Perspectives of the Dominated the Ariadne Myth in Catullus 64 and Ars Amatoria

Perspectives of the Dominated: The Ariadne Myth in Catullus 64 and Ars Amatoria A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in Classical Studies (Latin). ________________________ ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................... v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Catullus 64 and the Casualties of Heroic Domination ........................................................ 5 Theseus the Hero............................................................................................................. 7 Ariadne the Foil and Casualty....................................................................................... 10 Forced Empathy ............................................................................................................ 19 Theseus and Ariadne as Artifice and Nature ................................................................ 23 Achilles the Farmer ....................................................................................................... 32 Polyxena the Hero ......................................................................................................... 37 Bad Passion all Around ................................................................................................. 39 Ars Amatoria and the Casualties of Imperial Domination ................................................ 42 Bacchus the Colonizer .................................................................................................. 43 Ariadne the Becoming Crier ......................................................................................... 48 Bacchus the Lover and Hero ......................................................................................... 50 Ariadne’s Repurposed Fear........................................................................................... 56 Ariadne Incorporated ..................................................................................................... 58 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 61 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 65 iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract This thesis examines the relationship between love, heroism, and dominance in Ancient Rome through a comparison of the use of the Ariadne myth in the ekphrasis of Catullus 64 and lines 525 – 564 of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria I. In the context of the poem’s violent farming and battle imagery, Catullus’ presentation of Ariadne’s indomitable romantic passion as simultaneously analogous to and incompatible with Theseus’s heroic drive illuminates the individual and societal sacrifices incurred in the pursuit of heroic valor. While Ovid’s presentation of female fear similarly presents the violence inherent to heroic drive, his presentation of Ariadne’s salvation as a rape uniquely highlights the non-consensual nature of Augustan imperial domination. By depicting the perspective of the dominated woman, both writers prompt a reconsideration of the perspectives of others who are sacrificed or suppressed in the Roman pursuit to conquer and control. v Introduction In his preface to an analysis of Catullus 64, Richard Jenkyns admits: “No one who writes on it today can pretend to be tilling virgin soil… My excuse is that there is still more to be said.”1 Concepts of love, heroism, and dominance in Catullus 64 as well as depictions of female agency and imperialism in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria have been well explored and several scholars have conducted fruitful analyses of Ovid as a reader of Catullus through a comparison of Catullus 64 with Heroides 10. This thesis adds a detailed comparison between the use of the Ariadne myth in Catullus 64 and Ars Amatoria to that body of research. Although the story of Ariadne makes up only about 100 lines of Ovid’s didactic love manual, the section is ripe with allusions to and critiques of Catullus’s presentation of love and heroism in 64, meriting a discrete analysis. In Poem 64, Catullus calls the virtue of heroes into question by presenting the emotional, physical, and natural casualties precipitated by a hero’s quest to maintain a cultivated society. Through a detailed analysis of Ariadne’s simultaneous role as indomitable lover and innocent casualty of Theseus’s quest in the ekphrasis of Catullus 64, we understand the heroic quest to dominate as violent and imperfect, but on some level, societally necessary. The parallels between the frame narrative and the ekphrasis, specifically the imagery of corrupted nature, broaden the individual sacrifices of heroism exposed in the ekphrasis to a revelation of the ways in which the heroic drive undermines the very land and society which it aims to protect. The contrasting motives of Ariadne 1 Richard J Jenkyns, Three Classical Poets--Sappho, Catullus, and Juvenal (Duckworth, 1982),85. and Polyxena, two superficially similar female characters, highlight the especially limited avenues for women to exert agency in a culture of male dominance. Ovid’s retelling of the story of Ariadne and Theseus in Ars Amatoria 1 examines the same culture of violent dominance, but where Catullus presented the incompatibility of the roles of lover and hero, Ovid reveals the consequences of a conflation of a heroic and romantic drive. By positing Bacchus’s salvation of Ariadne as a didactic example of successful romantic pursuit, Ovid invites the myth to be read as a revelation of Rome’s violent conceptions of romance. Specifically, the candid discussion of the positive effect of fear on a woman’s beauty in Ovid highlights the implicit fetishization of Ariadne’s desolation in Catullus. The application of language of violent dominance reminiscent of Catullus’s heroes, and of fear reminiscent of Ariadne’s abandonment, to the “salvation” in Ovid draws the virtue of the imperialist mindset of salvation through dominance into question. In order to conduct an examination of Ovid as a reader of Catullus, I will first present a reading of Catullus 64 referencing T. E. Kinsey’s “Irony and structure in Catullus 64” which elucidates Catullus’s subtle critiques of heroism and depictions of limited female agency, Michael C. J. Putnam’s “The Art of Catullus 64” which examines the poem in the context of Catullus’s life and poetry, John Warden’s “Catullus 64: Structure and Meaning," which focuses on manifestations of heroic dominance, and David Konstan’s Catullus’ Indictment of Rome; The meaning of Catullus 64 which offers a close analysis of how images of farming and war serve a critique of Roman ideology of domination. My reading of Catullus 64 is perhaps most indebted to Sharron Knopp’s analysis of the complex relationship between love and heroism in her article “Catullus 64 2 and the Conflict between Amores and Virtutes.” I stand by her conclusion that “both [Ariadne and Theseus] are flawed and both are admirable. Ariadne’s lack of pietas does not negate the value of her love any more than Theseus’s lack of personal passion negates his heroism.”2 Since scholarship which focuses on the Ariadne myth in Ovid is limited, I look to literature on Ars Amatoria in general as well as analysis of the language of the scene depicting the rape of the Sabine women which has many notable parallels to the language describing Ariadne. For an examination of the depiction of female fear I contrast Amy Richlin’s claim that Ovid sexualizes and oversimplifies Roman women with Julie Hemker’s argument in “Rape and the Founding of Rome” that Ovid critiques a fetishization of female fear by depicting it. 3 Additionally, C. M. Green’s “Terms of Venery” offers insight into the implications of hunting language in the power dynamics of Ars, while E. W. Leach’s “Georgic imagery in the Ars Amatoria” provides a helpful reading of the gendered implications of farming imagery. Because, as Ellen Greene writes, “Love is inherently bound up within the hierarchy and social inequalities of the power systems of Roman politics,”4 it will be impossible to write about love and heroism in Roman texts without by extension examining the ideology of Rome, a culture which praises violent dominance and domestication. Catullus 64, written in the mid 1st century BCE, is largely grounded within a mythical and literary canon and requires little historical context to be fruitfully 2 Sheron E. Knopp, “Catullus 64 and the Conflict between Amores and Virtutes” CPhil. 71 (1976), 208. Amy Richlin, Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 1992), 158-179. 4 Ellen Greene, The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love Poetry. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), XII. 3 3 analyzed. As Mary Boatwright explains, “Politics are a marginal concern” in Catullus’s poetry, “More important [to Catullus] was the development of Latin literature, particularly the refinement of its formerly unsophisticated language into one capable of philosophical, lyric, and other kinds of expression.”5 To reconcile Greene and Boatwright, I would argue that although Catullus addresses no specific contemporary political figure, his poetry is aware and critical of Roman norms and values. In contrast, Ovid wrote from the height of the Augustan era, publishing Ars 1 and 2 in 2 CE; by this point Augustus was expanding the size of the Roman empire at an unprecedented rate while simultaneously imposing regulations on the personal lives of Roman citizens through the 18 BCE Lex Julia.6 Most scholars on Ovid agree that his writing is inextricable from the political climate he was writing out of, therefore more historical background will be offered when analyzing Ars than Catullus 64.7 5 Mary T Boatwright, Romans: From Village to Empire (Oxford University Press, 2004), 294. Boatwright, 305-6. 7 Peter E. Knox, A companion to Ovid (Maiden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 6 4 Catullus 64 and the Casualties of Heroic Domination Catullus 64, the poet’s longest work, outlines the story of the meeting and subsequent marriage of Peleus and Thetis precipitated by the first voyage of the Argo. Embedded within the tale of their ostentatious wedding ceremony is an ekphrasis depicting Ariadne waking up on Naxos to find herself abandoned by the Athenian hero, Theseus (lines 50-265). The poem concludes with a song foretelling the birth of Achilles and his participation in the Trojan war and a final apostrophe from the poem’s speaker bemoaning the denigration of justice and piety in his own society. The complex and deeply referential nature of the poem makes it extremely dense. In order to conduct a meaningful examination, I will therefore focus my analysis of Catullus 64 on the critique of the violent repercussions of heroism presented in the ekphrasis of Ariadne and Theseus, examining the frame narrative only when it supplements or offers insight into an analysis of the Ariadne myth. An examination of the ekphrasis as a critique of heroism is invited by the ambiguity of the introduction to the tapestry which decorates the marriage couch of Peleus and Thetis. According to the speaker’s introduction, the tapestry depicting the abandoned Ariadne “reveals the virtue of heroes with wonderful craft-skill” (heroum mira virtutes indicat arte 50-1).8 A surface level reading of this introduction creates an expectation of an image showing the positive aspects of heroes. However, the multiple 8 All Latin texts in this thesis are drawn from: Kenny, E.J. (ed.), Ovidi Nasonis: Amores, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris. Edited by E.J., Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford University Press, 1995 and Mynors, Roger A. B. (ed.), C. Valerii Catulli: Carmina. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford University Press, 1958. All translations are my own. 5 meanings of the word indico, which Kinsey points out has a sense of proudly proclaiming something but can also be used to imply an indictment or betrayal,9 opens up the possibility for the tapestry to positively praise the virtue of heroes or to betray some sinister true nature of heroic valor. Catullus does not necessarily say heroes are virtuous, but simply that the fabric will provide evidence of what heroes have the capacity to do.10 The depiction of Ariadne’s story on a tapestry places the reader of the poem in a state of imagined visual perception which parallel’s Ariadne’s own act of perceiving herself to be abandoned, offering an alternate lens through which to judge a hero. Although Catullus could open with Theseus enacting a traditional heroic act, such as killing the Minotaur, he opens with this scene: Namque fluentisono prospectans litore Diae Thesea cedentem celeri cum classe tuetur indomitos in corde gerens Ariadna furors (52-4) For there looking out from the wave-sounding shore of Naxos Ariadne beholds Theseus as he sails away with swift fleet bearing untamable passion-rage in her heart Although the subject of the art is purportedly the virtue of heroes, the subject of the introductory sentence is Ariadne, the woman who our hero is in the process of sailing away from, and her negative emotions. Kinsey argues that the figure of Theseus “probably 9 T.E. Kinsey, "Irony and structure in Catullus 64" (Latomus 24, no. Fasc. 4, 1965), 916. The only other time that Catullus uses the word indico is in 61.218 to express the wish that a child may provide evidence (indico) of its mother’s chastity by its resemblance to her husband. (et pudicitiam suae matris indicet ore). This establishes indico as a word for providing evidence without an assumed positive or negative of value of said evidence. The word indicavit is used by Ovid in Amores in the context of providing evidence of the perpetration of violence, supporting a reading of the word in Catullus as having a sense of revelation of a negative act. The speaker in Amores 3.8 laments a woman’s preference for a horseman, who’s hands are still metaphorically stained with blood, to a poet who has killed no one. The speaker attempts to make the horseman appear less attractive by alluding to his violent past, suggesting that the horseman might provide evidence to her (indico) of how often he has plunged a sword into a man’s throat (forsitan et, quotiens hominem iugulaverit, ille indicet, 3.8.21-2). This indictment of heroic violence introduced by indico seems to be what Catullus intends as well. 10 6 would not be depicted at all since his ship was far out to sea,” making Ariadne the clear focal image of the tapestry.11 Ariadne’s action of “beholding” Theseus, and the intense fury feeling that the action elicits, suggests a mode of judging a hero through another’s perspective. From the start we are invited to evaluate Theseus, not by his achievement of a specific heroic act, but by the effects of his actions on others. Theseus the Hero Early in the ekphrasis Theseus is established as an archetypical hero driven to maintain societal order. Catullus introduces the problem facing Athenian Society as the interruption of proper social order, and only then reveals Theseus’s willingness to sacrifice for it. Due to a “cruel plague of old” (olim crudeli peste 76) the city of Athens must sacrifice “chosen youths and the honor of unwedded girls” (electos iuvenes simul et decus innuptarum, 77) to the Cretan Minotaur. The severity of this sacrifice of youths is established by the use of the word pestis which denotes a deadly destruction or illness, but is given even more weight by the fact that it is the chosen youths (lecti iuvenes, 4) in the first section of Catullus 64 who voyage on the Argo enabling the marriage of Peleus and Thetis (5-6). By employing the same term, electos iuvenes, in the description of those youths sacrificed to the Minotaur, especially in combination with the girls, who, as the description decus innuptarum implies, are honorably unmarried and assumedly virginal, there is an implication of sacrificed societal potential in the loss of future heroes and 11 Kinsey, 916. 