza: i piu di loro vengono seduti 
attomo a tavole imbandite, o attegiati in posizioni di danza o nel gesto di 
suonare trombette. Ma pure tutti i commerci e i mestieri dell' Eusapia dei 
vivi sono all'opera sottoterra, o almeno quelli cui i vivi hanno adempiuto 
con piu soddisfazione che fastidio: I'orologiaio, in mezzo a tutti gli orologi 
fermi della sua bottega, accosta un'orechia incartapecorita a una pendola 
scordata; un barbiere insapona con il f>ennello secco I'osso degli zigomi 
d'un attorre mentre questi ripassa la parte scrutando il copione con le 
occhiaie vuote; una ragazza dal teschio ridente munge una carcassa di 
giovenca. 

Certo molti sono i vivi che domandano per dopo morti un destino 
diverso da quelle che gia tocco loro: la necropoli e affoUata di cacciatori di 
leoni, mezzesoprano, banchieri, violinisti, duchesse, mantenute, generali, 
piu di quanti mai ne conto citta vivente. 

L'incombenza di accompagnare giu i morti e sistemarli al posto voluto e 
affidata a una confratemita di incappucciati. Nessun altro ha accesso 
aU'Eusapia dei morti e tutto quello che si sa di laggiu si sa da loro. 

Dicono che la stessa confratemita esiste tra i morti e che non manca di 
dar loro una mano; gh incappucciati dopo morti continueranno nello stesso 
ufficio anche nell'altra Eusapia; lasciano credere che alcuni di loro siano gia 
morti e continuino a andare su e giu. Certo, I'autorita di questa 
congregazione suU'Eusapia dei vivi e molto estesa. 

Dicono che ogni volta che scendono trovano qualcosa di cambiato nell' 
Eusapia di sotto; i morti apportano innovazioni alia loro citta; non molte, 
ma certo frutto di riflessione ponderata, non di capricci passegeri. Da un 
anno all'altro, dicono, I'Eusapia dei morti non si riconosce. E i vivi, per 
non essere da meno, tutto quello che gli incappucciati raccontano delle 
novita dei morti, vogliono farlo anche loro. Cosf I'Eusapia dei vivi ha 
preso a copiare la sua copia sottoterranea. 

Dicono che questo non e solo adesso che accade: in realta sarebbero stati 
i morti a costruire I'Eusapia di sopra a somiglianza della loro citta. Dicono 
che nelle due citta gemeUe non ci sa piu modo di sapere quaU sono i vivi e 
quali i morti. 

No city is more inclined than Eusapia to enjoy life and flee care. And to 
make the leap from life to death less abrupt, the inhabitants have 
constructed an identical copy of their city, underground. All corpses, dried 
in such a way that the skeleton remains sheathed in yellow skin, are carried 
down there, to continue their former activities. And, of these activities, it 
is their carefree moments that take first place: most of the corpses are 
seated around laden tables, or placed in dancing positions, or made to play 
little trumpets. But all the trades and professions of the living Eusapia are 
also at work below ground, or at least those that the Uving performed with 
more contentment than irritation: the clockmaker, amid all the stopped 



206 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.l 

clocks of his shop, places his parchment ear against an out-of-tune 
grandfather's clock; a barber, with dry brush, lathers the cheekbones of an 
actor learning his role, studying the script with hollow sockets; a girl with 
a laughing skull milks the carcass of a heifer. 

To be sure, many of the living want a fate after death different from their 
lot in life: the necropolis is crowded with big-game hunters, mezzo- 
sopranos, bankers, violinists, duchesses, courtesans, generals — more than 
the living city ever contained. 

The job of accompanying the dead down below and arranging them in the 
desired place is assigned to a confraternity of hooded brothers. No one else 
has access to the Eusapia of the dead and everything known about it has 
been learned from them. 

They say that the same confraternity exists among the dead and that it 
never fails to lend a hand; the hooded brothers, after death, wiU perform the 
same job in the other Eusapia; rumor has it that some of them are already 
dead but continue going up and down. In any case, this confraternity's 
influence in the Eusapia of the living is vast. 

They say that every time they go below they find something changed in 
the lower Eusapia; the dead make innovations in their city; not many, but 
surely the fruit of sober reflection, not passing whims. From one year to 
the next, they say, the Eusapia of the dead becomes unrecognizable. And 
the living, to keep up with them, also want to do everything that the 
hooded brothers tell them about the novelties of the dead. So the Eusapia 
of the living has taken to copying its underground copy. 

They say that this has not just now begun to happen: actually it was the 
dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that 
in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and 
who is dead.^^ 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 



"** Italo Calvino, Le cittd invisibili (Turin 1972, repr.1978), pp. 115-16: Eng. tr. Invisible 
Cities: "Cities and the Dead 3": by William Weaver. (San Diego, New York. London 1974). 
pp. 109-10. 




ILLINOIS CLASSICAL STUDIES 



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J. K. Newman, Editor 



ISSN 0363-1923 



ILLINOIS 

CLASSICAL 

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VOLUME XII. 2 

Fall 1987 

J. K. Newman, Editor 



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Preface 



DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVES 

In his History of the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Femand 
Braudel chides the king for not removing his capital, after the conquest of 
Portugal in 1580, nearer to the Atlantic. Instead of looking to the New 
World, where economic progress was to make fantastic leaps into the future, 
he preferred to concentrate his gaze on the old and decaying Mediterranean, 
and the struggle with France for the legacy of Charlemagne; or for the 
legacy of Constantine and Justinian with an Ottoman Empire already, after 
the death of Suleyman in 1566, touched by senility. Thus at the apogee of 
the sigh de oro, in the midst of its glories, Spain was already sentencing 
itself, because of its fixation upon the past, to a long decline, a contest with 
its neighbors to find a place in a museum basement 

Economic forecasters nowadays talk of the Pacific Rim, as a proof that 
America must shift its own old preoccupations with the Atlantic and Europe 
away towards the new technologies of the East, visible in Japan, South 
Korea, Taiwan, Singapore. And what will happen if ever China harnesses 
the genius and energies of its billion people, amply attested for previous 
centuries by Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, to 
economic development on a large scale? What revolutions will that provoke 
in the United States? 

But all this has an unexpected corollary for the western segment of the 
Asiatic land-mass. If the twenty-first century is to witness such changes, a 
transformed and computerized East will again have something to offer as 
valuable as the spices and silks that once drew caravans to cross deserts and 
mountains, or that sent Marco Polo from Venice to the court of Kublai 
Khan. If Europe too is to want its share of the import and export of goods 
and ideas from and to the Pacific Rim, unless everything is to go tediously 
and lengthily by sea, Asian land routes will re-acquire their ancient and 
immense importance, and again the Mediterranean will become the 
crossroads between East and West. 

It may be that a reformed Soviet Empire will try to profit from this 
trade, and that would give the "Third Rome" and its Byzantine tradition fresh 
impetus indeed. But that system, so prolific in and so wasteful of its 
talents, is always likely to present uncertainties and difficulties. If the main 
routes run south of the USSR, there is the problem of Iran. But whatever 
pattern of traffic emerges, a simple glance at the map of Asia shows the 
strategic importance in any such configuration of Turkey, akeady a candidate 



vi Preface 

for membership of the European Common Market. Touching the Balkans 
and Greece at Byzantium, the Soviet Union at Kars, Iran at Urmia, so close 
to Egypt and the Suez Canal and yet, with the advent of the Channel 
Tunnel, soon to enjoy direct rail links with London, suddenly its people 
may throw off the lethargy of centuries; and the imperial ambitions of the 
Ottomans, now transferred to the commercial realm, may no longer seem to 
them a dream from the past, but the hope and possibiUty of a new future. 

In all this. Classical scholarship, apparently so remote and study-bound, 
has, as usual, its own most modem and relevant role of interpretation and 
comment, "orientation" on this occasion in its most literal sense, to play. 
The intrusion of the Turkish people into the Mediterranean world, 
linguistically documented at such exhaustive length by Gyula Moravscik in 
his Byzantinoturcica, resembles another intrusion; that of the Romans into 
the struggles of the Diadochi. Who could believe that history had reserved 
any part for the farmers and shepherds of Latium amid such Hellenistic 
sophistication? And yet, in hindsight, who played the imperial role with 
such distinction? The most fruitful and indeed the only possible 
relationship for a Greek thrown into the company of the Younger Scipio 
was that selected by Polybius: not to reject, but to try to understand why 
history had chosen this new people as the bearers of its future. In the case 
of Turkey, we too must seek to understand. No country or people long 
sustains the burden of empire without some gift or calling. 

The Romans — it was a token of their genius — carried into their new 
future a great deal of Greek cultural baggage. Islam in its turn has not been 
indifferent to the achievement of Byzantium. Akeady the court of Baghdad 
had attracted translators of Greek texts into Arabic; of Aristotle and his 
commentator Themistius, for example; of Galen, Dioscorides, even of the 
New Testament. In the tenth century, the Turkish writer Alpharabius 
adapted Plato's Republic to Islamic ideas. The Ottoman Turks continued 
this respect for learning. In the Dolmabache Palace, a Western painting in 
the salon d' attente reserved for ambassadors before their reception by the 
Sultan shows the young Conqueror Mehmed II entering through the breach 
in the city walls accompanied certainly by his troops, but also by his aged 
and venerable spiritual adviser Aksemseddin. In another painting, Mehmed 
and Aksemseddin watch the transportation overland of the warships that 
entered the Golden Horn from the Sea of Marmara. Venetian artists like 
Gentile Bellini and Titian worked for Mehmed and Siileyman. The medal 
struck for the former, saluting the Conqueror as Imperator, is in the purest 
Roman tradition, and it is this tradition which, soon after 1453, the 
Venetian traveller Giacomo de' Languschi invokes when he calls the 
youthful Sultan "as avid of fame as Alexander of Macedon." At the 
religious level, a convergence of imagination between the dome of the Ulu 
Mosque at Erzurum (1 150), itself in debt to Byzantine churches, and that of 
the chapel of the Santa Sindone in Turin by Guarini (1688-94) presents no 
longer a merely aesthetic problem but a delight and mystery. 



Preface vii 

The publication therefore of these articles about "Byzantium and its 
Legacy" as a theme issue of Illinois Classical Studies needs no apologetic 
explanation in a State increasingly conscious of its need for an international 
outlook and breadth. But they are of as great relevance to the Classicist 
also. The immense urgency of Byzantine studies — they form the single 
most important area of Classical scholarship in our time — is that 
Byzantium redefines our task as we abandon the twentieth century. What 
puzzles and seems "irrelevant" in fragments makes sense in a pattern of the 
whole. It is the context that clamors for attention, "Only connect," 

Superficially, it might seem attractive to the student who thinks he has 
exhausted Virgil to find authors as yet largely untouched, fresh victims for 
the scholarly scalpel. This approach is quite wrong. "Despite its appeal as 
a largely untilled field of philology, what Mommsen saw in the Byzantine 
world was the essential continuity of Roman law and administration; that is 
to say precisely those aspects of Roman civilization that he understood 
better than anyone else" (Brian Croke). It is not to get away from Virgil 
that we turn to Byzantium, but to understand him better when we go back to 
him. And this principle applies to all our work. Our aim is not to wander 
aimlessly in the forest counting the leaves on the trees, but to draw the 
contours of the sacred wood. 

Mommsen died in 1903. Is it too much to hope that his words will be 
heeded a century later, even though during the preparation of this issue news 
arrived that in Britain at least chairs of Byzantine studies are being short- 
sightedly left unfunded? Already in our time the great problem for the 
Classicist is to look beyond the temporary and transient to the continuing 
inheritance, and even to dare to recognize that some things, judged by this 
criterion, do not matter. It is evident how much passed from Byzantium to 
Russia, and as the Church celebrates the millennium of the conversion of 
Prince Vladimir how much more visible that debt will be. It is less evident 
how much passed to the Ottoman Empire. But even handkerchiefs are 
relevant here. When, in the illustrations to the Chronicle of the Szigetvar 
Campaign by Osman, we see a seated Siileyman receiving his vassal 
Stephen Zapolya in Belgrade in 1566 while holding his ceremonial 
handkerchief, must it not be understood that we have a modem version of 
consular diptychs issued under Theodoric and Justinian showing a seated 
Boethius or Areobindus holding the mappa, or of the gesture of the governor 
Flavius Palmatus, whose standing statue from the late fifth century A.D., 
now in the Museum at Aphrodisias, also holds a similar symbol of 
authority in its right hand? And that tradition is already described by Ennius 
before 269 B.C. for Romulus and Remus as they took the auspices at the 
very foundation of Rome, veluti consul cum mittere signum volt. 

Mommsen was right, and he was right because he was a Classicist, and 
so had material at his fingertips for comparison. There is striking 
continuity between New Rome and Old. Domitian is already a Byzantine 
monarch, and Statius, who may well be called the first Byzantine poet, in 



viii Preface 

his Silvae offers the proof. Fessis vix culmina prendas I visibus, auratique 
putes laquearia caeli (IV. 2. 30-31) of Domiiian's banqueting hall sounds 
like a Santa Sophia six centuries before Tralles and Anthemius. Statius' 
poem is entitled Eucharisticon. It is not surprising then that his imperial 
iconography should have contacts even with Pushkin. 

Ibn Khaldun, the great philosopher and theorist of cyclic history, died 
before Byzantium fell, but its collapse would not have puzzled him. When 
on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the praise of Allah was intoned for the first 
time by an imam in Hagia Sophia, Tursun Beg, an eyewitness, describes 
how Sultan Mehmed II advanced to survey the fallen city and the domes of 
its church (tr. Bernard Lewis): 

The Emperor of the World, having looked upon the strange and wondrous 
images and adornments that were on the concave inner surface, deigned to 
climb up to the convex outer surface, mounting as the spirit of God 
ascended to the fourth sphere of heaven. Looking down as he passed, from 
the battlements at each level, on to the marbled court below, he went up to 
the dome. When he saw the dependent buildings of this mighty structure 
fallen in ruin, he thought of the imp>ermanence and instability of this 
world, and of its ultimate destruction. In sadness, a verse of his sweetness- 
diffusing utterance reached my humble ear, and remained engraved on the 
tablet of my heart: 

The spider is curtain-bearer in the Palace of Chosroes. 
The owl sounds the relief in the castle of Afrasiyab. 

The Sultan was the heir of a long tradition. As the Younger Scipio in 146 
B.C. watched the destruction of Carthage, he quoted in Greek from the 
prophecy of Menelaus in the fourth book of the Iliad: 

eooexai rjiiap oxav nox' oXtoXr^ "VKxoc, lpT|, 
Kai npia|i.O(;, Kal Xabc, eiijijieXi© ITpid^oio. 

Menelaus makes this prophecy because the Trojans have violated a solemn 
religious obligation, and the Romans continually struck this same theme in 
their anti-Carthaginian propaganda. Punica fides meant Punica perfidia. 
But did not Mehmed think of the Byzantines also as "infidels"? 

History is a tale of blind men looking for a black cat in a darkened 
cellar. But the scholar's task is to emulate Thucydides and Ibn Khaldun, to 
throw light, to reveal patterns. This enterprise is fraught with difficulty, as 
Professor Cyril Mango and others have pointed out, stemming in part from 
the failure to see that Byzantine civilization is not a continuance of 
Hellenic, but of Hellenistic / Roman culture. Like Constantine, Justinian 
was a native speaker of Latin. The Byzantines were Rhomaioi, "Rum." 
The "great idea," as an increasing number of modem Byzantinists are telling 
us, is based on a great misapprehension. 

D. V. Ainalov wrote at the beginning of this century on The 
Hellenistic Origins of Byzantine Art (SjineHHCTHHecKHe Ochobu 



Preface ix 

BH3aHTHftHCKoro HcKyccTBa, CaHKT neTep6ypr, 1900). Classical 
antiquity is not a series of islands in a sea of decadence, but a seamless robe. 
In its shot-silk warp, the great urban centers of Alexandria and Byzantium 
focus complex, far-reaching, often "Hippodromic" and carnival patterns. 
Between these jewels is set Rome's mirror, refracting, altering, 
"contaminating." After them shine Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, but also 
Istanbul. If only our students would begin to understand the panorama and 
the vision — the diachronic perspectives — they must have if Classical 
scholarship is to live — 

Nel suo profondo vidi che s'intema 
legato con amore in un volume, 
cio che per I'universo si squadema. 

Dante is central to European poetry, and both verbal reminiscence and ring 
composition show that the source and trigger of Dante's insight was Roman 
Virgil: 

Vagliami '1 lungo studio e '1 grand' amore 
ch m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. 

We cannnot raise our students to those heights quickly. But perhaps we can 
make a beginning. Perhaps with the aid of Byzantium we can widen their 
horizons rather than, as we do too often, bind them in nutshells and then 
count them — mock them — as kings of infinite space. 

With this issue, my five-year Editorship of Illinois Classical Stiidies 
comes to an end. Of the 104 articles published during this time, 39 have 
been by authors whose affiliation either now or earlier has been with the 
University of Illinois. At a more personal level, and since this is the aim of 
all our endeavors, I have been delighted to include the work (in this order) of 
Peter Howell of Bedford and Royal Holloway Colleges, University of 
London; Paul Holberton of the Warburg Institute, University of London; 
John Dillon of Trinity College, Dublin; Radd Ehrman of Kent State 
University; and Julian Raby of the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, 
all former students of mine at different periods of my career. 

Finally, I would like to thank all who have helped in any way: in 
particular Professor Nina Baym, Professor Edward Sullivan and the School 
of Humanities; Professor Clayton Dawson; the Editorial Committee; Mrs. 
M. E. Fryer for her cheerful and devoted service; and above all Frances 
Stickney Newman, without whose unceasing toil none of this would have 
been possible. 

J. K. Newman 



Byzantium and its Legacy 



'PconTj na^PaaiXeia, x6 oov kXeoc, o-otiot' oXenai- 
N{kt| ydp OE (p-uYEiv anxzpoc, ot) 6'6vatai. 

A. P. IX. 647 



...JieTHT MHMO BCe, HTO HH OCTb Ha 3eMne, H, KOCHCL, 

nocTopaHHBaioTCH H flaioT eft flopory apyrHe Hapoflu h 
rocyziapcTBa. 

N.V. Gogol*, Dead Souls 



Contents 



1 . Byzantium's Role in the Formation of Early Medieval 
Civilization: Approaches and Problems 207 
MICHAEL McCORMICK, Dumbarton Oaks and The Johns Hopkins 
University 

2. The ManUe of Earth 221 
HENRY MAGUIRE, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

3. An Introduction to Byzantine Monasticism 229 
ALICE-MARY TALBOT, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 

4. Religious Key Terms in Hellenism and Byzantium: Three Facets 243 
HENRY AND REN^E KAHANE, University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign 

5. Grammar and Rhetoric in Euthymius Zigabenus' Commentary 

on Psalms 1-50 265 

THOMAS M. CONLEY, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

6. The Itinerary of Constantine Manasses 277 
MIROSLAV MARCO VICH, University of lUinois at Urbana-Champaign 

7. Das Ende Neuroms in der Sicht der deutschen Zeitgenossen 293 
JOHANNES IRMSCHER, Berlin, DDR 

8. Mehmed the Conqueror and the Byzantine Rider of the Augustaion 305 
J. RABY, The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford 

9. Domitian, Justinian and Peter the Great: The Ambivalent 
Iconography of the Mounted King 315 
J. K. NEWMAN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 



Byzantium's Role in the Formation of 

Early Medieval Civilization: 

Approaches and Problems 

MICHAEL Mccormick 



Until recently, Europe from the collapse of Roman power in the fifth 
century to the Carolingian achievement in the ninth — the early Middle 
Ages — has been the poor step-child of modem historical research. The 
reasons are not hard to find. Contemporary sources are few and difficult, 
their language is laced with obscurity, and lingering prejudice against the 
"dark ages" can still be perceived, especially in North America. But because 
a problem is difficult does not mean that it can be ignored. And it is 
increasingly difficult to deny that the long twilight period on the edges of 
Antiquity and the Middle Ages was fertile and even decisive for the destiny 
of medieval — and modem — civilization. 

These centuries prepared the ground on which the high Middle Ages 
would build and out of which the modern world would grow. Not a few 
salient characteristics of contemporary westem civilization appear there for 
the first time. It was then that Christianity conquered northem Europe and 
that the Germanic, Slavic and Arab peoples emerged as key players on the 
world stage. It is here that we find the direct ancestors of phenomena as 
diverse as Europe's modem nation states and today's "Roman" alphabet, a 
style of writing invented by the scribes of Charlemagne's kingdom in the 
eighth century. 

While many factors which shaped early medieval Europe must be 
sought, of course, within that civilization's internal development, there is 
little reason to think that outside stimulus was less influential here than in 
other, comparable cultures.* And few would deny that the diffusion of a 
civilization's culture beyond its frontiers is of great historical significance to 

* See e.g. P. D. Curtin. Cross-cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge 1984), p. 1. 



208 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

understanding both that civilization and its beneficiaries. In the case before 
us, Byzantium's contribution beyond its boundaries has been detected in 
domains as diverse as the music, art, thought, political symbolism and 
language of the early medieval West. Thus, it was Byzantium that supplied 
the organs which Carolingian rulers first introduced into church services.^ 
Early and middle Byzantine masterpieces inspired Carolingian and Ottonian 
book illuminators, while the court of Constantinople provided the very 
manuscript which stands at the beginning of western theology's 
neoplatonizing mysticism.^ The extent to which the medieval West and its 
heirs have assimilated their Byzantine inheritance is suggested by the 
surprise one feels at discovering that this legacy includes state welcome 
ceremonies such as we now see at airports, or that Byzantium gave us 
words — and the realities behind them — like "ink," "pasta," "bronze," 
"boutique," and "diaper.""* 

Even this small sampling indicates the depth and duration of 
Byzantium's impact on the West. It would be an easy task to add to it.^ But 
rather than lengthen a list which scholars have already made imposing, I 
would like to explore some of the historical complexities of Byzantium's 
role in shaping early medieval civilization. For it is remarkable that very 
little effort has been devoted to the deeper issues which underlie the 
phenomenon and how historians understand it. Was Byzantine influence a 
constant factor in the early Middle Ages or did it fluctuate, and if so, how 
and why? Is every parallel occurrence in East and West due to Byzantium's 
influence on the West — or vice versa — , or are there mirage influences? And 
what do we really know about the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange in 
the "dark ages"? Even if it proves impossible to resolve these questions, it 
is high time to raise them. 

^D. Schuberth, Kaiserliche Liturgie. Die Einbeziehung von Musikinstrumenten, insbesondere 
der Or gel, in den frtihmittelalterlichen Gottesdienst (Gottingen 1968), pp. 114-34. 

^ For Byzantine art and the West, see, e.g., A. Grabar, "L'asymetrie des relations de Byzance 
et de rOccident dans le dcanaine des arts au moyen age," Byzanz und der Westen, ed. I. Hutter 
(Vienna 1984), pp. 9-24. On neoplatonizing mysticism, see below, pp. 217 ff. For a general 
survey of Byzantine thinkers and their western impact see M. V. Anastos, "Some Aspects of 
Byzantine Influence on Latin Thought," Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern 
Society, ed. M. Clagett et al. (Madison 1966), pp. 130-88. 

■^On the early Byzantine roots of medieval political welcomes, see E. H. Kantorowicz, "The 
'King's Advent' and the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina," Selected Studies 
(Locust Valley 1965), pp. 37-75; cf. M. McConmick. "Clovis at Tours, Byzantine Public 
Ritual and the Origins of Medieval Ruler Symbolism," Acts of the Dumbarton Oaks 
Symposium on Byzantium and the Barbarians (Vierma, in press); for the linguistic legacy see the 
remarkable study of H. and R. Kahane, "Abendland und Byzanz: [Literatur und] Sprache," 
Reallexikon der Byzantinistik, 1 (Amsterdam 1976). 345-639, esp. 362. 364. 379-80 and 385- 
86. 

^ For systematic overviews, see O. Mazal, Byzanz und das Abendland (Graz 1981). and W. 
Ohnsorge et al., "Abendland und Byzanz." Reallexikon der Byzantinistik, 1 (Amsterdam 1969- ), 
126ff. 



Michael McCormick 209 

But, before these issues are attacked, it must be emphasized that modem 
scholarship's very positive appraisal of Byzantium's creative role in the 
formation of early medieval culture is a recent development. It reflects the 
remarkable achievement of modern Byzantine studies which have at last 
shaken off the old prejudices bequeathed by the competition and conflict 
between the upstart West and the legitimate eastern heir of Roman 
authority. It reflects no less the development of early medieval studies, at 
last relieved of the nineteenth century's romantic and nationalistic agendas. 

By applying new methods and newer questions, today's Byzantinists are 
exploding the image of a culture frozen in time, crystallized by Yeats' 
famous poems — "Monuments of unageing intellect" — and perpetuated by 
the Byzantines themselves.^ The results reveal a dynamic society, torn 
between the reality of change and its own ideology of continuity.^ The 
upheavals of our own time have lent new legitimacy to what is without 
question the discipUne's most flourishing sector, the early Byzantine period. 
It stretches from Diocletian's reform of the Roman state down to the 
shattering events of HeracUus' reign and the advent of Islam. Under its new 
name of "late antiquity," this era's disturbing features of modernity assert its 
relevance as it emerges from the sentence of "decadence" imposed by the 
eighteenth century's neoclassical revival.* At the same time that late antique 
specialists have begun to lay bare the hitherto disdained institutions and 
characteristics of the early Byzantine empire, medievalists have turned a 
skeptical eye to the presumed Germanic origins of many aspects of western 
society. Contemporaries of World War II and its aftermath find less appeal 
in the argument from silence and some curious assumptions about, the 
nature of early Germanic society when they must explain early medieval 
phenomena not attested by the older handbooks of classical civilization.^ At 
this point, their research increasingly encounters the splendid results of their 
Byzantinist colleagues and concludes, either that both Germanic and late 
Roman roots are possible, or indeed, that supposedly Germanic phenomena 

^M. McCormick, Eternal Victory. Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and 
the Early Medieval West (Cambridge 1986), p. 395. 

^ Though the debate is not yet ccmcluded: cf. G. Weiss, "Antike und Byzanz. Die Kontinuitat 
der Gesellschaftsstruktur," Historische Zeitschrift 224 (1977), 529-60 with A. P. Kazhdan and 
A. Cutler, "Continuity and Discontinuity in Byzantine History," Byzantion 52 (1982), 429-78. 

^ See the excellent essay by H. I. Marrou, Decadence romaine ou antiquite tardive? III'-V 
siecle (Paris 1977), pp. 9-14. 

'Anton Baumstark (1872-1948), the distinguished historian of early Christian liturgy, 
illustrates how tacit assumptions about primeval "Germanness" affected historical analysis. In 
his fundamental study Vom geschichtlichen Werden der Liturgie (Freiburg 1923), p. 85, 
Baumstark presumed that a military liturgical service attested in seventh-century Spain was a 
creation of the "gemianische Blutart." In fact, the Visigothic ritual fits smoothly into the 
emerging picture of how the Byzantine antny's liturgy of war developed from the sixth century 
on: McConmick. Eternal Victory, pp. 308-12; cf. pp. 245^9 and 394-95. 



210 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

are actually protobyzantine in character.^° In other words, the medievalist 
discovers continuity between his subject and late antiquity thanks to the 
Byzantinist's success at uncovering the change from classical to early 
Byzantine civilization! 

However great Byzantium's impact on the West, it could scarcely have 
remained constant over some five centuries. The first task then is to gauge 
the relative importance of that phenomenon over time. Yet such efforts are 
exceedingly rare.^^ A tentative effort is therefore useful if only to indicate 
the complexity of the task and the reality it addresses. While a definitive 
appraisal must await extensive research on topics ranging from technology 
to cuisine, a practical alternative is to draw a provisional picture from one 
sector of the evidence and then distinguish the limitations of that picture. 

A recent study has demonstrated how the early medieval West adopted 
and adapted one of late antiquity's most potent clusters of political belief and 
ritual, the myth of the eternal victory of the Romano-Byzantine state.'^ The 
result suggests a triple articulation over time. The first phase runs from the 
fifth century until sometime in the seventh; the second encompasses the 
later seventh and eighth centuries, while the third continues past the 
Carolingians. In the first, the impact of contemporary Byzantine civili- 
zation is massive, if not to say dominant. In the second, it seems very 
limited; in the third, Byzantium begins anew to make its influence felt. 

The overwhelming impact of early Byzantium on western rulership is 
readily understandable: indeed, it is scarcely justifiable to speak of cross- 
cultural contacts in the fifth or sixth centuries when East and West, North 
and South bathed in a kind of koine Mediterranean culture. ^^ The first fitful 
steps toward a distinctive western style of rulership were naturally guided by 
the prestigious models of late Roman governance that lay ready to hand, and 
Germanic rulers sought to anchor their new power in traditions both familiar 
to the vast majority of their new subjects and impressive to their non- 

^° Thus P. D. King's excellent study of Law and Society in the Visigothic Kingdom 
(Cambridge 1972) repeatedly notes the possibility or conviction of both Germanic and late 
Roman roots for a number of Visigothic institutions: e.g. the beliefs behind oaths of allegiance 
(pp. 41-42) or dowries (p. 225). Another good example is the ongoing debate about the 
Germanic or protobyzantine origins of late antiquity's private military retainers, the bucellarii. 
Even W. Kienast, "Gefolgswesen and Patrocinium im spanischen Westgotenreich," Historische 
Zeitschrifl 239 (1984), 23-75, esp. 26 ff. and 48 ff., the most recent defender of distant 
Germanic roots, acknowledges the evidence's slendemess, while O. Behrends, "Buccelarius [sic]," 
Reallexikon der germanischen Altertwnskunde 4 (Berlin 1981), 28-31, denies them outright. 
Neither knows J. Gascon's important contribution "L'institution des Bucellaires," Bulletin de 
I'Institutfrangais d'archeologie orientate 76 (1976), 143-56, in which the testimony of the early 
Byzantine papyri tends to strengthen Behrends' point of view. 

'^ The most remarkable exception lies in the pioneering effort of H. and R. Kahane, 
"Abendland" (above, note 4), pp. 440-51. 

'^ McCormick, Eternal Victory, pp. 392-94. 

'^ P. Brown, "Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways," 
Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1982), pp. 166-95, here 173. 



Michael McCormick 211 

Roman followers.^'* By the second half of the seventh century, however, the 
situation had changed both inside and outside the so-called Germanic 
kingdoms. Within because, by this time, the new monarchies of Visigoths, 
Franks and even Lombards had grown old in their turn. They had developed 
the heterogeneous legacies of their founders along novel lines dictated by the 
unique circumstances and experience of each. Outside because, as Pirenne 
emphasized, the advent of Islam — and the Slavs — helped disrupt diminishing 
contacts between eastern and western Mediterranean centers. Intercourse on 
the crucial level of provincial civilization slackened too, as Constantinople's 
outlying Latin provinces of Spain, North Africa, Italy and the western 
Balkans were swept or nibbled away. From mid-eighth century on, much of 
western Europe came under Frankish dominion and entered an era of 
political, social, cultural and, it would appear, economic consolidation that 
fostered renewed contacts with Byzantium and the importation of elements 
of eastern civilization, not to mention traffic in the opposite direction.^ ^ 

The pattern in contacts attested by state symbolism appears to find 
comfort in the best documented area of exchange: diplomatic missions 
between sovereigns. Thus a recent history of Byzantine diplomacy in the 
early medieval west shows that Constantinople dispatched 39 missions to 
rulers of Western states over the nearly 16 decades separating the collapse of 
the imperial government in Ravenna in 476 and 634 A.D., an average 
approaching two and one half per decade. The fifteen decades from the 
middle of the eighth century to 900 A.D. record 34 such embassies, slightly 
over two per decade. The eleven and one half decades between 634 and 750 
stand in stark contrast: they show no embassies from Constantinople to the 
WesLi6 

There is, moreover, a rough correlation between phases of western 
receptivity and the fortunes of Byzantine political and cultural power. The 
resurgence that began in the fifth century and endured into the seventh 
entailed extensive politico-military presence and intervention in the West, 
symbolized by Justinian's reconquest. The loss of the empire's wealthiest 

^^ McConnick, "Clovis at Tours" (above, note 4). 

^^ H. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne, tr. B. Miall (New York 1939). For a good 
selection of articles devoted to the "Pirenne Thesis," see P. E. Hiibinger, Bedeutung und Rolle 
des Islam beim Ubergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter, Wege der Forschung 202 (Darmstadt 
1968); R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe: 
Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (Ithaca 1983), offer a stimulating revision founded on 
recent archaeological work which should be read in conjunction with D. Claude's thorough 
reexamination of the written evidence: Der Handel im westlichen Mittelmeer wdhrend des 
Friihmittelalters, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Philolog.-hist. 
Kl. 3. 144 (Gottingen 1985). 

*^ Based on T. C. Lounghis, Les ambassades byzantines en Occident depuis lafondation des 
Etats barbares jusqu'awc croisades (407-1096) (Athens 1980), pjp. 462-77. In no case have I 
counted emissaries to p<^s, nor, in the third period, to the Venetian doges, since Venice must 
stUl be reckoned as belonging to the Byzantine empire into the ninth century: F. C. Lane, 
Venice, a Maritime Republic (Baltimore 1973), p. 5. 



2 1 2 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

provinces toward the middle of the seventh century forced on Constantinople 
a financial crisis of unparalleled proportions and inevitably undermined 
Byzantium's positions in the West. Finally, the eighth century brought 
renewed stability and rekindled the political and cultural ambitions of a 
significant but diminished imperial power, ambitions which peaked in the 
ninth and tenth centuries, precisely the time when Byzantine influence again 
becomes very apparent.^'^ 

Useful though this broad chronological pattern may appear as a 
provisional framework, it cannot stand without qualification for all facets 
and regions of medieval culture. Its concern with the symbolism of state 
slants its focus toward the monarchy, an institution whose development and 
prestige may not reflect developments at less exalted levels of society. The 
analysis of early medieval cross-cultural exchange must be socially 
differentiated, especially since archaeology hints that court milieux at 
opposite ends of the Mediterranean may have shared more material culture 
with each other than with the less privileged groups on their respective 
doorsteps.^^ That the broad chronology closely parallels the distribution of 
the surviving written sources raises the question of the value of the 
argument from silence. And the pattern suffers one important geographical 
exception: throughout this period and beyond, Italy's integration into the 
Byzantine world was so extensive that Peter Classen has reckoned Italy's 
forcible removal from the Byzantine to the northern sphere as the ninth 
century's most significant contribution to the birth of Europe. ^^ What is 
more, the correlation between Byzantium's political power and the diffusion 
of its influence varies according to the aspect of civilization one examines. 
Thus the collapse of Byzantine rule in the near East was precisely the factor 
which triggered an important immigration of that region's Greek-speaking 
elite to Italy, especially Rome, and explains why the pope should send a 
Greek from Tarsus to revitalize Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons.^° 
Nor does the reader need to be reminded of the connection between the fall of 
Constantinople in 1453 and the arrival of Greek scholars in the West 
associated with the Renaissance. Nonetheless, the fact remains that these 
considerations affect only the middle period; the unclarity of the situation 
between the fourth decade of the seventh century and the middle of the eighth 
cannot obscure the great difference between the fifth and ninth centuries. 

Byzantine influence in the field of political symbolism therefore 
fluctuated over time. The preceding considerations also suggest that its 

^' On the fiscal crisis of the seventh century, see the remarkable synthesis of M. Hendy, 
Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300-1450 (Cambridge 1985), pp. 613 ff. 

^* Cf. H. Vierck, "Imitatio imperii und interpretatio Germanica vor der Wikingerzeit," Les 
pays du Nord et Byzance, ed. R. Zeider (Uppsala 1981), pp. 64-1 13, here pp. 81 ff. 

^' P. Qassen, "Italian zwischen Byzanz und dem Frankenreich," Ausgewdhlte Aufsdize, 
Vortrage und Forschungen 28 (Sigmaringen 1983), pp. 85-1 15. 

^ J. M. Sansterre, Les moines grecs et orientaux d Rome aux ipoques byzantine et 
carolingienne (mUieuduVf^mdurX' s.) 1 (Brussels 1982), pp. 123-24 and 190-91. 



Michael McCormick 213 

intensity varied geographically — frontier provinces enjoyed a privileged 
position — and according to social status.^^ 

An accurate assessment of the changing patterns of Byzantium's role in 
the formation of early medieval civilization must pay close heed to what 
really constitutes evidence of cross-cultural exchange. Too frequently, the 
mere observation of parallels between East and West is reckoned sufficient 
proof that contemporaneous influence was at work. But the particular 
historical circumstances of Byzantium and the West can foster the mirage of 
cross-cultural exchange, particularly in the second and third periods. The 
mirage may only distort the moment and direction of exchange, or it may 
affect its reality. 

First, the surviving evidence's distribution over time and space is very 
uneven. In sheer volume, the evidence of almost all kinds — narrative and 
documentary sources, images, buildings, manuscripts — which survives from 
the western kingdoms between 600 and 750 far surpasses what has come 
down to us from contemporary Byzantium. It therefore stands to reason that 
if there were indeed contacts between these two cultures, institutions or 
customs which originated in Byzantium might crop up first in the better 
documented medieval West. And in fact, penal practice, the liturgy and 
royal insignia have all revealed cases which confirm this pattem.^^ 

Further precision in defining the moment of exchange may well result 
from Byzantinists' increasing success at stripping from their subject the veil 
of continuity Byzantium has thrown over its evolution. There are in any 
case numerous parallels between the two civilizations which reflect residual, 
rather than recent exchange.Two examples chosen from different layers of 
reality illustrate and clarify this point. 

Specialists in Byzantine manuscripts know well a conventional jingle 
with which Greek scribes often concluded the arduous labor of copying a 
text: 

ox; Ti5\) Toiq TcXiovciv £{)6io<; Xi^iriv, 

o\>z(ac, Ktti Toiq Ypd<po\)oiv 6 iSoTaxoq axixoq. 

A calm port is no sweeter for sailors. 
Than the last line for scribes. 

The most recent study of the poem's history observed that a nearly identical 
Latin colophon occurs in a manuscript copied in Merovingian France, some 

^' On the first point, cf . D. Obolensky, "Byzantine Frontier Zones and Cultural Exchanges," 
Actes du XIV* Congris international des etudes byzantines 1 (Bucharest 1974), 302-14; 
concerning the second, I Sevcenko has noted a similar social stratification of Byzantine influence 
among the Slavs: "Byzanz und die Slaven," Anzeiger der phil.-hist. Klasse der Osterreischischen 
Akademie der Wissenschaften 122 (1985), 97-1 15, here 1 10-1 1. 

^ Penal practice: R. S. Lopez, "Byzantine Law and lu Reception by the Gemians and the 
Arabs," Byzantion 16 (1942^3). 445-61; liturgy: McComiick, Eternal Victory, pp. 394-95; 
insignia: Vierck, "Imitatio" (above, note 18), pp. 83 ff. 



214 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

two centuries before the earliest attested Greek version. Does this imply 
that Merovingian copyists influenced their Byzantine counterparts? The 
uneven geographical distribution of surviving MSS combines with scant 
seventh-century evidence of cross-cultural exchange to caution against a 
hasty conclusion. That seventh-century book production saw little 
innovation points to an earUer origin. In fact, a closely related topos occurs 
in Cassiodorus, one of the sixth century's most outstanding intermediaries 
between East and West, and indicates that the medieval Greek and Latin texts 
both derived from a common ancestor in the bilingual book culture of late 
antiquity.^ 

A second case comes from the realm of costume which, in the early 
Middle Ages, emblematized ethnic identity. Einhard's famous sketch of 
Charlemagne's life-style emphasizes that he steadfastly avoided "foreign" 
clothes (peregrina . . . indumenta), preferring "native" Prankish dress. He 
says that in summertime Charlemagne wore a short cloak called a sagum. 
Now Byzantine officials of the ninth century also wore similar garments 
called sagia, but this parallel demonstrates neither Prankish influence on 
Byzantium nor vice versa. In fact, it is easy to establish that the word and 
the garment appeared in the classical world long before the Pranks. The 
Franks adopted this kind of cloak along with many other elements of the 
pan-Mediterranean material culture into which they settled, even as the 
Byzantines remained faithful to the same traditions.^ 

In both instances, eastern and western societies show close parallels 
which do not correspond to recent cross-cultural exchange. The historical 
link is indirect, in that both derive from the late antique matrix which 
spawned the two cultures. The cloak and the jingle tell us nothing, 
however, about Byzantium's relations with the Pranks in the ninth century. 
Here at least the common ancient origin explains the parallels, and rules out 
recent influence. A final, enigmatic set of phenomena admits no such 
explanation and underscores the limits of current historical understanding. 
They might be called structural parallels. 

It is a remarkable yet little commented fact that, in their individual 
developments, both eastern and western halves of Christendom display some 
striking parallels for which satisfying residual or recent cross-cultural causes 

^ K. Treu, "Der Schreiber am Ziel. Zu den Versen "Qonep ^evoi xaipovoiv . . . und 
ahnlichen," StiuUa codicologica, Texte und Untersuchungen 124 (Berlin 1977). pp. 473-92; cf. 
M. McCormick, Scriptorium 34 (1980), 191*. no. 960 and, for a new example, M. Manfredini, 
"Ancora un codice con la formula "iioTiep ^evoi . . . ," Codices manuscripti 10 (1984), 72. 
Cassiodorus plays with this metaphor when he introduces his treatise on the soul as an 
additional thirteenth book added to the twelve of Variae: De Anima, 1 , ed. J. W. Halpom, Corpus 
Chrislianorum, series latina 96 (1972), 534. 1-2. 

^ Charlemagne's dress: Einhard, VUa Karoli magni, 23, ed. O. Holder-Egger, Monumenta 
Germaniae historica, Scriptores rerum germanicarum (Hanover and Leipzig 1911), pp. 27. 22- 
28. 12; Byzantine digniuries: N. Oikonomides, Les listes de prisiance byzantines des IX* el X* 
Slides (Paris 1972), p. 170, n. 154. 



Michael McCormick 215 

have not yet emerged. Their detailed analysis and explanation must await 
the birth of a comparative approach to early medieval history, but the 
existence of such parallels can no longer be denied. It is, for instance, quite 
clear that between 750 and 850 both the Greek and Latin-speaking worlds 
perfected new, smaller, more economical book calligraphies called 
minuscule scripts. The new scripts marked a cultural epoch in more than 
one respect. They broke decisively with the old majuscule book-hands 
which had dominated classical Graeco-Roman literary culture and ensured its 
transmission. For this reason the emergence of minuscule necessitated the 
transliteration of each culture's classical heritage into the new script if it was 
to remain easily intelligible to later readers. And it is well known that what 
was not transliterated by western or Byzantine scribes has mostly 
disappeared.^ The new minuscules also happen to be the archetypes of our 
modem Greek and "Roman" scripts. 

The history of political ceremonial furnishes another example. Both 
eastern and western monarchies of the ninth century share a common shift in 
the main audience of the sovereign's ceremonial away from the emphasis on 
a mass audience obvious in their common early Byzantine matrix. While 
neither Byzantine emperors nor Prankish kings completely neglected the 
general public in their ceremonial display, it is safe to say that they paid 
more attention to an elite audience recruited from each society's aristocracy. 
I at least have uncovered no evidence to suggest that this parallel 
development was due to cross-cultural cause and effect or some form of 
imitation. It seems to reflect independent responses to similar but 
independent developments in each polity's social and political structure.^^ 

^ On the emergence of the Latin (Carolingian) minuscule, see B. Bischoff, Paldographie des 
romischen Altertums und des abendldndischen Mittelalters (Berlin 1979), pp. 137-39 and 143- 
47. C. Mango ("La culture grecque et I'Occident au Vlll" sifecle," I problemi dell'Occidente nel 
secolo VIII, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 20 [Spoleto 1973], 
pp. 683-721, here pp. 716-21) boldly suggested that the use of Latin minuscule at Rome may 
have inspired the Greek phenomenon. Although this view has failed to gain acceptance (cf. G. 
Cavallo and O. Kresten, ibid., pp. 845-57; Sansterre, Moines grecs, 2, p. 219. n. 315), and 
Professor Mango has himself acknowledged the difficulty of identifying a precise link, it has 
clarified the issues. Cf. C. Mango, "L'origine de la minuscule," La paliographie grecque et 
byzanline (Paris 1977), pp. 175-79, esp. 177-78. A further element which merits exploration 
is the roughly contemporaneous adoption of a minuscule in Georgian, the oldest dated example 
of which seems to be a book copied at St. Sabas near Jerusalem in 864 A.D.: Sinai, St. 
Catherine's, Georg. 32, 57 and 33 (three volumes of the same book); cf. G. Garitte, Catalogue 
des manuscrits giorgiens Uttiraires du Mont Sinai, Corpus scriptorum christianorum 
orienlalium, Subsidia 9 (Louvain 1956), pp. 72-97, esp. 93-95; illustrated in I. Abuladze. 
K'art'uli Ceris Nimusebi (Tbilisi 1973), p. 83. I owe this last information to the kindness of 
my colleague Robert W. Thomson, Director of Dumbarton Oaks. 

^ See McCormick, Eternal Victory, p. 395. Another possible example has been noted by P. 
Speck, "Ikonoklasmus und die Anfange der Makedonischen Renaissance," Varia 1, Poikila 
byzantina 4 (Bonn 1984), pp. 175-210, esp. 195-97, who emphasizes the near contemporaneous 
development of Renaissance-like movements in Byzantium, the Prankish West and the Abbasid 



216 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

A third illustration comes from just beyond the period under discussion 
here and testifies to yet another field of human activity: at roughly the same 
time, family names became a familiar feature of both Byzantine and western 
aristocratic kinships. So far not a shred of evidence has come forth to 
suggest a causal Unk between the two cultures .^'^ 

Transformations in script, political ceremonial and personal names stem 
from three very different layers of reality. Neither the shared experience of 
Byzantium and the West in late antiquity nor cross-cultural influence seems 
to offer sufficient explanation for any of these striking parallels. In other 
words, one must begin to explore the possibility that in two sibling 
cultures which issued from a common matrix, similar processes developed 
independently around the same time for reasons that so far escape us. 
Again, mere paralleUsm of the evidence does not suffice to show influence. 

If we turn from the mirage of Byzantine influence back to the reality, to 
organs, manuscripts, theological treatises and political symbolism, we are 
forced to observe that historians' success at uncovering examples of 
Byzantine influence has not been matched by advances in understanding how 
and why it occurred. One pressing task must be to clarify the nature of 
Byzantine influence in the West. The first obstacle is the word influence 
itself. It implies that the society which "receives" the foreign "influence" 
plays a passive role, inertly absorbing the output of another society. In 
reality, the process is usually quite the opposite: the borrower takes the 
initiative in appropriating from the "donor" society an element which it 
deems useful.^* A few established cases of Byzantium's contribution to 
western society develop and clarify some key issues behind the process. 

It has been observed that Charlemagne's writing office adopted from 
Constantinople the custom of authenticating certain documents by hanging 
lead seals from them. Hitherto, Prankish kings had used only seals made of 
wax. However, Charlemagne's clerks adapted the borrowed custom to the 
new, "archaeological" taste prevalent at his court by rejecting contemporary 
Byzantine standards of facing portraiture, and resurrecting profile views 
associated with early Byzantium .^^ The borrowing milieu reflected its own 
internal requirements and fashioned the borrowed element to its own 



West and the Abbasid Caliphate. He suspects that the Byzantine revival may have been spurred 
by rivalry with the Arabs. 

^'' Although Byzantium seems to have had something of a head start over the West, 
aristocratic family names spread through both societies in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: A. 
P. Kazhdan, CouHa;ii>HiJft cocraB rocnoflCByioiuero Knacca BHsaHTHH XI-XII BB.(=The 
Social Structure of Byzantium's Ruling Class in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries) (Moscow 
1974), pp. 223-26 and K. Schmid, Gebetsgedenken undadliges Selbstverstdndnis imMittelalter. 
Ausgewdhlte Beitrdge (Sigmaringen 1983), pp. 212-18. 

^P. E. Schramm. Herrschaftszeichen und StaatssymboUk, Schriften der Monumenta 
Germaniae historica, 13. 3 (Stuttgart 1956), pp. 1068-1072; cf. P. Brown, "Eastern and Western 
Christendom" (above, note 13), pp. 171-72. 

^ P. E. Schranun. Die deutschen Kaiser und Konige in Bildern ihrer Zeit, 751-1190, ed. F. 
Mutherich (Munich^ 1983). pp. 35-36. 



Michael McCormick 217 

distinctive cultural context. In other words, this appropriation of a 
Byzantine custom tells us as much about the differences between the two 
civilizations as their similarities. 

Yet even so clear an example of cross-cultural borrowing merely 
demonstrates the facts of contact and appropriation: it does not explain 
them. In part, the need to explain has fallen victim to the misleading 
connotations of the notion of influence. Once we recognize that the 
impulse to borrow from a foreign culture arises in the borrower, we perceive 
the necessity of determining what factors beyond mere availability induced 
the borrowing culture to do so. In part, Byzantium's ideology of continuity 
combined with historians' love of their subject to foster the assumption of 
Byzantine civilization's unchanging superiority over the contemporary West 
at all times and in all respects, with Uie further implication that medieval 
westerners shared that appreciation. ^° But the new Byzantinism has 
cancelled this approach, as eminent specialists have underscored that the 
seventh century's drastic upheavals produced a Byzantium which, however 
fascinating, cut a relatively impoverished and perhaps even backward 
character in the eighth century.^^ This compels renewed efforts to explain 
why and how contemporary western societies were moved to borrow from 
Constantinople. 

