Chariton and Latin Elegy II

Chapter 2 establishes Ovid’s Heroides, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto as central to a number of specific features of Chariton’s novel (especially the embedded letters). Section 2.2 focuses on the Heroides and the following epistolary motifs: the processes of composition and reception; the presence of tears; the recognition of handwriting; the role of memory and possessive adjectives; and the eroticization of the letter’s materiality. These contribute to the characterization of Chaereas and Dionysius as lamenting and abandoned heroines. Section 2.3 argues that Chariton has digested a number of motifs that characterize the exilic persona in Ovid’s Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, such as the role of finger rings and various psychosocial neuroses. As in Chapter 1, thematic proximities between Chariton and the elegiac corpus are supported by strikingly close points of verbal contact.

Introduction

This Introduction contextualizes the question of imperial Greek engagement with Latin literature within scholarship on the period often labelled as the ‘Second Sophistic’. It establishes the multiple parameters of ‘Greek biculturality’ in order to soften the traditional dogma according to which Greeks would not read Latin (and certainly not Latin poetry) (Section 0.1). It addresses questions of Greek–Roman bilingualism (0.2), the evidence of Latin papyri (especially Vergil) in the context of education (0.3), and gathers together the scattered literary evidence for Greek awareness of Latin poetry (0.4). It then focuses on two contexts, the festival circuit and libraries, in which Greeks may have engaged with Latin poetry (0.5); the archaeology and epigraphy of cities such as Ephesus and Aphrodisias (cities also associated with the novelists) are called upon in establishing this picture. The following section (0.6) sets up the methodology governing allusion and intertextuality, phenomena that are integral to the argument of the book. The final section (0.7) sounds a note of caution about any attempt to draw homogenizing conclusions about ‘Greeks of the imperial period’, a group of great chronological and geographical diversity.

Achilles Tatius and the Destruction of Bodies

Chapter 6 argues that Achilles is attracted to the gallery of bodily carnage on offer in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and Seneca’s Phaedra, as part of his apparent obsession with the vulnerability of human bodies and their susceptibility to wounding. It makes four distinct arguments. Section 6.2 makes the case that the episode of Charicles’ death in Achilles manifests strong indications of interaction with the accounts of the gruesome death of Hippolytus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Phaedra. Section 6.3 demonstrates that Achilles (or rather Clitophon) exhibits a recurrent interest in bodily dismemberment and reconstitution analogous to that in Ovid and Neronian poetry (especially Lucan). Section 6.4 argues that the decapitation of ‘Leucippe’ in Book 5 not only is modelled on the similar fate of the historical Pompeius Magnus but also combines the accounts of this event found in Lucan and Plutarch. These sections suggest that Achilles is alive to developments in Neronian literature that privilege the aesthetics of gore and bodily destruction, and which reflect the Roman imperial taste for violence more generally (perhaps energized by the institution of the amphitheatre). Section 6.5 elaborates a number of ways in which Achilles is attracted to the arresting style and verbal wit of Ovid, especially in connection with his flood narrative.

Longus and Vergil

Chapter 7 claims that Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe exhibits a sustained engagement with Vergil’s Eclogues and Aeneid, and, to a lesser extent, the Georgics. The introduction (Section 7.1) gathers the evidence for the novel as the composition of a Romanized member of the Mytilenean Greek elite, descended from Pompey’s freedman, Theophanes of Mytilene, and suggests that it was written at some point during the second half of the second century; this will become particularly relevant to Section 7.8 on Longus’ subversive engagement with the Aeneid (a poem celebrating the Julian—not Pompeian!—claim to autocratic rule). Sections 7.2–7.7 are concerned with setting out the features of Vergilian pastoral that recur in Longus, and which are absent from Theocritus (or at least different in degree and kind). These include: the fragility of pastoral autonomy (7.2); theft and vandalism (7.3, 7.3.1, the latter also positing a connection with Ovidian elegy); various elements of Philetas’ biography (7.4); dendronyms (7.5); Amaryllis and pastoral echo (7.6); and Tityros and pastoral succession (7.7).

Conclusion

The conclusion offers some final thoughts on the question pursued in this monograph, namely the Greek novelists’ engagement with Latin poetry, and what this means for how we model Graeco-Roman relations in the imperial period. It summarizes the findings of Chapters 1–7 and places them side by side in a way that clarifies how the different novelists approach the institution of Latin literature. At least for the three authors in question (Chariton, Achilles Tatius, Longus), the approach to Latin poetry is systematic rather than piecemeal. Allusion to Latin poetry is often playful, and occasionally ideological and potentially subversive (for example, Longus and the Aeneid). The conclusion also addresses the sociological problem of Greek imperial engagement with Latin literature: Greek literary men of the first two centuries CE were, it is suggested, habituated to practices that ensured the preservation of the Greek literary system as it stood. Failure to acknowledge the existence of a Latin poetic tradition in an overt manner served as one way of controlling the literary system.