7 wives. 12 Beard notes that in Roman culture “the main purpose of marriage…was the production of legitimate children, who automatically inherited Roman citizen status.”13 A contemporary reader would likely see the sacrificed children as a disruption of the proper cycle of societal progression. Theseus’s reaction to this disruption of Athenian life characterizes his heroic role as a protector of public order preferring a death of valor over longevity. Theseus volunteers to be sacrificed to the Minotaur instead of the children of Athens: Ipse suum Theseus pro caris corpus Athenis proicere optavit potius quam talia Cretam funera Cecropiae nec funera portarentur. (81-83) Theseus himself for his own dear Athens preferred to cast forth his own body than that such Athenian living dead might be born to Crete. Theseus’s act of sacrifice prioritizes the state over the individual. Athens is described as one might describe a beloved, carus. It is not the individual deaths that Theseus despises but the collective bearing-away of Athenians (Cretam… portarentur), the interruption of the function of the body of the state. His heroism is a function of his active choice (proicere optavit) to cast forth his individual body in order to reinstate the status quo of his homeland. Theseus’s self-sacrifice to benefit the state is complicated by the personal benefit of heroic valor he would potentially reap from success. The explicit description of Theseus’s options posits his heroism as somewhat self-centered: Cum saevum cupiens contra contendere monstrum 12 Celebrated Roman women where those who “remained faithful wives to one only husband throughout their lives” and fit within “‘female’ virtues of chastity and fidelity” which included virginity until marriage. Mary Beard. SPQR. (Edizioni Mondadori, 2016), 305. 13 Ibid., 303. 8 aut mortem appeteret Theseus aut praemia laudis (101-102) When desiring to contend face to face with the savage monster Theseus was seeking either death or the profit of praise By contending with an enemy of the state, Theseus sets himself up for “either death or the profit of praise” (aut mortem appeteret Theseus aut praemia laudis). Since death in heroic pursuit would be societally endorsed, Theseus is guaranteeing himself a heroic status. 14 By wagering his life for the possible gain of the “profit of praise” Theseus establishes the heroic valor as his highest and singular priority. Once Theseus is established as an archetypical hero whose self-sacrifice for the state serves an ultimate goal of obtaining personal valor, we can examine the components of his main heroic act, slaying the Minotaur. The metaphor describing Theseus’s domination of the Minotaur exhibits the necessity of domesticating chaotic nature to instate social order, but also imbues the hero with the same disorder that he aims to suppress. Catullus compares Theseus’s effect on the Minotaur to a storm uprooting a tree: nam velut in summo quatientem bracchia Tauroquer cum aut conigeram sudanti cortice pinum indomitus turbo contorquens flamine robur eruit (105-7) … sic domito saevum prostravit corpore Theseus nequiquam vanis iactantem cornua ventis (110-11) For just as on the top of Mount Taurus shaking its bough, an oak or cone bearing pine tree with sweating bark with an indomitable storm contorting the grain with its gale … Thus, did Theseus overthrow the savage with the body having been domesticated vainly throwing its horns to the vacant winds. 14 The concept of the heroic death as preferable to cowardly longevity is one of the most consistent tropes of Greek and Latin literature. See, for example, Hector’s proclamation in the Iliad “Better by far for me to stand up to Achilles, kill him, and come home alive or die at his hands in glory” than to “die of shame to face the men of Troy.” Fagles, Robert (trans.), Homer: The Iliad. Penguin Publishing Group, 1998, (22.125-131). 9 The description of the Minotaur as savage (saevum) and horned (cornua) establishes it as a violent and inhuman force. Theseus’s act of rendering the horns useless (vanis…ventis) and domesticating the formerly savage body (domito saevum) frames the act of slaying the Minotaur as an act of assimilation. In order to preserve the lawful order of the Athenian state the foreign force becomes placated at the hands of the hero. Warden describes Thesius’s show of “courage united with physical strength” as a classic form of “heroism that is uncomplicated and complete.”15 As Theseus returns from his classically heroic act of domination he is met with “great renown” (multa cum laude, 112), suggesting a completion of his transaction of violence for praise. The connotation of Theseus with an indomitable storm imbues his act with a violent chaos not so different from the savage Minotaur’s. A storm’s gale is just as uncontrolled and wild as the calm pine tree, if not more so, hinting that although Theseus attempts to reestablish social order, his actions must have a certain violent strength behind them to match and ultimately dominate exterior chaotic forces. Ariadne the Foil and Casualty When Theseus arrives in Crete to fight the Minotaur, he encounters Ariadne who immediately falls in love with him. At the inception of her love for Theseus, Ariadne begins to serve two roles in the text. In her role as the lover, she serves as a foil to Theseus illuminating the singular drive necessitated to pursue heroic domination and the 15 John Warden, "Catullus 64: Structure and Meaning," (The Classical Journal 93, no. 4, 1998), 409. 10 incompatibility of hero and lover. As the passionate lover, she parallels Theseus’s veracity and willingness to sacrifice to achieve success. Simultaneously, she serves the role of the helpless abandoned maiden. As an emblem of sacrifice by the hero, Ariadne personifies the emotional and physical casualties left in the wake of the hero’s quest. With the same singular intensity that Theseus is driven to domesticate for the good of the state, Ariadne is driven by intense love for the individual. The equally intense drives of the two characters is shown by the similar imagery used to describe the onset of Ariadne’s love and Theseus’s attack on the Minotaur. Before Theseus’s arrival, Ariadne is a “virgin princess, in whose chaste couch breathing sweet orders, / was still nourished in the soft embrace of her mother” (virgo regia, quam suavis expirans castus odores / lectulus in molli complexu matris alebat, 87-8). Like the pine tree sweating sap and firmly rooted in the nourishing soil of a mountain (sudanti cortice pinum, 106), Ariadne is surrounded by a sweetly sweating couch and the embrace of her mother. The similarly odorous settings and senses of swaddled youth describing both the young tree and virginal Ariadne present them as parallel portraits of previously undisturbed innocence. In both scenes there is a sharp turn at the entrance of Theseus. At the sight of Theseus, Ariadne, “harbored a flame in the whole body / utterly and all at once she blazed in the deepest marrow” (quam cuncto concepit corpore flammam / funditus atque imis exarsit tota medullis, 91-2). The use of a flame metaphor for Ariadne’s love captures the unstoppable and instant nature of her attraction to Theseus.16 The adjectives cuncto and tota describe the complete permeation of the feeling of love throughout her body. The intense shift from calm sweat to violent natural takeover closely 16 See Catullus 51for another instance of the flame signifying uncontrollable bodily attraction “tenuis sub artus / flamma demanat, sonitu suopte / tintinantaures” (51.9-11). 11 mirrors the violent entrance of the storm on the tree in the metaphor for the Minotaur (indomitus turbo contorquens flamine robur / eruit, 107-8). Like Theseus’s singular drive to domesticate the Minotaur, Ariadne’s love for Theseus is singular and all encompassing. The opposite effect of Theseus on Ariadne and on the Minotaur begins to reveal the central tension of the ekphrasis between the hero’s quest to dominate and confine, as shown through Theseus’s goal of domination (domito, 110), and the internal indomitability (indomitos, 107) brought on by love. Like the Minotaur, who “vainly throws his horns to the vacant winds” (nequiquam vanis iactantem cornua ventis, 111), Ariadne, having found herself abandoned on Naxos asks herself, “But why do I lament in vain to the ignorant air” (sed quid ego ignaris nequiquam conquerar auris, 164). Putnam aptly describes the use of the term nequiquam as a “pointed repetition... adding poignancy to the vain uselessness of Ariadne’s cries.”17 The echo of these appeals to unheeding nature emphasizes the complete hopelessness of both Ariadne and the Minotaur’s resistance to Theseus. For the Minotaur, resistance of Theseus’s physical domination is futile, he is “with the body having been dominated” (corpore domito, 110), while for Ariadne, it is the resistance to her love for Theseus that is impossible to fight, she is, as described at the beginning of the ekphrasis “bearing indomitable furies in her heart” (indomitos in corde gerens Ariadna furors, 54). The heroic drive to dominate is shown as incompatible with the indomitability brought on by love; yet the two drives are linked in their singular intensity. Ariadne’s role as a figurehead for the emotional sacrifice left in the wake of the hero is established by the parallel sorrow that she and Aegeus, Theseus’s father, suffer in 17 Michael C. J. Putnam “The Art of Catullus 64,” (Harv. stud. 1961), 178. 12 Theseus’s absence. I will first examine Aegeus’s grief on its own then compare it to Ariadne’s. In a flashback to Theseus’s departure his father is shown telling him: quandoquidem fortuna mea ac tua feruida virtus eripit inuito mihi te, cui languida nondum lumina sunt gnati cara saturata figura, non ego te gaudens laetanti pectore mittam (218-22) My son… it being that my fortune and your vehement virtue snatched you away from me unwilling, whose languid eyes have not been satisfied by the dear figure of my son, I do not send you off happily with rejoicing chest Theseus must leave his aging father behind to travel to Crete to slay the Minotaur. As occurred in the opening description of Ariadne’s gaze (tuetur 53), Theseus’s heroic act is shown through the eyes of one affected by it. In this case those eyes are languida meaning feeble or weak. Aegeus is unwilling (invito) and neither joyful (gaudens) nor happy (laetanti) to see his son go, emphasizing his sad perspective. The structure of Aegeus’s sentence places “feruida virtus” in the nominative, the virtue is enacting the snatching away (eriptit) of Theseus from his father. This statement simultaneously takes personal agency away from Theseus, as his heroic obligation is acting upon him (he is the object of the sentence) and offers a harsh indictment of virtue as feruidus a word denoting violent intensity. Knopp reads this description of Theseus’s driving virtue as “a hint that Theseus overdoes the heroic” but he holds that Aegeus is not criticizing Theseus because “fervida virtus is a positive ideal and it does not conflict with the pietas between father and son.”18 Theseus simultaneously upholds general family values but inflicts pain upon his individual father. Theseus’s heroism contains within it a violence, not just to the beast he must slay, but also to ones who love him. In order to slay the Minotaur, he must leave 18 Knopp, 209. 13 his aging father behind, disregarding his physical weakness and emotional distress. This intensity seems to fit with the connotation of Theseus with the violent storm as he kills the Minotaur (107). The deserted Ariadne is described with similar language to the deserted father, strengthening the tie between heroism and the simultaneously physical and emotional sacrifice of individuals. Ariadne is depicted “rousing faint sobs with wet face” (frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem, 132) as she realizes Theseus’s departure. The weakness of Ariadne’s sobs, but intense strength in the emotion portrayed through the pouring tears, closely mirrors the description of Aegeus’s eyes as languida. The emotional Ariadne, like Aegeus, is portrayed as a weak and miserable casualty of Theseus’s heroism, powerless in the face of Theseus’s singular drive. Ariadne makes her role as a sacrifice of heroism more explicit in the rhetorical questions she addresses to Theseus’s departing boat: Sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab aris, perfide, deserto liquisti in litore, Theseus nullane res potuit crudelis flectere mentis consilium (135-7) Thus, having born me from my fatherland, deceitful man, Theseus, you have abandoned me on the deserted shore, is nothing able to soften the resolution of your hard mind? Like Aegeus, who focuses on the snatching away of Theseus (eripit 219) by his virtue, Ariadne emphasizes Theseus’s leaving behind (liquisti) of her. Ariadne’s position on the deserted shore of Naxos is one of undeniable desolation and is intensified by the fact that Theseus has removed her from her fatherland. While Aegeus is left sad in his old age, Ariadne is both physically deserted and emotionally distraught. Ariadne’s attention to the 14 un-moveable nature (nullane res potuit… flectere) of Theseus’s resolve re-asserts the connotation between hero and fixed order, while her description of his mind as crudelis which denotes both cruelty but also a sense of hardness, reiterates the inherent violence in the “feruida virtus”(218) which Aegeus bemoans. In the face of Aegeus and Ariadne’s grief, the path of the hero appears fixed and unsympathetic. Catullus’s apparent indictment of the emotional sacrifices necessitated by the pursuit of heroism is complicated by the fact that Ariadne, in her role as lover, makes equally huge sacrifices to peruse her beloved. Although her sacrifices could simply be included to make her abandonment all the more pitiable, thus emphasizing the negative effects of the heroic drive, I would argue that they serve a more nuanced purpose. By showing Ariadne’s decision to renounce the safety and family structure of society, Catullus reveals the benefits of the cultivated society which she is losing. There is a sense of balance in Ariadne’s loss of societal protection in her pursuit of love with Theseus’s sacrifices of individual emotions to pursue societal protection. While Theseus chooses the pursuit