Archive 2006
| Query | Longo Sofista| Justin Time |A. E. Housman and Petronius | Dissertations |
Reporting P.G. Wodehouse’s honorary Oxford D. Litt., his biographer Robert McCrum (London 2005, pps. 260–261) reports that the university’s public orator, Lucretian editor Cyril Bailey, concluded his Latin tribute to ‘Plum’ with ‘Petroniumne dicam an Terentium nostrum?’ At Dulwich, PGW did Classics, later saying “this was the best form of education I could have had as a writer.” Fellow-Dulwichian Raymond Chandler said the same. I gather Wodehousians write articles identifying classical allusions in their Master’s works. Would be glad to hear from any fellow-Petronian who has spotted any to ours. (Barry Baldwin)
Longo Sofista,
Dafni e Cloe.
Introduzione, traduzione e note di Maria
Pia Pattoni,
BUR, Classici greci e latini, Milano 2005, 512 pp., € 10.
I
SBN 88–17–00609–2.
Reviewed by A. Setaioli University of Perugia, Italy.
The well-known series of Greek and Latin classics published by Rizzoli as part of BUR (Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli) aims to make such texts accessible to a wide readership in a presentation that often makes them a useful tool for the specialists too. This is particularly true for Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe by Maria Pia Pattoni.The text of the novel is preceded by an extensive “Introduzione” (pp. 7–117) based on some valuable papers published by P. shortly before this edition.[2] This introduction elucidates Longus’ technique of “contaminazione,” the mixing of genres and models, often with the intention of parody—in the first place the fusion of novelistic prose and pastoral poetry, i.e. two genres quite “eclectic” in themselves, as already emphasized by Hunter.
Some particular scenes and episodes of the novel are analyzed by P. to illustrate this point: Daphnis’ monologue at 2.22, a tragic parody reminiscent of Sophocles’ Ajax; the episode of Lykainion (3.15–20), which mixes themes from comedy, tragedy, and epic, with Lykainion stepping successively in the shoes of Penelope and Nausikaa; the character and the feats of the cowherd Dorcon (1.20–21; 29; 31), whose portrayal ranges from elegy to pastoral to epic, and finally to elegy again, when, at the point of death, he asks Chloe for a kiss; Daphnis’ peculiar paraklausithyron (3.5–9), mixing elegy with comedy and mime; Daphnis’ and Dorcon’s beauty contest (1.16), creatively revisiting a pastoral motif. Through the analysis of these scenes P. adroitly proves the totally literary nature of Longus’ “realism” as well as his way of making traditional themes subservient to the progression of his own plot. Lastly, she shows how hackneyed novelistic themes receive new life through a fresh nod to their ultimate source, i.e. Homer’s epic (in connection with Daphnis and Chloe falling in love with each other: 1.13–14; 17–18; 32); how nods to Sappho aptly describe the symptoms of love in Lesbos, her own island country; and how poetic images are transformed into “typical scenes” in Longus, who is also guided by the recurrent scenes and the very formularity of epic poetry. Symmetry and parallelism amount in fact to the most conspicuous structural principle in the novel.
The “Introduzione” is followed by an extensive series of “Schede informative” (pp. 119–189), which contain the basic information about the author and the work one might have expected to encounter at the beginning of the book. Such information is clear and exhaustive, though P., quite understandably, does not always take a definite position of her own. She does make several interesting points, though. For example, she remarks that from the very proem Longus declares his aesthetic principles: authorial detachment, Alexandrian labor limae, and reconcilement of nature and art as equally important factors of beauty; and she not only stresses Longus’ totally pastoral setting dispensing with the travels abroad and the obstacles from outside typical of the other Greek novels, but also remarks that his pastoral world is a city man’s vision with little or no relationship to the harsh toil of real country people.
P. also duly informs the reader about symbolic and mystic interpretations of the novel (by Merkelbach and others). Though here too she takes no explicit position, her own essays and the “Introduzione” itself clearly show that she favours the literary approach.
Finally, information about the text and its transmission, translations, editions and commentaries, as well as “Fortleben” is given in the closing pages of the “Schede informative.”
Before the text of the novel P. offers the reader an extensive bibliography comprising no less than 27 pages (pp. 191–217).
The text offered is Vieillefond’s (Paris 1987), which P. considers more conservative and less ready to intervene heavy-handedly in the text than Reeve’s (Stutgardiae et Lipsiae 19942, 19821). Vieillefond’s text (minus the apparatus) is reproduced reprographically, but some corrections are proposed in the notes[3] and taken into account in the translation. Only in a few instances the translation supposes an intervention in Vieillefond’s text which is not recorded in the notes.[4]
The Italian translation facing the text is as elegant as it is faithful. Only in a few cases ground for disagreement might be found.[5]
The text is accompanied by a great number of learned notes, amounting to a veritable commentary, and treating problems related to Longus’ language, style, and poetics, as well as to recurrent themes and structural analyses, and also discussing a wealth of models and parallel texts, which shed a great deal of light on Longus’ way of adapting and mixing his models.
In this connection, if one slight reproach can be made to P.’s beautiful and valuable book, it might be to the effect that Latin literature, though carefully taken into account by the author, does not receive the same amount of attention as Greek literature. For example, when P. (pp. 86–87) remarks that, when Longus attributes to Chloe eyes as big as a heifer’s (1.17.3), he is nodding to Homer’s well-known epithet of Hera (boōpis), one might have quoted Cicero, testifying that the same epithet had been applied to Clodia because of the beauty of her shining eyes (Cic. Att. 2.9.1; 2.12.2; 2.14.1; 2.22.5; cf. harusp. resp.38; Cael. 49). When P. (p. 312 n. 39) remarks that the theme of engraving the loved one’s name on the bark of trees is not found in Virgil as it is not in Longus, one could remind that perhaps it does appear at ecl.10.53–54. At p. 489 n. 116, on 4.32.3, P. refers only to Plut. Num. 15.4 for wine poured as an offering into a spring—a motif which also appears in a well-known Horatian ode (c. 3.13.1–2).
