Silenus and the Imago Vocis in "Eclogue 6" (original) (raw)
Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Silenus and the Imago Vocis in "Eclogue 6"
Author(s): Brian W. Breed
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100 (2000), pp. 327-339
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185223
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SILENUS AND THE IMAGO VOCIS IN ECLOGUE 6*
Brian W. Breed
ALTHOUGH the centerpiece of Virgil’s sixth Eclogue usually goes by the title “the song of Silenus,” the narrative technique of the poem is unusual in that this song (lines 31-86) is presented not as a dramatized performance by Silenus its singer, but as a narration of its contents by a primary narrator identified at the beginning of the poem (line 4) as Tityrus. 1{ }^{1} Beginning with the phrase namque canebat uti (line 31) Virgil renders Silenus’ song not as what Silenus sang, but what Tityrus tells us he sang; 2{ }^{2} rather than the singer’s actual words, we get a catalogue of the topics he treated. As a result the singing voice of Silenus is effectively absent from the poem because subsumed by the diegetic voice of Tityrus. In ways that are to be examined below, however, the description of Silenus’ song does encourage the reader to imagine the actual voice of the satyr within the fictional world. This paper will consider the ways in which the representation of a singing voice through a description in Eclogue 6 is comparable to another mode of literary description, namely ecphrasis, tracing a link between the description of a visual artifact and of a song in part through the
- An earlier version of this paper was presented as a talk at the University of Chicago, and I would like to thank my hosts on that occasion, particularly Shadi Bartsch, Peter White, David Wray, and Chris Faraone. The final version has benefited from help rendered by Christine Perkell and from comments by Niall Slater for which I am grateful.
1{ }^{1} The fact that Tityrus, a fictional character, is the named narrator is often ignored in the desire to see the voice of Virgil himself in the recusatio of lines 1-12; for a discussion of how Tityrus’ role as narrator may effect the presentation of the song of Silenus, see R. F. Thomas, “Voice, Poetics and Virgil’s Sixth Eclogue,” in J. Jasanoff, H. C. Melchert, and L. Olivier eds., Mir Curad. Studies in Honor of Calvert Watkins (Innsbruck 1998 [Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 92]) 669-676.
2{ }^{2} Cf. tum canit (61), tum canit . . . ut . . . utque . . . ut (64-67), omnia . . . ille canit (82−84)(82-84). ↩︎
- An earlier version of this paper was presented as a talk at the University of Chicago, and I would like to thank my hosts on that occasion, particularly Shadi Bartsch, Peter White, David Wray, and Chris Faraone. The final version has benefited from help rendered by Christine Perkell and from comments by Niall Slater for which I am grateful.
metaphor of an imago vocis. The latter part of the paper will consider how the representation of the voice of Silenus in the supposedly “nonTheocritean” Eclogue 6 does in fact draw on Theocritean themes, including the juxtaposition of ecphrasis and inset song.
Imago (vocis, verbi, vel sim.) is the Latin idiom for an “echo” (TLL 7.1.408.45-59 [O. Prinz]), and at the conclusion of Eclogue 6 Tityrus describes the echo that reflected Silenus’ voice all the way to the stars, so that even Olympus was listening 3(82−86){ }^{3}(82-86) :
omnia, quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus
audiit Eurotas iussitque ediscere lauros,
ille canit, pulsae referunt ad sidera valles;
cogere donec ovis stabulis numerumque referre
iussit et invito processit Vesper Olympo. 4{ }^{4}
Through this echo we can see that what Silenus sings can be heard within the fictional world, and not just heard but reflected to fill physical space. Despite the distance from the dramatized performance of Silenus that the indirect narrative effectively imposes on readers, we are encouraged by the description of the echo at least to imagine something that the poem is unable to convey directly, the sound of Silenus’ voice. The echo ascribes presence to the voice of Silenus within the fictional world, and in representing Silenus’ voice through its presence rather than by any verbal communication it might accomplish, the poem gives us not the words, but the voice as phenomenon. 5{ }^{5}
3{ }^{3} T. E. Page, Bucolica et Georgica P. Vergili Maronis (London 1898) ad 86: “The heaven itself is listening and unwilling that the song should cease”; cf. Serv.: ex eo quod nimio audiendi desiderio Vesper exortus est, cantilenae voluptas ostenditur.
4{ }^{4} Compare Geo. 4.49-50 ubi concava pulsu / saxa sonant vocisque offensa resultat imago, as well as the other passages adduced by Clausen ad loc. and Lucr. 4.570-594. Philargyrius’ comment on line 84 reads PULSAE idest pro echo pulsatae.