of heroic valor over the wellbeing of any individual, himself included, Ariadne chooses to renounce social order in favor of one person, Theseus. After telling of Theseus’s drive to sacrifice for the state, Catullus interrupts the narrative of Theseus’s journey to Crete to say he wants to tell of more: … ut linquens genitoris filia vultum, ut consanguineae complexum ut denique matris quae misera in gnata deperdita lamentatast omnibus his Thesei dulcem praeoptarit amorem (116-120) How the daughter abandoning the face of her father, the embrace of her sister, then finally her mother who wretched, lamented lost in grief for the daughter, how she chose rather the sweet love of Theseus over all these things 15 The quick shift from Theseus to Ariadne’s perspective invites a comparison of the two. Kinsey points out that the use of the word praeopto shows that “Ariadne’s elopement is a matter of deliberate choice.”19 Like Theseus, who makes an active preference to fight the Minotaur and risk death for praise (aut mortem appeteret Theseus aut praemia laudis 102). Ariadne makes a value decision preferencing “sweet love” (dulcem…amorem, 120) over everything else. Although both Ariadne and Theseus make choices which hurt their parents, the two acts are positioned quite differently. Romantic love physically breaks the embrace (consanguineae) of the mother and sister which once nourished Ariadne (alebat 88). Putnam characterizes the sacrifice as a first glimpse of Ariadne’s “violent passion.”20 The delineation of the three separate family members, the strong sense of abandonment in linquens, and hopeless grief in misera accentuates Ariadne’s departure as one of a disruption of the family structure.21 In contrast, while Theseus’s father is upset that he does not get to spend old age with his son (cui languida nondum / lumina sunt gnati cara saturata figura, 220), he acknowledges that virtue necessitates Theseus’ exit. Theseus is still acting within socially sanctioned bounds. While Theseus must actively choose to make individual sacrifices to uphold the social order of Athens, Ariadne must choose to sacrifice the sanctity of the family to follow her love. Ariadne’s active decision to disrupt traditional social structure is made even clearer when she, yelling at Theseus’s departing boat, states her sacrifice: certe ego te in medio versantem turbine leti eripui, et potius germanum amittere crevi quam tibi fallaci supremo in tempore dessem (149-151) 19 Kinsey, 917. Through a comparison of this passage with Catullus 68, Putnam, argues that Ariadne’s sacrifice constitutes a “renouncement of steadfast lasting pietas of home, the love which exists between parents and children” for the “violence of passion which in its joy is fleeting.” (Putnam, 174) 21 Ibid., 916. 20 16 Certainly, I myself snatched you away, whirling in a turbine of death and determined to let my own brother go rather than to fail deceptive you in the greatest time of need Ariadne’s use of the verb cerno, the archaic form of decerno meaning to decide a contested issue, to describe the sacrifice of her brother characterizes the choice as the resolution of a conflict.22 Ariadne has made up her mind that failing Theseus would be worse than failing her brother. The choice of the word germanum, which denotes a sibling through shared parental lineage, to describe the Minotaur is pointed, considering that the Minotaur is Ariadne’s half-brother on her mother’s side.23 The invocation of the blood connection almost exaggerates Ariadne’s closeness to the beast, intentionally emphasizing the sacrifice of family caused by her passionate choice. She, in her own words, has let a family bonds go in favor of the lover.24 The disruption of family bonds in the pursuit of the beloved is extended to the breakdown of gender and class norms as well, continuing to position Ariadne as similarly driven yet opposite to Theseus. In the moment of her realization of abandonment Ariadne cares “neither for the condition of her head scarf nor the floating body-covering” (sed neque tum mitrae neque tum fluitantis amictus… curans, 67). Instead she is “fixed on Theseus with all her heart, with all her soul, with all her mind” (pendebat… toto ex te pectore / toto animo, tota… mente, 70). The repetition of the adjective totus and specific delineation of heart, soul, and mind emphasizes Ariadne’s complete emotional and bodily 22 Elmer Truesdell Merrill. "Commentary on Catullus." (Harvard University Press,1893), ad loc. Thomas B. L. Webster, "The myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus." (Greece & Rome 13, no. 1, 1966), 25. 24 Note additionally that her characterization of Theseus as “te in medio versantem turbine leti” and “fallaci supremo in tempore dessem” challenges his previous heroic image of easily defeating the Minotaur as a storm defeats a tree (indomitus turbo contorquens flamine robur eruit 107). While Theseus at first appeared to be the storm, Ariadne claims that Theseus was in fact whirling in a “turbine” (turbine) and it is only through the snatching away (eripui) by her, that Theseus is able to survive. 23 17 attention to Theseus. This focus on the beloved leaves no space for Ariadne to pay attention to her exterior coverings (mitrae ... amictus), which constitute traditional emblems of female modesty.25 Through her singular amatory drive she cannot examine the condition of anything other than her beloved. Ariadne, in her mindlessness in the face of a singular love-drive serves as a foil to Theseus who, in his complete focus on his heroic mission, may truly have been unmindful of the condition of Ariadne (immemor, 58). Ariadne’s offer of voluntary slavery serves as the ultimate example of the extent of sacrifice she is willing to endure for the pursuit of love. Ariadne’s ultimate goal in abandoning her family for Theseus is a lawful wedding to him. She states, “not this [desertion] did you designate wretched me to wish for / but joyful wedlock, but optimal wedding songs” (non haec miseram sperare iubebas, / sed conubia laeta, sed optatos hymenaeos, 141-2). Ideally, her love would be societally sanctioned through a wedding ceremony. However she concedes that even if “[their] marriage had not been in [Theseus’s] heart” (si tibi non cordi fuerant conubia nostra, 158) Theseus could have “led [her] into [his] house as slave / who would serve [him] with pleasant labor (attamen in vestras potuisti ducere sedes, / quae tibi iucundo famularer serva labore, 160-1). Putnam argues that the offer of slavery displays “in Ariadne incredible devotion and the utmost submission to a stronger force, the weakest feminine impulse yielding to the adamant masculine.”26 As a princess, serving as a slave would be a huge social plunge, a humiliation devoted usually to women of losing armies.27 Thus, her offer of slavery 25 Edward Bispham, "The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome," (2009), 229. Putnam, 177. 27 Beard notes that for a wealthy woman, as Ariadne the princess would certainly have been considered, “marriages were regularly arranged to cement alliance, whether political, social, or financial” (Beard, 26 18 captures a true lack of care for traditional social structure or at the very least a prioritization of the beloved over societal status. Her love for Theseus makes even the grueling labor of slavery sound pleasant (iucundo), positing a value for the individual Theseus over maintenance of social order. This prioritization is echoed in Aegeus’s description of Theseus as “gnate mihi longa iucundior unice vita” (215). The father loves the son more than the length of his own life, just as Ariadne loves Theseus more than her high social class. While heroism required individual bodily and emotional sacrifice on the part of individuals to uphold the order of the state, love requires a rejection of societal norms for an individual beloved. Forced Empathy The conclusion of the ekphrasis in Catullus 64 solidifies the simultaneous indictment and incompatibility of heroism and love. Theseus and Ariadne are depicted experiencing the ramifications of their own sacrifices, affirming the consequences on individuals incurred by the pursuit of heroism and loss of social structure incurred by the pursuit of passionate love. Although up to this point Ariadne has appeared passive and hopeless in the face of her love for Theseus (omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia letum, 187), a stark turn takes place after she makes this plea to the gods: sed quali solam Theseus me mente reliquit, tali mente, deae, funestet seque suosque (200-210) SPQR, 309). By giving up the chance for a future socially beneficial marrige, Ariadne goes against the societal expectation which she would have been subject to. For the humiliation of slavery for the high-class woman see Deianira’s speech on the misfortune of female captives in Woman of Trachis, specifically her heightened pity for the high-class woman’s reversal of fortune “Nobly born, I’d say… I feel more sorry for her than all the others.” Sophocles, Woman of Trachis, Trans. Raeburn (Penguin, 2008), 295-315. 19 But with such a mind as Theseus left me behind deserted with a like mind, goddess, let him pollute himself and his own with murder Ariadne, having up to this point served as an emotional martyr for Theseus’s heroic quest, now requests that Theseus be placed in her vantage point. The quili / tali structure creates a rationality for the plea. Theseus, having caused grief and pain, should have to feel the consequences of his violent heroism. The verb funesto has a sense of bringing dishonor upon or polluting. By suggesting that Theseus must be polluted on a personal and familial level, Ariadne suggests that she herself has been corrupted in this way. She thus indicts Theseus with causing dishonor, through his heroic mission to uphold honor. The fruition of the prayer forces Theseus to experience the pain he caused Ariadne, reaffirming the connotation of sacrifice and heroism. Although the reader has already witnessed the pain inflicted on others by his heroic quest, Theseus now finally understands the consequences of his actions. After hearing Ariadne’s prayer, Zeus makes Theseus forget to alert his father of his safe arrival back to Athens. His father commits suicide and Theseus must face the violence his singular focus has caused: sic funesta domus ingressus tecta paterna morte ferox Theseus, qualem Minoidi luctum obtulerat mente immemori, talem ipse recepit. (246-8) Thus, ferocious Theseus, as he entered the house covered in morning for the father’s death, received the same grief as he had brought to the daughter of Minos with forgetful mind The pairing of the father’s suicide with the description of Theseus as ferox, meaning brave but also untamable or fierce, ties the intensity of Theseus’s heroic drive to the ferocity of the savage beast he sought to reign in. By causing, then having to physically face, the death of his innocent father, Theseus personally experiences darker side of 20 heroic drive, grief (luctus), an aspect that has been clear to the reader for some time. Warden points out the harsh indictment of heroism that Aegeus’s death presents, “[Theseus’s] failure is unequivocal… He had been willing to sacrifice his life… Now as a result, it is his father who sacrifices his life.28 The heroic intent yields an opposite consequence. Putnam points out that “in no other version of the legend is the curse of Ariadne connected with the death of Aegeus.”29 Although he argues for this causal link as a way to “show the reactions of two people to one figure who betrays them both,” it also allows for a role reversal where Theseus is placed in a similar position of grief as the one he left Ariadne in. 30 The same way that Theseus must face his own violence, Ariadne’s story ends with the entry of a lover equal to her, forcing her to experience her own untamed love from the beloved’s perspective. After describing the grief of Theseus, Catullus moves quickly to the final figure on the tapestry: “On another part of the tapestry flowering Bacchus was flying to and fro… looking for you, Ariadne, having been enflamed with love for you.” (At parte ex alia florens volitabat Iacchus… te quaerens, Ariadna, tuoque incensus amore, 251-3). Bacchus, the god of untamed nature and wine, perfectly mirrors Ariadne’s untamed emotional state. Just as Ariadne harbors a flame in her body when she first sees Theseus (quam cuncto concepit corpore flammam, 91), Bacchus is enflamed with love for Ariadne (incensus). Ariadne, who early in the ekphrasis is described as looking out like the statue of a Bacchanal (ut effigies bacchantis prospicit, 61) is literally being looked for by Bacchus 28 Warden, 409. Putnam, 179. 30 Ibid. 29 21 himself. Although we do not see the meeting of the two, there is an implication that Ariadne will be faced with the level of complete love that she had for Theseus. As Knopp writes, “While Theseus flees, unable to return her love… Bacchus’s arrival marks where passion will meet passion.”31 Ariadne’s intense love will be matched, and she will have to recon with the societal protection she has given up. Although most readers would likely view Bacchus’s entry as a salvation, for as the myth goes Bacchus will marry Ariadne and make her immortal,32 there is a simultaneous sense of danger and mystery in the entry of the bacchants. Some of the bacchants are depicted throwing the body parts of a mangled young cow (pars e divolso iactabant membra iuvenco, 257) and “some celebrate the obscure mysteries enclosed in sacred boxes33/ mysteries which the profane desire to hear in vain” (pars obscura cavis celebrabant orgia cistis / orgia, quae frustra cupiunt audire profane, 259-60). The word divello denotes a violent tearing to pieces, calling to mind a wild animal eating its prey. The use of this word to describe the bacchants ripping up an innocent young animal shows their wildness and capacity for violence. The bacchants are set apart from traditional lawful society by their possession of dark religious mysteries which most people have no access to. The chaotic frenzy of Dionysiac mysteries would have been well known by contemporaries of Catullus. Participation in the mysteries allowed women to briefly stray from societal constraints and dance freely in the hills in drunken frenzies.34 By placing 31 Knopp, 209. Webster, 26. 33 “The cista was either a cylindrical basket or a box, in which the secret emblems (orgia) of the worship of Bacchus, or of Ceres, were concealed from uninitiated eyes when carried in procession (celebrabant)” Merrill, ad loc. 34 Martin Persson Nilsson, "The Dionysiac mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman age: (Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen: 8. 1957), 16-18. 