1 Introduction
The relationship between epic and its fellow genus grande, tragedy, is marked both by shared spaces and sharp differences. While there is broad overlap in characters and themes,1 obvious differences concern meter (dactylic hexameter vs. iambic trimeter), narrative voice (“mixed” mode featuring narrator- and character-speech vs. “mimetic” mode featuring only character-speech),2 and the handling of time and space (events unfolding over a long stretch of time in a variety of places vs. events unfolding within twenty-four hours in a single setting).3 These pronounced differences allow a given text to be filed easily in either the epic or the tragic category. Yet when it comes to the interpretive analysis of intergeneric interferences between epic and tragedy, it often proves difficult to label specific textual elements as (unambiguously) epic or tragic.4 Such analysis tends to be most convincing when it identifies clusters of (thematic, formal, metaliterary) elements pointing to one genre or the other,5 and when it focuses on especially prominent elements within the generic system which have the status of generic markers and can thus connote an entire genre when transposed into new generic contexts:6 the messenger scene, anagnorisis (“recognition”), and the concept of hamartia (“error”) are examples of such easily recognizable generic markers of tragedy.7
2 Epic and Tragedy in Early Imperial Roman Literature
In Roman literature of the early imperial period, there is extensive cross-contamination between epic and tragedy.8 Vergil’s Dido narrative, set on the “stage” (Aen. 1.164 scaena) of Libya, is an obvious example.9 The many structural and thematic borrowings from tragedy in the Dido books of the Aeneid culminate in a simile which compares the Carthaginian queen to Pentheus, haunted by the furies, and Orestes, “chased across the stage” (Aen. 4.471 scaenis agitatus).10 Ovid opens the Theban portion of his Metamorphoses with a simile of equal metageneric force, comparing the men rising from the dragon’s teeth to figures painted on a theater curtain (Met. 3.111–314)11—a not-so-subtle reminder that the characters about to be introduced in Ovid’s epic of transformations have a long history on the tragic stages of Greece and Rome.12 In Neronian times, Seneca revisits the intergeneric relationship between epic and tragedy from the opposite direction: he incorporates an epic sea-storm in Agamemnon (421–578), a scene of necromancy in Oedipus (530–658), and a description of the underworld in Hercules Furens (662–827).13 These examples amply illustrate that in early imperial Roman poetry, epic and tragic poets routinely, consciously, and purposefully evoke the other genre and can do so by deploying a range of well-defined and easily recognizable generic markers.14
By the Flavian age, the cross-generic dialogue between these two genres has long become conventional, with tragedy so deeply woven into the fabric of epic that, at times, it appears futile to try to separate the tragic and epic strands, since it could easily be argued that, in a given passage, the poet is not so much making a point to evoke tragedy, but is rather continuing an epic tradition that has always shared a lot of ground with tragedy. This preliminary caveat notwithstanding, Flavian epic has repeatedly been shown to reward scholarly attempts to “find the tragic” (Parkes):15 it shows great engagement not only with specific plays (Seneca usually being the privileged exemplary model),16 but also, in a broader sense, with the tragic genre as code model.17 Both lines of inquiry (i.e. identification of specific literary models vs. studies in the appropriation of narrative devices, type scenes, stock-characters) have produced, and continue to produce, fascinating insights into the compositional techniques and literary genealogy of Flavian epic. This paper seeks to continue such scholarly undertakings by exploring the potential of reading the sermo praeruptus speech type, prominent in Senecan tragedy, as a generic marker of tragedy in epic. My main finding will be that while sermo praeruptus lends itself to being encoded as tragic in non-tragic contexts, it may indicate tragedy only when accompanied by additional thematic or metaliterary clues. By itself, it may be freely deployed to indicate a whole range of intense emotions, but it does not attain the status of a strong, stand-alone generic marker (such as e.g. epic aristeia or tragic anagnorisis).
3 Sermo praeruptus (“Broken Speech”) as a Marker of Tragedy
In the first book of De Ira, Seneca describes the physiological symptoms of madness (furor) and anger (ira). These emotions, Seneca explains, affect the whole body and also have a distorting effect on speech:
nam ut furentium certa indicia sunt audax et minax ultus, tristis frons, torva facies, citatus gradus, inquietae manus, color versus, crebra et vehementius acta suspiria, ita irascentium eadem signa sunt: flagrant ac micant oculi, multus ore toto rubor exaestuante ab imis praecordiis sanguine, labra quatiuntur, dentes comprimuntur, horrent ac surriguntur capilli, spiritus coactus ac stridens, articulorum se ipsos torquentium sonus, gemitus mugitusque et parum explanatis vocibus sermo praeruptus et conplosae saepius manus et pulsata humus pedibus.