5{ }^{5} Stephen M. Ross, in a book which defines the nature and functions of voice in the fiction of William Faulkner, has created categories which, despite their novelistic origin, are at least partially applicable to pastoral fictions of voice. He would call the voice of Silenus a “phenomenal voice” (as opposed to a “mimetic voice,” that is represented speech). A phenomenal voice is a literary voice that exists to be described, not simply heard (Fiction’s Ineshaustible Voice [Athens, GA 1989] 19): "‘Phenomenal voice’ refers to voice as a depicted event or object within the represented world. When voice is named, described, commented upon, employed metaphorically, or in any way explicitly presented, phenomenal voice is created. . . [Mimetic voice] differs from phenomenal voice,
Nor is this only an effect of the echo, but the phenomenal presence of the voice of Silenus figures also at the beginning of the song. As a singer Silenus is distinguished by his Orphic power over nature, evidenced by the effect his song has on its audience: when he sings the Fauns and beasts move in time to his music, the rigid oaks sway (lines 26-30). 6{ }^{6} As a by-product of this description, as with the echo, readers are informed that Silenus’ performance is heard and are encouraged to imagine the sound that is working upon those trees and beasts. Thus at the beginning and end of the song of Silenus descriptions of the song’s musical effect and of the imago vocis compensate in comparable ways for the effect of narrative distance that threatens to make Silenus’ voice disappear entirely behind the diegetic filter of Tityrus’ narration. 7{ }^{7} Some parallels from elsewhere will help to illuminate how these two guises of the voice of Silenus, its powerful Orphic effect and its presence as echo, complement each other.
For an inset song that is reported rather than dramatized the parallels come mostly from epic, and commentators on Eclogue 6 commonly refer to Argonautica 1.496-511, where the poet describes, in the same
for the latter is presented as such, in itself. Whereas voice in some sense always results incidentally from represented speech acts, phenomenal voice exists only when explicitly mentioned in the diegetic discourse as sound, act, gesture, or the power of speech irrespective of speech’s semantic ‘content’." According to Ross, for Faulkner the primary function of phenomenal voice is the representation of human presence within fictional spaces (18-64).
6{ }^{6} On Silenus as a kind of Orpheus see, for instance, M. Desport, L’incantation virgilienne (Bordeaux 1952) 181-188; G. Lieberg, Poeta Creator: Studien zu einer Figur der antiken Dichtung (Amsterdam 1982) 22-26.
7{ }^{7} Diegetic reporting does however give way to direct speech within the song of Silenus. At line 55-60 the pathetic voice of Pasiphae speaks (“claudite, Nymphae, / Dictaeae Nymphae . . .”), and it seems possible to take the apostrophe to Pasiphae which begins at line 47 (a, virgo infelix, quae te dementia cepit!) as representing the voice of Silenus in direct address to his subject, whom he is said to have “consoled” (solatur, 46) with his song; see Thomas (above, n. 1) 675-676, and for solatur as essentially a verb of speaking, Coleman’s note ad loc. and P. Alpers, The Singer of the Eclogues (Berkeley 1979) 129-130. Although formally Tityrus is “quoting” Silenus and Pasiphae, this eruption of unattributed direct speech brings readers directly into contact with performance that lies behind Tityrus’ narrative; for this there is a direct parallel in Theoc. 7.83-89: an apostrophe to Comatas ( ω~μακαριστε˙Koμα~τα…\tilde{\omega} \mu \alpha \kappa \alpha \rho \iota \sigma \tau \dot{\varepsilon} \mathrm{Ko} \mu \tilde{\alpha} \tau \alpha \ldots ) within a song indirectly reported in the same manner as the song of Silenus. For a discussion see S. Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice (Cambridge 1991) 235-236.
indirect manner, a song sung for the assembled Argonauts by Orpheus. 8{ }^{8} Repeated η˙εıδεvδ\dot{\eta} \varepsilon \imath \delta \varepsilon v \delta ’ ω˙ς(496,503)9\dot{\omega} \varsigma(496,503)^{9} corresponds to Virgil’s canebat uti (31), canit … ut (64-65), etc. Orpheus’ song is a cosmogony and theogony which shares certain similarities to the subject matter of Silenus’ song (cf. Ecl. 6.31-42). Apollonius describes in lines 512-518 the represented audience’s pleased reaction to Orpheus’ song, which serves to calm a fight on board ship. This is comparable to the description in Eclogue 6.26-30 of the effect of the voice of Silenus, and when Silenus is described as singing even more enchantingly than Apollo or Orpheus (29-30), we may detect a gesture towards his model in Apollonius. 10{ }^{10}
In fact, the Orphic imagery of Silenus in performance is paralleled a number of times elsewhere in the Eclogues. A comparable incantatory voice is ascribed in Eclogue 6 to Hesiod (69-71, cantando rigidas deducere montibus ornos); the two singers Damon and Alphesiboeus in Eclogue 8 sing in a way that “amazes” (mirata, 2) and “stupefies” (carmine stupefactae, 3) an audience of animals, while even making rivers reverse their course. On the set of cups which the carver Alcimedon made for the character Damoetas, the powerful Orphic voice is represented as coming from Orpheus himself (Eclogue 3.44-46):
Et nobis idem Alcimedon duo pocula fecit et molli circum est ansas amplexus acantho, Orpheaque in medio posuit silvasque sequentis. 11{ }^{11}
Orpheus is pre-eminently an oral poet, whose power lies in the sound
- 8{ }^{8} Other examples include the song of Phemius in Od. 1.325-327, the first song of Demodocus in Od. 8.499-520, and the song of Iopas in Aen. 1.740-746, also Achilles in Il. 9.186-189 (tòv δ′εv^ρovφρε\delta^{\prime} \varepsilon \hat{v} \rho o v \varphi \rho \varepsilon ́va ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 29: …lon \rho \pi o ̲́ \mu \varepsilo… α˙vδρω~v\dot{\alpha} v \delta \rho \tilde{\omega} v ). To these epic examples we may add the Theocritean precedent from Idyll 7 (52-89) mentioned in the previous note. In what is already an inset song, the character Lycidas describes preparations he will lay for a symposium and describes the song about Daphnis and Comatas that will be sung there by Tityrus (I underscore the name): ó δε˙\delta \dot{\varepsilon} Ti τ∪ρos\tau \cup \rho o s ė γγθ˙θεvα˙σεi\gamma \gamma \dot{\theta} \theta \varepsilon v \dot{\alpha} \sigma \varepsilon i / ω~ςπоκατα˙ςΣεvεα˙ςη˙ρασ˙σατoΔαφ˙φvιςo˙βoτ˙τας…\tilde{\omega} \varsigma \pi о \kappa \alpha \tau \dot{\alpha} \varsigma \Sigma \varepsilon v \varepsilon \dot{\alpha} \varsigma \dot{\eta} \rho \alpha \dot{\sigma} \sigma \alpha \tau o \Delta \alpha \dot{\varphi} \varphi v \iota \varsigma \dot{o} \beta o \dot{\tau} \tau \alpha \varsigma \ldots In his new commentary (Theocritus: A Selection [Cambridge 1999] ad 7.72-89) Richard Hunter has noted a number of parallels with Ecl. 6, including the song within a song, the name Tityrus, and “experimentation with ‘voice’.”