32 22 these figures opposite Ariadne, we see her similarity to them and thus distance from structured Greek life. Yet, at the same time, Ariadne’s vulnerability in being alone on the island ties her to the helpless young cow, reminding us of her defenselessness. The last line of the ekphrasis accentuates Ariadne’s loss of societal protection in her pursuit of passion: “And the foreign flute was shrilly emitting with horrible song” (barbaraque horribili stridebat tibia cantu, 264). The song accompanying Bacchus’s entry is not pleasant or happy, but instead is shrill (stridebtat) and horrible (horribili). The word barbara emphasizes the foreignness of Bacchus and thus the unknown nature and unpredictability of his desire. The fear that this shrill foreignness foreshadows, seems to turn Ariadne’s own sacrifice of traditional social order back onto herself, as she will now be faced with a completely new and foreign world of intense love and divinity. Just as Theseus’s heroism is shown as imperfect as it sacrifices the emotions of those around him, Ariadne’s abandonment of social expectations is shown as dangerous as she now lacks protection against outside foreign force. Theseus and Ariadne as Artifice and Nature While a literal reading of the ekphrasis illuminates the incompatibility of lover and hero and indicts the hero with perpetrating violence against individuals, a reading of the myth in the context of the frame story’s setting on the Argo charges human artifice with a violation of nature, enabling a reading of Theseus as a metaphor for heroic domination as a large-scale corrupting force. Like the ekphrasis which emphasized a judgement of Theseus from Ariadne’s vantage point, the entry of the Argo is framed through the eyes of the Nereids who are seeing a boat for the first time ever (monstrum 23 Nereides admirantes 15). By calling the boat monstrum, Catullus shows that from the Nereids’ perspective the boat is a foreign object for which they have no language. The word monstrum often describes an evil omen, thus the use of it to characterize the first boat suggests that its entry into the water will have negative consequences. In his chapter on seafaring and civilization in Catullus 64, Konstan establishes that “the Argo was associated with the inception of seafaring” and would thus have been seen by many as “a transgression of natural limits, motivated primarily by greed.”35 As the invention of the boat extended the sphere of man, it enabled new violent conquests and disrupted a previously agriculturally based social order. By unprecedentedly setting the meeting Peleus and Thetis on the Argo, Catullus places the ramifications of human artifice and ambition at the center of the poem. The poem begins with pine trees (pinum, 1) built for the first time into “that ship which swum through the previously untried Amphitrian” (illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten 11). Konstan argues that this language has sexual undertones. The word imbuo has a sense of breaking in and sometimes even of sexual initiation. The use of this word for the entry of the ship into the water, in combination with Konstan’s translation of “incanuit unda” as growing hot, suggests the entry of a ship into water as a human intrusion into nature, a sort of nature’s virginity loss.36 Konstan suggests that the use of the word remigium in line 13, which simultaneously means oars and the rowers themselves creates “an identification between ship and crew”37 which mirrors the Nereids conflation with the sea as implied by their description as watery (aequoraea, 15).”38 The ship’s intrusion into 35 David Konstan, Catullus' indictment of Rome: the meaning of Catullus 64 (Adolf M. Hakkert, 1977), 13. Ibid.,16. 37 Ibid.,14. 38 Ibid.,15. 36 24 previously calm water begins a motif of corrupted innocence by the hero, because the shifting of trees into a boat enables humans to fulfil a desire for plunder39 (optantes Colchis avertere pellem, 5). Based on a reading of the frame narrative as a suggestion of shipbuilding as a corruption of nature, the story of Theseus and Ariadne can be re-examined as a metaphor for the negative effects of the extension of human artifice associated with the heroic quest. The first line of the ekphrases establishes the contrast between Ariadne and Theseus as similar to the one between the Argonauts and Nereids: Namque fluentisono prospectans litore Diae, Thesea cedentem celeri cum classe tuetur indomitos in corde gerens Ariadna furors (52-4) The word fluentisono combines an image of physical waves with the resonance of their sounds, painting Naxos as physically and sonically chaotic. Putnam notes Catullus’s apparent invention of the word fluentisono and argues that the “ebb and flow, as part of the wave imagery, also become internal [to Ariadne].”40 The loud, continuous movement of this external nature scene closely mirrors Ariadne’s interior where she bears indomitable passion (indomitos in corde gerens Ariadna furor). A sense of wild intensity ties Ariadne to the uncontrolled nature of the island. Ariadne flows freely like the watery Nereids (aequoreae, 15) and flowing island. In contrast Theseus is swift (celeri) and sails directly away (cedentem) from the chaos of Ariadne and the island. His exit by fleet, classis, an organized group of men and boats, makes him a symbol of artifice and ties him to the Argonauts, who are one with their oars (remigium, 13). 39 40 Merrill translates avertere as “to win, especially used for plunder” (Merrill, ad loc.). Putnam, 171-2. 25 These contrasting categories become more pronounced a few lines later when Ariadne fully grasps that she has been deserted on the island: desertam in sola miseram se cernat harena. immemor at iuvenis fugiens pellit vada remis, irrita ventosae linquens promissa procellae. (57-9) She discerns her wretched self to be deserted on the solitary sand while the un-remembering fleeing youth strikes the depths with oars leaving behind empty promises to the gusty storm Ariadne is all alone (desertam), as the sand is solitary (sola). Although the gusty storm (ventosae procellae, 59) literally defines the violence of the weather, one can’t help but read it as a personification of Ariadne as well, who a couple lines later “looks out and undulates with waves of care” (prospicit et magnis curarum fluctuat undis, 62). As Ariadne becomes one with billowing the wind and waves, Theseus is an extension of his boat. He does not simply row away but is described using the oars to pello, a word associated with striking and driving something away, the vada, the depths of a body of water. The wooden paddle entering then expelling the innards of the ocean creates a contrast between rigid human artifice and fluid nature. The paddle’s intense impact on the depths of the water, then, presents the tension between the emotionally flowing Ariadne and Theseus on his set course. Like the Argo’s first entry into untried water, Theseus’s entry then expulsion of the water mirrors his physical sexual entry into the previously virginal Ariadne and then expulsion of the emotions this engenders through his later abandonment. It also expands a reading of Theseus’s effect on Ariadne to an examination of human’s effect on nature. The boat allows for Theseus to break his promises (ita nave levi nitens ac lenibus auris, 84) as the Argo enabled plunder (optantes Colchis avertere pellem, 5). 26 A reading of the personal interactions in the ekphrasis as symbols for a greater tension between human domination and untamed nature is perhaps clearest in the Minotaur slaying scene. By comparing the Minotaur specifically to a pine tree (pinum, 106), Catullus calls back to the opening line of the poem where pine trees (pinum, 1) are built into the first ship. Like the previously untried water (rudem, 11) the tree which the Minotaur is compared to appears to have had a healthy natural life before man’s entry as it was sweating (sudanti, 105) and bearing cones, images of slow and peaceful growth. However, at the entry of the indomitable storm the pine wood becomes contorted (indomitus… contorquens, 107). The reshaping of pine wood specifically is the definition of boat building, thus the image of Theseus contorting the Minotaur becomes a metaphor for man’s disruption of natural growth and the imposition of human drive to plunder. While Theseus becomes a personification of artifice and human domination of natural forces. Ariadne, through her internal and external indomitability on Naxos, serves as a symbol of nature returned to an untamed state. As Ariadne first realizes she has been left by Theseus, her body is stationary while her emotions surge: Quem procul ex alga maestis Minois ocellis saxea ut effigies bacchantis prospicit prospicit et magnis curarum fluctuat undis (60-62) The daughter of Minos looks forth towards [Theseus] from the algae with sorrowful eyes like a stone bacchanal, she looks out and undulates with huge waves of care. A bacchanal is a worshipper of Dionisius known to dance about in a chaotic frenzy, as shown in the entry of Bacchus at the end of the ekphrasis. Thus, the metaphor of the stone bacchanal (effigies bacchantis), highlights the tension between Ariadne’s physical confinement on the island and the undulating waves of emotion (magnis curarum fluctuat 27 undis) she is feeling inside. Her position amidst the algae, which assumedly would be flowing in the literal waves of the island, places her as an extension of the flowing natural landscape. As the reality of her abandonment sets in, Ariadne’s exterior begins to transform into an uncultivated state, mirroring the internal indomitability instated at the inception of her love. In order to understand the metaphorical significance of Ariadne’s physical shift, we must first look at the depictions of abandoned farmland in the frame story. On the day of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, mortals flock the Palace in Thessaly. Catullus devotes 7 lines to the effect of their absence: deseritur Scyros, linquunt Phthiotica Tempe, Crannonisque domos ac moenia Larisaea, rura colit nemo, mollescunt colla iuuencis, non humilis curuis purgatur uinea rastris, non glebam prono conuellit uomere taurus, non falx attenuat frondatorum arboris umbram, squalida desertis rubigo infertur aratris. (35-42) Scyros is deserted, they abandon the Phthiotic Temple and the houses of Cannon and walls of Larissa no one cultivates the land, the necks of the bulls become soft no longer are the low vines are pruned by curved hoe no longer does the bull heave up the dirt with downward ploughshare no longer does the pruners hook thin the shade of the trees squalid rust is brought on the deserted ploughs The use of both the verbs desero (to desert, give up, or abandon) and linquo (to leave behind, depart from, or resign) together in the first line create a scene of almost exaggerated neglect of the land. The consequences of the desertion appear unified in the decline of human imposed order. The fact that no one is cultivating (colit) the land has a negative connotation since it is introduced as an act of desertion. However, the description of nature no longer refined by man’s artifice is not one of poverty but instead 28 is a scene of implied growth. If the vines are not pruned (non… purgatur) and the shade of the trees is not thinned (non...attenuat) the implication is that the plants will become thick and wild as before human imposition. Similarly, the softening of the bull’s neck signifies the loss of the yoke that would normally be around it for the purpose of “heaving up the dirt by plowshare.” While the neglected bull becomes soft, a movement of expansion and release, the plow, man’s tool for cultivation, actively disintegrates as shown by the takeover of dirty rust (squalida rubigo). Along with this loss of cultivated agriculture comes an abandonment of both the home and religious worship sites (linquunt Phthiotica Tempe / Crannonisque domos). These locations are at the center of the Greek and Roman conceptions of civilized society. 41 Thus, the abandonment of them constitutes an abandonment of societal structure. The desertion and loss of cultivation of the farmland is contrasted by the descriptions of the opulent interior of the wedding palace: ipsius at sedes, quacumque opulenta recessit regia, fulgenti splendent auro atque argento. (43-4) But the abode of Peleus himself, wherever the opulent castle receded, gleams with flashing golf and silver When faced with the clean shine (splendent) of the precious metals within the castle, one can’t help but remember the squalid rust (squalida rubia) on the metal plowshare signifying a sacrifice to attend the wedding. Knopp views the contrast between the farm and castle as establishing the society of Peleus and Thetis as one which “abandons duty to passion,”42 Konstan agrees stating that the “splendor of Peleus’s palace may… be a symbol of corruption rather than greatness” since it reveals a desertion of the stoic ideals 41 42 Beard, SPQR, 313. Knopp, 211. 29 of simplicity and hard work.43 I would argue that the act of farming is conflated with the opulence of the palace since both the act of farming and decorating are examples of human imposition of order on nature, and that the abandonment of the fields is meant to show the ambiguous consequences of a loss of human domestication. The strikingly parallel language describing the loss of Ariadne’s clothing and the loss of cultivation of the farmland likens her to a crop. Farming and cultivating a woman are united by the usual imposition of a dominating force. Like the farmland Ariadne has been dramatically deserted (desertam, 57) and left behind (linquens, 59) and, like the farmland, her exterior transforms: non flavo retinens subtilem vertice mitram, non contecta levi velatum pectus amictu, non tereti strophio lactentis vincta papillas, omnia quae toto delapsa e corpore passim ipsius ante pedes fluctus salis alludebant. (63-7) [Ariadne is] no longer retaining the subtle headscarf on blond head, no longer is her chest shielded by the light covering, no longer are her milk-mature44 breasts bound by smooth girdle, all of these things which at once having fallen from the whole body the salty waves themselves were playing with before her feet The structure of three lines beginning with a negation of previous cultivation clearly ties Ariadne’s loss of clothing to the abandoned farmland. In both scenes we are offered a list of tools that are no longer in use. But, unlike the farming equipment which are tools of land cultivation, Ariadne’s lost equipment are those things which define a cultivated 43 Konstan, 33. Merrill notes that lactentis defines not just the milky color of the breasts but their capacity to produce milk (Merrill, ad loc). This description thus establishes Ariadne as at a child-bearing age, pointing out the role she would be serving in society if she had not abandoned it for Theseus. 