Sen. Dial. 3.1.3–4
The sure marks of madness are a bold and threatening look, a gloomy brow, a fierce expression, a hurried step, restless hands, an altered color, frequent and all too heavy sighing. The signs of anger are the same: the eyes blaze and sparkle, the whole face is crimson with the blood that surges from the lowest depths of the heart, the lips quiver, the teeth are clenched, the hair bristles and stands on end, the breathing is forced and harsh, the joints crack from writhing, there is groaning and bellowing and speech broken off with the words barely uttered, the hands are struck together too often and the feet stamp the ground.
transl. Basore 1928, modified
As commentators on Senecan tragedy have long suggested, the speaking style frequently employed by Seneca’s tragic characters when experiencing intense emotional turmoil may be read as an illustration of the broken speech mixed with groans and bellowing that is characteristic of states of madness and anger according to the De Ira passage just quoted.18 This reading rests on the assumption that a meaningful link may be drawn between, on the one hand, Seneca’s description of the speech of those affected by madness and anger in the theoretical treatise (without any reference to tragedy) and, on the other hand, a specific tragic speech mode in Senecan tragedy with conspicuous stylistic features, such as quick staccato sequences of short phrases and questions which contribute to, as Fitch puts it, the overall impression of a “broken, choppy” style.19 If admitted, this interpretation identifies as one of the functions of Senecan tragedy the illustration of specific theoretical concepts: in this case, the idea that emotional turmoil is reflected in the speech of those experiencing it.
Let us consider, for example, the following speech excerpt from the Hercules Furens (Hercules gazing upon his slaughtered family):
Sen. Her. F. 1173–1186en nudus asto; vel meis armis licetpetas inermem. cur meos Theseus fugitpaterque vultus? ora cur condunt sua?1175differte fletus! quis meos dederit neciomnis simul, profare. quid, genitor, siles?at tu ede, Theseu, sed tua, Theseu, fide.uterque tacitus ora pudibunda obtegitfurtimque lacrimas fundit. in tantis malis1180quid est pudendum? numquid Argivae impotensdominator urbis, numquid infestum Lycipereuntis agmen clade nos tanta obruit?per te meorum facinorum laudem precor,genitor, tuique nominis semper mihi1185numen secundum, fare. quis fudit domum?cui praeda iacui?
Look, here I am, stripped bare; you can use my own weapons to attack me, unarmed. But why do Theseus and my father avoid my eyes? Why do they hide their faces? Stop crying! Tell me, who has murdered them, all my family at once? Father, why so quiet? But you, Theseus, tell me, come on, by your faith! Neither speaks, they hide their ashamed faces and their furtive tears. In such disaster what place is there for shame? Was it the ruthless tyrant of Argos, or did a troop get up in arms against me for the death of Lycus, come to wreak destruction? I beg you, by the glory of my labors, father, and by the ever-propitious divinity of your name, tell me. Who ruined my home? To whom have I fallen prey?
transl. Wilson 2010, modified
Hercules’ inner turmoil is not only reflected by the barrage of short questions (9), but also by other features in his speech, which are intertwined with, and accompany, its short staccato statements and questions (all marked in bold): interjection (1), repetition (8), elision (4), vocatives (4), and imperatives (4). Thus, whereas descriptions of a passage as a sermo praeruptus speech have traditionally been based on the identification of rapid sequences of short questions and/or statements only, our example passage indicates that we may also approach this speech mode by viewing clusters of interjections, elisions, vocatives, imperatives, and repetition (in addition to clusters of interrogatives) as its constitutive features. So, starting from the working hypothesis that the detection of clusters of these six countable features will allow us to identify further instances of tragic sermo praeruptus, this chapter sets out to explore two interrelated sets of questions: first, how prominent is this pattern in tragedy, and is it prominent enough to be mobilized as a generic marker of tragedy in non-tragic texts? Second, how frequent is sermo praeruptus in epic, how often is it linked to invocations of tragedy in epic, and, finally, does it eventually attain the status of a strong generic marker of tragedy in epic? In sections 4–6, I will analyze a few hand-picked tragic and epic sample texts to outline general tendencies; in section 7, I will sketch a tentative conclusion. In an appendix (section 8), I explore the larger ramifications of my observations and possible future directions for research with a preliminary computer-assisted analysis at the corpus scale.
The individual sections build towards a gradual refinement of my initial working hypothesis, which will be qualified in two important ways: first, clusters of one or more of the six features under review by themselves do not necessarily indicate a sermo praeruptus sequence in the sense sketched out above (see e.g. my discussion of Aeson’s prayer in section 3). Therefore, accumulations of, say, vocatives or imperatives (which are common features of epic speech in general), are only relevant for my analysis when accompanied by a good selection of the other features identified above. Second, sermo praeruptus sequences do not necessarily indicate tragedy (see e.g. my discussion of Calchas’ prophecy and Deidamia’s farewell speech in section 6). My main finding will be that, while sermo praeruptus lends itself to being encoded as tragic in non-tragic contexts, it mostly does so when accompanied by additional thematic and metaliterary clues. By itself, it usually indicates heightened emotionality in a more general sense.