In the early Middle Ages, the inquiry can rarely proceed beyond factors 
of a rather general nature, but even these illuminate why borrowing occurred 
and clarify what Byzantium represented for the borrowing society. For 
example, Visigothic Spain's elite seems to have followed closely 
developments in the Byzantine capital and provinces. This explains that 
they knew and were able to appropriate significant elements of imperial 
ritual. But only a careful study of the conditions of Visigothic rulership and 
comparison with other innovations in the Spanish symbolism of power 
reveals that the struggle between ambitious kings and a powerful aristocracy 
coalesced with their shared admiration for Constantinopolitan culture to spur 
the court to borrow and adapt the Byzantine ceremonies marking the defeat 
of usurpers. The unique conditions of Visigothic society explain the power 
of one kind of Byzantine "influence" there.^^ 

A hundred years later and a little to the North, the volume of preserved 
source materials swells dramatically and it at last becomes possible to go 
beyond the general factors which fostered Byzantine "influence" and examine 
the details of this process. Yet even under these more favorable 
circumstances, the historian soon finds more questions than answers. 

^ E.g. ibid., p. 35, where the eighth -century Byzantine court and its international prestige is 
compared to that of Versailles under Louis XIV. 

^' Mango, "La culture grecque" (above, note 25), pp. 720-21; cf. Kazhdan and Cutler, 
"Continuity" (above, note 7), pp. 437 ff. 

^^ McConnick, Eternal Victory, pp. 315-23. 



2 1 8 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Western assimilation of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus was a decisive 
step in medieval intellectual development. This Byzantine neoplatonist 
theologian's Latin after-life has been linked with the genesis of Gothic 
architecture and influenced thinkers as diverse as Abelard, Thomas Aquinas 
and Wyclif.^^ An extraordinarily favorable source situation allows scholars 
to map in some detail the earUest stage of Pseudo-Dionysius' entry into the 
mainstream of western thought. The favorable situation affords insight into 
the dynamics of early medieval cultural exchange. 

In September 827, the Greek text of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus 
arrived at the court of Charlemagne's son and successor, Louis the Pious, in 
the baggage of an embassy from Byzantium. The legation was headed by a 
high dignitary of the church of Constantinople and had been sent to 
Compidgne by Emperors Michael II and Theophilus in connection with a 
treaty between the two empires. The book, which scholars believe has 
survived to this day in Paris (Bibliotheque Nationale, grec 437), may well 
have been calculated to win favor with Hilduin — one of Louis' chief 
advisers. Hilduin just happened to head the royal abbey of St. Denis (that 
is, Dionysius) in Paris and maintained against all opponents that his house's 
patron saint was none other than the Dionysius whom St. Paul converted in 
Athens, and the presumed author of the Areopagite corpus. Within weeks of 
the presentation, the Prankish emperor turned the book over to Hilduin, 
immediately triggering a series of miraculous healings at the Parisian abbey, 
which miracles, of course, demonstrated the identity of the two Dionysii.^ 
As part of the campaign to glorify his abbey's patron saint, Hilduin 
sponsored the first — ^mediocre — Latin translation of the works. A few years 
later, the mysterious Irishman John Scot Eriugena, the greatest intellect of 
the Latin ninth century, would try to improve the translation and grapple 
with its content, launching the Areopagite's western diffusion. 

Even this brief account illuminates the complexity of the historical 
processes by which Byzantium worked its way into the fabric of early 
medieval civilization. The concept of "influence" is sadly inadequate to 
explain the unique constellation of factors which converged to cause one of 
the most pregnant instances of cross-cultural transfer in the Middle Ages. 
What does the case of Pseudo-Dionysius tell us about these factors? 

^^ Pseudo-Dionysius and Gothic architecture: O. von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral: 
Origins of the Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order (New Yoric 1956), pp. 
106-07; for a succinct systematic survey of the Are<^agite's enduring impact in the West, see 
R. Roques et al.,Dictionnaire de spirituality 3 (Paris 1954), 244-429, esp. 318-429; cf. the 
update in G. O'Daly, "Dionysius Arcopagiu," Theologische Realenzyklopddie 7 (Berlin 1981), 
772-80, here 777-78. 

^ G. Th6ry, Etudes dionysiennes 1 (Paris 1932), pp. 1-100; R. Loenerlz, "Le pan^gyrique de 
S. Denys TArfeopagite par S. Michel le syncelle," Analecta bollandiana 68 (1950), 94-107 and 
"La 16gende parisieruie de S. Denys I'Ardopagite. Sa genese et son premier temoin," ibid., 69 
(1951), 217-37. 



Michael McCormick 219 

The first element is availability, no small consideration in a world of 
significant but limited cross-cultural contacts. In this case, someone in the 
Byzantine government actually took the initiative of making Pseudo- 
Dionysius available to a foreign elite, quite possibly in order to further 
precise diplomatic goals. ^^ The ambassador was in any case one vector in 
this transfer; his intention had of course little to do with the distant results. 

Another essential factor was the existence of someone on the receiving 
end who was interested in and capable of using Pseudo-Dionysius. Let us 
not forget that a century earlier, the pope himself seems to have sent another 
copy of Pseudo-Dionysius to Louis the Pious' grandfather: that copy 
vanished without a trace.^ The powerful abbot of St. Denis was therefore a 
second indispensable vector in the process of the Byzantine thinker's entry 
into western theology. 

Yet Hilduin's first use of the book had nothing to do with Pseudo- 
Dionysius' theology: he exploited it as a relic, whose presence at his abbey 
proved his point and cured the sick. It was only later, when the emperor 
urged him to compile a devotional work, that the abbot got around to 
dealing with the content. While Byzantium's place in the early medieval 
world may explain why an embassy came to Compi6gne seeking to 
influence a Prankish ruler and therefore made the book available to Prankish 
society, it cannot explain what the book meant to Hilduin. For whatever 
Hilduin's attitudes toward Byzantine civilization may have been, they do not 
suffice to explain his energetic appropriation of the works of Pseudo- 
Dionysius. As his own testimony makes abundantly clear, the book from 
Byzantium was first and foremost a weapon in the struggle to enhance the 
prestige and power of his own house via an apostolic connection.^^ And of 
course, so far as Hilduin knew, there was nothing Byzantine about the 
Dionysian corpus itself, since the demonstration of its sixth-century origin 
lay more than a thousand years in the future. 

Hilduin's promotion of Pseudo-Dionysius' writings also illustrates the 
present limits of our knowledge. For all that is known of this case, 
scholars are reduced to hypotheses when it comes to the crucial question of 
the linguistic intermediary. Who actually did the translating for Hilduin? 
The leading theory is that Hilduin used unknown Greeks.^* But what 
Byzantines did Hilduin know? Aside from ambassadors, were any Greeks 
associated with the Carolingian elite? How many and where were they? 
And with whom were they associated? Or was most knowledge of 
Byzantium mediated not by the Byzantines themselves, but by northern 

^ On this j)oint, ibid., 232. 

^ Th6iy, Etudes, 1, pp. 1-3; cf. Sansterre, Moines, 1, pp.182-83. 

'' Hilduin of St. Denis, Epistolae variorum, 20, c. 4, ed. E. Diimmler, Monumenta 
Germaniae historica, Epistolae 5 (1899), 330. 3-11; cf. c. 8, 331. 10-14 etc. 

'^Th^ry, hudes, 1, p. 134 and 142; cf. B. Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien 2 (Stuttgart 
1967), pp. 256 ff. 



220 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

scholars like Eriugena, Sedulius Scotus, and Martin of Laon who struggled 
to acquire some elements of Greek with the miserable research instruments 
available to them?^' Or by Italians like the remarkable Anastasius 
Bibliothecarius who, like some Franks, actually sailed to Byzantium? In 
other words, the analysis of the dynamics of Byzantine- Western cultural 
exchange in the early Middle Ages must begin to take into account the 
essential characteristic of early medieval society. In a world in which 
personal and family relations were everything, in which kings ruled peoples, 
not countries, personal — ^rather than institutional — networks stand a good 
chance of having channeled and conditioned the diffusion and appropriation 
of Byzantine civilization and it is to them that future research must turn. 

The sampling of borrowings adduced at the outset indicated Byzantium's 
extensive role in the formation of early medieval civilization. But the study 
of this historical process must learn to differentiate the Byzantine 
contribution in time, space, social strata and content, to shun everywhere 
the misleading notion of influence and in some places the mirage of cross- 
cultural causality. It must explore the dynamics of this process and then 
identify the vectors of cross-cultural transfers. As ongoing research uncovers 
new instances of Byzantium's impact on the West — and vice versa — , the 
very success of that inquiry urges the historian to begin to contemplate the 
how and why of that phenomenon. The historical understanding of both 
societies stands only to gain. 

Dumbarton Oaks and The Johns Hopkins University 



^ The best account of the resources of western would-be intennediaries is E. Jeauneau, "Jean 
Scot firigene et le grec," Archivum latinitatis medii aevi 41 (1977-1978; printed 1979), 5-50. 



The Mantle of Earth 



HENRY MAGUIRE 



The purpose of this paper is to identify a theme which occurs with some 
frequency as a decoration on early Byzantine tapestry weaves from Egypt, 
but which has not hitherto been recognized in the literature on these textiles. 
This theme is nothing less than the portrayal of the terrestrial world, the 
representation of the entire earth and ocean together with their bounty. It is 
a subject which was displayed on Near Eastern textiles as early as the first 
century A.D. and which continued to be shown after the fall of Egypt to the 
Arabs in the seventh century. In many of the textiles, the weavers reduced 
the vastness of terrestrial creation to a design not more than a few inches 
across, compressing the fruitfulness of all nature to the confines of a motif 
which could be repeated several times on a hanging or a garment, like the 
reiteration of a charm. 

In A.D. 39 Queen Kypros, the wife of Herodes Agrippa the King of 
Judaea, sent a textile to the Emperor Gains, together with these lines by the 
poet Philip: 

yaiav T-qv <p£peKap7iov ooriv e^coKE jiepixSwv 

a)Keav6(; }i£YdX,(oi Kaioapi jieiBo^evriv 
Kttl y'ka\)Kf\v ^e QaXaaaav ctJiTiKpiPwoaTO Kvnpoc, 

KCpKioiv loTOTtovoK; Tidvx' a.no\Lafyniivr\- 
Kaiaapi 5' ev^eivcoi x«P^ TiXSo^iev, tjv ydp avdaoriq 

Scc>pa (pepeiv xct Qtoic, Kal npiv 6<peiX6neva.* 

This gift, "a perfect copy of the harvest-bearing earth, all that the land- 
encircling ocean girdles . . . and the grey sea too," must have rendered 
pictorially a common concept of Roman cosmography, the notion that the 

^ Antholog'ia Palatine, IX. 778; edition and translation by A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The 
Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip (Cambridge 1968). I. p. 300 and H. pp. 333 ff. 



222 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

inhabited earth was surrounded, like an island, by a continuous sea.^ The 
idea was expressed in Greek literature as early as Homer's description of the 
shield of Achilles,^ and was set out by Strabo in his Geography shortly 
before the weaving of the textile.'* Eventually it was taken over by Early 
Christian and early Byzantine writers, such as Eusebius and Cosmas 
Indicopleustes.5 The notion of the sea-encircled earth was also depicted in 
early Byzantine works of art, of which the most well-known is the mosaic 
in the north transept of the basilica of Dumetios in Nikopolis, which was 
laid in the second quarter of the sixth century (Fig. 1).^ Here a border 
depicting varied creatures and plants of the waters surrounds a square central 
panel portraying birds, trees, and flowers which signify the life of the earth; 
the mosaic is accompanied by the following inscription: 

'i^KEavov 7iepi<pavTov djcipixov evGa 5e6opKa(; 
yaiav ^ecJOOv e'xovta oo<poi(; iv5d^|a.aai TEXvn(; 
Tidvxa Tcepi^ (popeovoav oaa Tcviei xe Kai epTcei, 
AconETiov KTEttvov nEyaGv jAOV dpxi.Epfio(;.'' 

While this inscription speaks of the "famous and boundless ocean 
containing in its midst the earth," it may be noted that the border 
surrounding the central panel of the mosaic contains fresh water life as well 
as sea creatures: in this ocean we find not only fish, octopuses and 
shellfish, but also lotus plants and ducks.^ 

The textile sent by Queen Kypros no longer survives; indeed, no 
textiles illustrating the earth and the ocean have come down to us from the 
time of the early Empire. There are, however, a number of textiles with 
this subject extant from the early Byzantine period; one of these textiles is 
well known, but the others are hitherto either unpublished or unidentified. 

^See E. Kitzinger, "Studies on Late Antique and Early Byzantine Floor Mosaics I. Mosaics 
at Nikopolis," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, VI (1951). 83-122, esp. 103. 

^iiiad,xvm.6cn. 

* Geographica, I. 1. 8. 

^ Eusebius, De laudibus Constantini, 6. 6; Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Christiana, 
3. 25 and 4. 7. 

^ Kitzinger, "Studies on Late Antique and Early Byzantine Floor Mosaics"; idem, "Mosaic 
Pavements in the Greek East and the Question of a «Renaissance» under Justinian," Actes du VI' 
Congres International d'^tudes Byzantines, 11, 209-23, esp. 214 ff. (reprinted in idem. The Art of 
Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies, ed. W. E. Kleinbauer [Bloomington 1976], 
pp. 4^-63). 

' Kitzinger, "Studies on Late Antique and Early Byzantine Floor Mosaics," 100. 

* The same phenomenon may be noted in other early Byzantine floor mosaics which depict 
the earth surrounded by the waters. See, for example, the cosmographic floor of the narthex of 
the Large Basilica at Heraklea Lynkestis, where the encircling border of aquatic motifs includes 
ducks, geese, swans and lotus plants: G. Cvetkovic-Tomasevic, Heraclea, EI, Mosaic Pavement 
in the Narthex of the Large Basilica at Heraclea Lyncestis (Bitola 1967); idem, "Mosaiques 
pal6ochr6tiennes r6cemment decouvertes a H6racl6a Lynkestis," La mosaique greco-romaine 
(Paris 1975), H, pp. 385-99, figs. 183-92. 



Henry Maguire 223 

The known piece is a silk of the sixth or seventh century which was 
found in the coffin of St. Cuthbert at the Cathedral of Durham.' Although 
the silk is in a fragmentary condition, its decoration can be reconstructed 
(Fig. 2). It was woven with repeated medallions, each enclosing the frontal 
figure of a woman shown half length, richly dressed with a heavily jeweled 
necklace or collar, and holding between her hands a scarf which makes a 
crescent shaped fold filled with fruits. This figure may be identified as a 
personification of Earth, by analogy with other works of art in which this 
personification is identified by an inscription. In the center of the sixth- 
century mosaic floor of the church of the Priest John at Khirbat al- 
Makhayyat in Jordan, for example, there is a portrayal of a woman labelled 
as 'TH"; she wears a richly adorned headdress and holds before her a crescent 
shaped fold of cloth brimming with fruits (Fig. 3).^^ In the Byzantine silk, 
the personification of Earth rises from a series of parallel lines in the lower 
third of the roundel which represent water. In these waves six fish and four 
ducks can be seen swimming; they are arranged symmetrically on either side 
of the central axis of the medallion, either facing toward the personification 
or away from her. The circular frame of the medallion is filled with various 
fruits, such as grapes, figs, and pomegranates. The textile, then, was 
adorned with repeated portrayals of Earth with her fruits, rising up from the 
midst of the ocean with its creatures. As in the mosaic at Nikopolis, the 
ocean is here signified by ducks as well as fish. 

In addition to the silk at Durham, there are other, previously 
unrecognized, textiles which portray Earth in the midst of Ocean. Of these, 
the most explicit with respect to iconography is a fragment from Egypt in 
the Field Museum of Chicago (Fig. 4).^^ In its present state it comprises a 
square ornament in wool tapestry weave on a plain linen ground. The 
ornamental panel measures about eleven inches in height and ten in width; 
not enough of the piece is preserved to show whether the ornament was 
repeated, or what the function of the original textile was. It is possible that 
the panel decorated a garment such as a tunic, but it could also have been 
part of a cover or hanging. 

The decoration of the panel consists of two squares enclosing two 
circles. In the innermost circle there is the bust of a woman, portrayed 
frontally. She is richly dressed, with a crown, pendant earrings, a necklace 
or band around her neck, and a jeweled collar. Behind her head is a yellow 
halo. The outer circle, which surrounds this figure, is filled with water 
creatures and plants: fish, dolphins, ducks and lotus plants. The four 

' J. F. Flanagan, "The Figured Silks." in The Relics of Saint Cuthbert, ed. C. F. 
Batliscombe (Oxford 1956). pp. 484-525. esp. pp. 505 ff.. fig. 1. 

1° S. J. Sailer and B. Bagatu. The town ofNebo (Khirbet El-Mekhayyat) (Jerusalem 1949). 
pp. 38-39, 49-55. fig. 4. pis. 8-13; M. Piccirillo. / mosaici di Giordania dcd I al VIII secolo 
DC. (Rome 1982). p. 17. 

^^ Museum accession number 173888. The textile is unpublished. 



224 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

spandrels between the outer circle and the inner square are filled by 
irregularly shaped motifs which can no longer be read. In the outer square 
there are stylized rinceaux of leaves. 

There can be little doubt that the subject of this panel is the 
personification of Earth surrounded by the ocean. Her rich attire matches the 
portrayal of Tfi on the Durham silk (Fig. 2). The surrounding border of sea 
creatures corresponds to the border of the Nikopolis mosaic, with its fish, 
ducks and lotus plants (Fig. 1). 

Another textile depicting a personification of Earth surrounded by sea 
creatures is preserved in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Fig. 5).^^ The 
composition, in wool tapestry weave on linen, is circular; in a central 
medallion it displays the frontal bust of a woman wearing earrings and 
holding before her a scarf filled with fruits. This central motif is enclosed 
by a larger circle containing four stylized plants growing from vases. The 
whole is framed by an outer circle which creates a border filled with fish. In 
their forms the four plants are similar to those depicted in the mosaics of the 
Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; they may suggest a late seventh or early 
eighth-century date for this piece. ^^ 

To the panels in Chicago and Boston we can add a third Egyptian textile 
portraying Earth arising out of the ocean, which is now preserved at the 
Cleveland Museum of Art (Fig. 6).^'* In this case we can see that the motif 
was repeated several times on the same piece of cloth. The textile, which is 
about ten inches square, comprises a square ornament (segmentum) which is 
framed on two sides by an L-shaped strip (gammadion), both being in 
tapestry weave in wool and linen. The motif in the central square is the 
bust of a woman who is richly dressed in a jeweled crown, pendant earrings, 
and a jeweled necklace or collar around her neck. Her head is framed by a 
large yellow halo, and the whole figure is set against a dark blue 
background. The bust is supported below by a pair of ducks with red and 
white bodies and green necks. The birds face each other in symmetrical 
poses, with their heads turning away over their backs. 

The same motif, of the richly dressed female bust supported on a pair of 
ducks, is repeated on a smaller scale five times in the gammadion. The 
woman may be identified as Earth on account of her rich costume, and 
because she rises above a pair of symmetrically confronted ducks, like the 
personification of Tr\ on the silk at Durham (^'\g. 2). As in the silk, the 
birds in the Cleveland textile serve as signs of the waters that surround the 
earth. 

^^ Museum accession number 07.266. The textile is unpublished; entire dimensions are seven 
by seven inches. 

^^ Compare, especially, the plants illustrated in plates 13-22 of K. A. C. Creswell, Early 
Muslim Architecture (2nd ed., Oxford 1969). I. 1. 

'^Museum accession number 73.21; "The Year in Review for 1973," The Bulletin of the 
Cleveland Museum of Art 61 (1974). 78. no. 166. 



Henry Maguire 225 

The manner in which the gammadion frames the segmentum on the 
Cleveland textile makes it possible that this fragment came from a piece of 
clothing, such as the lower border of a tunic. ^^ The adoption of Earth as a 
motif for the decoration of clothing would echo a common comparison 
found in both classical and Early Christian writers: either the earth itself 
was viewed as a cloak, on account of its shape, or it was seen to be 
"clothed" with the mantle of its vegetation, Strabo, for example, compared 
the inhabited world to the form of a chlamys, since he believed that its 
upper or northern portions were more contracted, whereas its southern 
regions were more spread out.^^ Eusebius wrote of the Creator who "clothes 
the previously shapeless eternity with beautiful colors and fresh flowers."^^ 
Basil the Great described the earth at the Creation "moved to produce fruits, 
as if she had cast away from her some somber garment of mourning, to put 
on another more brilliant [robe], adorned with the ornaments which are 
proper to her, and presenting the countless species of her plants."^^ The 
textile in Cleveland, therefore, could be seen as the realization of a 
metaphor. 

In each of the textiles discussed above, the personification of earth was 
accompanied by creatures signifying the waters or the sea. On the textiles 
that will now be examined, however, Earth appeared on her own. We may 
take as our first example another piece from the collection in the Boston 
Museum of Fine Arts, on which Earth appears as a nimbed bust in a 
medallion,' holding a very stylized scarf filled with fruits (Fig. 7; compare 
Fig. 5). The medallion containing the bust is enclosed in a narrow strip of 
tapestry weave decorated with heart-shaped plants, the forms of which 
suggest a date after the Islamic conquest.^' 

A fifth Egyptian textile which probably depicts a personification of 
Earth is found in the collection of the Louvre (Fig. 8).^ It is a rectangle in 
tapestry weave, measuring about ten by nine inches, and displaying at its 

Compare, for example, a completely preserved tunic such as number 71.48 in the Textile 
Museum of Washington, D.C.; J. Trilling, The Roman Heritage, Textiles from Egypt and the 
Eastern Mediterranean 300 to 600 AJ). (The Textile Museum Journal, 21 [Washington, D.C. 
1982], 92, no. 103). 

^^Geographica,U.5.6. 

^' 6 8' avToc, xP«>fiaaiv dapaiOK; Kal veapoiq avGeoi xov Tcplv aaxmidxiaxov 
ajKpievvwq aimva, .... De laudibus Constantini, 6. 6. 

** Jtp6<; KapTtoyovCav ovYKivounevtiv, aionep tivct oicuQpconfiv Kal nevGfipri 
anopp{v|/aoav nepiPoXfiv, neTajKpievvvjievtiv tfiv q)ai6poTepav Kal Toiq oiKeioiq 
Koajioiq ayaXXonevTiv, Kal xa |i\)p{a yivr\ xS>v (foofiivuiv npoPdXXcuoav. 
Hexaemeron, 5. 2. 

^' Museum Accession Number 01.5896. The textile is unpublished. The woman's halo is 
flanked by two letters: *'C." or perhaps a Coptic gamma, on the left and "e" on the right. It is 
possible that the inscription was originally intended to read 'TH." The dimensions of this piece 
are four and a quaiter by eleven inches. 

^ Inventory number X4736; P. du Bourguet, Catalogue des etqffes coptes du Musee du 
Louvre (Paris 1964), I, p. 197, no. E31. 



226 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

center the frontal bust of a woman wearing a jeweled diadem, earrings, and 
collar. She is enclosed by a circle strewn with flower buds. The circle is in 
turn inscribed within a square, leaving four spandrels between the circle and 
the square which are filled by green birds. In the frame around the square 
there are eight medallions containing either birds or flowers; the medallions 
alternate with eight boys who hold out birds or vases of fruit as offerings. 
The theme of a richly dressed Earth receiving offerings can be paralleled on 
floor mosaics such as the floor of the church of the Priest John at Khirbat 
al-Makhayyat, where boys with extended arms offer baskets filled with fruits 
to the central bust of Ffj (Fig. 3).^^ 

Finally, I would like to adduce five other textiles from Egypt, each of 
which depicts the bust of a richly bejeweled woman who may have been 
intended to personify Earth, but who could also have been given other 
identifications. The first example, also from the Louvre collection, is a 
panel of tapestry weave in wool and linen measuring around fourteen and a 
half by eleven and a half inches, the design of which is related to the textile 
just described.22 It shows in the center the frontal bust of a woman wearing 
a jeweled diadem, necklace, earrings and collar. She is inscribed in a circle 
containing flower buds, which is contained by a square. In each of the four 
spandrels there is a blue peacock, while the outer frame contains a series of 
sixteen medallions enclosing stylized flowers or birds. The similarity of the 
central figure to the j)ersonifications on the previously discussed textiles in 
Durham, Chicago, Cleveland and Paris (Figs. 2, 4, 6 and 8) suggests that 
this also may be a representation of Earth. It can be noted, in addition, that 
the peacock was considered by Early Christian writers one of the most 
beautiful adornments of terrestrial creation,^^ and as such would be a fitting 
sign of the Earth costumed in her finery. However, in the absence of any 
offerers of fruit and game, or of any motifs indicating the surrounding sea, 
the identification of the subject cannot be as certain as in the case of the 
preceding examples. 

The same observation may be made of two other panels of wool and 
linen tapestry weave in the Louvre, each of which also shows the frontal 
bust of a richly costumed female in a surround containing birds and plants. 
In these two panels, which are closely related to each other, the woman 

^* See also the boys offering produce to the personification of Fii depicted in the floor mosaic 
of the church of St George at Khirbat al-Makhiyyat; Sailer and Bagatti, Town ofNebo, pp. 67- 
74. fig. 8, pis. 22-28. A related upestry is no. 42.438.4 in the Brooklyn Museum on which 
the bust of a woman wearing earrings and a jeweled collar or necklace, but no diadem, receives 
offerings in the form of vases or birds; D. Thompson, Coptic Textiles in the Brooklyn Museum 
(New York 1971), p. 72, no. 31. 

^ Inventory number X4665; du Bourguet, Catalogue des etoffes coptes, p. 197, no. E30. 

^ See, for example, Gregory of Nazianzus, Homilia XXVIII, 24; George of Pisidia, 
Hexae-meron, 1245-1292 (Migne. Patrologia Graeca XCH. cols. 1529-1532). For the 
association of the peacock with Juno and with empresses, see J. M. C. Toynbee, Animals in 
Roman Life and Art (London 1972), pp. 251 ff. 



Henry Maguire 227 

wears a diadem in her hair, earrings, a jeweled necklace and a jeweled 
collar.2^ Her bust is enclosed by a circle strewn with green leaves which is 
set in a square; here, too, each of the four spandrels contains a blue peacock. 
The whole composition is surrounded by a squared frame containing 
schematic petals. 

A fourth panel from the Louvre also displays the frontal bust of a 
woman wearing long pendant earrings, a pearled necklace, and a jeweled 
collar.25 Her head is surrounded by a nimbus and her portrait is framed by a 
squared border containing a series of medalUons enclosing stylized plants. A 
similar panel of tapestry weave is preserved in the Textile Museum of 
Washington, D.C. (Fig. 9).^ It is about twelve and a half inches in height 
and ten inches wide, and it shows in the center a circle containing the bust 
of a woman wearing a jeweled diadem in her hair, long pendant earrings, and 
a jeweled collar. Behind her head there is a yellow nimbus. The circle 
containing the bust is enclosed in a rectangular frame filled along its sides 
with stylized rinceaux and at its four comers with schematized flowers. 

Each of these last five examples may well represent the personification 
of Earth surrounded by her plants and creatures. However, as so often 
happens in Egyptian textiles, the iconography has become simplified to the 
point that a specific identification of the subject is no longer possible; 
indeed, the images are ambiguous. Besides Earth, the woman in this last 
group of textiles could also have represented other personifications who were 
commonly shown during Late Antiquity as frontal figures in rich attire. 
Such personifications would include 'Eatia7ioXt)o^Po<; ("the Hearth, rich in 
blessings"), as seen on the famous tapestry in Dumbarton Oaks,^'^ and Tpx^l 
KaXri ("Good Fortune"), as seen on certain clay lamps from Egypt (Fig. 
10). In each of these cases, of course, the meanings overlap with the 
concept of the fruitful Earth, beautiful and rich in her blessings. The lack of 
specificity of the iconography on the textiles could have had multiple 
causes. On the one hand, the abstraction of the motif can be attributed to 
the repeated copying of a more detailed model by weavers who no longer 
understood its original context. But, on the other hand, the generalization of 
the image of the richly dressed woman can also be seen as an intensification 
of its significance, for the beneficent associations of all the wealth-bringing 
female personifications it resembled could now be read into it. 

In conclusion, a few observations can be made concerning the relevance 
of these domestic textiles to the wider study of early Byzantine art. We have 
seen how floor mosaics can help us to interpret the subjects on weavings. 

^ Inventory numbers X4156 and X4157; L'Art Copte, exhibition caulogue. Petit Palais 
(Paris 1964). p. 21 1. no. 252; du Bourguet. Catalogue des itoffes, p. 332, nos. F228 and F229. 
The dimensions are ten and a half by nine inches and ten and a quarter by ten and a half bches. 

^Inventory number X4727; L'Art Copte, p. 209^, no. 251; du Bourguet. p. 331. no. F227. 
The dimensions are ten and a half by eleven and a half inches. 

^ Museum accession number 72. 121 . Trilling, The Roman Heritage, p. 33. no. 7. plate 4. 

^ P. Friedlander. Documents of Dying Paganism (Berkeley 1945), pp. 1-26. 



228 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

But just as ecclesiastical mosaics can throw light upon the meanings of 
motifs on household cloths, so also the textiles can help us to understand 
how contemporary viewers may have reacted to the decorations of churches. 
Many of the floor mosaics which portrayed the earth together with her 
creatures and products were capable of several levels of interpretation. From 
the perspective of the clergy, who were often the patrons and who may 
sometimes have participated in the designing of the floors, the mosaics 
conveyed ideas about the nature of God's terrestrial creation and about the 
place of humanity within it, ideas which were expressed also in Early 
Christian sermons and commentaries on the 'E^armepov.^* But from the 
perspective of the lay churchgoers the mosaics may have contained a simpler 
message; they gave the promise of fruitfulness in dry climates, as did the 
textiles people used in their houses. Whether she was repeated as a charm 
on a garment or laid out on the floor of a sacred building, the personification 
of Earth, richly adorned and framed by water, held out the hope of plenty in 
arid lands. 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 



^ Henry Maguire, Earth and Ocean: the Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art, 
Monographs on the Fine Arts sponsored by the College Art Association of America 43 
(University Park 1987), pp. 69-72. 




i:u.. 



Y 






■■<i5 





^ 



Figure 2. Silk from St. Cuthbert's coffin, Durham Cathedral, reconstructed detail. 
Earth and Ocean. (Photo from J. F. Flanagan, "The figured SiUcs," in The Relics of 
St. Cuthbert, ed. C. F. Battiscombe [Oxford 1956], fig. 1) 




Figure 4. Tapestry weave, Field Museum, Chicago. Earth and Ocean. 
(Photo: Courtesy, Field Museum of Natural History) 




Figure 5. Tapestry weave, Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Earth and Ocean. 
(Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 







Figure 6. Tapestry weave, Cleveland Museum of Art. Earth and Ocean. (Photo: 
Cleveland Museum of Art; purchase A. W. EUenburger Sr. Endowment Fund) 




Figure 8. Tapestry weave. Louvre. Paris. Earth and offerings. 
(Photo: Musees Nationaux, Paris) 




Figure 9. Tapestry weave. Textile Museum, Washington, D. C. Earth? 
(Photo: The Textile Museum) 




Figure 10. Clay Lamp from Egypt, Bode Museum, Berlin, Friihchristlich- 
Byzantinische Sammlung. T'ox'H KaXTJ. (Photo: author) 



An Introduction to Byzantine Monasticism" 

ALICE-MARY TALBOT 



The institution of monasticism was one of the most important charac- 
teristics of Byzantine society, and touched the life of virtually every imperial 
subject in many ways. First of all, a substantial number of Byzantine men 
and women took monastic vows: some in their youth, who pledged 
themselves to a lifetime of dedication to Christ; some in middle age, when 
their children were grown; many more at the end of their lives. Countless 
Byzantines, when they realized they were on their deathbed, took the 
monastic habit for their final hours or days, in the belief that, by dying in 
the holier monastic state, they were more likely to achieve salvation in the 
world to come. 

* There is as yet no definitive work on Byzantine monasticism. The following are 
recommended as an introduction; they will guide the interested reader to further bibliography. C. 
Mango, Byzantium: the Empire of New Rome (New York 1980), ch. 5 on Monasticism; R. 
Janin, "Le monachisme byzantin au moyen age. Commende et typica (X'-XTV* siecle)," Revue 
des Etudes Byzantines 22 (1964), 15-44; P. Charanis, "The Mcnk as an Element of Byzantine 
Society," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 25 (1971), 61-84; N. M. Vaporis, ed., Byzantine Saints and 
Monasteries (Brookline, Mass. 1985), a series of articles reprinted from Greek Orthodox 
Theological Review 30 (1985); a group of essays on female monasticism in Byzantinische 
Forschungen 9 il9i5). 

Among the most important primary sources for monasticism are the documents preserved in 
the archives of Mt. Athos (currently being published in the series. Archives de I'Athos, ed., P. 
Lemerle), and the typika or foundation charters of monasteries. New critical editions of five 
eleventh and twelfth-centun' typika were recently published with French translation by the late 
Paul Gautier in Revue des Etudes Byzantines 32 (1974), 39 (1981). 40 (1982), 42 (1984) and 43 
(1985). A project currently in progress, the Dumbarton Oaks/N.E.H. Byzantine Monastic 
Foundation Documents Project, is preparing annotated translations of all 52 surviving Byzantine 
monastic typika. Lives of Byzantine saints, who were usually monks or nuns, also throw much 
light on Byzantine monasticism; available in English are Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers 
(Ann Arbor, Mich. 1957) and Elizabeth Dawes and Norman Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints 
(Oxford 1948). 



230 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

The monastery was often the spiritual center of a rural village or urban 
quarter; local inhabitants might attend services at the monastic church, seek 
out monks for spiritual advice, or ask for help in time of need. If a 
Byzantine fell ill, he or she might find medical care in a hospital attached to 
the monastic complex, or alternatively seek healing at the tomb of a saint 
whose relics were preserved in the church. A traveler who hesitated to stop 
for the night at an inn (which was usually a euphemism for a brothel) might 
find accommodation at a hostel run by monks. An elderly widow without 
children to look after her could find spiritual companionship and nursing 
care in a convent; the nuns would also see to her proper burial and arrange 
commemorative services after her death, all in exchange for a handsome 
donation to the nunnery. The poor could come to the monastery gate and 
receive loaves of bread, wine, and the leftovers from the refectory. A 
wealthy noble, who wanted to present a deluxe illuminated Gospelbook to a 
church, could commission the copying and illustration of such a manuscript 
in a monastic scriptorium, or workshop for the production of manuscripts. 
A peasant who owned a small plot of land might be pressured into selling 
his vineyard or olive grove to the local monastery, which wished to increase 
its holdings; he might on the other hand give the land to the monastery as a 
pious act, in exchange for commemorative requiem masses in perpetuity. 
Emperors as well as peasants took personal interest in monasteries; they 
might found new ones, or present existing ones with landed estates, or 
declare their immunity from taxation. Emperors sought out monks as 
advisers on matters of state as well as religious policy. And not a few 
Byzantine emperors ended their lives in monasteries, either unwillingly 
when they were deposed from the throne by a usurper and forced into the 
tonsure, or of their own accord as an act of personal faith when their end 
drew near. Finally, monasteries served as the bulwark of Byzantine 
Orthodox Christianity: in the eighth and ninth centuries monks were among 
the most ardent supporters of image veneration and adversaries of 
iconoclasm: in the thirteenth century monks were persecuted for opposing 
Michael VIII's policy of Union with the Roman Church at the Council of 
Lyons (1274). In the following century the monasteries and hermitages of 
Mt. Athos nurtured the burgeoning mystical movement called hesychasm, 
which was to give new vitality to the Orthodox religious tradition. 

I. The Origins of Monasticism 

Let us turn to the early centuries of the empire to seek out the origins of 
this institution which affected every level of Byzantine society throughout 
its long history. The beginnings of monasticism are closely connected with 
the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire; the first monks appeared 
during the final period of persecution of Christians in the late third century, 
just before the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the following 
century. 



Alice-Mary Talbot 231 

The word "monasticism" is derived from the Greek verb iiovd^co ("to 
live alone"), and indeed the first monks were hermits. In order to escape 
persecution pious Christians would retire into the desert, alone, where they 
could lead lives of asceticism and prayer without harassment. Tradition 
holds that a certain Paul (called the "First Hermit," to distinguish him from 
the apostle) was the first Christian to adopt this rigorous life style. Fleeing 
persecution, perhaps that of the Emperor Decius (249-51), he withdrew to 
some mountains in the Egyptian desert to live in a cave. Nearby grew a 
palm tree, and a stream of water flowed by. He wove himself a garment of 
palm leaves, and every day a crow brought him half a loaf of bread. Thus he 
had all the necessities of life, and lived there peacefully for 60 years until his 
death. 

His younger contemporary, St. Antony, is much better known, 
primarily because of the vivid Life which the Church Father Athanasius of 
Alexandria wrote about him in the fourth century. This became the pattern 
for all future biographies of saints, and was widely read in the medieval 
world, both east and west. Paul had lived completely alone, but disciples 
flocked to St. Antony, and so communities of monks developed. The 
monks remained in their separate cells during the week, praying and weaving 
rush mats, but met on weekends for church services. This kind of monastic 
community was called a lavra. St. Antony is significant in that he 
demonstrated a new way of achieving sanctity, without martyrdom, but 
through extreme mortification of the body. 

He kept vigil to such an extent that he often continued the whole night 
without sleep, and this not once but often, to the marvel of others. He at* 
once a day, after sunset; sometimes once in two days, and often even in 
four. His food was bread and salt; his drink, water only; of flesh and wine 
it is superfluous even to speak, since no such thing was found with the 
other earnest men. A rush mat served him to sleep upon, but for the most 
part he lay upon the bare ground.^ 

In the early fourth century people flocked to the desert to follow 
Antony's example. One might think that the establishment of Christianity 
would have contributed to the decline of monasticism, since in the 
beginning so many monks had fled to the desert to avoid persecution. But 
curiously enough, once Christianity was tolerated, the number of monks 
increased even more. Many Christians felt that now their faith was not 
being sufficiently tested, so they retired to the desert to create their own 
rigorous discipline. And not just men, but women, too, became hermits; a 
number of these hermitesses, however, disguised themselves as men, to 

^ Athanasius, Life of Antony, tr. H. Ellershaw and A. Robertson, in St. Athanasius: Select 
Works and Letters [= A Select Library ofNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian 
Church, 4] (New Yoik 1892). pp. 197-98. 



232 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

protect themselves against rape, or as a denial of their own sexuality .^ In 
the biography of St. Antony, Satan is heard to complain: "I am become 
weak. ... I no longer have a place, a weapon, a city. The Christians are 
spread everywhere, and at length even the desert is filled with monks."^ 

Problems began to arise, however, when Christians became monks for 
non-spiritual reasons, for example to escape taxes and military service. And 
I quote again from the Life of St. Antony: 

So their cells were in the mountains like tabernacles, filled with holy bands 
of men who sang psalms, loved reading, fasted, prayed, rejoiced in the hope 
of things to come. . . . And truly it was possible, as it were, to behold a 
land set by itself, filled with piety and justice. For then there was neither 
the evil-doer nor the injured, nor the reproaches of the tax-gatherer: but 
instead a multitude of ascetics, and the one purpose of them all was to aim 
at virtue . . . many soldiers and men who had great possessions laid aside 
the burdens of life, and became monks for the rest of their days.* 

In fact so many young men retired to the desert that later in the fourth 
century an emperor ordered the removal of those monks who fled to 
monasteries in order to evade public duties. 

In addition to the hermits and monks who lived in lavras, another form 
of monasticism developed in Egypt around 300. This was the cenobitic 
monastery, derived from the Greek words Koivoq pioq, or "common life." 
Pachomius was the founder of this highly organized form of monasticism in 
Upper Egypt, just north of Thebes and Luxor. In cenobitic monasteries, a 
third virtue, that of obedience, was added to the virtues of poverty and 
chastity practised by hermits. For the monastery was headed by an abbot to 
whom the monks owed obedience. Hermit monks decided on their own life 
style, and, as it were, their personal spiritual program for attaining 
salvation. At cenobitic monasteries regular religious services were held, and 
all monks were required to attend. Each monk was also expected to perform 
some manual labor, working in the fields or weaving, for example. The 
Pachomian monasteries were enormous, often numbering hundreds of 
monks or even thousands. 

If one reads stories of these early "desert fathers," certain themes keep 
cropping up in one edifying tale after another. One is the monks' 
abhorrence of the female sex; they went to great lengths to avoid any contact 
with women. One monk, for example, found himself in a situation where 
he was forced to carry his mother across a river. He covered his hands with 
his garment when carrying her, so as not to touch her. When his mother 
asked him why he covered his hands, he replied: "Because the body of a 

^E. Patlagean, "L'hisioire de la femme d6gui$6e en moine et revolution de la saintete 
f6minine a Byzance." Studi Medievali, ser. 3. 17 (1976), 597-623. 
^Life of Antony, p. 207. 
* Ibid., pp. 20S, 219. 



AUce-Mary Talbot 233 

woman is fire. And even from my touching thee came the memory of other 
women into my soul."^ 

Connected with this sexual obsession was abhorrence of one's own 
body. The Egyptian monks never washed or changed their clothes; the 
Pachomian rule provided for a bath only if a monk was sick. We read of St. 
Antony that 

he had a garment of hair on the inside, while the outside was skin, which 
he kept until his end. And he never bathed his body with water to free 
himself from filth, nor did he ever wash his feet, nor even endure so much 
as to put them into water, unless compelled by necessity. Nor did anyone 
ever see him unclothed, nor his body naked at all, except after his death, 
when he was buried.^ 

The monks' obsession with abstinence from sex was ahnost equalled by 
their obsessive abstinence from food; the monks competed with each other 
to see who could eat the least. Makarios the Great, for example, once 
observed the Lenten fast by eating only once a week, a few cabbage leaves 
on Sunday! 

II. St. Basil of Caesarea 

The Pachomian type of monastery was the basis of all later monasteries that 
evolved in both the western and eastern Mediterranean; specifically it gave 
rise to the Basilian monastery of eastern orthodoxy, and to the Benedictine 
monastery in the west. "Basilian" monasticism takes its name from one of 
the Fathers of the Eastern Church, St. Basil of Caesarea, who played an 
important role in synthesizing the classical tradition with Christian faith. 
This fusion was the basis of most later Byzantine theology. 

In the mid-fourth century Basil set out to formulate a rule for his 
monastery in Cappadocia (in central Anatolia). He was dissatisfied with the 
forms of monasticism that had developed in Egypt, Syria and Palestine, and 
sought to introduce a modified form of Pachomian monasticism into Asia 
Minor. He strongly endorsed the cenobitic monastery, and did not approve 
at all of the solitary life. He thought it was difficult and even dangerous for 
a monk to live alone, unless he had tremendous self-control. Also it was 
hard for a hermit to be self-sufficient; he had to depend on the charity of 
visitors for his daily needs. Basil argued that the majority of monks cannot 
muster sufficient discipline to become hermits, and need a communal form 
of monasticism. Each member of the community would be expected to 
contribute to providing for the physical necessities of the monastery, and the 
monks would encourage and criticize each other in their spiritual 
development 

^ Waddedl. Desert Fathers, p. 74. 
^Life of Antony, p. 209. 



234 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Basil's system was based on the Pachomian rule, but differed from it in 

several ways. 

1. He reduced the size of monasteries, since he felt the huge aggregates of 
monks in Egypt were too large. 

2. Obedience to the abbot was considered the primary virtue. 

3. He forbade extraordinary feats of asceticism and mortification; if a 
monk wanted to make a special fast, he had to ask the abbot's permission. 

4. Another important difference from the rule of Pachomius was that Basil 
established monasteries in towns instead of in deserts, so that monks would 
not be isolated from their fellow men, but could practise charity towards 
them. Also by their conduct, monks were to provide their secular brethren 
with a model of the true Christian life.'' 

Here we see the beginnings of a characteristic of medieval monasteries, 
which provided service to the lay community, as well as supporting the 
monk's individual search for personal salvation. What impresses one most, 
however, in reading the Long Rules of Basil is the tone of moderation and 
practicality, compared with the fanaticism of the monks of Egypt, or the 
stylite saints of Syria who lived on top of columns. One can clearly detect 
here the influence of Greek rationalism, and the ancient Greek adage, 
"nothing in excess." 

III. Byzantine Monasticism in its Fully Developed Form 

One of the most important differences that emerged between eastern and 
western monasticism in the Middle Ages was that Byzantine monks were 
not organized into separate orders like their Benedictine, Franciscan or 
Dominican counterparts in the west. In a sense all Byzantine monasteries 
belonged to one order, and followed the Rule of St. Basil; at the same time 
each monastery was organized on an individual basis, and provided with 
rules by its founder. About fifty of these foundation documents, called 
typika, survive, an invaluable source of information about ideals of 
monasticism and the realities of daily life in Byzantine monasteries from the 
ninth to the fifteenth century. 

Normally these documents include a preamble which explains the 
founder's motivation for establishing a new monastery, followed by detailed 
guidelines for the monks or nuns. Topics covered include the election of the 
superior, the length of the novitiate, rules of enclosure, behavior in the 
refectory, dietary rules for feastdays and fastdays, the monastic habit, and 
discipline of disobedient monks or nuns. All the typika place strong 

' An English translation of the Long Rules can be found in Saint Basil. Ascetical Works, tr. 
by Monica Wagner (New Yoric 1950), pp. 223-331. 



AUce-Mary Talbot 235 

emphasis on strict adherence to the cenobitic form of monasticism, 
especially with regard to eating. Monks and nuns were to take their meals 
together in the refectory, eat the same food, and not keep snacks in their 
cells. The typika follow the basic precepts of Basil, particularly with 
respect to the spirit of moderation, but there are countless variations 
between monasteries as far as specific rules are concerned. 

Still I shall hazard a description of a fairly typical Byzantine 
monastery.^ It was founded in Constantinople in the fourteenth century by 
an aristocratic lady, and provided a home for several members of her family, 
including a daughter. Fifty nuns lived at the monastery, thirty of them 
choir sisters, responsible for singing the daily offices: twenty of the nuns 
performed basic housekeeping duties. Each nun had her own cell, but ate in 
common with her sisters in the refectory. The diet included bread, 
vegetables, fruit, fish, eggs and cheese, but never meat. Wine was 
considered a staple, and was served in generous portions; in cold weather a 
hot drink of cumin-flavored water was also available. Each nun had specific 
duties, whether singing in the choir, working in the kitchen, overseeing the 
refectory, serving as infirmarian or gatekeeper. The nuns also did handwork 
such as spinning and weaving, reciting psalms as they worked; if literate, 
they would devote many hours to study of the Scriptures or saints' lives. 
They received a new habit once a year, and a monthly supply of soap, and 
oil for their lamps. The nuns were expected to remain within the convent, 
except on special occasions, such as a visit to a sick relative. When a nun 
did go outside the convent, she was always to be accompanied by two 
elderly nuns. Nuns might also leave the cloister to visit a local shrine, to 
attend a funeral of a relative, or on convent business, such as to give 
testimony in a lawsuit involving monastic property. 

The convent was headed by a superior, elected by members of the 
monastic community. She had responsibility for the spiritual and material 
well-being of the nuns in her charge, and had to combine the talents of 
businesswoman, psychologist and spiritual leader. The abbess held this 
position for life, and could be deposed only for grave cause. 

Why did Byzantine men and women enter monasteries?' For many it 
was a true vocation; from childhood some Byzantine boys and girls dreamed 
of renouncing the world, and dedicating themselves to Christ. Usually this 
decision met with parental approval, since the monastic vocation was so 
common and so admired in the Byzantine world. Some parents in fact 
dedicated their children to God at infancy, often in thanksgiving at the birth 
of a child after a long period of infertility. Sometimes whole families took 

* The following paragraph is a summary of the typikon of the nunneiy of the Virgin of Sure 
Hope (QeoTOKoq tfiq ^d^aiac, 'EXni5o<;), published by H. Delehaye in Deux typica byzantins 
de I'epoque des Paliologues (Bnissels 1921), pp. 18-105. 

'On this topic, see A. M. Talbot, "Late Byzantine Nuns: By Choice or Necessity?" 
ByzantinLsche Forschungen 9 (1985), 103-17. 



236 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

the monastic habit together, especially at a time of crisis, such as the death 
of one of the parents. The mother of Gregory Palamas, one of the most 
famous of Orthodox theologians, wanted to enter a convent right after her 
husband died, even though it would have meant abandoning her five 
children, who ranged in age from a few months to seven years. It was only 
with difficulty that she was persuaded to remain at home until her children 
were grown; when they were teenagers, they all ended up taking monastic 
vows. 

Even if they did not take the habit themselves, many Byzantines 
became benefactors of monasteries, making donations of cash, sacred vessels 
or liturgical books for the church, land or income-producing properties such 
as a factory or mill. The reward for such donations was commemoration 
after one's death; the perusal of typika makes it clear that prayers for one's 
salvation in perpetuity were of immense importance to the pious Byzantine. 
Notices in the typika might read as follows: 

Since the bishop of Ephesus . . . gave our convent 400 gold pieces a 
requiem should be celebrated for him . . . and also celebrate the requiem of 
the bishop of Mytilene on the anniversary of his death, as best you can. 
For he donated to the convent a solid gold icon of the Mother of God, 
decorated with precious stones and pearls, and stoles and armlets, also with 
pearls.i° 

IV. Cultural Activities 

My description of a typical nunnery deliberately omitted any mention of 
intellectual or artistic activities, because nuns rarely engaged in the copying 
or illumination of manuscripts, or the composition of hymns, saints' lives, 
theological treatises or historical chronicles.^ ^ In a number of male 
monasteries, however, there were scriptoria for the production of 
manuscripts, and many of the most important literary figures of Byzantium 
were monks who worked in the confines of a cloister. Monastic libraries 
were usually limited to the basic liturgical books, with perhaps a few 
volumes of patristic commentaries or saints' lives; they almost never 
contained works of ancient Greek authors. A few libraries, however, 
benefited from the personal collection of their founders, and held a wider 
range of books. Such was the library of Chora in fourteenth-century 
Constantinople, the best library in the capital, where a number of the 
leading classical philologists of the day prepared editions and commentaries 
on classical authors. Monasteries tended to specialize in certain areas. One 
might have a scriptorium that produced only liturgical manuscripts in a 

^° Typikon of Convent of Sure Hope, ed. Delehaye, Deux typica, p. 102. 