44 30 woman.45 The description of the headscarf as subtilem, meaning slender or smooth, connects it with human artistry or refinement. Similarly, the smooth, or perhaps shining, cover (levi), would normally serve as a vail for a modest woman and the girdle would hide the breasts. Thus, as these tools of constraint literally fall away from her (delapsa e corpore), so too do the societal constraints attached to a cultivated woman. Ariadne is no longer the proper Minoan Princess, shielded and bound, but is returned to a wilder, uncultivated state which matches her, up to this point, internal chaos (furores indomitus, 54. Curarum fluctuat undis, 62). The loss of the strophio to reveal milk-mature breasts, calls back to the loss of the plowshare which allows the bull’s neck to become soft and exposed. The fact that these losses of cultivation are associated with Theseus’s abandonment complicates Theseus’s intended maintenance of social order as his treatment of Ariadne actually returns her to a chaotic natural state. This mirrors the way the wedding, while supporting the socially sanctioned union of Peleus and Thetis, 46 causes a disruption of the order of the farmland. There is an inherent sacrifice in the quest for human domestication. The very concept of the negativity of the loss of cultivation is challenged by the word choice of the two scenes. As Ariadne sheds her clothes, they scatter outward indiscriminately (passim). Ariadne’s body being un-bound and her clothing spreading out mirrors the implied growth of the deserted farms. Just as the plants are left to grow 45 “Dress was a powerful signifier of social statuses... and economic class in roman society especially… social identities might be constructed by means of garment type, color, and the way a garment was worn… footwear and hairstyles would also contribute to the overall dress effect.” Edward Bispham, "The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome" (2009), 229. 46 The gods and family of both parties approve of the wedding. It is Theseus “to whom Jupiter himself / Himself, father of the gods, resigned his own passion” (Peleu, Cui Juppiter ipse / ipse suos diuum genitor concessit amores, 26-7) and to whom “Tethys conceded to wed her own granddaughter and Oceanus who circles the whole of the world with ocean. (suam Tethys concessit ducere neptem, Oceanusque, mari totum qui amplictitur orbem, 29-30). 31 thicker while the plough is covered in rust, Ariadne’s body physically expands in her abandonment. The fact that the water plays with (alludebant) the tools of feminine cultivation, a verb that seems out of place in this scene of desperation, implies a supremacy of nature and by extension Ariadne’s strong emotion over the human structures attempting to keep them in place. Both the farming and clothing scenes, although presented as the casualties of human abandonment, display moments of freedom and expansion drawing into question the benefit of human imposed order. Achilles the Farmer The ambiguous virtue of the sacrifice implicit in heroism and the extension of this ambiguity to man’s interaction with the natural world present in the ekphrasis is mirrored in the song of Achilles which takes place at the end of the wedding. The song takes a critique of heroism even farther than the ekphrasis by focusing on deaths in war, imbuing the earlier nature imagery with violent undertones as farming becomes a metaphor for war’s effects on youths. I stand by Warden’s argument that a comparative reading of Theseus and Achilles is central to understanding Catullus 64 which at its core examines heroism and the relationship between the two heroes in the text.47 Much like the tapestry of Ariadne and Theseus which promises to “reveal the virtue of heroes with wonderful craftskill” (heroum mira virtutes indicat arte, 50-1) but actually shows the casualties of heroism and calls the benefit of established social order into question, the Pacrae’s song of Achilles is said to be “foretelling the happiness of Peleus” (praefantes felicia Pelei, 382), but 47 Warden, 408. 32 exclusively focuses on the gruesome casualties his son leaves behind during war. The song strengthens the argument of the tapestry through a number of textual parallels between the sacrifices made by Achilles and Theseus. Early in the wedding song Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, is shown as a brave hero paralleling many of the traits of Theseus. He is introduced as “Achilles having no part in fear” (expers terroris Achilles, 335) and posited as the best hero since, “None of the [other] heroes will be able to match him in war” (non illi quisquam bello se conferet heros, 133). The comparison of Achilles’s fighting to that of other heroes shows an ability to perpetrate violence as a key judgement of the level of a man’s heroism. Achilles’s complete lack of fear characterizes a hero’s ability to do whatever is necessary to complete his conquest. Achilles’s extraordinary ability to perpetrate violence without reserve connects him with the vehement Theseus who fearlessly seeks to go hand to hand with the Minotaur (feruida virtus, 218; cum saevum cupiens contra contendere monstrum, 101). The crop metaphor describing the way Achilles kills further links Achilles to Theseus and strengthens a critique of the virtue of heroism and human’s use of nature: namque velut densas praecerpens messor aristas sole sub ardenti flaventia demetit arva Troiugenum infesto prosternet corpora ferro. (353-5) And just as the reaper diminishing early the thick ears of corn under the burning sun mows down the blond field, [Achilles] will overthrow the bodies of Troy’s sons with hostile steel Achilles here is likened to a farmer who violently cultivates nature. The crops, at first thick and unorganized (densas) are mown down (demetit), just as the army of Troy will be overcome by Achilles. Warden argues that this act of domination parallels Theseus’s domestication of the Minotaur as both use the word prosterno to describe murder 33 (prostravit corpere, 110; prosternet corpora, 355).48 The two killing scenes are further linked by the use of plant metaphors, since the mown down crops clearly call back to the Minotaur who was likened to a mangled tree. There is also a similar context in both scenes where the hero perpetrates violence for the good of protecting his own society, although for Theseus the protection is against individually sacrificed youths while Achilles wages war to secure a homeland. On a second level, the crop metaphor ties back to the nature imagery associated with Ariadne. The detail of the blond corn (flaventia) parallels the blond hair which Ariadne lets free from the headdress in her intense emotion over Theseus’s departure (non flavo retinens subtilem vertice mitra, 63). By invoking the image of Ariadne’s loss of cultivated binding which already paralleled an even earlier image of the neglected farmland (non falx attenuat frondatorum arboris umbram, 41) the young men going to war are connoted with Ariadne’s abandonment on Naxos by Theseus. We are invited to question whether these youths, like the corn or Ariadne, have been robbed of potential by the hero - cut down before their due time. As Warden points out, this subtle indictment of the hero takes on a particular weight in the face of the purpose of Theseus’s heroic quest, which was to stop the cruel plague of the sacrifice of Athenian youths to the Minotaur (78).49 A sense of dark irony emerges here in the necessary violence against youths to protect youths. By connecting the war hero with the farmer who constrains the natural growth of plants, Catullus indicts the hero with stifling the natural urges and life cycle of individuals, both emotionally as shown by Ariadne’s abandonment and physically as shown by the death of Aegeus and the Trojan youths. 48 49 Warden, 410 Ibid. 34 The ekphrasis is also closely paralleled in the description of the funerals of the victims of Achilles, tying the emotion sacrifice necessitated by heroism to the physical sacrifices made in war: Illius egregias virtutes claraque facta saepe fatebuntur gnatorum in funere matre cum incultum cano solvent a vertice crinem putridaque infirmis variabunt pectora palmis (348-51) The surpassing virtues of that [Achilles] and illustrious deeds often will be confessed in the funerals by mothers for sons when they will unbind uncultivated hair from aged heads and variate the withered chests with feeble hands Like the tapestry which promises to “indicate the virtue of heroes,” (heroum mira virtutes indica, 51), but focuses heavily on the emotional toll left in their wake, the mothers at the funerals confess the effects the virtue and illustrious acts of one hero but tell of only unbridled grief. The very fact that mothers must mourn their own sons, establishes a breakdown of the family structure where children carry on the legacy of their parents.50 The image of the mothers’ grief distills Aegeus and Ariadne’s expressions of abandonment into one image. The aged (cano) head, withered (putrida) chest and feeble hands (infirmis) of the mothers emphasize their age, tying them to the feeble eyes (languid lumina) of Aegeus, who watches his son leave before he has been satisfied with his image (221) and dirties his own hair in mourning (224). Meanwhile, the loosening of the women’s hair, which returns it to a wild (incultum) state, and the bruising of the chest, both externalizations of internal emotions, closely mirror the falling away of Ariadne’s clothing and head scarf as she finds herself abandoned on the beach (63). The larger scale sacrifice of sending youths into warfare is thus connotated with the sacrifice 50 Beard, SPQR, 304. 35 of individual emotions incurred on Theseus’s heroic expedition. The unification of these differing levels of violent consequence under similar images of farming reveals the cohesive dominance driving many levels of Roman life. Heroic domination yet again sets emotional chaos in motion and causes literal deaths, directly undermining its mission of maintaining order. The connection between heroism and stifled nature is continued in the scenes of war. In addition to the camps “which will flow with Teucrian blood” (cum Phrygii Teucro manabunt sanguine campi, 133), “[Achilles] will make the deep streams [of the river Helens] warm with intermingled blood, narrowing its channels with heaps of corpses having been slain” (cuius iter caesis angustans corporum acervis / alta tepefaciet permixta flumina caede, 359-60). The transformation of the streams from deep (alta) to narrow (angustans) posits war as physically restraining nature. The water dyed red and the heaps of dead bodies create a gruesome combination of corrupted youth and nature corrupted by dead bodies. The earth’s water which is described in the early days as embracing (amplectitur, 30) the globe, in what Jenkyns characterized as a “massive paternal hug,”51 becomes the setting for what she calls an “extravagantly gruesome”52 story of pollution. This language of heroic action as clogging or corrupting nature contrasts against the free growth of the farm abandoned by the farmer and the free expression of Ariadne after rejecting the societal bounds for her beloved. The heroic quest to sublimate forces of chaos and the greater quest of the farmer to impose order on nature both lead to the ambiguously positive stifling of human emotion and plant growth, but also leave chaos in their wake. 51 52 Richard Jenkyns, Three Classical Poets--Sappho, Catullus, and Juvenal. (Duckworth, 1982), 109. Ibid., 143. 36 Polyxena the Hero The image of Polyxena in the final stanza of the song of Achilles forefronts the limits of female agency within a society which prioritizes heroic domination. The wedding song introduces Polyxena through her sacrifice as virgin bride to the dead Achilles: alta Polyxenia madefient caede sepulcra, quae, velut ancipiti succumbens victima ferro, proiciet truncum submisso poplite corpus. (368-70) The high alter will be soaked by the slaughter of Polyxena who just as a beast of sacrifice succumbing under a two headed sword will yield the mangled body with the knee having been submitted. Polyxena is likened to a literal beast of sacrifice (victima). The depiction of her slaughter (caede) and blood (sepulcra), paint a gory image, likening her experience to the warfare experienced by the youths on the battlefield (prosternet corpora, 355). The reference to Polyxena is often read by scholars as a corruption of pure feminine by the heroic male. Putnam aptly describes the sacrifice as “triumph of grotesqueness over gentleness” but cites it as an example of heroism as a corruptor of purity: “The purity of the virgin is only emphasized when put to contrast with the overwhelming masculine rage of Achilles.”53 Konstan ties the concept of corrupted purity to Ariadne arguing that the inclusion of Polyxena as a “tribute to Achilles’s virtue” ties her to Ariadne who’s desertion was a “fault of Theseus’s virtue.” He concludes that military virtue is shown to result in “the cold destruction of a defenseless and innocent woman.”54 Although the sacrifice is undoubtedly grotesque, I would argue that simplifying Ariadne and Polyxena’s roles in 53 54 Putnam, 194. Konstan, 49. 37 Catullus 64 to innocent virginal sacrifices misses a crucial examination within the poem of limited yet still varied scope of options for women within a society of domination. The specific language of Polyxena’s yielding calls back to her depiction in Euripides’s Hecuba painting her as Theseus-like hero and contrasting her directly against Ariadne. In the song of Achilles, Polyxena is shown yielding (proiciet) her body and submitting (submisso) the knee. Although she is going to die, she actively submits her own body, imbuing her sacrifice with a sense of personal agency. This reading is upheld by Warden who notes that by putting forth her body (proiceit… corpus, 370) Polyxena actually parallels Theseus’s offer “to sacrifice his life (corpus proicere) for his fellow citizens.”55 Although Warden concludes that this parallel serves to “juxtapose the hapless Polyxena, victim, and the first and finest moment of Theseus’s heroism.”56 I would argue that it actually reveals the closest way for Polyxena as a female, equal to the male hero. In Hecuba when faced with the option to die as a sacrifice to Achilles, Polyxena says “leave me free when you kill me, so that I may die a free woman! For since I am a princess, I shrink from being called a slave among the dead."57 Catullus’s allusion to Polyxena’s active preference for a virtuous death over shameful slavery complicates a simple reading of Polyxena as an extension of Ariadne, since Ariadne specifically claims that she would have preferred slavery over desertion by Theseus (attamen in vestras potuisti ducere sedes, / quae tibi iucundo famularer serva labore, 160-1). Two options for the Roman woman emerge: heroic self-sacrifice and complete rejection of societal bounds. The contrast between the two women is furthered in Hecuba by the fact that, 55 Warden, 411. Ibid., 412. 57 Euripides. Children of Heracles. Hippolytus. Andromache. Hecuba. Edited and translated by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library 484. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995) 549-50. 