4 Valerius Flaccus’ Mopsus as Prophet of Tragedy
I begin with a particularly striking epic example which will serve as a key yardstick throughout. In the first book of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, the Argonauts, wishing for safe voyage, make prayers and sacrifices to the sea gods. After that, in an unusual act of vatic competition or even rivalry, the prophets Mopsus and Idmon offer two competing visions of the future (on which more below). Mopsus, “fully possessed by the god” (207 totus … dei) and “monstrous to behold” (208 immanis visu), speaks first:
Val. Fl. 1.211–226heu quaenam aspicio? nostris modo concitus ausisaequoreos vocat ecce deos Neptunus et ingensconcilium. fremere et legem defendere cunctihortantur. sic amplexus, sic pectora fratris,Iuno tene tuque o puppem ne desere, Pallas:215nunc patrui, nunc flecte minas! cessere ratemqueaccepere mari. per quot discrimina rerumexpedior! subita cur pulcher harundine crinesvelat Hylas? unde urna umeris niveosque per artuscaeruleae vestes? unde haec tibi vulnera, Pollux?220quantus io tumidis taurorum e naribus ignis!tollunt se galeae sulcisque ex omnibus hastaeet iam iamque umeri. quem circum vellera Martemaspicio? quaenam aligeris secat anguibus aurascaede madens? quos ense ferit? miser, eripe parvos,225Aesonide! cerno en thalamos ardere iugales!
Ah, what is this I see? Behold—provoked by our daring, Neptune summons a vast assembly of sea-deities. They roar and all urge him to defend the law. Even so hold in embrace, even so hold your brother’s breast, Juno, and do not desert this vessel, Pallas: now, even now, turn aside the threats of your uncle! They have yielded and accepted the vessel on the sea. Through how many perils am I delivered! Why does fair Hylas suddenly cover his hair with reeds? Whence the pitcher upon his shoulders, and the cerulean garment upon his snow-white limbs? Whence these wounds of yours, Pollux? Ah, what a mighty flame comes from the swelling nostrils of the bulls! Helmets spring up and spears from every furrow, and now shoulders too. What is this fight I see about the fleece? What woman is this, drenched with slaughter, who passes through the air on winged serpents? Whom does she attack with the sword? Ah, wretched son of Aeson, save your little ones! Lo—I see bridal chambers aflame!
transl. Zissos 2008, modified
In her commentary on Book 1, Daniela Galli offers a concise discussion of this speech’s style (“breathless, broken questions”) and, with reference to Tarrant’s note on Sen. Ag. 724, explains that “the function of the sermo praeruptus is to convey a state of strong emotion.”20 She does not, however, go on to tease out the implications of her astute observation that Mopsus’ speaking style is strongly reminiscent of tragic sermo praeruptus.
There is of course an alternative interpretation available, namely that the peculiarities of Mopsus’ speech are nothing more than particularly pronounced features of prophetic speech. However, a comparative analysis of all the prophecies in the Argonautica makes such a reading unlikely (see Table 13.2 below): in language and style, 1.211–226 differs significantly from the other prophecies in the Argonautica and, in my reading, the influence of “tragic speech” in the form of sermo praeruptus is the most natural explanation for these differences. In what follows, I will attempt to show that the way Mopsus speaks complements (and reinforces) a larger strategy of metageneric signposting in and surrounding his speech that suggests, as Zissos and others have argued, that Mopsus’ prophecy is essentially an Argonautica seen through the tragic lens.21
Verbs of seeing placed at the speech’s beginning and end (211 aspicio; 226 cerno) create the impression of spectatorship.22 The descriptions of Hylas’ hair covered with reeds, the cerulean garment upon his snow-white limbs, and the flames from the nostrils of the bulls are strikingly visual.23 Medea, who occupies the final part of the prophecy, is the tragic heroine par excellence: The child murder and the palace fire, both of which are mentioned by Mopsus, serve as the grim climax of Euripides’ and Seneca’s (and Ovid’s?) celebrated Medea tragedies.24 The prophet’s explicit mention of the sword (225 ense), Medea’s murder weapon in Euripides and Seneca,25 establishes a particular close link between these tragic models and the Mopsus prophecy. The prophecy is framed by narratorial references to the fear and horror Mopsus is causing among the crew (210 vox horrenda viris; 227–228 Minyas … / terrificat),26 which is the emotional response Aristotle famously ascribes to tragedy in the Poetics (1453b12–14). The interpretation of Mopsus as a prophet of tragedy (in a generic sense) is implicitly confirmed in a later passage in Book 1, namely during Mopsus’ formal introduction in the catalogue of Argonauts (1.383–386), where the poet points out that Mopsus wears the palla and the cothurnus, which are both attributes of the tragic actor and frequently function as metageneric markers pointing to tragedy in Roman literature.27 Apart from such metaliterary signposting, there is also a significant structural argument to be made: as outlined above, Mopsus’ dark and unsettling vision of the future is immediately followed by, and juxtaposed with, Idmon’s optimistic and uplifting prophecy (1.234–238), which, in the words of Andrew Zissos, generates a kind of “vatic dissonance”.28 A reading in generic terms, as convincingly proposed by Lovatt and Zissos, has Idmon provide the epic counterpoint to Mopsus’ earlier tragic outlook.29 While Idmon does not deny that there will be hardships, he announces that “the much-enduring ship will overcome them all” (236 patiens … ratis omnia vincet), before admonishing the “great souls” (237 ingentes … animae) on board of the Argo to “be strong” (237 durate). The stark differences in tone and content (epic triumph vs. tragic catastrophe) alert readers to the generic connotations of these two vastly different visions of the journey ahead.