9{ }^{9} Drawn from Hom. Od. 8.514 (Demodocus).
10{ }^{10} W. Clausen, A Commentary on Virgil: Eclogues (Oxford 1994) 176.
11{ }^{11} Cf. Geo. 4.507-510, where also Orpheus is said to move trees with his music. ↩︎
of his music and his voice; in all of these passages it is by describing the effect of voice that written words reflect powerful, oral song that can be heard and that in being heard can magically charm an audience. It is as if the actual words of an Orpheus recorded in a text would fail to adequately reflect what is in effect beyond imitation. These representations of an Orphic voice through its effect are directly comparable to visual representations of Orpheus, as for instance in mosaics which depict the singer, lyre in his lap, surrounded by an attentive audience of tamed beasts as he apparently sings. 12{ }^{12} The sound and the actual words of Orpheus are beyond imitation in visual art, but we are able to imagine them upon seeing voice reflected in its effect on an audience. This commensurability of visual representation and verbal description of Orpheus in performance makes the Orpheus depicted on the cup in Eclogue 3 directly comparable to Tityrus’ description of Silenus in performance as an image of the power of voice. In both cases the representation of the effect of voice produces the same result as the description of the echo in lines 82-86: the creation of voice as a phenomenal presence within the frame of representation. In fact we might say that in the description of the song of Silenus one type of imago, an echo, is blending into another, a representation or likeness, whether in pictures or in words. 13{ }^{13} As imago vocis an echo is an image, likeness, or reflection of a sound; these are visual metaphors for describing an auditory phenomenon, and there is inscribed in the Latin an implicit comparison with modes of visual representation. 14{ }^{14}
12{ }^{12} Many examples among items 89-163 (“Orphée parmi les animaux”) of the LIMC entry for Orpheus, by Maria-Xeni Garezou. The parallel between Ecl. 6 and the Orpheus of visual art is noted by C. Segal, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore 1988) 15: “Vase paintings and other visual representations of Orpheus throughout antiquity show his audience caught up in a trancelike, physically responsive movement. Though centuries after the disappearance of a creative oral tradition, Virgil’s lines on the Orphic singer Silenus in the Sixth Eclogue concentrate still on this essential attribute of rhythmical responsive movement.”
13{ }^{13} For imago as verbal description, approaching the sense of ecphrasis/descriptio, see TLL 7.1.410.4-19, and cf. G. Williams, “Conversing after Sunset: A Callimachean Echo in Ovid’s Exile Poetry,” CQ 41 (1991) 171-172, in regard to conflated meanings of imago in Pont. 2.4.