And perhaps in a book on the novel such a great Roman novelist as Petronius should have received more attention. The mixing and parodying of different genres is a common trait of Longus and Petronius, though the latter is of course much more desecrating. And when P. (pp. 236–237 n. 25, on 1.7.1) treats the novelistic theme of the parallel dreams of two different characters, the parody at Petr. 104.2 might have been mentioned; the same applies to the theme of love under one cloak (treated by P. at p. 411 n. 109, on 3.24.2), which Petronius parodies at 11.3.
Justin
Time
by Barry Baldwin
Not the Christian martyr-saint, but Marcus Junianus Justinus (probably 2nd-3rd century AD), epitomator/excerptor/polisher-upper—editors agonise over the right label—of the Universal History of Pompeius Trogus from Augustus’ reign. In his excellent Justin and Pompeius Trogus: A Study of the Language of Justin’s Epitome of Trogus (Phoenix Suppl. Vol. 41, Toronto 2003), John Yardley’s rigorous analysis of the Latinity (using Ibycus, the Packard Humanities Institute Disc, TLL, L&S, OLD—good old-fashioned philology, not a theory in sight, hence I forgive Petronius’ absence from his general Index) includes 10 passages from the Satyricon:
ALL the spade-work is Yardley’s. A random sampling suggests he has missed nothing of consequence. One may add the odd widow’s mite, e.g. on Justin’s liking for contentus with the infinitive (Yardley 118), this construction occurs four times in our author. I am simply putting on a Petronian ‘spin’ for Arbiter fans who may not realise the relevance of this study to their hero. For present purposes (his book is much richer), Yardley has sought to distinguish passages written by Trogus from ones (re)written by Justin, dubbing the latter ‘Justinisms’. In our case, these imply his reading Petronius, thereby adding a lap to the Satyricon’s ancient circulation.
Two stand out. First, 105.10, confusis omnibus corporis indiciorumque lineamentis. Thus Mueller in his 1995 Teubner, having deleted it in earlier editions; cf. J. P. Sullivan, ‘Interpolations in Petronius,’ PCPhS 202 (1976), 116. Yardley adduces a trio of J-T passages: 1.9.10, et oris et corporis liniamentis persimilis—Buecheler wrote et oris into the Petronius sentence; 3.5.11, confusa corporum lineamenta—cf. Livy 26.41.24, liniamenta corporis, “but Petronius is closer” (Yardley 31); 3.5.11, confusa corporum lineamenta— “Petronius seems too close to be coincidental” (Yardley 128).
Second, 119.1, prodere fata; J-T 3.4.15, fata prodidisse—“only these two examples” (Yardley 128); both passages were missed by L&S and OLD.
2.7, pestilenti sidere; J-T 19.2.7, pestilentis sideris.
19.1, repentina mutatio animorum; J-T 27.2.3, repentina animorum mutatione.
79.9, oblitus iuris humani; likewise J-T 18.4.8 – “verbatim at Petronius” (Yardley 152).
79.9, solutus mero; J-T 9.6.6, solutumque mero—“most likely, in view of the Petronius example, a colloquialism by the time of Justin” (Yardley 194); cf. P 109.8, vino solutus.
80.1, parricidali manu; J-T 27.1.10, parricidale scelus; Petronius seems the first attested user of this adjective.
80.9, nomen amicitiae sic quatenus expedit haeret—“in thought and wording close to J-T 41.3.10, fides...quatenus expedit” (Yardley 177); cf. Cicero, De Amicitia 17.61, also Gellius, NA 1.3.16.
89.1, inter aras, also J-T 4.3.3—“mostly poetic” (Yardley 130).
102.16, in profundum mergamus; J-T 36.3.7, in profundum merguntur.
Only one passage features in the repertoire of Livian influences on Trogus, the single Cena item adduced: 63.1, attonitis admiratione universis; J-T 25.4.5, admiratione adtonita; Livy 30.30.3, admiratione mutua prope attoniti. Readers may now be a little attoniti to see no note on this detail in Smith’s Cena edition. As Trimalchio admonishes his guests (39.3), oportet etiam inter cenandum philologiam nosse.
A. E. Housman and Petronius
by Barry Baldwin
A possible sequel to Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. They might begin by pondering their inclusion in Robert Drake’s The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read (New York 1998), along with the notion that A Shropshire Lad 18, “Oh, when I was in love with you,/ Then I was clean and brave...” was modelled on the Arbiter’s Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas... —Can’t see it myself, but it is popular on gay websites, e.g. www.unseelie.org/books/gray.selected poems.
In a letter to Maurice Pollet (Feb.5 1933) that constitutes a mini-vita, Housman wrote: “No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but I was surprised when critics spoke of my poetry as ‘classical’. Its chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare’s songs, the Scottish border ballads, and Heine.” His riposte to John Sparrow’s ‘Echoes in the Poetry of A. E. Housman’ (Letter of June 19 1934) was: “Some of the plagiarisms in your list I thought imaginary and non-existent, but a much greater number escaped your notice, and in particular I see that you are not such a student of the Bible as I am.”