Coming back to Galli’s labelling of the speech’s style as sermo praeruptus, it may be argued that Mopsus’ conspicuous speaking style functions as yet another marker of tragedy, and even a particularly strong one at that. His speech shares with Her. F. 1173–1186 (quoted above) the use of interjection, a high frequency of repetitions and elisions as well as clusters of interrogatives, vocatives, and imperatives. So may we read Mopsus as an epic character momentarily adopting the speech patterns of an actor in a tragedy?
Before we press this point any further, we first need to get a better grasp of how the language of Val. Fl. 1.211–226 compares with other speeches in the Argonautica, and, in a further step, with some epic and tragic parallels. I will attempt to chart the relations between speeches by means of a quantitative model: based on hand counts of the features under review, I will assign scores to individual speeches and thus be able to rank them according to stylistic proximity or distance. I hand-calculate these speech scores by dividing the composite count of interjections, repetitions, elisions, interrogatives, vocatives, and imperatives by total word count. My initial assumption is that this quantitative analysis will help identify striking examples of sermo praeruptus and thus potentially flag moments of intergeneric exchange between epic and tragedy. The straightforward nature of both counting system and scoring method facilitates computational automatization and extension to corpus-size analysis in a later stage (for which see section 8 below). There are, however, a few caveats. First, individual features are not weighted in this scoring system, which affects the validity of the score: for example, even if most features are absent, a given speech may score high if one particular feature is very dominant in a speech. Moreover, longer speeches are likely to have relatively low scores unless the indicators of sermo praeruptus are consistent throughout the speech. Finally, sentence length is not taken into account, which means that sequences of short questions or statements, a key feature of sermo praeruptus in Senecan tragedy as identified by the commentators, will not influence the score in one way or the other.
Table 13.1
Top 10 speeches in Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 1 by composite score
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) |
110 |
5 |
8 |
11 |
9 |
6 |
4 |
43 |
0.391 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.788–822 (Aeson) |
191 |
1 |
6 |
11 |
0 |
13 |
14 |
45 |
0.236 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.241–251 (Jason) |
66 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
3 |
4 |
14 |
0.212 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.164–173 (Jason) |
72 |
2 |
5 |
2 |
5 |
1 |
0 |
15 |
0.208 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.234–238 (Idmon) |
25 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
5 |
0.200 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.320–334 (Alcimede) |
102 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
18 |
0.196 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.81–90 (Jason) |
66 |
0 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
5 |
2 |
11 |
0.166 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.712–724 (Pelias) |
81 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
5 |
0 |
13 |
0.160 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.627–632 (Argonauts) |
38 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
6 |
0.158 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.113–119 (Juno) |
52 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
8 |
0.154 |
Table 13.1 shows the statistics for the Mopsus prophecy in the context of the top 10 speeches in Book 1 by composite score (int = interjections; rep = repetitions; elis = elisions; quest = interrogatives; voc = vocatives; imp = imperatives):
Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) scores much higher than any other speech in Book 1 and indeed seems to be exceptional in the range and density of the six features under review. Still, the rather high score of a speech such as 1.788–822 (Aeson’s prayer to the deities of retribution) points to a weakness of the scoring system applied and merits explanation. The speech’s high score is due to the high number of elisions, vocatives and imperatives (the last two being characteristic of prayer language), but, despite its score being not too far removed from the score for 1.221–226, it can hardly be said to be an illustration of Seneca’s sermo praeruptus: on the formal level, the speech lacks clusters of short questions and/or exclamations (the feature count for interrogatives is 0) and, on the content level, Aeson, although clearly shaken by Pelias’ imminent attack on his family, does not allow himself to be overcome by mad rage or blind fear. This steadfastness, I would argue, is also reflected in his speech. On the other hand, even though Alcimede’s grief-laden farewell speech to Jason (1.320–334) receives a rather low rating, parts of it actually compare quite well with the Mopsus speech (note the interjection at 327, the sequence of questions at 328–331, and the cluster of imperatives at 334–335). Of course, the speech’s low rating is due to the relative scarcity of sermo praeruptus features in its first half.30 Summing up, there is a risk that my scoring method may frequently produce “false positives” (e.g. 1.788–822) while assigning low scores to interesting passages (e.g. 1.320–334). However, the fact that 1.211–226 scores highest by a significant margin still leads one to expect that my model will reliably attribute high scores to particularly striking instances of sermo praeruptus.