56 38 Polyxena, “though her life was ebbing out, still took great care to fall in seemly fashion to the ground, concealing from male eyes what should be concealed.”58 By intentionally retaining her clothes Polyxena maintains her maiden grace, prioritizing the social expectations of her royal lineage. In contrast Catullus takes special care to emphasize Ariadne’s rebellion against her royal lineage, as she deserts her royal parents (116) and has absolutely no heed for her clothing in her singular focus on Theseus (sed neque tum mitrae neque tum fluitantis amictus… curans, 67-8). Polyxena thus serves as an example of the heroic woman, one willing to die to retain the social status quo. Her focus on remaining socially proper emphasizes how far Ariadne has strayed outside of acceptable female bounds. Polyxena’s death in its adherence to virtue comes at a young age, as the death of the Athenian soldiers do, this links her self-sacrifice to a man’s in battle. Although both women can be summarized as corrupted virgins, Ariadne and Polyxena’s sacrifices for the heroic quest are not completely passive. These characters, in their dual roles as agents of actions and exempla of heroic casualties, reveal the limited but existent scope of agency for women in in a society focused on heroic domination. Bad Passion all Around The implicit indictment of heroic domination’s negative effect on individuals, nature, and society are unified and stated explicitly in the final epilogue59 of the poem. 58 Ibid., 565-6. Although scholars have argued about how to characterize the final section of the poem (see Kinsey, 918), I have chosen to use Konstan’s term “epilogue” to characterize the ending because, as he argues, the narrator’s voice seems to speak from the poet’s contemporary day (Konstan, 34). 59 39 After the wedding song, Catullus interjects that a negative shift has taken place since the times of Peleus and Thetis when gods would come down among mortals (385-9): sed postquam tellus scelerest imbuta nefando, iustitiam que omnes cupida de mente fugarunt perfudere manus fraterno sanguine fratres (396-8) … omnia fanda nefanda malo permixta furore iustificam nobis mentem avertere deorum. (405-6) But after the earth was died by the most nefarious defilement and all men banished justice from their desiring minds and brothers’ hands are wet by the blood of a brother … all nefarious acts having been mingled with bad passion turned us away from the just minds of the gods This closing remark upholds a reading of the poem as revealing the corruption of individuals, society and the physical earth by the mindset of heroic domination. Both the characters in the frame narrative and ekphrasis are implicated in the epilogue. Theseus is described by Ariadne as an archetypical man who “as soon as the libido of the desiring mind has been satiated… does not care about his broken oaths” (sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libidost … nihil periuria currant, 148). The resonance of the words mens and cupidus, and the similar sense of iustitia and peirua to the epilogue’s claim “iustitiam que omnes cupida de mente fugarunt” ties Theseus in his treatment of Ariadne to this final indictment. Resonance between the use of cupiens (101) to describe Theseus’s urge to contend with the Minotaur and the word cupida in the epilogue further imbues his heroic quest with a selfish desire for virtue. It is the singular drive of the heroic desire which leads to the sacrifice of justice in the treatment of others. Similarly, the earth dyed red (telus imbuta) in the epilogue ties back to the murders by Achilles which clog streams with the blood of heaps of dead bodies (cuius iter caesis angustans corporum acervis, 359). Thus, 40 Achilles too is implicated in enacting nefarious deeds. The indictment does not only parallel heroic characters. Specifically, the image of a sibling’s hands stained in the blood of a brother (perfudere manus fraterno sanguine fratres) undeniably calls back to Ariadne’s choice to enable the death of her brother (potius germanum amittere crevi, 150) to save Theseus, her beloved. This connection is strengthened by another suggestion in the epilogue that nefarious acts have been perpetrated so that a man might freely enjoy the flower of a young bride (liber uti nuptae poteretur flore novella). Although this language is gendered, placing a man in the amatory role, it is not a stretch to tie this indictment to Ariadne who perpetrates nefarious violence against her brother to pursue her beloved of choice. Although, up to this point, the violent ramifications of the drive of love and heroism have only been linked through textual parallels, Catullus’s final exclamation unites them through suggestion that all (omia) nefarious acts are linked to bad passion (malo furor). The only person in Catullus 64 directly described by the word furores is Ariadne (Furores indomitus, 54. Exagitans immiti corde furores, 94. Caeca furore, 197), however the description of Theseus as ferocious (ferox Theseus, 247) which has a similar sense as furor of fierce and wildness, easily can be applied to him as well. Catullus’s final claim that bad passion turned humans away from the justice of the gods serves as a direct challenge to the virtue of violent dominance whether it be of a beast, a war enemy, a plot of land, or even a beloved. In the pursuit of controlling one sphere, another is inherently sacrificed. 41 Ars Amatoria and the Casualties of Imperial Domination Like Catullus 64, where a promise to reveal heroic virtue is complicated by evidence of various levels of violence inflicted by heroic pursuits, Ars 1 promises to “sing of safe love and … nothing criminal” (Nos venerem tutam… nullum carmine crimen erit, 33-4) yet is filled with advice for conducting extra-marital affairs and non-consensual conquests. One section of Ars I directly responds to Catullus 64; In lines 525-654 Ovid uses the story of Ariadne and Theseus as a didactic example for how men can use wine to woo women at dinner parties. In his retelling of the myth, Ovid employs images that closely parallel Catullus 64’s ekphrasis but depicts Ariadne’s salvation and subsequent deification by Bacchus as well. Ovid heightens the sense of wild chaos associated with the bacchants in Catullus 64 and depicts Ariadne as a victim of Bacchus’s love, bringing to the forefront the theme of sacrificed individuals and limited female agency in Catullus 64. The application of language of violent dominance reminiscent of Catullus’s heroes, and of fear reminiscent of Ariadne’s abandonment, to the “salvation” in Ovid draws the virtue of the imperialist mindset of salvation through dominance into question. An understanding of the extent of the violence in Ovid’s depiction of Ariadne can be deepened by a comparison of the Ariadne retelling in lines 525-654 of Ars I to the rape of the Sabine women60 in lines 101-132, a scene which details female fear in notably 60 Although the rational and conclusion of the rape of the Sabine women is not outlined in Ovid, the tale would have been common knowledge for its centrality to Rome’s founding mythology. As the story goes, Romulus needed women to complete his newly founded Rome. After failing to conceive an alliance with the neighboring Sabines, Romulus invites them to a religious festival. Halfway through the festivities Romulus give a signal for each of his men to capture a woman to take as his wife. This is where Ovid’s scene begins. (Beard, SPQR, 60) 42 parallel language. Since significantly more scholarly attention has been given to examination of the language used to describe the rape of the Sabines, it will be helpful to refer back to it while analyzing the language of Ariadne’s “salvation.” To understand the rape scenes within the context of Ars as a whole, I will also turn to scenes which outline the speaker’s beliefs and the way romance is positioned within the man’s larger role in Roman society. Bacchus the Colonizer In order to understand Ovid’s indictment of heroic domination in his retelling of the Ariadne myth, one must consider the purpose of his work as a whole and the political context it was written out of. While Catullus’s poem is an epyllion, a narrative poem with a focus on scholarly allusion and myth, Ovid’s work is a didactic manual directly addressed to the Roman man who “who seeks the substance for lasting love” (materiam longo qui quaeris amori, 49). Ovid’s concern from the start is creating enduring unions. At the beginning of Ars he lists the three basic steps his students should follow: Principio, quod amare velis, reperire labora, Qui nova nunc primum miles in arma venis. Proximus huic labor est placitam exorare puellam Tertius, ut longo tempore duret amor. (35-8) First work to discover whom you wish to love you soldier who now for the first time come newly armed, next the work is to entreat the girl having been favored, third may the love endure for a long time. The conflation of love and labor establishes romantic pursuit as intentional and requiring effort. The necessity of entreating (exorare) a beloved in order to make the love endure 43 presents Ovid’s conception of lasting unions as positive and requiring a certain level of pacification of the beloved. There is apparently going to be some level of consent in the courtship of Ars. However, the military metaphor conflating lover and soldier sets up one’s attainment of the beloved as a type of military victory, imbuing sexual or martial unions with an implicit sense of violent subjugation. This manual for permanent attainment of a romantic conquest was written at a time when Augustus was solidifying lasting control of a rapidly expanding empire. By 2 CE when Ovid published the first two books of Ars, Augustus was well into the process of gaining complete agency over the Roman empire. Boatwright highlights that Augusts’ primary concern was not simply to gain power but “to maintain the supremacy he had gained.”61 Much like the students of Ars who sought lasting love, August sought to attain lasting and far-reaching control over the Roman empire. August’s domination was twofold. Through a massive public works program and the Lex Julia he offered increased amenities to Roman citizens and extended his power into the social sphere of Roman life, limiting the agency of women specifically.62 Meanwhile, through military might he sought to retain and grow Rome’s imperial territorial reach. Although effort went into placating Roman territories which were vulnerable to attack or likely to revolt,63 the primary means of retaining territory was through physical domination.64 Boatwright sums 61 Boatwright, 289. “In or around [8 BC], Augustus promulgated his revolutionary Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis, whereby illicit sexual relations with married women (including widows and divorcees)—whether freeborn or of freed status—became subject to serious punishment.” (Knox, 96). 63 Spain, Gaul, Cilicia, Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt to name a few. Boatwright, 289. 64 “Augustus himself devoted considerable time during the 20s to imposing Roman control throughout the Iberian Peninsula, especially its rugged northwest, which had never been subjugated previously. At the same time, he authorized others to embark upon the immense task of extending Roman control northwards in central and eastern Europe as far as the Danube River” Ibid., 305. 62 44 up the paradox of Augustus’s imposition of physical force to preserve a peacefully unified empire: The army was to be used both to protect Rome’s empire and to expand it. Augustus saw no contradiction when he sought praise both for bringing peace and for making conquests even more extensive than those of Pompey or Caesar. (Boatwright, Romans: From Village to Empire, 304). Ars’s logic and ultimate aim of lasting love is inextricable from Augustus’s logic of lasting imperial conquest and subjugation. This culture of stability backed by a militaristic dominating force is central to understanding Ovid’s depiction of Ariadne. While Catullus advertised the consequences of the singular drive of the hero to conquer and move on, Ovid examines an imperial mode of dominance where success is marked by lasting retention and domestication. In the context of the imperial ideology of the Augustan age, Bacchus’s entry in Ovid serves as a symbol of Roman military might. The story of Ariadne is introduced in Ovid by an invocation of Bacchus: Ecce, suum vatem Liber vocat; hic quoque amantes Adiuvat, et flammae, qua calet ipse, favet. (525-6) Behold, Bacchus calls his prophet, this god aids lovers also and he favors the flame by which he himself is inflamed The introduction of a Bacchus who seeks those sharing his passion connects him to the Bacchus of the ending of the Catullan ekphrasis, who, inflamed with love (incensus amore, 253), searches for Ariadne, herself equally inflamed (concepit corpore flammam, 91) with love for Theseus. Both authors foretell a sort of meeting of equals, two equally strong flames combining. Both entry scenes also imbue the bacchants with a sense of foreignness and disorder foretelling a capacity for violence. Like Catullus’s bacchants who rouse loud 45 crashing with bronze symbols (262) and emit chaotic sounds (barbaraque horribili stridebat tibia cantu, 264), Ovid’s bacchants enter as boisterous group: “On all of the shore symbols sounded and drums emit by pulsing hands” (ait: sonuerunt cymbala toto / Litore, et adtonita tympana pulsa manu, 537-8). The overwhelmingly loud entry creates a sense of force behind the bacchants. The repeated mention of yoked tigers pulling Bacchus’s chariot in Ovid (tigribus adiunctis aurea lora dabat, 550; e curru, ne tigres illa timeret, desilit, 560), much like the emphasis on the foreign mysteries (260) in Catullus, establish Bacchus as wielding power over foreign forces, since tigers would have been captured and taken back from India. The depiction of Bacchus on a chariot hauling foreign spolia is impossible not to read as a Roman triumphal procession, since in Rome Bacchus’s mythical journey home from a series of victorious campaigns in India was regarded as the first and archetypical triumphal procession.65 To understand the imperial dominance implicate in the image of a triumph, I look to Mary Beard: The triumph and its captives amounted to a physical realization of empire and imperialism. As well as the image of Roman conflicts with monarchy, the procession (or the procession’s written versions) instantiated the very idea of Roman territorial expansion, its conquest of the globe. The prisoners’ exotic foreignness, at the heart of the imperial capital, put on show to the people watching the procession (or reading of it, or hearing tell of it, later) the most tangible expression you could wish of Rome’s world power. (Beard, The Roman Triumph, 123) It is no stretch to read Bacchus’s boisterous parade displaying ostentatious foreign spolia as such an image of imperialism. It follows that his act of finding and marrying Ariadne should read as a metaphorical colonial domination as well. 65 Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Harvard University Press, 2009), 315. 