14{ }^{14} Thinking in Ovidian terms, we might say, “If Echo, then Narcissus” (J. Goldberg, Voice Terminal Echo: Postmodernism and English Renaissance Texts [New York 1986] 25); see Met. 3.339-510, with Goldberg 11-12, 28-29, and passim; also the discussion of the theme of reflection by G. Rosati, Narciso e Pigmalione: Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio (Florence 1983) 20-41, who cites much further bibliography. The analogy between visual and aural perception that exists in echo as imago vocis, however,
In Eclogue 6 the similarity between Tityrus describing the song of Silenus, an artist depicting Orpheus in performance, and a poet describing a depiction of Orpheus in an ecphrasis is brought to the fore, in that the manner in which Silenus’ performance is reported may in general be compared to the narrative technique of ancient ecphrasis, particularly the type of ecphrasis in which the poet does not describe the notional work of art directly, but rather narrates its manufacture. This is the manner of the description of the shield of Achilles in Iliad 18, which Lessing famously defended as a variety of narration rather than pure description. 15{ }^{15} Homer’s narrative positions the reader not as viewer of the work of art itself, but as observer of the artist Hephaestus as he creates. Each scene on the shield is described beginning with variations of a formula ε˙vδ′ε˙τı^θει\dot{\varepsilon} v \delta^{\prime} \dot{\varepsilon} \tau \hat{\imath} \theta \varepsilon \iota “and he put on it. . .” Tityrus’ description of the song of Silenus is likewise focused on the satyr’s authorship: the mythical singer is made the subject of verbs which introduce object noun clauses identifying the subjects of his song, “he was singing how …,” “and then he sings how,” etc. Couched in the narrative tenses of the imperfect and historical present, these phrases encourage readers to imagine the scene of Silenus and his audience through Tityrus’ narrative lens; Tityrus is in effect performing an ecphrasis of Silenus’ song. 16{ }^{16}
- is found as early as Aristotle (De An. 2.8), as noted by N. Scivoletto s.v. “eco” in the Enciclopedia Virgiliana. The semantics of imago, from the same root as μiμησıς\mu i \mu \eta \sigma ı \varsigma and imitatio, are discussed now by A. Manieri, L’immagine poetica nella teoria degli antichi: Phatasia ed enargeia (Pisa 1998 [Filologia e critica 82]) 19-20, tracing the affiliation with Greek φαvτασiα\varphi \alpha v \tau \alpha \sigma i \alpha. G. Nagy, Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond (Cambridge 1996) 58 n .67 has some remarks on the congeniality of metaphors for visual and auditory representation in archaic Greek poetics, already in the pseudo-Hesiodic Shield 279 and 348περiδεσ˙σφισιvαα˙γvvτoη˙χω˙348 \pi \varepsilon \rho i \delta \varepsilon \dot{\sigma} \sigma \varphi \iota \sigma \iota v \alpha \dot{\alpha} \gamma v v \tau o \dot{\eta} \chi \dot{\omega}, “and the sound [êkhô] was refracted all around them” (an ecphrastic context); see also 23-24. C. Segal, “Synaesthesia in Sophocles,” ICS 2 (1977) 88-96 discusses numerous examples of sounds in the plays accorded the imagery of vision (e.g., α˙χω˙τηλεφαvηη˙\dot{\alpha} \chi \dot{\omega} \tau \eta \lambda \varepsilon \varphi \alpha v \eta \dot{\eta}, Phil. 189). Reversing the trope, the same poet also ascribed speech to visual art, referring in the lost Tereus to Philomela’s weaving as η˙τη^ς\dot{\eta} \tau \hat{\eta} \varsigma κερκiδoςφωvη\kappa \varepsilon \rho \kappa i \delta o \varsigma \varphi \omega v \eta (Arist. Poet. 1454b36), a metaphor that provides the jumping-off point for Geoffrey Hartman’s essay, “The Voice of the Shuttle: Language from the Point of View of Literature,” in Beyond Formalism (New Haven 1970) 337-355.
15{ }^{15} See for instance D. Fowler, “Narrate and Describe: The Problem of Ecphrasis,” JRS 81 (1991) 27 and A. S. Becker, The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ecphrasis (Lanham, MD 1995) 13-22.
16{ }^{16} With videres in line 27 the reader is asked to visualize the effect of Silenus’ voice; videres, aspiceres, and such words directed to the reader and his mind’s eye are common in ecphrastic contexts (cf. Aen. 8.650, 676). C. Segal, “Caves, Pan, and Silenus: Virgil’s Sixth Eclogue and the Pastoral Epigrams of Theocritus,” ZA 26 (1976) 53-56 has noted ↩︎
The parallel between the foundational text for ecphrasis and Tityrus’ ecphrasis of Silenus’ song is confirmed by the fact that in Eclogue 6 Virgil uses a mode similar to that he would later adopt in the Aeneid when he most directly engages the presentation of the shield of Achilles. In describing the composition of the shield of Aeneas at the end of Aeneid 8 Virgil for the most part drops Homer’s focus on the artist at work. While he keeps Homer’s regular reference to the artist, he couches his description of Vulcan’s actions in the pluperfect tense, which serves to focalize the shield simultaneously through the firegod’s “authorial” activity and through the viewing of Aeneas. 17{ }^{17} In enumerating the individual scenes on the shield Virgil replaces Homer’s sequential description of Hephaestus’ actions with positional indicators, which may be excerpted as follows: illic … fecerat ignipotens (626-628), illic . . . fecerat (628-630), nec procul hinc . . . addiderat (635-637), etc. This technique corresponds directly to the varied main clauses that Tityrus uses to articulate Silenus’ song; through these and the repeated temporal adverb tum the narrative directs attention to the progress of the song through time: namque canebat uti . . . ut (31-33), hinc . . . refert (41-42), his adiungit (43), tum canit (61), tum (62), tum canit . . . ut . . . utque . . . ut (64-67), quid loquar aut . . . aut ut . . . narraverit (74-78), and finally omnia . . . ille canit (82-84). That the description of the song is articulated in terms of time and that of the shield in terms of space corresponds to the mimetic standing of each object within its represented world: the song has a definite progress through time as it is performed, while the shield, once created, exists in a single moment, with its figuration spreading over space. Thus the
- some similarities to “ecphrastic” epigrams. The depiction of Silenus also shows limited similarities to a North African mosaic of the third century A.D., discussed by E. de SaintDenis, “Le chant de Silène à la lumière d’une découverte récente,” RP 37 (1963) 23-40. I detect no signs of voice in this image, in contrast to representations of Orpheus. Famous singers are common subjects in the rhetorical tradition of ecphrasis: e.g., Philostr. Jun. Im. 6 (Orpheus), Callistr. Descript. 7 (Orpheus), and Philostr. Im. 1.10 (Amphion), all of which describe songs being performed within the images through the effects of voice and not the semantic content of the songs. Cf. also Philostr. Im. 2.18.5, a description of Polyphemus which does not describe the Cyclops in the act of singing, but rather indirectly relates the content of what he sang ( ω˙ς…ω˙ς…σ^δεı…ταv^τα\dot{\omega} \varsigma \ldots \dot{\omega} \varsigma \ldots \hat{\sigma} \delta \varepsilon \imath \ldots \tau \alpha \hat{v} \tau \alpha ), alluding in the process to the song of Polyphemus in Theoc. 11.