It’s possible that Housman’s note on Manilius 2.928, wherein the hapless Elias Stoeber is dubbed vervex sectarius, was inspired by Satyricon 57.1 (cf. G. B. A.Fletcher, ‘Supplements to the Bibliography of Housman,’ Housman Society Journal 29, 2003, 32; John Hunt, ‘Imitator Imitandus,’ LCM 19.1–2, July–Oct. 1994, 100), albeit Plautus, Captivi 820, Qui Petroni nomen induunt verveci sectario looks more likely—Petroni nomen being a smileable bonus for PSN fans.
A better Petronianising bet is Satyr. 45.1, Echion centonarius, as the impetus for Housman’s immortalising of scissors-and-paste merchant Jakob van Wageningen as a centonarius (note on Manilius 5.23; cf. Hunt 101 n5). This depends, of course, on the older translations of centonarius as ‘rag-and-bone man’ rather than the OLD’s ‘fireman’ and Ehlers-Mueller ‘ein Fabrikant von Feuerwehrrequisten’; cf. my ‘Echion’s Profession in the Satyricon,’ Riv. Fil. 104 (1976), 327–328 = Studies on Greek & Roman History & Literature (Amsterdam 1985), 165–166.
Hunt (106) points out that on Manilius 5.634, Huc huc Convenite, addressed to errant scholars Kortte and Marx, is from the opening line of Petronius 23.3, the versified invitation to sodomitic frolics. I hope on a future occasion to go fossicking for similar nuggets in the Juvenal and Lucan commentaries.
Unlike other pertinent ancient authors, Petronius is not in the Index to Henry Maas’ edition (London 1971) of Housman’s Letters. He features, though, in two of four notes addressed to his bibliographer, Stephen Gaselee; the other pair both contain deipnosophistic echoes (“I shall be much pleased to enjoy your succulent repast on Michaelmas Day,” and “We were enjoying ourselves so much that Amaryllis was left weeping on the doorstep”).
Housman sent a brisk postcard to Gaselee on Nov. 9, 1927: “Thanks; I have plodded through De Vreese. He has mugged up a lot of astrology; but what a goose, trying to make Trimalchio an expert and Petronius a fool.” The book in question is Jacques De Vreese, Petron 39 und die Astrologie (Amsterdam 1927). According to P. G. Naiditch, ‘The Library of A. E. Housman: part II Latin Literature,’ HSJ 29 (2003), 137–138, this is one of four on Petronius owned by him, the others being the 1862 and 1904 editions of Buecheler and Michael J. Ryan’s Cena text (London & Newcastle-on-Tyne 1905), all marginally annotated. Gaselee (no.85) registers this last, giving Felling-on-Tyne instead of Newcastle, adding (no.135) Ryan’s own English translation therefrom of the following year, remarking: “Ryan is more successful (sc. than Lowe’s “a little flat” version), but he does not keep very close to the Latin text. He is perhaps at his best in the two chapters where Hermeros abuses Ascyltos and Giton with a wealth of opprobrious slang” —this last might link in with our earlier vervex item.
Ryan’s translation was in Housman’s possession by May 7 1918 when he wrote this from Cambridge to Gaselee: “Dear Gaselee, I shall be delighted to dine with you on Whit-Sunday. I was just on the point of writing to you about the translations of Petronius, which I happen to be wanting to consult, and cannot find many within my reach. Burnaby, Wilson & Co., Lowe, Ryan, Heseltine, Friedlaender, & the French of 1694 are all I can get at either the University or the College library or on my own shelves, for the University copy of Bohn is out, as I suppose it always is. Jackson possesses a copy, & also one of Addison, but cannot lay hands on either. No doubt you have quite a number, & perhaps sometime you would let me have a look at them. It is only one passage that I am concerned with. N.B: Perhaps you know that we have in the College library a MS translation, 18th Century apparently, based on Burnaby & not so good in diction, but more understanding & helpful in the passage I consulted it for.”
There is no follow-up letter to Gaselee (at least in Maas' edition which is professedly incomplete), nor can I recognise any allusion to this manuscript in his Petronian bibliography. It is amusing to see Kelly’s crib (cf. my remarks on it and Addison’s in ‘Dem Bohns,’ PSN 32, 2002, 6–9) so popular with the Cambridge undergraduates—dons, too? What was the “one passage” concerning Housman? According to both A. S. F. Gow’s 1936 Sketch and Bibliography, also the list in (ed. J. Diggle & F. R. D.Goodyear) The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman (Cambridge 1972), 3,1299, Petronian passages are touched upon—never directly focused—in only three articles, viz: 9.8, ‘Tunica Retiarii,’ CR 18 (1904), 395–398; 41.6–8, ‘Jests of Plautus, Cicero, and Trimalchio,’ CR 32 (1918), 162–164; 141.9, ‘Ciceroniana,’ JPh 32 (1913), 261–269.
The second one fits chronologically. It is on the Liber pun, Housman printing the word both times in capital letters “as Trimalchio would have wished.” His explanation is plundered without acknowledgment by Smith. The remark “Nobody, not even W. K. Kelly, explains it...” shows that he had now acquired the Bohn.