46 Another contextual aspect necessary to analyze Ariadne in Ars is her story’s role as a didactic example of how a man must carefully use wine to his advantage when wooing a woman at a dinner party. Ovid follows the story of Ariadne on Naxos with this moral: Ergo ubi contigerint positi tibi munera Bacchi Atque erit in socii femina parte tori, Nycteliumque patrem nocturnaque sacra precare, Ne iubeant capiti vina nocere tuo. Hic … Blanditiasque leves tenui perscribere vino, Ut dominam in mensa se legat illa tuam (565-572) As a consequence, when the gift of Bacchus having been set down seizes you and a woman is your partner on the common couch, ask the Nycteian father and night spirits that they judge the wine not to inflict harm on your head because here… you might trace light flatteries in thin wine so that on the table [a woman] can read herself to be your mistress. Bacchus, who already symbolizes imperial violence must now also be read as an exemplary Roman bachelor. Perhaps, the warning against drunkenness calls back to the entry of the bacchants when drunken Silenus “urges the four-legged horse with a reed / And having fallen from the long-eared ass, collapses headfirst” (Quadrupedem ferula dum malus urget eques / in caput aurito cecidit delapsus asello, 545-6). There is a clear contrast here between the fumbling wine-drunk Silenus and Bacchus the god of wine who marries Ariadne. The simultaneous conflation of Bacchus with imperial might and the Roman everyman draws a connection between the necessity of strategic love and imperial growth, blurring the line between imperial and romantic conquest. With this context in mind we can begin to approach Ovid’s depiction of Ariadne. 47 Ariadne the Becoming Crier Before the entry of Bacchus which makes up much of Ovid’s Ariadne scene, Ariadne is depicted alone on Naxos. Although much of the imagery in Ovid’s description of Ariadne closely parallels Catullus’s, the emphasis on Ariadne’s attractiveness in Ovid poses a question of what aspects of a woman actually matter to the Roman man. Ariadne’s clothing is described in Ars I as “tunica velata recincta” (529). This mirrors the cover (veltum, 64) and other garments which all fall from the body of Ariadne (toto delapsa e corpore, 66) in Catullus. The word velatus and the parallel verbs of falling tie the images closely together. Similarly, Ovid describes Ariadne’s hair as “blond hair unbound” (croceas inreligata comas, 530) replicating Catullus’s image of the loss of Ariadne’s headdress from the blond head (non flavo retinens subtilem vertice mitram, 63). The continuity between the two texts makes Ovid’s departures from Catullus appear stark and intentional, as he is clearly working from Catullus’s writing. A first major departure from Catullus is Ovid’s explicit fetishization of female fear already implicit in the language of Catullus 64. Ovid presents a sexual judgement of the appearance of Ariadne’s grief: Clamabat, flebatque simul, sed utrumque decebat; Non facta est lacrimis turpior illa suis. (533-4) She shouted and wept together but both became her that girl was not made unsightlier by her tears Like Catullus’s Ariadne who rouses faint sobs with a wet face,” (frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem, 131) Ovid shows Ariadne in tears. However, Ovid homes in on the physical appearance of the tears, revealing the attractiveness of a woman as a primary concern for the narrator and assumedly the men he is addressing in Ars. Ariadne’s grief is purportedly 48 not a negative thing, since the tears do not detract from her physical attractiveness. The feelings of the woman are notable only if they make a woman less attractive or proper (turpior). The same concern for a woman’s proper becomingness (decere) in fear is the focus of the scene of the rape of the Sabine women earlier in Ars. By Romulus’s decree each soldier in the theater will get to choose a Sabine woman to capture and wed. The woman feel fear in reaction to the force of the men: “As the infant lamb flees from the hated wolf those women were fearing the men violently falling upon them without restraint” (Ut fugit invisos agna novella lupos / illae timuere viros sine more ruentes, 119-20). The women’s likeness to baby animals characterizes their vulnerability. However, Ovid assures us that, “The fear itself was able to become many of them” (Et potuit multas ipse decere timor, 126). The argument here that fear actually enhances the appearance of a woman suggests that it is the woman’s lack of agency in the face of the man’s violent force (ruentes) that makes them sexually attractive. The repeated concern for a woman’s appearance (decere) in the face of physical safety threats in both Ars scenes sets up a pattern of fetishized female fear in Ovid. At first glance Ovid’s examination of the fetishization of female fear appears to be a departure from Catullus 64 as nowhere does Catullus actively make a judgement on Ariadne’s attractiveness. However, Ovid’s direct statement of the becomingness of her fear invites us to question Ariadne as a sexualized figure seen through the eyes of a male poet. With Ovid’s statement in mind we may return to Catullus and ask, “Does Catullus also depict Ariadne’s fear as becoming?” 49 Richard Jenkyns answers this question by noting the length of the description of Ariadne’s fallen clothes which stretches from lines 63-70 and the textural wording of bodily details such as “mollia nudatae tollentem tegmina surae” (129) arguing that Catullus “takes pleasure in the pictorial beauty of his damsel in distress, bringing out with loving observation the textures of her clothing against her body... revealing seductive beauty.”66 A reading of Ariadne as a sexualized figure based on bodily description in Catullus alone is enhanced by the contrast of her smooth body and blond hair with the later description of the elderly Fates whose bodies although wrapped up are quivering with age (tremulum, 307), whose heads have white hair (niveo, 309), and whose lips are dry (aridulis, 118). Catullus’s depictions of the fates which Jenkyns characterizes as containing “an element of unpleasant sexual disgust”67 by comparison poses Ariadne as attractive in her fear. Thus, Ovid can be read as making Catullus’s implicit sexualization of the damsel in distress explicit, highlighting the man’s concern for a woman as only for her sexual attractiveness. Bacchus the Lover and Hero The violence and fear which characterize the salvation of Ariadne by Bacchus in Ovid directly conflates the lover with the violent hero, challenging Catullus’s presentation of lover and hero as incompatible while affirming his indictment of the violent consequences of domination driven action. 66 67 Jenkyns, 117. Ibid., 141. 50 The distinction between Catullus and Ovid’s heroes can be seen by looking again to the unrestrained violence (viros sine more ruentes, 119) through which Romulus’s men enact romantic pursuits of the Sabine women. The language of dominance characterizing Romulus’s men echo’s the slaying of the Minotaur and troops in battle by Theseus and Achilles respectively (prostravit, 110; prosternet corpora, 355). Although all three scenes are characterized by violent dominant acts, there is a key difference in the aims of Catullus’s and Ovid’s heroes. While Theseus and Achilles represent a generation of heroes who seek to kill and move on to the next conquest, Ovid’s contemporary men seek to capture and keep, both in their role as imperial soldiers and as men choosing wives. In his examination of hunting metaphors in Ovid, Green illuminates this shift, noting that in Ovid “The prey’s desirability is no longer defined by the natural wildness of the hare or deer but by the innocence and perfection of natural beauty, the goal is no longer to kill the prey, but, by act of capture, to tame and keep the beloved.”68 This analysis serves to explain the men’s concern for the woman’s attractiveness and also contextualizes one soldier’s question: “Atque ita ‘quid teneros lacrimis corrumpis ocellos? / Quod matri pater est, hoc tibi’ dixit ‘ero.’” (129-30). The focus on the appearance of the face is combined with an expression of confusion as to why the woman is upset since the man plans to take care of her as a parent would. There is an irony in the man’s assumption that he is taking care of the woman while he is in the act of forcibly abducting her, he is the metaphorical wolf eating a lamb. Ariadne’s salvation might be read with a similar level of dark irony. 68 Carin MC. Green "Terms of Venery: Ars Amatoria I." (Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1996), 228. 51 Ariadne’s reaction to the actual arrival of Bacchus mirrors the fear of the Sabine women as they are abducted against their will, drawing the concept of salvation for a Roman woman into question. In the face of their captors the Sabines are depicted growing pale: “Then in none remained the same color which was before,” (constitit in nulla qui fuit ante color, 120) and are differentiated only through the ways in which their fear manifests: Nam timor unus erat, facies non una timoris … haec manet, illa fugit (121-124) For there was one fear, but not one appearance of fear …this one remains, that one flees The limited possibility of a woman’s reaction to physical dominance is accentuated by the men’s reactions to their attempts at resistance: Siqua repugnarat nimium comitemque negabat, Sublatam cupido vir tulit ipse sinu (127-129) And if anyone resisted too much and was denying her companion, the man himself would pull her up, her having submitted to the desiring breast. The Sabine women are united under collective fear (timor unus erat) of their violent abduction and experience a collective loss of color from their faces in their intense fear. The women have options under the umbrella of manifesting fear, but even their reactions are limited, since, although they have the option to remain or flee, their abduction is inevitable. Those resisting are still made to submit (sublatam). The focus on faces of fear in this scene has been read as both the glorification of rape and an exposure of its flaws. Based on similar language of domination in the Fasti and Metamorphoses, Amy Richlin argues that Ovid’s focus on the beauty of those being raped suggests that he truly condones “violence as part of love.”69 She notes that “men are here subjects of action verbs, especially of the gaze… [the women] act only to show fear… 69 Richlin, 168. 52 [marking] their vulnerability.”70 Ovid is certainly depicting the agency of women as limited. However, the revelation of the reality of a gendered imbalance of agency does not necessarily mean Ovid condones it. Hemker acknowledges the depiction of limited agency but holds that, by showing the women’s clear desolation, Ovid’s scene “is a brilliant exposure of the underlying assumptions concerning rape, the subjugation of women, and militaristic imperialism.”71 He notes that Ovid offers explicit evidence against the claim that women enjoy violence thus exposing “the tragedy inherent in any philosophy which espouses domination as a means of gratifying one’s own desires.”72 If the language of the bearing away (tuli, 128) of the Sabines by Romulus’s army can be read, as Hemker argues, as revealing “the tragic consequences” of “heroic manhood,”73 than the bearing away of Ariadne (abstulit, 562) by Bacchus in Ovid might be read as one as well. Let us first examine how Ovid’s depiction of Ariadne’s salvation by Bacchus reveals a violent power inequality similar to the one revealed in the scene of the Sabines and then how it parallels critiques of the heroic drive to dominate implicit in Catullus. At the arrival of Bacchus, Ovid’s Ariadne is depicted in a state of complete vulnerability. As Bacchus enters, Ariadne is characterized by her losses and inability to move: Et color et Theseus et vox abiere puellae: Terque fugam petiit, terque retenta metu est. (551-2) Color and Theseus and voice had left from the girl three times she tried flight, and three times fear detained her 70 Ibid., 167. J. Hemker, “Rape and the Founding of Rome,” (Helios, 1985), 44. 72 Ibid., 46 73 Ibid., 46 71 53 Like the Sabines, Ariadne physically loses all color, externally presenting her fear. Her repeated attempts to flee characterize her as unwilling to concede to Bacchus’s advances, and again tie her to those Sabines who tried flight (illa fugit, 124). Ariadne is depicted in a state bereft of agency. Richlin’s note that the Sabines are only presented through their fear also applies to Ariadne whose fear is so strong that it “detains her.” However, Hemker’s reading of the description of fear as a cultural critique tracks just as strongly. The use of a nature metaphor to describe Ariadne’s fear of Theseus further establishes her vulnerability. As Bacchus approaches, Ariadne “bristles as a slim ear of corn, which the wind agitates / or as a light reed trembles in the middle of a watery marsh” (Horruit, ut graciles, agitat quas ventus, aristae, / Ut levis in madida canna palude tremit, 553-4). Ariadne is connotated with two single stalks of vegetation, both of them small and delicate (graciles…levis), which are moved by slight agitation, painting her as a vulnerable natural object, similar to the comparison of the Sabine women to baby deer. The depiction of the first physical contact between Bacchus and Ariadne characterizes a romantic union as predatory act which capitalizes on the woman’s vulnerability: Implicitamque sinu (neque enim pugnare valebat) Abstulit in facili est omnia posse deo (561-2) He, embracing her in his lap (for she was not strong enough to oppose him), took her up by force- for a god all things are able to be done with ease. The first two words depict a romantic union from the outside perspective. The woman is embraced and drawn towards the chest. This description usually contributes to a happy 54 romantic scene74 but Ovid subverts expectation with a parenthetical describing Ariadne’s perspective. The embrace is only possible “because” (enim) Ariadne is not physically capable of fighting back. This implies that she would resist if she could. The image is shifted from an embrace to an attack by the inclusion of the parenthetical. While the Sabine women are taken into the laps (tulit… sinu) of the men because they resisted too much (nimium… negabat), Ariadne, in her inability to flee, is forcefully taken into the god’s lap (sinu… Abstulit). The futility of resistance for the woman pursued mirrors the experience of those dominated by other displays of heroic force in Catullus such as the Minotaur or enemy armies. Women in Ovid become a heroic conquest while the marriages they are forced into become acts of colonial absorption, the domestication of conquered entities. The explanation that Ariadne is taken up so easily because of Bacchus’s godly status (in facili est omnia posse deo) superficially sets Ariadne’s rape apart from the rape of the Sabine women by Romulus’s men. However, the almost identical language of the two scenes seems to argue that a woman’s agency is so ineffectual that both man and god have the same easy (facili 562) power over them, or at the very least that soldiers are able to wield heightened godlike agency. In the end, “the [Sabine] girls having been forcefully removed are lead away as booty for the marriage-couch (Ducuntur raptae, genialis praeda, puella, 125) the same way that “on the sacred couch the bride [Ariadne] and god [Bacchus] unite (sic coeunt sacro nupta deusque toro, 564). Both the Sabines and Ariadne, although clearly unwilling, are forced into marriage beds and by extension marriages. Like any other imperial conquest, the women become permanent possessions, spolia for the dominating 74 See Catullus 61.102: “He will be enfolded in your embrace… such great joy for him to enjoy” (implicabitur in tuum complexum…. “quanta gaudia… gaudeat) to describe the first happy union of a new bride and groom. 