Chariton and Vergil’s Aeneid

Chapter 3 develops a case for Chariton’s engagement with Vergil’s Aeneid. This is on a number of fronts, and argues that Chariton latches onto a cluster of phenomena in Vergil that fall under the rubric of ‘simulacral presences’. Section 3.2 explores dreams or dreamlike apparitions of dead or thought-to-be-dead spouses (Dionysius’ wife; Chaereas; Creusa; Sychaeus). Section 3.3 reads Callirhoe, and her relations with her previous and present husbands, Chaereas and Dionysius, in connection with Dido as a univira and the obligations owed to the ghost of her husband, Sychaeus. Sections 3.4 and 3.5 discuss the role of imitations (in connection with Chaereas’ funeral statue and the image on Callirhoe’s finger ring, and the miniature Troy, Buthrotum, in Aeneid 3), and other modes of reproducing the physical presence of absent loved ones (children; effigies). In connection with death, Section 3.6 revisits Chaereas’ attempted suicide by hanging (also addressed in Section 1.3) in relation to Dido’s suttee and subsequent appearance in the Underworld. Section 3.7 briefly illuminates King Artaxerxes as modelled on Queen Dido.

Achilles Tatius and Vergil’s Aeneid

Chapter 5 attends to Achilles Tatius’ engagement with Vergil’s Aeneid. The argument focuses on three main lines of enquiry (in all of which it is clear that Achilles is capitalizing on the erotic potential on offer in Vergil’s epic). Section 5.2 argues that Achilles models Melite’s plea for sex with Clitophon (articulated in two speeches) on Dido’s plea that Aeneas stay in Carthage (also articulated in two speeches), thus reducing Dido’s tragic hope for marital-political security to a wish for a single session of sex (Melite is successful in her wish). Section 5.3 takes as its subject the flushed cheeks of Leucippe in Book 1 (to which Clitophon responds erotically) and argues that it is modelled on the famous blush of Lavinia in Aeneid 12 (which fires Turnus with love). Section 5.4 ranges over a number of phraseological overlaps between Achilles and the Aeneid suggestive of a close engagement (especially in connection with the storm in Aeneid 1 and the character of Coroebus in Aeneid 2).

Chariton and Latin Elegy I

Chapter 1 establishes Latin love elegy (especially Propertius) as an important frame of reference for Chariton, and explores a number of characteristics (lexical and thematic) that all constitute an extreme or ‘totalizing’ attitude towards love on the part of the lover. Section 1.2 addresses the language of wholeness and exclusion (ὅλος‎ and μόνος‎; totus and solus) on display in Chariton and elegy, which is suggestive of a direct link. Section 1.3 approaches the conceptual analogy between love and death in Chariton and elegy, and argues that Chariton looks to the Latin poets for his characterization of Chaereas and Dionysius as obsessed with death and erotically motivated thoughts of suicide (especially in connection with the lover who imagines his own funeral). Section 1.4 similarly approaches the characters of Chaereas and Dionysius as susceptible to overwhelming jealousy, the quintessential ‘elegiac passion’; as well as a number of Propertian poems, this section also argues for an extended allusion to Ovid’s treatment of the Procris and Cephalus myth as narrated in Ars 3 and the Metamorphoses. Thematic proximities between Chariton and the Latin poets are supported by strikingly close points of verbal contact.

Achilles Tatius and Latin Elegy

Chapter 4 establishes the multiple connections between Achilles and Latin love elegy (especially Ovid), which he mobilizes as a principal weapon in his redefinition of the novelistic genre. This is especially in the first two books (during which time Clitophon attempts to seduce Leucippe), but also implicates the ‘antagonists’ Melite, Thersander, and Callisthenes. Section 4.2 demonstrates the importance of the contemptor amoris theme (as represented especially in Propertius 1.7 and 1.9). Sections 4.3, 4.3.1, and 4.4 establish the erotodidactic credentials of Clinias as they relate to elegy (4.4 focusing explicitly on the theme of consent), while Sections 4.5 and 4.6 do the same for Clitophon’s slave, Satyrus (with Section 4.6 focusing on the metaphor of servitium amoris). Section 4.7 homes in on the role of vision in the novel’s symposia and those in elegy (especially Heroides 16-17). Section 4.8 draws a connection between the way Achilles and Ovid aestheticize (and even eroticize) female distress (embodied in tears and fears). Section 4.9 focuses on the idea of love as a type of ‘theft’, and kisses as alienable possessions, in Achilles and elegy (Tibullus is prominent here). Section 4.10 is an extended reading of Clitophon’s refusal to have sex with Leucippe as modelled on Ovid’s description of a bout of impotence in Amores 3.7.