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Docticity Fecundity Interiority in Pleonastic Pacuvian Psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2016
Extract
In Marcus Pacuvius' play Antiopa, the title character is reunited with her twin sons Amphio and Zethus, whom she had previously abandoned on Mt Cithaeron. Such is her state of unkemptness that Zethus, it appears, did not recognise her:
- inluuie corporis
- et coma prolixa impexa conglomerata atque horrida
- (Pac. Antiopa 13f. W)
- In dirtiness of body
- And hair unkempt, matted, compacted and bristled.
Many of Pacuvius' plays deal with mother-son recognitions, often at crux moments of incestuous marriage or unholy kin murder; here it is the physicality of dirt that perverts the perceptions of the mind. The language wallows in this filth, with asyndeton and assonance and homoeoteleuton and vowel elision that runs all the adjectives into each other, such that their pronunciation smacks of the hairball, spluttering for breath, a noisy mastication with an unpleasant grating from those last staccato syllables. The focus on the physical accumulation of detritus betrays a psychological distaste and an inability to unravel a personality and identity from behind this rotting palimpsest of decay. The language reflects this distaste, compacting thought and knowledge in a filth unspeakable. Thus we might conjecture that this is even a sublime dirt(!), in the sense that Burke implies, one that terrifies, stuns and shuts down logical capacity. The awkward convolutions of the language mimic this inability to comprehend, and actually recognise, this awesome picture of the unwashed. Pacuvius thus uses linguistic ingenuity effectively to convey psychological disturbance by foregrounding its manifestation through a distorted apprehension of a physical phenomenon, one that reveals its very distortion as the language is matted and glued back into itself, denying the sort of clarity that recognition requires.
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References
1. The attribution of fragments to characters is an imprecise science due to the form of the preservation of the fragments by later grammarians, where much interest was taken solely in explicating unusual words or metrical formulations. Using the plot summaries of Hyginus and other versions of similar plays gives us many clues, but we must always maintain a certain circumspection in making claims too boldly reliant on an unverifiable assignation. Elaine Fantham notes the dangers of such a balancing act, with specific reference to Hyginus in her recent article ‘Pacuvius: Melodrama, Reversals and Recognitions’, in D. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome: Studies in Honour ofT.P. Wiseman (Exeter 2003), 98–118Google Scholar. In the case of this fragment a scholiast to Persius’ parody of the same description in his first satire, discussed below, is the source of the fragment, the attribution of Zethus as speaker is made with reference to a passage from Hyginus Fab. 8 which speaks of Zethus not recognising his mother because he thought that she was a fugitive slave (existimans fugitiuam).
2. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are my own. The numbering of the fragments for both Pacuvius and Lucilius is from the Loeb volumes of Warmington, E.H., respectively Remains of Old Latin Vol.2 (Cambridge MA and London 1936 Google Scholar) and Remains of Old Latin Vol. 3 (Cambridge MA and London 1938 Google Scholar). Unfortunately, I have been unable to consult the soon to be published new edition of and commentary on Pacuvius by Schierl, P., Die Tragödien des Pacuvius: Ein Kommentar zu den Fragmenten mit Einleitung, Text und Ubersetzung (Berlin & New York 2006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
3. For such recognitions see eg, Medus, Atalanta, Iliona, Dulorestes. The first three are discussed by Elaine Fantham (n.1 above). Manuwald, G., Pacuvius, Summus Tragicus Poeta: Turn dramatischen Profil seiner Tragödien (Munich 2003), 49f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, compiles a similar list with the addition of the Chryses.
4. Burke, E., A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London 1958 Google Scholar). Burke’s formulation runs that astonishment is the central passion roused by the sublime, and continues ‘astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror’ (57). This astonishment created by the sublime is aligned moreover with fear that ‘effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning’ (57) and with terror which ‘in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime’ (58).
5. There is, of course, more to Lucilius’ satire that just being amusedly smitten with Pacuvius’ language; see for example Manuwald, G., ‘Lucilius und die Tragödie’, in G. Manuwald (ed.), Der Satiriker Lucilius und seine Zeit (Munich 2001), 150’65Google Scholar. Yet in following the trajectory from the dirty Antiopa, this revelling in linguistic twistings is precisely what stands out on the surface. Starting from this perspective, as an anamorphosis if you will, we can begin to re-inscribe this punning verbosity into a wider appreciation of what lies behind ancient (and modem) conceptualisations of Pacuvius.
6. This fragment is in parody of Pacuvius’ Medus 248 W, with an admission by Warmington that the definitive meaning of auerrunco is unknown. This lack of definitiveness is precisely, in my opinion, what allows satire room to manoeuvre and flexibility to bite.
