The lover who dies of love was evidently a motif that appeared in Gallus’ Amores, which became famous and influential, if we can judge by Vergil (Eclogue 10) and Propertius (2.34). Vergil portrays Gallus as consumed with love: Lycoris has followed another, Gallus cannot resign himself to this discidium, and he is dying (indigno cum Gallus amore peribat, Ecl. 10.10). Propertius next places Gallus in the Underworld, where he washes his wounds, having died “for the beautiful Lycoris” (et formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus / mortuus inferna vulnera lavit aqua, 2.34.91–92). There is another indication favoring the hypothesis that Gallus liked to imagine his death as immanent, and due to love. Vergil and Horace both seem to be alluding to erotic elegiac discourse in a spirit of parody when each of them introduces an abandoned lover who has decided to kill himself. In Virgil’s Eclogue 8, Damon, an elegiac lover in shepherd’s clothing, announces that he is about to jump into the sea because the woman he loves has married someone else.1 His announcement inspires little confidence, however, because his suicide is conditioned upon the prior occurrence of an unlikely event, a flood that will swallow the whole world (Ecl. 8.58–60). Similarly, in Horace’s Ode 3.27, when Europa complains of having been abandoned by the bull that brought her to Crete, she lists some of the ways in which she might end her life, each of them more improbable than the others. What is more, she simultaneously alludes to her own beauty with a rather suspicious complacency: utinam inter errem / nuda leones. / … speciosa quaero / pascere tigris. / … potes hac ab orno / pendulum … / laedere collum. / sive te rupes et acuta leto / saxa delectant, age te procellae / crede veloci (“if only I could wander nude among lions … beautiful as I am, I want to feed feed tigers …. You can break your neck by hanging it from this elm. Or, if cliffs and rocks sharp to cause death please you, come on! Trust the swift storm,” 51–52, 55–56, 58–63).
Even though it enjoyed such distinguished precedents, suicide for love is not a motif that Ovid liked. One of his most distinctive traits is that he always tries to keep erotic relationships under control. After writing about the art of love, he wrote about remedies for love; and it is at the beginning of the Remedia amoris that such distancing is clearly seen. After enumerating different ways that desperate lovers had chosen to commit suicide, Ovid concludes by apostrophizing the god Amor: qui, nisi desierit, misero periturus amore est / desinat, et nulli funeris auctor eris (“whoever is going to die because of an unhappy love unless he renounces it, let him renounce, and you will not be the author of anyone’s death,” Rem. 21–22). I would like to show that elsewhere in his work Ovid condemned such a terrible resolution more precisely by purposely borrowing an example that had probably been used by Gallus, namely, that of Phyllis, a Thracian princess who killed herself because she believed she had been abandoned by her lover Demophoon. After examining why Ovid disapproved of this radical choice and considering his arguments against it, I shall read from a similar perspective his version of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, two young lovers who kill themselves, one after the other, for love. It is a story that Ovid doubtless wanted to be “exemplary,” but not in a positive way, as is often believed.
1 Phyllis
Phyllis offered hospitality to Demophoon, son of Theseus, when he was shipwrecked returning from Troy, and she fell in love with him. Eventually Demophoon left for Athens, promising to return; but on the appointed day, his ship did not appear. After lamenting for a long time, Phyllis hanged herself. In addition to Ovid’s version of the story, we have those of two mythographers, Apollodorus and Hyginus, and two commentators of late antiquity, Servius and Tzetzes.2 It is probable that the myth of Phyllis had earlier been narrated in the Aetia of Callimachus, though all we have is a fragment that is too short to give us an idea of the whole story. That said, the fragment clearly emphasizes male perfidy:
1.1 Phyllis, an Exemplum of the Effects of Furor in Gallus’ Amores?
In an earlier paper,5 I examined the texts in which Vergil, Horace, and Propertius all use the name Phyllis, but to designate, respectively, a shepherdess, a slave, or a musician.6 All of these passages evoke Demophoon’s lover by alluding to some famous details in her story. Each of the poets deals with themes of fidelity and infidelity, constancy, and renuntiatio amoris, and each develops his own point of view in accordance with the literary genre he has chosen, be it bucolic, lyric, or elegiac. Their similar way of alluding to the myth of Phyllis seems to me an indication that they were following some earlier treatment of this story by a Roman poet. In that article, I proposed Gallus as a candidate, because in Eclogue 10, Vergil makes Gallus say that, if he had been an Arcadian shepherd, he would have loved Phyllis, or Amyntas, or quicumque furor (38). The situation d’énonciation, or “utterance situation,” implies that the words attributed by Vergil to his friend contain words and motifs taken from Gallus’ own poems. Because poets do not deploy proper names at random, it is very likely that the names of Phyllis and Amyntas are part of the elements alluding to Gallus’ Amores. Throughout his speech in Eclogue 10, Gallus places in opposition pastoral poetry and elegy: fidelity and constancy in love would be characteristic of the life of the shepherds in Arcadia; the themes associated with elegy are the infidelity of Lycoris and Gallus’ own inability to renounce his love for her. Perhaps, then, he had used the story of Phyllis in the Amores to illustrate these elegiac themes; perhaps he had associated it with the themes of male perfidy (as does Callimachus7) and furor. But what did Ovid, for his part, do?
