amor : roma: Love & Latin Literature

Eleven essays and a poem by leading Latinists, presented to E. J. Kenney on his seventy-fifth birthday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913701284

Book preview

1

GENETHLIACON EJK prid. Kal. Mart. MIM

J. C. McKeown

Qualis uere nouo teneros iam iamque nouellis

uiribus ausuros insuetas surgere ad auras

temperie laeta flores fouet aetherius sol,

qualis et ad nidos uolucris querulosque loquacesque

assidue circumuolitans per aprica locorum

uermesque blattasque, alimenta optata, reportat,

nec minus Edonis cantans in cotibus olim

auritas qualis quercusque ferasque choreis

Haemonius uates deduxit, dura canorae

blanditias citharae temere dum saxa sequuntur,

talis tu nobis, studiorum maxime fautor,

Ausoniae simul ac linguae suscepimus artes

arcanas, neque adhuc gratorum experta laborum

pectora habebamus, proprio manifestus amore

longum instillabas doctrinae doctus amorem,

incertosque uiae certo moderamine gressus

ad Latias duxti Musarum et Apollinis aras.

ecce, tuus Natalis adest, uenerande magister,

quinque ter exactis (quis possit credere?) lustris.

ergo tibi hunc hodie, qualis sit cumque, libellum

donamus, gratae pignus pietatis, alumni.

scilicet omne tui, si quid nunc possumus ipsi,

muneris est. nam tu ratione et mente sagaci

discipulis aderas semper uigilemque laborem

primitiis nostris studii et iuuenalibus ausis

temporis et curae tam prodigus impendebas.

sunt quos, obscuro ueluti Telchinas in antro,

puluerulenta iuuat doctrinae praemia inanis

collegisse sibi solis, cum luce carentes

ingenii uera uero sine honore malignae

absumant nulli felicia tempora uitae.

at quantum istorum tua pectora pectore distant

in medium semper quaerentis et omnia largo

communes animo quaesita adhibentis ad usus!

sunt etiam quorum primo praecepta coruscant

splendida et ad sese suaui oblectamine mentes

multorum alliciunt, muscas ut nocte uolantes

paullisper fax luce breui trahit, at cito uento

flamma perit, atra tantum fuligine pingues

fumorum nebulas linquens tenuemque fauillam

et magis obscuras quam nox erat ante tenebras.

tu tamen, interpres Latiis operate poetis,

omniaque illustras constanti lumine et omnia

praepandis ne nos dubiis ambagibus error

frustretur uerumque alta caligine celet.

hactenus auxilium quod nobis dasque dabasque

et (placeat Musis) multos dabis usque per annos

testamur grati. nunc, ne quae plurima doctis

scripsisti libris neglecta et munere laudis

orba iacere putes, diuersis aspice quanta

turba locis adsit meritos ut praestet honores

Natalemque tuum celebret. neque creditur ulli

antiquos hodie procul hinc absistere uates,

auersum nisi si quis habet Phoeboque choroque

Pieridum pectus. sed nos aduertimur omnes,

arte tua instincti, Musarum et Apollinis artes,

antiquosque hodie nobis adsistere uates

credimus. e quorum numero, dum quisque frequenti

te cumulat plausu, te laeta uoce salutat,

en duo praesertim peragunt praeconia laudis

(alter barbatus sapientum more uetusto,

blandior at specie cultuque insignior alter).

occupat ille prior ‘carus’ que ait ‘inclute Kenney,

semper eris certe mihi caru’; per auia quondam

solus ego errabam, cum suauiloquentia dona

fuderunt mihi Pierides, si forte liceret

carmina scribendi diuina effringier arte

claustra quibus caecae mentes hominum impediuntur.

sed paucis tantum sermonis egentibu’ nostri

cognosci penitus rerum natura potestur,

conantique nouae primordia doctrinal

ingenii nisu proferre laboreque multo

auxiliatum etiam atque etiam mihi suppeditasti.

quippe etenim multi libris didicere tuis ex

naturam rerum cognoscere, perque sequendo

dulcia dicta tua et mellis suffusa sapore

Musarum sublima queunt contingere templa.