Regarding the other two. At 9.8, Housman proposed de ruma for the much-obelised manuscript de ruina, a notion acknowledged in Warmington’s revised Loeb, but not by Mueller who both in his earlier editions and 1995 Teubner left the phrase in daggers, mentioning only Fraenkel’s derisum. Buecheler proposed a lacuna, his apparatus recording only Scioppius’ transposition de harena ruina, a brighter idea; there is also Moessler’s ruina nervorum (‘Quaestionum Petronii specimen novissimum,’ Philologus 50 (1891), remembered only in the Segebade-Lommatzsch Lexicon Petronianum (Leipzig 1898). Housman’s conjecture strikes me as utterly improbable, a case of teat for tat. Any takers for the thought that Scioppius’ solution might involve a covert allusion to the theatre that rocked during a Nero concert (Suetonius, Nero 20.2; Tacitus, Ann. 15.34.1)? I wonder if any change is really needed; cf. Satyr. 119.v 47, hoc dedecoris populo morumque ruina. Take de in its common sense of ‘on account of’ (e.g. Plautus, Casina 2.6.63, de labore pectoris tundit; Ovid, Met. 10.49, de vulnere), and there we are. If we must emend, what about derutum?—false ruina could have been caused by the following -ena of harena.
The third article is a defense of the spelling opsessi over Rittershusius’ obsessi for manuscript oppressi, accepted in Mueller’s Teubner (earlier versions retained oppressi); Buecheler had oppressi, also Heseltine; Warmington has obsessi; Segebade-Lommatzsch kept oppressi. Editors do not notice Housman’s orthography, from ignorance or silent contempt. There is no need for it, unless obsidio (also of Saguntum) at Livy 21.8.1 be also fiddled with; this noun may justify Ruttershusius, but oppressi makes perfectly good sense in the context and could be retained.
One benefit of drafting this piece was that it led me to a re-reading (all right, then, reading) of all Housman’s Latin papers, a pleasure prompted by need, thanks to Petronius’ absence from the general Index of Diggle-Goodyear. Unless battle-fatigue set in too soon, the only other item (excluding occasional uses of Petronian passages for parallels) occurs not in the notorious ‘Praefanda’ but in ‘Emendationes Propertianae,’ JPh 16 (1888), 31: “In Petronius 137.6 Burmann perhaps rightly reads expiare manes for manus” —no sign of this in modern apparatuses.
“Others, I am not the first,/Have willed more mischief than they durst”—A Shropshire Lad 30
Ahearne-Kroll, Patricia, “Joseph and Aseneth” and Jewish Identity in Greco-Roman Egypt. Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2005.
This study investigates the significance of the narrative “Joseph and Aseneth” (JA) for Jews who lived in Greco-Roman Egypt. JA provided a template of meaning for this audience by enhancing a story about their heroic past in Egypt and offering them guidance for living in an environment where Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews inevitably interacted with each other.
Instead of relying upon a textual reconstruction, this study focuses on the uniform portion that is preserved in the earliest witnesses of JA (i.e., the fabula, genre, and common phrases/imagery that these witnesses share). JA is best understood as an ancient Greek novel because it provides the basic storyline and specific elements (in terms of content and literary technique) that are in accordance with this genre. As a Greek novel, JA depicts its protagonists in legendary ways and displays their greatness in terms that would have resonated with its audience. It creates composite characterizations of Joseph and Aseneth that effectively portray them from a dual perspective, Greco-Egyptian (i.e., in the portrayal of their royal status) and Jewish (i.e., in the extensive use of biblical paradigms in depicting their Jewish identity), and it expands the biblical story about Joseph to include the tale of how Joseph and Aseneth became Pharaoh and Queen of Egypt. In addition, JA not only presents non-negotiable features that define Jewish identity (e.g., prohibition of idolatry for all family members), but it also exhibits the response of reformulating this identity as a result of social interaction with other groups (e.g., the readjustment of rules about retaliation). In this way, JA not only confirmed for Jews their legacy within the cultural milieu of Egypt, but also modeled for them a way to construct their identity within the greater, social environment of Greco-Roman Egypt.
This study also addresses the debate about the historical placement of this narrative. JA’s particular interest in the Jewish past in Egypt and its use of cultural imagery from the setting of Greco-Roman Egypt provide persuasive evidence that it initially was written for a Jewish audience who lived in this setting between 100 B.C.E. and 115 C.E.
Fuhrmann, Christopher J., Keeping the Imperial Peace: Public Order, State Control and Policing in the Roman Empire during the First Three Centuries AD. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005.
The inhabitants of the Roman Empire drew on a variety of methods to enforce laws, encourage public order, and promote state control. While the empire lacked any institution fully comparable to modern police forces, this dissertation examines several groups of men who were armed and organized by the state, whose duties involved keeping order among civilians. The first synoptic study of Roman-era police forces in over a century, “Keeping the Peace” examines policing on four different levels (civilian, imperial, gubernatorial, military detached service), situating each in the context of public order and state control. The diverse sources relevant to these themes (including historical narratives, inscriptions, papyri, Judeo-Christian writings, rhetorical literature, and novels) reveal an increase in police institutions, which were created and expanded in response to persistent security challenges during the first three centuries of the imperial era.
Chapter 1 addresses policing carried out by civilians, covering a wide variety of policing arrangements. In most areas outside of Egypt and Asia Minor, evidence of fully developed civilian police institutions is scant. Local magistrates, assisted by their attendants and public slaves, emerge as a significant factor in local order, but their policing powers were limited. The subsequent four chapters all touch on the marked increase of policing on the part of soldiers. Chapter 2 investigates the symbolic and real importance of the emperor in keeping public order, and his use of soldiers under his direct command to do so. Here we see that Augustus’ rule crucially shaped the expectation that emperors should provide stability and security. Chapter 3 deals with provincial governors and the soldiers they had at their disposal for policing tasks. Governors possessed the necessary scope and authority to effect orderly conditions, but had to surmount the complexities of local politics. Chapter 4 examines the out-posting of soldiers in administrative and security posts, and its largely negative effects on civilians. Although these different levels of policing in the Roman Empire were typically uncoordinated, the final chapter (Chapter 5) reveals the exceptional amount of police cooperation which Roman officials devoted to the recovery of runaway slaves.