55 heroic forces. What is characterized as a gain for the lover, or the Roman state, is a simultaneous sacrifice of agency on the part of the beloved or conquered. We are reminded here of the paradox of violence which enables Augustus’s Roman peace. Ovid illuminates the gendered inequality of Roman romantic relationships here but implicitly indicts the entire thought process of imperialism in which Rome as a dominating power gains permanent ownership of the other by force. Ariadne’s Repurposed Fear Many of the images that Ovid uses to depict Ariadne’s fear of Bacchus are the same images that Catullus used to describe Ariadne’s fear of being left alone on Naxos, drawing the very possibility of a woman feeling secure in Roman society into question. At the thought of Theseus being killed by the Minotaur in Catullus, Ariadne’s face “often turns paler than the gleam of gold” (quam tum saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri, 99). In context, the paling reveals Ariadne’s deep concern over the possibility of losing her beloved. By replicating that paling at the entry of Bacchus and combining it with the loss of her ability to speak and the loss of her former love (color et Theseus et vox abiere puellae, 551), Ovid suggests an even greater fear at the entry of Bacchus. This fear directly contrasts with Bacchus’s imperative to Ariadne: “Here I am a more faithful care... put down your fear… you will be the wife of Bacchus” (adsum tibi cura fidelior... pone metum Bacchi, Cnosias uxor eris, 555-6). Bacchus in his promise of faithfulness is positively contrasted against Theseus in Catullus who Ariadne repeatedly indicts as “treacherous” (perfide, 135-6). However, Bacchus’s use of imperative language and the fear he engenders 56 leaves no option for Ariadne to verbally reject him even if her voice had not already faltered. There is a sense of irony in Bacchus’s claim that Ariadne has nothing to fear now since she will be his wife, while it is his arrival that prompts her increased fear. Another way that Ovid directly transfers Catullan fear language onto Ariadne’s salvation is through the concept of limited escape. Ariadne’s main argument for seeking vengeance on Theseus is that he has left her on a deserted island with “no means of flight” (nulla fugae ratio, 186). At Bacchus’s entry the situation in which Ariadne is kept from flight (Terque fugam petiit, terque retenta metu est, 552) is recreated. The lack of a tangible improvement in Ariadne’s level of agency or safety poses the question whether her situation has improved with Bacchus’s approach. Ovid’s use of a plant metaphor transfers Catullus’s image of the hero as a farmer onto the lover. Ariadne in Ovid “bristled as a slim ear of corn, which the wind agitates” (Horruit, ut graciles, agitat quas ventus, aristae, 553). This explicit reference to corn, the same crop which Catullus used to metaphorize the trojan troops cut down by Achilles (namque velut densas praecerpens messor aristas, 353) correlates Ariadne in Ovid to a victim of a violent hero in Catullus. The same way that Theseus killing the Minotaur is likened to wind which dominates a tree (indomitus turbo contorquens flamine robur erui, 107), in Ars, Bacchus becomes a wind (ventus) which agitates (agitat) Ariadne. There is a continuity from one text to the other where the male heroic figure is simultaneously the farmer domesticating the crops and a force of violent nature. By carrying the image of Ariadne as a crop into a depiction of her salvation, Ovid shows the Roman lover as a dominating figure, similar to Catullus’s heroes. 57 Ariadne Incorporated The concluding deification of Ariadne in Ovid, much like incorporation of the Sabines into Rome after their rape, is an image of successful assimilation, positing the individual suffering of the conquered as irrelevant to the ultimate aim of domination and permanent incorporation of the conquered. While Ovid’s depiction of the rape of the Sabines ends in the moment of abduction, the incorporation of the captured women into Roman society and resulting incorporation of the Sabines into the Roman empire is the unequivocal implied result.75 Ovid takes care to enumerate the individual women’s expressions of pain and resistance, yet the story still concludes with the speaker’s compliment: “Oh Romulus, you alone know to give suitably to soldiers” (Romule, militibus scisti dare commoda solus, 131). We are offered a peek of the women’s suffering then are brought back to the reality that their pain serves a perfectly appropriate (commoda) function. As Beard describes, the story becomes one of legitimized rape as it “serves the purpose of procreation.”76 In their role shift from enemies to the generators of all future Roman citizens, the Sabine women serve as the ultimate symbols of successful imperial domination in which the conquered are permanently assimilated and serve the future good of the empire. Ariadne’s deification by Bacchus similarly trivializes her fear as it is presented as a temporary condition serving a broader benefit. As he abducts Ariadne, Bacchus also deifies her, proclaiming: “Take the heavens as a gift, as a star you will be looked upon in the sky/ often you will guide fluctuating vessels with a Cretan crown” (Munus habe caelum; caelo 75 76 Beard, SPQR, 64. Ibid., 303. 58 spectabere sidus / Saepe reges dubiam Cressa Corona ratem, 556-7). By making Ariadne immortal, Bacchus assimilates her, changing her from her previous human state, into a form mirroring his own. Her shift is made especially stark by the fact that she goes from being helplessly abandoned by means of a boat, to serving as the guide for those in boats. There’s a sense that her incorporation into the world of the dominating force, in this case the immortal realm, comes with an increase in position and power. This is very similar to the ideas espoused in Augustan Rome that conquered territories forced to fight for Rome would be on the winning team.77 Perhaps Ariadne’s fear and lack of consent is ultimately worth it for benefits reaped by a marriage to Bacchus. While Ariadne’s deification can be read as a reward, her specific role as a visible constellation calls to mind the spectacle of the spolia on display during the Roman pompa, reminding us that she is still ultimately a conquered victim. Traditionally the family of the person receiving a Triumph would be depicted riding happily alongside him.78 However Ariadne’s departure in Ovid is characterized as a violent removal (abstulit, 562). She is taken and shown off and certainly does not take a participatory role in Bacchus’s parade. By placing Ariadne in the sky for the purpose of being seen (caelo spectabere sidus, 557), Bacchus displays her as one would those conquered after a successful military conquest.79 Although Ariadne is not literally marched in a triumphal procession, she is proudly and publicly displayed by Bacchus and is forced into his tiger-driven carriage along with the rest of his tokens of foreign conquest. Ariadne serves here as the assimilated Roman 77 Ibid.,165. Beard, The Roman Triumph, 320. 79 For captured soldiers this would have been considered deeply shameful. Beard notes that many rulers chose suicide rather than be subjected to the humiliation of being displayed in a Roman Triumph. (Beard, The Roman Triumph, 115). 78 59 conquest. Although her domination provides her with certain benefits, she is ultimately absorbed into an empire against her will. Bacchus the imperial force exerts dominance and achieves his aim, regardless of how Ariadne feels about it, mirroring the irrelevance of a losing society’s consent or feelings when they are forced into subjugation by the Roman army. Remember that the woman in Ovid’s advice is not propositioned but instead simply looks down at the table to find herself a mistress: “Hic … Blanditiasque leves tenui perscribere vino / Ut dominam in mensa se legat illa tuam” (565-572). The skilled dominator gets the conquest he desires. Ovid’s argument throughout Ars, although depicting female fear, offers no means through which women might escape it. He offers, at best, a humanization of violated women, and a presentation of the benefits that Roman society offers men to fulfill their lust. Although he offers advice on conducting affairs, he essentially stays within the bounds of acceptable gender dynamics. I would argue that Ovid’s upholding of gender dynamics is his largest departure from Catullus and characterizes the contrast between the two writers’ Ariadnes. While Catullus presents the pursuit of true love as a woman’s avenue for rebelling against a dominance-based society, Ovid conflates the pursuit of a beloved with the pursuit of valor, positing the domination and domestication of a woman as yet another means for a Roman man to enact heroic conquer. 60 Conclusion The gendered power dynamics in Ovid’s depiction of the rape of the Sabines and of Ariadne’s “salvation” are made more explicate by Ovid’s comparison of romance with other traditionally male heroic activities in Ars 2. Ovid’s metaphors for love in lines 670-4 of Ars 2 is consistent with his depiction of Ariadne and serves as a direct contrast to Achilles in Catullus’s frame narrative. Ovid advises young men: Aut mare remigiis, aut vomere findite terras, Aut fera belligeras addite in arma manus, Aut latus et vires operamque adferte puellis: Hoc quoque militia est, hoc quoque quaerit opes. Either cleave the ocean with your oars or the land with the ploughshare or join the warlike hands in ferocious battle prep or bear the extent and vigor and service of your body to the maidens: this also is warfare; this also requires might. (2.670-4). This list encapsulates the main occupations of a Roman man: Seafaring, farming, and fighting. The three acts are united by man’s domination through physical strength, as I have formerly detailed. Ovid’s man uses oars and a plowshare to physically cleave land and ocean respectively. The term “belligeras manus” posit hands as inherently built for war, much like Catullus’s descriptions of oars as remigium in line 13 which conflates the physical sailors with their oars.80 These physical occupations of domination are then likened to the way a man should approach romance. Like man dominates nature he should bear his might (opes) upon women. The bearing of the strong male body upon women (adferte puellis, 2.663) depicted here tracks with the description of Bacchus’s bearing 80 Konstan suggests that the use of the word remigium in line 13, which simultaneously means oars and the rowers themselves creates “an identification between ship and crew (Konstan, 14). 61 Ariadne to his chest (sinu… Abstulit, 1.562). Ovid may genuinely believe this advice or could be placing it in the mouth of a narrator, but either way his war metaphor highlights a Roman conception of gendered dominance. Love, for Ovid, is just another avenue through which a man exerts heroic dominance. The language of this list of imperatives is strikingly similar to the set of images Catullus presents both in the ekphrasis and frame narratives of Catullus 64. However, Ovid’s conflation of these acts with love is a departure from Catullus who actively contrasted these images of heroic dominance against love -which instead was associated with indomitable nature. Ovid’s image of the cleaving of the ocean with oars (mare remigiis… findite) mirrors Catullus’s description of the violent entry of Theseus, who strikes the depths of the ocean with oars (pellit vada remis 58). Catullus notably contrasted this fixed path of Theseus with the indomitable flow of Ariadne’s love which was likened to the ocean itself (prospicit et magnis curarum fluctuat undis, 62). Similarly, the domination of land by plowshare (vomere findite terras, 671) in Ovid, is exactly what must be neglected in order to celebrate the loving union of Peleus and Thetis, making the romantic union and domestication of crops incompatible (non glebam prono conuellit uomere Taurus, 40). Finally, the ferocious battle preparations that Ovid promotes (Aut fera belligeras addite in arma manus, 670) bears a marked resemblance to the ferocity and war skill of Theseus ( ferox Theseus 247) and Achilles (non illi quisquam bello se conferet heros, 132) in Catullus which occasion the suffering of Ariadne and the death of Polyxena. While Theseus saw love as a brief conquest, forgetting Ariadne after his temporary lust had been satisfied, Ovid argues for a hero who puts the same amount of 62 energy towards permanently dominating the beloved as he would cultivate a farm or fight a war. In an examination of Ovid’s use of georgic plant imagery, E. M. Leach offers a reading of the conflation of plants and women in Ars which helps to summarize the nuanced difference between Ovid and Catullus’s conceptions of the relationship between dominance and love: If women [In Ovid] represent nature as raw material, then men are the cultivators and controllers of their natural environment… Just as the artisan or farmer imposes his skills upon the objects of his trade, so does the lover impose his craft upon the unruly race of women whose natures must be forced into conformity with an orderly system of love. (Leach, 149) While Catullus presents a number of realms which the hero may dominate, the lover he presents breaks free of an orderly system, expanding and rebelling against forces of dominance as the crops on an abandoned farm. Meanwhile, Ovid presents amatory pursuit as an imposition of structure, yet another way to farm, conquer, and domesticate. By characterizing love as another act of male domination, Ovid is going against Catullus’s conflation of the lover with indomitable nature, or perhaps negating the possibility of truly emotion-based love in gendered Roman society. However, Ovid’s note that love too requires power and strength (opes) certainly fits within Catullus’s argument for the similar levels of intensity and sacrifice required in the pursuit of either love or heroism. In the end both writers examine the Roman value for domination and the perspectives of those who incur the casualties left in the wake of imperial quests. While Catullus implements the story of Ariadne to reveal the incompatibility of heroism and love, critiquing both the drive to dominate nature and illuminating the danger of 63 completely rejecting societal bounds, Ovid uses Ariadne’s salvation to illuminate the imbalance of agency between genders, examining the detrimental effects of the extension of the imperial mindset of domination onto romance. Regardless of whether the hero ignores the lover as Theseus does, or dominates the beloved as Bacchus, the victim is left pale, trapped, and without recourse. Catullus’s depictions of the sacrifices of heroism on individual and grander scales and Ovid’s illumination of the vulnerability and unconsensual experience of the domesticated woman prompt a reconsideration of the perspectives of others who are sacrificed or suppressed in the Roman pursuit to conquer and control. 64 Bibliography Texts Consulted Cornish, F. W. (trans.), Catullus. Loeb Classical Library. 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