1.2 Phyllis According to Ovid: A Woman Who Did Not Know How to Love
At the beginning of Ars amatoria 3, Phyllis is included with Medea, Ariadne, and Dido in a list of women who were disappointed by perfidious men (31–32) because they “did not know how to love”: quid vos perdiderit, dicam; nescistis amare; / defuit ars vobis; arte perennat amor (“What led you to ruin, I now will say: you did not know how to love; you lacked art: art sustains love,” 41–42). According to Hyginus (Fab. 59), the day when Demophoon was to arrive, Phyllis ran nine times to the shore. For this reason the place was called in Greek “the nine roads” (enneados). The mythographer adds that the trees that grew on the girl’s grave mourned her death when their leaves dried and fell.8 For this reason the word for leaves is in Greek phylla. When Ovid evokes Phyllis, he alludes to these two details associated with her despair and her death (Ars 3.37–38):
Quaere novem cur una viae dicantur, et audidepositis siluas Phyllida flesse comis.
Find out why a single road is called the nine roads, and learn that the forests mourned Phyllis by dropping their hair.
The four heroines chosen by Ovid as examples of women who did not know how to love, Medea, Ariadne, Phyllis, and Dido, also feature in his Heroides. Does this interpretation also apply to Heroides 2? It has been noted that the purported “letters” of Phyllis and Dido, written shortly before their respective suicides, end with words that are to be inscribed on their tombstones.9 Both make the same subtle distinction between the hand that performed the fatal gesture (their own) and the cause of their death, which is attributable to the unfaithful lover (2.147–148; 7.195–196):
PHYLLIDA DEMOPHOON LETO DEDIT HOSPES AMANTEM;ILLE NECIS CAUSAM PRAEBUIT, IPSA MANUM.
He who was her guest, Demophoon, led Phyllis, who loved him, to death; he provided the cause of death, she herself the hand.
PRAEBUIT AENEAS ET CAUSAM MORTIS ET ENSEM;
IPSA SUA DIDO CONCIDIT USA MANU.
Aeneas provided the cause of death and the sword: Dido herself fell under a blow from her own hand.
Dido writes her letter with the sword given her by Aeneas on her lap (et gremio Troicus ensis adest, 184). This gift, now bathed in tears, she says, will be stained with blood, and it will not be the first time her chest will be struck, since Love has already wounded her (189–190). Phyllis demonstrates a similar ingenuity in her search for a death that “signifies,” that is, one that makes an accusation. She cherishes the idea of several possibilities, each of which has its advantages. She could jump into the nearby sea: hinc mihi suppositas immittere corpus in undas / mens fuit (“I had the idea of hurling my body from this place into the waters below,” 133–134); perhaps the waves would take her body to the shores of Athens to appear before Demophoon’s eyes: ad tua me fluctus proiectam litora portent / occurramque oculis intumulata tuis (“may the waves bear and cast me up onto your shores and may I appear, unburied, before your eyes,” 135–136). Phyllis is pleased to imagine the regret that this spectacle would tear from the lover even if he were the worst of all men: duritia ferrum ut superes adamantaque teque: / “Non tibi sic, dices, Phylli, sequendus eram” (“Even if you in your hardness surpass iron, adamant, and your own self, you will say, ‘This is not the way, Phyllis, for you to follow me!’ ” 137–138). After having briefly discussed two other possible deaths, by poison or by sword, Phyllis lingers on a final method that would also have a symbolic significance (141–142):
colla quoque, infidis quia se nectenda lacertispraebuerunt, laqueis implicuisse iuvat.
My neck too, because it gave itself to be embraced by unfaithful arms, it pleases me to tie into a noose.
The word complexus designates a moment during a night of lovemaking that elegiac lovers prolong and always want to repeat. The mortal embrace by which Phyllis chooses to end her life is therefore another way of incriminating Demophoon, whose last gesture towards her was a very long embrace: ausus es amplecti colloque infusus amantis (“you dared to embrace me, and lying on your lover’s neck,” 93).10 The end of the verse refers to Vergil, who wrote about Vulcan: optatos dedit amplexus … / coniugis infusus gremio (“he gave her the embraces she hoped for … lying on his spouse’s breast,” Aen. 8.405–406). It is no coincidence that Ovid replaced Virgil’s gremio with collo.11 Therefore, it seems perfectly appropriate that the Phyllis of the Heroides in her epitaph designates Demophoon as “the odious cause” (causa invidiosa, 145) of her death. But perhaps another reading is also possible?