etsi igitur credo prorsum fore ut exitiale

pessum det quoddam tempus terras mare caelum

disque soluta ruat summarum denique summa,

noenu tamen possum tempus fore credere cum me

decipiant ingrata tuarum obliuia laudum.’

non bene desierat, cum intercipit alter et ‘apta,

apta tuis’ dicit ‘meritis haec praemia pendit.

debet enim certe tibi plurima. plus tamen ipsi

debemus: doctae, doctissime, pignora famae

multa licet dederis isti, mihi plura dedisti.

si uera fruitur ratione, fatebitur ultro

non ita certandi cupidum me uelle loquendi

surripuisse uicem quam quod tibi propter Amores

atque Artes et quas heroes et heroinae

scripserunt furtim rescripseruntque tabellas

ceteraque illustri studio quae carmina nobis

exponis grates aueam laudemque referre.

quippe meum nomen narrant sermone Britanno

(littera si cedat stationem prima secundae)

significare chaos uacuum, multique solebant

dicere conueniens, uates, tibi nomen inane est.

ad dignos tu me reuocasti primus honores:

nam mea, quae sub Amore audax iuuenalia lusi,

carmina soluisti uitiorum crimine (certe

barbaria tam praua mihi quam tempore longo

iampridem sunt facta, frequensque inrepserat error),

quaeque mea latitant artes subtiliter arte

laudando nobis decus indelebile praestas

nec iam Musa notam mea rusticitatis habebit.

per te igitur tam cara mihi sunt litora Cami

quantum odio fuerunt olim mihi litora Ponti,

donec et immenso mea carmina in orbe canentur

nominibus nostris tua nomina iuncta manebunt.’

haec ait. adsentit fremitu chorus omnis ouanti

atque aliquis uatum ‘numquam concordia talis

hos inter’ dicit ‘fuerat prius: alter ab omni est

religione deum liber nullaque docet ui

mutari summam rerum, sed (ut expedit) alter

annua fastorum deducit sacra dierum

inque nouas formas ipsorum corpora diuum

commutat. dum te laudant, bene conuenit illis

amborumque hodie miramur homoeomerian.’

sed tua cur longis merita aequiperare loquelis

experiamur? amor nos scribere iussit, amoris

hoc, precor, accipias pignus multosque per annos

candidior semper Genius celebrandus adesto!

2

LOVE IN TERENCE

John Bars by

Originality and influence

In 1986 David Konstan published an article with the suggestive title ‘Love in Terence’s Eunuch: the origins of erotic subjectivity’.¹ The title is suggestive because it seems to imply (i) that later writers of subjective erotic poetry, notably the Roman elegists and before them Catullus, looked back directly to Roman comedy and in particular to Terence, and (ii), though Konstan does not explicitly pursue this point, that Terence developed a view of love or a way of portraying it that was different from what can be found in Plautus and Menander. The present chapter takes Konstan’s article and its implications as a starting-point and then goes on to develop a broader picture of love in Terence.

Times have certainly changed since Friedrich Leo made his magisterial pronouncement in 1895: ‘there is no doubt that Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid preferred any other reading matter to the comedies of Plautus’.² Such was Leo’s influence that for the next ninety years it was generally assumed that any influence of comedy on elegy (and it has long been recognised that the two genres do share common themes and situations) came from Greek comedy, and even then not necessarily by a direct route. The case for direct influence from Roman comedy was not systematically argued until 1985 (the year before Konstan’s article), when Jasper Griffin published his book Latin poets and Roman life, and, though Griffin’s arguments and alleged parallels are not all equally compelling, the tendency in recent scholarship is at least to allow for the possibility.³ It remains true that the elegists conspicuously fail to acknowledge Plautus and Terence as being among their models; Griffin explains this on the basis that, if they did owe a debt to Roman comedy, it would not have been fashionable for such ‘modern’ poets to proclaim it.