While Mopsus’ speaking style appears unusual when compared to the other speeches in Book 1, comparing it to the other prophetic speeches in the poem will allow a fuller appreciation of its composite score. Table 13.2 lists the scores for the ten speeches in the Argonautica tagged as “Prophecy, Oracular Speech, and Interpretation” in the DICES database at the time of writing:31
Table 13.2
Prophecies in the Argonautica (ordered by composite score)
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) |
110 |
5 |
8 |
11 |
9 |
6 |
4 |
43 |
0.391 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.234–238 (Idmon) |
25 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
5 |
0.200 |
|
Val. Fl. 2.592–607 (Helle) |
111 |
0 |
4 |
5 |
0 |
2 |
3 |
14 |
0.126 |
|
Val. Fl. 4.25–37 (Hylas) |
96 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
12 |
0.125 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.741–751 (Cretheus) |
79 |
1 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
0 |
2 |
9 |
0.114 |
|
Val. Fl. 4.553–624 (Phineus) |
490 |
2 |
16 |
21 |
4 |
2 |
8 |
53 |
0.108 |
|
Val. Fl. 5.673–689 (Jupiter) |
119 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
1 |
2 |
1 |
12 |
0.101 |
|
Val. Fl. 1.531–567 (Jupiter) |
242 |
1 |
10 |
6 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
24 |
0.099 |
|
Val. Fl. 5.233–240 (Phrixus) |
48 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
0.041 |
|
Val. Fl. 2.322–325 (Polyxo) |
27 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0.037 |
These numbers confirm the overall tendencies I have identified when discussing the results for Book 1: there is an overwhelming number of unremarkable low scores; the reason for the slightly above average score for 1.234–238 (Idmon’s prophecy, no less) is that it is a rather short speech (25 words) that happens to contain five instances of the features under review. Like 1.788–822 (Aeson’s prayer), however, it neither reflects emotional turmoil on part of the speaker nor contains a sequence of exasperated short utterances. Also like 1.788–822, its score shows that my scoring system will at times flag speeches that in fact do not match the sermo praeruptus criteria as laid out in section 3 (cf. also my list of caveats above). Summing up, the language at 1.211–226 (Mopsus) indeed differs sharply from the language employed by other prophets in the Argonautica. It can thus not be interpreted as simply reflecting prophetic frenzy (if that were the case, the scores of the other prophecies would have to be closer). The results of this first round of quantitative analysis strongly suggest that we are in fact dealing with a highly unusual stretch of epic text. Next, I will try to establish that its particular style may in fact function as a generic marker of tragedy.
5 Widening the Scope
I concede right away that Mopsus’ speaking style is not unprecedented in the Roman literary tradition. One does not have to look to tragedy to find parallels either. In Aen. 4, for example, when Dido gazes out at sea and beholds the departing Trojan ships, she curses her faithless lover Aeneas in a long speech (4.590–629) which reflects her intense pain and despair. I will limit my discussion of Dido’s curse to (roughly) its first half, since it is there that we encounter many of the same speech patterns that are so conspicuous in the Mopsus prophecy (see Table 13.3; note esp. the cluster of imperatives at 593–594 and the tricolon of short questions at 595):
Aen. 4.590–604“pro Iuppiter! ibit590hic,” ait “et nostris inluserit advena regnis?non arma expedient totaque ex urbe sequentur,deripientque rates alii navalibus? ite,ferte citi flammas, date tela, impellite remos!quid loquor? aut ubi sum? quae mentem insania mutat?595infelix Dido, nunc te facta impia tangunt?tum decuit, cum sceptra dabas. en dextra fidesque,quem secum patrios aiunt portare penates,quem subiisse umeris confectum aetate parentem!non potui abreptum divellere corpus et undis600spargere? non socios, non ipsum absumere ferroAscanium patriisque epulandum ponere mensis?verum anceps pugnae fuerat fortuna. fuisset:quem metui moritura?”
“Oh, by God,” she cries, “will the stranger just sail off and make a mockery of our realm? Will no one rush to arms, come streaming out of the whole city, race to the docks and launch the ships? Go, quick—bring fire! Hand out weapons! Bend to the oars! What am I saying? Where am I? What insanity’s this that shifts my fixed resolve? Dido, oh poor fool, is it only now your wicked work strikes home? It should have then, when you offered him your scepter. Look at his hand clasp, look at his good faith now—that man who, they say, carries his fathers’ gods, who stooped to shoulder his father bent with age! Couldn’t I have seized him then, ripped him to pieces, scattered them in the sea? Or slashed his men with steel, butchered Ascanius, served him up as his father’s feast? True, the luck of battle might have been at risk—well, risk away! Whom did I have to fear? I was about to die.”
transl. Fagles 2006, modified
Table 13.3
Dido’s curse (excerpt)
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Verg. Aen. 4.590–604 (Dido) |
92 |
2 |
5 |
11 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
29 |
0.315 |
While the Aeneid is of course an epic text, Vergil’s Dido episode is well-recognized for its affinities with tragedy.32 At times, the episode’s overall tragic frame seems to be reflected in its language too: it has been noted, for example, that the quick succession of short questions at 4.595 may evoke similar lines from Greek tragedy (Eur. Alc. 863–864; Hipp. 239–241).33 Seeing that the Aeneid is a key model for the Argonautica,34 one could make the argument that in the Mopsus prophecy, Valerius imitates Dido’s speaking style, replicating one particular Vergilian strategy of accommodating tragedy in the process. On this reading, sermo praeruptus appears as a tragic mode of expression that, after the Aeneid, has been absorbed into the epic repertoire and may freely be deployed in post-Vergilian epic to add tragic coloring without having to refer back to actual tragic plays.