1.3 Phyllis’ Suicide: A Choice Criticized by Ovid
Whenever Ovid alludes to Phyllis’ story after the Heroides, he always disapproves of her amorous behavior. In Ars 3, where he recommends avoiding some kinds of men, he gives Phyllis as an example of women who let themselves be seduced by a fallacious man (3.455–456; 459–460):
discite ab alterius vestris timuisse querelis;ianua fallaci ne sit aperta viro…et tibi, Demophoon, Thesei criminis heres,Phyllide decepta nulla relicta fides.
Learn to be afraid from the laments of others; let your door not be opened to a fallacious man … and in you, Demophoon, heir of Theseus and his crime, having tricked Phyllis, no confidence remains.
In the Remedia, when Ovid advises one to beware the effects of solitude, he chooses the example of Phyllis, explaining that she died because she had no one beside her: quid, nisi secretae laeserunt Phyllida silvae? / certa necis causa est: incomitata fuit (“What harmed Phyllis, if not the isolated forests? The cause of her death is beyond doubt: she had no companions,” 591–592). The surprising hypothesis of line 591 serves to highlight the ingenious idea developed later: when she was in despair, Phyllis was surrounded only by trees in which she saw an easy means of ending her life. I quote the end of the long passage in which Ovid describes and analyzes her unhappy state of mind (Rem. 599–696):
Limes erat tenuis longa subnubilus umbra,qua tulit illa suos ad mare saepe pedes.Nona terebatur miserae via: “viderit,” inquit,et spectat zonam pallida facta suam,adspicit et ramos: dubitat refugitque quod audet;et timet et digitos ad sua colla refert.Sithoni, tunc certe vellem non sola fuisses;non flesset positis Phyllida silva comis.
There was a narrow path a little dark due to the long shadow of the foliage; she often passed this way when her feet took her to the sea. The unhappy girl had walked the road nine times: “it is up to him to see,” she says and, turning pale, she looks at her belt, considers the branches, and brings her fingers to her neck. Daughter of Sithon, at this moment at least I would have liked you not to be alone: the forest would not have mourned Phyllis by losing its hair.
After reconstructing the dramatic moment in which Phyllis made her fatal decision, the author intervenes to regret that she was, unfortunately, alone at that time. The reader can only agree with him: Phyllis missed a friendly voice, like Ovid’s. The poet had already said it at the beginning of the poem: vixisset Phyllis, si me foret usa magistro, / et per quod novies, saepius isset iter (“Phyllis would have lived if she had had me as a teacher, and she would have walked more often the road she traveled nine times,” Rem. 55–56).
But perhaps Ovid was already of this opinion in Heroides 2. Line 27 supports this theory: dic mihi quid feci, nisi non sapienter amavi (“tell me what I did, except that I loved unwisely”). When she met Demophoon, Phyllis now understands, she was without experience; she was deceived because she knew nothing about the artes that men use when they want to seduce a girl (2.49–52, 63–65):12
credidimus blandis, quorum tibi copia, verbis,credidimus generi nominibusque tuis,credidimus lacrimis; an et hae simulare docentur?hae quoque habent artes quaque iubentur eunt?…fallere credentem non est operosa puellamgloria; simplicitas digna favore fuit.sum decepta tuis et amans et femina uerbis.
I trusted the caressing words that you used in abundance. I trusted your lineage and the great names of your ancestors. I trusted in tears; do they too have their artifices and arise upon request? They too have their artifices and arise upon request … To deceive a credulous girl is not a difficult glory to acquire; my simplicity also deserved favorable treatment; I have been deceived by your words both as a lover and as a woman.
Even if Phyllis now sees Demophoon’s game, and his perfidy, clearly, the despair caused by his abandonment continues to torment her and leads her to death.13 It has been noted that Ovid seems to have chosen a version of the story that is totally unfavorable to Demophoon, unlike Servius. According to Vergil’s commentator (on Buc. 5.10), Phyllis was changed after her death into an almond tree without leaves, but Demophoon returned to Thrace. When he learned what had happened, he hugged the tree trunk, qui velut sponsi sentiret adventum, folia emisit (“which, as if she had felt the arrival of her fiancé, sprouted leaves”).14 This version was known in Ovid’s time: Vergil plays with this final trajectory in Eclogue 7 when, imagining an ingenious variation, he associates the revival of the forests with the return of Phyllis, and not of her lover: Phyllidis adventu nostrae nemus omne virebit (“When our Phyllis arrives, the whole forest will revive,” Ecl. 7.59).15 Perhaps Ovid’s Phyllis made too rash a decision by killing herself: she should have waited a little longer. I have no space here to develop this interpretation (which must, however, be taken into account when discussing the reading semel / quater in line 8).16 Instead, I now propose to read in the light of these Ovidian texts about Phyllis one of the most famous love stories told in the Metamorphoses: that of Pyramus and Thisbe.