Goldman, Max Leo, Problems of Voice in Petronius. Dissertation, Brown University, 2004.
I examine how Petronius manipulates first-person narration to create a sophisticated and amusing story. Petronius introduces a narrator, Encolpius, who tells his own story, a simple technique that has caused problems for interpreters. Recent scholarship, while stressing the importance of the narrator, has rarely agreed on how he functions. For Sullivan, the author occasionally uses the narrator’s voice to express his views (1968). For Conte, the author’s silent voice continually undermines the narrator’s—the narrator is a scholastic fool; the author is sophisticated (1996). For Beck, the narrator is sophisticated, shaping an amusing portrait of his past folly (1973, 1975). These views rarely produce satisfying readings because they are based either on faulty assumptions about narrative form or on an insufficient account of the text.
Applying narratology, I seek to prove that the narrator’s voice does not impose a unified view of the Satyrica. Instead of trying to interpret the text by the narrator’s voice, I seek to explain how the narrator functions and what effect his storytelling has. In the first chapter, I show how Petronius uses the expectations created by first-person narration—often treated as simple properties of the form—to manipulate and direct the reactions of his audience. In the second, I examine how Petronius represents discourse--spoken and mental, prose and verse—in terms of technique. In the third chapter, I show how the narrator’s explicit commentary does not fix his point of view as ironic or empathetic. It is impossible to unify the text through the narrator’s point of view because it is unstable.
In the final chapter, I suggest that an approach to the diversity of unsubordinated voices can be found in Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia. Heteroglossia, the social and individual diversity of languages, can elucidate the conflict of voices and genres that takes place in the Cena.
Halvonik, Brent Norman, The Rhetoric of Picaresque Irony: A Study of the “Satyricon” and “Lazarillo de Tormes.” Dissertation, University of Missouri - Columbia, 2000.
The dissertation consists of a comparative textual analysis of a Roman novel, the Satyricon (c. 63 A.D.) written by Petronius, and an anonymous Spanish novel, Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). It is important to stress that this is not an influence study: that is to say, it is not argued that the Satyricon was a requisite precursor to Lazarillo nor that the Satyricon had a profound influence upon Lazarillo. Rather, this is a study of similar narrative strategies especially with regard to the application of an ubiquitous irony. Chapter 1 establishes the socio-historical and literary contexts, in Neronian Rome and in Renaissance Spain, respectively, in which these two works arose. Chapter 2 examines irony of character and incident in the two fictions. Chapter 3 describes the phenomenon of an unreliable ego narrator as consequence of irony of point of view. Chapters 4 and 5 address anti-epic as ironization of this canonical genre. Chapter 4 considers the Satyricon and the Pharsalia of Lucan, a contemporary of Petronius. Chapter 5 treats anti-epic elements in Don Quijote and Lazarillo.
Hirt, Susan Christine, Erotic Vision in the Conversions of Aseneth and Thecla. Dissertation, Stanford University, 2001.
Two pre-Augustine conversion texts, the pseudepigraphical Joseph and Aseneth and the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, present a connection between the divinity and the convert which is realized through two visions and which transfers holy power and status to the converts Aseneth and Thecla. The first vision follows the pattern of erotic vision found in the five Greek novels of Chariton, Xenophon, Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus, establishing a power dynamic between viewer and object in which the viewer is debilitated by the sight of the beloved object. The second vision enacts the transference of holy power and status to the convert, completing the transformation.
As a way of explaining visual dynamics the novelists incorporate vocabulary and imagery from Hellenistic visual theories which provide an atomic explanation for all phenomena. First, a comparison of the philosophical vocabulary and imagery to visual passages in the Greek novels reveals both the novelists’ use of the Hellenistic vision vocabulary and their atomic conceptualization of vision and its effects. Second, evidence in Joseph and Aseneth shows that the erotic visual model constructed in the novels is altered in this conversion narrative to encompass the experience of a divine vision. Third, both types of vision, erotic and divine, serve as necessary catalysts of religious transformation in Thecla’s narrative and in other contemporary conversion narratives. Finally, an examination of theological writings indicates that the Hellenistic visual theories penetrate the theological discourses of this period in the formulation of pneuma /spirit as the divine intermediary to the human world and the instrument of conversion. This theological formulation is a more explicit articulation of the same divine visual mechanism presented in the conversion narratives.
Evidence examined in this dissertation reveals that the experience of eros and conversion are both conceived in these narratives as transforming events precipitated by a visual encounter. The permeation of Hellenistic visual theory in Late Antiquity provides useful language to explain the mechanism of transformation by describing the invisible activities of the soul, the activities of the divinity, and the intermediary through which the divinity interacts with the human world.
Hoffer, Noreen Lynn, Apuleius’ “Cupid and Psyche” and the Egyptian Cult. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2001.
This dissertation examines the relationship between Apuleius’ fable and the movement toward religious syncretism which was very active in the first two centuries of the Christian era.
Especially relevant to the activity were the many syncretic relationships involving the goddess Isis and the Roman goddesses. The story is explained in terms of these relationships some of which had already crystallized and some which were still in flux. Psyche is shown to be an incarnation of the goddess Isis, who was attempting to form a syncretic relationship with Venus who, in the story, is resisting her enemy with all of her wiles. She is particularly determined to prevent her son, Cupid, from marrying Psyche-Isis.