^' On the limited cultural activities of Byzantine convents, see A. M. Talbot, "Bluestocking 
Nuns: Intellectual Life in the Convents of Late Byzantium," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 
(1983). 604-18. 



Alice-Mary Talbot 237 

distinctive script; another monastery might be an important center for the 
composition of hymns and religious poetry. 

Formal schooling was not a function of Byzantine monasteries; in fact, 
a number of typika specifically forbade the admission of children for 
educational purposes, but monasteries played a significant role in 
maintaining the culture of Byzantium. Literate nuns were encouraged to 
teach their illiterate sisters their letters, since a certain degree of literacy was 
required in order to chant the office, maintain the monastery accounts or 
serve as librarian or archivist. A high percentage of Byzantine manuscripts 
were produced in monastic scriptoria, and the monastic environment 
provided the tranquillity and spiritual stimulation necessary for the 
composition of religious poetry or a theological tract 

V. Charitable Functions 

Monks and nuns provided a variety of community services.^^ j ^^ve already 
mentioned that free food was generally made available for the poor; 
distributions were made at the monastery gate on a regular schedule. On 
special feastdays, there might even be distributions of small coins. 

Several monasteries had hospitals attached, where the best medical care 
available was provided. The typikon for a twelfth-century monastery in 
Constantinople, the Pantokrator, supplies a detailed description of the 
organization and management of such a hospital.^^ It had five wards, with 
61 beds in all. One ward was for patients with wounds and injuries, andUier 
for patients with diseases of the eyes or internal organs; there was also a 12- 
bed ward for women. The patients wore special hospital gowns; their own 
clothes were washed and made ready for them to wear when cured! 

Hospital personnel were numerous: about one staff member per patient. 
The female ward was served by a woman doctor, whose salary was half that 
of her male colleagues. The staff also included pharmacists to prepare herbal 
medicines, laundresses, cooks, and four gravediggers (which seems a rather 
high figure for a 61 -bed hospital!). The patients were limited to a strictiy 
vegetarian diet, consisting mosUy of bread and vegetables. There was a 
large bathroom, where the patients were entitied to two baths a week. This 
hospital was reserved for the use of laymen; the monks had their own six- 
bed infirmary. 

The monastic complex of the Pantokrator also included a hospice or old 
people's home, designated for the care of 24 men who were crippled or 

^^ Much material on monastic philanthropy is found in two books by Demetrios 
Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare (New Brunswick, New Jersey 1968), 
and Poverty, Society and Philanthropy in the Late Medieval Greek World (forthcoming). 

P. Gautier, ed., "Le typikon du Christ Sauveur Pantocrator," Revue des Etudes Byzantines 
32 (1974), 82-113; T. S. Miller, The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire (Baltin 
1985), pp. 12-19. 



238 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

invalid. No one was eligible who was in good health and could provide for 
his own living by his own work. Each resident received an annual ration of 
bread, wine, dried vegetables, cheese and oil, plus wood for heating. If the 
pensioner became gravely ill, he could be admitted to the hospital. 
Separately from the monastic complex, the monastery also ran a 
leprosarium. 

In addition to running old-age homes, where the elderly pensioners 
retained their lay status, monasteries also served the needs of the elderly 
Byzantine who decided to take monastic vows at an advanced age. 
Retirement to a monastery was a frequent solution to the problem of an 
older man or woman who either could not or did not wish to live with his 
children, and needed to find support and lodging outside the family circle. 
Sometimes it was even necessary for a married couple to separate and live in 
different monasteries. This was the case for the Byzantine historian George 
Sphrantzes and his wife Helen who found adoption of the monastic habit a 
welcome refuge, after their lives took a tragic turn in the wake of the 
Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Their two surviving children 
had died during captivity in the sultan's entourage, and by 1467 the formerly 
prosperous couple were without means of support. As Sphrantzes 
comments in his History, because he was "old, sick and penniless since the 
days of his enslavement [by the Turks]," he went first to the island of 
Leukas to seek a pension, "some yearly compensation," from its ruler. He 
was unsuccessful in his mission, however, and the next year, plagued by 
chronic rheumatism, he renounced his "secular clothes and assumed the 
habit," together with his wife.^"* 

Even more frequently it was a widow or widower who would seek the 
solace of a monastery, which could provide food and lodging, companion- 
ship, nursing care, spiritual comfort, burial and commemoration in requiem 
masses, for those able to make the appropriate donation. Thus we read 
about a woman who was a refugee from the fourteenth-century Turkish 
occupation of Asia Minor and turned to monastic life, because she 

was deprived of everything, and had no relative or any other consolation . . . 
she had no one to help her . . . she was in a strange and alien land and had 
no parents or husband.*' 

Many of the older inhabitants of monasteries, who retired there late in 
life, and might be considered a burden on monastic resources, were supported 
by a kind of pension, which they received in exchange for a contribution of 
land or money, usually 100 gold pieces. The case of a thirteenth-century 
widow called Zoe exemplifies the type of financial transaction which might 

^* M. Philippides, tr.. The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle by George Sphrantzes, 
1401-1477 (Amherst, Mass. 1980). p. 90. 

*' B. Papoulia, "Die Viu des hi. Philotheos vom Athos," Siidostforschungen 22 (1963), 274- 
76. 



Alice-Mary Talbot 239 

take place between a monastic community and an individual seeking security 
in her declining years. Toward the end of her life Zoe found herself without 
any familial support, and turned to the nunnery of Nea Petra in Thessaly to 
provide for her old age. In return for a donation of her ancestral property, 
including three vineyards, four fields, a fig tree and two houses, the convent 
agreed to admit her as a nun and support her for the rest of her life. Equally 
important, from Zoe's point of view, at the time of her death she was 
assured of proper burial and commemoration at the convent in requiem 
masses. 

Younger monks and nuns considered it a pious duty to care for their 
aged colleagues. A tenth-century saint's life has preserved a graphic 
description of the final illness of Anna, the retired abbess of a convent in 
Thessalonike. Because of her failing vision, the centenarian had slipped and 
fallen in the courtyard, dislocated her hip, and consequently was bedridden for 
the seven years until her death. During the entire period she was tended by a 
younger nun, Theodora, who looked after her every need and even fed her. 
Theodora's patience was sorely tried during the final three years when Anna 
had become senile, and struck and cursed her dutiful attendant. She per- 
severed, however, mindful of the Biblical injunction, "Child, care for your 
father in his old age, and do not cause him grief in his lifetime. And if he 
should lose his senses, have mercy on him and do not dishonor him. . . ."^^ 

VI. Economic Aspects of Monasticism 

Monastic complexes were able to function, and to support cultural and 
philanthropic activities, only if they had a strong financial base. Many 
Byzantine monasteries were well endowed and survived for centuries, some 
to this day. Others could not afford to repair the roof and fell into ruins. As 
previously noted, Byzantines considered it a pious duty to make donations to 
monasteries, and many monastic institutions were able to accumulate 
substantial wealth and real estate, both in the form of farmland and urban 
workshops and houses at lease. Both urban and rural monasteries ran 
agricultural estates, and appointed a steward to handle business affairs, such 
as collecting rents from tenants and selling the harvest. The following 
excerpts from a property inventory give an idea of the holdings of an urban 
convent of ca. 1300; most of the donations were made by the foundress, the 
Dowager Empress Theodora Palaiologina, mother of Michael VIII: 

From the estates of Achilleion and Barys ... a portion worth 300 gold 
pieces; included ... is the fish hatchery ... in addition the mill of 
Thermene . . . also the vineyard of Emporianos ... the village called 

^^ Vita S. Theodorae Thess., ed. E. Kurtz, Des Klerikers Gregorios Bericht iiber Leben, 
Wunderthaten und Translation der hi. Theodora von Thessalonich nebst der Metaphrase des 
Johannes Staurakios [=3anHCKH H AKaneMHH HayK 8, cep. no HCTopHKO- 
(tHJionoraiecKOMy o6mecTBy, tom 6, N? 1] (St. Petersburg 1902). p. 21. 



240 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Nymphai . . . whose revenues from paroikoi (dependent peasants) and arable 
land are 260 gold pieces . . . another village, Skoteinon . . . whose income 
bom paroikoi is 183 gold pieces plus 70 gold pieces from four mills, and 
100 gold pieces from arable land of 2600 units. 

Within Constantinople, among the properties owned by the nunnery were 
three vineyards, numerous gardens, six mills, and about 20 houses.^^ 

Since monastic properties were generally exempt from taxation, vast 
amounts of land were removed from the tax rolls; at various times emperors 
tried to hmit the foundation of new monasteries or their acquisition of more 
land.^^ At the same time the monasteries saved the state money by 
performing some health and welfare services that in other societies might be 
provided by the government. 

VII. Centers of Byzantine Monasticism 

Byzantine monasteries were located both in cities and in isolated rural areas. 
As one would expect, the capital of Constantinople was an important 
monastic center, housing several hundred monasteries and convents. Some 
were distinguished for their libraries and scriptoria, others for their icons and 
relics, a few for their hospital or old-age home. Little survives today of 
these religious houses except for a few churches, like Chora and 
Pammakaristos, whose gleaming mosaics testify to the wealth of their 
aristocratic patrons.^' At the site of the Stoudios monastery, which once 
held hundreds of monks, now stands only a roofless basilica. 

Rural monasteries have fared much better in surviving the centiuies of 
Arab and/or Turkish occupation. A visitor to St. Catherine's in the Sinai 
desert, to the mountainous peninsula of Athos, or to the rocky spires of 
Meteora in Thessaly, can still witness and experience the living tradition of 
Byzantine monasticism. Oldest and most remote is St. Catherine's, built by 
the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century with a massive fortification wall 
to protect the monks from Bedouin raids. Continuously inhabited for 14 
centuries, the monastery is an incomparable repository of the Byzantine 
heritage, housing a collection of over 2,000 icons, including extremely rare 
examples of encaustic painting from the pre-iconoclastic period. The library 
contains more than 3,000 manuscripts in a variety of languages (Greek, 
Arabic, Georgian, Syriac and Slavic) which reflect the diversity of the 
monks who have Lived at Sinai.^^ 

^^ Typikon of convent of Lips, ed. Delehaye, Deux typica, pp. 130-34. 

^* See P. Charanis, "The Monastic Properties and the Sute in the Byzantine Empire," 
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 4 (1948), 51-1 18. 

1' P. Underwood, The Kariye Djami, 4 vols. (New Yoik-Princeton 1966-1975; H. Belting, 
C. Mango, D. Mouriki, The Mosaics and Frescoes of St. Mary Pammakaristos (Fethiye Camii) 
at Istanbul (Washington, D.C. 1978). 

^ J. Galey, Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine (London 1979); G. H. Forsyth, K. 
Weitzmann, The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai. The Church and Fortress of Justinian. 



Alice-Mary Talbot 241 

The Athos promontory was inhabited only by hermits until the tenth 
century, when the first monasteries were established there. At its zenith the 
"Holy Mountain" attracted thousands of monks, because it combined the 
reputation of its holy men with an isolated locale of stunning rugged beauty 
and proximity to the major cities of Thessalonike and Constantinople. Its 
dozens of monasteries, many of them still functioning, have played a vital 
role in preserving the traditions of Orthodoxy and hundreds of Byzantine 
manuscripts.21 

The Meteora (literally "floating in the air") monasteries were a 
relatively late foundation, as monks did not begin to inhabit the rocky 
pillars until the fourteenth century. The eroded conglomerate formations, 
reminiscent of an other-worldly lunar landscape, are riddled with caves which 
provided shelter for hermits; more ambitious monks laboriously constructed 
entire monastic complexes atop some of the larger spires. Originally 
accessible only by rope ladders or by baskets hauled up by windlass, the 
monasteries offered particularly safe refuge during the final turbulent years of 
the Byzantine Empire, and during the four centuries of Turkish occupation.22 

VIII. Conclusion 

Byzantine monasticism appeared in many forms, ranging from isolated 
mountain hermitages to populous urban monasteries: many monks moved 
frequently from one monastery to another, or shifted back and forth between 
a cenobitic and eremitic life style. People could take monastic vows at 
various stages of life, and in the monastery could pursue intellectual 
interests, engage in artistic or philanthropic activity, manual labor or a Ufe 
of asceticism and prayer. Monasticism played such a key role in the 
Byzantine Empire, because it was a varied, flexible and fluid institution, 
which responded to the needs of society and affected the lives of people of all 
classes. At the same time monastic routines and rituals offered security and 
stability, a safe haven from the tempestuous events of the outside world. 
Monastic spirituality reflected the essence of Eastern Orthodoxy, a tradition 
that lives on today in the hymnography, music, art and architecture which 
still survive and demonstrate Byzantine creativity at its best.* 

Cleveland Heights, Ohio 



Plates (Ann Arbor, Mich. 1973); K. Weitzmann, The Monastery of St. Catherine at Ml. Sinai. 
The Icons. I. From the 6th to the 10th c. (Princeton 1976). 

^^ E. Amand de Mendieu, La presque'ile des caloyers: le Mont Athos (Bruges 1955); S. M. 
Pelekanides, The Treasures ofMt. Athos, 4 vols. (Athens 1974- ). 

^ D. M. Nicol. Meteora, the Rock Monasteries ofThessaly (London 1975). 

* Editor's Note: The author of this article is Executive Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of 
Byzantium (b preparation). 



Religious Key Terms 
in Hellenism and Byzantium: 

Three Facets 

HENRY AND RENEE KAHANE 



In a first, typological, study,^ we emphasized certain general features 
inherent in key terms. In what follows we exemplify our argument with 
three case histories. These share the linguistic milieu, Christianity in its 
Greek (or, in one instance, Greco-Latin) expression; and they represent 
incisive phases of ecclesiastical history which center on language. But the 
function of language changes from case to case. 

The key word of the first account is a powerful term of the Pauline 
tradition, which, like many lexemes of Western civilization, survived in the 
language of the Church, yet changed its connotation and had to be 
"translated" by its exegetes, period after period. — The second analysis deals 
with a basic term of early monasticism, which (with its synonyms) 
dominated all phases of that life and thereby turned into a focus of 
metaphorization. — The last case is an attempt to reconstruct, through its 
key terms, the image of a medieval sect as it appeared to an eloquent enemy; 
what evolves is a linguistic field with, throughout, negative values. 



I. Mutations of a Pauline Key Term: 
Agape and Con'toJ 

St. Paul's "Hymn to Love" (1 Cor. 13), with such phrasings as "if I am 
without /ove, I am a sounding gong" / " . ■. . faith, hope, and love, but the 

^ "Linguistic Aspects of Sociopolitical Keywords," Language Problems and Language 
Planning 8 (University of Texas 1984), 143-60. 



244 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

greatest of them all is love" had, through its key word, a considerable 
impact on religious lexicology. The key term is dYdn-ri in the Greek text 
and caritas in the Latin, and it exemplifies the potentialities inherent in a 
profane word, which in the hands of the erudite, with their classical outlook, 
turned into a stimulus for reinterpretation and readaptation. The following is 
a survey of the main semantic variations of love in the Greek and Latin of 
the Church Fathers and the medieval Latin of Scholasticism .2 

1. Greek Patristics. In its first phase, as a technical term, dydnTi 
"love" still kept the connotations of the pristine Christian communities, in 
which it expressed, as in the Pairiine passage, a new concept of human 
relationship: the people, in a mutual state of equality and united against the 
pagan world without, perceived themselves as a loving family, whose 
members were metaphorized as "brethren." The key concept "fraternal love 
for the neighbour" is dissected in the Apocryphal Epistle to Diognetus (c. 
200): "Happiness consists not in the domination over neighbours [tqv 
tiXtioiov], nor in wishing to have more than the weak, nor in wealth and 
power to compel those who are poorer. . . . [Happy is he who] takes up the 
burden of his neighbour, and wishes to help another, who is worse off in 
that in which he is the stronger" (X. 5-6 )? 

Hence, the early Fathers saw in dydTiTj a moral concept, using the 
word as a synonym of (piXot5eAxp(a "fraternal love (between brethren)" and 
Koivo(peA.E<; "common interest, benefit for all."'* Origen (2nd-3rd c.) stuck 
to this image. He stated explicitly that St. Paul, in his passage, "does not 
speak of agape for God but of that for one's fellow man — he (the Apostle) 
actually says that he is writing for the faithful. And all that is said today is 
just exaggerated."^ This view, which lasted into the Byzantine era, imparted 
to dydTiri the force of an axiom; it was the key term of a way of life, and 
its foremost promoter, John Chrysostom (fourth century) fixed its dominant 
position in the virtue system: "In the eyes of the Lord everything else ranks 
below dydTtTi"^ and "Nothing is as pleasing to God as living Koivo(peA.©q, 
for the common benefit,"^ 

^It follows, above all, the thorough study by P. R. Balducelli, // concetto teologico di caritd 
attraverso le maggiori irUerpretazioni patristiche e medievali di I ad Cor XIII (Rome 1951). 
H61ene P6tr6, ^tude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charile chretienne (Spicilegium sacnim 
lovaniense 22 [Louvain 1948]), has analyzed the semantic ramifications of LaL caritas up to the 
fourth century, as a contribution to the growth of Christian Latinity. 

^ K. Lake, ed. and trans.. The Apostolic Fathers (Loeb Classical Library, London 1912- 
1913), n, p. 373. 

** P6tr6 (above, note 2), pp. 1 15-17. 

' J. A. Cramer, ed.. Catenae graecorum patrum in Novum Testamentum, V: In epistolas S. 
Pauli Ad Corinthios (Oxford 1844), 252.22-24. 

^ J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 61 : col. 289. 

'Migne.PG. 58:714. 



Henry and Renee Kahane 245 

2. Latin Patristics. After some vacillation between the Grecism agape 
and its Lat. synonym dilectio, prevalent in second and third-century African 
Latinity, caritas, a derivative of carus "dear," became with Cyprian (third 
century) the standard rendition of the Pauline term. Ambrosiaster, the fourth 
to fifth-century commentator on St. Paul's letters,* unidentified yet marked 
by his legalistic mind, was no longer bound by the tradition which shaped 
the Greek lexeme and was shaped by it. Virtue, to him, was to be judged by 
man's actions, and caritas, expressing itself by, say, compassion or 
kindness, was perceived as the wellspring of merit. The mental state in 
which merit could be attained became a significant feature in the analysis of 
1 Cor. 13: fear of punishment or selfishness were not the conditions 
appropriate for accomplishing the task; only love could do it. Caritas, in 
short, effected the disposition which made an action meritorious, that is, 
qualified a human for mercy from God. The Ambrosiaster likes the sober 
metaphor: "To enable them to make some profit, he [the Apostle] iu"ges 
them on, to do things which would gather merit with God" (Ad Colossenses 
3:13) and "he who is found to be patient in his tribulations gathers merit" 
{Ad Romanos 8:26). With the Ambrosiaster's doctrine of merit, the moral 
orientation behind the Greek lexeme, emphasizing "brotherly love," had 
given way to one focusing on religious virtue, with virtue determined by 
man's deeds and motivations. 

In the doctrine of St. Augustine (fourth to fifth century) the concept of 
caritas was central and displayed new facets. His exegesis of St. Paul's 
passage came after his reading of Plotinus' Enneads and blended the Pauline 
tradition and Neo-Platonic ideas. In particular, the impact of the Platonic 
eros, love searching for the idea of the good, is noticeable. With God being 
the absolute and invariable good, caritas, by referring to "love of God" 
became the dominant ethical concept, the yardstick for worthiness of eternal 
life. In St. Augustine's formulation: "You may have gotten whatever you 
want — it will be of no use to you if you do not have the one thing [caritas]; 
you may have nothing else, but have this one and you have abided by the 
Law."9 

3. Scholasticism. By the first half of the thirteenth century, with the 
Scholastic movement at its height, a science of theology evolved which 
went beyond the traditional exegesis of the Scriptures. Its stronghold was 
the University of Paris, with the group of the Magistri in Sancta Pagina.^^ 
Key words used by St. Paul became technical terms in the Summae of the 
period. The fundamental explication of caritas, holding for centuries to 
come, was owed to Thomas Aquinas. He followed the Ambrosiaster, with 

Ambrosiastri qui dicitur commentarius in epistulas paulinas (Corpus scriptonim 
ecclesiaslicorum lalinorum 81: 1-3) (Vienna 1966-1969). 

' In epistolam adParthos V, 7 (Migne, Patrologia Latino. Vol. 35: col. 2016). 

^° J. de Ghellinck, "Pagina et Sacra Pagina: Histoire d'un mot el transfonnalion de I'objet 
primilivement design^," Melanges Pelzer (Louvain 1947), p. 58. 



246 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

caritas as the meritorious virtue, that is, as the wellspring of mercy. But 
he blended this explanation with the Aristotelian exegesis in the 
Nicomachean Ethics, of (pi^ia "friendship": "equality and likeness are 
friendship" (VIII. 8) and "friendship depends on community" (VIII. 9). To 
Thomas Aquinas communicatio, mutual sharing and involvement, was, 
apparently, the key concept: ^^ "Every love consists in some kind of 
oneness" {"In epistolam I ad Corinthios" Lectio IV), It is the essential 
feature in his theological redefinition of caritas as amicitia divina, God's 
friendship for man. God, to him, was not only the object but also the 
subject of love. Thomas declared in his Disputatio de malo: ''Caritas, 
which is amor Dei, God's love for man, controls all other virtues" 
(Quaestiones disputatae, VIII. 2). This statement says, particularly in view 
of the Aristotelian term "control" (imperare in Thomas), that (parallel to 
certain natural processes) in a supernatural order caritas "subordinates" all 
other moral and theological virtues to that very purpose.^^ 

4. Resume. The key word of St. Paul's passage stimulated reinter- 
pretations. The term persisted, in its Greek as well as in its Latin form; the 
content changed. In the beginning it was an ordinary, nonliterary lexeme, 
surfacing with Christianity and summing up, with extraordinary simplicity, 
the social thrust of the rising movement. Then, with the new religion 
vigorously expanding, the tone-setting early Fathers institutionalized the 
hortatory concept as the cornerstone of a virtue system. In its transfer to the 
West, dydTiTi became caritas, and the early use, which was closely linked to 
the Greek word, faded. For the Ambrosiaster caritas, as a virtue of high 
morality, was "a way to acquire merit," and merit was the way to God. At 
the height of Scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas, under the stimulus of the 
Aristotelian quasi-synonym cpiXia, added to caritas "man's love for God" a 
caritas "God's love for man" / "God's friendship for man." 

Typically, the set of the key term's changing connotations, which 
evolved from early to medieval Christianity and whose progression demands, 
step by step, some kind of "translation," illustrates the dependence of 
meaning upon environment. 



II. The Demon in the Pachomian Community 

1. The Setting. The fourth-century monasteries, largely located around 
the Eastern Mediterranean, in regions such as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and 
Constantinople, were populated with simple people. They came from the 
farms and were often barely able, often even unable, to speak Greek, which 

^^ L.-B. Gillon, "Les grandes 6coles lh6ologiques," s.v. Chariti in Dictionnaire de 
SpiritualUe.U (1953), 5Sl. 

^^ BalduceUi (above, note 2), p. 175. 



Henry and Ren^ Kahane 247 

by then (and very much in that area) was the language of education. In their 
beliefs the monks preserved, intertwined with their Christianity, the 
tradition of popular religions, with their abundant ingredient of 
superstitions. The documentation of their monastic culture is of the greatest 
interest. As Festugi^re^^ pointed out, these texts represent, within the 
heritage of Antiquity, the first sizable body of literature through which the 
"common people," the "country folk," make their voice heard. The popular 
vein is evident, above all, in the domain of "demonology," typical of this 
early monasticism. A text that contains a representative sample of this 
complex feature is the Life of St. Pachomius in its Greek version.^"* 

Pachomius (c. 287-346), the indigenous son of a pagan peasant and 
himself a soldier, assembled around 320, in his monasteries at Tabennesi, in 
the Upper Egyptian Thebaid, several thousand monks unified in a movement 
created by him and called Cenobitism: living and working together in sdict 
asceticism and in obedience to the rules of the community. 

The mentor of Pachomius describes daily life in a few sentences, which 
in their terseness truly justify the monks' fear of demons: "My regimen is 
hard: in the summer I fast all day, and in the winter I eat once every two 
days. And by the Grace of God I only eat bread and salt. I am not used to 
oil and wine. I stay awake always hak the night, as I was taught, for prayer 
and the study of God's words, and many times all night" (6). 

The Life of St. Pachomius, probably rendering an (unknown) Coptic 
model, was written around 390 in Vulgar Hellenistic Greek.^^ Viewed 
diachronically, the terminology of asceticism, as Reitzenstein has shown,^^ 
draws heavily on the lexicon of popular Hellenistic philosophy. 
Festugi6re's attempt to link the Pachomians' "demon language" to ancient 
traditions of superstition is doubted by the most recent interpreter of the 
Pachomian community: to Rousseau^^ it represents, with its purpose and 
its perception, "a genuine effort to achieve clarity of mind about the self and 
the world." The wellspring of the community's demonology is, to him, 

^' A.-J. Festugiere, Les moines d'OrUnt, I, Culture ou sainteli: Introduction au monachisme 
oriental (Paris 1961), p. 25. 

^* The following versions of the Pachomius tradition were used [with quotations according to 
sections]: The Greek text: Vita Prima, in Sancti Pachomii Vitae Graecae, P. Halkin, ed. 
(Subsidia Hagiographica, 19; Brussels: Soci6t6 des Bollandistes, 1932), pp. 1-96. English 
translation: A. N. Athanassakis, trans.. The Life of Pachomius (Vita Prima Graeca) [with a 
reprint of Halkin 's Greek text] (Society of Biblical Literature; Missoula, Mont 1975). French 
translation: A.-J. Festugiere, Les moines d'Orient, IW: 2, La Premiere Vie Grecque de Saint 
Pachome: Introduction critique et traduction. (Paris 1965), pp. 159-245. 

^^ Festugifere, La premiere vie grecque de Saint Pachome, pp. 7 and 156-57. 

^^R. Reitzenstein, Historia Monachorum und Historia Lausiaca: Eine Studie zur Geschichte 
des Monchtums und der friihchristlichen Begriffe Gnostiker und Pneumatiker (Gottingen 1916), 
pp. 98-99. 

^^ Ph. Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (The 
Transformation of the Classical Heritage, VI [Berkeley 1985]: with extensive bibliography), p. 
135. 



248 Illinois Classical Studies. XII.2 

Pachomius himself, and to explain the mind of Pachomius, Rousseau 
adduces an apocalyptic work of c. 200, The Shepherd by Hermas, by then 
widely read in Egypt. The following analysis, however, does not trace the 
genesis of the Pachomian "demon"; it is a synchronic survey: trying to 
describe the meaning and the use of demon, and the associations evoked by 
it in the cenobitic community. 

2. Onomasiology of the Demon. The demons, ubiquitous in the 
narrative, are mentioned with varying names; yet, so far as we can see, the 
multiplicity of names represents synonymy: it does not seem to imply 
semantic nuances. The designations were given from, essentially, three 
angles. 

(a) The Christian Tradition. The inherited Greek lexeme is Sai^icov. 
In classical times it referred to a divinity somewhere between a god and the 
tutelary genius of human beings, vaguely perceived as an internal voice and 
correlated with fate. In the popular beliefs of late antiquity the term alluded 
to some ambivalent entity between good and evil, but then in Christianity, 
as a feature of the pagan heritage, the demon was degraded to a spirit of evil 
(whereas its good features were transferred to the angels). In Christian 
writings the Sai^cov was made responsible for a human's vices without, 
however, exonerating the sinner from his responsibilities.^^ In theL//e of 
Pachomius the term appears repeatedly (e.g., in 8, 18, 52, 73, 112). The 
other somewhat "technical" expression which anticipates its cenobitic use in 
earlier applications is Y.axa.\ac„ usually restricted to the singular: "Keep 
awake . . . lest Satan [6 ZaTava(;] tempt you and harm you" (6). The 
term is drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition.^' In the Old Testament it 
refers to the adversary who tests and accuses in behalf of God; in 1 Chron. 
21:1, Satan is the tempter, luring man into sin. In the Septuagint, Sirach 
21:27 warns against blaming one's evil intentions on the satan: "In cursing 
the satan as unholy, one just curses one's own soul." The Church Fathers 
echoed the New Testament in calling Satan the "adversary," the "accuser," 
and the "evil one." A third lexeme of religious tradition, somewhat less 
technical because morphologically transparent, is ocvtiKei^iEvoq, "the 
opponent," "the adversary," in the phrase owxiipia Kaxoc tSv 
avTiKei)j.ev<ov, salvation from the adversaries (96). The term, denoting the 
"evil powers as adversaries," was used likewise in the plural, by Clement of 
Alexandria, in the third century .^o 

(b) The Demon as Apparition. Some of the terms for the demon stress 
the component of the "supernatural." (i) Ilvev^a, "breath," in a complex 
development,^^ turned into a metaphor of the immaterial breath of life, 

** G. W. H. Lampe. A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford 1961). s.v. 

*' G. Kiuel et al., Theologisches Worterbuch zumNeuen Testament (Stuttgart 1939-79), s.v. 

^ Migne, PG, 9:692D; Lampe, s.v. avtiKeijiai, c. 

^ Kittcl. S.V.. 333-37. 



Henry and Ren6e Kahane 249 

applied to the "mind" of man and, under Judeo-Christian influence, to the 
transcendental "ghost." The fourth-century catechist, Cyril of Jerusalem, 
was aware of the term's ambiguity: Kal ayyeXoq KaA,evtai TweOfxa . . . 
Kttl 5ai^cov dvTiKei|i£vo(; KaXeixai 7ive\)p.a "an angel is called 'spirit' 
just as a hostile demon is called 'spirit'" {Catech. 16:13 )?'^ Epithets are 
used to integrate Tcveufia into its context: in the magic Papyrus Mimaut 3. 
8 a numen is reverently addressed as lepov 7rve\)|ia, "holy spirit"; Acts 
19:15, on the other hand, mentions to Tuvev^a to TtovTjpov, "the evil 
spirit." The latter phrase is a common one in the Pachomian community: 
TiovTipov nve\>[ia (73) / Ttvzv>\ia Tcovripov (84), "evil spirit." (ii) Several 
expressions call the demon a "vision": opa|ia (99, 135), ontaaia (99), 
and (paiv6p.£vov (87). (iii) Through lexemes describing a tricky 
transformation, the demon is marked as a hallucination: took the shape of 
. . . [axT||iatia9£i(;] (8) / in the form of . . . [oxTj^ati + gen.] (19) / took 
the form of . . . [fUTiov XaPcov] (19) / by appearing (in a deceptive guise) 
[tw cpaiveaGai] (18).^^ 

(c) Persecution Mania. Frequently the demon's designation reveals a 
victim's perception of his tormenter, that is, the monk's dread of his own 
impulses.^ But the enemy inside is described as if he were outside. The 
relevant appellations occur, to be sure, in Biblical parlance, yet as mere 
words they kept their sensus litteralis also independently of that tradition. 
The term that defines the relationship between monk and demon, most 
commonly and most simply, is e^Gpoq, enemy. An abbot, for example, 
mentions the enemy and adds: "Combating me all day long he has crushed 
me" (140). Vituperative expressions come naturally when they are applied 
to the demon: either in the form of a noun, such as G-qpiov, beast (105), or 
in that of adjectives, such as Kovripov (Trvevjia), evil (spirit) (73), and 
dXXotpioq (^oyiaiioq), alien (thought) (132). Also the demon's primary 
function, to tempt, produced designations: he is called 6 Tteipd^cov, the 
tempter (18), and 6 neipdaoa; ex0p6(;, the enemy who tempted [them] (131). 

3. The Language of Angst. The Saint talks to the brethren about their 
sins (96): "He talked not only about bodily chastity but also about such 
various thoughts as lust for power, sloth, hatred toward a brother, and love 
for money." The aim of his talk was to enlighten them on the measures of 
safety for salvation from the adversaries [acotTipia<; Katd ttov 
dvtiKei)ievcov] (96). For sins are perceived, that is, expressed, through the 
medium of the "enemy." He elicits, he exposes, and he symbolizes the 
weakness of the flesh. And he does it in many guises. 

^ Lampe, s.v. nveufux, I. 

^ A. and C. Guillaumont, Dimon: HI. Dans la plus ancienne littirature monastique, in 
Diclionnaire de Spirituality, m (1967). 192. 

^ Festugiere, Les moines d'Orient, I (above, note 13), pp. 34-35. 



250 Illinois Classical Studies, XIL2 

(a) The Demons at Work. The Life of Pachomius contains many 
"exempla" of human weakness which substantiate the Evepyeva Sai^iovtov, 
the demons in action (8). 

The case histories describe, first of all, the cardinal sins. Pride: There 
was an ascetic brother who [by showing off his asceticism] did not live by 
God. . . . [Pachomius warned him:] "/ see that you are envied by the enemy 
[opco ae <p0ovot)|ievov vnb xov ixQpov]. . . . Do not pray much until you 
master the demon of boasting [xov> 6a{)xovo<; xfiq KavxTjaecoq]" (69). — 
Vainglory: The evil spirits used to come in front of him and they marched 
on both sides, as one does escorting a dignitary [ox; ini apxovxoq], saying 
to each other, "Make room for the man of God [66t£ totiov tq dvGpcoTtcp 
xo\> 6Eot)]" (18). — Gluttony: An evil spirit came to him to tempt and to 
deceive him into the sin of eating first [Tieipdaai avxov tti dTidxTi xr\c, 
d|j,apx{a(; ev xw (payeiv avxbv TipcJycov] from the food intended for the 
sick (84). — Lust: The evil spirit took the shape of a beautiful and well- 
adorned woman [oxTniaxiaGelq eiq yuvaiKeiav ^opcpriv] (8) and as he 
would sit to eat, they used to come in the form of naked women [oxq^aii 
yujivcov yuvaiKcbv] to sit and eat with him (19). — Anger: [An abbot 
who broke certain rules of monastic life] was angered [TiyavdKXTiaEv] when 
reprimanded owing to the temptation of the enemy [Kaxd neipaa\ibw xov 
ExGpoti] and wanted to withdraw his monastery from the community . . . and 
with him not listening to his superior who tried to dissuade him, the 
tempting spirit prevailed [hioxooev 6 neipao\i6<;] (127). 

Broadly stated, offenses against cenobitic discipline set the demons in 
motion. Pachomius admonishes a neophyte: "Why do you not pay 
attention to yourself [npooixev; aeat)xw] instead of giving free rein to your 
heart [aniXvcac, xt^v Kap6iav aou]?" (104). Two infringements of self- 
control, in particular, provoke the enemy. Fear: [The demons] attempted to 
shake the foundations of his hermitage, threatening [cpoPEpi^ovxEq] that it 
was to fall upon him (19). — As he was praying and about to kneel, [the 
demons] made the space in front of him appear as a pit, so that he might not 
kneel out of fear fi'va x© (p6pcp )xf| kXivti yovaxa] (18). — Laughter, 
which the ascetic commonly has to restrain:^ The evil spirit came and took 
the form [xianov . . . ^pcbv] of a cock and crowed in his face . . .in order 
to relax his heart and make him laugh [o7ico<; yzkctozx ev ekXtSoev 
KapSiaq] (19). 

Angst and stress, flowing from the demons and enwrapping the 
monastic community, are echoed in a vocabulary of their own. Two key 
concepts subsume the main fears of the monk: that the demon wants to 
harm him and wants to be his master. Two sets of verbs correlate with 
these two hyperonyms. 

^ P. Keseling, "Askese 11," in Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum, I (1950). p. 767, 
s.v. 



Henry and Ren^ Kahane 25 1 

(b) The Demon as the "Destroyer." The monk finds no peace of mind, 
always paralyzed by the fear "lest Satan tempt you and you suffer harm 
[pXapTi(;]" (6). The demon ruins the body and stifles the will power: "The 
Enemy acted wickedly within some of us [ETcovripevoaxo ev xioiv fiixcbv 
iSCoiq]" (113). — "[The demon] is plotting against you [eniPo-uXevei ooi]" 
(69). — The evil spirits wished to lay him low [KataPaXeiv] (18). — 
The enemy wickedly destroys the body [to a&^ia dcpavi^ei KaKicjt] (118). 
— "Envied by the enemy I see you lose all your labor [anoXicai oXov xov 
Kot^iaTov aoi)]" (69). — *\ . . that the enemy may not scatter the fruits of 
our father's labor [SiaoKopnia-p xov Kdp.axov xov naxpoq Tm©v] " (131). 

(c) The Demon as "Master." He dominates his man, instils desires, and 
always "stands in his way": [The Enemy] gains mastery of the entire man 
[icopiEvei xot) dvOpcoTio-u oXov], who is then destitute of anything good 
(75). — ^Thus the enemy found a place in him [evpoov ev avxcb xoTtov] . . . 
(118). — As the demon was shooting him with an evil desire [zic, 
iniQv\iiav KaKr\v xo^evovxoq at)x6v], the monk became inclined to sin 
(8). — The enemy has eaten up the willingness of the soul [Kaxaqjaywv 
xTiv npoQx>\iiav XTiq \|/vxfi<;] (118). — When the evil spirit that had deceived 
him saw that he was under its control [-uTioxeipiov xovxov elvai] ... (8). 
— The demons in every way try to stand in the way of the faithful [ev 
jrotvxl invxExpovaw e|mo5i^eiv zo\>q niaxo-ug] (52). 

(d) Ecstasy. For the monk unaware that his blasphemy was implanted 
by the Enemy, cKoxaciq, a breakdown, is bound to follow: "If one is 
neither sufficiently vigilant nor consults a wise man in order to learn to 
overcome the enticement to blasphemy, the latter will destroy him [r\ ir\q 
pXaa<pimia(; vnopoX-q . . . xovxov anoXioEi]. . . . Many men, in fact, 
killed themselves" (96). They were victims of their TtdGoq.^^ The demons, 
in short, have seen to it that his guilt has made him "deranged." "One, in a 
state of ecstasy [ax; eKaxaxiKoq] threw himself down from a cliff (96); 
another monk, who was "in a frenzied state" [cKoxaxiKov ovxa], the 
demon threw into the furnace . . . and he was burned (8). 

4. The Language of Resistance. The saga of the ascetic brother, the 
daKTixTi<; d5eX(p6^ (69), always on trial and always struggling, created its 
linguistic field, the Swa^iic; dGXrixov, the "strength of the champion," as 
Athanasius called it in his Vita Antonii.^'^ The semantic aspects of the 
terminology highlight the monk's strategies. 

(a) Warfare. Soldierly drill was, to begin with, a feature of the 
Pachomian monastery ,^8 and the all-pervading demon transformed and 

^ Translated as "passion" by Athanassakis, and as "illness" by Festugiere. 

^ Migne, PG 26:861 A. 

^ J. Olphe-Galliard, "Cdnobitisme," in Dictionnaire de Spirituality, II (1953), 405. 



252 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

metaphorized the monk into a soldier-in-action. The key terms of his feats 
play up such efforts of his as vigilance, obedience, and combat. 

(i) Vigilance [vfi\|/i<;] was a monastic virtue of the time:^' [A monk 
testing a possessed fellow monk] was scared, thinking of how much 
vigilance man needs to escape the wiles of the demons [6ia jtooTjq 
vTivEox; eKcpuyri xotq no\K\k\ac, twv 5ai^6va)v 6 avGpcoTioq] (69). 
— If perchance he is not vigilant [eocv \n\ vrixj/p] the enemy will defeat 
him in some other matter (75). — "Keep awake [vfjcpe] . . . lest Satan 
tempt you and harm you" (6). — . . . being awake [aypvitvov ovxa] 
day and night he might defeat the enemy (22). — Unless he who is 
tempted is not exceedingly keen [dKpoxatcx; 6iaKpitiK6<;] in discerning 
the tempter he is deceived (135). — . . . to be blameless in knowing 
and not ignoring [ev tw Ei6evai Kal \ij\ dyvoevv] the power of the 
enemy (56). — He, aware of the tricks [xd<; xiyyac, avvicov] of his 
tempters ... (18). 

(ii) Obedience, a religious concept since the Septuagint and the New 
Testament,^° became a fundamental feature in the hierarchical structtire 
of monasticism. Pachomius inculcated it upon his monks as a most 
desirable cenobitic virtue:^^ Seeing [Pachomius'] obedience in 
everything [xt\v ziq ndvxa -oitaKoriv] and the progress of his 
endurance, the old man [his guide to monasticism] rejoiced (6). On the 
other hand, the reverse, disobedience [ojceiBeia], as well as "obedience 
in the wrong place" hand a monk over to the demon: since he [the 
monk] was disobeying and about to be possessed by the demon 
[aneiQoxivxoq avxov Kal \ieXKovxoq 5ai|iovia9Tivai] . . . (69), and 
coming from the mouth of the demon: "My man is obedient [xwd 
ex« evTieiGf]]. If I [the demon] advise him, he listens to me [ocKouei 
\iOf\i] and does it" (73). 

(iii) Combat. Military duty for the faith was a feature of Christianity 
from its early stages on: "I have not come to bring peace but a sword" 
(Matt. 10:34) / "Let us . . . put on our armor as soldiers of the light" 
(Rom. 13:12). The topos of the Fighting Christian reached a peak in 
ihG monastic movement, which fused the concept of the plotting enemy 
with the doctrine of virtues and vices, and identified the vices with the 
demons: In his struggle he did not allow [dYcoviC6^evo(; ot) 
o-uvex<op£i] unclean thoughts to settle in his heart (18). — . . . an 
unyielding man [dvGpconov GKXr\p6v] (73). — "You saw the demons 
and you combated them to ward them off from souls [TtoXenSv avxoix; 

^ Lampe, s.v. 

^ Bauer (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, trans, and adapt. W. F. Amdt and 
F. W. Gingrich. 2nd ed. Chicago 1979), and Lampe, s.w. •unaKori, imaKOxxo. 

^^ P. Resch, La doctrine ascdtique des premiers mattres igyptiens du quatrieme siecle (Paris 
1931), p. 238. 



Henry and Ren6e Kahane 253 

(XKoatfjaai tSv yvx^^]" (112). — [Each brother confessed to him] 
how he battles the enemy [ax; noXe\iEl tov e^Gpov] (132). — " . . . the 
beast which has been making war on you [to 7ioA,E|iot)v \)|xaq Gripiov] 
. . . Silvanus has slain it [ eacpa^ev at)T6v]" (105). 

(b) Faith. The language of faith creates a shield against temptation, 
formulated either as an appeal to the Lord or as some symbolic evocation of 
the Scriptures (intertwined with traditions of religious practice). 

(i) Appeal to the numen. He constantly kept in mind the fear of God 
[EfxeXexa xov (p6pov xo\> Geoti] and remembered the Judgment and the 
tortures of the eternal fire [. . . Kal tt]v |j.vTmT|v xoiiv KpCoetov Kal 
xaq Paadvo"u^ xox) nvpoc; to\) aicoviou] (18). — Through his hope in 
God [tfi eiq TOV Kt)piov eXniSi] he laughed at the tempters scornfully 
(18). — He would teach the brothers . . . how to oppose the enemy 
with the Lord's power [dvTiKeioGai a\)Toi<; tti 5\)vd|iei tov Kvpiov] 
(56). — "If you speak with faith [m-etoc nioTeox; Xeycov], the demon's 
suggestion will vanish like smoke" (96). — He . . . knelt with faith 
[ixETOt TiioTEox; EyovoTiETEi], bringing shame upon [the demons] with 
his praise of God [tov ©eov EvXxjySv] (18). 

(ii) Evocation of the Scriptures. Having learned from the Holy 
Scriptures and especially from the Gospel [jiaGwv ek twv Geicov 
Ypacpwv Kal jidXioTa ek tou z\>ayyzk\o\>], he endured many 
temptations by evil spirits (17). — Against them he recited the psalm 
[£)j.EX,ETa KttT' aiixSiv TOV \j/aX|j.6v . . .], "God is our refuge and 
strength" (19). — . . . the various temptations which he withstood in 
accordance with the Gospel and his True Faith [ox>q -utceheivev KaTd 
TO EX)ayy£Xiov Kal tt^v opG-qv a{)ToO nioTvv] (30). — Thus, one of 
the demons says, ". . . when I suggest a thought to him, he stands up 
immediately and prays [cx>Qx>c, ott|kei zic, e\>xw^]- So I bum and come 
out" (73). — "You should guard yourselves and make the sign of the 
cross in the name of Christ [acppayi^EoGE t© ovojxaTi toO XpioTov]. 
If you oppose the evil spirits, they will have no power over you" (73). 

(c) Stoicism. A few times the monk succeeds in mastering the demon 
through dTidGEia, the suppression of his emotions. This strategy was 
known to the Egyptian monks from early on.^^ jhe defense, a poor man's 
stoicism, is metaphorized as "paying no attention" and "closing the eyes of 
the mind": When he saw them, he sighed at them, and since he paid no 
attention [\xt] npoa£xovTO(; avToO] they departed (19). — So he would close 
the eye of his mind [KamivovToq avTov tov ocpGaXfi-ov Tfi<; SiavoCaq 
av>To\)], and the enemy would disappear, having accomplished nothing 
against him (19). 

^^ Lampe, s.v. oiTtdGeia; see also J. B. Russell, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition 
athaca.NY1981).p. 185. 



254 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

(d) God behind the Demon. One way, finally, of allaying the unholy 
dread of the demons is to eliminate them by positing a design of God behind 
the machinations of the "enemy."^^ The demon is the Lord's tool of trying, 
and by providing the monk on trial with the chance to conquer, the demon 
works for the good of the soul. By association with God's will and Divine 
concession the negative connotation of concepts such as "temptation" and 
"trial" is scaled down: God tests his servants in various ways [boKi\iaaxT\c, 
6 Qebc, . . . tioikCXox;] (52). — Through divine concession [ek Beiaq 
ox)yx(ji)p'f\aE(o<;] he saw evil spirits at work (8). — His being tempted by 
various temptations . . . happened through divine concession and trial [t^v 
EK a-oTxcopTioEcoq Qziac, Kal SoKififiq] (18). — If with the Lord's will [xov 
Kvpiov Po\)Xo|i£vo\)] he ever saw a vision or an apparition . . . (99). — 
What kept the suffering monk going was, in short, the thought that God 
was training him [t| \ivr\\n\ xox> 7iai6Et)ovTO<; ©eov] (20). 

5. Epilogue. We have attempted to describe the characteristic aspect of 
a religious movement, Cenobitism, through the analysis of its most 
conspicuous key term, demon. The term was embedded in a representative 
hagiography, and the concept behind the word (and its synonyms) evolved, 
in changing contexts, as the dominating force in all phases of the monk's 
life: as his enemy and his savior, his weakness and his strength, the Devil 
and God. With such a load of transfers and associations, demon illustrates 
well an essential feature of key terms. On the level of the "text," it 
expresses the literal meaning, which evokes the allegorical meaning 
"hidden" (in Dante's phrasing^) "under the cloak of the narrative." In the 
text at hand, the story, that is, the sensus litteralis, focuses on the demon, 
the monk's tempter and oppressor, but what is really meant by "demon," 
that is, its sensus allegoricus, concerns the monk's restless ego. 
Interestingly, in the Pachomian Vita these two levels of meaning are 
correlated with domains of religious attitude and style: the sensus litteralis 
uses the images of popular beliefs and lore to highlight the drama inherent 
in monastic existence, which is the theme of the sensus allegoricus. 



ni. The Paulician Heresy as seen by Orthodoxy 

1. Introductory. Our third approach views a movement as a linguistic 
field. The movement chosen as an example is that of the Paulicians, an off- 
shoot of the Byzantine Church which flourished, from the seventh to the 
ninth century, in Asia Minor, at the eastern frontier of Hellenism. It was a 

^^ J. A. Timbie, Dualism and the Concept of Orthodoxy in the Thought of the Monks of 
Upper Egypt (Diss., University of Pennsylvania [University Microfilms International, Ann 
Arbor, Mich.] 1979). pp. 135-36. A. Kallis, "Geister (Ddmonen)," C 11. Griechische Voter, in 
Reallexikon fiir Antike und Christentum. DC (1976). 712-14, s.v. 

** H. and R. Kahane, "Linguistic Aspects of Sociopolitical Keywords" (above, note 1), 148. 



Henry and Ren6e Kahane 255 

dualistic and docetist sect, returning to the roots of Evangelical Christianity. 
Its religious language was marked by a bent for the allegorical reading of the 
Sacred Scriptures, contrasting with the literalness of Orthodox exegesis. 

The text on which the analysis rests is by Photius, Patriarch of 
Constantinople and the dominant figure of the Byzantine Renaissance.^^ He 
acquired his detailed knowledge of the movement around 871-72, through 
two writings: the summary, About the Paulicians by a certain Abbot 
Petnis, and the History of the Heresy of the Paulicians by the ecclesiastical 
annalist Petrus Siculus (Oetpoq liKeXi(snr[q). The two "Peters" refer, quite 
possibly, to the same man. The Patriarch, without mentioning it, 
plagiarized these two woiics so that, so far as the facts were concerned, he did 
not contribute much. Yet compared with his models (at least with Peter, 
the Abbot) he was more of a writer, marked by "a style quite diffuse and 
prolix" and thus very suitable for a repository of key words. The typology 
of the "heretic," which evolves from the Byzantine corpus of key terms, 
prefigured in many features the image of the Western medieval heretic.-^^ 

The key terms which define the movement center on four main themes: 
the image of the heretic; verbal strategy; illusions; and propaganda. 