2 Pyramus and Thisbe: An “Exemplary” Tale?
Why compare the story of Phyllis and Demophoon with that of Pyramus and Thisbe? Because they have narrative sequences in common, or ones that play on the same elements. Demophoon has not returned on the appointed day; Pyramus did not arrive at the meeting place when he should have done so: he set out later, and therefore too late (serius egressus, Met. 4.105). The end result is the same: like Phyllis, Thisbe kills herself, proclaiming Pyramus responsible for this fatal act. To be sure, there is an important difference: Thisbe kills herself because Pyramus had killed himself earlier. He decided to die because he believed, wrongly, that he was responsible for Thisbe’s death. In the end, this really will be the case, precisely because Pyramus started the chain of decisions. I would like to show that Ovid has designed his story so as to lead his reader not only to deplore this double suicide but also to condemn the choice to die for love. As in Heroides 2, the fault apparently lies with the boy.
2.1 Thisbe: The Behavior of a Perfect Elegiac Lover
As their fathers are opposed to their love, Pyramus and Thisbe have decided to meet each other outside the city. Thisbe is called “clever” (callida, 4.93) when she leaves home “through the darkness” (per tenebras, 93) with her face veiled, eluding the surveillance of her family (fallitque suos, 94); Ovid adds that “love made her bold” (audacem faciebat amor, 96). These two traits, cleverness and boldness, resemble those of the ideal puella dreamed of by the elegiac poets. As has been observed, Thisbe behaves like Delia, of whom Tibullus says in poem 1.6, iam Delia furtim / nescio quem tacita callida nocte fovet (“clever Delia is already coddling someone secretly in the silent night,” 5–6), and to whom he recommends in 1.2, tu quoque ne timide custodes, Delia, falle; / audendum est: fortes adiuvat ipsa Venus (“You too, Delia, do not be afraid when you deceive your guardians; one must be bold: Venus herself helps those who are brave,” 15–16).17 When Thisbe sees from a distance a lioness attracted by a spring, she proves to be clever: she immediately flees and hides in a cave. In her escape, however, she loses her veil, which the beast tears to pieces before it returns to the forest.
2.2 Pyramus’s Death: A Hasty Decision Described without Empathy
If Thisbe is the “ideal” elegiac puella (a girl, in love, resourceful), what about Pyramus? He can certainly be compared to an elegiac lover, but one that puellae would regard with disappointment. In fact, he resembles Demophoon, whose delay causes the death of his girlfriend, except that, unlike Phyllis’ lover, Pyramus considers himself guilty (4.110–112):
nostra nocens anima est; ego te, miseranda, peremi,in loca plena metus qui iussi nocte veniresnec prior huc veni.
My soul is guilty; pitiable girl, it is I who killed you when I asked you to come to these places full of terror at night, and did not myself come first.
Pyramus not only feels responsible, but wants to die immediately: “una duos,” inquit, “nox perdet amantes” (“one night,” he says, “will cause the end of two lovers,” 108). He also wishes to be torn apart by a beast, and describes this death as a punishment with a grandiloquence that allows one to suspect a certain distancing on Ovid’s part (112–114):
nostrum divellite corpuset scelerata fero consumite viscera morsu,o quicumque sub hac habitatis rupe, leones.
Rip my body apart and ruin these criminal innards with your ferocious bite, o lions, all of you who live under these rocks.
Because hoping for death would be the act of a coward (sed timidi est optare necem, 115), after drenching Thisbe’s veil with tears Pyramus kills himself with his sword: “accipe nunc,” inquit, “nostri quoque sanguinis haustus” (“Now,” he says, “have a drink of my blood, too,” 118). Ovid then makes a comparison that has been much discussed (121–124):18
cruor emicat alte,non aliter quam cum vitiato fistula plumboscinditur et tenui stridente foramine longaseiaculatur aquas atque ictibus aera rumpit.
The blood spurts up as high as when a pipe, because the lead is not sound, breaks, and from the thin crack with a shrill whistle shoots out long jets of water and cuts through the air with its shootings.
The trivial nature of the object, a lead pipe, is surprising, as is the fact that this trivial incident is described at such length. As any comparison, positive or negative, has an impact on how its subject is viewed, Pyramus’ death then cannot really be considered tragic. But what did the author intend? As often, intertextual relationships can give us some clues. First, Charles Segal has highlighted the sexual symbolism of the Ovidian comparison.19 Next, taking up this point of view, Stephen Hinds noted that these verses refer to Lucretius, particularly a passage from Book 4 in which “the word ictus (‘stroke’) is openly used in connection with male ejaculation.”20 Lucretius describes the phenomenon that is produced when a teenager is sexually aroused and his sperm (humanum semen, 1040) makes its way through his genitals (DRN 4.1045–1052):
inritata tument loca semine, fitque voluntaseicere id quo se contendit dira lubido,idque petit corpus mens unde est saucia amore.namque omnes plerumque cadunt in volnus, et illamemicat in partem sanguis unde icimur ictu,et si comminus est, hostem ruber occupat umor.sic igitur Veneris qui telis accipit ictus.