As for the originality of Terence vis-à-vis Plautus and Menander, it would not be particularly surprising if Terence’s portrayal of love were different from Plautus’, if we take the view that Plautus’ plays were heavily influenced by a native Italian tradition which inclined to farce and that Terence to a large extent departed from this tradition in favour of the greater sophistication and sensitivity of Menander.⁴ It would be more surprising, given that view, if Terence’s portrayal of love differed from Menander’s, but it would be by no means unthinkable, especially if the difference was in the direction of traditional Roman concepts such as fides or pietas, which might indeed lead to ‘subjective’ self-examination on the part of the lover of a kind not known to Menander. And, if we can accept the traditional biography of Terence, we might well expect a literate African freedman brought up in the house of a Roman senator and with links to the leading philhellenes of the day to produce a complex view of love which did not simply reflect either the Greek or the Roman traditions.

There is an inherent problem which we have to face in ascribing originality to Terence. We can compare his total œuvre with what remains of the œuvre of Menander and identify different approaches or attitudes in general terms; but, when it comes to particular passages which might seem to indicate originality on Terence’s part, there is always the risk that the Greek model for the passage might turn up on papyrus and reveal that, so far from being original, Terence was simply reproducing what he found in the Greek. What we need is passages where we can confirm Terentian originality by direct confrontation with the corresponding passage of his Greek model, and there are not many of these, since we have only scanty remains of the actual Greek originals of Terence’s six plays either on papyrus or in quotations from later authors. But there is one interesting fragment of Menander’s Eunouchos which can act as a test case.

At the end of the opening scene of Terence’s Eunuchus, the slave Parmeno counsels his lovesick younger master Phaedria not to make matters worse by resisting the invitation of the meretrix Thais, in the following terms (77–8):

By chance Stobaeus (Ecl. 4.44.38) preserves the corresponding lines from Menander’s Eunouchos (= fr. 162K-T):

The comparison reveals a significant difference between the two authors, namely that, while Menander represents love as an external divine force (μὴ θεομάχει), Terence treats it as a human condition. And this is a distinction maintained throughout by the two dramatists to the extent that, while it can by no means be claimed that Menander always represents love as due to divine influence, it is true that Terence never does.⁵

As for the other proposition, that Catullus and the Roman elegists derived inspiration from the reading of Terence, the Eunuchus again throws up a test case. In the second scene of the play Phaedria responds sceptically to Thais’ expression of a concern not to offend him, as follows (175–7):

There is a very striking similarity between these lines and Catullus’ sceptical response to Lesbia’s proposal of everlasting love in poem 109 (3–4):

Was Catullus recalling Terence’s lines or was he not? And, if not, are the resemblances mere coincidence or do we posit some lost intermediary through which the triplet uere, sincere, ex animo had been passed down? Commentators on Catullus such as Fordyce and Kroll note the parallel but avoid the question of whether Catullus was consciously echoing Terence. Konstan, in the article with which this chapter began, had no doubts: ‘In a famous epigram to Lesbia,’ he says, ‘Catullus imitated Phaedria’s appeal to Thais for truth and sincerity.’⁶

There is another case in the opening scene between Phaedria and Parmeno, where, though the verbal similarities are not immediately as striking, it is difficult not to think of Catullus. Parmeno has advised Phaedria not to try to resist Thais, because she will easily manipulate him and he will be the one who suffers. Phaedria’s response is (70–3):

This is, of course, the Catullan odi et amo situation; and, even if the verbal similarities with Catullus 85 are relatively unobtrusive (sentio in both and nec … scio ~ nescio), enough echoes of this Terence passage have been noted in other poems of Catullus’ love-hate cycle (nunc ~ Cat. 72.5, scelestam ~ Cat. 8.15, miserum ~ Cat. 8.1, ardeo ~ Cat. 72.5 uror) and in his other poems to false friends (taedet ~ Cat. 73.4) to ascribe to Terence a significant influence on Catullus’ poetry. The most forceful expression of this view can be found in the 1987 collection of essays by Alessandra Minarini,⁷ who declares that ‘these verses of Eunuchus constitute a nexus which has supplied abundant material to Catullus and not to a single poem but to his whole poetic laboratory’.⁸ Minarini goes on to refer to Terence as ‘the precursor of the neoteric language, the anticipator of so many linguistic, stylistic and literary traits, which the neoterics and Catullus in particular made their own’, adding ‘the sermo of Terence is the base on which the Catullan ποιϰιλία moves’.⁹ This is not the place to subject Minarini’s claim to detailed scrutiny; the Eunuchus offers a number of linguistic parallels with Catullus¹⁰ over and above the echoes noted here, but it is not easy to establish direct influence on Catullus from Terence’s other plays.