“Cupid and Psyche” is treated as a multi-level allegory, with the identity of Psyche being proved by means of analogy, which is the mode of argument employed by allegory. Multi-level allegory is discussed and explained by means of two other examples of ancient allegory, one from Homer and a second from Catullus.
Klabunde, Michael Robert, Boys or Women? The Rhetoric of Sexual Preference in Achilles Tatius, Plutarch, and Pseudo-Lucian. Dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2001.
In Achilles Tatius’ Greek novel Leucippe and Clitophon (2.35–38), Plutarch’s Amatorius (749c–756a) and [Lucian’s] Amores (17–52), there occur three conversations where a man’s choice of having either young men or women as sex partners is discussed and problematized in relation to its philosophical, traditional, moral and social propriety within the literary world of the Second Sophistic in the Roman Empire. Using as conceptual framework Michel Foucault’s construction of Greco-Roman sexuality as put forth in the second and third volumes of his Histoire de la sexualité , this dissertation offers a close reading to examine the issues raised in these three ancient Greek texts, their wider literary and social context, and how they may diverge from Foucault’s schema. The erotic paradigm dictating proper sexual and affectational relations with partners of both genders, inherited from classical antiquity and as constructed by Foucault, will, in fact, prove to have undergone several modifications by the time of these three primary texts. On the one hand, a more frankly sexualized interpretation of the pederastic side of this paradigm will take its place alongside, and in some respects supplant, the traditionally and philosophically chaste representation of relationships with a beloved boy. On the other, a new understanding of the erotic worth of women, and wives in particular, will transform procreative relations to conjugal partnerships of the deeply philosophical sort formerly characterizing amorous relations among men.
Konstantinova, Ralitza Hristova, Emotions and their Functions in Achilles Tatius’ “Leucippe.” Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000.
Achilles Tatius’ second-century AD novel Leucippe abounds in detailed descriptions of turbulent emotional states. These descriptions are akin to the type of descriptions of turbulent emotional states. These descriptions are akin to the type of ecphrasis, a rhetorical device typical of the Second Sophistic. The purpose of an ecphrasis is to describe a scene clearly and vividly, while simultaneously eliciting hermeneutic activity from the audience. By omitting the authorial pronouncement on truth, which usually accompanies ecphrasis and its discussion within the text, Achilles Tatius introduces a twist into this rhetorical practice. His descriptions of emotional states are especially problematic, because the hermeneutic activity they trigger blocks the conventional mechanisms for the audience’s sympathetic identification. Achilles Tatius projects onto Leucippe the tension between two conflicting second-century AD views on emotions. Some claim that strong emotions indicate truthfulness, because they temporarily suspend one’s rational control, and hence the ability to calculate and deceive. Critics of this view argue, however, that emotional symptoms can be simulated and dissimulated at will. Achilles Tatius’ descriptions of overpowering emotions activate simultaneously the emotion-truth association and the practice of critical interpretation, the latter effectively blocking the process of identification. Thus the detailed ecphraseis of emotional states appear at first to function as a tool for promoting emotional detachment from fiction. Such an attitude is well-suited to the current imperial concerns of the Antonines, whose associations with intellectuals from the Second Sophistic are well-known. But the ‘loose ends’ in Achilles Tatius’ emotional descriptions contour covert experiences, especially those of the main heroine, and so destabilize the reading of Leucippe as a conventional love story. We are given enough clues to begin constructing alternative plots. However, in the absence of authorial pronouncement on ‘truth,’ it is difficult to know where to quit the hermeneutic process unleashed by these descriptions. In Part One of the dissertation, I examine some important views in the ancient discourse on emotions, which make clear that interpreting the depicted emotions of fictional characters is a complex business in the time of Leucippe . In Part Two, I show that the interpretation of emotions in Leucippe requires reading between the lines, an activity that dramatically changes the novel’s meaning.
Lapp, Joy Louise, Chaste Women: Characterization in the “Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles” and the Greek Romance Novels. Dissertation, The Iliff School of Theology and University of Denver, 2002.
It has been argued that renouncing sexual relations and marriage afforded early Christian women a possibility for female agency that was otherwise not attainable in the ancient world. The objective of this dissertation is to compare the characterization of the chaste women in the Apocryphal Acts and the contemporaneous Greek romance novels, assessing in particular the degree of personal agency the women demonstrate. The novels provide a “control,” because their heroines, like the celibate women of the Acts, strive to safeguard their sexual purity under challenging circumstances. However, in contrast to the Apocryphal Acts, the happy ending of the novels is marriage.
The dissertation considers women from the five major Apocryphal Acts (Thecla, the five celibate women in the Acts of Peter, Drusiana, Maximilla, and Mygdonia) and the five ideal Greek romance novels (Callirhoe, Anthia, Chloe, Leucippe, and Charicleia). It assesses the characterization of each heroine by considering three “techniques of characterization”: (1) her description in the text; (2) her actions, noting in particular the extent to which she is either an acting subject or the object of the action of others; and (3) a comparison with other characters.
Each of the women of the Apocryphal Acts successfully carries out one independent action, that of renouncing sexual relations with her fiance/husband. Except for Thecla, however, that act does not lead to an increase in autonomous action or greater personal agency for the women. The novels, by contrast, portray several of the heroines engaged in limited independent action that extends beyond the defense of chastity. However, as each of these women approaches the happy ending of married life with her husband, her actions become constrained by traditional gender roles. In conclusion, although the romance novels portray women’s independent action and personal agency becoming curtailed as the heroines enter marriage, the ability for independent female action is not enhanced in the Apocryphal Acts when the female protagonists end sexual relations and leave their marriages. Only Thecla, who never marries, experiences an independent life shaped by her own desire.