17{ }^{17} As D. West notes, “Cernere erat: The Shield of Aeneas,” PVS 15 (1975/76) 6, “in Virgil the pluperfects take us into the mind and eyes of Aeneas.” The ecphrasis of the frieze of the temple of Juno in Aeneid 1 begins as a narration of Aeneas’ act of viewing: namque videbat uti . . (466), and the line is an echo of Ecl. 6.31. ↩︎
manner in which each object is perceived is reflected in the way it is described. Furthermore, for his description of Aeneas’ reaction to the shield (talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis, / miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet, 729-730) Virgil has employed a self-reference back to Tityrus’ description of the reaction to Silenus’ song, Eclogue 6.29-30: nec tantum Phoebo gaudet Parnasia rupes, / nec tantum Rhodope miratur et Ismarus Orphea. In both Aeneid 8 and Eclogue 6 miratur serves to gloss Greek θαv~μα\theta \alpha \tilde{v} \mu \alpha from ecphrastic contexts. 18{ }^{18} Why amazement is conjoined with pleasure (gaudet) will be considered in a moment. Like the parallels between Silenus’ song and Orpheus on Damoetas’ cup in Eclogue 3, this parallel reveals a sense of the commensurability of songs and works of visual art as objects within a fictional world in terms of the effects they have on their represented audiences. The description by Tityrus of a song creates voice as something that can be heard within the fictional world in the same way that an ecphrasis creates something that can be seen. Orpheus on Damoetas’ cup and Silenus within Tityrus’ narration are thus truly comparable images of voice.
After the opening of Eclogue 6 and the famous recusatio (3-8; cf. Call. Aet. fr. 1.21-24 Pf.), the poem’s engagement with such narrative techniques as ecphrasis and the indirect reporting of an inset song may be considered a function of pastoral’s dialectical relationship with epic. It has furthermore generally been doubted that Eclogue 6 is a “Theocritean” poem; obvious allusions that would establish a direct intertextual link between Eclogue 6 and poems of Theocritus are not forthcoming. 19{ }^{19} In the complementary relationship, however, between a song and a work of visual art as artifacts which cause pleasure and amazement, Eclogue 6 is in fact drawing directly on Theocritus, especially Theocritus 1. While the description of the goatherd’s cup in Idyll 1.27−561.27-56 is in part an epic ecphrasis aspiring to the status of a micro-
- 18{ }^{18} See R. F. Thomas, “Callimachus, the Victoria Berenices, and Roman Poetry,” CQ 33 (1983) 92-113, at 108-109; cf. Hes. Asp. 140 θαv~μα\theta \alpha \tilde{v} \mu \alpha i δεσθαl,318θαv~μα\delta \varepsilon \sigma \theta \alpha \mathrm{l}, 318 \theta \alpha \tilde{v} \mu \alpha i δεv~v\delta \varepsilon \tilde{v} v к αi\alpha i Znví; Hom. Il. 18.549 tò δη˙περiθαv~μα\delta \dot{\eta} \pi \varepsilon \rho i \theta \alpha \tilde{v} \mu \alpha т ε\varepsilon tıvкto; Mosch. Eur 37-38 tó ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 48: …mu \varepsilon ̲́ \gamma \alpha θαv~μα;\theta \alpha \tilde{v} \mu \alpha ; Cat. 64.51 mira . . . arte. On Theoc. 1.56 αiπoλı\alpha i \pi o \lambda ı кòv θαη˙μα⋅\theta \alpha \dot{\eta} \mu \alpha \cdot т ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 54: …pa \varepsilon ̲́ ~ \tau v \thet… α˙τζ˙ζα\dot{\alpha} \tau \dot{\zeta} \zeta \alpha see further below. Becker (above, n. 15) deems thauma to be the implicit or explicit rhetorical goal of Homeric ecphrasis; see for instance pages 128-130.