2. Image of the Heretic. The Patriarch's rejection of the heretical 
doctrines, an inherent feature of the contemporary Orthodox attitude, 
determined his perception of the men who represented them (mostly men are 
implicated). Their image evolves in the process. A few specific facets of 
the portrait become the portrayer's favorites: 

(a) Misbegotten. Evil breeds evil, and the traditional scapegoats of 
society are indicted: Some of the leaders are the offspring of Saracens 
['AyapTivSv . . . yevvTuxaTa]; others are marked by the outrages and 
sufferings of slavery [loic, rqc, dovXeiac, KaTeaTi7|ievo'U(; . . . Kal iiPpeai 
Kttl TiaGrmaai]; others again are tht progeny of adultery [{xoixe^aq . , . 
pXaaTT|)iaxa]; some, finally, reveal themselves as disciples of female 
madness and ranting judgment [7iapa(ppoovvTi<; yuvaiK£{a<; Kal £|X)iavo\)<; 
yvai\ir\c, |j.a0TiTd(;] (102). 

(b) Egalitarian. The priests of heresy are accused of not upholding the 
dignity of the office: in their pursuit of populism they do not manifest, 
either in dress or in manners, their distinctiveness from the common people 

^^ The version of the Photius text used here, entitled Aifiytiai? xx\c, veo<pavo\)(; xoiv 
Mavixotioav avaPXaaxTJoeox;, "Account of the Recent Revival of the Manichaeans," was 
established by W. Conus-Wolska, with a French translation by J. Paramelle, on the opposite 
pages (Jravaux et M£moires, 4; Paris 1970; pp. 120-73). Quotations are according to sections. 
The Paulician movement, documentation, and scholarship were examined with circumspection 
by P. Lemerle, "LTiistoire des Pauliciens d'Asie Mineure d'api^s les sources grecques" (Jravaux 
et Mimoires, 5; Paris 1973; pp. 1-144). 

'^ As drawn by H. Grundmann in 1927: "Der Typus des Ketzers in mittelalterlicher 
Anschauung," repr. in Ausgewdhlte Airfsdtze, I, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 
25:1 (Stuttgart 1976), pp. 313-27. 



256 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

[to 6id(popov avTwv npbq to TiXfjGoq] (34). — The people call them not 
priests but "fellow travelers" (a Pauline term, here approximately 
"comrades") [ox>x lepeiq, aXXa o'uveK6Tmau<; . . . ETiovojid^auaiv] (34). — 
All of them, functioning as a group and equal in status [6|ioTi|i.co<; ocXXtiXok; 
at)Tol KaTct 7iXf|9o(;], guide the people (143). 

(c) Secretive. The heretics are described as if they were a secret society. 
The leaders were anxious not to confide right away [\n\ KaT* dpxdq evQhq 
. . . GappEiv] to the newcomers the ultimate of sacrileges, nor to display 
before them [)iTi5e . . . npoTiGevai] the most abominable of the mysteries 
(111). — A dominant teacher and leader is described as "expounding and 
confiding his own doctrines about himself to a specially selected group" [eiq 
TO e^TipTiiievov] (97). — Non-initiates are barred and the climate of mystery 
is cultivated. The slogan is succinct, indeed: *'think and speak together 
only in secrecy" [\iVGX\.K(oc, Kal (ppoveiv Kal Xiyeiv Ttpo^ 6.Xkr{Xov(;] 
(97). — Scripta manent: One of the leaders avoided confiding [TtapoSovvai 
ov)K eGappTioEv] his heretical thoughts to writing (6). — (Another one 
hoped that) by escaping (through emigration) /rd>m intercourse with other 
people [tw dve7ii|i{KTa) t&v aXK<o\/ dvGpcoTicov] and thus being among 
themselves [Ka0' eavTotx; ovTag], they would be able to devote 
themselves, without fear and openly, to their diabolical and extravagant 
practices (147). — The Patriarch underlines the secrecy of the mysteries 
[^\)aTTipia] by accusing the heretics of secret orgies [djioppriTcov . . . 
opYicov] (143), and blames them for excelling in secret magics and 
witchcraft [ev xaic, p.-ooTiKaiq ^ayyaveiaK; Te Kal yoriTeCaK;] (142). 

(d) Stubborn. The heretics remain obstinate, above all, in regard to 
their return to orthodoxy: the attempts to convert them to the right faith 
come to a dead end [npbc, dv6vT|Tov . . . nipaq] (56). — Instead of 
converting they displayed incorrigibility [to d5i6p8coTov e7re5ei^avTo] 
(68). — They absolutely refuse [ovda^iSic, KaTa5exovTai] to curse their 
leaders (10). — Not even by the sword came their impious vigor to a halt 
[^Ti6e (^i(pei) iaTa|ievTi<;] (56). — The obsession applied even to the 
group: a leader suffered death by burning together with those of his 
disciples whom unrepentance seized [ooovq eIXev to a\iExa\iihr\xo\] (70). 

(e) Fraudulent. This salient feature of the heretical image is realized in 
many forms. One heretic is called "a natural in making up things and 
lying" [TepaTe\)6)ievo(; Kal \|/e'o5oXoYcov], and a certain claim of his about 
his mission is judged by the Patriarch "as one of the many stories which he 
embroidered and fabricated" [6ieppa\|/a)5ei Kal a\)ve7iA,aTTev] (63). — 
Another heretic knows how to get rid of his impieties: by simply 
disavowing them [5id xt[c, dpvT|oetix; djioSuojievov] (74). — The brisk 
word portrait of the apostate Sergius, a leading Paulician (living in the first 
half of the ninth century and coming from the theme of Armeniakon), 
consists of variations of perfidy. He outshines his forerunners in fraud 
[paSiovpyia] / craftiness [Tcepivoia] / scheming [\n\xoLvo\>pyiq.] / wily 



Henry and Rende Kahane 257 

manners [iitiKXonoic, tiGeoiv] (108). Sergius' scheming produces further 
synonyms: Photius calls him most apt for any kind of intrigue [npbc, 
Tiaaav Spaixaxovpyiav 6eiv6Taxov], and sharp in contriving tricks [o^vv 
56Xo\)(; pd\|/ai] (96). But the richest terminology of fraud which Sergius 
evoked concerns the art of dissimulation: he is experienced in hiding his 
thought [Kp-uyai TO (ppovrma] at the right time (96). — He used to transmute 
himself [eavtov ^exenXatxev] into a thousand guises, adapting 
[ap^o^oixevoq] to the diverse characters of the deceived; with shrewd 
metaphorical insight he transformed himself and turned into [xx>no\)\ievoc, 
Kal 8ianXaxx6\iEvoc,] a monkey or a lion or a fox (122). — He was 
terrific in feigning [axT||J.axi0ao0ai] virtue (96). — His conduct was a 
faked show of virtues [aicnvTi dpetcbv 7tpoPepXri)j.evTi]: his graciousness 
was just simulated behavior [Kaxeoxr[\i-OL'^^o\iivo<:; xponoq], as were his 
sweetness [ruiepoTTiq] and his humble ways [xaneivov t|0o<;] (126), 
although whatever the circumstances he showed ojf[r[KaC,ove\is.xo] (115). 

(0 Lewd. Their way of life [f| noXixeia to-otcov] is dragged into the 
open as a welcome weapon against them. A harsh vocabulary describes the 
heretics' unrestrained conduct (36), with the key phrase, // is full of 
licentiousness [ye^iei (XKoXaoiaq]. They are marked by drunkenness and 
profligacy [|ie0ti Kal docotia]; and they indulge in the two varieties of 
love life [xpwvxai |j.i^Eaiv EKaxepa<; (p-uaeox;], involving the opposite as 
well as their own sex. The Patriarch's conclusion: They lead a life in no 
way inconsistent with their doctrines [o\)5ev xov pCov d7ia6ovxa xoiq 
66Y)iaoiv TtepwpEpovoi]. 

3. Verbal Strategy. Two sets of key words evolve from the diatribe of 
the Patriarch which reveal what to him and to his cause was the essence of 
apostasy: negativism and the manipulation of the Sacred Words. 

(a) Negativism. The attitude of denial and rejection, attributed to the 
heretics, is expressed by negative prefixes (d- / 5\)a- / ano- ) and by verbs 
of rejection (nx-uco, "spit" / tiXuvco tSPpEoi, "wash with abuses"). The 
Patriarch's strongest effect results from the reverse collocation of terms 
associated with heresy: God is "negated" whereas the Devil is glorified with 
the epithets appropriate only for God. The hyperonym expressing the 
heretics' non-conformism is pXaocprmeco "blaspheme," lit. "speak ((pim-) 
evil (pXaa-)": . . . reviling [pXaa(pr||j.ot)vxe<;] our Supreme-Holy Mistress, 
the Mother of God (19). Some synonyms: most of all . . . they revile 
[6\)a(pTmo\)aiv] Peter (since he disclaimed Christ) (23). — . . . reviling 
[5'0G<pTm.otivxe(;] the lifegiving Cross (22). — They do not accept [(oijk) . . . 
anobixovxax] either the priests of the Catholic Church (that is, the Church 
before the Great Schism) or the other members of the clergy (34). — [Peter] 
they consider utteriy to be rejected and turned away from [dn6^Xr[xov Kal 
dnoxponaiov xvGevxai] (25). — They spit at [SianxiSovxeq] the saving 
baptism (30). — They abuse with a thousand outrages [\ivpia\c, iSPpeai 



258 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

TiXvvovxeq] the Holy Communion (21). — In regard to their doctrines they 
are impious [Sx>aae^Eic,] and they are equally in discord [(xat)^(pcovoi] with 
the truth as they are with each other (36). — The summa of their secret 
doctrines is the complete negation of God [apvnavq navxeXr]c, Geov] and 
their belief in the glory and power and creative force of the devil [xo\> 
SiaPoXov 664a Kal KpocTo^ Kal 6T|fxio'upYia(; iox^<i] (HI)- 

(b) Heretical Exegesis. In the heretics' hands, as the Patriarch is 
convinced, the sacred body of the Scriptures fares badly. The truths anchored 
in the Holy Words are cynically distorted. The "unholy philology" of the 
heretics (as one is tempted to call this view) evoked a phraseology of its 
own, focusing on the manipulation of the text, with its reinterpretations, 
adaptations, deletions, additions, and incoherences. Their technique of 
obscurantism involves, above all, semantics: meanings are insinuated, 
falsified, invented, colored, and hidden. 

A sweeping statement sets the tone: the heretic exegete is falsifying 
and mutilating the entire meaning of Orthodoxy [oXov xov vouv XT\q 
Evoe^ziac, Siaoxpecpcov Kal KaxaGpa-owv] (6). The theme is endlessly 
varied: The exegete tries to adapt and to adjust [evap|x6^Eiv xe Kal 
TtepidTtxEiv] the words of the Gospel and the Apostle to his doctrines (58). 
— Tearing those words out from their context [xaq Xe^eiq ekeiGev 
dTioanapd^avxEq], they assign them [xavxaq ETiKprnxi^o-uoi] to quite 
impious meanings (17). — ^The heretic ascribes and insinuates meanings to 
the words [dvdjixEi Kal vno^aXkzi (xoiq pTjxoiq) voT||iaxa], which have 
no counterpart in the Holy Sayings, nor is there any coherence [ot)5E)iia 
dKoXo\)6ia] in these meanings but they are full of contradictions [jid/Exai 
Ttpoq dXXTjXa] (7). — He invested all his cunning and effort in reading and 
instilling (his doctrines) into the words [{>no^6Xkz\.v xe Kal -unoxiGEvai 
pTiiiaoiv] of the Lord and the Apostle (60). — ^They are the ones who truly, 
to their own perdition, twist and distort [axp£pXo\)vx£(; Kal 
6iaaxp£(povx£q] the sayings of the Lord, the citations from the Apostle 
Paul, and other Scriptures (27). — The heretics adulterate 
[KaxaKip5T|X£voT)ai] the Holy Words . . . they obscure their impious 
thought [x6 6\)ao£P£(; ETiioKid^ovai (ppovTijia] (152). — One heretical 
leader used, on the face of them, the ecclesiastical words [xdq 
EKKXTiaiaaxiKaq Xe^ek;], under which he was hiding [EKpvTixEv] the 
deadly poison of apostasy (81); and he tinged (the impieties) with orthodox 
words [pT|)iaoiv opGoSo^OK; ETiixpcovvvvxcx;] (74). — His words were the 
familiar and common ones [xd pr^axa Tjoav xov GEdxpot) Kal Koivd], 
but the meanings of these words were those of apostasy and were secret [xd 
6T|Xo-6nEva xf|<; dTioaxaaiaq Kal ixDoxiKd] (76). — The heretics make a 
travesty of the Words of the Lord [xEpaxoXoyouvxEq xd SEOTioxiKd 
prmaxa] (21). 

Behind the heretic's verbal defense against accusations the Patriarch 
senses an unholy case of "heretical semantics." While overtly pronouncing 



Henry and Ren6e Kahane 259 

the traditional religious words the heretic covertly substitutes his own, quite 
devious, meaning for the one accepted by Orthodoxy. The following are 
examples of such strategy, with emphasis on the terminology of 
"distortion." For Theotokos, "Godbearing," that is, Mother of God, they 
substitute [{ino^aXXovxai] Heavenly Jerusalem, which (with an allusion to 
Hebr. 6:20) "Christ entered as precursor for us," and by this switch they 
show that they do not recognize the Virgin Mary (19). — For the word [xfi 
(pcovfi] "baptism" they substitute [hno^dXXovizc,] the sayings of the 
Gospel (as spoken by tiie Lord in John 4:10-14): "I am the living water," 
and thereby reveal their rejection of baptism as a sacred rite (30). — For the 
"cross" the deceivers and sorcerers dream up the meaning [avajiXxxxTovTeq] 
"Christ Himself," visualized with outstretched arms (that is, different from 
the Crucifix) (22). — ^The terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are pious, to 
be sure, but the heretics impute to them [hno^aXXovxec, 5e xavxaK;] the 
extreme impiety. . . . When they say "Father" they don't proclaim [ox> . . . 
dvaKTjpvxTovteq] Him "the Almighty" . . . , but they link [iniovv- 
dTixo-uoiv] the term "Father" with "Uie heavenly," thereby completely 
denying to Him the sovereign power over both heaven and earth (17). With 
these changes in the Creed their dualism becomes manifest: they confess 
two principles [6vo dpxcc<; op-oXoyouaiv], as the Manichaeans do, 
distinguishing between two Gods, the heavenly father [xbv eTtoupdviov 
Tiaxepa] and the demiurge of the material world [xov STmio-upyov xov 

KOOIiOv] (15). 

4. Illusions. Another trait of the heretics likewise rooted in language, 
which the Patriarch denounces, is their urge to identify with persons and 
features of primitive, prevalentiy Pauline, Christianity. They realize their 
compulsion in two ways: either they feign to be someone they are not, or 
they transfer the nomenclature of orthodoxy onto their own heretical 
institutions. 

(a) The alter ego. Sergius, that central figure of the movement, tended 
to identify himself with higher beings, and the verbs of self-assertion, which 
verbalize the transformation, commonly express Uieir inherent autism either 
by the reflexive pronoim ea-uxov, "himself," or by a middle- voice ending. 
The Patriarch accuses Sergius: he did not shrink from "naming himself 
[KaXeiv ea\)x6v] Paraclete and Holy Ghost nor from letting his disciples 
call and perceive him [6vo}j.d^eiv xe Kal vo|a.{^£iv] in this way" (97). — In 
a similar passage the term for Sergius' self-glorification is even stronger: he 
celebrated himself [{)\ivG}v eavxov] as the Holy Ghost (1 14). Sergius called 
himself "doorkeeper, shepherd, and guide" HkolXzi . . . eauxov Kal 
Gvpcopov Kal 7toi|j.eva Kal oStjyov] (118) and, quite in line with such a 
self-image, transformed himself into Tychicus, a disciple of St. Paul's, 
whom the AposUe called "beloved brother" (Eph. 6:21) and "fellow-servant 
in the Lx)rd" (Col. 4:7): Sergius not only usurped the name [ox> xr\v kXtjoiv 
ekkXetcxwv ^lovov] but remodeled in his own image and faked and 



260 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

appropriated [zic, ea-utov ixexanXdoawv Kal napaxapdaocov Kal 
\)7iopaX^6)ievo(;] the very identity of Tychicus (113). 

The link to Paulinism, sharply stressed in Photius' portrait of Sergius, 
was cultivated, indeed, by the Paulicians. The practice started with 
Constantine, the organizer of the movement (seventh century, from 
Armenia): he pretended to be [eavxov eXeyEv eivai] the one whom the 
Letters of Paul the inspired mention under the name of Silvanus; he was the 
travel companion of Paul in Phihppi (Acts 16:19 ff.) (63). The expression, 
much in vogue, of "belonging" by adopting the name of a Pauline disciple 
produced a considerable accumulation of synonyms for "name-changing": 
ea-oTov ^eT(ov6|j,aaev (5) / ea-uxov |iExovo|j.aod|j.evo^ (8) / ea-uxov 
^lexEKaXeaEv (8) / amov £itcov6p.a^Ev (113) / ^ExaPEpXruxEvoq to 
Kijpiov (the name) (8) / xyyj K^ficnv (the name) ^EtESEto (69). The 
metonymy spread from humans to places. The Patriarch castigated the 
Paulicians' phony practice of designating their churches, and thereby their 
townships, by the terminology sanctified by the Pauline Letters (12-14). 
He mentions such names as <b\k\.nny\<5\o\. / 'EcpEoioi / KoXaoaaEiq, as well 
as AaoSvKEiq, after a letter apparently sent to the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16). 
One church is called 'Axaia, after the Achaians mentioned in 2 Cor. 1:1; 
another one, MaKESovia, after the area of Paul's travels (Acts 16:11-12; 
17:1). 

(b) Lexical Camouflage. The heretics hide behind the language of 
orthodoxy: they feign to rely on and they pretend to lay claim to 
[npoaavEXEvv ymoiikaxxovxcLx. . . . dvxi7ioiEia9ai oxT||i,at(^ovtai] the 
Words of the Lord and the Letters of the Apostle Paul; and the Patriarch 
qualifies their citation of the sources as done in a malicious and dishonest 
spirit (52). — The act of make-believe is expressed by some verbs for 
"naming" which tie a good "word" to a bad "thing": While they stamp the 
true Christians as "Romans," they claim the label "Christians" for 
themselves [Ea-uio^ xriv kXtjoiv tojv Xpiatiavwv TTEpidnxovaiv] (16). 
— One of the leaders, Gegnesius, is described as calling his own impiety 
"orthodox" [6p065o^ov KaXSv to oikeiov daEPtijia] (75). — They call 
their assemblies a "Catholic Church" [KaGoXiicnv EKKXriaiav xd Eavxcbv 
KaXooai a^)V£5pia] (29). — Gegnesius expresses the same simile with 
more elaborate verbs: He perceived and extolled the assemblies of the 
Manichaeans as the "Catholic Church" [xd avvESpia x©v Mavixaicov 
KaGoXiKTiv EKKXtjoiav EVEvoEi XE Kttl dTiEOEixvuvEv] (79). — Also the 
townships with the Pauline names, which are the centers of their 
organization and indoctrination [<r6axri|ia Kal 5i5aaKaXia] (14), are their 
so-called "churches" [al XEyo^Evai EiocXriaiai] (15). 

5. Propaganda. The expansionist zeal of the heretics, with its inroads 
into the ranks of orthodoxy, weighs on the Patriarch's mind. It stimulates 
many remarks of his, directed against their campaigning, which, as a whole, 
yield the terminology of a missionary movement — as seen by its opponent 



Henry and Ren^e Kahane 26 1 

The language dwells on three aspects of the process: the tactics of the 
preachers, the ways of the people who become their willing victims, and the 
fate in store for them. 

(a) The Missionaries. The emissaries of heresy are teachers and heralds 
[SiSdoKaXoi Kttl icTipvKEq] (102), handling indoctrination and propaganda. 
The qualifications for the selection of heralds are stated: those whom the 
leaders found excelling in impiety, and very active in evildoing [x&v 
aXkdiv in\ xfi 6Doa£Peia Siacpepovxaq, Kal SpaaxTipiotx; ovxa<; to 
KaKOTioifjaav], they sent out into new lands as heralds of lawlessness 
[Kx\pvKaq XT\q dvofj-ioc;] (3). One herald of impiety [Kr\p-o% vf\c, aoe^eiac,], 
who had passed through many towns and countries, is depicted as more 
ardent [didnvpoq] than any one before him, hunting, deceiving, ensnaring 
souls [6tip©v, dTiaxSv, nayi^Evcav . . . \|/\)xd<;] (115). This very man, 
Sergius, most persuasive in preaching impiety [icripv^ai xr[v doi^Eiav] 
(96), had himself been defiled in his youth by a woman teaching and 
preaching [yuvaiKi xivi npeo^Evovar] xe Kal icripvxxovaTi] the destructive 
doctrines of the Manichaeans (101). 

When the missionary was taken for a teacher [SiSdoKaXoq] (66, 69) or, 
with emphasis on the religious aspect, for a mystagogue [^voxaycoYoq] 
(3), that designation was usually qualified by some negatively slanted 
epithet such as of apostasy [djioaxaaiaq] (69) or of perdition [djicoXeiac;] 
(66) or of defilement [^ivaouq] (3). These agents work in the area assigned 
to or selected by them, from a base of operations described as a workshop of 
error [epYaaxripiov xfjq nXayr^c^ (66) or an impious school [5t)aaePe<; 
SiSaoKdJliov] (8). One so-called teacher of piety and leader of salvation 
[5i5daKaXo(; zxioz^ziac^ Kal oStjycx; acoxripiac;] is singled out by the 
Patriarch as an example of heretic strategy. By using the simile of Matt. 
7:15, about "hiding the wolf in a sheepskin" [kwSio) npopdxov xov Xiokov 
EvaTioKp-uKxojv], Photius portrays Sergius as a pseudo-prophet. In order to 
"take the sting out" of his dissolute deeds and sacrilegious tenets, Sergius 
made them less revulsive by pruning his filth, covering up his 
licentiousness, toning down his profanities, or blending the intolerable with 
the tolerable [KEpiKonxcov / ETiiKaX-unxcov / ovoxeXXcov / Kaxa^iyvvq] 
(110). 

In several places the heretics' involvement in propaganda and 
indoctrination is expressed by the old simile of "the weeds sown among the 
wheat" (Matt. 13:25). The very terms of the passage in St. Matthew are 
echoed in a reference to early Paulician activity: disciples of Manes sowed 
the weed of the devil [xd xov) novripoO ^i^dvia EyKaxEOTiEipav] (55). — 
According to the Patriarch, an Armenian apostate, upon arriving in the area 
of his activity, devoted himself to sowing impiety [oKEipcov i<5no\>ZaZ,z 
XTiv doEPEiav] (72). — And one of the villages received in its womb the 
seeds of impiety [xd xr\c^ doz^ziac, EVEKv^iovriaE axcEpixaxa] (3). 



262 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

(b) The Misguided. The human beings who succumb easily to the lure 
of the missionaries are seen from various angles. One view is expressed 
through words of folksy psychology: the leaders corrupt the souls of men 
[vj/vxat; dvGpcoTicov] (84); and the deceived [o'l TiTtaxTmevoi] (97) are rather 
slow-witted [vcoQeaxepoi] (52). Another perception of the victims is 
couched in sociological terms: they are, essentially, the people [6 Xaoc;] 
(143) and the natives [ol e7x«)pioi] (64) defined by their habitat, such as a 
small town [kcdiit] / 7toA.{xvTi / TioXi/viov] or a village [xtopCov] (3, 13), or 
by their education, such as the fairly ignorant [ol anA^ovaxepoi] (115). One 
of the leaders-to-be, when brought around as a young man, was still of the 
common herd and boorish [tcov dyeXaicov , . . Kal dypoiKcov] (106). 
Even an Orthodox missionary sent out to spread his creed among the 
Paulicians turned out to be so ignorant [d)ia9ri<;] of the true dogma, light- 
minded [xdq (ppevaq Kotxpoq], and easy to lead astray [evnapdyoyyoq] that 
he succumbed to their pernicious superstition (68). 

And the Patriarch scoffs at the blind admiration which precisely the 
simple people feel toward their seducers. The verbs he uses mark their 
heresy as a cult in itself. Today's children of the Manichaeans deify and 
honor [Geid^ouoi Kal TiepieTio-uaiv] Constantine (the early Paulician leader) 
to the highest degree, and they worship [yepaCpovai] his successors like the 
Apostles of Christ, to say the least (62). — When the heretics split, some 
of them deify [Geonoiovai] Baanes, and the others Sergius (11). — The 
wretched [xd^iocveq] disciples of Sergius carry matters so far as to seal their 
prayers in his name [ev tw ovoixaxi avxoti xdq ihiac, Tipooe-oxdq . . . 
knxQv^payilpxxsw]. The Patriarch calls these prayers ''barkings" [{)>xxKd<;] 
(117). 

(c) Into the Abyss. The Patriarch's vision of the fate destined for the 
misled is apocalyptic. The dire predictions which run through the AiTiynoK; 
point to the impact of apostasy on the gullible. Among the verbs picturing 
that effect the basic meaning "drag" is dominant, which locates the victims' 
guilt in their lack of resistance. One of the leaders is described as pulling 
down [Kaxaavpcov] the ones who trusted in him, into the pit of perdition 
(90). — Another found people, whom he attracted to himself so as to trust 
him [ov(; eiXicuoe TieCGeoGai aijxw] (63). — A third one is quite skillful 
in drawing the souls of men {\fx>xa.c, dvGpwKcov ovveXK-uoai] to their 
perdition (96). — The same leader hurled [KaxEKprmviaev] many into the 
abyss of utter perdition, who, in their lack of awareness [dnpooTixox;], were 
swallowed up [KaxaTcoGevxeq] by him (1 10). — One of the seducers' 
successes is, finally, described in the language of warfare: dragging many 
off as booty, away from orthodoxy [tcoXXoix; dno xfi<; euaePeiaq 
avA,a70)yri<Ja<;] (70). 

6. Summary. In an analysis focused on the key words of a movement, 
the text from which these are abstracted "creates" its own linguistic field and 
in the case at hand the text is an Orthodox treatise directed against a sect and 



Henry and Ren6e Kahane 263 

assessing it as heretical. "Heresy," in short, evolves as the hyperonym of 
the field. With that generic concept in the negative, the field turns into a 
unified structure of negative ideology: the hyperonym transmits the 
negativism to its constituents, the key concepts; and these transfer it to the 
broadly synonymous lexemes, which actually express the "values." The 
effect is what Antonio Gramsci, the Italian linguist, called "a single cultural 
climate."^'' 

But the Patriarch's negative language vilifying the Paulician heresy, 
which he usually labels "apostasy," conceals a word portrait exalting 
orthodoxy. The negative values insinuate their positive correlates: "they 
lie" implies that "we speak the truth." This function of the underlying 
antonymy underpins the exegesis, proffered by Thomas Aquinas, of the 
Pauline maxim (1 Cor. 11:19), bzi Kal alpeoeiq Eivai "there must also be 
heresies": that orthodoxy is brought into relief if it is seen against its 
counterpoint, heresy.^* 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

^ H. and R. Kahane (above, note 1). 152. 

^ Cf. H. Gnmdmann, "Oportet el haereses esse: Das Problem der Ketzerei im Spiegel der 
miuelalterlichen Bibelexegese" (1963), rq)r. in op. cit. (above, note 36) , p. 361. 



Grammar and Rhetoric 

in Euthymius Zigabenus' Commentary 

on Psalms 1-50 

THOMAS M. CONLEY 



The Commentary on Psalms of Euthymius Zigabenus was first published ir 
the West in Venice, in 1763, by A. Bongiovanini, together with a 
translation (of sorts) by Saul, the bishop of Brugnato.^ Zigabenus' skill as a 
commentator was recognized by Vossius (1661) and admired by Pere Simon 
before the Venice edition,^ and evidently was also admired by Nicephorus 
Blemnydes, who seems to have borrowed rather extensively from Zigabenus 
in his commentaries on Psalms? Zigabenus' work is, in any event, one of 
the few complete commentaries on Psalms which survive from the 
Byzantine exegetical tradition. 

The merits of Zigabenus' commentary were noted by Martin Jugie in a 
brief article he published in 1912, substantially repeating the judgment of 
Krumbacher.'* Both indicate that Zigabenus' principal sources are to be 
found in Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and Hesychius 
of Jerusalem.^ True as that may be in broad "doctrinal" terms (Zigabenus' 
occasional references to the anagogic sense of a phrase or verse are 
consistent with those used by these predecessors), there is an important 
aspect of Zigabenus' exegetical practice which cannot be derived from these 

* This is the text published in Migne, Palrologia Graeca 128. On the publishing history, see 
Martin Jugie, art. "Euthymius Zigabene," Dictionnaire de Thdologie Catholique 5, coL 1580. 

^ R. Simon, Histoire critique des principaux convnentateurs du Nouveau Testament (1693), p. 
409; I. Vossius, De septuaginia interpretibus (1661), p. 67. 

^ I have examined this question in "Blemnydes' Debt to Euthymios Zigabenos," Greek, 
Roman, and Byzantine Studies 26 (1985). 303-09. 

^ See M. Jugie."La vie el les oeuvrcs d'Eulhyme Zigabene," ^cAoj d'Orient 15 (1912), 215- 
25; K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur (1897), p. 83. 

' Jugie,"La vie," 220; Kiumbacher, loc. cit. 



266 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

"principal sources" and which, to my knowledge, has never been noted, 
explored, or explained. I refer to the frequent clarification Zigabenus is able 
to bring to the text as a result of his grammatical and rhetorical 
observations, examples of which I have gathered from his comments on 
Psalms 1-50. Some recognition of this aspect of his work is in order, 
since it is so crucial to his exegesis. His use of grammar and rhetoric 
raises, as well, important questions about the nature of the "tradition" 
behind his commentary, and the setting in which it was composed.^ 

I 

1. Grammar 

(a) Syntactical observations. On two dozen occasions or so, Zigabenus 
makes observations on syntactical problems in the Greek: e.g., ad 22:4, 
305A: 

eaxi 5e Kal t| avvxa^iq omox;, "Avxai p.e TiapEKocXeaav, ti 
pdpSoq oo-u Kal fi PaKTT|p{a gov." "napeKaXeaav" dvxl to\) 
"evo-uGetTioav." 6 ydp vo\)0exa)v, napaKokei Kal eXkev npoq 
TO cruncpepov 

Compare ad 16:4, 216A; 26:3, 321A; 28:5, 333D; 28:6, 336A; 28:9, 
337A; 31:8, 364D,'' all of which are equally elementary. In addition to 
these, Zigabenus' observations sometimes focus on apparent pleonasm: 
e.g., ad 35:2, 405CD: 

to "(pTjalv" dvxl xov "oiexai," vorjaeK;- Kal to "tov" nepiTTov 
IV ' fi TOioi)To<; 6 vo\>q, oiETai 6 Tiapdvojioq d)iapTdveiv , . , 
Tot)TeaTiv ev [i6vr\ xt\ eavTou a-uvEiSriaei XeXtiGotccx; ox; ^ti5£v 

T0\) 0EOt> P^7tOVTO<; 

Compare ad 36:22, 421B; 34:24, 404A; 36:25, 421D; 37:11, 433C; 38:7, 
444A.^ These observations coordinate with others which we will see later 
on the general subject of the difficulties caused by apparent pleonasm. 

(b) "Hebraisms." Sometimes syntactical problems arise, Zigabenus 
teaches, from the persistence of Hebrew "idiom" in the LXX translation. 
Cf., e.g., ad 24:6: 

^ I have used the less than perfect text in Migne, limiting my observations to the first fifty 
Psalms. Nothing Zigabenus does later alters the general picture we get from his comments on 
1-50. 

' See also ad 17:26, Kal eaxi x6 oxnjiot, ovona AvtI nexoxtii;, "oaxoc," dvxl tow 
"ooiajv"; 24:6; 24:8; 34:1; 34:14; 36:1; 37:11 (noting a pleonasm); 38:6; 41:6; 43:4; 44:6; 
49:19. 

^ See also ad 4:4, 93C; 24:11. 309B (involves Hebraism); 39:9. 453B; 39:13. 456D; 40:9. 
465 A; 43:22, 485C (in the midst of a series of observations on periphrasis). 



Thomas M. Conley 267 

tot "iXi-r\" 6e dSiacpopox; Kaxa aixiaxiK-nv Trtcbaiv 
leGeiKaCTiv ol Epp.TiveTq, r[ cue, Kal xt\c, 'E^pdiboc, Xi^eaic, 
eKeivTjq xoia-uTTiv ixovicriq titcooiv, 

and ad 41:5, 469B: 

XPT] 5e KaQ6Xox> YiyvcooKeiv, caq t\ xcov 'EPpa{cov 6id>.eKT0<;, 
d6ia(p6pco(; (oq ini to nXziaxov, ta^ ov\xdb,zai KEXpTixai, 
KaGdnep Kal vvv, "in" ep.e" eiTiovaa dvxl xoti "ev e|xo{." 

See also ad 24:11, 309B; 38:6, 441D; 41:5, 469B; 50:21, 560D (explains 
enallage of tense). "Hebraism" also explains, for instance, why the plural is 
sometimes found instead of the singular: e.g., 2:1-2, SOD; 8:4, 133 A; 9:11, 
145D; 15:6, 200C; 18:2, 252A; 47:3, 520B; or explains instances of 
periphrasis: ad 4:3, 93B; 8:5, 133D, and so on.' Often the sense of the 
Greek is clear only when one knows the Hebrew "idiom," as at, for 
example, 9:28, 157C; 30:3, 348BC; 30:11, 352C.io Most of what 
Zigabenus knew of Hebrew, presumably, was received information. 

2. Schemes and Tropes 

Zigabenus frequently identifies and explains the Psalmist's use of 
schemes and tropes. 

(a) KaxdxpTiaK;: adl:3, 117A: 

KaxaxpTjoxiKcoxEpa 6e xt\c, "apnayr\c," t] Xi^iq, evxevGev • 
5T|Xo{)aT|(; dcpaipeaiv, 

and ad 8:8, 136C; and 48:9 f., 529C: 

xot)XO ydp x6 "^TioExai ziq xeA.o<;," ^toTjv 5e X-eyei xtiv K'upico(; 
Kal ocTtovov -q ydp £vxat>9a KaxaxpiloxiKcii^, (nq 
7iapa5i6oxai, 

the last words of which also indicate received tradition. 

(b) Ppaxv)XoYva: ad 26:3, 321A; 28:9, 337A; 34:24, 404A; and, of 
particiJar interest, ad 1 1:7: 

Ax>Yia Se EiTiEv, o\) Ka9' "bnoKpia^iov zvxeXeiaq, dXX' oxi xo\>q 
XpTjoixo-ix; Xoyia [i.e., oracles] EKdXouv 6id x-qv PpaxiiXoyiav 
aiL)xa)v. £v oXiYaiq ydp ^.e^eoi, jiEydXTiv SiSva^iv ivvoiaq 

£|J.7lEpiElXOV. 



'Also, ad 19:1. 265A; 24:5. 305C; 24:11. 390C; 37:8. 443A; 38:7. 444B; 39:2. 448D; 
41:5. 469B; 47:3.5208. 

1° See also 39:2. 448D; 7 Prol.. 1 13D; 9:28. 157C; 9:6. 144B; 9:1 1. 145D f. 



268 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Zigabenus, in short, makes clear what he sees as David's rhetorical aim here. 
We shall see more of this below. 

(c) EK napaXX-qXoM: At ad 43:4, 480C, Zigabenus is able to settle a 
dispute by reference to this schema: 

(aXX' "H 5£^id aox>, Kal 6 ppaxicov oov) tive<; 6e4iav jxev, 
Xiyox>ai xr\\ PoTjGeiav xiveq 6e, Tfjv SiSva^iiv. aXXoi 6e Kal 
a^(pto TTiv 6t)va)iiv oTi|iaivEiv ek napaXXv{Xox). 

See also ad 8:5, 133D; 36:8, 416C; 38:13, 448A. 

(d) KXeovao[i6c,: Zigabenus notes several instances of figurative 
pleonasmos (as recognized and defined by the authors of the rhetorical 
handbooks)^ ^ particularly as achieved by £7iixaai(;, dvaSiTiXtoaiq, 
Ttepitppotou;, and vnEpPatov. 

1. knixaoxc,-}^ 2:12, 88AB; 6:7, lllB; 9:6, 144B (to "Eiq tov 
alSva TO\) aitbvoq," ETtCxaoK;, avxl to\> M-EXPi- 7iavT6<;); 39:1, 
448D (on "vnojiEvcov \)7i£p.Eiva," 6 xoiovtoq 6i7iX,aoiao)i6(;, 
a-uvTiGrjc; \ihf xdic, 'Eppaioiq- eoxv Se e^kpocvxikck; EniTdaEOx;, dx; 
TO "l5o)v i6ov" Kal "YiyvtboKcov yvcboTi"). See also ad 48:2, 
525BC. 

2. dvaSiTiXcDOK;:^^ We see an example at 39:2, cited just above; 
but see also ad 1:4, 77C; 21:5, 277B {emphasis noted there, too); 
23:8, 301B; 34:21, 401B (to "evye," naXaxbv r\\ £7ii<p(bvTi|i.a 
Twv EVTVTxavovTOJv ov) Ti^xovTO 5id TOt) SiTiXacnaojxoi) ttiv 
ayav fi5ov'nv To\i 7ipdY^aTo<; £|A(paivov); 49:7, 54 ID (see 
below, p. 270, section I. 3). 

3. TCEpicppaoK;:''* Cf., e.g., ad 4:3, 93B (mentioned above under 
"Hebraisms"); 5:13, 108A ("\)l6v"Ydp KaXEi "5\)vd^£co<;" tov 
5\)vaT6v, Kal "av5pa al|idT(ov" tov (poviKov); 7:6, 120B; 10:1, 
165B; 16:13, 213B ( . . . ti, twv tioXeij-ovvtcov "tti XEipi oov," 
8TiXa6Ti "ooi," TiEpKppaaTiKwq); 28:2, 332D; 32:21, 380A; 



^^ Phoebammon, n. ox- 8.498 f. Walz, lists eleven kinds of pleonasm: TawxoXoYia, 
avaSCnXojoii;, enavacpopd, endvo8o(;, enavaXriyK;, nepicppaoii;, en{<ppaaiq, 
napovojiaaia, ene^TJyTioii;, eTtinovfi, and enitaaiq. This tradition goes back at least to the 
second century (cf . Tryphon and Tiberios on schemata) and carries on through the later Greek 
Middle Ages. 

^^ Cf., e.g., Phoebammon 8.501W: enixaaiq is an enijiovti^ eiSo(; ovk enioiiq 6e 
8r|Xx)wv TO npayfux. Compare John Sikeliotes In Herm. de ideis 6.56 ff. W; "Phoebammon," 
In Herm. de ideis, Rabe Prolegomenon Sylloge 377.11, 378.5. 

" Cf. Alexander 8.462W; Phoebammon 8.499W; Zonaios 8.682W; Anon. 8.707W. 

^* See Phoebammon 8.500W (achieves [leyaXonpzntia); Zonaios 8. 689W; Tryphon 
8.742W (ncp{<ppaai(; . . . nXeiooi Xe^em Tiapioxdvovoa jier' aw^fjoeox; to •unoKeinevov 
npayna); Gregory of Corinth 8.771W (6id nXeiovcov avxb to Kvpiov SriXovoa, npbq 
ax)^r\aiv tov oimcxivonevou). 



Thomas M. Conley 269 

34:12, 397B; 37:4, 429C (to "ano npooamoro Tr\<; opyfiq oov" Kal 
"dcTio npoadmov xwv a^iapxiSv \JiOv" Kal "ccnb npoacoTtoi) Tqq 
dcppocruvTiq iiov," Kal xoiauxa, Kaxa Tiepicppaaiv eipuxai, dvxl 
xo\) "5id TTiv opyriv oov". . .)}^ 

4. vTcepPaxov:^^ ad 13:1, 18 IC (vooixo 6' av Ka9' -uTiEpPaxov 6 
aiixoq, oxi "5ie(p0dpT|aav" ev E7tixT|5ev}j.aai Kal 
Ep5eUx0Tioav); 39:5, 449CD: 

eaxi 6e t) xov 7tap6vxo<; prijoai c-ovxa^ic, ovxox;- "^o^Kctpioq, ov 
avxov eaxi x6 ovojxa Kvpio-u eXnic," SwdiJ-eGa 5e Kal aXk(oc, 
xovxo vofjoai Tiepl xwv XpioxiavSv, Ka9' -uTiEppaxov 
a'uvxdxxovxE<; ouxocx;- 'VotKapioq, ot) eoxiv iXnic, x6 ovojia 
Kvpio-u av)xo\)"- Tiavxl Se Xpiaxiav© x6 ovo|j.a xov Xpiaxou 
Eoxw eXtiIc; Kal oonripia. 

Cf. also ad 44:6, 493A. 

(e) ixExacpopd:^"^ Zigabenus frequently notes those passages where he 
thinks David is expressing himself "metaphorically," a term which covers a 
wide range of expressions. Cf., e.g., ad 2:12, 88AB (see under epitasis 
above); 16:7, 209D: 

EXEpav EiKOva (p-uXaKfiq E"upd)v . . . ek ixExacpopaq x©v xaiq 

EaVXWV TlXEpU^l OKE7c6vX(OV XOXiC, VEOXXOVq TCETEIVWV . . . ; 

22:2, 292C; 44:7, 493C ("6 0p6vo(;" paaiXEiag ©v ovuPoXov, ttiv 
Paoi^Eiav aivixxExai); 48:5, 528B.^* We might include here two 
instances of synecdoche (not explicitly identified as such by Z.): ad 21:5, 
281B ("KoiXiav" 6£ XiyEi vvv, x6 KoXhjov oXov xo\> oa)p.axo(;) and 50:10, 
556B (dno |i£po"uq Se, xwv oaxwv, oXov Ea\>x6v evecptive). 

(f) EpcoxTjOK;:^^ Cf. ad 14:1, 189B (^.omov ovv dvaKXEov xd pTjxd- 
oxTm-axi^Ei xov Xoyov o Aapi5 zic^ Eptbxriaiv . . .); 14:2, 189D (xouxo xv[(^ 
EpcoxTioEox; r\ dTiOKpiaiq, iac, ekeivo^ napovKnaEi); 18:4, 252D; 23:3, 
300A (5i' Epomiaiv axriixaxiaaq 6 npcKpT|XT|<; x6 npoXxxPov pTixov).^'' 

'^ See also ad 8:5. 133D (Hebraism); 26:11 f., 325AB: 28:3. 333B (iSiojjia . . . -riiq 
TtaXaiou;): 37:13, 436A; 41:6. 472A; 43:21. 485BC: 43:25, 448A. 

^^ Cf.. e.g., Tiberios, n. ox. 8.561W; Phoebammon 8.501W; Zonaios 8.689W; Anon.. 
8.7 1 3 W. 

^' Cf. Tryphon 8.729W (Xe^iq \i.tzctx^tpo\ii\r\ dno -cov Kvpiox) oti to \lx\ Kvpiov. 
ejicpdaecoq i) ojioicDoe&x; evewx; cf. Anon. 8.7 15W and Choiroboskos 8.804W). 

^«See also ad 6:18. 129A: 8:5. 133C; 16:13. 213A: 26:5, 3210; 27:1, 328A; 40:9. 465B; 
45:7. 509C; 46:2. 513B. 

'' Cf.. e.g., Phoebammon 8.496W; Herodian 8.597W (eptanioii; eon Xoyoi; ev vnoKpCoei 
Xeyojievoq eni t^ oaqieotepov yvcivai xi toav eni^titovjievoav). Also, Anon.,7t. 0%. 
8.632W. 

20 See also a<i 38:8. 445A; 40:9. 465A; 48:5. 528C; 48:8, 529 A. 



270 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

(g) Tipoaconov / TipootoTioTioua:^^ Cf. ad 13:7, 188A; 26:8, 324C 
(TipoawTiov 5e zov Aapi5 avxbc, 6 Aapi6, Kaxa Ttepicppaaiv); 49:3, 541A 
(oKOTiEi 5e oti Kttl Mto-uofiq eioayaYOJV xov Xaov eiq xtiv yfiv 
|idpT\)paq Tcov o\)v0t|kcov napiXa^zv . . . eoti 6e to axfjiia 
jipoocoTioTioua, OTi Toiq axj/tJ/OK; e|x\j/"6xcov owixata TtepixiGeixev). 

(h) E|i(potai(;:^ Forceful expression (including that which, in English, 
"emphasizes") and allusive or connotative expression (where emphasis 
comes close to ainigma) are both results of many of the schemata we have 
seen in Zigabenus' commentaries on the text. See, e.g., ad 9:30, 160C: 

E^riYEixai 5£ Kttl XTiv apTiayfiv oxi kXKX>c\i6c, eoxi, 6va Se ir\<; 
£7iavaA.Tiv|/£C0(; xov ovo^axoc, apTiayfjc;, £|X(pa{vEi oxzxXiaa\i6v. 
r\ Kttl 5ia xr\q a-ovEXEiai; xcov 7ia0TixiKcov pTjudxcov, 6i£YEip£i 
xov 6e6v Eiq d|j.\)aov. 

Also, ad 17:4, 221B: 

xoaa\Jxa EiTtcov, dvaicoK^ioi xov Xbyov Kal Kaxa^EyEt xox>q 
TioiKvXotx; aiixot* kiv6'uvo'u<;, Kal xotq 7ioX^)£i6£i(; EKiKo-upiac; 

XOX) 0£O\i. XpOTllKcbxEpOV Se Xp SlTiynOEl TtpOq TlA-ElOVa XCDV 

Tipayjidxcov £|x<paaiv. 

And cf. ad 18:4, 253B; 21:5, 277B; 24:4, 305A; 27:1, 325D; 27:4, 328D 
{xavxoXoyia); 28:1, 322B (dva6{7tXcooi(;); 36:14, 417D; 41:3, 468D (ti 
Xi^ic, £^(pa(v£i); 44:2, 489A; 45;9, 512BC. Some of these we shall see 
later. 

3. Rhetoric/Audience 

Zigabenus' readings frequently go beyond the traditional "grammatical" 
identification of odd expressions and standard schemes and tropes as they 
appear in the text. On more than two dozen occasions in his remarks on the 
first fifty Psalms he explains the rhetorical function of a given expression, 
namely, the intended rhetorical effect on the audience. See, for example, ad 
7:14, 125AB, which I quote in extenso: 

XPT] dk YtyvcboKEiv, a><; ei Kal dvGpcoTciva xd prmaxa, dXXa 
0£O7ipE7ifi xd voTiixaxa- Kal napEXaPE xtiv Tiax'uxTixa xwv 
Xe^ecov, oSaxE xfi<; xcov aKpoaxcov naxoxr[xoq KaOiKEoOai. 

^ Cf. Phoebammon 8.509W; Choiroboskos 8.816W (who cites Ps. 19:1 as an example); and 
Anon.. Ttepl noniTiKciv tp., 8.722W (f) Toiq dyvxci^ npoacoitov npoxiGrioa Kai Xoyovq 
awToit; ap^oSCoue; jipoadTtTowoa; with which Zigabenus ad 49:3, quoted below, should be 
compared). 

^^ Cf. Tiberios, n. tp. 8.543W (oxav (if) avto xiq XerfXi to npayna, aXXd 5\' exepcov 
eji<pa{vp); Planudes, ax- E^ iSeSv, 5.479 f. W. 



Thomas M. Conley 271 

5ia TOVTO yap Kal po|j.(pa{av eladyei xov Geov exovxa, Kal 
To^ov, Kal PeXt), Kal oKevTj noXefxiKa, Kal oiiXPovvta, Kal 
evTEivovxa, iva tov (p6Pov zoic, dKpoaxaic; dnb toutcov 
ax)t,r[ar[, Kal 6id xwv auvxpocpcov ovojidxcov Kaxaaeiari xfiv 
XiGivTiv at)x©v 5idvoiav. . , . 

Zigabenus' comments ad 16:12, 212D are also worth noting: 

o-u5ev 5e KcoXvei xavxb Kal d|i.(p(o SriXoaiv el'coGe ydp 
noXkoiKic, ev xoi(; 7ra6TixiKoi(; XoyoK; 6 npo(pT|XTi(; xavxoXoyeiv, 
ev •uTtaA.A.aya^ Xe^ecoq, iva a-o^riaTi x6 ndQoc,, eic, eXeov 
e7ii07tdaT|xai. 

See also ad 24:4, 305A: 

x6 av)x6 6i' d|i(poxepcov Xeyei xcbv prixcov, ox; el'coOe Jtoieiv ev 
noXkoic,, en(paivcov xtiv xdoiv . . . xr{C, KapSiaq. 

31:8, 364D: 

eipTiKa)iEv 6e noXXaKiq, oxi dno x©v dvGpcoTiwcov SiaOeaecov 
Ti ypacp-q axri|xaxi^Ei xd 0eia, a'ovKaxaPa{vo\)aa x^ daBevEia 

xcbv dKpOC0}J.EVC0V. 

36:8, 416D: 

opa 6e oTtox; ev dp^fi x6 "\ir[ Tiapa^Ti^oD," Svacppaaiv xeGeike. 
TtapaKaxiwv 6£, oacpEoxepov avxb TipoaxeGriKE- vtiv 5e* 
xE?i£Ov ai)x6 £aa(pTivioEv 7toXA,dKi(; 6£, xd at>xd XEyEi, Kal 
dvco Kal Kdxco oxpEcpEi, PEPa{av xfiv 5i5aaKaA.{av xaiq xwv 
dKpoaxSv v-uxaiq EvaTiEpydaaaGai 5id xr\c, ovvEXEiaq. . . . 