We may now turn to another passage from the second scene of Terence’s Eunuchus which attracted Konstan’s attention. At the end of this scene, Phaedria is bidding an unwilling farewell to Thais, having acceded to her request that he leave her to his rival, the soldier Thraso, for a few days while she secures from Thraso the gift of a slave girl, captured by pirates from Sunium, whom she is hoping to restore to her Athenian family and thus gain for herself patronage in Athens. Phaedria asks Thais to think only of him while she is with the soldier (192–6):

Konstan reasonably claims that these lines, along with lines 175–7 which we have already considered, ‘establish Phaedria as a figure of deep passion’.¹¹ Peter Flury had earlier argued that the directness of the expression of love and the un-ironic high style were un-Menandrean and thus evidence of Terentian originality.¹²

The last line is particularly striking: meus fac sis postremo animus quando ego sum tuos (‘in short be my heart (or soul) as I am yours’). As Konstan says, ‘The idea of love as a communion or exchange of minds or hearts sounds romantic’,¹³ and the question of romantic love in Terence is one to which we shall return later in this chapter. More interesting for the moment, though, is Konstan’s footnote: ‘The notion that one’s animus is elsewhere or in someone else is common in Roman comedy, and seems a Latin idiom … The conceit that one is another’s animus seems peculiar to Phaedria in the Eunuch.’ This is a point which deserves to be underlined and amplified. There is a huge difference between ‘my mind is elsewhere’, i.e. ‘I am intent on other things’ (Pl. Per. 709 animus iam in nauist mihi, Ter. Eun. 816 iamdudum animus est in patinis)¹⁴ and ‘be my heart as I am yours’. There is also a difference between ‘I gave my heart to her’ (Pl. As. 141 amans ego animum meum isti dedi) or ‘I extricated my heart from her’ (Ter. Hec. 297 impeditum in ea expediui animum meum)¹⁵ and ‘be my heart as I am yours’. Phaedria is talking not of the surrender of a lover’s heart or even the exchange of lovers’ hearts but, in effect, of the fusion of the two personalities. The line deserves to be compared with the line which Hermann Fränkel notoriously called ‘one of the most astounding lines to come out of pagan antiquity’ (Ov. Am. 1.7.60 sanguis erat lacrimae quas dabat illa meus (‘the tears she was shedding were my blood’, in a context where Ovid is expressing contrition at having laid violent hands upon his girlfriend).¹⁶ We do not possess the line of Menander’s Eunouchos which corresponds to the line of Terence’s under discussion, but it seems highly probable that the conceit is due to Terence, given that it is difficult to find anything remotely similar in the remains of Menander, even if the idea of the transfer of the animus is not quite as uniquely Roman as Flury and Konstan might lead us to suppose.¹⁷

Another area in which we may see signs both of Terence’s originality vis-à-vis Menander and Plautus and of his influence upon Catullus and the Latin elegists is the imagery of love. This point was argued by Elaine Fantham in her 1972 book Republican Latin imagery, and her conclusions will bear repeating here. Fantham accepts the opinio communis derived from Leo that ‘the affinities of subject matter and treatment between … the Elegists and Plautus and Terence can only derive from the Greek sources’ but argues that this does not apply to affinities of language: ‘the imagery of the love-poets develops in many ways the pattern established by Terence, and I believe that his range of erotic, or rather, sentimental vocabulary, more restricted and urbane than that of Plautus, embodied a norm which survives as the basis of the usage in the Elegists’. Fantham cannot quite bring herself to say that Terence’s influence is a direct one, though she does see some support for this idea from the almost verbatim adaptation of Eun. 46–64 in Horace’s portrayal of the lover at Serm. 2.3.259–71.¹⁸