Panagakos, Katherine, Criminal Elements: The Evolution of the Outlaw in the Ancient Novel. Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2004.
In the first to fourth centuries A.D., a literary genre developed unlike any the Graeco-Roman world had seen. While essentially an amalgam of nearly all earlier types of literature, the ancient grammarians and commentators found the ancient novels difficult to classify. These texts employed tragic and comedic elements, as well as historiographical, epic, and erotic components. In addition to the difficulties the ancients had in classifying such a unique creation, these fictional works continue to be problematic in the modern world. Issues related to the origins of the novel are debated regularly, as well as problems pertaining to the dating, chronology, authorship, and provenance of many of these texts. Although these works have received much scholarly attention in the last forty years, there has been no thorough study of the narratological function of outlaws (ubiquitous figures throughout the novels).
In this dissertation, I focus my examination on the “canonical” exemplars of the genre: Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, Xenophon’s An Ephesian Tale, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, and Heliodorus’ An Ethiopian Tale, and, where relevant to the argument, I include Petronius’ Satyricon and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.
Many of the misconceptions about the role of outlaws in the novels have centered on the idea that these are formulaic characters who function solely to transport the protagonists into an unfamiliar world and therefore are merely convenient plot devices. I argue that outlaws not only deviate from their previous manifestations in classical literature, but also develop into crucial and central characters in their own narratives. The authors of the ancient novels consistently employed, expanded, and challenged the traditional roles of these characters. Through an analysis of the development, typology, and functions of outlaws as well as an examination of the rhetorical descriptions of their dwellings ( ekphraseis ), I show that outlaws are fundamentally vital to the themes and development of the ancient novel.
Petersen, Lauren Hackworth, Questioning Roman “Freedman Art”: Ancient and Modern Constructions. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 2000.
This dissertation offers a critical study of art thought to have been commissioned by former slaves in ancient Roman society. Traditionally, the history of Roman art has focused almost exclusively on elite culture, the segment of society that controlled the power and wrote the literature that we depend upon so heavily to understand the past. However, former slaves, or freedmen, who made up a significant portion of Roman society, left behind an extensive artistic legacy; they commissioned monumental tombs, generous civic benefactions, and houses with elaborate painted and sculptural decoration. This dissertation specifically considers how freedmen represented themselves through artistic patronage by exploring how these first-generation Roman citizens were a more diverse, and more complex, group of individuals than modern scholarship has suggested.
The goal of this project is to dismantle ancient and modern stereotypes that have characterized former slaves in the history of Roman art. These stereotypes include claims that freedmen ostentatiously displayed their newly acquired freedom and wealth and that they simply and naively imitated elite culture, thus aspiring to an elite status. To avoid these stereotypes, this dissertation will not privilege the words of elite ancient authors in assessing how freedmen constructed their social and legal identities. Thus it will problematize scholars’ dependence on the “Cena Trimalchionis” of the Satyricon, where Petronius satirizes the social pretensions of the freedman Trimalchio. It will instead rely on the only records we have by freedmen themselves—their monuments—with careful consideration of the ways that these monuments could communicate the complex legal and social identities of freedmen, whose servile past marred their citizen-status, thus reinforcing their marginal position in society.
This project will manage the ample visual evidence by considering four principal case studies: (1) the tomb of the baker Eurysaces in Rome (c. 13 BCE); (2) the Isola Sacra necropolis, near Rome (second century); (3) the House of L. Caecilius Iucundus in Pompeii (first century); and (4) the rebuilding of the Temple of Isis, also in Pompeii (after 62 CE). Together, these case studies will explore how freedmen’s desires for self-representation may have been realized differently within funerary, domestic, and civic contexts, reflecting the diversity of former slaves themselves.
Poetker, Katrina M., “You are My Mother, My Brothers, and My Sisters”: A Literary-Anthropological Investigation of Family in the Gospel of Mark. Dissertation, Emory University, 2001.
A decidedly disruptive voice speaks throughout the Gospel of Mark in regard to family. The narrative manifests and enacts multiple transformations between and within families. This dissertation draws on various literary and anthropological tools to understand and contextualize these family dynamics.
In contrast to much New Testament study that accepts family as a non-problematic reality, this analysis recognizes that family is a disputed terrain, both in fact and in analysis. It also makes available to New Testament scholarship a sophisticated contemporary theory of cultural models from anthropologist Bradd Shore that rectifies a number of problems in prior social scientific approaches to the New Testament.
The dissertation sketches the dominant instituted model for family in the ancient world and reads two narrative texts from Mark’s cultural milieu, Chariton of Aphrodisas’ Callirhoe and Tobit. Most noteworthy for comparison with Mark, the relationship between religion and family is mutually reinforcing and stabilizing in both of these ancient novels. The inscribing of class and gender distinctions in the novels serves to reinforce, not only the distinctions themselves, but also the values and metaphorical entailments that are attributed to them.
The dissertation then reads the Markan text as a “native voice” whose distinctive perspective on family contributes to the overall grasp of family in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. The narrative analysis of Mark identifies a view of family that is deeply ambiguous. Jesus disrupts the natural kinship system. He forms a new family around himself, one whose membership is defined, not by blood and marriage, but by “doing the will of God.” Jesus functions as the head of the household, but not as father. The only father is God.