19{ }^{19} For instance S. Posch, Beobachtungen zur Theokritnachwirkung bei Vergil (Innsbruck 1969 [Commentationes Aenipontanae 19]) records only 5 Theocritean correspondences for this poem, fewer than for any other Eclogue and none of them, beyond the Syracosio . . . versu of line 1, particularly striking. ↩︎
and oeuvre in which it appears like Homer’s shield of Achilles, 20{ }^{20} in addition to this extra-mimetic or rhetorical function the ecphrastic cup stands also in a relationship with a second inset of the poem, Thyrsis’ song of the “sufferings of Daphnis” (Theoc. 1.19). The cup, along with three milkings from a goat, is offered by the aipolos as a reward for Thyrsis’ song (25-27). This reciprocity between an inset song and an ecphrastic object, along with other related passages in Theocritus, will be of use in clarifying the song of Silenus and its ecphrastic presentation.
At the conclusion of Thyrsis’ performance in Theocritus 1 the unnamed goatherd who is his audience describes the pleasure he derived from hearing the Daphnis song (146-148):
ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 41: …ho \varepsilon ̲́ \varsigma toı με\mu \varepsilon ’ λıτoς\lambda ı \tau o \varsigma tò καλ\kappa \alpha \lambda òv ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 15: \sigma \tau o ̲́ \mu \alpha, \T…, ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 106: …alpha \delta o ̲́ v \omega v, \k… ’ Aí γiλω\gamma i \lambda \omega í ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 64: …au \rho \omega ̲́ \gamma o ı \va… ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 35: … \varepsilon i ̲́ \alpha v, \tau….
This way of representing Thyrsis’ poetic talents, saying that he is a better singer than the cicada and deserves to have his mouth filled with sweets, “alludes” in Theocritus’ cross-referential manner to the opening of the same poem (1-11), where the sweetness of poetic performance is in evidence ( ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 23: …lpha} \delta v ̲́ \tau \imath tò ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 142: …kappa \alpha i ̲́ ~ \tau v ́ / \…; ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '̀' at position 85: …ta ่ v, \tau o ̲̀ ~ \tau \vareps… Related also is the passage
20{ }^{20} In general pastoral’s deployment of ecphrasis, from the cup in Theocritus 1 on, can be considered a feature of its self-definition over against epic; see in particular D. Halperin, Before Pastoral: Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry (New Haven 1983) 161-189; also F. Cairns, “Theocritus’ First Idyll: The Literary Programme,” WS NF 18 (1985) 89-113 and K. Gutzwiller, Theocritus’ Pastoral Analogies (Madison 1991) 90-94. For the use of Homer and Hesiod in the ecphrasis of the cup, see U. Ott, Die Kunst des Gegensatzes in Theokrits Hirtengedichten (Hildesheim 1969 [Spudasmata 22]) 93-110. Hunter (above, n. 8) ad 1.27-61: “it is clear that the cup is to be seen as a ‘bucolicisation’ of the Shield [of Achilles].” Concerning the higher register occupied by the ecphrasis of the cups in Eclogue 3, see C. Segal, “Vergil’s Caelatum Opus,” AJP 88 (1967) 279-308; R. Faber, “Vergil Eclogue 3.37, Theocritus 1, and Hellenistic Ecphrasis,” AJP 116 (1995) 411-417 sees in caelatum an ironic gesture towards the expected material of ecphrastic objects, namely metal, as with the shield of Achilles.
21{ }^{21} See Hunter (above, n. 8) ad Theoc. 1.1 α˙δv\dot{\alpha} \delta v. Further concerning Theocritean intratextuality see K.-H. Stanzel, “Selbstzitate in den mimischen Gedichten Theokrits,” in M. A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, and G. C. Wakker eds., Theocritus (Groningen 1996 [Hellenistica Groningana 2]) 205-225.
in Theocritus 7 concerning the divine singer Comatas already mentioned (80−85):(80-85):
The favor of the Muses, and the “sweet nectar” they pour on his lips, results in Comatas’ being fed by bees, that is eating honeycomb, during his incarceration in a larnax. In the light of Theocritus 1.1-11 and 146-148, as well as other passages, 22{ }^{22} it is clear that Comatas both produces and experiences “sweetness” as a poet, and by getting a mouthful of honey he actually experiences what is a hypothetical reward for poetic talent in Theocritus 1.146-148. When the speaker of Theocritus 7.85-89 expresses his wish to have heard Comatas “sweetly playing” ( α˙δν˙μελ\dot{\alpha} \delta \dot{\nu} \mu \varepsilon \lambda เ σδδμ˙ενoς,89\sigma \delta \delta \dot{\mu} \varepsilon \nu o \varsigma, 89 ) his words, like those of the goatherd to Thyrsis, are echoing the opening of Theocritus 1: α˙δν˙τιτν˙ψιθν˙ρισμακαi\dot{\alpha} \delta \dot{\nu} \tau \iota \tau \dot{\nu} \psi \iota \theta \dot{\nu} \rho \iota \sigma \mu \alpha \kappa \alpha i ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 68: …\alpha i \pi o ̲́ \lambda \varep….