However that may be, Fantham identifies a number of images of love, common in the Roman elegists and in subsequent Latin poetry, which occur only occasionally in Plautus and Menander but have greater prominence in Terence; and this is in spite of the fact that Terence’s imagery is in general much less abundant than Plautus’.¹⁹ One example is the metaphor of love as warfare. This occurs several times in the opening scenes of Terence’s Eunuchus (53, 60–1, 74) and Hecyra (65, 70, 73) and becomes very common in Roman elegy (Ov. Am. 1.9, etc.), but is rarely found in Menander (Fantham finds one example: Pk. 406–7K–T) or in Plautus (where she finds none). Its rarity in Menander is not surprising, since the image is probably Roman in inspiration (the Greeks preferred the analogous imagery of the wrestling ground); we might have expected it to feature in Plautus, who is very fond of military imagery in other contexts.²⁰ Another example is the image of the fire of love. This image does not occur at all in Menander, which is an interesting fact. Plautus does have two clear examples, both involving the word incendium (As. 919 ex amore tantum est homini incendium, Mer. 590 ita mi in pectore atque in corde facit amor incendium), but Terence significantly extends the image, using not only the verb incendere (An. 308, Hau. 367) but also the direct metaphor ardeo = amo (Eun. 72, Ph. 82) and the noun ignis for the beloved (Eun. 85).²¹ Thirdly the idea of love as a disease, for which Fantham identifies only one clear example in Menander (fr. 200K–T; cf. Eubulus fr. 41K) and one in Plautus (Cist. 74 si medicus ueniat qui huic morbo facere medicinam potest), is similarly developed by Terence, who not only uses morbus (Eun. 225) and medicari (An. 831, 944; cf. mederi at Ph. 822) but has several examples of the word aegrotus applied to the lovesick (An. 193, 559, Hau. 100).²² The point here is not that Terence invented these images or was the first to apply them to love, since, even if rare in Greek comedy, they are mostly Greek in origin, but that, by bringing them to prominence in his comedies, he helped to naturalise them and incorporate them into the tradition of educated Latin speech.²³

We can now pass to the question whether Terence’s portrayal of love can be called romantic. C. S. Lewis in a famous dictum declared that romantic love was invented by French poets in the eleventh century, denying romantic love to the ancient world in general and to Catullus and Propertius in particular.²⁴ This view has, not surprisingly, been challenged by classicists, for example by J. P. Sullivan on behalf of the Roman elegists and by Niall Rudd on behalf of the wider world of classical literature.²⁵ Perhaps, as Rudd suggests, what the French troubadours invented was not romantic love but courtly love.²⁶ It is, of course, largely a matter of how we define romantic love, and in the absence of an agreed definition Rudd’s will perhaps do as a starting-point. To paraphrase briefly, Rudd identifies six features: (i) an immediate visual impact (love at first sight); (ii) a series of familiar physical symptoms; (iii) idealisation of the beloved; (iv) emotional preoccupation with the beloved, colouring the lover’s attitude to other things; (v) expressions of lifelong devotion, even beyond the grave; (vi) postponement of physical fulfilment or the thwarting of it by external factors.²⁷ If idealisation is the essential component of romantic love, as it arguably is, the corollary would be that love ceases to be romantic when practicalities or realities take over. It might follow that, though marriage is a perfectly appropriate goal for romantic love, romantic love cannot exist within marriage, but this is not a point that needs to be pursued here.²⁸

If we accept Rudd’s definition or something like it, Menander’s Dyskolos offers a clear example of romantic love in the person of Sostratos. He has fallen in love with the daughter of the misanthrope Knemon at first sight (52 εὐθύς); he has immediately tried to establish contact with her father or guardian (72–4), so that marriage clearly is the goal in this case from the outset; he is enraptured by her ‘irresistible beauty’ when she appears (191–3 ὦ Ζεῦ πάτεϱ … ϰάλλους ἀμάχου); he doubts whether any of the gods can save him (202–3); he assures her half-brother Gorgias that he is ready to marry her without a dowry and to cherish her for ever (308–9 διατελεῖν στέϱγων); he will toil in the fields to win her or die in the attempt (370, 379–80) (perhaps a willingness to die for the beloved should be added to the definition of romantic love); he sees it as bliss to win her (389 μαϰάϱιον); he proves unable to concentrate when called on to help to rescue Knemon from the well, letting the rope slip three times because he is gazing into the girl’s eyes (682–3).²⁹ Sostratos in fact satisfies four of Rudd’s six requirements (love at first sight, idealisation, everlasting devotion, emotional preoccupation), though not the other two (not physical symptoms, unless with Arnott we accept the conjectural supplement τϱέμω at 194, or the postponement of physical fulfilment, which is not an issue in Dyskolos or indeed a feature of love affairs in Greek and Roman comedy). On the other hand, in some aspects of his character, notably his exploitation of Gorgias’ good will (560–2) and the lecture by which he wins his father’s permission for the marriage (797–812), Sostratos shows himself practical or pragmatic rather than a starry-eyed romantic. However that may be, the case of Sostratos is enough to show that such romantic traits as we find in Terence’s lovers may well be derived from his Greek originals.