7. This fragment is in parody of an unknown section of Pacuvius’ Chryses.
8. Persius Sat. 1.120f.
9. Erasmo, M., Roman Tragedy: Theatre to Theatricality (Austin 2004), 35 Google Scholar.
10. An interesting corollary to this reading of Varro is gained from Tacitus’ Dialogus where the question of literary and moral decline is also discussed. There Pacuvius is grouped with Accius, representative of a defiling poetic appearance quite unsuitable for an aspiring orator: exigitur enim iam ab oratore etiam poeticus decor, non Accii aut Pacuuii ueterno inquinatus, sed ex Horatio et Vergilii et Lucani sacrario prolatus (‘For poetic ornament is even demanded nowadays of the orator, not such as is stained by the spores of Accius and Pacuvius, but rather that brought out from the sacred shrine of a Horace, a Virgil, or a Lucan’, Dial. 20.5). The violating bodily thrust of inquinatus is picked up in the very next section where the ancient pair are described as adeo durus et siccus (‘so hard and dry’, Dial. 21.7) and Tacitus’ Aper remarks that oratory is like the human body, where beauty should not be marred by veins too prominent, or bones too visible. This embodiment of the literary poses a question: Were Pacuvius’ and Accius’ literary corpora mouldy from the beginning, or only when exhumed centuries later?
11. See for example Livy 34.4.1–3 with regard to Cato’s desire for the Oppian law to remain in effect against female extravagance. Note also the powerful simile of luxuria as an unfettered beast at 34.4.19–20.
12. Quintilian Inst. 8.6.14. The logic here privileges moderation and the opportune use of metaphor to fit its context over a constant deployment that does not accord with the nature of the work. For example, prose metaphors should not be used in poetry, Homeric metaphors should not be used in modern oratory. This section suggests that such indiscriminate use not only unpicks a work’s cohesiveness and the opportunity for metaphor to bathe a point in brilliant illustration, but actually can change the very nature of the work itself, forcing it across the spectrum of tropes into allegory and enigma: ita frequens et obscurat et taedio complet, continuus uero in allegorias et aenigmata exit (‘too frequent a use is both obfuscating and tedious, while a continuous use goes off into allegory and enigma’).
13. I thus modify Boyle’s, A.J. division between dramatic spareness and ubertas in Roman Tragedy (London 2006), 97 Google Scholar.
14. Cicero (de Div. 2.64.133) assigns the riddler to Amphio. His audience is thought to be either the chorus or his brother Zethus leading it. I prefer the latter reading, but grant that the plural verb form of intellegimus is suggestive. In fact with regards to my general argument about the structuring role of riddling language and deferred recognition in Pacuvius, either still fits my reading.
15. I prefer the reading of Ribbeck, O., Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta3 (Leipzig 1897), i.87 Google Scholar, who recommends saeptuosa dictione for saeptuose dictio.
16. Quintilian’s criticism of Pacuvius’ combination of a preposition and two nouns in the phrase from the Antiopa (Nerei repandirostrum incurvicerum pecus, ‘the spread out snouted incurving necked herd of Nereus’) is also qualified by the adverb dure at Inst. 1.5.67.
17. Erasmo (n.7 above), 34.
18. See for example Boyle (n.13 above), 88–90. Fantham (n.1 above), 99, has supposed that the assignation of a Greek doctrina to Pacuvius misreads both poetic diction and mythology by downplaying Pacuvius’ inventiveness in favour of an inherited learning. I certainly agree in large part with this, but my reading employs this misreading in a more theoretical and positive sense by rescuing the notion of imitation and filtering it back into the text through my conception of Gellius’ ubertas and Pacuvius’ focus on the internal dynamics of language and psychology.
19. See for example from the Hermiona the phrase o flexanima atque omnium regina rerum oratio (‘O mind twister and queen of everything, eloquence’, 187 W).
20. Manuwald (n.2 above), 89.
21. The title of Zizek’s, Slavoj book Tarrying with the Negative (Durham NC 1993 CrossRefGoogle Scholar), a book that amongst other things presents a synthesis of Hegel and Lacan by advocating a return to Hegel’s insights concerning the constitutive horror of the darkness at the root of one’s being as an anamorphosis on to the Lacanian category of the Real.
22. Lachmann has conjectured ni me for minus and Hermann ne me, whilst Ribbeck (n.14 above) plumps for nimis. Lachmann’s seems the preferable emendation, balancing the ni in the second clause and giving faxis a direct object.
23. I would like to thank the audience of the University of Southern California Classics Department Juries presentations in October 2006 for their helpful suggestions on the first half of this paper. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous readers and editors at Ramus for their encouraging and provocative comments. All remaining errors are, naturally, the author’s fault.