Table 13.4
Top 4 speeches in Seneca’s Hercules Furens by composite score
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Her. F. 516–523 (Amphitryon) |
48 |
0 |
4 |
1 |
3 |
5 |
2 |
15 |
0.313 |
|
Her. F. 1138–1186 (Hercules) |
292 |
1 |
18 |
17 |
34 |
6 |
7 |
83 |
0.284 |
|
Her. F. 618–625 (Amphitryon) |
51 |
1 |
0 |
6 |
6 |
1 |
0 |
14 |
0.274 |
|
Her. F. 1321–1341 (Hercules) |
117 |
1 |
6 |
8 |
7 |
3 |
4 |
29 |
0.261 |
Yet without denying the possibility of influence from an epic model such as Aen. 4, it must be conceded that, in the Flavian age, the most obvious frame of reference evoked by a speech such as Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) would certainly be the corpus of Senecan tragedy, which includes many conspicuous examples of the sermo praeruptus pattern.35 I limit the following discussion to Hercules Furens and Medea.36 Table 13.4 and Table 13.5 show the scores for the four highest-scoring speeches in each of the two plays (a representative stretch of Her. F. 1138–1186 is quoted above):
Both plays boast particularly high-scoring speeches (Her. F. 516–523; Med. 982–994) as well as speeches with comparably lower scores, which do, however, still contain impressive stretches of sermo praeruptus (e.g. Her. F. 1321–1326, 1338–1341; Med. 930–939). This last observation points to one of the shortcomings of my calculation method mentioned above, i.e. the low composite score attributed to long speeches with only some sermo praeruptus patterns interspersed.
Table 13.5
Top 4 speeches in Seneca’s Medea by composite score
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Med. 982–994 (Medea) |
79 |
4 |
8 |
4 |
3 |
8 |
2 |
27 |
0.367 |
|
Med. 1–55 (Medea) |
320 |
0 |
16 |
19 |
3 |
17 |
12 |
67 |
0.209 |
|
Med. 380–396 (nutrix) |
102 |
0 |
2 |
10 |
4 |
1 |
3 |
20 |
0.196 |
|
Med. 893–977 (Medea) |
516 |
3 |
21 |
25 |
18 |
12 |
20 |
99 |
0.191 |
A close reading of the speeches in Table 13.4 and Table 13.5 in comparison with Val. Fl. 1.211–226 reveals many correspondences in linguistic detail: (1) sequences of short staccato questions at e.g. Her. F. 1138–1145, 1149–1155, 1321–1323 comparable to Val. Fl. 1.217–221 and 223–225, (2) frequent elision at Med. 380–396 (on average 1 elision per 10 words, which corresponds to the numbers for Val. Fl. 1.211–226), (3) patterns of word repetition at e.g. Her. F. 516–523 (pro … pro, cur … cur, est … est) to which compare Val. Fl. 1.214–220 (sic … sic, nunc … nunc, unde … unde), (4) clusters of imperatives at e.g. Sen. Med. 965–966, 968–969, 974–977 comparable to the cluster at Val. Fl. 1.215–216, and, finally, (5) clusters of vocatives at e.g. Sen. Med. 1–7, 985–986 comparable to the deployment of vocatives at Val. Fl. 1.215, 220, 225–226.
The above analysis suggests that Valerius—possibly with an eye to earlier instances of “tragic speech” in epic such as Aen. 4.590–604—carefully reproduces a striking aspect of Seneca’s tragic idiom in the Mopsus prophecy. Since Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) receives a higher composite score than any of the speeches in Hercules Furens or Medea, the poet even seems to purposefully amplify what he finds in the tragic source texts, by which strategy he draws explicit attention to the fact that he is incorporating “foreign” generic material. As a result, we may very well analyze the sermo praeruptus in the Mopsus prophecy as a generic marker of tragedy in epic.
6 Quantifying Genre
Exploring the potential of a quantitative model to detect generic shifts in Roman epic, my analysis has proceeded from defining six countable features of tragic sermo praeruptus (interjections, repetition, elision, interrogatives, imperatives, vocatives) to interpreting some striking example passages from epic and tragedy. Given that this discussion has not only yielded promising initial results, but also highlighted some issues with the calculation method, I now turn to the question whether detecting speeches with high composite scores is in fact a suitable approach to identifying tragic interludes in Roman epic. I will attempt to sketch a response by briefly discussing a small number of passages from Statius’ Thebaid and Achilleid (see Table 13.6 and Table 13.7), which I selected because, on a reading of the two epics aimed at spotting occurrences of the sermo praeruptus pattern, they stood out in terms of the range and density of the speech features under review. The following discussion will illustrate both the potential and the risks of eventually running an automated search.