These parts when irritated swell with semen, and there develops a will to cast it out where the sexual drive, terrible as it is, strives to go; and the body seeks out that from which the mind has received the wound of love. For everyone for the most part falls on their wound and the blood spurts in the direction from which the blow has wounded us, and if it is close, the enemy is covered by the red fluid. That happens when you are struck by Venus’s missiles.
Here the ejaculation of the teenage lover into the body that provoked his desire is compared to the spurt of the blood of a wounded man whose blood gushes upon the enemy who struck him. Ovid shares with this passage the words emicat (121), eiaculatur (124), and ictibus (124).21 These are just a few words, but the likelihood that they refer to Lucretius’s text is increased by the fact that Pyramus himself is an adolescent lover. Otherwise, what we find in the Metamorphoses is not a comparison, but a transformation: the young lover becomes a wounded man, who can never satisfy his desire. If we refer to the text of Lucretius, it seems right to interpret the tree with white berries that is covered with Pyramus’ blood as equivalent to the origin of Pyramus’ desire, that is, as an image of the beloved. If, however, it is true, as Carole Newlands puts it, that “Pyramus’ manner of dying suggests a gigantic orgasm,” then at the same time the “ejaculation” of blood (instead of sperm) cruelly highlights the boy’s failure.22
2.3 How to Interpret This Break in the Tone of the Narration?
According to Newlands, Ovid’s intention was to parody the ancient novel.23 A characteristic ingredient of the novel is a mistake combined with a suicide attempt. This circumstance is usually followed by a wonderful “resurrection” or rescue. The Ovidian reader therefore expects that the separation of the lovers will not last and that their subsequent “deaths” are not real. This is the case only for Thisbe’s first “death,” which is merely imagined by her lover. After the death of Pyramus, which is real, the separation of the lovers seems to be final. Thisbe, however, asserts that she and Pyramus will not be separated by death, because she will die too: quique a me morte revelli / heu! sola poteras, poteris nec morte revelli (“and you who could have been torn away from me by death alone, alas, will not be able to be torn away even by death,” 152–153). But is it true that death is an appropriate response to separation?
2.3.1 An Ambiguous Story
In elegy, when a lover evokes his approaching death (as in Tibullus 1.1 and Lygdamus 2, for example), he imagines (usually) that his puella will weep for him at his funeral.24 Seneca the Elder gives us a controversia (2.2) in which “a husband and his wife swore that, if something happened to one of them, the other would die.25 The husband left for a trip abroad and sent his wife a message announcing his death. The wife flung herself from on high place. Once revived, she receives an order from her father to leave her husband. She is unwilling to do so. Her father disowns her. She contests this decision.” Seneca says that Ovid treated this controversia when he was the pupil of Arellius Fuscus. He argued “what is difficult for you [i.e. the father] is to admit that the husband loved his wife, and the wife her husband” (quidquid laboris est in hoc est, ut uxori virum et uxorem viro diligere concedas, 9)—or in other words, that the love between two spouses can be similar to that between two lovers, which everyone agrees is excessive. Ovid said, “in love it is easier to obtain cessation than moderation” (facilius in amore finem impetres quam modum, 10). He added that this was not the first wife to have made such a gesture: one had died with her husband, another for her husband (periit aliqua cum viro, periit aliqua pro viro), and all would always be honored and celebrated by all (11). Of such extreme conjugal devotion there was a famous example in Latin poetry: that of Laodamia. The story of Laodamia, who killed herself after the death of her husband in Troy, was often evoked by Ovid. Every time he did so, he used the word comes: me tibi venturam comitem, quocumque vocaris / sive—quod (heu!) timeo—sive superstes eris (“I will follow you as a companion, wherever you are summoned, whether, alas! what I fear happens, or you will survive,” Her. 13.161–162); aut comes extincto Laodamia viro (“or Laodamia, companion to her deceased husband,” Tr. 1.6.20); respice Phylacidem et quae comes isse marito / fertur et ante annos occubuisse suos (“consider Phylax’s grandson [Protesilaus] and her who is said to have gone as a companion to her husband and died before her time,” Ars 3.17–18). The phrase ante annos suos emphasizes that the death of Laodamia was premature. In the Remedia (723–724), Ovid was more openly critical: si potes, et ceras remove; quid imagine muta / carperis? hoc periit Laodamia modo (“If you can, remove the wax portraits; why let yourself be tormented by a silent image? That’s how Laodamia died”). This makes it clear that Laodamia is not an example to follow.