Two co-existing systems of power relations emerge in Jesus’ family. In relation to the father, God, a hierarchical schema of authority remains in place. The symbolic weight of God as the father of all members, however, seems to modify the relations of those members with each other. A system of mutual reciprocity and service characterizes Jesus’ ideal for relationships within this family, although they are not fully realized within the narrative.
Star, Christopher Peter, Action and Self-control: Apostrophe in Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius. Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2003.
This dissertation investigates apostrophe in three writers of the late Julio-Claudian period and argues that this figure of speech represents a key facet of contemporary ethical and psychological theory. Although traditionally seen as a mere decorative rhetorical figure, apostrophe, and in particular self-apostrophe, is developed in Seneca’s philosophical works into a means to strengthen the soul (animus). For Seneca the animus functions according to a specific grammar of command and hence the appropriate, imperatival language directed towards the self can be a means to shape the soul, defeat psychological wavering and initiate action. Thus throughout his philosophy Seneca exhorts his readers to address and order themselves; according to Seneca one can work towards the Stoic virtue of consistency of desire and action by means of repeated self-directed commands. Seneca’s tragedies treat this idea of self-apostrophe as Stoic therapy from the opposite perspective. The tragic characters take the model provided in Seneca’s philosophy and command themselves to commit crimes. The plays do not, however, negate Seneca’s philosophy, but rather offer a fuller picture of Seneca’s theory of human psychology and action. Lucan’s Civil War and Petronius’ Satyricon both provide further development and commentary on Seneca’s ideas. Lucan, who is known for his “overuse” of apostrophe, employs this figure in two related ways. His characters use self-apostrophe and command to create and shape their own self-image. Through his repeated apostrophic outbursts and reactions to the text, Lucan also creates the narrator of the epic into a uniquely individualized figure. Petronius parodies Seneca’s theories, using self-apostrophe as a means to control the body instead of the soul. His fragmentary text ends with the “hero” Encolpius offering his own reinterpretation and expansion of Senecan philosophy.
Wudel, Barbara Diane, Seductions of Self-control: Narrative Transformation in Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth. Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005.
The problem of the passions, called the principal concern of Greco-Roman moral philosophy, is also a chief preoccupation of ancient Jewish and Christian homiletic and paraenetic texts. Whereas such texts often treat desire and self-restraint, passion and renunciation, as opposed categories, other ancient novelistic texts complicate their relations. Three such stories—The Shepherd of Hermas, The Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—invite close narrative analysis of how their protagonists are divinely transformed through the complex interplay of ascetic restraint and erotic desire. In The Shepherd of Hermas , a male Christian householder, Hernias, narrates his own long, diffuse, and erratic movement through receiving revelation, engaging in self-scrutiny, and being urged toward enhanced manliness. Hermas is called the Self-Restrained, yet his transformation is initiated by an erotically-charged encounter with his former mistress emerging from her bath in the Tiber, and culminates in a night-long dalliance with beautiful personifications of virtue. The Acts of Paul and Thecla is a fast-paced tale paying minimal attention to the interiority of the protagonist, yet depicting both desire for restraint and the restraints of desire. Thecla is transformed from being a cloistered, pagan virgin poised to marry the leading man of her city to being an ascetic, itinerant Christian missionary and teacher. Her social and religious change is driven both by apparent infatuation with the apostle Paul and by her need actively to resist male sexual aggression. The third story, Joseph and Aseneth, tells in often extravagant figurative language how the beautiful but arrogant virgin, Aseneth, living in cloistered hatred of men and extreme devotion to countless Egyptian gods, came to be the God-venerating, virtuous, radiant wife of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph. Her impassioned desire for Joseph is inextricably interwoven with her turn toward the most high God. In each of the tales, the protagonist’s transformation is depicted in part through categories of gender—in particular, virginity and masculinity. Close narrative analysis shows that these three ancient stories offer intriguing, distinctive developments of the thematic of desire, restraint, and transformation.
[1] The summaries of the dissertations are from the data supplied by Pro Quest.
[2] M. P. Pattoni, “I Pastoralia di Longo e la contaminazione dei generi. Alcune proposte interpretative,” MD 53 (2004) 83–124; “Innamorarsi nella Lesbo di Longo: topoi romanzeschi, reminiscenze epiche e saffiche memorie,” Eikasmos 15 (2004) 273–303; “Dafni davanti alla porta chiusa (Longus II, 9): variazioni in tema di paraklausithyron,” Lexis 22 (2004) 341–368.
[3] Pattoni has written on Longus’ text: “Annotazioni testuali ai Pastoralia di Longo,” Aevum(ant) N. S. 2 (2002) 278–290; “In margine al testo di Longo,” Prometheus 31 (2005) 75–89.
[4] At 2.8.3 (p. 315) the translation introduces a negative which is not in the text (“se questo non è amore, e io non sono amato…”); at 2.23.1 (p. 337: “le tre Ninfe”) no numeral appears in the text. At p. 437 n. 13 stylistic store is set by the order of three words which does not correspond to the order found in the text; this is probably due to an oversight.
[5] At 2.9.1 (p. 317) the thing Daphnis and Chloe “had never done yet” is probably kissing at the very moment of meeting, rather than embracing each other; at 2.17.3 (p. 329) the youths from Methymna are chased from the bounds of the farm, rather than from the mountains; at 3.34.2 (p. 431) “ancora appesa al suo ramo” is hardly a correct translation. The last sentence of 4.29.3 (p. 483) is not translated.