It has often been argued that Statius in the Thebaid attempts an extensive and multi-layered fusion of epic and tragedy.37 For this reason it is probably unsurprising that the “tragic” speech patterns I have discussed above also appear at moments where characters in the Thebaid experience intense emotional turmoil: the speeches in Table 13.6 include Oedipus’ remorseful lament after his sons have killed each other (11.605–626), Argia’s inner monologue after she separates from the other Argive women and continues her journey to the Theban battlefield to find Polynices’ unburied corpse (12.209–219), and Argia’s mournful address to her dead husband after having discovered his corpse (12.322–328). Given that the Theban myth is so intimately bound up with the tragic genre, the speeches just listed could easily be adduced as further examples of epic integrating a particular type of tragic speech to highlight its treatment of quintessential tragic themes, subject-matter, and emotions.
Because of their high composite scores as well as the range and density of features, it seems likely that the three speeches listed in Table 13.6 would also be picked up in a larger scale, computer-assisted analysis of the entire epic. This is true for the two Achilleid examples in Table 13.7 also, but in these two cases, one would be hard-pressed to argue that the speech patterns employed are meant to evoke tragedy.
Table 13.6
Examples of sermo praeruptus in Statius’ Thebaid
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Theb. 12.209–219 (Argia) |
71 |
3 |
9 |
2 |
4 |
3 |
0 |
21 |
0.296 |
|
Theb. 11.605–626 (Oedipus) |
150 |
7 |
8 |
10 |
6 |
6 |
4 |
41 |
0.273 |
|
Theb. 12.322–348 (Argia) |
151 |
4 |
8 |
4 |
11 |
1 |
4 |
32 |
0.212 |
Table 13.7
Examples of sermo praeruptus in Statius’ Achilleid
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Ach. 1.931–942 (Deidamia) |
82 |
3 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
1 |
5 |
24 |
0.293 |
|
Ach. 1.526–535 (Calchas) |
72 |
3 |
2 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
20 |
0.277 |
Calchas’ prophecy (Ach. 1.526–535) seems to be directly modelled on the Mopsus prophecy and mirrors its language quite closely.38 But, unlike Mopsus, Calchas is not cast as a prophet of tragedy; his speaking style aptly conveys prophetic frenzy, but it does so without any overt or implicit references to the tragic genre (which could easily have been included by e.g. reminding the audience of Calchas’ role in the attempted sacrifice of Iphigeneia—a plot point in Euripidean tragedy). Likewise, the first part of Deidamia’s farewell address to Achilles (Ach. 1.931–942) shares many stylistic features with Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (note e.g. the sequence of short questions at 1.935–936 and the repetition of the interjection o at 1.938–939), yet it does so without referring to tragedy. The Scyrian princess rather casts herself in the role of the elegiac relicta,39 expressing her grief and despair upon being abandoned and thereby reprising (like Vergil’s Dido before her) the role of Catullus’ Ariadne. If her speech points to any other genre than epic, that genre would be elegy rather than tragedy.
The two Achilleid examples just discussed illustrate that speeches which are stylistically similar to Val. Fl. 1.211–226 do not necessarily connote tragedy. Yet while a cluster of the six features under review in epic may or may not serve as a generic marker of tragedy, it seems to reliably point to speeches reflecting a range of intense emotions such as anger, despair, confusion, madness, grief, or fear, which are of course not tied to any particular genre. High scores may thus only occasionally indicate an intergeneric interference between epic and tragedy.
7 Results of Quantitative Stylistic Analysis
In a literary scene where pre-publication readings for live audiences were a fixture,40 it may seem obvious that sermo praeruptus would have appealed to epic poets: it makes for heightened tension and drama; it allows poets to turn their public readings into performances, into an experience as immersive and suspenseful as watching a play unfold on a theater stage.
The relative prominence of this speaking style in Senecan tragedy, which seems to have been destined also, if not exclusively, for an audience of readers,41 may have inspired the Flavian epicists to experiment with this feature in their poems. Even though the pattern can be traced back to Augustan epic, its many instances in Seneca will have facilitated its association with tragedy and its ability to connote epic’s fellow genus grande. It must be noted, however, that, by themselves, clusters of the six features analyzed in this paper are not always indicative of tragedy, but rather of various kinds of emotional turmoil. For this reason, the sermo praeruptus pattern may best be described as a stylistic feature which has a certain propensity to being encoded as tragic, but always retains its flexibility to be used in non-tragic contexts.
Individual generic elements, as Conte observed, attain their generic identity only in relation to each other.42 Still, some elements (e.g. epic aristeia, tragic anagnorisis) come to occupy such a prominent position within their respective systems that they have the power to connote the entire genre by themselves even when employed in alien generic frameworks. On the other hand, less prominent elements may be freely shared across generic demarcations and depend strongly on thematic or metaliterary clues to indicate a particular genre.43 As the above discussion suggests, sermo praeruptus falls into the second category rather than the first.