I return to the Metamorphoses. The narrator (one of the daughters of Minyas) emphasizes the responsibility of Pyramus in the decision taken by Thisbe. The boy was late: he came out “later” than intended, and therefore too late (serius egressus, 105). That is his first fault. At the beginning of the passage that describes his suicide in detail and includes the comparison with the lead pipe, the expression nec mora indicts him on a charge opposite to the first: he acts precipitously. This is Pyramus’ second fault, which transforms an error of judgment, that of believing in Thisbe’s false death, into an irremediable fact, a real suicide, which leads his lover to repeat this ill-considered act. Alison Keith has highlighted a subtle verbal game, with which Ovid supports the critical point of view attributed to the narrator, between mora (delay), mors (death), amor (love), and morum (mulberries): “Furthermore, the mora (‘mulberries’) are ironically reminiscent of the mora (‘delay,’ 120), the cautionary delay which Pyramus fails to observe, thus causing his own mors (‘death’).”26
When Thisbe returns and sees quivering on the ground a bloody body in which she recognizes her lover, she begins to lament, believing that fortune has dealt her this blow: “quis te mihi casus ademit?” (“What chance has taken you from me?” 142). Then she recognizes her veil, sees the sheath empty of its sword, and understands: “tua te manus,” inquit “amorque / perdidit, infelix” (“It was your hand and your love,” she says, “that destroyed you, poor boy,” 148). She immediately adds, “I too have a hand and a love that are strong enough for this same purpose” (est et mihi fortis in unum / hoc manus, est et amor, 149–150) and “I will be called the very wretched cause and companion of your death” (letique miserrima dicar / causa comesque tui, 151–152). It is not by chance that we find here the words manus and leti causa, words played upon by the accusatory epitaphs of Phyllis and Dido as well. They are accompanied by amor, which underlines the paradox of the situation. While she is sure of Pyramus’s love, as Phyllis is sure of Demophoon’s perfidy, Thisbe also expresses a regret about her lover: she qualifies Pyramus as infelix and calls herself, using a superlative, miserrima not only as “the cause of his death,” but also as the “companion” (comes)—the key word used for Laodamia—“of this death.” This seems to me a way of deploring the fact that she is forced to commit this fatal act.27
2.3.2 The Story of Pyramus and Thisbe in the light of the Entire Narrative Cycle Attributed to the Minyeides
Carole Newlands (1986) has put the love of Pyramus and Thisbe into perspective along with other stories told by the daughters of Minyas. The second story is the love affair of Mars and Venus, who are denounced to her husband, Vulcan, by the Sun, who is then punished by Venus. The Sun’s love affair with Leuconoe is also denounced, this time by her sister, Clytie, to their father, who buries Leuconoe alive. Clytie, who is herself in love with the Sun, perishes because she cannot not satisfy her love. The third story is that of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis: the boy tries in vain to escape the desire of the nymph, who manages to unite with him until together they form a single body.
According to Newlands, all these stories validate the life choice made by the three sisters, the daughters of Minyas, who reject the passion and irrational forces that are associated with Bacchus and Venus. Regarding our storyteller, Newlands (1986, 150) speaks of her “stubborn, virginal exclusion of the life of the passions.” I generally agree with her analysis. However, when a story is put into the mouth of a secondary narrator, two narrative levels must always be taken into account and a distinction must be made between the intention of the main narrator and the point of view attributed by him to the secondary narrator. Specifically, any intertextual game that may be in play must be ascribed to the main narrator.28 This is certainly the case with the incongruous simile of the lead pipe, which refers to Lucretius and signifies Ovid’s critical position regarding suicide for love.
We must also ascribe to Ovid the general construction of the cycle of stories narrated by the Minyeides and the choice of occasion for their serial narration, i.e. when the three girls are spinning. The construction of this small cycle seems to me to offer a variation on a pattern of which we have other examples in Georgics 4 and in Propertius 2.13. In these texts, the love affair of Mars and Venus serves as the generator or model for other love stories.29 In the Georgics, Mars and Venus’s affair occupies the first place in a series of stories that Clymene narrates to her companions, who are spinning: “in their midst she told of the useless care taken by Vulcan, the deceptions of Mars and the sweet, secret meetings, and she enumerated from Chaos the numerous loves of the gods” (inter quas curam Clymene narrabat inanem / Volcani Martisque dolos et dulcia furta / aque Chao densos divom numerabat amores, Geo. 4.345–347). Propertius includes the affair of Mars and Venus in the middle of a group of three stories illustrating the idea that the fame of beautiful women cannot be damaged, even when their loves are illicit. The divine protagonist of central history, Venus, clearly serves to guarantee that this principle holds true for the mortal women of the other stories, Helen and Oenone, as well. In a previous article on the reception of Empedocles in elegiac poetry, I argued that the Lucretian treatment of Mars and Venus, which refers to the philosophy of Empedocles (in accordance with allegorical interpretation of his Homeric source), would have had a determining influence on the genesis of the elegiac genre in the Amores of Gallus, and that Gallus must also have used Mars and Venus as an exemplum.30 However Gallus chose to narrate or allude to this story, Ovid inscribes his treatment of it into a tradition to which Vergil and Propertius also belong. It is not impossible, however, that the situation d’énonciation chosen by Ovid for the narration of this tale, which is identical to that of Vergil (the women who listen to the story are spinning), refers to a poem of Gallus. We actually find a variation on this scene in Tibullus 1.3, when the poet imagines that Delia, left alone, spends her time listening to fabellas (85) narrated by one of the two women sitting next to her and spinning. If in the Metamorphoses this small cycle of tales by the Minyeides is to be seen as a variation on a Gallan scheme, it seems significant to me that Ovid has chosen to tell a story of double suicide for love and that he adopts a position that is openly critical of this Gallan motif, as well.