49:7, 541D: 

ESiTcXaaiaoE S-q x6 "6 Qeoq" eic, 6iao'up|i6v xfiq dvaioGiiaiaq 
Kal 7taxt>XT|xo(; xcbv aKoSv a-uxwv, 

Cf. also ad 21:5, 277B; 23:8, 301C; 36:14, 417D; 36:25, 424A; 36:30, 
425 A; 36:34, 428A; 48:2, 525BC; 49:1, 527C. 



It is clear from this brief conspectus that Zigabenus has a good deal to 
say in his Commentary on grammatical and rhetorical matters. His 
observations are scattered, uneven, and unsystematic, however. On Psalms 
12, 20, and 29, for instance, he has no such observations to make; on 24 
and 38, a great many. While there is no system, his choice of difficulties 
to focus on is not random, nor are his observations unconnected with one 
another. Zigabenus concentrates on difficulties which might arise over 



272 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Hebraisms embedded in the LXX text,^^ on difficulties a reader might 
encounter in construing the Greek of Psalms, and on David's use of 
figurative language. 

The point of most of the comments on passages which contain 
Hebraisms is usually that the troublesome Greek expressions are "normal" 
in Hebrew, or at least normal in the Hebrew style of the authors of Hebrew 
sacred scripture. As for the grammatical questions, it is remarkable how 
elementary most of the problems addressed are. It is not hard to imagine a 
student having trouble when he encountered a phrase which is proper in 
Hebrew but unusual in Greek; but it is often hard to see where any difficulty 
might have arisen over the text at, for example, 22:4, 293B; 16:4, 216A, or 
in most of the passages whose syntax Euthymius calls adiaphoros. All in 
all, the "problems" are quite elementary. 

Somewhat less elementary are problems which arise in passages where 
one expected verbal form is substituted for another (as at, e.g., 17:26, 237C, 
interestingly described as to axfj^a, ovo^a dvtl \)iZioxr\c^ or where 
pleonasm is encountered (as in ihose cases where a word is considered 
TtepitToq, e.g. ad 34:24, 404A; 35:2, 405C; 38:7, 444A; 43:22, 485C). 
Zigabenus' observations on those passages which exhibit £nuaai<; (e.g. 
2:12, 88AB; 9:6, 144B; 34:4, 393C), nepCcppaoK; (e.g. 7:6, 120B; 10:1, 
165B; 26:11 f., 325AB), oMabinXfuoxq (see ad 21:5, 277B; 23:8, 301 A; 
34:21, 401B), or vneppaTov (e.g. 39:5, 449CD; 44:6, 493A, cited there 
along with TiepicppaoK;) are similarly addressed to difficulties a student 
might have in recognizing deliberate pleonasmos. All of these schemata, it 
will be recalled, are associated with pleonasmos in the handbook tradition.^^ 

In that tradition, pleonasm is used by speakers and writers to achieve 
such effects as vividness, clarity and emphasis.^ So too the other tropes and 
figures noted by Zigabenus: epcot-noK;, npooomoTioua, synecdoche, and, 
above all, metaphor. It is these figures and tropes, it seems, that sum up 
what might be called David's style.^ 

But style is not merely a grammatical thing. Style, the Byzantines 
knew as well as the Ancients, has ends for which it is employed. Style, in 
short, is not just a matter of concern for grammar; it is rhetorical. It is in 
this way that Zigabenus' observations on audience, which we noted before, 
become noteworthy; and it is in those observations that one of the main 

^ Zigabenus, of course, almost certainly knew no Hebrew. Such infonmation appears in the 
various catenae, however. 

^ "Pleonasm" is a shifting concept in the tradition. It is counted as a schema by Alexander 
(8.421 f. W). Tiberios (8.527W), Zonaios (8.673W). and Phoebammon (8.497 f. W); a trope by 
Tryphon (8.726W) and Gregory of Corinth (8.761 f. W); and as a mere 7td9o<; oiXi%\c, (cf. 
Apollonius E>yskolos, De syniaxi [Uhlig-Schneider: Leipzig 1878-1910], I. ii. 149. 267. etc.; 
Manuel Moschopoulos. Opusc. Gram. [ed. Titze: Leipzig / Prague 1822]. pp. 27 ff.). 

25 Cf.. e.g.. Tiberios 8.563W; Phoebammon 8.501 ff. W; Gregory of Corinth 8.77 IW. 

^ Or perhaps, more generally, the "prophetic" style. 



Thomas M. Conley 



273 



goals of the commentary is achieved — to clear up whatever obscurities stem 
from the fact that {Proleg., p. 61D) 

6ia(p6poi(; Yotp KexptiTai to TtpcxpTjTiKov eGoq ei Kal jit] ev jiaai- 
a"oveaiciaaM.£va yap xd nXeiaxa 5id tt]v xa>v cxKpoaxwv 
dneiGeiav Kal OKXripoxTixa. 

m 

Zigabenus' commentary is unusual in paying so much attention to 
grammatical and rhetorical questions. No other Byzantine commentary, in 
fact, contains as much. Very little of it can be found in the "principal 
sources" Jugie points to; and not much more of it is to be found in those 
two "Antiochene" exegetes, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of 
Tarsus, 2^ both of whom wrote commentaries with which Zigabenus was 
evidently familiar. 

One must not, of course, confuse familiarity with influence. As it 
happens, such evidence as we find of Zigabenus' familiarity with Theodore 
and Diodorus is rather thin. I have been able to discover only the following 
possible resemblances: 



Theodore Mopsuestia 

ad 30:3: 'Yjiepdanioov xai 
ejidfivvov ev zoic, Kavoiq. 'I5ia)^a 
51 xo\)xo 'EPpaiKOv, dvxi xow 
•oTcepdoJiioov \iyt\v yevov \io\ ei^ 
Seov vnepaoJtioxTjv. 

Diodorus of Tarsus 

ad 16:8: jcapaPoXiK(b(; Xeyei "xa»v 
rtxepvywv oov" icai ^exaipopiKcbq mq 
ttTio xmv opvetov x&v xaiq nxepv^iv 
do9aXi^o^ev(ov xovq v£oxxov(;. 



Zigabenus 

x6 "eiq 6e6v ■ujiepaonioxriv" dvxl 
xo\) "Geoq •bnepaoniaxiiq"- I5i«>|j.a 
ydp xouxo XTiq IlaXaidq. 



16:7: . . , ek ^exa(popd(; x&v xaiq 
eavxwv Jixepv^i oketiovxwv xovq 
veoxxovq icexeivwv. 



ad 18:2: eitoOev ydp ev 7toXXoi(; xov 
eva TtXTiGvvxiKoiiq KaXeiv- I5i(0^a 
6e eoxiv 'EppaiKov. 



"ov)pavo\)(;" 5e Xiyei xov -ojiep x6 
oxepeco^a, tiXtiGvvxik^ x^Pc^^P^ 
Xp1^od^evo(; dvxl eviKov, xaxd 
xfiv 'EppdiSa SidXeicxov. . . . 



ad 38:7: x6 jiXt^v Kal x6 ^cvxol ye 
ov)5eniav eio<pepei 5idvoiav d;i6 
ydp xov 'EPpaiKov eniovpexai. 



x6 "TtXfjv" evxavGa nepixxov xiveq 
ev6|iioav. . . . 



^ I have consulted the edition of R. Devresse, Le conunentaire de Theodore de Mopsueste sto- 
les Psaumes, Studi e lesti 93 (Vatican City 1939); and that of J. M. Olivier of Diodonis' 
Commeniarii in psalmos. Corpus Christianonim, Series graeca 6 (Louvain 1980). 



274 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

ad 39:2: 6 5vjtXaoiaon6(; ormeiov 6 xoiovToq 6iJiX.aaiao^6(; auvriGriq 
eotw enudoecoq . . . "YiyvdJOKcov jaev Toiq 'Eppaioiq- eoti 5e 
yvcooTi" dvTi xou ocKpiPax; "yvwGv." e^<pavTiK6(; enudoecoc;, (aq x6 "i5cbv 

i5ov" Ktti "YiyvcooKCOV yvcoori" dvTi 
xov CKpiPox; "yvtooTi." . . . 

a^ 48:5: "TiapaPoXriv" yctp evxav6a Xeyei 5e "jiapaPoXriv" xd aiviy- 
x6 5ir|YTina Xeyei. 5fiXov 5e oxi ^axa- xai yap aivlY^axa)5rl xd 
napd xou jrvev^iaxoq xov dyiov TipocpiixiKd eioi, 5id xt^v dod<peiav 
e5i5dx0r| Ktti oxTmcxxi^ei xov xojv KEKp^iifievrnv voTi)j.dxci)v. 
Xoyov cDoavei 5i' dvofic; ^aGwv xd 
xoiauxa TiaiSevjiaxa. 

As is quite evident, there is little to indicate that Zigabenus was 
particularly influenced by either Theodore or Diodorus. In fact, while there 
are some cases where all three comment on the same verse, or even phrase, 
from Psalms, they seldom agree either about what requires comment or, 
when they agree about that, what the proper interpretation is.^ 

These comparisons suggest that Zigabenus' commentary stands apart in 
an important respect from any other exegetical traditions we find in 
Byzantine commentary. If there was a grammatical-rhetorical tradition he 
drew upon — and it is hard to believe there was no such tradition — it has 
been lost. 

IV 

A few other questions are raised by what we have seen here, none of which 
is likely ever to be answered satisfactorily. First, for whom did Zigabenus 
write his commentary? On the basis of the rather elementary nature of the 
problems — particularly the syntactic ones — he addresses, and in view of the 
tone and organization of the prolegomena, it seems likely that the 
commentary was meant for young scholars midway through their 
grammatical studies. We know that the study of Psalms was assigned early 
in the curriculum, and there certainly were schools in late eleventh-century 
Constantinople that catered to such a clientele.^ 

Second, if it is likely that the commentary was produced in a school 
setting, which school? Nothing I have been able to find gives any hint. 
There are no internal clues in the commentary itself. There is no mention 
anywhere in the chronicles or registers of Zigabenus as either a 6i5daKaXo(; 

^ Compare, e.g.. Diodorus and Zigabenus on 16:12, 39:2. 48:5. 48:10b; and Theodore and 
Zigabenus on 16:14. 18:6. 15:7. Theodore on 26:6 is almost identical to Diodonis ad loc, but 
both differ considcraWy from 21igabenus. 

^ Cf. L. Brdhier.^L'enseignement classique et I'enseignement religieux k By2ancc." Revue 
d'Histoire de Phdosophie et Religion 21 (1941), 49 ff., 65 ff. Unfortunately, no one has yet — 
for very understandable reasons — done for the eleventh centuiy what Robert Browning did for the 
twelfth in "The Patriarchal School at Constantinople in the Twelfth Century," Byzantion 32 
(1962). 167-202; 33 (1963). 1 1^0. 



Thomas M. Conley 275 

or a npot,i\ib<; tfjq axoXfjc; in any school known to be in operation in 
Zigabenus' time, for example, that at the monastery of Theodore Sphorakios 
or at any other branch (what Browning has called a "college") of the 
Patriarchal School.^ He was not the Euthymius who is thought to have 
composed the oration in honor of the girdle of the Virgin in the church of 
Our Lady of Chalkoprateia, where there was a didaskaleion-?^ nor is our 
Euthymius the Euthymius associated with the monastery at Peribleptos.^^ 

On the other hand, it is certain that our Euthymius is the same 
Euthymius Zigabenus whom Anna Comnena characterizes as YpaiiixaxiKfiq 
. . . ei(; cxKpov zkxxkcLKOxa koX ptiTOpiKfi*; o\)k djieXEXTixov ovxa Kal to 
Soyiia ox; o\)k aXkoc, tk; e7iiaTd|ievov (Alexiad 15. 9), an old friend of 
the imperial family (she tells us),^^ the \iovax6q Euthymius who was 
commissioned by Alexios I to compose a refutation of "all heresies," and did 
compose such a treatise, the Panoplia which fills PG 130. Alexios' choice 
must have been based on high recommendation as well, perhaps even on the 
basis of first-hand acquaintance with his virtues as a commentator.^"* 
Zigabenus was not then a mere teacher, but a monk of impressive learning, 
a scholar supremely knowledgeable in the arts of interpretation and 
argumentation who had not succumbed to the temptations of idle 
schedographia or to the charms of unorthodox and pagan philosophies, as so 
many, in Alexios' view, had done. And a monk like that could have found a 
place in a monastery such as that of St. George at Mangane, close to the 
imperial palace and the emperor himself, and possessed of a considerable 
library. 

This is all quite speculative, of course, the sort of speculation we must 
occasionally turn to in the study of Byzantine grammar, rhetoric and 
exegesis. What is not a matter of speculation, however, is the fact that 
Euthymius Zigabenus is extraordinary among the commentators on Psalms 
that are known to us from the Byzantine era. If ever the history of 
Byzantine exegesis should be written, Zigabenus will be seen to represent an 
important facet of it 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 



^ On such schools and their locations, cf. R. Janin, Les iglises et les monaster es (Paris 
1953). pp. 159 ff.. on St. Theodore Sphorakios. See also ibid. 412 (St. Peter's, where Niketas 
of Heraldeia produced a commentary on Luke); 246 ff. (Theotokos Chalkoprateion), and further 
Br^hier, 63 ff.. Browning, 177 f. 

^' Cf. Jugie. "La vie" (above, note 4). 223. Jugie points out that the oration attributed to 
Zigabenus in Vat. gr. 1671 dates from the tenth century or before. 

^^ Jugie. "Euthymius." col. 1580. 

^^ Alexiad 15. 9: novaxov tiva ZuyaPrivov KotXovfievov, yvoxjxov (lev tf) 5eo7to{vi;i 
Ktti npo^ JiTiTpoq CHfi fidnjiT). . . . 

^ As is well known. Alexios and his wife were noted for their piety and interest in 
theological and exegetical matters. 



The Itinerary of Constantine Manasses 

MIROSLAV MARCOVICH 

I. The Problem 

The Empress Irene died (probably in the winter of 1 159), leaving behind two 
daughters.^ The Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1 143-1 180) needed a male 
successor to the throne. Consequently, after much consultation at the court, 
the emperor decided to send an embassy to Baldwin III, King of Jerusalem 
(and the emperor's relative through the king's marriage with Theodora, the 
daughter of Sebastocrator Isaac Comnenus). The embassy was headed by the 
emperor's cousin, the general Sebastus John Contostephanus (who had 
already met Baldwin), and by Theophilactus the Excubitor, a clever diplomat 
of Italian descent.^ In his turn, John Contostephanus invited the poet 
Constantine Manasses, then about thirty years of age, to join the embassy.'^ 
The delegation left Constantinople sometime during the summer of 
1 160 and safely reached Jerusalem. The emperor's xpvoopo-uXXov delivered 
to King Baldwin III read in part: 

Nos autem de imperii successione soUiciti et melioris sexus sobolem 
non habentes, de secundis votis cxim illustribus sacri palatii diligentem 
saepius habuimus tractatum. Tandem de universonim principum favore et 
consensu placuit, ut de sanguine tuo, quem unice diligit nostrum 
imperium, nobis in consortitim jungamus imperii; et utram consobrinarum 
tuarum — seu illustris viri comitis Tripolitani sororem, seu magnifici viri 
principis Antiocheni germanam juniorem nobis elegeris, — nos pro tua 
optione, sinceritati tuae omnem fidem habentes, eam nobis in tori sociam 
et imperii participem, auctore Domino, assumemus.^ 

^ Cinnamus, //wr. 5. 1 (p. 202 Meineke); Manasses, Ilin. 1. 132-36. 

^ Cinn. 5. 4 (p. 208); William Archbishop of Tyre, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis 
geslarum 18.30 (Migne, Patrologia Lalina 201, p. 743 B). 
^ Manasses, Itin. 1. 14-17 and 1. 65-67. 
* William of Tyre 18. 30 (p. 743 BC). 



278 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

This means that Manuel had left Baldwin to choose between Millicent 
(M61isende, Milisendis, Melusine), the daughter of Hodiema (the dowager 
countess of Jerusalem) and sister of Raymond III, Count of Tripoli; and 
Mary, the younger daughter of Constance and her late husband, Raymond of 
Poitiers, Prince of Antioch. Political considerations decided Baldwin in 
favor of Millicent, and the Byzantine embassy left Jerusalem for Tripoli to 
meet Raymond III and Hodiema.^ 

At Tripoli, the preparations for the wedding had already reached an 
advanced stage, and Count Raymond had already equipped twelve galleys to 
take the bride to Constaotinople, when the Greek delegation began to 
procrastinate, thus delaying the official betrothal. As late as 31 July 1161, 
that is, about one year after the arrival of the embassy, in an official 
document issued by King Baldwin III at Nazareth, we read that Millicent was 
referred to asfutura imperatrix Constantinopolitana.^ Something must have 
happened in Constantinople. 

Cinnamus says that Millicent had suddenly become gravely ill (p. 209, 
voaoi Papeiai xr[ K6pr\ iviaKx\nxov), and that this was the reason for her 
repudiation. But he also adds that there were rumors about the bride's being 
an illegitimate child (p. 210, wq eitj ydfj-cov ouk ek vo|j.{|a,cov r\ Kopri 
(p\)eiaa). However, Constantine Manasses (itinerary 4. 46-55) and William 
of Tyre (18. 31) know nothing of the kind, and the latter is likely to be 
closer to the truUi when stating (18. 31, p. 744 B): 

Interea, dum Graeci singula ad unguem perscrutantur et rimantur interius 
de moribus puellae [i.e. Milisendis], de occultarum corporis partium 
dispositione, dum nuntios frequentes ad imperatorem dirigunt et eorum 
praestolantur recursum, annu« cffluxit. 

The fact was that meanwhile Manuel had changed his mind and decided 
to marry Mary of Antioch, with the intention of bringing the Principate of 
Antioch closer to his side in the imminent war against the Seljuk Turks.^ 
But King Baldwin III learned the full truth only after sending a special envoy 
(Otto of Risberge) to Manuel in Constantinople,^ and after paying a personal 
visit to Antioch in the summer of 1161. There the king found another 
Byzantine embassy, headed by Basil Camaterus.^ 

In brief, the official betrothal of Mary took place in Antioch where 
Manuel was represented by Magnus Dux Alexius, the grandson of the 
Emperor Alexius I, by Sebastus Nicephonis Bryennius, and by Sebastus 

^ Idem, 1 8. 3 1 . Compare Ren6 Grousset, Histoire des Croisades et du Royaume franc de 
Jerusalem, H (Paris 1935). pp. 428-32. 

* Cf. Reinhold Rohricht, Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani (1097-1291) (Oeniponti 1893). 
No. 366 (p. 96 f.). 

' Compare, e.g.. Ferdinand Chalandon."The Later Comneni," in Cambridge Medieval 
History, IV (1923), p. 315. 

« William of Tyre 18. 31 (p. 744 C). 

9 Cinnamus 5. 4 (p. 210); slighUy differcnUy William of Tyre 18. 31 (p. 745 A). 



Miroslav Marcovich 279 

Andronicus Camaterus. Finally, the marriage rite was performed by no less 
than three patriarchs (of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch), in Hagia 
Sophia on 25 December 1 161 (that is, two years after the death of Irene).^^ 

For his part, in revenge for the humiliation of his sister, Raymond III, 
Count of Tripoli, delivered the twelve galleys to the pirates, instructing 
them to bum and plunder Byzantine coastal cities and islands without any 
compunction: 

Et vocatis piratis et nefandorum scelerum artificibus eas [sc. galeas] 
u-adit [sc. Comes Tripolitanus], praecipiens, ut praedicti imperatoris 
terras obambul antes omnino nee aetati parcerent, nee sexui, et 
conditionum etiam nuUam haberent differentiam; sed passim et sine 
delectu tam monasteria quam ecclesias omnia traderent incendiis, et 
rapinas ubique sive homicidia libere perpetrarent, pro justa causa arma et 
vires illaturi.^^ 

Of course, the Byzantine embassy of John Contostephanus did not wait in 
Tripoli to witness the rage of Count Raymond, but hurriedly left for 
Cyprus, where we find them celebrating the Pentecost of 1 162. Assisted by 
the governor of Cyprus, one Alexius Ducas, the embassy then safely reached 
Constantinople. ^2 

So much for the historical background. Now, in his Itinerary 
('OSoiTiopiKov), the poet Constantine Manasses described the journey of the 
ill-fated embassy of Contostephanus. The poem consists of 796 
dodecasyllabic lines, divided into four Logoi, and is preserved in two 
manuscripts. The better one, the famous Marcianus 524 (s. XIV),^^ fol. 
94^-96', contains only Itin. 1. 1-269, while the less careful Vaticanus 1881 
(s. XIV), fol. 102'^-109^ comprises the entire poem (with the omission of 
1. 124-212). Konstantin Homa (in 1903), assisted by E. Kurtz, provided a 
meticulous editio princeps of Manasses' Itinerary}^ 

Since the passage omitted in Vaticanus (1. 124-212) comprises 
Manasses' ecphrasis on the extraordinary beauty of Millicent, Horna 
correctly concluded that the Vaticanus reflects a later redaction of the poem, 
most probably made by the poet himself, when Millicent no longer was the 
prospective bride: 

"Wer war nun jener Redaktor? Wahrscheinlich Manasses selbst." 
"Wichtiger scheint mir, dass der Autor selbst am ehesten Grund hatte, die 

^° Cinnamus 5. 4 (p. 210 f.); Nicetas Choniata. Hist. p. 151 Bekker = p. 115 f. van Dielen 
(1975). 

" William of Tyre 18. 33 (p. 745 f.). Compare Manasses, Itin. 4. 56 ff.; 4. 168 ff. 

^^ Manasses, Itin. 4. 36 ff.; 4. 96 (IlevTtiKooTfjv Ka^oujiev awxfiv e^ eOouq); 4. 131-33. 
William of Tyre is exaggerating (18. 31, p. 744 D): Porro domini imperatoris nuntii, comitis 
Tripolitani indignationemformidantes, inventa casu navicula, in Cyprum se fecerunt deportare. 
The Byzantine embassy had left Tripoli divided into two groups, and on two successive trips. 

^^ On this codex compare Sp. Lambros, in Neo<; 'EXXtivouvtjjkov 8 (1911), 113-92. 

^"^ "Das Hodoiporikon des Konstantin Manasses," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 13 (1904), 313- 
55 (text: 325^7). 



280 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

envahnten Ktirzungen vorzunehmen." "So wurde bereits in Palastina der 
erste Teil [= Lx)gos 1] ausgearbeitet und auch publiziert, d.h. Freunden und 
Bekannten in Abschrift mitgeteilt, eine Voreiligkeit, die Manasses wohl 
bereute, als die Verlobung wieder zurUckging. Er entschloss sich daher, die 
bereits verOffentlichten Teile den geanderten Verhaltnissen entsprechend 
umzuarbeiten und vor allem die nicht mehr zeitgemasse Partie I 124—212 
mit der ausftlhrlichen Schilderung der Schonheit Mellisendes zu 
streichen."^* 

Horna goes one step further, however. Since the extant text of 
Manasses' Itinerary displays some omissions and inconsistencies with the 
account of the events as reported by William of Tyre and Cinnamus, Horna 
concludes that this is due to a radical revision of the original text of the 
Itinerary, stemming from Manasses himself: 

Leider konnen wir sonst aus dem Hodoiporikon nichts Genaueres 
erfahren. Es sind nachtraglich umfangreiche Auslassungen an dem Werke 
vorgenommen worden, so dass es schwer, teilweise unmoglich ist, von der 
Riickkehr der Gesandtschaft ein klares Bild zu gewinnen.^^ 

Apparently, this verdict pronounced by Horna in 1903 is reflected in a recent 
criticism of the Itinerary by Herbert Hunger (in 1978): "Ein Reisebericht 
uber diese Erlebnisse liegt uns in 794 ZwOlfsilbem (4 Bucher) vor, dem es 
allerdings an einer geschickten Redaktion mangelte."^^ 

While I agree with Horna that it was most probably Manasses himself 
who omitted lines 1. 124-212 in a later revision of the poem, I am in 
strong disagreement with him on two points of some significance. 

First, it is unlikely that Manasses had published Logos 1 separately, 
while still in Palestine, since in lines 1. 207-12 the poet makes a clear 
allusion to the later troubles caused by the delay of the Byzantine mission: 

'Eyo) 6' 6 xa.'kja.vxaxoq (oveipooKOTicuv 

©(; xdxiov pXi\|/aifxi xfiv KcovoxavxivoD* 

aXK' OMixTivtixsac, KaKla(; 6 KaiKia(; 

Xeiiicbva^ e^Tjyeipev atkXonvooMc,, 210 

xpiK-u|j.{a(; (poPrixpa, vavxiaq (/tXac, 

Kal Ppa5'uxfixa(; xal oxoXa(; napaA^yovq. 

Secondly, and more importantly, it is not likely that the extant text of 
the poem represents a radical revision of the original poem, or that it lacks a 
final redaction. Manasses has made a few metrical and stylistic changes, but 
no more, so that the extant text reflects the poet's ultima manus. As I shall 
try to demonstrate (III. Conclusions), Manasses never intended to produce a 
systematic chronicle of the embassy's journey. In his four Logoi, the poet 
is deliberately selective while concentrating on his own most heartfelt 

^^ Op. cU.,3\9. 
^^ Op. cit., 317. 
'' Die hochsprachliche profane LUeralur der Byzantiner (Munich 1978), II, p. 161. 



Miroslav Marcovich 281 

experiences, on personal psychological analysis, emotions and reflections. 
And by so doing he is simply exemplifying the program of the romantic 
movement of the Comnenan era. 

II. The Content of the Poem 

Logos 1. The poet had just gained a brief respite from misfortune that 
allowed him to dedicate himself to the study of Greek literature, when 
calamity struck again (1-12). Falling asleep with his Athenaeus in his 
hands, he experiences a terrible dream. He sees Sebastus John Conto- 
stephanus embarking on a naval expedition to Sicily, and dragging the poet 
into his trireme by force (13-28). A terrible storm endangers the lives of 
the sailors, but eventually they reach safe harbor (29-47). 

Such was the poet's nightmare. But it proved to be a true premonition 
(48-60). For with the dawn a sad message reached the poet, bidding him 
"Join the Sebastus in his journey to Jerusalem and Palestine" (61-67). The 
poet's first reaction to this "sting" (68, p.-6co\|/) was a feeling of disbelief and 
stupefaction (68-75). The description of such a psychological phenomenon 
finds its match in Manasses' love novel Aristander et Callithea (Frr. 3 and 
121 Mazal).i8 

The Byzantine embassy leaves Constantinople, passes through Nicaea, 
Iconium (Konya), several cities in Cilicia, Antioch, Sidon, Tyre, Beirut, the 
ugly city of Ptolemais (Akko),^' and reaches the beautiful town of Samaria 
(Sichem, Neapolis, Nablus) (77-99). In his romantic ecphrasis describing 
Samaria, the poet likens the city, located between two high hills, to a sweet 
baby between the two breasts of her mother (100-21). 

It was in Samaria that the real purpose of the embassy was revealed to 
its members by John Contostephanus — to arrange a second marriage for the 
Emperor Manuel (122-49). It just so happened that the prospective bride 
was sojourning at that very moment in the city. The discreet poet does not 
reveal her name, but the identity of Millicent is unmistakable (in view of 1. 
185 ff. and 4. 44-55). Our poet had the opportunity to see the girl in a dark 
chapel (153, oiKCaicoq) of the city and to produce an impressive ecphrasis 
describing her radiant complexion, overwhelming charms and consummate 
beauty (150-199). It is true that Cinnamus too says that Millicent was a 
girl of extraordinary beauty (Aativa p.ev yevo^, mpiKaXXr{c, 5e ev xai^ 

^* Of Manasses' novel only 765 "political lines" have survived. They have been critically 
edited and reconstnicted by Otto Mazal, Der Roman des Konstantinos Manasses: Uberlieferung, 
Rekonstruktion, Textausgabe der Fragmente (Wiener Byzantinistische Studien, 4 [Vienna 
1967]). 

^' Ptolemais is called by our poet navTojiicrnToq and |iv)pio<povevTpia noXiq (1. 92"; 1. 
93-98; 4. 151) because of the pollution and many epidemics caused by the multitude of 
pilgrims. Compare John Phocas, Ecphrasis, etc. (Migne, Palrologia Graeca 133: 933 C); 
Homa, op. cU. (above, note 14), 349. 



282 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

^dXiaTa),2o but the point is that Manasses' description of Millicent is 
strongly reminiscent of his description of Helen of Troy in his Chronicle 
(1157-1 167),2^ and that it smacks of mannerism.^^ While we can understand 
that the poet was able to grasp the quality of the noble princess, it is 
amazing to learn that he was capable of forming a judgment about her good 
education by merely glancing at her in that dark chapel (182-84): 

'HGoq YaXTjvotTixi o\)YK£Kpa|j.evov 
Kal xTiX-iKavT-ri npoocpopcoxatov KOpri- 
nai5£\)ai(; dovyKpitoq, exjyeveq yivoq. 

After awhile, the embassy leaves Samaria and reaches Jerusalem, where 
Baldwin III resided (218-24). Here the poet visits Jesus' tomb (225), 
Golgotha (230), Mount Zion (239), the house of the apostles (246; cf. John 
20:19), the house of Pentecost (252-57; cf. Acts 2:3), the place of Mary's 
death (258-60), the scene of Peter's repentance (261-63; cf. Matthew 
26:75), the Virgin's tomb at Gethsemane (264-74), and, finally, the hill of 
Jesus' ascension (275-78; cf. Acts 1:9). The poet then visits Bethlehem 
(279), Jericho (280-87), the River Jordan (288-93), and, on his way back to 
Tripoli, Nazareth (297) and Capernaum (309). 

The refined poet from Constantinople is shocked by the climate of the 
Holy Places, and asks himself why Jesus chose to appear precisely in such 
scorched, suffocating, burning and deadly spots as these (294-96; 316-20): 

Ti xama, Xpioxe, (pwc; vTcepxpovov (pdoix;, 

7ca)(; n^expi itoXXov ^p6^ xono^x; dv£oxpd<pT|^ 295 

^T^potx;, Tiviynpo-uc;, <p>,eKxvKOV(;, 9avaoi|io'0(;; 

Ti ydp Jiap' auxoiq eaxiv d^iov Xoyo-o; 316 

'Atip 7covTip6(;, Kav^axcbSri^, 7i'upa)5Ti(;, 

axaxioc,, dpepaioq, ovk e'xcov axdciv- 

a<po5p6v x6 Kavoo(;, dv-onooxaxov q>£peiv, 

dKpaxo(; dr^p •u5dx(ov Eprmia. 320 

And he seems to suggest that Jesus' choice of such places reflects His 
salvific plan (302-04; 311-15): 

'AXK' oiq EoiKEv, wq Enioxaoai \i6voc, (sc. XpiaxE), 302 

£v ndoi xoiq aoiq aco|i.axiKoi(; ekXeytj 

£1 XI TCEVIXPOV, El XI XWV dv(BV■U^(OV. . . 

2° //iy/. 5. 4 (p. 208). 

2^ Ivvo\|/i(; XPOviKTi. p. 51 f. Bekker. (Total. 6733 political lines.) 
^ It suffices here to mention that Nicetas Choniales describes the beauty of the winning 
Mary of Antioch in these terms: *Hv 6e KaXfi x6 ei5o<; fi yuvfi, wxl Kakx\ Xia\, Kai eax; 
a(p65pa KaXfi Kal to xdXXoq d^\)nPXTixo<;, wq fivGov eivai dxexvoic; itpoq aiixfiv 
'AcppoSiTTiv xfiv (piX,onei5fi Kal xP'w^^lv, "Hpav xr\v XevKcuXevov Kal Poccmiv, Kal 
TTiv 6oA,ix68eipov Kal Ka\X,{a<p\)pov AdKaivav, ai; ol ndXai 6id x6 KdXX,0(; 
e9ecoaav, Kal xd<; Xoinac, 5e dndoac;, oocu; pipXoi Kal laxopCai bianpemlc, xr\v 6eav 
jtapa5e5a>Kaaiv (Hisl., p. 151 Bekker = p. 1 16. 61-66 van Dieten). 



Miroslav Marcovich 283 

IetcxoI |iev ei<oi> navxEc, ol Sdoi totioi, 311 

ev oxq 6 Zcottip oapKiKox; dveoTpd<pT|- 

nXr\v einep e^eXoi xk; dvojrooxoX.ox; 

Tojv SeoTcoTiKcov Ga-uiidxcov x6 ji-upinvoDv, 

aKXTipai(; dKocvGaK; xo^)q lono-uq jcapeiKdooi. 315 

The desolation of Palestine evokes in the poet's mind the contrasting 
picture of blossoming Constantinople, and he closes Logos 1 with these 
lines (331-36): 

'ii yri Bv^avxiq, cb 6e65)j.Tixo(; noXiq, 

r\ Ktti x6 <p©(; 5ei^aaa Kal 9pev|racd jie, 

EV ooi Y£voi|iTiv, KaXXovdq pX.£\t/ai|j.i aox). 

Nal vai, YEvolfiTiv hnb zaq caq dyKdXa^, 

vol vav, Yevoi|j.T|v \>nb zr\\; nxep-uyd oov, 335 

Ktti 5iaxTipoiTi(; )ie KaOd oxpovGiov. 

Logos 2. But the poet never reached Tripoli: in Tyre he was struck with 
severe typhoid fever (1-44), The illness gave him the opportunity to ponder 
the frailty of the human condition (45-52), another locus communis (cf. 3. 
14 f.; 3. 46-56) and another encounter with Manasses' novel (fir. 10; 49; 
69; 74; 159; 160 Mazal).^^ Seeing the young poet half dead, Sebastus 
Contostephanus sends him from Tyre to Cyprus to recover (53-65). 
Alexius Ducas, the governor of Cyprus,^ takes good care of Manasses, who 
quickly regains his health (66-83). 

But now the poet pines while idling in Cyprus, missing his library and 
yearning for his native Constantinople (84-128). All the attention of 
Alexius Ducas cannot cure the poet's nostalgia for his homeland (129-52). 
And he closes Logos 2 in a tone similar to that of the end of Logos 1 (153- 
58): 

'ii Y^ Bv^avxiq, cb noXiq xpiooXpia, 

6<p9aXne xr\(; yr{q, Koa^ie xfiq oiKO-unevric;, 

xTjXa'UYEq daxpov, zov Kdxco koohov X-uxve, 155 

ev ool Yevo{|iTiv, Kaxaxp'U(pT|aai)j.{ gov 

cx) Kal ntpiQaXnoiq )ae xal 6i£^dYOi(;, 

Ktti ^.TixpiKaJv <j£»v dYKaXwv |j.fi x^P^<^^^'i- 

Logos 3. We find the poet stricken with another illness, this time with 
rheumatoid arthritis (1-45), which gives him the opportunity for another 
complaint about man's being but a roseau (50, [oxv6xt]c, KaXa\iivT]) 
passing away (46-56). The poet is in pain, he cannot move, and has no 
desire for food or drink (57-70). Finally, dismissing his physicians, he 

^ For example, Arislander el CalUlhea, fr. 160 Mazal reads: 

'Q<; apa PePaiov otiSev, oii crtdoinov avBpowtOK;, 

dXXd Kan V 6c xot twv GvTixoav, aXka OKid td Ttdvxa. 
^ On whom compare Homa, op. cit., 350 f. 



284 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

decides to take a series of warm baths, and that cures him (71-101). The 
Logos closes with a third nostalgic address to Constantinople (102-06): 

'^Q, xp^oeov 7t6X,io|i.a Tn(; B-o^avxiSo^, 

liXie xr[c, yfi(;, KaXXx>q ovk e'xov Kopov, 

eco^ jioxe pX.£\j/ci) oe xaxa zoix^ iSnvovq; 

"I5oini, Tiavxepaaxe, aaq oxiXPTi56va(;, 105 

pX,Evaini, KaXXi<pcoxe, xa npoocojid co\>. 

Logos 4. The final chapter of the poem opens in jubilation: the poet, back 
in his beloved Constantinople, is exulting (1-35). The route home from 
Tripoli led the embassy to the city of Syce in Cilicia (between Arsinoe and 
Celenderis). But then the danger of the pirates, encouraged by the Count of 
Tripoli, forced them to cross over to the safer Cyprus (36-68). John 
Contostephanus reached Cyprus later on, a fact that was sufficient to cure 
the poet from an attack of the quartan fever (69-81). The governor of the 
island, Alexius Ducas, gives everybody rich gifts, and the ill-fated embassy 
leaves for Constantinople (82-87; 131-33). 

The poet feels that now is the proper moment to introduce an amusing 
anecdote required by the literary genre (89-94): 

CK)5ev 5e koivov o\)5e noppoo xfjc; xexvTji; 

TiapeiaeveyKeiv Kal yeXovov xoi^ XoYo^■ 90 

xoit; Y«P ^v^11P0^ ^^'■^ yiiioMoi xov nd9o'U(; 

Kttl xapievxa ovyKepavvveiv 5eov 

Kttl xai(; oicu9pco7caiq laxopioypacpiaK; 

YeX,(oxoepYot)<; 7iai5id(; npocziaayew .^ 

While attending the mass of Pentecost in a church on Cyprus, the poet was 
approached by a Cypriot peasant who was both drunk and smelling of garlic. 
As he could not stand the pungent stinkweed, he warned the peasant twice to 
move away. Since he ignored the warning, the poet slapped him vigorously 
in the face, and the sharp noise of the slap strangely blended with the 
singing of the choir (95-130). 

The end of the poem is a hymn of praise addressed to Jesus for saving 
the poet from deadly Palestine, the arrogant Latins, the prison of Cyprus, 
and the bloodthirsty pirates (134-94). 

in. Conclusions 

1. Chronology. Logos 1 was probably written sometime during the fall of 
1161, while the poet was recovering in Cyprus. Lines 1. 207-12 (quoted 
above, p. 280) presuppose the delay of Millicent's betrothal, which had 
become obvious only in the summer of 1161. I assume that our poet, on 
his way back from Jerusalem, and after visiting Nazareth (297; 310) and 
Capernaum (309), had not reached the final destination of the embassy, the 

^ TtpooeiodYeiv, Homa (323) metri gratia: Ttpooaydyeiv Valicanus. 



Miroslav Marcovich 285 

court of Raymond III in Tripoli. Already in Tyre he became ill with 
typhoid fever (2. 8 ff.), and then was sent by Contostephanus to Cyprus. 

Logos 2 was definitely written in Cyprus (84, Kal vt)v TiapoiKw triv 
{)^vot)^evr|v Kvnpov: see also 99, 109). The poet became ill in the summer 
of 1161, in Tyre (cf. 3. 10-11: "iii|iTiv to 5ev5pov xwv e^cov 
TiaGrmdtcov, I mv ev Gepei xE0r|Xe, xei^^vi (pGiveiv), In Cyprus he 
regained his health and joined the embassy in Tripoli (probably in the winter 
of 1161). 

Logos 3 was written in Tripoli (not in Cyprus), for in 4. 36-43 we find 
the poet leaving Tripoli and reaching Cyprus again. It was in the winter of 
1 161 (cf. 3. 11) that the poet became ill with arthritis and was then cured by 
his hot baths in Tripoli. At 4. 96 we see him celebrating the mass of 
Pentecost in Cyprus, on his way home. 

Logos 4 was obviously written in Constantinople (5-6: 'l5ov ydp, 
i6ot>, KaOapanata pXento I xr^v Travtepaatov, bX^iav B\)^avTi5a, 
187-94). Consequently, Manasses' journey had taken about two years 
(summer 1160 to summer 1162). At the time of the wedding of the 
Emperor Manuel with Mary of Antioch, on 25 December 1161, our poet 
most probably was in Tripoli. 

2. Multum, nan multa. If the general John Contostephanus had included 
the young Constantine Manasses in his imperial embassy in the hope that 
he would immortalize the betrothal of the future empress of Byzantium, he 
was utterly wrong: in his poem, our poet proves to be a hopelessly lyric and 
romantic enfant terrible, reminding us of Catullus. The analysis of the 
content of the Itinerary clearly shows that Manasses never intended to 
produce either a historical chronicle of the imperial mission or a traditional 
and proper Iter Hierosolymitanum. 

What Manasses has produced instead is a work of four lyrical episodes 
reflecting the poet's psychological reaction to external events and attesting 
his despair and deep unhappiness at being anywhere except in his native 
Constantinople. Manasses is deliberately selective in his narrative. He 
combines poetic ecphrasis with analysis of psychological phenomena and 
with philosophical or religious reflection. The convergences between his 
romantic novel in verse and his versified chronicle have been pointed out in 
the analysis of the content of the poem. 

The poet's deliberate selectiveness of subject-matter is indicated in the 
poem by such aposiopetic expressions as these: 

Ta TcoXXa Kal ydp PovXojiai Ttapatpexeiv. 4.41 

Ti 5ei Kaxaxeiveiv ne ^axpoix; xoix; "ko-^oMc;;, 1.60 

Kal yotiv xct noXXd xi ndxriv jtapajiXeKw; 1.76 

Ti 581 5iaYpd<peiv ^e xdq naoac, JioXeii;; 1.91 



286 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Ti xavta t^tjucov eiq \i6Lxr\w KaxaXeyw, 

r\ xfiq Op-uvixo\) TcevGiKTiq otcoji-uX-iac;; 

Ei yap xa Tcdvta Kaxoc Xtnxov xiq <ppdaei, 

■unepPaXeixai avyvpacpTiv SovicuSiSov.^ 1.213-17 

The last remark seems telling: the poet is not producing a systematic 
historical record. 

As for the poet's nostalgia for Constantinople, it has become a guiding 
thread of the entire poem, being repeated no less than eleven times (1. 77; 1. 
208; 1. 331-36; 2. 84-90; 2. 112-13; 2. 137^0; 2. 153-58; 3. 24-28; 3. 
102-06; 4. 1-35; 4. 187-94). These systematic outbursts of homesickness 
are a deliberate device of the poet, serving as a unifying motif for the four 
fragmentary Logoi. 

In brief, Manasses' Itinerary is not a chronological diary of his journey, 
but rather a fragmented personal soliloquy by the poet. Incidentally, 
Odoeporicum is a convenient title given to Manasses' poem by Leo Allatius 
(back in 165 1),^'' which has no support at all in the manuscripts. 

There is, however, more to it than this. Manasses was not satisfied 
with producing a warm lyrical soliloquy in his Itinerary. In addition, he 
wanted to play the role of an innovative poeta novus in the tolerant 
Comnenan era, who would not hesitate to shock the ears and hearts of his 
Byzantine audience. And just how is Manasses deliberately shocking and 
offensive in his poem? By repeatedly qualifying his participation in the 
imperial wedding-embassy as simply a nightmare and the worst experience 
of his life, and by being unable to find better descriptions of the places of 
the Holy Land than, for example, these: 

r\ xr\v Na/^apex, xt^v e^ioi ox-uynxeav 4.10 

ctv evvoTioco x'n(; Na^apex x6 nv'xyoc, . . . 1.297 

"Ti ydp dyaGov fi Na^apex exxpecpei;"^* 1.301 

EK ^Ev Tioxajicov xd(; pod(; 'Iop5dvo\) 

HTi5' ev Ttoxano^ a-oyKaxapiG^o-oiievov, 

EK xwv 7ioX,ixvi(ov hz XT[Q, naXaioxivii(; 

xd ^\)7tp6xaxa Kal KaxEOKXripv^HEva- 

XTiv Kaji£pvaov)i. xf^v KaxEOX'uynixEvnv 

Kol xfiv Na^apEX xt^v dTcrivGpaKconEVTiv. 1.305-10 

Last but not least, by employing such scatological expressions as these: 

CHix(o lioXiq 7i£<p£t)yEv 6 aKaxocpdyoq. 4.129 

2^ SimUar expressions at 1. 25; 1. 152; 1. 179; 2. 13; 2. 69; 3. 29 f. and 4. 169 belong to a 
different rhetorical device. 

^ In a note to his edition of Georgius Acropolites, p. 201 ed. Paris. (1651) = p. 205 ed. 
Bonnensis (1836). 

^ See the remaik attributed to Nathanael, NT John 1:46. 



Miroslav Marcovich 287 

B5eXv)xto|xai yap v(\vbe xt\v KaKoo^iav 4.105-06 

©<; xcbv xttKcbv nov thv SvocoSti KOJtpiav . . . 

Mn Kvnpov oiKO), xtiv KotKoa^ov JtiKpiav; 4.8 

cxXXxjk; K-uTteipov o^oav [sc. K^Tcpov], aXk' e^oi Konpov. 2.86 

The poet's excuses (1. 268, xo^iiripov eitieTv, d^^d ^.oi ovyyvcooteov; 4. 
130, Kal Tot)To |j.ev toio\)xo, mv \ie\i(poix6 xiq) will convince nobody: he 
wants to shock. 

Manasses' innovative drive is also reflected in two characteristics of his 
diction and style. First, the poem abounds in compound nouns and 
adjectives. Some of them are extremely rare; some are the poet's own 
neologisms, and well deserve a separate (lexicographical) study. Second, 
Manasses abuses the device of employing "heavy," three-word lines. 
Including three two-word lines (2. 19-20, dTiTjvGpdKcooev, e^e5a7idvT|ae 
p,£, I ETfupnoJiTiaev, E^ExriydvioE |xe; 4. 151, nToA,£|iai5o(; 
ji-opiocpovE-utpiaq), there is a total of forty-two such lines in the poem, one 
in every nineteen lines. This is the highest frequency in the entire corpus of 
Byzantine iambography (with the sole exception of the extant metrical 
seals).29 Although the shape 5 + 3 + 4 syllables prevails in the poem (with 
eleven examples), the rhopalic shape (3 + 4 + 5 syllables) seems to be the 
most impressive: 

yuvaiKi (piXonaiSi GaXai^evxpia. 1.121 

ecpcooE, KaxenX-q^e, xaxrioxpave \iz. 1.163 

eiSotppvq, ev)7ip6acono(;, evitpeneoxdxTi, 

e'uo7ixo(;, £\)n/\.6Kano(;, evyeveaxaxTi 1.196-97 

Xei|i.©va<; e^tiyevpev cteX-XoTtvoovq 1.210 

avGpcojroq ev^dpavxoq, eKxexTiYHevo(; 2.26 

In conclusion, if the suggested interpretation of Manasses' Itinerary is 
plausible, it may well shed new light on the poet's intention. He wanted to 
produce an innovative programmatic poem. His neoteric objectives are 
reflected in the selectiveness of his subject-matter and in his fragmented 
mode of expression. As a result, the poem is subjective, emotional, 
sometimes introspective and sometimes even shocking and offensive. 
Apparently, Manasses* emotional outbursts only reflect the general 
tendencies of the romantic movement of the Comnenan era (Theodorus 
Prodromus, Nicetas Eugenianus, Eustathius Macrembolites). What a pity 
that Manasses' love novel did not survive! 



^ The ratio of three-word dodecasyllables in Byzantine metrical seals is 1/11 .35 (total, 931 
lines). With a ratio of 1/19, Manasses takes first place among the Byzantine poets in the 
frequency of such lines. Ephraim's Caesares (total, 10392 lines) is second, with a ratio of 
1/23.3. Compare M. Marcovidi, Three-word Trimeter in Greek Tragedy (Beitrage zur klass. 
PhUologie, 158 [Konigstein 1984]). pp. 160-61; 163; 202 f.; 210 f. 



288 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

IV. Textual Criticism 

Homa's edition of 1903 is critical and judicious, but it is not totally 
satisfactory. Space allows me to suggest only a few emendations here. At 
1. 91-98 Homa follows Marcianus in printing: 

Ti 5ei 5iaYpdq>£iv |i£ xciq Tidoaq noXeiq, 

Ii5oc)va, T-opov, Xi\iivaq Biipvxiojv, 

nxoXenavSa ttiv (povevxpiav 7r6X.1v; 

riToXenaiSa fnv (pSopaq ena^iav, 

e^ r\c„ 'Itioov, <p©i; deiPpvxo-o (pdouq, 95 

xfiv "nXiaKTiv ctTtonapdvaiq (pXoya 

Kttl aDOKidoaiq xt^v navojcxpiav Kopriv, 

(oc, |j.-n Tioao)^ pXenoixo |i.icrr|xfi noXiq. 

Venetus, however, adds a new line after 92 and corrects 98 accordingly. 
Since Venetus seems to reflect Manasses' 6e'6TEpai (ppovT{6eq, its text is to 
be preferred here: 

Ti 5ei Siaypdcpeiv \iE zaq naaac, tcoXek;, 91 

2i5oc)va, Tvpov, kiiiivaq Brip'uxioov; 92 

Ei5ov ovv dX,Xai<; Tcavxop.ioTixov noXiv 92^ 

^xoX,e^dl5a xt^v povevxpiav nokiv. 93 

rixoXenaiSa xtiv <p8opd(; ena^iav ... 94 

CDC, |XTi pXeTioixo x6 ax-uynxov xov xohod. 98 

The compound at 92^, Travxo^iaTjxoq, recurs at 2. 10 (a> TiayKaKia, 
7iavTO|j.{oT|TO(; T-upo^), as well as in Manasses' prose. Compare also 4. 40 
(ttiv 7iavxo)j.iafi, ttiv KaxaTCT-uaxov noXiv). As for the repetition of the 
same word at the beginning or end of two successive lines (which did not 
sound pedestrian to a Byzantine ear), compare: 1 . 8-9 novoxx; I; jiovo-unevo) 
I. 2. 21-22 e^6<po\) I; ovve^ocpoT) I. 2. 51-52 ^\)p{cov KaKwv I, |i'op{(ov 
KttKQv I. 4. 54 KopTiv xapix6(p0aX|iov, evonxov KopTjv. 4. 67-68 Gpdooq 
I, Qpdaovc, I. 1. 175-76 I Kokbv x6 xei^tx; • . . , I KaXov x6 X£^^o<; .... 2. 
101-02 I pT|xcop aYA-oxjaoq . . . , I pTjxtop acpcovoq. . . . 