This Theocritean theme informs the conjunction of gaudet with miratur in Eclogue 6 and Aeneid 8. The sweetness and pleasure, η˙δovη\dot{\eta} \delta o v \eta, of poetry in Theocritus reflects post-Aristotelian literary aesthetics in which pleasure is singled out as an express purpose of poetry. 23{ }^{23} In Theocritus 1 and 7η˙δovη˙7 \dot{\eta} \delta o v \dot{\eta} is a function of poetic performance for both the poet and his audience. The goatherd of Theocritus 1 experiences a song about the “sufferings of Daphnis” as pleasure, like that he and Thyrsis derive from hearing each other’s music and the music of nature in lines 1−111-11. For his part Comatas has the pain of confinement in a larnax
- 22{ }^{22} The favor of the Muses is associated with honey and sweetness also at Hes. Theog. 81-84, 97; further examples are adduced by Gow ad 7.82 .
23{ }^{23} See R. Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford 1968) 58, 74-75, 166-167, and cf. Manieri (above, n. 14) 124-126 on η˙δovη˙\dot{\eta} \delta o v \dot{\eta} and τε˙ρψις\tau \dot{\varepsilon} \rho \psi \iota \varsigma in rhetorical criticism (i.e., Dion. Hal. Epist. ad Pomp., 239-240 Us.-Rad.). Hunter (above, n. 8) notes ad Theoc. 1.1 that “in later rhetorical theory, η˙δovη˙\dot{\eta} \delta o v \dot{\eta}, like ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 27: …bda v \kappa o ̲́ \tau \eta \var…, was a quality of thought and writing particularly associated with ‘bucolic’ and images of nature.” ↩︎
translated into the sweetness of poetic performance and the favor of the Muses. In Theocritus 1, as in certain theories of aesthetics, a complement to such varieties of poetic η˙δovη\dot{\eta} \delta o v \eta is “amazement” ε¨κπληξις\ddot{\varepsilon} \kappa \pi \lambda \eta \xi \iota \varsigma, as indicated directly by the audience response provoked by the pendant to Thyrsis’ Daphnis song, the ecphrastic cup described in lines 27-56. The cup is said to be an ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 10: \alpha i ̲́ \pi 0 \lambda … “a goatherd’s marvel, a wonder to amaze your heart” (56). The degree to which the two performances of the goatherd and Thyrsis are reciprocal suggests that both cup and song both delight and amaze, 24{ }^{24} just as do the shield of Aeneas and the ecphrastic song of Silenus. 25{ }^{25}
The Theocritean hendiadys of pleasure and amazement, as well as the narrative technique of Eclogue 6, assimilate the representation of song and voice to the representations of visual art. This analogy is in fact as old as ecphrasis itself; on the shield of Achilles it takes the form of the young aoidos singing the Linus song (Il. 18.569-572). 26{ }^{26} A recent article documents the effect created when ecphrasis contains voice, whether the singer on the shield of Achilles, the talking ram on Jason’s cloak (A.R. Arg. 1.763-767), or the long background narrative and oratio recta “within” the embroidery in Catullus 64.2764 .{ }^{27} Because the description itself is in somebody’s voice, whether a narrator or a dramatized character performing the ecphrasis, where a verbal description meets words being described, readers may experience a frisson of recognition that voice “always retains its noncontradictory references to phenomena in the created world and to phenomena of the discourse.” 28{ }^{28} By describing a song and a voice itself as an ecphrastic object, rather than as notionally present within a work of visual art, Eclogue 6 is wholly
- 24{ }^{24} Hunter (above, n. 8) ad 56; see “Longinus” De subl. 15.2 with Russell’s note, where he cites Plu. De aud. poet. 25D: tò γα˙ρε˙μπαθε˙ς\gamma \dot{\alpha} \rho \dot{\varepsilon} \mu \pi \alpha \theta \dot{\varepsilon} \varsigma кai ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 103: … \varepsilon i ̲́ \sigma \tau \e… ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 100: … \varepsilon i ̲́ \sigma \tau \e…. See also Manieri (above, n. 14) 55-60, 85-88: in De subl. 15.2ε¨κπληξις15.2 \ddot{\varepsilon} \kappa \pi \lambda \eta \xi \iota \varsigma is notably a product of φαvτασiα\varphi \alpha v \tau \alpha \sigma i \alpha. On “amazement” as a reaction appropriate particularly to tragedy and epic, see R. Heinze, Virgil’s Epic Technique, trans. H. and D. Harvey and F. Robertson (Berkeley 1993) 370 with n. 1.
25{ }^{25} Cf. also Il. 19.15-18, Achilles’ reaction to the shield made for him by Hephaestus: ω˙ςεiδ\dot{\omega} \varsigma \varepsilon i \delta, ParseError: KaTeX parse error: Expected 'EOF', got '́' at position 110: …delta v \chi o ̲́ \lambda 0 \var…; see Becker (above, n. 15) 149. Cf. Pac. fr. 330 W: sed nescioquidnam est, animus mi horrescit, et gliscit gaudium; possibly also Lucr. 3.28-29 me . . divina voluptas / percipit atque horror.
26{ }^{26} See Becker (above, n. 15) 135-137.
27{ }^{27} A. Laird, “Sounding Out Ecphrasis: Art and Text in Catullus 64,” JRS 83 (1993) 18−3018-30.