Any variation implies that the meaning given to the elements taken from another text is different according to each of the authors. In the Metamorphoses, I agree with Carole Newlands (1986) that the lesson to be drawn from the Minyeides cycle has to do with its narrator. The significance of this cycle is related to the kind of life chosen by the daughters of Minyas. The story of Mars and Venus’ love affair illustrates the general significance of the cycle. Consisting of two parts—the episode told by Homer and the story of the Sun in love—this narrative depicts the power of love and its destructive effects. This is not the place to analyze the entire issue in detail. Let it suffice to point out that the internal narrators, the three daughters of Minyas, highlight the role of the female protagonists, Venus, Clytie, Thisbe, and Salmacis. That is to be expected: they are women, too. Their preference is made clear in what is said about the good or bad use of delay, an issue that is consistent with the sisters’ conception of the terrible power of love. It seems that men do not know how to make good use of delay: Pyramus is late, then he kills himself, nec mora, causing the death of Thisbe; the Sun, once struck by love, cannot restrain his desires (nec longius ille moratus, 230). On the other hand, Salmacis does manage to defer her desires, even if she does so with difficulty (vixque moram patitur, vix iam sua gaudia differt, “with difficulty she endures to delay, with difficulty she defers her pleasures,” 350). And finally, she finds herself in the situation dreamed of by all lovers: never to be separated from being loved (nulla dies a me nec me deducat ab isto! “may no one day take us away, him from me and me from him!” 372), even if Hermaphroditus does not share her perspective.31 Perhaps this conclusion ironically highlights the failure of the first story, that of Pyramus and Thisbe, after their double suicide, reunited … in a single urn (quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna, “what remains from their funeral pyre rests in a single urn,” 166)—a word that then resonates with a certain bitterness.
Damon expresses himself in more dramatic terms than the goatherd in his model, Theocritus, Id. 3.25–27, who also speaks of leaping into the water and dying—“perhaps.”
Apollod. Epit. 6.16–6.17; Hyg. Fab. 59; Serv. on Buc. 5.10; Tzetz. ad Lyc. Alex. 495.
Fr. 556 Pfeiffer.
According to fr. 58 Powell (Dix, 258) Euphorion had evoked the story of Phyllis in regard to that of Laodice, a daughter of Priam, who had had a child with Acamas or with Demophoon.
Fabre-Serris 2013.
The different texs are Vergil’s Eclogues 3, 7 and 10, Horace, Odes 2.4 and 4.11, and Propertius, 4.8.
This is at least the case in the Culex, a poem whose author mainly alludes to Vergil and Gallus: posterius cui Demophoon aeterna reliquit / perfidiam lamentandi mala—perfide multis / perfide Demophoon, et nunc deflende puellis (“then the tree to which Demophoon bequeathed the eternal misfortune of lamenting his unfaithfulness, unfaithful, unfaithful Demophoon, now the object of tears for so many young girls,” 132–133). See Fabre-Serris 2013, 125.
According to Hyginus, Phyllis does not commit suicide but dies of sorrow: Phyllis autem ob desiderium Demophoontis spiritum emisit (Fab. 59.2).
Here I have to disagree with Fulkerson, who argues, “I will concern myself in this study with the ways Phyllis’ letter—indeed her story—models itself on several of the foundational tales of abandoned women” (2002, 145), and, “I shall suggest that, like a number of the heroines, she [Phyllis] finds herself seduced by the stories of other women into writing her own” (2005, 22). These two formulations attribute to Phyllis an autonomy as a letter writer that does not exist for a secondary character in a fiction. The only real author of the Heroides is Ovid, not the mythological heroines whom he presents as letter writers, even if he assumes their characters for the sake of his fiction and can therefore suggest motives and emotions “felt” by the characters. The resulting narrative situation is very complex: for each letter there is a different, fictive, Greek (or barbarian), female author and her fictive, Greek, male addressee (here Phyllis and Demophoon), and a single Roman author and his many Roman readers (Ovid and his female and male readership). Fulkerson lists some innovations noted by critics regarding Phyllis’ story, including “Demophoon’s shipwreck; Phyllis’ status as queen instead of princess and her consequent freedom to select her own husband; her offer of Thrace to Demophoon; and her belief (2.81–84) that she needs to be married to preserve authority over her subjects,” and she concludes, “many of these alterations seem designed to force comparison to the story of Dido” (2005, 27). This is an interesting and convincing observation per se but, in my opinion, it does not support Fulkerson’s thesis. All intertextual allusions to Vergil in the Heroides are made by the first narrator, Ovid (not by Phyllis), and are intended to be perceived and appreciated only by Ovid’s Roman readers (not Demophoon). Furthermore, as we do not know how Gallus may have treated Phyllis’ story, it is difficult to evaluate whether or how Ovid’s differed from his treatment.