1.123-49: John Contostephanus kept the purpose of the journey 
secret. Finally, in Samaria he was forced to reveal it to the members of the 
embassy: it was to seek a prospective bride for the emperor. The relevant 
text reads: 

'0 ydp aeQaaxoq, dKpipox; Tcerceicnevoi; 125 

dpiaxov eivai x6 nap' avxo) Kai ^.ovm 

^vaxripiov KpvTrxovxa xot> PaoiXeox;, 

OIL) napzy\)\i\o-o xov okottov npbq ovSiva. 

Kaixoi Y£ itoXXoiv 7ioX,Xd Jioxvico)i.ev(ov 140 

Kttl xfiv dvaKdA-vyiv e^aixo\)|j.ev(ov, 

eii; xiva Kal nov xov 5p6|io\) x6 yopYOJiovv. . . 

'iiq ovv XaGeiv tjv dSvvaxov ei(; xeXoq, 



Miroslav Marcovich 289 

bxoM xapiv Tiapfi^ev tiq JlaXaioxivTiv 

Ktti la^iapeuMv xoxx; jioX-opp'uxo'uq xonoxtc,, 145 

iSeiv TO KdX,Xo(; tiiq KOpri^ k.y\ix6iir[V . . . 

Horna indicated a lacuna after line 142. But his text does not yield a 
satisfactory sense. Kaitoi (140) is not concessive, and should be read, Kai 
Toi = 'AXka Toi ("But when"); furthermore, the main clause of the sentence 
has been dropped after 143, eiq xeXoq; finally, the sentence closes with 145, 
Tonovq. Consequently, read: 

Kai toi Y£ noXXfflv jioXXa J:oTVl(o^ev(ov 140 

Kai zr\v otvaKaX-ovvv e^aito»nev(ov, 

Eiq xiva Kai no\) xov 5p6^o'u x6 yopYOJCovv, 

dx; ovv XaGeiv ^v dS^vaxov, eiq xeKoc, 143 

<6 7iavoePaaxo(; napty\i\ivoM nav xiXoq,> 143* 

oxov x«P^v Ttapn^iev £l(; FlaXaiaxivTiv 144 

xai Zaiiapeixwv zohq jioX.vppvxoix; xonoix;. 145 

The most likely reason for the omission of line 143* is the isoteleuton 
TeXoq. As for the text of the added line, 6 navaepaaxoq (referring to 
Contostephanus) recurs at 4. 72; TiapEyu^vo-u we already had in 1. 128; and 
xiXoc,, in the sense of 1. 128 oKonoq, recurs at 2. 148. 

In 1. 153-99 the poet had the opportunity of seeing the prospective 
bride Millicent in a chapel at Samaria. The chapel is elaborate but dark. 
With the entrance of Millicent a brilliant light begins to shine: it is the 
radiance of her bright and beautiful face. The text reads: « 

OiKiaKo*; ^v xk; dfivSpov x6 (pfiq ex®^' 153 

Koajiov ^£v avxwv, aXka Kai nmjiov (pepcov 

ov TtXovoia^ ydp eixev a-oyctq fiXioi). 155 

Tovxov 6a^i^a>v tcoXXoiki^ dvioxopovv 

Ktti x6 ^o<p(b5eq fixKOfiTiv xov 66|iov 

dXA,', (oangp r\v ovvtiSe^, elaiovxi \io\ 

aiipvTiq opaxai x^ovoxpcoxoq KOpri^^ 

Kai xou TcpoowJtou xr\q (pepavyov^ Xa\inaboq 160 

9(ox6(; 7l•upl^dp^apov eK<pepei oeXac;, 

Kai KaxaXd|i7iei Kai Sicokei xov ^6<pov 

EqxooE, KaxETcXri^E, KaxTiaxpa\|/E jxe. 

There are too many genitives in line 160. Consequently, read tri (pEpavyei 
Xa)i7td5i (in 160), and eiacpepei (for eKtpepei) in line 161: "and with her 
face as a light-bringing lamp she introduces a gleaming brightness into the 
chapel." 

The poet describes Golgotha as follows: 

To FoXyoGa KaxEi5ov, ei5ov zac, nixpac, 1.230 

^ In Manasses' Chronicle, Helen of Troy is also xiovoxpovq (1158), with to itpooconov 
KaxaXeuKov (1162). 



290 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

zac, Jipiv payeiaaq Km XvQtiaaq ek (popoi),^^ 

oxav Qzoc, ^o^) Kai Kcpanevq xov yivox>c, 

to Koojioocoxripiov ■ujioaxctq TcdBoq 

EK Tcbv X.i0(ov riyeipev 'APpacc^i xeicva,^^ 

XTiv a-ovxpiPeioav dvaKaivi^cov <piioiv.^^ 235 

In line 232 0e6<; ^lov is the reading of Vaticanus. Marcianus offers 6 
n'kaGir[c, instead, and this reading is to be preferred in view of 2. 149-50 
050th lines referring to Jesus, as in our passage): 

val vai, K£pa|i.eu <p'6ae(0(; dvGpconivn(;, 
vai vai, p'UTO'upYe nXdaeca q PpoxTjoiaq. 

At 2. 84-90 the poet expresses his frank opinion about Cyprus, as 
compared with shining Constantinople — laudabunt alii . . . : 

Kal vvv TtapoiKm x-qv ■b|a.vo'un£vnv Kvirpov, 84 

xTiv X,i7tapdv yfiv, x^v jioXixpopov xQova- 

dX,X,oi(; icuTieipov ovaav, dX.X,* e|ioi Kvnpov. 

Ti ydp xaTceivwv doxpicov d^.a\)p6xii(; 

npoq XT^v x6 ndv PoaKOvcav tiXiov (pXoya; 

"H XI npbq a\>xr\v zr\v K(ovaxavxivo\) JtoXiv 

fi K\>npoq r\ ciiinaaa xal xd xr\q Kijnpov; 90 

The poem abounds in puns: 1. 35, 5\)a7cv6oi(; nvoalq I (cf. Soph., 
Ant. 588); 1. 209, akX' dvxmve\>csaq KaKia<; 6 KaiK{a<; I ; 2. 74-76: 

xov (pXo^v djce^Tipave xov xo\> capKiov, 
xov xot>v djirmavpcoae xf\q 5iapxia(;, 
xov povv EKcoxexEuoe xwv £vxoa6i(ov. 

Compare also 2. 148, FevoiTo, XpiaxL Kal T-uyeiv ypTioTou xiXoMc,: 3.75, 
aXXriv dxpaTTov e^ dvdyKTiq £TpdKT|v, and others. Line 2. 86, however, 
lacks such a pun. K-uTceipov, the aromatic and medical herb galangal, 
galingale, gladiolum, Cyperus rotundus, is something pleasant and positive. 
Accordingly, KvTtpov must hide something unpleasant and negative. Read 
instead: 

aXkoxc, KVTteipov ouoav [sc. KvTtpov], dXX' e^ioi Konpov. 

While to others Cyprus evokes the picture of the sweet-smelling 
galangal, it brings to the poet's mind only the idea of a heap of ill-smelling 
manure or dung. The suggested emendation finds its support in 4, 8, Mt] 
Kt)7ipov OIK©, TTiv KdKoa}xov niKpiav; as well as in 4. 106, tt]v S-uocoSti 
KOTtpiav I ; 4. 129, 6 OKaxoi^afic, I . 

^'Matthew 27:51. 

32 Matthew 3:9. 

33 Rom. 12:2; Tit 3:5; Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-10. 



Miroslav Marcovich 291 

In Logos 4, the poet cannot believe that he is back in Constantinople; 
he thinks it is only a deceptive dream: 

'l5o\) yap. i5oio, KaGapmaxa f^Xinoa 4.5 

TTiv Tiavxepaatov, oXPiav B-u^avxC5a. 

'AXX' & XI xovxo; Mt^ mn'kavrwxai naXiv; 

<l)avxd^o^ai \jfe-u5wq ae, xP^oea tcoXk;; 11 

'Evvnviov |j,oi xovTO Kai vukxoc; yiXoaq, 

^ oe xpavayq KaxeiSov vnap, o\)k ovap; 

T{, <pe^), TtejtovGa; Iloi JiapeTtXayxOiiv (ppevwv;'^'* 27 

"Q nox; x6 a'oxvwv xiv oveipcov xfi(; 7iXdvTi(; 

x6 Jiioxov £^£KO\|/e xmv 6pco)j.eva)v; 

The expression of line 29, to tiiotov . . . xSv opcofievcov, requires that we 
read in line 28 to cvxybv twv oveCpcov. 

The poet cannot stand the pungent odor of garlic (stinkweed), and he 
uses this simile: 

B5eX,^xxonai yap xr|v5e x-qv KaKoo^iiav,^^ 4.105 

oic, xmv KttKcbv \ioM xr[v S\)c<iibr\ Konpiav, 
ax; a\)x6v av)xo\) xov Zaxava xov xvTtov, 

The poet's own excrements (= 106, ta Kam) are as malodorous as 
anybody else's. Thus read in 106 nov, for |j.o-u, "as, for example," "as may 
be." What is more important, garlic has nothing in common with the devil. 
On the contrary, it is an apotropaic plant that drives away the devil, the evil 
eye, demons, Hecate, and so on.^^ What the poet particularly abhors is "the 
Devil's place, house or abode."^^ Consequently, read in line 107 toTiov for 
TOTiov. This scribal error is proverbial. 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

^ Cf. Eur.. Hipp. 240. 

^^ Sc. TOV CTKOp66o-0. 

^ Cf., e.g.. Slith Thompson. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington. Indiana 1966), 
D1385.2.8. 

^ Cf. Hanns Bachtold-Staubli, Handworterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (Berlin-Leipzig, 
4 [1932]), p. 179 f.; Stiih Thompson, G401. 



Das Ende Neuroms in der Sicht der 
deutschen Zeitgenossen 

JOHANNES IRMSCHER 



Im Jahre 1976 legte bei Amaldo Mondadori der leider allzufruh verstorbene 
Mailander Byzantinist Agostino Pertusi unter dem Titel "La caduta di 
Costantinopoli" zwei bemerkenswerte kommentierte Textbande vor, von 
denen der erste den Untertitel tragi: "Le testimonianze dei contemporanei," 
wahrend der zweite unter die Uberschrift "L'eco nel mondo" geriickt isL Die 
Einleitung des ersten Bandes wiirdigt die Tiirken als welthistorische Potenz: 
Sie sind "la grande paura del mondo," ihr Sultan Mehmed II. wird vielfaltig 
Gegenstand kunstlerischer Darstellung und in den historischen Werken der 
Zeit un personaggio epico, das tiirkische Heer macht ein Thema auf- 
merksamer Bewunderung aus, und den Fall des byzantinischen Reiches 
kommentierte kein Geringerer als Enea Silvio Piccolomini, nachmals Papst 
Pius II., mit den Worten: "Fuenint Itali renim domini, nunc Turchorum 
inchoatur imperium."^ So hatte sich die Nachricht von den Geschehnissen 
des 29. Mai 1453 wie ein Lauffeuer durch die gesamte Okumene verbreitet, 
und Pertusi zeigte auf, welche Wege dabei begangen wurden, und erfaBte die 
sentimenti di partecipazione umana e interessamento politico — bei den 
Griechen und ihren orthodoxen Glaubensbriidem, im Westen und auch bei 
den Tiirken. Bei der Auswahl seiner Texte lag das Schwergewicht des 
Editors naturgemafi bei den Anrainervolkern des byzantinischen Staates. 
Nachtrage und Erganzungen sind daher namentlich in bezug auf Mitteleuropa 
moglich und erforderlich, wobei ein friiherer Aufsatz von mir: 
"ZeitgenOssische deutsche Stimmen zum Fall von Byzanz"^ als Ausgangs- 
punkt genommen werden kann. 

Im Unterschied zu dem Balkangebiet und im Unterschied auch zu den 
italienischen Herrschaften mit ihren weitgespannten Ostinteressen war 

^ Pertusi. a.a.0.1.XXni. 

^ J. Imscher, Byzantinoslavica 14 (1953). 109 ff. 



294 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Deutschland— hier nicht im staatspolitischen, sondern im geographischen 
Sinne verstanden — zunSchst von dem osmanischen Vordringen nur wenig 
betroffen. Indes ubte, wie Pertusis Dokumentensammlung zeigte, der Fall 
von Konstantinopel eine so einschneidende Wirkung, daB sich davon sehr 
bald auch die entfernteren Territorien beruhrt fuhlten. Hatte man in 
vergangenen Sakula fiir das schismatische Byzanz nur recht gelegentlich 
Geschmack und Interesse gezeigt, so setzte jetzt eine verstarkte 
Beschaftigung mit dem gefdhrlichen Eroberervolke ein, das die Marchenstadt 
am Bosporus hatte einnehmen kOnnen. Die Uberwindung der feudalen 
Gebundenheit durch das Wachstum der StSdte, durch den seit den Kreuzzugen 
intensivierten Femhandel, durch die Ausbildung der Grundlagen der 
kapitalistischen Produktionsweise und die dadurch hervorgerufenen 
gesellschaftlichen Strukturwandlungen weitelen das Weltbild der sich ihrer 
bewufit werdenden biirgerlichen Klasse. Dabei zeigten sich in der Haltung 
gegenuber den vordringenden Tiirken bemerkenswerte Differenzieningen 
innerhalb der verschiedenen sozialen Gruppierungen. 

Die deutschen Chroniken der zweiten Haifte des 15. Jahrhunderts 
nahmen fast ausnahmslos von dem Fall Konstantinopels Notiz und 
bewerteten dieses Ereignis ziemlich einheitlich. Der brandenburgische 
Franziskaner Matthias DOring (gestorben 1469)^ fuhrte seine Fortsetzung der 
Chronik des Theodoricus Engelhusius (gestorben 1434)"* bis zum Jahre 1464 
weiter, wobei der obersSchsisch-brandenburgische Raum den Mittelpunkt 
seines Interesses bildete. Um so bemerkenswerter ist die Aufmerksamkeit, 
die der Chronist der Eroberung Konstantinopels und zugleich ihren 
innerdeutschen Auswirkungen zuteil werden lieB: 

Imperator Turcorum per terram et mare vallavit Constantinopolim cum 
200000 et cepit eam et populum redegit in servitutem Imperatoremque et 
filium et filiam captives duxit ad ecclesiam magnam Sancte Zophie. In 
cujus altari, prout famabatur, filiam stupravit patre et fratre inspicientibus, 
quo facto et patrem et filium et filiam immaniter in frusta concidi jussit 
cum protestacione, quod ante finem anni sequentis ita faceret pape et 
Cardinalibus in Roma. Et ad id prosequendum muris Constantinopolis 
urbis solo equatis iter vertit versus Ungariam, in quo regno iam surrexit 
quedam discolorum ex reliquiis heresis BohemicaHs congregata societas 
[namlich die Hussiten] que regnum prefatum depopulabatur ab intra, Turco 
ab extra invadente. In his omnibus Imperator Fridericus australis [nimlich 
Friedrich HI., 1440-1493] sedit in domo, plantans ortos et capiens aviculas, 
ignavus. Regnum quoque Ytalicum ad id nichil valet per guerras, per 
Imperatorem post sui coronacionem in Ytalia relictas, ut sic bellum 
internum ecclesie infidelibus det ansam 'ecclesiam invadendi. Ita enim 
dicitur Turcum dixisse, antequam Alemanni bellicosi, quos plus pondero, 
concordare poterunt, intencionem meam de destniccione Rome videbo 

^ August Potlhast, Bibliotheca historica medii aevi, 1, 2. Aufl. (Berlin 1896), 382. 
'* Potthast a.a.O. 407. 



Johannes Irmscher 295 

completam. Sicque Constantinopolis, que condita fuit anno Domini 334, 
hoc anno destruitur.^ 

Sehr viel kiirzer und lediglich das Geschehen in Konstantinopel 
berucksichtigend informierten andere Chroniken, wie z.B. das von Leibniz 
erschlossene, bis 1474 reichende Chronicon Sancti Aegidii in Brunsvig^ 
(d.h. Braunschweig), von einem ungenannt bleibenden MOnch jenes Klosters 
abgefaBt,'' oder das 1475 gedruckte, gleichfalls anonyme Lubecker* 
Rudimentum noviciorum — epitome sive systema historiae universalis^ oder 
die 1493 gedruckte Weltchronik des Niimberger Stadtarztes und Humanisten 
Hartmann Schedel (1440-15 14>,'° die uberdies einen Holzschnitt mit der 
Stadtansicht Konstantinopels bietet,^* oder die bis 1508 reichende 
Weltchronik des Passauer Presbyters Johann Staindel.^^ 

Nach den Chroniken stand also Neurom, Orientis imperii sedes, wie es 
bei Staindel hieB, dem BewuBtsein der Leser recht fern, und seine Einnahme 
durch die Osmanen war von mancherlei Grausamkeit gekennzeichnet; daB 
durch das tiirkische Vordringen auch die deutschen Belange beriihrt werden 
konnten, war von all den Chronisten nur Matthias DOring deutlich 
geworden. An politischem Sensus ermangelte es den westlichen Chronisten 

^ Riedel, Codex diplomaticus Brandenburgensis, IV 1 (Berlin 1862). 224. 

^ Joannes Pistorius, Rerum Germanicarum scriptores aliquot insignes (Regensburg 1731), 
1111: "Constantinopolis a Turchis capitur, in qua, omnibus Christianis ab annis sex supra 
interfectis, imperator Graecorum occiditur. Insuper alii circiter 60 millia vincti, in captivitatem 
ducuntur, crucifixusque abominabiliter ab impiis illuditur." 

■^ Potthast a.a.O. 235. » 

^ Pathast a.a.O. 2. 986. 

^Rudimentum noviciorum (Liibeck 1475), Blatt 408 verso: "Eodem etiam anno qui est 
Domini 1453 Imperator thurcorum oppugnans Constantinopolim quolibet die ter [sic!] terra 
marique plus quam cum 300 milibus hominum ad 66 dies tandem obtinuit eam Imperatore 
grecorum ac patriarcha cum omnibus christianis masculis ad instar pecudum trucidatis 
mulieribus abductis raptisque virginibus 28 die marcij." 

1° Potthast a.a.O. 2, 1001. 

^^ Text bei Andreas Felix Oefelius, Rerum Boicarum scriptores, 1 (Augsburg 1763), 394: 
"Turci obtinuerunt terram et civitatem Constantinopolin et magnam ibidem multitudinem 
Christianorum interfecerunl et praecipue ipsum Imperatorem Graeciae, et onuies Ecclesias 
desolarunt, et reliquias Sanctorum pedibus conculcaverunt facientes ex Ecdesiis subula equorum 
et lupanaria, et tandem eandem civitatem suo Domino subjugarunt, et circa Constantinopolin 
circumquaque multas civitates devastamus [sic I] usque ad fines Hungariae. Fuit autem id factum 
sub Friderico Imperatore tertio et sub Nicolao Papa V. Videlicet quod regia civitas 
Constantinopolis caput totius Ecclesiae orientalis diu obsessa tandem capta a Saracenis et ab 
Imperatore Turcorum in grave praejudicium et ludibrium totius Christianitatis. Hie namque 
magna multitudo virorum religiosorum virginumque et aliorum Christianorum miserabiliter 
occisa occubuerunt, et Sanctorum reliquiae cum locis sacratis irreligiose et inhimianitus 
execratae et desolatae." Die Stadtansicht in der deutschsprachigen Ausgabe von 1493 (Reprint 
Leipzig 1933), Blatt 249. 

^^ Potthast a.a.O. 2, 1029. Text bei Oefelius a.a.O. 537: "Constantin(^)olis orientis Imperii 
sedes et armis expugnata a Mahumeto Turcorum Rege caede diripitur XXIX. mensis Maji, anno 
regni ejus tertio. In hujus urbis populatione Constantinus Paleologus, et ipse matre Helena 
genitus, orientis Imperator capite tiuncatus regni simul et vitae fmem fecit, defecitque Imperium 
Graecorum." 



296 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

klOsterlicher oder verwandter Couleur im allgemeinen offenbar ebenso wie 
ihren byzantinischen Kollegen. Wesentlich sensibler zeigten sich 
demgegenuber die poetischen AuBerungen, in denen die differenten 
Positionen der unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Krafte recht beredt und 
parteilich zum Ausdruck kamen. Die Genres Tiirkenlieder und Fastnachts- 
spiele sind hier zuvOrderst zu nennen. 

Die Tiirkenlieder erscheinen in grOBerer Zahl erst mit dem Jahre 1529. 
Die unablassig vordringenden Tiirken batten zwischen 1459 und 1463 
Serbien und Bosnien als Provinzen ihrem Imperium einverleibt, 1479 
Albanien besetzt, 1521 Belgrad erobert und standen nunmehr vor Wien, der 
Hauptstadt des Heiligen Romischen Reiches deutscher Nation. Wenn 1453 
deutsche SpieBbiirger sagen konnten, um aus dem "Osterspaziergang" des 
Goetheschen "Faust" zu zitieren: 

Nichts Bessers weiB ich mir an Sonn- und Feiertagen 
als ein Gesprach von Krieg und Kriegsgeschrei, 
wenn hinten, weit, in der Ttirkei, 
die Volker aufeinander schlagen, 

so war diese Tiirkei nunmehr nicht mehr weit, sondem sehr nahe geriickt, ja 
die Tiirken wurden als die wahren Erbfeinde des deutschen Namens 
angesehen, und ihrem Vordringen Einhalt zu gebieten, erkannte man als 
nationale Aufgabe. Im vorangehenden Jahrhundert war der Kreis derer, 
welche die zukunftigen Entwicklungen bereits erahnten, jedoch noch sehr 
eng gezogen. 

Ein Druck von Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, der heute zu den 
seltensten Inkunabeln gehOrt, reproduzierte "Eyn manung der cristenheit 
widder die durken"^^ (un' esortazione alia cristianit^ contro i turchi^"*), ein 
Gedicht von iiber 180 Versen in einer vom elsSssischen Dialekt beeinfluBten 
Sprachform, das offenkundig in den ersten Wochen des Jahres 1455 in der 
DiOzese StraBburg entstand.^^ Es beginnt mit einer Anrufung Christi und 
dem Gebet um Hilfe wider die Tiirken. 

Aiutaci d'ora in poi in tutte le ore 

contro i nostri nemici, i turchi e pagani; 

fa loro scontare la malvagia violenza 

che a Costantinopoli e in Grecia 

hanno usato contro non poca povera gente, 

catturando, torturando, uccidendo e umiliandola, 

come secoli fa e successo agli Apostoli.^^ 

^^ Text bei Johannes Joachim in: Karl Dziatzko, Beitrdge zur Kenntnis des Schrift-, Buch- 
und Bibliothekswesens 6 G-eipzig 1901). 87 ff. 

'* Von einem Kreuzzugsappell spricht Robert Schwoebel, The shadow of the Crescent: the 
Renaissance image of the Turk (1453-1517) (Nieuwkoop 1967), 166. 

^^ Joachim a.a.O. 98 ff. — Gutenberg hatte von 1434 bis 1444 in StraBburg gelebt (Aloys 
Ruppel, Johannes Gutenberg [Berlin 1939], 41), die Verbindung liegt daher nahe. 

^^ Obersetzung von Barbara Stein Molinelli bei Pertusi a.a.O. 2, 327. 



Johannes Irmscher 297 

Den Hauptteil des Gedichtes, das sicher keine groBe Kunst, aber doch 
praktikable Gebrauchsliteratur im Dienste der Reichspolitik verkOrpert, 
macht ein Horoskop^'^ mit astrologischen Voraussagen fiir das Jahre 1455 
aus. Diese bezeugen eine ziemliche Vertrautheit des Verfassers mit den 
politischen Konstellationen der Zeit, fiir welche wesentliche Quellen faBbar 
gemacht wurden.^* Aber so munter auch die europaischen Machte, mit dem 
Papst angefangen, Revue passierten und so optimistisch der Poet seine 
Prophezeiungen auch zu gestalten suchte, am Ende blieb ihm doch nur das 
Gebet zu dem Herrgott und zu der Muttergottes. 

Ahnlichen Stimmungen begegnen wir bei dem Meistersinger^' Michael 
Behaim aus Sulzbach in Wurttemberg; er wurde dort 1416 geboren und 
verstarb ebenda nach 1474.^0 Weber von Beruf, nahm er 1439 Kriegsdienste 
an und suchte die Verbindung zu Fiirstenhofen von Ungarn bis nach 
Norwegen. Einen dezidiert papstlich-katholischen Standpunkt vertretend, 
pries er seine adligen Conner, geiBelte er das Hussitentum, das uns als 
reichsgefahrdend ja bereits in der DOringschen Chronik begegnete, und 
schmahte er die Aufstandischen, die 1462 den Kaiser in seiner Wiener Burg 
belagert batten; als er freilich spater die kaiserhche Gnade verlor, eiferte er 
auch gegen Fiirstenwillkiir und Pfaffentum. Seine zahlreichen Poesien 
vermOgen strengeren asthetischen MaBstaben nicht gerecht zu werden, um so 
bedeutsamer ist ihr historischer Quellenwert.'^^ In neun Strophen von 
insgesamt 87 Versen gab auch Behaim eine esortazione, welche die 
Gesamtheit der christlichen Fiirsten aufrief, das geschandete Byzanz 
wiederzugewinnen; er uberschrieb das Karmen "Dis geticht sagt von turken 
und vom adel''^^ (Questa poesia parla dei turchi e della nobilta). Es beginnt 
mit der Feststellung: "La corona greca h caduta," und nennt das Ende von 
Byzanz eine Katastrophe, nicht zuletzt, weil sie fast 300000 Christen das 
Leben kostete — eine weit iibertriebene Zahl,^ die uns jedoch bereits mit 
RegelmaBigkeit in den Chroniken begegnete. Ihr aber, "principi del Sacro 
Romano Impero, siete responsabili del loro sangue." Ihr habt keinen Finger 
geriihrt, als Konstantinopel um Hilfe rief, und ihr werdet, wenn ihr euch 

^^ Zu den astrologischen Daten vgl. Arthur WyB in: Festschrift zum funfhundertjdhrigen 
Geburtstage von Joharm Gutenberg, hgg. von Otto Hartwig (Leipzig 1900), 380 ff.; WyB spricht 
geradezu von einem Tiiikenkalender. 

'* Durch Joachim a.a.O. 93 ff. 

^' Die Bezeichnung ist insofem zu prazisieren, als Behaim nicht zu den seBhaften, 
handwerklichen Meistersingem gehorte; so Hellmut Rosenfeld in: Neue deutsche Biographie, 2 
(Berlin [West] 1955). 6. 

2° Fritz Morre, Archivfur Kulturgeschichte 30 (1940). 5 ff. 

^^ Giinter Albrecht u.a.. Deutsches Schriftstellerlexikon von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart, 
4. Aufl. (Weimar 1963). 39 f. 

^ Text bei Th. G. von Karajan in: Quellen und Forschungen zur vaterldndischen Geschichle, 
Literatur und Kunst (Wien 1 849). 64 f. Zur Interpretation vgl. Hans Gille, Die historischen und 
politischen Gedichte Michel Beheims (Berlin 1910). 117 ff., der auch Behaims spatere 
Tiirkengedichte beriicksichtigt. 

^ So richtig Pertusi a.a.O. 2. 481. 



298 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

nicht gegen den heidnischen Tiirken zur Wehr setzt, die Macht verlieren, die 
ihr Kaiser Karl (dem GroBen) verdankt. In einer Zeit, die Einigkeit fordert, 
leben die Christen in Zwietracht; der kaiseriiche Adler, anzich^ volare su 
zone selvagge nutrendosi di animali selvatici, cio^ anzich6 portare le sue 
armi lontane contro i pagani, preferisce ora volteggiare sui villaggi dell' 
impero germanico e nutrirsi di animali domestici, come fa la poiana.^^ 

Es ist uberaus wahrscheinlich, daB der dienstbereite Meistersinger 
Behaim mit seinen Versen, die ja schon durch die Uberschrift den 
innerpolitischen Bezug herauskehrten, nicht nur die eigene Meinung 
aussprach, sondem zugleich einem politischen Auftrag gerecht wurde.^ 
Eine solcher Auftrag steht ganz eindeutig hinter dem Gedicht 
'Tiirkenschrei," als dessen Verfasser sich ein sonst nicht bekannter Balthasar 
MandekeiB nennt.^^ Das 33 Strophen umfassende Poem, das in zwei 
voneinander abweichenden Versionen iiberliefert ist, gehOrt in das Jahr 
1455/56. Das Gedicht spricht von "uns" (Strophe 33) und "unserm Heer" 
(Strophe 32) und ruft zum Kampf gegen die Turken auf, welche die 
Christenheit bedrohen, nachdem einleitend in der uns schon vertrauten Weise 
die Schandung Griechenlands und der "Verrat" Konstantinopels^'' beklagt 
wurden. Ansonsten wird das Geschehen im Osten nur in Allgemeinplatzen 
behandelt, wahrend sich der Verfasser uber die politischen Aktionen des 
Westens, die der militarische Erfolg der Osmanen auslSste, wohhnformiert 
zeigt. Er weiB um die Bulle Papst Nikolaus' V. vom 30. September 1453 
und weiB um die Bemuhungen, einen allgemeinen Landfrieden herzustellen. 
Im Sinne der Appelle, welche von den Reichstagen zu Regensburg und 
Frankfurt 1454 und zu Wiener Neustadt 1455 ausgingen, wandte sich 
MandelreiB an die einzelnen "edlen Fiirsten" (Strophe 15), beginnend mit 
dem KOnig von Frankreich, sowie an die "ehrbaren Reichsstadte" (Strophe 
29) mit der Aufforderung, dem Vordringen der heidnischen Turken ein Ende 
zu setzen; aber auch MOnche und Kleriker sollten "wider die Turken" fechten 
helfen. Dann diirfe man auch die Zuversicht haben, mit Sankt Peters und 
Maria Hilfe "mit Freuden" (Strophe 32) wieder nach Hause zu kommen. 

Schon die Inhaltsiibersicht laBt erkennen, daB es sich bei dem 
MandelreiBgedicht um bestellte Arbeit handelt, um offiziose Reichspoesie, 
der es an volkstiimlichem Stil ebenso mangelt wie an inhaltlicher 
Volksverbundenheit. Entstanden sein mOgen die Verse, als zur Zeit der 
Reichstage von Frankfurt und Wiener Neustadt der spater heiliggesprochene 
Franziskaner Johannes Capistranus^^ (1386-1456) auf eigene Faust ein 
Kreuzfahrerheer zusammenbrachte, Ergebnis der Agitation gewisser 

^ Interpretation von Pertusi a.a.O. 2, 482, in Obereinstinunung mit Karajan a.a.O. 26 f. 

^ G. G. Gervinus sprach von "Gewerbsdichtung im Dienste der Fiirsten" (Morr6 a.a.O. 5). 

^ R. V. Liliencron, Die hislorischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert, 
1 (Leipzig 1865). 460 ff.. ebd. S. 463 ff. der Text. 

^ Uber diese "DolchstoBlegende" vgl. Irmscher a.a.O. 1 13 Anm. 20. 

^ Zuletzt H. Dopsch bei Mathias Bemath und Felix v. Schroeder, Biographisches Lexikon 
zur Geschichle Siidosteuropas, 2 (Munchen 1976), 288 f. 



Johannes Innscher 299 

Hofkreise, deren fiihrender Kopf der erwahnte Humanist Enea Silvio 
Piccolomini (1405-1464), der nachmalige Papst Pius II., war,^^ der in 
vielfacher sonstiger Weise gegen die Tiirken agitieri^^ und auf dem Reichstag 
zu Frankfurt eine glanzvolle Rede De Constantinopolitana clade et bello 
contra Turcos congregando^^ gehalten hatte. Bekanntlich gelang es 
Capistranus, Belgrad zu entsetzen; dann blieb seine Aktion stecken, die Pest 
befiel das Heer, Capistranus fand den Tod.^^ 

Gegeniiber der offiziosen, mit einer Richtung innerhalb der Aristokratie 
verbundenen Poesie eines MandekeiB begegnet uns in den Opera des 
Numberger Meistersingers Hans Rosenplut wahrhaft volksverbundene 
Dichtung. Urn 1400 in Numberg geboren, ergriff der Biirger der damals 
bliihenden Reichsstadt das Biichsenmacherhandwerk, nahm an den 
Hussitenkriegen teil, verteidigte die Burgerrechte im Kampf gegen die 
AnmaBungen des Markgrafen Albrecht III. Achilles von Brandenburg und 
sympathisierte mit den Plebejem. Sein umfangreiches Oeuvre bedient sich 
der parteilichen Satire, um die MiBstande der Zeit zu geiBeln, oder aber einer 
grobianischen, die mittelalterliche Gebundenheit durchbrechenden Welt- 
offenheit.^^ 

Das Lied Von den Tiirken,^'* 40 Strophen zu je fiinf Versen, stellt 
Strophe 40 fiir das Jahr 1459 eine groBe Entscheidung in Aussicht; man 
darf daraus schlieBen, daB es gegen Jahresende 1458 entstand. Trotz der 
Bemuhungen Piccolominis und der Beschlusse der vorhin erwahnten 
Reichstage zu Regensburg, Frankfurt und Wiener Neustadt und trotz der 
Tatsache, daB die AggressivitSt der Osmanen und damit die unmittelbare 
Bedrohung des Reichsgebietes immer offenkundiger wurden, war, um der 
Turkengefahr zu begegnen, nichts Emsthaftes geschehen, abgesehen von der 
Ausschreibung neuer Steuern, deren Verwendung fiir die, welche sie 
aufbringen muBten, nicht zu kontrollieren war. Vielmehr spitzten sich mit 
zunehmender Gefahrdung von auBen die politischen und sozialen GegensStze 
im Innem immer mehr zu. Nach den Worten eines Chronisten begann man 
in Deutschland wahrend der langen Regierungszeit Friedrichs III. — wir 
fanden ihn ja bereits von Matthias DOring kritisiert — zu vergessen, daB es 

^ Zopffel-Benrath in: Realencyklopddie fiir protestanlische Theologie undKirche, 3. Aufl. 
von Albert Hauck, 15 (Leipzig 1904). 427. 

^ Georg Voigt, Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini, als Papst Pius der Zweite, und sein Zeitalter, 2 
(Berlin 1862). 89 ff. 

^^ Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomineus, Opera quae extant omnia (Basel 1571), 678 ff.: 
"Constantinopolitana clades," "quae Turcorum grandis victoria, Graecorum extrema ruina, 
Latinorum summa infamia fuit," wird als Leitthema vorangesteUt, und die Rede schlieBt mit der 
VerheiBung an die Teilnehmer des Reichsugs: "Quia neque oculus vidit, neque auris audivitX 
neque in cor hominis ascendit, quae promisit dominus diligentibus se — quales vos futuros esse o 
Germani nobiles nemo dubitaverit, si hoc bellum ut Imperator admonet. Papa petit, Christus 
iubet, pro divino honore atque amore suscipietis" (S. 689). 

^^ Eugen Jacob. Johannes von Capistrano, 1 (Breslau 1903), 152. 

33 Albrecht a.a.O. 551. 

** LUiencron a.a.O. 503 ff.. der Text 506 ff. 



300 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

im Lande einen Kaiser gab,^^ so sehr waren Ansehen und reale Macht des 
obersten Herrschers gesunken, der sich allein auf die ihm durch seine 
Erblande zur Verfiigung stehenden Potenzen zu stutzen vermochte und 
allenfalls darauf Anspruch erheben konnte, als der erste der unter ihm 
gleichgestellten Feudalherren zu gelten. Diese Schwache der Zentralgewalt 
fiihrte dazu, daB sich BOhmen unter dem Hussitenfiihrer Podiebrad, der am 2. 
Marz 1458 zum KOnig gewahlt wurde, fiir lange Zeit aus dem Reichsverband 
16ste. Gleichzeitig formierte der vorhin genannte Brandenburger Albrecht 
Achilles eine Gegenpartei der Fursten, mit der eine kriegerische 
Auseinandersetzung unmittelbar bevorzustehen schien. Nicht geringer als 
die dynastischen waren die gesellschaftlichen Widerspriiche der Zeit Aus 
dem hohen Adel waren die Fursten hervorgegangen,^ die sich, wie deutlich 
wurde, weitestgehend verselbstandigt hatten. Fast geschwunden war der 
mittlere Adel der mediavalen Feudalpyramide, wahrend der niedere Adel, die 
Ritterschaft, einem raschen Verfall entgegenging. Ein Teil der Ritter war 
den Fiirsten lehnspflichtig, ein anderer reichsunmittelbar; verstandlicherweise 
waren die Fursten bestrebt, die noch unabhangigen Ritter sich botmaBig zu 
machen, und umgekehrt bemiihten sich diese, mOglichst reichsunmittelbar 
zu werden. Einig waren sich indes die Ritter samtlich in der Bauern- 
schinderei, die Leibeigenen wurden bis auf den letzten Blutstropfen 
ausgesogen, die Horigen mit immer neuen Abgaben und Dienst- 
verpflichtungen belegt. Ahnlich wie der Adel war auch die Geistlichkeit 
aufgespalten. Der geistlichen Feudalhierarchie der BischOfe, Abte und 
sonstigen Pralaten stand die plebejische Fraktion der Prediger auf dem Lande 
und in den Stadten gegeniiber, die den antifeudalen Kraften vielfach ihre 
Theoretiker und Ideologen lieferte. In der stadtischen Gesellschaft hatte das 
Aufbliihen von Handel und Gewerbe neue, antagonistische Fraktionen 
heraufgefuhrt. Die Spitze der stadtischen Gesellschaft machten die 
patrizischen Geschlechter, die sogennante Ehrbarkeit, aus, die sowohl die 
Stadtgemeinde als auch die ihr untertanigen Bauem exploitierten. Die 
zahlenmaBige Majoritat in den Stadten bildete die biirgerliche Opposition der 
reicheren und mittleren Burger sowie der Kleinbiirger unterschiedlicher 
Couleur; sie drang auf Verfassungstreue, nicht auf revolutionare 
Veranderung. Bunt gemischt war die plebejische Opposition der vom 
Biirgerrechte Ausgeschlossenen. Unter diesen Klassen und Schichten aber 
stand die groBe Masse der Nation, die Bauern, die, gleichgiiltig welchen 
juristischen Status sie hatten, nahezu rechtlos, in jeder Form ausgesaugt und 
ausgebeutet wurden. 

Rosenpluts Tiirkenlied schildert in poetischer Form die auBere und 
innere Lage des Reiches, wie sie sich im Jahre 1458 darbot. Die 
verschiedenen Machte und Machtegruppen werden in seinem Karmen durch 

^^ W. F. Semjonow, Geschichte des Millelalters (deuUch Berlin 1952), 213. 
^ Hierau und zum Folgenden Engels in Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels, Werke 7 (Berlin 1960), 
332 ff. 



Johannes Irmscher 301 

Vogelmann umschrieben, wie denn uberhaupt der Autor mehr allegorisiert, 
als dem Verst^ndnis — vor allem durch uns Nachfahren — gut ist. "Man sagt, 
die Tiirken sind ausgeflogen," heiBt es zu Anfang; diese Feststellung ist 
iibertrieben, wenn man bei dem Ausfliegen an einen regulSren Feldzug 
denkt; an Grenzplankeleien dagegen hat es in jenen Jahren zumindest in 
Ungam nicht gefehlt. Der Adler — unter dem symboltrachtigen Vogel, dem 
wir bereits bei Behaim begegneten, werden Kaiser und Reich verstanden — 
diirfe daher nicht zogem, sonst werde er selbst Fedem lassen miissen. Auch 
hatte er sich gegeniiber seinen Untertanen zu schamen; denn Burger und 
Bauem — sie erscheinen in der Gestalt von Zeisigen und Meisen — stiinden 
zur Abwehr bereit (Strophe 1). Im iibrigen lehre die Erfahrung, daB das 
Pferd seine Widerspenstigkeit aufgebe, wenn man es fest an die Kandare 
nehme (Strophe 2); woUte sich nur der sSumige Kaiser auf seine 
Herrscherpflicht besinnen, so wiirde man der Schwierigkeiten im Reiche 
schon Herr werden. Doch sei Eile geboten; denn habe der Tiirke erst einmal 
Ungam und BGhmen sich unterworfen, dann werde der Angriff auf das Reich 
mit Notwendigkeit folgen (Strophe 3 und 4). Von der Eule, dem 
Hussitenkonig Podiebrad, kOnne dabei der Kaiser mancherlei lemen, da die 
Eule sich auf die Kunst der Politik verstehe. Jedenfalls wiirde ein guter 
Politiker, das heiBt in der Sprache Rosenpluts ein kluger Falkner, die 
Tiirkengefahr dazu benutzen, urn der unbotmaBigen Falken, nSmlich der 
Fursten, Herr zu werden (Strophe 5). In einer durch Eigennutz, 
Treulosigkeit und Sophisterei vergifteten Welt kOnne eben auf Harte nicht 
verzichtet werden (Strophe 8 und 9), nachdem die LSssigkeit des Herrschers 
die Turken ermuntert habe, in den ungarischen und bOhmischen 
Angelegenheiten aktiv zu werden (Strophe 10 und 11). Dabei fiihlten sich 
diese sogar noch als TrSger einer gewichtigen Sendung, indem sie meinten, 
die Hoffart der hohen Herren strafen zu mussen (Strophe 12), — die Turken 
galten also keineswegs nur als MenschentOter, BlutvergieBer und 
Landerverwuster! Denn Rosenplut ubemimmt wenigstens partiell jene 
plebejische Einschatzung: die Geier, die adligen Herren, mOchten den 
Meisen, den Bauem, das Blut aussaugen. Doch nicht die Turken sollen die 
Geier zur Rason bringen, sondem der Kaiser sei bemfen, Ordnung im Reich 
zu schaffen (Strophe 14). Dann werde er auch erkennen, daB fur das Reich 
der geringe Hasenbalg, der Burger und Bauem verkOrpert, mehr bedeute als 
der fiirstliche Zobelpelz (Strophe 24; ich lasse bei meinem Resiimee 
Gedanken aus, die in unserm Zusammenhang von minderer Bedeutung sind). 
Bei den Bauem, den Meisen, vor allem aber bei den Reichsstadten, den 
Staren, fande das Reich seine Kraft; denn die uberkommene Welt sei 
verdorben, die Mannheit habe die Ritter verlassen, das Recht werde gebeugt, 
und MaBigkeit sei bei den Geistlichen nicht mehr zu finden (Strophe 25- 
29). Moge daher der Kaiser erkennen, daB die Stare = Reichsstande die 
aufstrebende Kraft darstellen, wShrend von den Falken = Fursten Rettung 
nicht mehr zu erwarten sei (Strophe 37). Ja, Herr Adler, Ihr entehrt Eure 
Wurde, wenn Ihr, statt die Reichsstadte zu schutzen, ihren Untergang 



302 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

betreibl! (Strophe 39). Darum handelt jetzt weise, wo die Stunde der 
Entscheidung gekommen! (Strophe 40). 

Bot MandekeiB ein Dokument der Reichspropaganda, ohne Schwung 
und wirkliche Anteilnahme des Verfassers, so machte sich Rosenpliit zum 
Sprecher und Interessenvertreter progressiver gesellschaftlicher Gruppier- 
ungen. Die Einwohner der ReichsstSdte in ihrer Gesamtheit, deren 
Fraktionen in den angesprochenen Fragen durch gemeinsame Interessen 
verbunden waren, fordem von dem schlaffen Kaiser Friedrich III. eine aktive, 
dem Reiche und nicht dynastischen Vorteilen dienende Politik; sie treten fiir 
die Einheit des Reiches gegen die separatistische Fiirstenmacht ein; sie rufen 
laut nach kirchlichen Reformen. Dabei hebt sich Rosenplut unter seinen 
Zeitgenossen hervor, indem er die geschundenen und maltratierten Bauem als 
eine sich formierende politische Kraft erkennt ebenso wie die Reichsstadte, 
die sich als solche bereits formiert hatten. Die neuen antifeudalen Klassen 
sind sich ihrer Starke voll bewuBt. Rosenplut richtet keine devoten Bitten 
an den Kaiser, sondem eindeutige, stichhaltig begriindete Forderungen. 

DaB Rosenplut der Verfassser des Tiirkenliedes ist, wird heute in der 
Germanistik von niemandem mehr bestritten, dagegen ist die Autorschaft 
von "Des Turken vasnachtspir'^*^ nicht voUig gesichert. Fastnachtsspiele 
hatten sich, seit dem 14. Jahrhundert belegt, im Zusammenhang mit den 
Fastnachtsumzugen herausgebildet, deren Gestalten ein Praecursor erkiarte, 
der im Laufe der Entwicklung zum kommentierenden Spielfiihrer des 
literarisch meist nicht sehr hochstehenden Spektakels wurde.^* Das 
satirische Moment ist mit dem Fastnachtsspiel fest verbunden. Die Satire 
richtete sich auf das hSusUche Leben (zMnkisches Weib, geprellter Ehemann, 
Pantoffelheld) und bezog die Standesatire (Spott des Stadtburgers uber 
Raubritter, Bettler, MOnche und Nonnen, Juden, Bauem) ein ebenso wie die 
politische Kritik. Rosenpluts Tiirkenspiel hat eine weitere Verbreitung 
gefunden als seine anderen Fastnachtsspiele, und zwar auch auBerhalb 
Niirnbergs; die Aktualitat seines Gegenstandes ist damit erwiesen. Als 
Terminus ante quern fiir die Entstehung ergibt sich bereits das Jahr 1456, 
Ort der Handlung ist die Reichsstadt Nurnberg; hier ist der Sultan 
erschienen, dem dafiir freies Geleit erwirkt wurde. 

Der Praecursor fiihrt den Sultan ein, der, wie hervorgehoben wird, 
Griechenland erobert hat. Er sei aus dem femen Orient, wo "es wohl und 
friedlich steht" (S. 288, Vers 10) und wo man zinsfrei auf seinem Grund und 
Boden sitze, "mit seinem weisen Rat" (S. 288, Vers 8) nach Nurnberg 
gekommen, weil er — man staune — aus den christlichen Landem vielerlei 
Klagen zu hOren bekam. Die Klagen kamen von den Bauem ebenso wie von 
den Kaufleuten, sie wandten sich gegen den Adel und seine StraBenrauberei, 

^ Text bei Adelberl Keller, Fastnachtsspiele aus dem funfzehnten Jahrhundert, 1 (Stuttgart 
1853). 288 ff. 

^ Joachim G. Boeckh u.a., Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von 1480 bis 1600 (Berlin 
1961). 83 ff. 



Johannes Irmscher 303 

der nur mit harten MaBregeln begegnet werden kOnne. Der Sultan, so 
informiert der Sprecher weiter, sei, wenn man sich an ihn wende, bereit, fiir 
Frieden und Ordnung zu sorgen, ohne dafi deshalb der christliche Glaube der 
Bittsteller angetastet werden wiirde; ein solches Vorgehen entsprach 
bekanntlich der turkischen Praxis in den unterworfenen Gebieten. Auf den 
Praecursor folgte ein Ritter. Dieser erklMe die Angebote des Sultans fiir 
bloBe KOder, urn dem Eindringling das Einnisten zu erleichtern; wer an ihn 
und seinen Gott glaube, der sei "des Himmelreichs beraubt" (S. 290, Vers 
15). Ein Rat des Sultans verweist demgegenuber auf die gottgewollten 
Erfolge seines Herm, so zum Beispiel die Einnahme des Kaiserreichs von 
Trapezunt. Im weiteren Verlauf def Stuckes tritt dann der Sultan selber auf. 
Er sei nicht gekommen, urn Krieg zu fuhren und um zu betriigen, sondem 
weil ihn gelehrte Biicher dazu trieben. In diesen stehe geschrieben, dafi das 
Ungliick der Christen anheben werde, wenn die Armen um ihr Recht und 
Gut gebracht wiirden, wenn die Satten sich der Hungernden nicht mehr 
erbarmten, Gelehrsamkeit zur TSuschung verwendet wiirde und die Herren 
den Bauem keine Ruhe mehr liefien. Die Nachrichten, die ihn erreichten, 
liefien den SchluB zu, dafi dieser Zeitpunkt gekommen sei, dafi sich der 
Christengott abkehre und eine allgemeine Umwalzung bevorstehe. Er 
brauche daher nicht Gewalt anzuwenden, sondem kOnne sich auf die Kraft der 
Uberzeugung verlassen; denn es sei gewifi, dafi der Gott der Tiirken, wenn 
sie sich ihm zuwendeten, alle Ubel von ihnen nehmen wiirde (S. 295, Vers 
10). 