28{ }^{28} Ross (above, n. 5) 12. ↩︎
located on that point where the text and its represented world intersect. And so in presenting the song of Silenus through Tityrus’ narrative frame Virgil has created a type of imago vocis that bridges a number of semantic fields. Imago in Latin may describe a literary copy of a previous work; in this sense Silenus’ voice is an imago of that of Apollonius’ Orpheus. Tityrus’ description also creates an image of a voice as a presence in the fictional world in the same way that an ecphrasis creates a piece of visual art. 29{ }^{29} But it is as echo that “images of voice” are most associated with pastoral. For Virgil, rather than being just a precious trope of the sympathy between man and nature or a worst case scenario of the pathetic fallacy, echo creates “phenomenal voice” and is in fact parallel to the description of the effect of sound as a means of representing voice in his fictional landscapes. 30{ }^{30} Even if in English the almost wholly visual sense of the word “image” is not true to the Latin idiom, 31{ }^{31} through the similarities to another representational strategy of
29{ }^{29} In Epist. 84.8 Seneca tries to kill the metaphor of imago: Etiam si cuius in te comparebit similitudo, quem admiratio tibi altius fixerit, similem esse te volo quomodo filium, non quomodo imaginem; imago res mortua est. This letter is very well discussed by T. Greene, The Light in Troy (New Haven 1982) 73-76, who calls it “the most coherent and self-sufficient discussion [of imitation] by any Roman” (73). The static lifelessness of imago results, as Greene intuits, from deciding the sense of the word for a visual object, as opposed to echo; Greene translates “not as a picture resembles its original; for a picture is a lifeless thing.” In Ovid Echo survives physical death as voice (Met. 3.398-401), unlike Narcissus, persistently entrapped by visual reflection in the underworld (502-505); see J. Brenkman, “Narcissus in the Text,” Georgia Review 30 (1976) 293-327, esp. 306-308. By excerpting Seneca’s remark about the preferability of filial resemblance, T. Hubbard, The Pipes of Pan (Ann Arbor 1998) 11-12 makes him a proto-Bloomian.
30{ }^{30} Thus for instance in Ecl. 1.36-39 the mourning landscape of Theocritus 1 has become a representation of the sound of Amaryllis’ human voice echoing around her as she laments the absence of Tityrus, and not merely a sign that "der Sänger in seinem Bereich Glück und Segen verbreitet " (V. Pöschl, Die Hirtendichtung Vergils [Heidelberg 1964] 40). Echo fascinates later pastoralists such as Spenser, Marvell, and Milton as well as their critics: for instance, Goldberg (above, n. 14) and J. Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkeley 1981), which traces echo’s passage from sonic phenomenon to literary trope. For the Eclogues specifically, see M. Desport, “L’écho de la nature et la poésie dans les Églogues de Virgile,” REA 43 (1941) 270-281; P. Damon, Modes of Analogy in Ancient and Medieval Verse (Berkeley 1961 [University of California Publications in Classical Philology 15.6]) 281-290; and for a different view, A. J. Boyle, “Virgil’s Pastoral Echo,” Ramus 6 (1977) 121-131.
31{ }^{31} In regard to Wordsworth’s “Ye voices, and ye Shadows / And Images of voice” Hollander (above, n. 30) 19 writes, “The traditional Latin imago here becomes a complex figure, blending a far more visual meaning of image (appositive to ‘shadow’) with something approaching our modern sense of image meaning ‘trope’.”
narrative, namely the creation of visual objects of the fictional world through ecphrasis, the comparison between visual and verbal representation inscribed in the Latin word imago emerges from Silenus’ ecphrastic voice. 32{ }^{32}
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST
32{ }^{32} A similar statement of the commensurability of represented song and ecphrastic objects emerges from structural pairings between an inset song and an ecphrasis, like that in Theoc. 1. The song of Orpheus in Arg. 1 is pendant to the ecphrasis of Jason’s cloak in book 2: in terms of the events depicted, the cloak picks up the story where the song leaves off; see R. L. Hunter, The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies (Cambridge 1993) 52-59. The song of Demodocus in Od. 8 is a primary model not only for the song of Iopas in Aen. 1, but also for the ecphrasis of the temple frieze; see now M. Putnam, Virgil’s Epic Designs (New Haven 1998) 47-54. Moreover Iopas’ song alludes also to the shield of Achilles: Aen. 1.742-744 hic canit . . . Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones; Il. 18.483-486 ε˙vμε˙vγαiαvε˙τεvξ′…Πληiαδ˙δαςθ′′γαδδαςτετα˙τε\dot{\varepsilon} v \mu \dot{\varepsilon} v \gamma \alpha i \alpha v \dot{\varepsilon} \tau \varepsilon v \xi^{\prime} \ldots \Pi \lambda \eta i \alpha \dot{\delta} \delta \alpha \varsigma \theta^{\prime}{ }^{\prime} \gamma \alpha \delta \delta \alpha \varsigma \tau \varepsilon \tau \dot{\alpha} \tau \varepsilon σθε˙voςζΩρiωvoς\sigma \theta \dot{\varepsilon} v o \varsigma \zeta \Omega \rho i \omega v o \varsigma. In Cat. 64 the ecphrastic coverlet is parallel to the inset song of the Parcae in that both represent the virtutes of the past age (51; 348, 357).