For example, I refer to Propertius 1.13, which places Gallus precisely in this position: vidi ego te toto vinctum languescere collo / … non ego complexus potui diducere vestros: / tantus erat demens inter utrosque furor (“I saw you languish with your neck all entwined in her embrace. … I could not separate your hugs, such a mad frenzy raged between you both,” 15, 19–20).
Because Demophoon did not return to marry her, Phyllis declares that she is determined to redeem the loss of her chastity: stat nece matura tenerum pensare pudorem (“I have decided to redeem my tender chastity with a quick death,” 143). We find the same version in Servius (on Ecl. 5.10), according to whom Phyllis hangs herself and is changed into an almond tree with no leaves.
As noted by Kennedy 2006, 64: “Demophoon was, it appears, very successful in instilling fides.”
Her destiny well illustrates this observation by Ovid in Ars amatoria 3: women do not manage very well when they are lovestruck (femina nec flammas nec saevos discutit arcus, “a woman does not shake off the flames or the wild weapons of love,” 29); men are less vulnerable: parcius haec video tela nocere viris (“I observe that these missiles are less harmful to men,” 30).
Servius (ad Ecl. 5.10): the greening of the almond tree inspired the use of the Greek word
Fabre-Serris 2013, 125–126.
The word semel (3) was corrected by Burmann (1727) and changed to quater. As many other editors, Barchiesi 1992 prefers to keep semel by arguing “Tutto il contesto (vv. 8 sgg) enfatizza piuttosto l’idea che Fillide è stata paziente, ha atteso a lungo (three months after the expected date) quasi non credendo all’evidenza dei fatti.” For Fulkerson (2002, 151), who prefers quater, Phyllis kills herself the same day on which Demophoon does not come back. But even if Phyllis has waited three months, she would have killed herself too early if Demophon finally returned.
Rosati in Barchiesi and Rosati 2007, 263. Tibullus 2.1 depicts in detail the cautious behavior inspired by Amor that permits a girl to rendezvous with her lover: hoc duce custodes furtim transgressa iacentes / ad iuvenem tenebris sola puella venit / et pedibus praetemptat iter suspensa timore, / explorat caecas cui manus ante vias (“under his guidance a girl passes secretly by her sleeping guardians and in the dark goes all alone to her boyfriend; anxious and fearful, she feels her way by foot, her hand groping for directions that she cannot see before her,” 75–78).
But perhaps Demophoon too will be found guilty of Phyllis’s death: this is what she hopes when she imagines her lover’s reaction at the sight of her corpse.
Segal 1969, 50.
Hinds 1987, 31 and 143 n. 16.
As Hinds (1987, 143) observes, foramine is also a Lucretian word. emicat … alte occurs at Lucretius 2.195 (Bömer ad Met. 4.123).
Newlands 1986, 143.
“The simile of the broken pipe marks the strategic point in the story when the pattern of romance is arrested. The disruptive nature of the simile reinforces the dislocation of the story and generic expectations at this point” (Newlands 1986, 146).
Tibullus (1.1.61–68) and Lygdamus (2.11–14) attribute to Delia and Neaera the customary demonstrations of grief. Cynthia will bring perfumes and garlands and will remain next to Propertius’ pyre (3.16.21–24).
vir et uxor iuraverunt, ut, si quid alteri optigisset alter moreretur. vir peregre profectus est, misit nuntium ad uxorem, qui diceret decessisse virum. uxor se praecipitavit. recreata iubetur a patre relinquere virum; non vult. abdicatur.
Keith 2001, 149.
In favor of this interpretation it can be added that ad tua te manus … amorque / perdidit (148–149) and miserrima (151) are perhaps an echo of the single word attributed by Vergil to Eurydice, which without a doubt is a word of regret: “quis et me,” inquit, “miseram et te perdidit, Orpheu / quis tantus furor?” (“What madness, so great,” she said, “destroyed me, miserable, and destroyed you, Orpheus?” Geo. 4.494–495).
Cf. n. 9 above.
Mars and Venus are “both caught fixed in the middle of their embrace” (in mediis ambo deprensi amplexibus haerent, Met. 4.184): a situation to which all lovers aspire. See Lucr. 4.1105–1111.
Fabre-Serris 2014, par. 13–19.
I disagree with Fowler 2000, 163, who speaks of “Salmacis’ intolerance of delay, mora,” even if she does not defer pleasure for a long time.
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