Aber auch die Meinung des Papstes wird vemommen; sie ist weniger 
apokalyptisch, sondem sehr konkret. Der Heilige Vater werde, so referiert 
sein Abgesandter, sich die Klagen iiber die Tiirken nicht langer anhOren, 
sondern den Sultan mit dem Bann und anderen Strafen belegen. Dem 
widerspricht ein Rat des Sultans. Sein Herr sei nicht gekommen, um die 
Kirche zu zerstOren, wohl aber, um Mifistande zu beseitigen: 
Ungerechtigkeit der Richter, Verworfenheit der Beamten, Wucher der Juden, 
Uppigkeit der Pfaffen. Der Sultan werde "eine rechte Reformation" ("ein 
rechte reformatzen," S. 297, Vers 5) durchfiihren; der Begriff erscheint hier 
ein halbes Jahrhundert vor dem Auftreten Luthers, gelSufig jedoch durch die 
radikale Flugschrift "Reformatio Sigismundi" vom Jahre 1439,^^ in der 
ahnliche Fordemngen wie bei Rosenplut laut wurden. Der Abgesandte des 
Kaisers, der nunmehr das Wort nimmt, vermag darauf nur mit 
Beschimpfungen und Strafandrohungen zu antworten; doch wird auch ihm 
aus dem Gefolge des Sultans die gebuhrende Abfuhr zuteil. Schliefilich 
erscheint noch ein Emissar der Kurfursten und geht sogleich zum 
rhetorischen Angriff uber, indem er die bei der Einnahme Konstantinopels 
geschehenen Greuel anprangert. Dafiir, dafi Unschuldige getOtet, Priester 
gemordet und Frauen geschandet worden seien, musse Siihne geleistet 

^' Leo Slem-Erhard Voigt, Deuischland in der Feudalepoche von der Mitte des 13. Jh. bis 
zumausgehenden 15. Jh. (Berlin 1965). 256 ff. 



304 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

werden. Doch der tiirkische Sprecher hat ein Gegenargument; die KurfUrsten 
bei ihrem Wohlleben, das nur die Ausbeutung der Bauem ermOglichte, 
hatten alien Gnind, stille zu sein und vor der eigenen Ture zu kehren. 

Das Spiel geht zu Ende, ohne daB nach so vielen Worten ein faBbares 
Ergebnis zustande gekommen ware. Der Rat der Reichsstadt Niimberg 
versichert Kaiser, Fiirsten und Adelsherren zum Trotz die Tiirken des freien 
Geleits. Der Sultan bedankt sich fiir dieses Entgegenkommen und ladt 
seinerseits die "ehrsamen, weisen Burger" (S. 302, Vers 8) zu einem 
Gegenbesuch in seinem Reiche ein. 

Rosenpliits Dichtungen lieBen deutlich werden, daB die Minder- 
privilegierten unter den Biirgem des Heiligen ROmischen Reiches deutscher 
Nation in den Tiirken keineswegs nur blindwiitige Eroberer und Feinde der 
Christenheit zu erblicken vermochten; vielmehr gemahnte die Bedrohung 
von auBen sehr nachdrucklich an die gesellschaftlichen Widerspriiche im 
Innem. Die Opposition und die plebejische zu allererst bildete sich daher ihr 
eigenes Urteil iiber die Weltlage und zog daraus ihre eigenen 
SchluBfolgerungen. Mit deren weiterem Vordringen sanken freilich die 
Hoffnungen auf die Tiirken zunehmend dahin. Rosenpliit fand mit seinen 
politischen Fastnachtsspielen keine Nachfolge."*^ 

Wir hatten iiber den Widerhall des Jahres 1453 in deutschen Quellen zu 
informieren. Diese sprachen iibereinstimmend von Konstantinopel, niemals 
von Neurom. 

Berlin. DDR 

^Albrechta.a.O. 551. 



8 



Mehmed the Conqueror and the 
Equestrian Statue of the Augustaion* 

J.RABY 



One of the landmarks of Constantinople was the colossal equestrian statue 
which stood on top of a hundred-foot-high column outside Hagia Sophia. 
Known as the Augustaion from the square in which it stood, the bronze 
statue was erected by Justinian, although in all probability it was not his 
own but a re-used work of Theodosius I or II, The statue's size alone — 
some 27 feet in height — would have ensured its fame, but it was particularly 
esteemed as a symbol of Byzantine dominion and a talisman of the City. 
Christianity's triumph over the world was signified by the globus crueller 
which the rider held in his left hand, while with his extended right he was 
believed to gesture apotropaically towards the Orient, commanding the 
Eastern enemy, successively Sasanians, Arabs and Turks, to stay back 
behind the Byzantine border. The statue was so prominent, its symbolic and 
magical character for the Christians of Constantinople so commonly 
acknowledged, that it is hardly surprising it failed to survive under the 
Turks. ^ 

* I would like to express my sincere thanks to Professor C. Mango and Professor V. Menage 
for their criticism and help. 

^ For a review of the sources: F. W. linger, Quellen der byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte, I 
(Vienna 1878), pp. 137-46; idem, "Uber die vier kolossalen Saulen in Constantinopel," 
Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft 2 (1879), 109-37. P. W. Lehmann, "Theodosius or 
Justinian? A Renaissance Drawing of a Byzantine Rider," Art Bulletin 41 (1959), 40, note 5, 
gives a bibliography to supplement Unger's. See further C. Mango, The Brazen House. A Study 
of the Vestibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople (Copenhagen 1959), pp. 174-80; G. 
Bovini, "Giustiniano sul cavallo di Teodosio," Felix Ravenna 3 (1963), 132-37; J. P. A. van der 
Vin, Travellers to Greece and Constantinople. Ancient Monuments and Old Traditions in 
Medieval Travellers' Tales, vol. 11 (Istanbul 1980), passim. The Turkish legend of the "Red 
Apple" was no doubt prompted by the gilded orb held by the equestrian statue of Justinian. As 
most travellers to Constantinople attested, the orb symbolized world dominion; dominion could 
thus be achieved by capturing Constantinople and the orb. After the Ottomans captured 
Constantinople, the legend was transferred to other cities such as Budapest and, most 
importantly, Rome: F. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans (Oxford 1929), U, pp. 



306 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Some time between 1544 and 1550 Peter Gyllius saw fragments of the 
statue, which he claimed had long been kept in a courtyard of the Sultan's 
palace, being transported to a cannon-foundry, which was presumably the 
one at Tophane;^ and he furtively measured a few of these disjecta membra, 
the rider's nose and the horse's hooves being nine inches long, the rider's leg 
taller than Gyllius himself. It has never been satisfactorily explained how 
the statue came to be removed to the imperial Saray. The answer, however, 
is to be found not in European or Greek, but in Ottoman, sources. 

Until recently the statue was believed to have been taken down from its 
column by Mehmed the Conqueror soon after the Fall of the City, This 
belief was based on a drawing in a fifteenth-century humanist miscellany 
now in Budapest, which depicts a Byzantine rider holding a globus cruciger 
in his left hand and gesturing with his right (Fig. 1). An inscription on the 
preceding folio identifies it as the work of Giovanni Dario and Cyriacus of 
Ancona, and allegedly dates it post-Conquest; Cyriacus, regarded as one of 
Sultan Mehmed's tutors before the Fall, is argued to have accompanied 
Mehmed into the City and there helped Dario to record the statue. Both the 
angle and detail of the drawing were held to prove that the monument was 



736-40; E. Rossi, "La leggenda turco-bizantina del Porno Rosso," Sludi bizantini e neoellenici 
5 (1937), 542-53; M. (?) Dukas {Ducae, Michael is Ducae Nepotis. Hisloria Byzanlina, ed. E. 
Becker, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae [Bonn 1834], p. 300) claims that the Turks 
nailed a severed head, believed to be that of Emperor Constaniine, on the column, thereby, 
perhaps, expressing their contempt for this Christian talisman. 

^P. Gyllius, De lopographia Constantinopoleos et de illius antiquitatibus libri quattuor 
(Leyden 1561), p. 104, Bk. 11, ch. xvii: "Barbari enim omni aereo vestitu, & equo, & statua 
columnam lustiniani spoliarunt, aliquotque annos nuda remasit. Tandem {105) ante triginla 
annos eversa est tota usque ad stylobatem, quern anno superiore funditus vidi excindi, ex cuius 
crepidinibus aqua saliebat fistulis in magnu labrum, nunc stylobatae loco, caslellu aquae latiiis 
constructum est, & fistulae auctae, equestrem lustiniani slatuam, quam modo dixi supra hanc 
columnam fuisse coUocatam, servatam diu in Qaustro regij Palatij deportari nuper vidi in 
caminos, quibus metaUa funduntur in machinas beUicas, inter quae erat lustiniani crus procerilate 
meam staturam superans, & nasus dodrate longior. Crura equi ad terram proiecta metiri non 
potui, pedis ungulam mensus sum occulte, & deprehendi dodrantalis esse altitudinis" (my 
italics). John Ball, trans.. The Antiquities of Constantinople, in 4 Books (London 1729), ch. 
xvii: "[This ill treatment of Theodosius by Justinian, was revenged upon him by the 
Barbarians]; for they used his Pillar in the same Manner, and stripped it of the Statue, the Horse, 
and the Brass wherewith it was covered, so that it was only a bare Column for some Years. 
About thirty Years ago the whole Shaft was taken down to the Pedestal, and that, about a year 
since, was demolished down to the Basis, from whence I observed a Spring to spout up with 
Pipes, into a large Cistern. At present there stands in the same Place a Water-House, and the 
Pipes are enlarged. I lately saw the Equestrian Statue of Justinian, ereaed upon the PiUar which 
stood here, and {130) which had been preserved a long Time in the Imperial Precina, carried into 
the melting Houses, where they cast their ordnance. Among the fragments were the Leg of 
Justinian, which exceeded my Height, and his Nose, which was above nine Inches long. I dared 
not publickly measure the Horse's Legs, as they lay upon the Ground, but privately measured 
one of the Hoofs, and found it to be nine Inches in Height." 



J. Raby 307 

sketched from close, so that it must have been removed from its elevated 
pedestal, and by inference also destroyed, on Mehmed's orders.^ 

This reconstruction is no longer tenable, however, since the discovery 
that Cyriacus was never Mehmed's tutor and that the entire theory of their 
relationship derives from a banal misreading of a scribal abbreviation in the 
manuscript of Zorzi Dolfin's Chronicle. In all probability Cyriacus died in 
Cremona in 1452, which dates the Budapest drawing to before the 
Conquest."* Moreover, the statue need not have been taken down to be 
sketched, because repairs took place some time between 1427 and 1437/8 
when Cyriacus and Dario could well have climbed the scaffolding and 
recorded the statue in situ.^ 

Although the Budapest drawing is of no relevance in proving that 
Mehmed II removed the statue, a second piece of evidence seems to 
implicate the Sultan in its destruction. In his Diario di viaggio, Gian-Maria 
Angiolello, who was captured by the Turks at Negroponte in 1470 and 
served in the imperial households first of Prince Mustafa and then of the 
Sultan himself, relates how Mehmed, heeding the advice of his astrologers 
and divines, destroyed a statue of "San Agostind" which stood outside Santa 
Sophia. The statue, he was advised, was a danger to the Ottomans, for as a 
talisman of Byzantium it would ensure the triumph of Christianity. It is 
impossible, of course, that a likeness of Saint Augustine should have 
survived into Palaeologan times, let alone that orthodox Byzantines, from 
whom Mehmed's advisers presumably derived their claim, should have 
regarded it as a Palladium of their city. San Agostino must be Angiolello's 
or his informer's gloss on Augustaion, a monument he had evidently not 
seen: 

Ancora per mezzo la porta di Santa Sofia vi e una colona lavorata di pezzi 
assai alta, sopra la quale era I'imagine di Santo Agostino fatta di bronzo, la 
quale fu levata via dal Gran Turco, perche dicevano li suoi Astrologhi et 
indovini, che insino che la detta statua di Sant' Agostino stara sopra la detta 
colona, li Cristiani sempre haverano possanza contro i Maomettani; e cosi 

^ E. Jacobs, "Cyriacus von Ancona und Mehemmed 11," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 30 (1929- 
30), 200; F. Babinger. "Johannes Darius (1414-94) Sachwalter Venedigs im Morgenland, und 
sein griechischer Umkreis," Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-hislorische 
Klasse, Silzungsberichte 5 (1961), 75-78; M. Vickers, "Theodosius, Justinian or Heraclius," Art 
Bulletin 5S (1916), 2M. 

'* J. Raby, "Cyriacus of Ancona and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed 11," Journal of the Warburg 
and Courlauld Institutes 43 (1980), 242-46. 

^ Unger (1879; above, note 1), p. 135; C. Mango, "Letter to the Editor," Art Bulletin 41 
(1959), 353; A. Vasiliev, "Pero Tafur, a Spanish Traveller of the Fifteenth century and his visit 
to Constantinople, Trebizond and Italy," Byzantion 7 (1932), 105; M. Letts, tr.. The travels and 
adventures of Pero Tafur (London 1926), pp. 140-41. Several MSS of Buondelmonti's De 
Insulis — not just the Marburg MS, as Lehmann (above, note 1), 54 — have an emended text 
which indicates that the column was scaled and an inscription on the horse deciphered: cf. 
Bodleian Canon. Misc. 280, f. 54' and Marciana It. cl. X 124; on the latter Mango (above, note 
1), p. 174, note 4. On Bod. Canon. Misc. 280, C. Mitchell, "Ex libris Kiriaci Anconitani," 
Italia medioevale e umanistica 5 (1962), 283-99. 



308 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

fu levata via la delta colona. Ancora nel fondo di quella vi e una bella 
fonte, la quale gietta in un lavello per Ire canoni di metallo acqua 
suavissima.^ 

Angiolello's account is contradicted, however, by Hartmann Schedel, who in 
his Liber cronicarum, first published in 1493, records that the equestrian 
statue was damaged by lightning in the great storm of 12th July 1490, and 
as if by way of proof Schedel includes a woodcut of the scene (Fig. 2)P 
Lightning certainly struck the church known by the Turks as Giin GOrmez 
Kilisesi, which was being used as a powder store and which blew up causing 
great damage, but there is no mention, pace Schedel, in either Ottoman or 
Christian sources of storm damage to the statue.* Nevertheless, Schedel 
claims to have derived his account from Venetian merchants trading in 
Istanbul, and such a source would appear to deserve some credence. 

The impasse between Angiolello and Schedel can be resolved by 
recourse to the Ottoman sources, which are unanimous in bearing out 
Angiolello. The most detailed account is by the late fifteenth-century author 
Dervi^ §emseddin Mehmed Karamani, in a Turkish version of his Tarih-i 
Ayasofya.^ The passage concerns the dying injunction of the Emperor 
Estuyanos (Justinian) to his nephew. This included the building of a tall 
column opposite Ayasofya and the making of a "bronze" (bakir) statue of 
Estuyanos riding a horse. The statue was to carry a gold globe in one hand, 

^ A. Capparozzo, ed., Di Gio. Maria Angiolello e di un suo inedito manuscritto (Nozze 
Lampertico-Balbi) (Vicenza 1881), p. 21; J. Reinhard, Essai sur J. M. Angiolello (Angers 1913), 
p. 167 gives a resume of the Vicenza MS. The passage does not appear in the section on 
Constantinople in the standard edition of AngioleUo, ed. I. Ursu, Donado da Lezze, Historia 
Turchesca (1300-1514) (Bucharest 1909). pp. 158-64, esp. 160-61, a section which is for the 
most part derived from Buondelmonti's description. 

^ H. Schedel, Liber cronicarum cwnfiguris et ymaginibus ah initio mundi (Nuremberg 1493), 
fol. CCLVIT; L. Baer, Die illustrierten Historienbiicher des 15. Jahrhunderts (Strassburg im 
Elsass 1903); V. von Loga, "Die Stadteansichten in Hartmann Schedels Weltchronik," Jahrbuch 
der (koniglichen) Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 9 (1888), 93-107, 184-96; C. Jenkins, "Dr. 
Hartmann Schedel and his book," Mediaeval Studies presented to Rose Graham, ed. V. Rutler 
and A. J. Taylor (Oxford 1950), pp. 98-137; J. Ebersoll, Constantinople Byzantine el les 
Voyageurs du Levant (Paris 1919), p. 78, note 3; Lehmann (1959, above note 1), 40, note 8. 

^ Oru9 Bey, Die friihosmanischen Jahrbiicher des Urudsch, nach den Handschrifien zu Oxford 
und Cambridge, Quellenwerke des islamischen Schrifltums 11 (Hanover 1925), p. 136, line 4; R. 
F. Kreutel, Derfromme Sultan Bayezid (Osmanische Geschichtsschreiber Band 9) (Graz, Wien, 
Koln 1978), p. 51; Mango (above, note 1), pp. 180-82. 

^ The complex problems of the various legendary histories of Ayasofya are discussed by F. 
Tauer, "Notice sur les versions persanes de la legende de 1 edification d'Aya Sofya," Fuad 
Koprulu Armagani. Melanges Fuad Koprulu (Istanbul 1953), pp. 487-94; P. Wittek, 
"Miscellanea," Tiirkiyat Mecmuasi 14 (1964), 263-72. The Persian versions are summarized by 
F. Tauer, "Les versions persanes de la legende de la construction d'Aya Sofya," Byzantinoslavica 
15 (1954), 16-18. For Estunyus fulfilling his uncle's order, see also Hoca Sadeddin, Tac iit 
Tevarih (Istanbul 1279/1861-2), I, p. 441; ed. I. Pamiaksizcglu, Hoca Sadeddin Efendi, Tdcut- 
Tevdrih (IsUnbul 1974-), 11, p. 303; G. de Tassy, "Description de la vLlle de Constantinople, 
traduite du turc de S2i&A-\idA^m," Journal Asiatique 5 (1824), 144. 



J. Raby 309 

while the other hand was to be open, the globe signifying to onlookers his 
control of the world. Estuyanos dies, and the passage reads:^^ 

9un Estunyu§a memleket-i tac u taht muyesser oldu 'ammisinin vas iyyetin 
iltizam idiib Ayasofiya mukabelesinde ol 'all mill biiny ad idiib tamam 
kildi. ve 'ammisinin heykelini ustadlarabakirdan duzdilrdii ve ol miliii 
iizerinde berkitdi, §6yl(e)kim anun gibi heybetlii sureti 'alemdekimesne 
gormemis idi. Bakir at ol suret ile ta bizim zamammiza degin mevcud idi. 
Onu gammazlar gamz idiib soziyle Sultan Mehemmed Han GazI (rahmat 
Allah 'alayhi rahmatan wasi'atan) yikdirdi ve ol suretleriiibakinndan 'aff 
toblar y apdirdi. Amma mfl heniiz Ay asofiya mukabelesinde hali tizere 
mevcuddur. 

When Estunyus [Justin 11, 565-578 A.D.] was favored with the kingdom of 
the throne and crown he undertook the injunction of his uncle and 
constructed that tall column, opposite Ayasofya, and completed it. He had 
craftsmen cast the statue of his uncle from "copper" [bronze] and he secured 
it to the top of that column, with the result that no-one had seen as 
majestic a statue in the world. The "copper horse" [bakir at] existed in that 
form until our present time. Story-mongers gossiped about it and on their 
word Sultan Mehemmed Han Gazi (may God's extensive mercy be upon 
him) had it pulled down; and from the copper of those statues he had 
splendid cannons made, but the column is still standing as it had been 
opposite Ayasofya. 

The correspondence between §emseddin's and Angiolello's accoupt is 
striking, all the more if one believes that there is little to distinguish 
astrologers and story-mongers. 

Neither Angiolello nor $emseddin , however, provides a date for the 
removal or destruction of the statue. This omission is made good by 
Asikpa^azade, the source for Ne^ri. According to Asikpa^ade, Mehmed 
had the "copper horse," together with crosses and bells — other potent 
symbols of Christianity as well as sources of bronze — melted down and 
turned into ordnance in preparation for his siege of Belgrade in 1456. In 
other words, the Augustaion was removed from its column some time 
between June 1453 and the winter of 1455-56.^^ 

Schedel's reference to the statue's survival in 1490 is nothing more than 
a "pious fiction," although it is not clear whether Schedel or his Venetian 
informants were guilty of the fabrication. Such a fiction nonetheless 
testifies to the fascination the statue exerted on contemporaries. Christians 

^° Topkapi Sarayi Museum Library, Revan 1498, fol. 37B-38A; cf. Istanbul University 
Library, TY 259 f. 50A. 

'^ A^ikpa^azade: Die Altosmanischen Chroniken des 'Asikpasazade, ed. F. Giese (Leipzig 
1929), 138 ch. 127; Tevarih-i Al-i 'Osman: 'Asikpasazade Ta'rihr.ed. 'AllBey (Istanbul 
1332/1914). 147; in g. N. Alsiz, Os^nli Tarihleri, I astanbul 1949), pp. 196-97; ed. and 
trans. R. F. Kreutel, Vom Hirtenzelt zur hohen Pforte, Osmanische Geschichtsschreiber, HI 
(Graz, etc. 1959). p. 206. 



310 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

and Turks alike. For the Christians of Istanbul and Galata there was profit 
in perpetuating the talisman's existence, or at least its memory; while for 
the newly settled Turks the marvels of the City — the copper horse, and that 
other celebrated talisman, the Serpent Column, and the various monumental 
stone columns and obelisks — were so awe-inspiring that continual reference 
is made to them in the Legendary History of Constantinople which was 
incorporated into the Anonymous Chronicles.^^ 

Angiolello and §emseddin differ, however, over the fate of the column 
itself, which Angiolello states was removed and Dervi^ $emseddin claims 
was left standing. Angiolello appears to have mistakenly conflated the 
removal of the statue and the column, whereas in reality the column 
survived into the first decades of the sixteenth century. According to 
Gyllius, the Turks fully dismantled the column, as far as the stylobate, 
thirty years prior to his writing (1544-50).^^ Turkish sources suggest the 
column collapsed during either Selim's (1512-20) or Siileyman's (1520- 
1566) reign, ^"^ and indeed the column is no longer visible in Matrak^i 
Nasuh's city-view of Istanbul of 944/1537-38.^^ 

Mehmed had no part, therefore, in the disappearance of the Augustaion 
column, although he did remove its statue. Despite his error Angiolello 
must be referring to the "Augustaion Rider," because not only does he 

^^ F. Giese, Die altosmanischen anonymen Chroniken. Teil I, Text and Variantenverzeichnis 
(Breslau 1922), pp. 74-11 1; Ted II. Ubersetzung (Leipzig 1925). pp. 101-48. 

^^ For Gyllius, see note 2 above. 

^'*Ali al-Arabi, writing in 970/1562-63, claims that the column was destroyed under 
Siileyman (Istanbul, Bayezid Library, MS Cevdet K284, fol. 156 ff. I owe this reference to the 
kindness of Professor Menage). A late recension of the Anonymous Chronicles (W3) refers to 
another column "collapsing suddenly [ansizin yikildi] one night during the time of Sultan Selim 
[1512-1520]." This is described as surmounted by a cross, and must be the Column of 
Constantine in the Forum of Constantine, which was given a cross finial in the mid-twelfih 
century by Manuel I Comnenus. As this column, known as Qemberlitas, is still standing, the 
recension of the Anonymous Chronicles is in error, and presumably intended to refer to the 
Augustaion colunm: Giese (1922, above, note 12), p. 94, line 17, and apparatus p. 297; and 
Giese (1925, above, note 12), p. 126. Yikildi could mean "dismantled," but the qualification 
"suddenly" makes this translation unlikely. Night would have been a perverse and dangerous 
time for workmen to have dismantled such immense columns. As in the case of the Serpent 
Column, therefore, the Turks were accused by Europeans of destructiveness, when the blame in 
fact rested with nature. According to Gyllius, the Ottomans stripped the column of its bronze 
cladding, but this had already been removed by the Crusaders of 1204: linger (1879, above, note 
1), 135. Hoca Sadeddin, in the Tac ut Tevdrih, which he dedicated to Murad m in 982/1575, 
states that the statue of the "copper horse" was standing "untU recently" (yaktn zamana degin) 
(see above, note 9). 

^^ W. Denny, "A Sixteenth-Century Architectural Plan of Istanbul," /4r.s Orientalis 8 (1970), 
49-63. The Augustaion column is visible in O. Panvinio's view of the Hippodrome (Fig. 3) 
and in the first editions of the so-called Vavassore view of Istanbul. Although it was first 
published in 1600 (De ludis circensibus, Venice), Panvinio's view must date from the late 
fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It cannot, however, be earlier than 1491, since it depicts 
what can only be the Firuz Aga Mosque, which was built in that year: K. MiiUer-Wiener, 
Bildlexikon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion-Konstantinupolis-Istanbul bis zumBeginn des 
17. Jahrhunderts (Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Tubingen 1977), pp. 70-71; Mango 
(above, note 1), p. 180. 



J. Raby 311 

describe the statue as bronze, on a high column outside the entrance to 
Hagia Sophia, but he mentions a fountain at the base of the column; and a 
fountain is attested at the stylobate of the Augustaion column by Gyllius. 
Several recensions, notably L and W3, of the Anonymous Chronicles also 
mention a fountain in connection with the "copper horse."^^ 

There is no evidence that the Augustaion statue was destroyed as part of 
a deliberate campaign by the Sultan against the monuments of Byzantium. ^^ 
On the contrary, Mehmed made a rich collection of Byzantine sculpture 
which he gathered within the precincts of the Saray, including almost all the 
imperial porphyry sarcophagi from the Church of the Holy Apostles, the 
honorific stele of Porphyrius the'1;harioteer, the statue of the Wise Judges, 
and the miraculous marble toad of Leo the Wise; while he also formed a 
collection of Christian relics the envy of any Western power.^^ Nor was the 
Augustaion melted down merely to satisfy an omnivorous demand for war 
materials, for Mehmed preserved the bronze Serpent Column, and even 
ensured its future safety by having a threatening mulberry tree cauterized to 
its roots. '^ 

Yet whereas the Serpent Column was a beneficent talisman in Turkish 
eyes, and safeguarded the City from snakes, the "copper horse" they 
considered a potential threat. Whether or not Mehmed himself believed in 
the magical efficacy of the horse, there was sufficient Turkish pressure to 

^^ Giese (1922, above, note 12). p. 82. esp. line 6; Giese (1925. above, note 12). p. 110. 
W3, for example, reads: "(Yanko bin Mad>^) bir lilii mil yapdirdi be 5 yiiz ar$un mikdan 
$imdiki halde Aya§ofya oniindeki ^esme iizerindeki bakir at mill kim vardir . . .'*; A. 
Mordtmann, Esquisse topographique de Constantinople (Lille 1892), p. 64, no. 116, ideniiTied a 
sheet of iron over the entrance to a cistern as the site of the former Augustaion column. 

^' Sadeddin (see above, note 9) claims that the "copper horse" and other similar monuments 
were removed by Mehmed. Dervi^ 5emseddin also talks of "statues" (in the plural) providing 
metal for Mehmed's cannon. There is little evidence, however, of similar statues extant in 
Constantinople just before the FaU. Three bronze statues of "Saracen Kings" on columns near 
the Augustaion column are mentioned by Russian pilgrims to Constantinople in 1390 and 
1420, but they had apparently been removed by 1432: Mango (above, note 1), p. 175; B. de 
Khitrowo, Ilineraires russes en Orient (Geneva 1889), pp. 202, 228. 

*^ On Byzantine sculpture found in the Saray, C. Mango, "Three Imperial Byzantine 
Sarcophagi Discovered in 1750," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 16 (1962), 397-402; idem, "Notes on 
Byzantine Monuments. HI." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23-24 (1969-70), 372-75; Muller-Wiener 
(above, note 15), p. 39. with additional bibliography; cf. C. Mango, "The Legend of L£o the 
Wise," Zbornik Radova, Recueil des Travaux de I'Acaddmie Serbe des Sciences. Institut d'Etudes 
Byzantines 6 (1960), 59-93, esp. 14-75. F. Babinger, "Reliquienschacher am Osmanenhof im 
XV. Jahrhundert." Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. philosophisch-historische Klasse. 
Silzungsberichtel (1956). overlooks A. Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant (Lyons 1554), fol. 
635'. ch. 139, claiming that he heard from a 105-year-old Greek Bishop near Epirus that 
Mehmed, according to Gennadios, kept several relics from Hagia Sophia "dans son cabinet." For 
a review of Babinger. see U. Heyd, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenldndischen Gesellsckaft 107 
(1957), 654-56. 

*' V. L. M6nage, "The Serpent Column in Ottoman Sources," Anatolian Studies 14 (1964), 
169-73; R. M. Dawkins, "Ancient Statues in Mediaeval Consuntinople," Folklore 35 (1924), 
209-48 and 380; J. Ebersoll (above, note 7). passim, but esp. pp. 130. 162. note 2; Capparozzo 
(above, note 6). pp. 21-22. 



312 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

have ihc statue destroyed. The Greeks of the city countered by claiming that 
the Augustaion was a talisman, not this time against the Eastern enemy, 
but against the plague. Only by stressing that it was protective of the entire 
community, Turks included, could the Greeks hope to save their statue. The 
Greek claim was evidently known to the Turks, for the Anonymous 
Chronicles refer to a copper horse with plague-repelling powers; ". . . some 
say that copper horse was a talisman, whereby, according to the belief of the 
Infidels, plague would not enter Istanbul, as long as that copper horse was 
standing." According to the late and doubtless ingenuous account of the 
Greek Patriarch Jeremias II (d. 1595), the Sultan, when he learnt that the 
statue was a defence against the plague, tried to have it restored, though he 
failed for lack of skilled craftsmen.^^ 

The Ottomans destroyed one of the greatest of Byzantine sculptures 
before their unsuccessful siege of Belgrade. Exactly 70 years later, after 
their successful conquest of Ofen in 1526, the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pa§a 
brought back to Istanbul several bronze statues which had originally been 
commissioned by Matthias Corvinus from the Florentine-trained Giovanni 
Dalmata — one of Hercules, the others of Diana and Apollo — and placed 
them on columns in front of his palace, that is on the Atmeydan, only a 
short distance from the former site of the Augustaion. These statues did not 
survive long, and their summary fate provoked Gyllius' remark that the 
Turks were acerrimi hostes statuarum, & totius artis Vitruvianae?^ 

As if by way of confirmation, only a few years ago a massive statue of 
a recumbent female nude, the personification of Gilzel Istanbul, was 
hurriedly removed after protest from the crossroads at KarakOy and relegated 
to an obscure corner of Yildiz Park. 

Postscript 

The fifteenth-century sources are unequivocal that the "Augustaion Rider" 
was melted down and converted into cannon. Yet little under a century later 

^ Giese, see above, note 14. I. Leunclavius, Annales Sultanorum Othmanidorum a Turcis 
sua lingua scripti, etc. (Frankfurt 1588), pp. 43-^4, Pandectes 130 (Patrologia Graeca, ed. J-P. 
Migne, Paris 1866, vol. 159, cols. 820-821), who translates a W3 text of the Anonymous 
Chronicles, also attributes in his commentary plague-protective powers to the statue: Menage 
(above, note 19), 170, note 11; Jeremias' account is recorded by Lubenau: W. Sahm, 
Beschreibung der Reisen des Reinhold Lubenau (Mittheilungen aus der Stadlbibliolhek zu 
Konigsberg in Pr. IV-V, 1914), I, pp. 141^2. Mehmed was said to have destroyed the statue 
himself, just as he was accused of damaging the jaw of one of the serpents of the Serpent 
Column: Menage (1964, above, note 19). In nineteenth -century Athens the Kolanaki was siiU 
regarded as a talisman against the plague: Dawkins (above, note 19), 229. 

^^ P. Gyllius (above, note 2), 11, pp. 89-90. J. v. Karabacek, "Miniatur des Persers Behzad 
des Jungeren," Zur orientalischen Altertumskunde FV — Muhammedanische Kunststudien, 
Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Phil. -hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichle 172, 
Abh.l (Vienna 1913), 85 ff. Ibrahim Paja's statues are also mentioned in Sehi Bey's Tekzere, 
although not in the S ukri edition, but the Istanbul University Library MS cited by O. Rescher, 
Turkische Dichterbiographen I: Sehi's Tekzere (Istanbul 1942), pp. 128, 142. For Ibrahim's 
Palace, N. Atasoy, Ibrahim Pa^a Sarayi (Istanbul 1972). 



J. Raby 313 

Gyllius saw large fragments of the statue being taken from the Saray for 
precisely the same purpose. It is clear that Gyllius refers to the Topkapi 
Sarayi when he talks of the statue being kept in the "Courtyard of the Royal 
Palace." The Topkapi Sarayi was not, however, built at the time of 
Mehmed's Belgrade campaign in 1456. There are two puzzles, then. First, 
how did a statue which Mehmed, we are told, had destined for the melting- 
pot, survive his reign, at least in fragments. And, second, was the statue 
removed from the column directly to the area that was to become the First 
Court of the Topkapi Sarayi, or was it, more intriguingly, brought there 
only after the establishment of the palace in the 1460s? In the latter event, 
it must have found a temporary home elsewhere, perhaps at the Eski Saray, 
before being transferred to the Yeni (Topkapi) Saray.^^ 

Even partial preservation of the statue suggests that the fragments 
meant more to the Sultan than a convenient supply of metal. Transfer of 
the statue's fragments from one site to another argues that they had some 
significance for him. The simplest explanation is that they were preserved 
as evidence of the destruction of this powerful Christian talisman. 
However, given Mehmed's careful collection of other examples of Byzantine 
statuary, one must ask whether the "Augustaion Rider" did not form part of 
that collection; if, indeed, he did not attempt to preserve it intact. There is 
no doubt that Mehmed removed the statue from the column, but can we be 
certain that Mehmed destroyed it? Angiolello merely says that it was levata 
via by the Sultan.23 The statue was, however, so massive that it could not 
have been displayed openly, in the First Court for example, without 
observers such as Angiolello or Promontorio de Campis taking notice of 
it.2^ 

There are, then, numerous unsolved questions about Mehmed's 
treatment of the Augustaion statue. Perhaps the Patriarch Jeremias II's 
account of Mehmed's efforts to repair the statue is not as ingenuous as one 
first supposed. 

The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford 



^ There can be no doubt that Gyllius (Bk. I, ch.vii) refers to the Topkapi Sarayi, which he 
calls the "Regium aaustrum." The Eski Saray is termed by Gyllius (Bk. Ill, ch. vi) the 
"Palalium Gynaeconilidum Regiarum" "The Palace of the Imperial Harem." 

^ A compromise hypothesis — that the statue was only partially destroyed by Mehmed, the 
rider being melted down, while the mount was left unharmed — is feasible technically because 
Antique equestrian statues were constructed in sections: Bovini (above, note 1). That the 
"Augustaion rider" was so constructed is evident from the fact that the rider's headdress and the 
orb are recorded at various times as being blown down in high winds: C. Mango, Art Bulletin 
(1959, above, note 5); Unger (1879, above, note 1), 135. However. Gyllius (see above, note 2) 
measured fragments both of the rider — his leg and nose, the latter more than nine inches long — 
and of the horse. 

^ For Angiolello, see above, note 6. F. Babinger, "Die Aufzeichnen des genuesen lacopo de 
Promoniorio-de Campis viber den Osmanenstaat um 1475," Bayerische Akademie der 
Wissenschaften, phUos.-hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, Jahrg. 1956, 8. Heft (Munich 1957). 




Figure 1. Drawing c. 1436 by Cyriacus of Ancona and Giovanni Dario of the 
equestrian statue of Justinian, from a humanist miscellany. Budapest, University 
library, MS 35. fol.l44\ 




Figure 2. Woodcut view of the Saray and Ayasofya, with the Augustaion column and 
the statue of Justinian being struck by lightning on 12 July 1490. From Hartmann 
Schedel, Liber Cronicarum etc., Nuremberg 1493. 



Domitian, Justinian and Peter the Great: 
The Ambivalent Iconography of the Mounted King 



J. K. NEWMAN 



I. The Ruler-Charioteer 

"Eypeo, KtovotavTwe- xi xdXKeov \)7ivov la-ueiq; 

aeto Sicppowq noGeei 5tih,0(; evl oxaSioi^, 
crqc; te 6i5aoKaX{Ti<; eniSeveei; fivioxfie<; 

eVaxai 6p<paviK0i(; Ttaiolv onoioTaxoi. 

Rulers as chariot drivers are familiar from Egypt. In the fourteenth century 
B.C. they were already a topos. Arpag Mekhitarian notes of a coffer showing 
an ailing monarch in horsy company: 

The chariot we reproduce figures in a battle-scene: a subject banned in 
the days of the pacifist king Akhenaten, but in high favor under the new 
regime — though that poor consumptive Tutankhamen had hardly strength 
enough to drag himself about the palace gardens. Against the ivory-yellow 
ground the pair of huge red horses with their decorative plumes and 
streamers, black and yellow caparisons, are trampling down the defeated 
Syrians. . . . The Pharaoh is majestic power incarnate. . . . The ardor of the 
fray is well conveyed by the galloping horses, a massive diagonal slashing 
through the tangled mass of combatants.^ 

Whether the Egyptian painting was intended in some way to combat 
and deny the youthful Pharaoh's mortal illness (d. 1350) is not clear, 
although it was of course found in his tomb. But eventually the chariot 
was, as the story of Elijah shows, a means to overcome death itself.^ The 

^ See "Batde Scene: Tutankhamen Fighting the Syrians," from a decorated coffer preserved in 
Cairo, in Egyptian Painting, text by Arpag Mekhitarian (Skira, Geneva 1954), p. 118. The 
quotation is drawn from the commentary on pp. 121-23. 

^ This is why Virgil shows the blessed dead as engaged in athletics: arma procul cwrusque 
virum miratur inanis, Aen. VI. 651: cf. E. Norden's note on 653, referring to Pindar and to 



316 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

Byzantines cherished this old idea. A tenth-century seal now in the 
Hermitage bears on its reverse a picture of the Ascension of Alexander the 
Great. Quite unlike the traditional iconography of the Ascension of Christ, 
he is shown standing in a chariot drawn by two winged griffins, and holding 
in either hand a bar to which the bait is attached.^ A silver bowl dating 
from the twelfth century, also in Leningrad, shows this scene in company 
with eleven others, arranged under arches,'' that include a musician, two 
figures of mounted riders and a dancing girl. On another twelfth -century 
bowl "musicians, dancers, acrobats" and others surround no longer an earthly 
champion, but a mounted St. George.^ 

The religious connection between the ruler and the victory-bringing 
chariot of the circus (hippodrome), so evident in Byzantine art and 
ceremony,^ has therefore deep roots, in the near East generally, but also in 
the Greco-Roman past. Everyone will immediately think of Nero."^ But 
Syracusan coinage both of the Deinomenids and later had exploited the 
concept of the chariot of state used also by Plato, and comically suggested 
by Aristophanes.* In Greek poetry, the association is at least as old, for 



Herodotus VI. 103. The Etruscan "Tomba delle Bighe" and the chariot rescued from an Etniscan 
tomb and carefully reconstructed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are also 
relevant 

^ A. Grabar, "Images de I'Ascension d'Alexandre en Italie et en Russie," in L'art de la fin de 
Vantiqmli et du Moyen Age (Paris 1968), vols. 1, pp. 295-96; 3. pi. 66 a. b: Bank (below, 
noteS), p. 301. 

* The arch (fornix) has a sure place in the history of morals: Horace, Sat. I. 2. 30; Juv. XI. 
173. Fornication was particularly associated with the Circus: Pri^pea 26.1. 

* Alice Bank, Byzantine Art in the Collections of Soviet Museums (enlarged ed., Leningrad 
1985). plates 213-17 with her remarks on pp. 310-1 1. 

^ K. M. D. Dunbabin, "The Victorious Charioteer on Mosaics and Related Monuments," 
American Journal of Archaeology 86 (1982), 85-86: M. McCormick. Eternal Victory. 
Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge 
1986), passim. Alice Bank writes of a relief with circus scenes from circa 500 preserved in 
Leningrad: "The piece is likely to have been used as a chancel-screen in a church" (op. cit., p. 
273 on plates 13 and 14). This association of Church and Circus survived in Kiev: Grabar 
(above, note 3), 1, pp. 251 ff., "Les Fresques des Escaliers a Sainte-Sophie de Kiev et 
llconograprfiie Imp6riale Byzantine," esp. 255 ff. (cf. also p. 648); Christa Schug-WUle, Art of 
the Byzantine World, tr. E. M. Hatt (New York 1969), pp. 236-37. A Jewish midrash 
mentioned by K. Knimbacher describes Solomon's Hippodrome at Jerusalem with the 
participation of the four factions: Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (repr. New York 
1970), I, p. 33 with note 1. It was impossible to imagine a royal court in any other tenms. A 
similar bias inspires the attribution of a theatre to Charlemagne's New Rome at Aachen: 
Anonymus de Carolo Magno et Leone Papa, w. 104-05. But Virgil had already described 
Dido's theatre at Carthage (Aen. I. 427). 

^ Cf. (among much other material) Tacitus, Ann. XV. 44: circense ludicrum edebat, habitu 
aurigae permixtus plebi vel curriculo insistens. More generally, for the association ruler / 
festivities, compare Nero himself on Britarmicus: Ann. Xm. 15; and Seneca on Claudius, 
Apocol. 8. 2 (Salurnaiicius princeps). 

^ M. Kraay and M. Hirmer, Greek Coins (New York 1966). plates 23-27; Plato, Rep. Vm. 
566d: cf. Aristophanes, ATn/^/i/j 1109 and 1128; Ecclesiazusae 466. 



J. K. Newman 317 

example, as Pindar's second Pythian (468 B.C.?). That ode contrasts what 
may be called King Hiero's "chivalry," his gentle governance of his horses, 
with the wild savagery of the lawless Centaurs, horse / men of a far different 
breed. Hiero, master of horses, victor in the hippodrome, favorite and indeed 
double of Zeus, ruled Syracuse, according to Pindar, with gentleness that 
called for "gentle requitals."^ But even the hospitable Zeus was betrayed by 
his guest Ixion, now punished forever on his revolving wheel in a parody of 
the revolving wheels that have just brought victory to the king. Hiero too 
was faced with uncomprehending opposition. The ode itself is the best 
evidence of his dilemmas. In a dialogue with his enemies, he is made to 
describe himself as a "cork," always bobbing above the brine. But his self- 
mockery cannot mask a ruthless resolution to deal with his foes, if they 
prove recalcitrant, as they deserve. ^° 

Hiero, ailing (like Tutankhamen), suspicious, cruel, died in 466 B.C., 
and his dynasty fell from power soon after. The dialogue and self- 
justification of this "Hippodromic" poem already contain the germ of the 
Nika riots and their aftermath, and more generally of all those Circus 
encounters between people and ruler so characteristic of imperial Rome.^^ It 
was appropriate that the leader and champion of the social group, eventually 
the king, should play this role in this setting. The hippodrome / stadium / 
circus, the model and microcosm of the wheeling universe, is the locus of 
agon with and triumph over death, and Pindar's odes stand in a komic 
(comic) tradition acknowledging this fact.^^ The Olympic Games were 
celebrated at the tomb of Pelops, who thus acquires the only immortality 
possible for man, just as the funeral games of Patroclus or Anchises were 
the token and proof of those heroes' continuity. The Roman Circus, where 
after the conspiracy of Piso Nero gave thanks for his survival to the Sun,^^ 
whose circling motion the terrestrial course represented, harbored also the 
shrine of Consus, god of the harvest home but also of the underworld. The 

' Tov eiepYetav dyavaii; d^oipai^ otoixonevow^ T{vea6ai, 24. The gnome is couched 
in general terms, but obviously applies to Hiero (cf. ayavaioiv ev xtpai, 8), whose brother 
Gelon had already been saluted as euepyettif;, ao>tf|p and PaaiXeuq at Syracuse (Diod. Sic. XI. 
26. 5-6). 

^° This interpretation is developed in J. K. Newman / F. S. Newman, Pindar's Art 
(HUdesheim 1984). pp. 215 ff. 

^^ L. Friedlaender. Darstellungen aus der Sitlengeschichte Roms 11 (10th ed.. Leipzig 1922), 
pp. 7-8: for the earlier period. T. Bollinger. Theatralis Licentia: die Publikumsdemonstrationen 
an den offenlUchen Spielen im Rom der friiheren Kaiserzeil und ihre Bedeulung im politischen 
Leben (Winterthur 1969). 

^^ A theme particularly noticeable in 01. 10: cf. tov eyKCOjiiov dn<pi xponov. v. 77; Pindar's 
Art, pp. 200 ff. Alcestis is brought back from the dead in Euripides' play precisely by a comic 
Heracles who claims that he won her in an athletic agon (1026-27). 

^^ Tac. Ann. XV. 74: propriusque honos Soli, cui est vetus aedes apud Circum in quo 
facinus parabalur. 



318 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

triple cones that marked the turning point or meta were borrowed by the 
Romans from Etruscan /wnerary monuments.^"* 

Laughter and mockery are part of this complex of usages, since laughter 
is the token of birth and resurrection,^^ The primitive community laughs at 
what it means to preserve, as Old Comedy in Athens and satire in Rome 
attest. The right of Circus freedom (nappriaia^^) is well established. 
Criticism of rulers as part of this right and rite is a theme familiar in Rome 
both Old and New. This is why it was proper for a victorious charioteer and 
king, Hiero, through Pindar, to air his differences in a dialogue with his 
enemies in the second Pythian, and because of that airing to pose as 
confident of survival. ^^ 

II. The Ruler-Knight 

The ambiguities attending the concept of the ruler-charioteer, straddling the 
two realms of death and life, are already apparent. They extend to the 
"knightly" ruler or prince. This is a notion familiar to Homer, where it is 
especially associated with Nestor.^* But how telling that there should 
already be about it some air, however faint, of laughter, ridicule. The 
garrulous Nestor, living on his past, a walking example of vertical time, 
too old for the realities of combat, is bound to be a figure of fun, as indeed 
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) would be centuries later. Ariosto 
had earlier exploited this same ambivalence in his Orlando Furioso (final 
version 1532).^' A history of "chivalry," ancient or medieval, would 
evidently provide an inexhaustible theme. What an odd development for the 
humble word caballus, and yet how in keeping with this lowly etymology 
that this ideal should so often carry some suggestion of the fool. But worse 
than this. The fool, to the unsympathetic eye, easily slips into the role of 
knave. Even the ambivalence Knecht / Knight therefore illustrates 
something of the same duplicity, the rejected (evil) and the ideal sides of the 
one concept. 

^* John H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses (London 1986), p. 255 (quoted below, note 48); cf. 
Tertullian, De Sped. (ed. E. Castorina [Florence 1961]), 9 (games as microcosm): Pindar, 01. 1. 
90 ff. (tomb of Pelops): Callimachus, fr. 384. 30 Pf.: tacpicov . . . 7tavr|Yup{cov. 

^^OT Genesis 18:12; 21:3 (Isaac = "He laughed"): cf. the riteof rij«.s/>ayc/w7ty: M. Bakhtin, 
TBopnecTBO OpaHcya Pa6ne (Moscow 1965), p. 18. 

^^ On the religious aspect of this concept, which was after all exercised at Athens in an 
ecclesia, cf. G. Kittel, Theologisches Worterbuch zumNeuen Testament V (Stuttgart 1954), pp. 
869 ff . (H Schher). 

'"^ The point is reiterated by Cassiodorus in 509 ax>. (Var. I. 27. 5): quorum [i.e. that of the 
gaudens populus in the Circus] garrulitas si patienter excipitur, ipsos quoque principes omare 
monstratur. Garrulitas populi = Pindar's XdPpoq orpaTO^, Py. 2. 87. 

^^ fepTivioq InnoTa Neorcop, //. n. 336. "The title [i.e. Feprivioq] is evidently so old that 
the real meaning of it had been lost in prehistoric times" (W. Leaf, ad loc). 

^' Oh gran bontd de' cavallieri antiqui! O.F.I. 22. 



J. K. Newman 319 

This double aspect of horse and man is classically illustrated on the 
Parthenon marbles, where on the one hand we find the Battle of the Lapiths 
and Centaurs, and on the other the young knights of Athens assuming their 
energetic role in the Panathenaic procession. Again, we can trace the battle 
back to Homer, where it began its long life throughout antiquity as the 
model of improper social ("political") behavior.^o and again, centuries later, 
Cicero would invoke a complex of motifs already deployed by Pindar to 
prove the stupidity and immorality of a political opponent.^^ The horsy 
Centaurs, who could not hold their wine, were evidently fools who verged 
too far into folly ("horseplay"). Yet the double aspect is once more evident. 
The wise Centaur Chiron was the tutor of Asclepius and Achilles in the art 
of healing. 

Though the reminder of that might seem small comfort to the nephritic 
king to whom Pindar retailed a version of the story ,^2 [^ [^ possible to 
guess a reason why this myth was appropriate to and perhaps even 
appreciated by a ruler sick to death. An article written as long ago as 19 14^^ 
traces the importance of the horse in beliefs connected with the dead. 
Already in the sixth century B.C. the dead man, originally represented as a 
horse, became a horse's rider, evidently riding to some kind of immortality. 
We can find some trace of these old ideas in the myth of the athlete riders 
Castor and Pollux, who take turns to rise from their earthly repose to share 
the divine life of Olympus.^ The two heroes also visit human banquets, in 
a version of the refrigerium or rinfresco, at which the dead partake of an 
earthly meal. This too is a Pindaric theme.^^ 

Yet Pindar also tells the story of Bellerophontes, who vainly tried on 
his winged horse Pegasus to ascend to Olympus.^^ A ruler therefore who 
allows himself to be portrayed on horseback is making bold religious and 
metaphysical statements and, since the ultimate religious and metaphysical 
statement is comic,^^ inevitably assuming many risks. One such risk is that 
of looking like a Centaur, a theme explored by Statins in the characteri- 
zation of Adrastus in the Thebaid?^ It is not clear when such equestrian 

^ Od. XIX. 295 ff.: in general, K. Bielolahwek, "Gastmahls- und Symposionslehren bei 
griechischen Dichtem," Wiener Studien 58 (1940). 1 1-30. 

^^ In Pis. 10. 22: Fortunae rotam, Centaworum convivium. 

^Py.3: ci. Iliad XL 830-32. 

^ L. Mallen, "Das Pferd im Totenglauben," Jahrbuch des deutschen archdologischen Instituts 
29 (1914). 179 ff. M. NUsson is skeptical: Geschichte d. gr. Religion I (Munich 1955). pp. 
382-83. But there is no contradiction between the horse as chthonic and the horse as 
hippodromic. 