Play-by-play discussion

It will be best to pursue the question of romantic love in Terence in the context of an examination of individual plays, and the rest of this chapter consists of a brief survey of each of the six plays in the light of the foregoing discussion. The survey will also serve to highlight recurring features of the portrayal of love in Terence, which it is tempting to label Terentian. But it has to be repeated that what may seem original to Terence in the current state of preservation of Greek New Comedy might well prove to be derived from his Greek models if those models were rediscovered; meanwhile the only guarantee of Terentian originality is the identification of a particularly Roman slant, and that is not a simple or straightforward matter.

In the Andria the situation is that the young man Pamphilus has fallen in love with Glycerium, the young sister of the meretrix Chrysis from Andros, and got her pregnant, but is being forced by his father Simo to enter a respectable marriage with the daughter of the family next door. There are five interesting features of the Pamphilus–Glycerium affair, which are worth observing in detail.

(i) Its beginning is described in romantic terms. Pamphilus, who, unlike several of his friends, has had nothing to do with Chrysis herself, has secretly fallen in love with Glycerium, who is described as surpassingly beautiful, modest, charming, and ladylike (119–20 uoltu… adeo modesto, adeo uenusto ut nil supra, 122–3 forma praeter ceteras honesta ac liberali).³⁰ At Chrysis’ funeral (she is dead by the beginning of the play), Pamphilus betrays himself not merely by shedding tears, but by rushing in to save Glycerium when she goes too near to the flames of the pyre, addressing her in loving terms (mea Glycerium) and holding her weeping in his arms (131–6).

(ii) As the time approaches for the birth of the baby, which the couple have decided to rear rather than to expose, they concoct a story that Glycerium is of Athenian birth; there is no courtly love here but a desperate solution devised by two young people to an all too real problem (217–24). At the same time the seriousness of the situation is undercut by the metatheatrical irony: given the standard plots of New Comedy, there is every probability that this fiction will turn out to be true.

(iii) Faced with his father’s opposition to his affair with Glycerium, Pamphilus makes two romantic declarations of love and loyalty to her, both addressed to her maid Mysis (270–80, 694–7):

We may note in the first of these passages the protectiveness of the lover (272), the idealisation of the nature of the beloved (274), and the references to humanitas (278), pudor (279), and fides (280), of which the first is typically Terentian,³¹ the second perhaps identifiable with the Greek αἰσχύνη,³² and the last arguably Roman;³³ and in the second passage the assertion of compatibility (696 conueniunt mores), which strikes a modem note, and the reference to death (697), which strikes a romantic one.

(iv) There is a real tension between love and filial piety. This is established in an early monologue by Pamphilus (259–63):

and finally resolved in favour of filial piety towards the end of the play after an emotional outburst by the father in which he comes close to disowning his son (896–8):

We may observe in the first passage that what lies behind patris pudor (262) is not simply deference to a paterfamilias but a sense of repaying the father for his generous treatment, something found also at Adelphoe 707–11, where it is almost certainly derived from Menander (cf. Ad. 48–52) and at Samia 17–18, where we have Menander’s actual words.³⁵ On the other hand the obedience in the second passage is obedience pure and simple, and it is interesting that it is preceded by a conversation in which Simo despairs of his son’s pietas (869). This is, however, the only occurrence in Terence of pietas in the sense of duty to a father.³⁶

(v) When all is resolved, Glycerium has been found