^ Pindar. Py. 1 1. 61-64. Nem. 10. 55 ff. 

25 01. 3. 34-35. 

2^0/. 13.84; /^/A. 7. 46. 

^ Arridi, Dante, Paradiso XXXm. 126: cf. St. Bernard's sorridea, ibid. 49. 

^ E. g. X. 228. Pholoes: cf. H. 563 (of Tydeus). Pholus. 



320 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

statues were introduced,^' but what is clear from the evidence so far presented 
is that this sort of image could never be in its essence univocal, a truth that 
Caligula more suo may have overemphasized when he made his horse a 
consul. Hiero of Syracuse was already a "Hellenistic" monarch avant la 
lettre, "king," "lord," "benefactor." It is perhaps significant that we know 
the name of one of his horses, Pherenikos,^ and of Alexander the Great's 
Bucephalus. When the latter died after the battle on the Hydaspes (326 B.C.), 
the king founded on the site the town of Bucephala. 

At Rome, Q. Fabius Maximus had set a bronze equestrian statue of 
himself on the Capitol next to a gigantic statue of Hercules from 
Tarentum.^^ Julius Caesar, very much aware of his spiritual debt, had been 
represented in the Forum Julium on a horse originally made for Alexander.^^ 
But, with the Flavian emperors, this iconography took a new turn. Andr6 
Grabar writes: 

En effet, les exemples byzantins sont pr6ced6s de compositions analogues, 
sur les monuments du Bas-Empire romain qui s'inspirent, a leur tour, de 
prototyjjes ct€6s au I" siecle, probablement pour celebrer les victoires des 
Flaviens. C'est sous le regne de Titus du morns qu'on voit pour la 
premiere fois une figure de barbare sous les pieds du cheval galopant de 
I'empereur. Le barbare fait im geste de supplication, I'empereur I'^crase ou 
menace de I'^craser sous les sabots de son cheval. Ce type (et ses variantes) 
ct66 au I" siecle (ou plutot transform^, car I'image de I'empereur galopant 
sans barbare a €t€ connue avant) et contemporain du theme precedent, doit 
lui aussi probablement son origine k une influence orientale et plus 
pr6cis6ment parthe.^^ 

Even such a sobersides as Marcus Aurelius could be seen until recently 
outdoors in Michelangelo's Campidoglio,^'* his image apparently, in its 
original version, showing him riding down the (symbolically) small figure 

^ In Hellenistic Egypt Horus had been shown as a warrior "on horseback, atUcking his foe, a 
crocodile, with a lance, very similar lo and possibly the prototype of St George and the Dragon 
of the Christian era": Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tutankhamen (rev. ed. Excalibur Books 
1972), p. 172. Cf. Grabar (above, note 3), vol. 3, pi. 272,"Horus en soldat romain," from 
BaouiL 

^° Cf. Theocritus XVI. 46-47, xijiiiq 8e Kal coKCcq eXXaxov ijtjtoi, / oi atpiaiv e^ 
lep&v CTTe<pavTi<p6poi fiX,0ov aytovtov, where the honoring of horses victorious in the games 
seems already to be attributed to Simonides. 

^^ Plutarch, Fab. Max. 22. I owe this reference to the kindness of Frances S. Newman. 
Hercules and bronze horses are also found at St Mark's, Venice, and St. Vladimir followed this 
Byzantine fashion, which included in his case the Ascension of Alexander, at Kiev: Grabar, vol. 
2, p. 1096. 

Cedat equus Latiae qui contra templa Diones I Caesarei slat sedefori; quem trader is ausus I 
Pellaeo, Lysippe, duci: Statius, Silvae I. 1. 84-86. 

^' L'Empereur dans I'art byzantin (Paris 1936), p. 130. 

** The image is familiar, but the photograph in Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde (New York 
1988, following p. 492), taken around Easter in the year of Wilde's death (1900), is not without 
a certain pathos. 



J. K. Newman 321 

of a bound barbarian chieftain. As Grabar notes, this old motif was also 
carried forward into Byzantium. An epigram on an image of the Emperor 
Marcian (450-57) may be compared (A. P. IX. 802, tr. W. R. Paton): 

Mopq>-nv TT|v5' opdoK; ^to^ evaXiyKiov injicp, 
MapKiavov <pop£ovxi, ppoxwv PaaiXfja YEve0X,Ti(;- 
5£^itepriv 5' exdvucae, Geovta 5e 7ia»X,ov ejiEiyei 
5'uajiev£0(; KaGvnepGev, oxk; xecpaXfi ^iv deipei. 

Thou seest this shape, like a live horse, carrying Marcian, ruler of the race 
of men. His right hand is outstretched, and he spurs on the galloping horse 
above a foeman, who seems to support its weight on his head. 

Of the statue of Marcus Aurelius H. W. Janson remarks: 

The wonderfully spirited and powerful horse expresses this martial spirit. 
But the Emperor himself, without weapons or armor, presents a picture of 
stoic detachment — a bringer of peace rather than a military hero. And so 
indeed he saw himself and his reign (161-180 A.D.).-'^ 

Perhaps, when the captive was still visible under his horse, he illustrated the 
power of reason to prevail of itself over all its barbaric adversaries. This 
became completely unintelhgible to the (western) Middle Ages^^ — ^but not 
so much because the icon left men unmoved, as because it worked too 
strongly on Christian imaginations. We can see from a Saxon example that 
it fascinated, for example, the contemporaries of King ^Ethelbald of Mercia 
in the English Midlands, buried at Repton in A.D. 757.^"^ In 1979, in a pit 
outside the east end of St. Wy Stan's Church there, once the royal 
mausoleum, an extraordinary relief came to light. The stone was part of the 
shaft of a tall cross, more particularly of the projection on the top, to which 
the cross-fmial was fastened. The front face bears the figure of a mounted 
warrior, wearing a mail shirt over a pleated kilt, and brandishing a large 
sword and a small round shield or target. He has a luxuriant mustache, and 
is turned to face the viewer.^* On the one preserved side, a monster with a 
humanoid head and a serpent body is shown with its mouth engulfing the 

^^ A History of Art (new ed. London 1977), p. 174. The locus classicus is of course in 
Schramm, p. 151 (see the following note). 

^ Percy Ernst Schramm, Das HerrscherbUd in der Kunst desfriihen Mittelalters (Vortrage 
der Bibliothek Warburg H, 1, 1922-23 [repr. Nendeln / Liechtenstein 1967]), p. 153; E. R. 
Curtius, Europdische Liieratur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern 1948), p. 409. 

^^ Martin Biddle and Birthe Kj0lbye-Biddle, "The Repton Stone," Anglo-Saxon England 1 4 
(1985), 233-92. 

^ This was characteristic of Byzantine emperors. Cf. "Dish with The Triumph of the 
Emperor Constantius 11" (late fourth century), plate 1 in Alice Bank (above, note 5) with her 
commentary on p. 271. The so-called Barberini ivory (R. Browning, Justinian and Theodora 
[New York 1971], p. 34) shows a front-facing emperor, probably either Anastasius or Justinian, 
at his adventus, seated on his horse, while a general bears a statuette of Victory. M. McCormick 
(above, p. 216) notes that this pose was avoided in the iconography of Carolingian lead seals: 
not apparently in Mercia. 



322 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

heads of two human figures, who stand on the coils of the body with their 
arms around each other's waists. 

The finders argue for an eighth-century date for the monument and 
suggest that "the Repton rider takes his place naturally in the development 
of the equestrian ruler statue from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages":^^ 

The sequence for present purposes begins with the statue of Marcus 
Aurelius now on the Capitol. . . . These are the elements basic to most late 
Roman and early Byzantine imperial equestrian statues, and are present in 
slightly differing ways in adventus scenes such as those on the Belgrade 
cameo. ... the Szilagy-Somly6 medallion and the Barberini diptych. . . . 
When Justinian erected a huge equestrian statue of himself in 
Constantinople in 542-3 it still showed, and was seen by Procopius and 
later writers to show, those same elements of stem and effective yet 
humane authority which Statius had seen in the statue of Marcus 
Aurelius. '*° 

Since the time of Diocletian, however, the eastern enemies of Rome had 
begun to influence the fashions of the imperial court. In the third quarter of 
the fourth century the imperial equestrian figure of Constantius II on the 
Kertch dish . . . shows that ninety-degree turn to the front . . . which can 
already be seen in the third century in the relief ... of the Sassanid King 
Sapor I (241-72). . . . 

It is into this sequence, but much nearer to Constantius 11 on the Kertch 
dish than to the emperor of the Bamberg silk, that the Repton rider fits so 
well.-*! 

Earlier, the writers take up the question of the serpent's symbolism: 

If meaning is sought, the most likely interpretation of this face would 
seem to be that it represents the mouth of hell. . . . The fallen angels on 
fol. 2 of the Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library, Cotton 
Claudius B. iv), a manuscript of the second quarter of the eleventh century, 
are . . . violently cast down and uneager, but the hell-mouth towards which 
they fall is represented not simply as a monstrous head, but as a dragon 
with legs and a long, coiled, serpent-like body. The illuminations of this 
manuscript, as has long been recognized, are derived at least in part from 
late antique or Greek manuscripts, and some of the pictures, including the 
fall of the rebel angels, are also inspired by Anglo-Saxon literary 
tradition.'*^ 

^thelbald's equestrian funerary monument surmounted a tall cross. The 
Anglo-Saxon sculptor then saw the equestrian ruler as a religious 

39 Biddies. 287. 

^ Sic. Actually. Domitian's horse, trampling a stylized Rhine (Silvae I. 1. 51). was rather 
more restrained than Marcus Aurelius'. anticipating the later Byzantine tradition (Grabar, 
L'Empereur dans I'art byzantin, p. 48). 

^^ Biddies, 287-88, foUowing Schramm, pp. 164 ff. 

"2 Biddies. 278. Cf. Dante. //i/sr/u? XXXIV. 55-56: Gnbax,L'Empereur dans I'art byzantin. 
pp. 43-45. 



J. K. Newman 323 

phenomenon, just as the sculptor of Marcus Aurelius was making a 
philosophical statement. This supernatural aura must not be overlooked 
whenever the monarch / horse is in question. The ambivalence — 
incommensurability with the rational — surrounding the horse / man in the 
tradition is both comic ("he's dead, but he won't lie down") and religious, 
again something made quite plain by the komic Pindar at the start of the 
second Pythian (6aip.6viai). 

It is consistent with this that Byzantine religious art employs the 
motif, notably in the iconography of St. George.'*^ The mounted figure of 
the saint was to become especially popular in the art of medieval Novgorod, 
along with the equestrian Saints Florus and Laurus. Far earlier, the rock 
churches of GOreme in Cappadocia, first investigated by Guillaume de 
Jerphanion, depict the Three Mounted Saints George, Theodore and 
Demetrius of Orthodox hagiography, and notably St. George"^ (chapels of 
St. Basil and St. Barbara). But this image was also pagan. Earlier again, 
the Temple of Hadrian in Ephesus, on the right as one descends the street of 
the Curetes, still displays a frieze added in the fourth century, showing an 
equestrian Androcles killing a wild boar at the foundation of the city. 

This immemorial image has about it then a double aspect, partly good 
and partly bad, comic and tragic, holy and diabolical, natural and 
supernatural, time-bound and time-free, even though in certain scenes one or 
other of these double aspects may seem wholly to have driven out or 
suppressed the other. Sometimes the ambivalence is neatly polarized. At 
Ephesus, the hero killed a boar. In the Christian icon, as in the Mercian 
relief, the cowering enemy who has now vanished from Marcus Aurelius' 
statue appears in the shape of the dragon, the personification of evil. 
iEthelbald's dragon is on a separate side of the stone. St. George's crouches 
in the lower right comer of the picture, while the saint occupies the left and 
center, his spear crossing from left to right, a use of the diagonal to express 
opposition as old as the Parthenon frieze — or Tutankhamen's coffer. 

Yet in all these instances the lesson was the same. Evidently the 
mastery of the uncouth creature is the evidence of bravery and virtue, and the 
example for the Stoic / heroic / Christian soul. In the case of hero, saint 

^■^ See above, p. 316, for St. George in company with Circus scenes. But see also the icon 
of St. Demetrius (late thirteenth or early fourteenth century) now in the Kremlin Museum, 
Moscow: Bank, op. cit., plates 262, 263 and her commentary on p. 319. 

** The Church of St. George at Belisimia built by Basil Giacoupes, the minister of the 
Seljuk Sultan Ma^ut U, and his wife Thamar, presents however the saint standing in frontal 
view, a reminiscence of Byzantine imperial iconography and an anticipation of Donatello's 
sculpture in Or San Michele. Janson, A History of Art, p. 382 with figure 490, calls attention 
only to the kinship of the latter with the St. Theodore on the south transept portals of Chartres, 
dated to 1215-20. Icons such as those of Saints. George and Demetrius (Bank, plate 148: she 
compares [p. 297] a similar image of St. Demetrius on the bottom of the serpentine vessel in 
the Treasury of St. Mark) or Boris and Gleb (Schug-Wille, Art of the Byzantine World, p. 250) 
are however also relevant 



324 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

and emperor-king, the good and the bad have been divided into two clearly 
recognizable opposites. When Pindar and the sculptors of the Parthenon 
used the motif, they also divided it, and its double aspect is represented by 
two separate images, the Charioteer / Knight and the Centaur. Durer's 
engraving Knight, Death and Devil (1513), preserved in Boston, completed 
three years before the first edition of the Orlando Furioso, is a later example 
of this same technique of division. In Byzantine art, the saint's horse and the 
dragon equally represent a potential for good or ill. 

But what if the double aspect is contained in the one image? The 
smiling Can Grande on his horse in Verona, of unknown authorship but 
dated to 1330, shows that this schizophrenia or double apprehension (really, 
comic twinning^^) may coalesce around a single figure. Again Janson's 
commentary is relevant:'*^ 

Among the latter [Italian Gothic tombs], the most remarkable perhaps is 
the monument of Can Grande della Scala, the lord of Verona. A tall 
struct\ire built out-of-doors next to the church of Sta. Maria Antic a, it 
consists of a vaulted canopy housing the sarcophagus and surmounted by a 
truncated pyramid which in turn supports an equestrian statue of tJie 
deceased. . . . The ruler, astride his richly caparisoned mount, is shown in 
full annor, sword in hand, as if he were standing on a windswept hill at the 
head of his troops; and, in a supreme display of self-confidence, he wears a 
broad grin. Clearly, this is no Christian Soldier, no crusading knight, no 
embodiment of the ideals of chivalry, but a frank glorification of power. 
Can Grande, remembered today mainly as the friend and protector of Dante, 
was indeed an extraordinary figure; although he held Verona as a fief from 
the German emperor, he styled himself "the Great Khan," thus asserting his 
claim to the absolute sovereignty of an Asiatic potentate. His free-standing 
equestrian statue — a form of monument traditionally reserved for 
emjjerors — conveys the same ambition in visual terms. 

In this analysis, several points are important: 

1. The statue (like that of King ^Ethelbald) is a funeral monument, in this 
case to a "Great Khan." Under Khan Batu the Tatars, including many 
Mongol and Turkic elements, had reached the Adriatic in 1241. In 1246 
Piano Carpini had visited them and described their military might. Marco 
Polo lived in Tartary at the court of the Great Khan from 1275-92.'*'^ Can 
Grande's statue seems to embody heady and primitive ideas for Trecento 
Italy, but they were not so much novel as the revival (with Turkish aid?) of 
old and forgotten traditions. 

2. It is raised. That of King iEthelbald surmounted a tall cross. 

^ M. Bakhtin, npo6neMU HoeTHKH flocToeBCKoro (Moscow 1963), pp. 38-39, 282 ff. 
The classic study is by Sigmund Freud. "Cber den Gegensinn der Urwoite," Gesammelle Werke, 
vol. Vm (repr. London 1948), pp. 213 ff. 

^ A History of Art, pp. 318-19 with figure 438. 

*^ B. Pares, A History of Russia (repr. London 1955), pp. 81-82. 



J. K. Newman 325 

3. It is next to a church, again like that of the King. 

4. It stands on a truncated pyramid supported by a vaulted canopy. 

5. The figure is smiling. 

Can Grande therefore signified his survival by an equestrian statue 
rising above a pyramid'** and above the vault of heaven. His smile is not to 
be dismissed as one of self-confident complacency. Did the patron of 
Dante's Comedy not understand the cosmological and eschatological 
significance of laughter? Can Grande's broad grin is his claim to transcend 
death by accepting the comic. This is more but not less than Christian, and 
a re-assertion of the element of humor found earlier in Homer's long-lived 
Nestor. What deeper wells of pre-logical thought all this may plumb can 
only be guessed. 

III. Pushkin's MeflHud BcaflHHK 

"Asiatic" is a term often applied by nineteenth-century liberals to the more 
distasteful aspects of the Russian despotism. But those more attuned to old 
ambivalences were not so hasty in their judgments. A. S. Pushkin's 
MeflHUd BcaflHHK {The Bronze Horseman, 1833) is the proof of that The 
liberal who seeks for some univocal condemnation of Russian imperial 
power as embodied in this image will find it in Adam Mickiewicz."*' He 
will not find it in the Russian. The poet has certainly turned the static into 
the fluid, the tranquil contemplation of the imperial icon into a kinetic 
nightmare. But he is great enough to retain some of the old ambiguity, so 
that it cannot be said that his compassion stifles his feeling for the majesty 
of empire. Pushkin's Evgenii, the sentimental but degenerate descendajit of 
a once noble family, now a lowly civil servant, is a variant of the cowering 
barbarian beneath the hooves of Marcus Aurelius or Marcian. He goes mad 
because he lacks the vision of Peter the Great, described in powerful lines as 
the poem opens, when the Czar stands at the mouth of the desolate Neva and 
decrees that here is to be Russia's window on Europe. The struggle with the 
elements is too much for him. The onset of his madness is signalled by 
laughter.50 His threat to the Bronze Horseman plunges him even further 
into a delirium in which he hears the statue in pursuit Eventually his body 
is found "at the threshold" (H. 219) of a happiness denied. 



platfonn, the whole evidently serving as a funerary monument": Humphrey, Roman Circuses, 
p. 255. There were "Pyramides" at the festival held in honor of the circumcision ("rile de 
passage") of the son of Murad EI in 1582: B. Lewis, Istanbul and the Civilization of the 
Ottoman Empire (Norman, Oklahoma 1963), p. 138. Compare pyramides, Biddies, 283. 

*' Cf. Czeslaw MUosz. The History of Polish Uterature (Berkeley 1983), pp. 224-25. who 
acknowledges Pushkin's "ambivalence" (p. 225) quite frankly. 

* 3axoxoTan, part n, line 65. 



326 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

But although the Czar is brought into association in this way with 
laughter and madness, the poet's admiration for the imperial achievement is 
quite clear. nK>6nK> Te6fl, IleTpa TBopeHte ("I love you, creation of 
Peter"), he cries in a famous passage (Vstuplenie, 43 ff.). And again (84 
ff.): 

KpacyftcH, rpan rierpoB, h croft, 
HeKone6HMO, Kaic Pocchh. 
Ha yMHpHTCK 5Ke c To6oft 
H no6e3KneHHaH cthxhh; 
BpajKay h nneH cTapHHHuft ceoft 
nycTb BOJTHU $HHCKHe 3a6ynyT 
H TiaeTHoft 3no6oK> h© 6ynyT 
TpeBoacHTb eeHHUft coh nerpa! 

Exult, city of Peter, and stand unshaken, like Russia. Let even the 
conquered element be reconciled with you. Let the Finnish waves [of the 
river Neva] forget their old hatred and captivity, nor with vain malice 
disturb Peter's eternal sleep. 

The motif of the guardian lions, twice mentioned in the poem (I. 128; 
II. 140), is as old as the Lion Gate at Mycenae, itself the descendant of 
Hittite practice.^ ^ And the Hittites of course were settled in Asia Minor 
(Anadolu). Yet, in spite of this evocation of the symbols of ancient 
"Asiatic" kingship, obviously there is ambiguity, since the interpretations 
of the poem have varied so widely, corrupted in part by the desire to make 
Pushkin a liberal because he was the enemy of despotism. But the poet's 
maripose manner is too elusive to be fixed by these unfeeling literary- 
entomological pins. Least of all can this poem be adduced as evidence that 
the first poem of Statins' Silvae must be interpreted univocally. Pushkin is 
not a politician.52 

A few years later (1842), in a development of the ancient and Pindaric 
chariot-of-state motif, N. V. Gogol' envisages Russia itself as a troika, 
coursing over the steppe: 

He TaK niA h tu, Pycb, hto 6oftKaH Heo6roHHMaH xpoftsa HeceuicH? 
HuMOM nuMHTCH nofl To6oK> flopora, rpeMHT MocTU, Bce oTCTaer h 
ocTaeTCH no3anH. OcTaHOBHncH nopaaceHHMft 6o»:tHM nynoM 
coaepuareTit: He mohkhh hh 3To, c6pomeHHaH c He6a? mto 
3HaMHT 3T0 HaBOflHinee yacac ABH^KeHHe? h hto sa HesenoMaH 
CHna 3aKnioMeHa b chx HeBenoMux CBeroM kohhx? 3x, kohh, kohh, 
MTO 3a kohh! BHxpH HH cHflHT B BaiuHX rpHBax? HyTKoe nw. yxo 
ropHT Bo BoiKoft Bameft acHnse? 3aiii7iuiiianH c buiuhhu 3HaK0MyK> 
necHio, flpyacHo h pa30M HanpnrnH MenHue rpynn h, hohth He 



^^ Janson, p. 74 with figure 91 (Bogazkoy. c. 1400 B.C.). 

^^ See my discussion "Pushkin's 'Bronze Horseman' and the Epic Tradition," Comparative 
Literature Studies IX (1972). 173-95. The reader will wish to contrast F. M. Ahl's essay in 
Aufstieg undNiedergang der romischen Welt, 11. 32. 1 (1984), esp. pp. 91-102. 



J. K. Newman 327 

TpoHyB KonuTaMH 3QHnK. npeepaTHTiHCb b ohhh BUTHHyrue 
nHHHH, neTHiUHe no B03nyxy, h mhhtc« bch BnoxHOBeHHan 6oroM ! 
... Pycfc, Kyna ac Hecemcn tu. naft oTBer? He naer oTseTa. 

HyflHUM 3B0H0M SanHBaeTCH KOnOKOTIbMHK; rpeMHT H CTaHOBHTCH 

BeTpoM paaopBaHHUft b sycKH Boanyx; nemr mhmo Bce, hto hh 
ecTb Ha 3eMne, h, nocfich, nocTopaHHBaioTCH h naioT eft nopory 
npyrHe Haponu h rocynapcTBa. 

Are you too, Russia, not borne along like a lively troika, not to be 
overtaken? The path smokes beneath you, bridges ring, everything stands 
out of the way and will be left behind. The onlooker halts, struck by the 
divine miracle. Is this lightning, hurled from heaven? What does this 
movement mean that inspires horror? What unknown force is enclosed in 
these horses unknown to the world? Ah, horses, horses, what horses! Do 
whirlwinds sit in your manes? Does a keen ear bum in every one of your 
veins? They hear from on high a familiar song, readily at once they strain 
their chests of bronze and, almost without touching the ground with their 
hooves, they are transformed into single outstretched lines, flying through 
the air, each flashing under the inspiration of God! . . . Russia, whither are 
you borne, answer me? No answer is given. The bell spills its wonderful 
sound, the air, torn to pieces, whistles and turns into the wind. Everything 
on earth flies past, and with sidelong looks other peoples and states move 
to one side and yield her the road. 

Just as in Pushkin's poem, these horses too are of bronze (MeflHue 
rpyflH). And the eulogy leaves us with a question that is unanswered (He 
flaeT OTBeTa). It concludes the First Part of Dead Souls, the comic and 
yet overwhelmingly sad depiction of Russian self-seeking and self-deception 
(noDiJiocTi)) in the early nineteenth century. 

IV. The Colossal as Religious Statement 

The reader already feels in Gogol's Circus image something suprahuman. 
Falconet's famous statue in St. Petersburg,^^ the inspiration of Pushkin's 
Bronze Horseman, was larger than life. This too is an important concept, 
and in Near Eastern and Egyptian art the colossal statue has a long history. 
Big statues, like those of Rameses II at Abu-Simbel, impress by their sheer 
weight, and weight is a notion akin to glory. This was quite well known in 
the Greco-Roman world, to Apollonius Rhodius, for example, and Statius.^ 

^^ He had studied Marcus Aurelius' statue: Observations sur la statue de Marc-Aurele 
(Lausanne 1781): Schramm, p. 152, note 19. 

^* Botterweck, Ringgren, Fabry, Theologisches Worterbuch zum Alien Testament IV 
(Stuttgart 1984). s. w. kabed and kabod, cols. 13 ff., 23 ff. Cf. Iliad V. 838-39; Ap. Rhod.. 
Arg. n. 679-80; Schol. Ap. Rhod. I. 1289-91a (p. 116. Wendel); VirgU. Aen. VI. 413; Ovid. 
Met. XV. 693-94; Lucan. Phars. I. 57; Statius. Thebaid VII. 750: H. Cancik, Untersuchungen 
zur lyrischen Kunst des P. Papinius Statius (Hildesheim 1965), pp. 93-94. Swift notes in the 
style of the Emperor of Lilliput, "whose Feet press down to the Center, and whose Head strikes 
against the Sun" (Gulliver's Travels [1735; repr. New York 1977]. p. 29). 



328 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

But already Alexander's artists had offered to carve Mount Athos into a 
likeness of the king so big that it would hold an entire town in its right 
hand. "He's got the whole world in his hand," the theme of a Negro 
Spiritual in debt to the Hebrew Psalms, would here have been realized quite 
literally .^^ The Hellenistic motif of the large statue is exploited at Rome by 
Ennius to flatter the Elder Scipio (Varia 1) and guyed by Plautus (Cure. 
139^0, 439 ff.).^^ The suggestion of the colossal in these early authors is 
quite unmistakable later, for example, when Propertius echoes the theme in 
flattering Augustus (II. 10. 21-24): 

Ut caput in magnis ubi non est tangere signis, 

Ponitur hie imos ante corona pedes, 
sic nos nunc, inopes laudis conscendere culmen, 

pauperibus sacris vilia tura damus. 

The reign of Augustus is not to be exempted from the long history and flux 
of ancient ideas about the divine ruler, the god-king. 

V. Justinian as Bronze Horseman 

Colossal statues of the emperors were familiar in Asia Minor, and the head 
of Constantine preserved in the Campidoglio is proof that this tradition was 
alive for the founder of New Rome. Constantine's colossal statue had stood 
outside his basilica in Old Rome. More interestingly for the reader of 
Statius and Pushkin, in the central square of New Rome, the so-called 
Augustaion, redesigned after the destruction caused by the Nika riots, stood a 
column bearing a colossal equestrian bronze statue of the Emperor 
Justinian.^"^ C. Mango notes the fame of this image: 

This colunm came to be regarded as one of the wonders of Constantinople, 
and there exists a vast body of evidence concerning it, since every medieval 
visitor of the City — be he a Russian pilgrim, an Arab, or a Crusader — 
made a point of describing it for the benefit of "the folks at home." Even 
after the column had been pulled down by the Turks, it continued to be 
represented on Russian icons.^ 

A page from a fourteenth-century manuscript of the medieval Bulgarian 
translation of the verse Chronicle of Constantine Manasses (twelfth 

^^ E. Norden. Mtike Kunstprosa (repr. Stuttgart 1958), p. 838, notes a rhyming inscription 
in iambics from Aualeia in Pisidia referring to the xtxp ^ovapxoi; of Leo IV (775-780). Cf. 
Herodotus VIE. 140 P x^^P vnepji-Tnait; of Xerxes, over a thousand years before. Pompey's 
dextera invicta (Cicero, Verrine V. 58. 153) is in the same vein, and Pompey, the builder of 
Rome's first permanent theatre (inspired, according to Pluurch, Life of Pompey 43, by the sight 
of the theatre at Miletus), would serve with distinction in the East Cf. Cancik, pp. 62-63. 

^ Again the double, serio-comic aspect 

^ See the article by J. Raby, above, 305 ff. 

^ The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453 (repr. Toronto 1986), p. 57. 



J. K. Newman 329 

century),^' now in the Vatican, shows Justinian looking at St. Sophia from 
the Augustaion. In the center, adjoined therefore by the Baths of Zeuxippus, 
the Senate House, the Imperial Palace, the Church and the Hippodrome, the 
column crowned by his equestrian statue is quite clearly visible. In 
medieval Russia, the Letter to Cyril of Tver' of Epifanii the Wise, written 
about 1415, requests: 

Delineate for me Justinian, as he is called, sitting on horseback and 
holding in his right hand a brazen apple which, they say, is so big and 
capacious that it would hold two and a half pails of water.*" 

Justinian's contemporary Procopius writes {De Aed. I. 2. 5-12): 

'Ev Se xo\> Kiovo<; zr\ Kop-ucpfi x^^'^ovq eoTi^Kev VTiepixeYeOfiq 
i7tJiO(;, xetpamievoq 7ip6(; eo), Geana Xoyov noXXov tx^iov. eoiKC 
5e Pa6io\)nevcp Kal tov Jipoooo Xa^npox; exo|J.ev({). 7io5cbv xwv 
TipoaGicov djieXei xov \itv ctpioxepov iiexecopi^ei, iac, eniPrioojievov 
x^(; envTcpoaSev Yfi(;, 6 5e 5fi exepoq enl xov XOov Tipeipeioxai,*' 
ox> \)7tep8£v eoxiv, ox; xtiv pdoiv eK5e^6^Evo(; • xoxtc, 5e otiioOio-vx; 
ovxco ^-uvdyei w^, ereeiSctv x6 \it[ eoxtj^eiv avxoii; eniPdXXoi, ev 
exoi|i(p elev. xovxw 5ti x^ iJincp x«^'^ eniPePTiKe xot) PaoiXico^ 
eiKcov, KoXx)oo^ e|i<p£pT|<;. eoxaXxai 5' 'AxiA-Xevc; ti eiKcov. otSxco 
ydp x6 oxTina KaAx)\)civ onep a.\inixtxct.\. xd(; xe ya.^ apP-uXaq 
•U7to5e5exai xai xd oKp-opd eoxi KvnjiiScov X'^pk- e'"^" fipcoiKmq 
xeSoopdxioxai xai xpdvoq avx^ xt^v Ke<paX-nv okekei So^av co(; 
KaxaoEioixo 7capEx6|i.evov, aiyXTi^^ xe xk; evGevSe a\)xo\) 
djiaoxpdnxEi. (paiTi xiq dv jtoirixiKwq Eivai xov oncopivov 
EKEivov daxEpa." PXettei Se 7tp6(; dvioxovxd Jtov xov riXiov, xt^v^ 
Tivioxnoiv e^'i riEpaai;, o^ai, Ttoiov^Evo(;. xal <p£p£i ^ev xc^Pi 
xfi Xaia TtoXov, 7capa6TiXwv 6 nXaoxtxz, oxi yfi xe av)x^ xal 
GdXaoca 5e5ovX,coxai ndoa. e'xei ht oiSxE ^i(p0(; oiSxe Sopdxiov 
oiSxE dXXo xfflv ojtXcov ouSev, aXka oxavp6(; at>x© ejcI xov noXov 

^' Reproduced in R. Browning, Justinian and Theodora (above, note 38, p. 113. Professor 
Browning kindly informs me that the original is Vat SI. 2 fol. 109*. 

^ Mango, p. 257. Actually, the orb ("apple") was in Justinian's left hand, according to 
Procopius, but the Russian hagiographer has been misled by the symbolic importance of the 
right hand ("dextera Domini fecit virtutem") into substituting that. Although Schramm 
interprets (p. 158, note 39a) the orb as originally the attribute of Zeus, one is reminded by 
Epifanii's irreverence of the biped Centauress preserved in the Antiquarium at Taomnina and 
adc^led as its civic emblem by the city, holding in her right hand what may be a love-apple of 
heroic proportions. It is visible on the fountain in the Piazza Municipio. Compare the ball 
promised by Aphrodite to Eros (Apollonius, Arg. HI. 132 ff.), which she describes as Avo^ 
nepiKoXXei; aGupjia, though now it is evidently in her gift 

*^ The form is presumably modelled on Homer's f|pf|peiOTO (e.g. //. IE. 357. 8id StopriKoc; 
jtoXwSaiSdXov TipfipeiOTo), and in final position like this is already intended to give some 
epic air to the description. A. Grabar, L'empereur dans I'arl byzantin, actually reads T|pf|peiOTai 
(p. 46, note 4). 

*^ AiyXdevxa . . koojiov, Pindar, Py. 2. 10 (cf. ai'yXxx 6i6o6oToq, Py. 8. 96): ndvtoGev 
aiyXneK;. A. P. XVI. 65. 4. 

^ Cf. Iliad XXn. 26-29. 



330 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

eniKeitai, 8i' oh br\ \i6yo\> tr\v xe PaoiXeiav Kai to tov noXenov 
nenopioxai KpdcTOi;. npoTEivo^ievoq 6e xe^P« ttiv Se^iav eq xa 
npbq ctviaxovxa tiXiov koi xox>q baKz\)Xo\>c, bianexaaac, 
eyKeXevExai xoiq eKeivri PapPdpoii; KoGfioGai oikoi Kai nn 
npoaco levai. 

On top of the column stands a huge bronze horse, facing east, forming an 
imposing monument. It seems on the verge of moving, and grasping firm 
hold of what lies ahead. Its left forefoot is raised, as if to step onto the 
earth before it, the other is fixed upon its pediment, to support its 
movement. Its hind legs are gathered so as to be ready when their turn 
comes for action. The horse's rider is a bronze effigy of the emperor, of 
colossal size. The garb is that of Achilles — that is the name of the 
costume he is wearing. It includes boots, but no greaves for the ankles. 
He has a hero's breastplate, and a helmet protecting his head that looks as if 
it might shake off, and this is the source of the brilUance that streams from 
him. One might quote Homer's phrase about the autumn star. His looks 
are directed towards the rising sun, as if he were riding against the Persians. 
In his left hand he has an orb, the sculptor's intention being to indicate that 
he is lord of all the earth and sea. He carries no sword, spear or other 
weapon, but a cross surmounts his orb, for it is through this alone that he 
has won his royal power and victory in war. His right hand is stretched 
towards the east, its fingers outspread, in a gesture of command to the 
barbarians there to stay safely at home and to advance no further.^ 

Some points emerge about this Constantinopolitan Bronze Horseman: 

1. It is both raised and of colossal size. 

2. Its right hand appears to be threatening the Persians in the East. 

3. It stands near a church and a Circus. 

4. It is about to take off into another dimension, that of motion. 

5. It is a resurrection of Achilles. 

6. Epiphanii the Wise makes fun of the orb, calling it a brazen apple. 

7. According to other evidence,^^ it had a spring at its base, later enlarged 
after the conquest. 

8. It was awe-inspiring even to the Turks, and in general was regarded as 
having religious or even quasi-magical properties.^ 

^ Mango offers a briefer excerpt (p. 110). He also adduces (pp. 1 1 1-13) the Ekphrasis of the 
Augustaion (late thirteenlh century) of Georgius Pachymeres. Cf. in general, P. Friedlaender, 
Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius: Kunstbeschreibungen justinianischer Zeit (Leipzig 
1912). 

" Raby, 306, note 2; 308; 311, note 16. Hence the importance of the Lacus Curtius, 
described as adjacent to Domitian's statue by Statius {Silvae I. 1. 66 ff.; cf. palus, 76). and of the 
flooding Neva in Pushkin's MeflHUfl BcaUHHK 

^ Raby. 305, 311-12. 



J. K. Newman 331 

The Greek Anthology also seems to describe another equestrian statue 
of Justinian, this time actually in the Hippodrome (XVI. 62, translation 
adapted from W. R. Paton): 

Tavxd ooi, (0 PaoiX^v Mti5okx6v£, Swpa KO^i^ei 

ar\q '?a>\ir\c, y£.vixr\(; xai naiu; EtxjxdOioc;, 
7cwA.ov vntp v{kti(;, Niktiv oxecpavncpopov cxXXtiv, 

Kal oe liextive^iw ttcoX-o) e<p£^6|4.Evov. 
{>\\i6a\ 'lo-uoxiviave, xeov Kpdxo(;- ev ^Oovi 5'aiei 

5eo}i6(; e'xoi Mt|5cov xal IkuGecov npoiidxo-oc;. 

These gifts, O King, slayer of the Persians, are brought to thee by 
Eustathius, the father and son of thy Rome: a horse for thy victory, 
another laurelled Victory, and thyself seated on the horse swift as the wind. 
Up with thy might, Justinian, but may the champions of the Persians and 
Scythians ever lie in chains on the groimd. 

The next epigram may be compared (XVI. 63, adapted from Paton): 

nSXov 6|j.ov Kal avoKxa xal oX-XvuevTiv BaP\)X.Mva 

XaXKoi; dno ok^X-cov ETcXaaev 'Aaavpicov. 
eoxi 5' 'lovoxiviavoc;, ov 'AvxoXiri^ ^-uyov eXkcov 

ax-qaev 'lovXiavoc;, |j.dpx\)pa MTjSocpovov. 

The bronze from the Assyrian spoils moulded the horse and the monarch 
and Babylon perishing. This is Justinian, whom Julianus, controlling the 
yoke of Anatolia, erected, his own witness to the slaying of the Persians. 

VI. Domitian as Bronze Horseman 

Byzantine art therefore provides an indispensable link between past and 
future, Statius in Old Rome and Pushkin in the realm of the Third Rome; 
for between Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius, before Justinian and Peter 
the Great, stands Domitian's colossal equestrian statue, which can only be 
understood as part of this same peculiar sequence.^'' No doubt the statue 
itself was meant as a piece of imperial propaganda, but what kind of 
statement was it making? Domitian's father and brother had built the 
Colosseum, named after a destroyed colossal image of Nero that once stood 
on the site, and Martial shows how much the imagery of the Circus 

^ Procopius actually says that Justinian bore a physical resemblance to Domitian (Anecdota 
Vin. 13 ff.) — a piece of satirical malice that may however conceal a deeper truth about 
Domitian's proto-Byzantine inclinations, and on the other side about Justinian's traditionalism. 
Some observations on the rhetorical / anathematic background are to be found in A. Hardie, 
Statius and the Silvae (Liverpool 1983), pp. 131-32. Paul Holberton reminds me that Statius' 
poem is actually picked up again by Pomponius Gauricus, De Sculptura (1504: edd. A. Chastel 
and R. Klein, Geneva-Paris 1969): cf. p. 55 and n. 64. Gauricus himself made a bronze 
horseman (perfiaps only a medal) inspired by the concept of an(piPoX{a or ambiguity (p. 199). 
This was suggested by Pliny (N. H. XXXV. 59, dubitatur) with reference to an equestrian 
painting (so Gauricus) by Polygnotus. 



332 Illinois Classical Studies, XII.2 

pervaded Domitian's reign. Was Statius' celebration of the emperor's statue 
at the opening of the Silvae a spoof? And if it was a spoof, is that 
inconsistent with the whole concept of the knightly ruler? Is it a question 
of either / or? 

For the first time in literature in the first poem of the Silvae Statius 
has united the old idea of the colossal with the old idea of the "knightly" 
ruler. This is the immense importance of the theme, and explains its 
position in the collection. It opens a book that ends with Phalaecian 
hendecasyllables on a Satumalian feast celebrated in the amphitheatre, just 
as Justinian's equestrian statue stood near the entrance to the Hippodrome. 
None of this is any more fortuitous than Can Grande's grin. 

Some lines of the poem may be quoted (2-16): 

caelone peractum 
fluxit opus? Siculis an conformata caminis 
effigies lassum Sterop>en Brontenque reliquit? 
an te Palladiae talem, Germanice, nobis 5 

effinxere manus qualem modo firena tenentem 
Rhenus et attoniti vidit domus ardua Daci? 
nunc age fama prior notum per saecula nomen 
Dardanii miretur equi cui vertice sacro 

Dindymon et caesis decrevit frondibus Ide. 10 

hunc neque discissis cepissent Pergama muris; 
nee grege permixto pueri innuptaeque puellae, 
ipse nee Aeneas nee magnus duceret Hector, 
adde quod ille nocens saevosque amplexus Achivos, 
hunc mitis commendat eques. iuvat ora tueri 15 

mixta notis belli placidamque gerentia pacem. 

Is this a work of art made in heaven and drifted down to earth? Was this 
image shaf>ed on Etna's anvils, wearying the Cyclopes? Was it Athena's 
hands that fashioned you in this guise for us, Caesar, such as the Rhine and 
the lofty home of the thunderstruck Dacian witnessed you but now, bridle 
in hand? Old legend may be content to admire the long -lasting fame of the 
Trojan Horse, for whose sake Dindymon lost its hallowed top and Ida was 
shorn of her woods. But Troy could never have contained this horse even 
with her walls thrown wide, no boys and unwedded maids in mingled 
throng have drawn it inside, not even Aeneas or mighty Hector. That horse 
was treacherous, the lair of the savage Greeks; this its gentle rider 
recommends. How good to see that face marked indeed by the features of 
war, but mingling with them those of tranquil peace. 

Some details of the poem may now be listed and annotated: 

1 . Caelone peractum /fluxit opus (2-3): This whole opening passage (2- 
16), in which the poet finds the divine at work in the suprahuman 
image, may be compared with the end of Dead Souls, and with 
Procopius' evocation of Justinian's aiyXTj and of Achilles. Pindar's 



J. K. Newman 333 

second Pythian had led the way (\Leya\on6Xie<;, 6ain6viai, 
aiyXdEvta K6a}j.ov). 

Mitis eques here (15; cf. mitior, 25), recalls the theme of Hiero's 
"gentleness" in Pindar (cxYocvaiaiv ev x^P^^> Py- 2. 8). Both Marcus 
Aurelius and Justinian would be ostentatiously unarmed. There is 
nothing inherently polemical about the reminiscences of the Iliad and 
the Aeneid. These are the canonical Greek and Roman statements of the 
heroic ideal. 

2. Par operi sedes (22 ff.): The statue is near the Temple of Quirinus (the 
deified Romulus) and the Julian basilica. Since death in one shape or 
another could be taken for granted, it promises therefore immortality. 
Its head overlooks temples (32-33), exactly as Justinian overlooked 
Hagia Sophia. 

3. Dextra vetat pugnas (37): Alexander's hand has akeady attracted our 
attention. The "right hand of the Lord" is familiar from the Bible. Here 
it brings peace, like Pompey's in Cicero's Fifth Verrine (§153), another 
religious idea. Justinian's right hand was equally visible, but by 
contrast it threatened war. This motif also recurs twice in Pushkin's 
Bronze Horseman (I. 162; II. 190), though the hand is not specified. 

4. The horse is on the verge of galloping {cursumque minatur, 47): 
Again, this is exactly like Justinian's horse. Pushkin would make this 
motif actual. 

5. Vacuae pro cespite terrae I aerea captivi crinem terit ungula Rheni (50- 
51): Marcus Aurelius once had a captive beneath his horse's hocfves. 
This Ravian theme,^^ already noted in Egyptian art and in the statue of 
the Emperor Marcian, is akin to the Psalmist's: Dijdt Dominus domino 
meo, 'Sede a dextris (!) meis, donee ponam inimicos tuos scabellum 
pedum tuorum'^^ It progresses towards Pushkin's Evgenii. 

6. Pondere (56): see note 54 above on /:aZ?o(i. 

7. The epiphany of Curtius from the Lacus Curtius (66 ff ) is set up by 
the typical device of an enquiring (lesser) deity puzzled by the action of 
another,''^ but the fact that this guardian spirit springs from the lower 
world is an essential part of the same Roman mentality that opened the 

^ Grabar, L'Emperew dans I'art byzantin, p. 130, quoted above, p. 320. 

® OT Ps. 1 10:1 (compare 66:12 for the wonn's eye view). Cf. E. Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford 
1957), p. 161; Aeschylus. Agamemnon U (repr. Oxford 1962), p. 412 ad v. 907; McCormick. 
Eternal Victory , p. 58, note 76, on the history of the calcatio colli, already known to Propertius 
(I. 1. 4); Grabar, L'Empereur dans I'art byzantin, p. 129, on Ps. 91:13. 

'° The inspiration was no doubt Callimachus, fr. 288, Pf., but this became a t(q>os variously 
amplified in the Roman eulogy: Qaudian, Prob. Olyb. 73 ff.; Sidonius, Pan. Anth. II. 318 ff.. 
Pan. Maioriani 53 ff.. Pan. Aviti 45 ff. 



334 IlUnois Classical Studies, XII.2 

shrine of Consus at the meta of the Circus.''^ In the celebration, death 
loses its terrors, and becomes instead the renewer of life, the source of 
resurrection.''^ 

8. Cedat (84): The cedat topos, so engrained in the Roman attitude to the 
world, is also at work in various guises at 8 ff., 18 ff., 27 ff., 39, 52 ff. 
It is particularly well known from Roman comedy and Martial,''^ but it 
was also known in Byzantium,'^'* and Justinian's "Solomon, I have 
surpassed thee" is part of the same concept. 

9. The image conquers time (91 ff.): This was already hinted at in the 
allusion to the Trojan Horse. It is part of the suspension of time that 
characterizes the carnival.''^ 

10. Domitian is a second Alexander (100): This too is part of the theme of 
resurrection, particularly visible in the stories about Nero's 
reappearance, for example.''^ Similarly, Justinian was a second 
Achilles. 

11. Cert us ames terras (105): This theme is already developed by Horace 
and Virgil. It would later be taken up by Dante.''^ 

It is legitimate for the reader to compare some of these points with 
those emerging from the study of Justinian's statue in the Augustaion 
(above, p. 330). But a profounder question is whether, even if we could 
show that Statius had been engaged in mockery of Domitian, that would 
justify the conclusion that somewhow he was "agin' the government," a 
notion that has done much harm to the appreciation in our time of ancient 
literary sensibility. Circus freedom was of course, when taken to extremes, 
an act of sedition. But it was not normally taken to extremes. The more or 
less good-humored badinage and exchange of comic repartee between ruler 
and ruled was an admission of the emperor's status, not its denial. The 

'^ Above, p. 317. The serpent on King iCthelbald's stone (above, p. 322), representing the 
mouth of hell, may be compared. Obviously, this was no disrespect to the king. 

'^ K. Meuli, "Der Ursprung der olympischen Spiele," Ges. Schriften U (Basel-Stuttgart 
1975), pp. 881 ff.; Humj^rey. Roman Circuses, pp. 62, 258-59. 

''^ Cf. E. Fraenkel. Elementi plauiini in Plauto (Florence 1960), pp. 7 ff.; O. Weinreich, 
Studien zu Martial (Stuttgart 1928). pp. 30 ff.; E. R. Curtius, Romische Literatur und 
lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern 1948), pp. 168-72. 

''*A. P. DC. 656. 11, ei^ov in praise of the Chalke in the Palace of AnasUsius. 

^^ Cf. Silvae 1. 6. 39 ff. This is why Nestor is trisaeclisenex: C. Buechner, Frag. poet, latin. 
(2nd ed. Leipzig 1982), p. 71 (Laevius). 

^^ Expected because of his games: L. Friedlaender, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte 
Roms n, pp. 1-2. citing Dio Chrys., Or. 71. 9 ff. (H. 268. Am.); Tac. Hist. I. 4; Plutarch. 
Otho 3. This is where the concept of the emperor / chariaeer links with that of immortality, as 
in the Ascension of Alexander (above, notes 3 and 31). The Constantinus of the epigrajA to 
this article (App. Plan. 375) was only a charioteer, but it was not for nothing that he bore an 
imperial name. 

^^ Nisbel and Hubbard on Horace. Odes I. 2. 45; Dante. Vita Nuova XDC. 7-9; J. K. 
Newman, The Classical Epic Tradition (Madison 1986). p. 257. 



J. K. Newman 335 

location of the statue is significant, not because it provides a chance to 
portend the end of a repressive regime, but because it guarantees triumph 
over death in a re-enactment of the patriotic sacrifice of the Curtii. Laughter 
is part of that same guarantee, as Can Grande knew. 

The ruler in every society occupies a religious / comic status, even 
when (as happened to Domitian and King iEthelbald, and as still happens) 
he is ritually sacrificed (assassinated). His images necessarily have about 
them an atmosphere of comedy, sometimes disguised as public rejoicing, 
sometimes turning to public ridicule.^^ But even his victimization is the 
affirmation of his role, not its denial. Roman emperors were surprisingly 
tolerant of this kind of Circus freedom, and the writers who took advantage 
of it are not to be regarded as ipso facto their political enemies. When 
Statins exalted the colossal equestrian statue of Domitian, in so many ways 
the precursor of the Byzantines, he inevitably introduced into his eulogy an 
ambiguous note, developed more fully in the character of Adrastus in the 
Thebaid. (But in what sense was Adrastus a "bad" ruler?) That was itself an 
act of homage. Later, when Pushkin commented on a Russian statue in the 
tradition of Justinian's own image as a Bronze Horseman, he described the 
cruelty and cost of empire, without however meaning to make that the 
whole story any more Uian did the poet who described the encounter of 
Aeneas and Dido during a hunt, or that earUer poet through whose lips a 
Sicilian victor in the Hippodrome threatened his adversaries that he would 
run up on them like a wolf 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 



^ I cannot help recalling here a cartoon that appeared in an Italian magazine a few years ago. 
Two horses are contemplating a familiar statue in some provincial piazza. The first remarks: 
"Allora, questo e il famoso Garibaldi?" The second responds: "Si, ma chi gli su a cavallo?" 
Scholars would do well to read more of this Mediterranean humor before concluding that this is 
evidence of an undercurrent of resentment against the hero of the Risorgimento. 




ILLINOIS CLASSICAL STUDIES 



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