8 Testing the Hypothesis on Corpus Scale
The comparison of Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) with some parallel passages from Senecan tragedy has led to the conclusion that epic speeches showing a high density of interjections, repetitions, elisions, questions, vocatives, and imperatives may potentially be analyzed as imitations of tragic speech. This preliminary result comes with the caveat that, by themselves, such clusters primarily indicate emotional turmoil, not a particular genre. In order to explore whether these observations could be generalized, my experiment was replicated on a larger scale by running a computer-assisted analysis of all the speeches in the Argonautica and the corpus of Senecan tragedy.44
The automated analysis considered a total of 571 speeches, calculating the six features under review as well as the composite score. The automated assignment of these counts and scores draws on a combination of human-generated data (e.g. for elision detection), mechanical commands (e.g. for repetition detection), and inference work performed by language-trained models (e.g. for vocative detection). Comparing the computer analysis to hand-calculated results (with the top 10 speeches by computer analysis as the test sample) shows that the computer scores are usually about 80–85 % accurate,45 with undetected vocatives and non-meaningful repetitions such as et (which were excluded from the manual counts) being the main sources of error. This is a reasonably reliable basis for an interpretation of the data. (One- and two-line speeches are excluded from the following discussion.)
The top five speeches according to composite score by this method do not include Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) and include only one speech (Sen. Med. 982–994) which may be considered a good parallel for the Mopsus prophecy (see Table 13.8).
Table 13.8
Top 5 speeches by composite score according to digital analysis. The table represents not the scores as were calculated automatically, but rather hand-corrected data for the speeches that surfaced with the automated analysis
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Val. Fl. 4.327–329 (Argonauts) |
18 |
2 |
6 |
2 |
0 |
14 |
1 |
25 |
1.388 |
|
Sen. Phoen. 407–413 (Iocaste) |
52 |
0 |
19 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
24 |
0.462 |
|
Sen. Med. 500–503 (Medea) |
27 |
0 |
6 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
12 |
0.444 |
|
Val. Fl. 6.282–286 (Gesander) |
35 |
0 |
4 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
15 |
0.429 |
|
Sen. Med. 982–994 (Medea) |
79 |
4 |
8 |
4 |
3 |
8 |
2 |
27 |
0.367 |
These results merit consideration. Clearly, all of the top five speeches reflect extreme emotional states, thereby confirming the intuition that similar language is employed to express a range of intense, but ultimately diverse emotions: while Medea’s madness after having killed the first of her sons somewhat resembles Mopsus’ prophetic frenzy and is reflected in a similar speaking style, it is distinct from the Argonauts’ exuberant joy (Val. Fl. 4.327–329), Iocasta’s desperate grief (Sen. Phoen. 407–413), Medea’s raging fury (Sen. Med. 500–503), and Gesander’s disgusted anger (Val. Fl. 6.282–286). Importantly, none of these four latter passages closely parallels the style of Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus): Val. Fl. 4.327–329, the Argonauts’ address to Pollux after he defeated Amycus, consists almost entirely of an accumulation of vocatives with modifiers. The effect of Iocaste’s speech at Phoen. 407–413 rests upon its excessive use of repetition. A high repetition count is also the main reason for the high score of Medea’s short speech at Med. 500–503, while Gesander’s speech at Val. Fl. 6.282–286 scores high for its well-balanced range of features. Yet, although all these speeches are interesting in themselves, only Medea’s speech at Med. 982–994 combines e.g. a clustering of interjections (985–986), an imperative cluster (986–987), and an extended staccato sequence of short thoughts, questions, and exclamations (986–993). Stylistic features such as these make this speech the only good parallel for Mopsus’ prophecy out of the top five speeches identified by automated analysis.
Above, I listed as one of my preliminary caveats that when one feature is particularly dominant, the scoring system employed may result in high scores even if most other features are absent (cf. Val. Fl. 4.327–329; Sen. Phoen. 407–413). I also pointed out that it is likely that short speeches of any kind would frequently receive high scores when they just happen to contain a good selection of features at some frequency (cf. Sen. Med. 500–503; Val. Fl. 6.282–286). While the manually executed quantitative analysis provided some evidence to strengthen these assumptions, the computer-assisted analysis confirms that some modifications need to be made to the scoring system for it to more reliably detect the sermo praeruptus pattern.
The detection of closer parallels may be facilitated by not only looking for a high composite score, but by also excluding all speeches that do not contain the full range of features. This does in fact yield a list with about 15 speeches in the upper 30 which are comparable in one way or another to Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (coming in at number 7 after fixing the incorrect vocative count). However, it also simply places too many irrelevant passages high on the list (such as Val. Fl. 4.466–472 [Zetes’ immense joy upon recognizing Phineus]), assigns a low position to e.g. Sen. Ag. 720–758 (one of Tarrant’s prime examples for tragic sermo praeruptus), and misses an obvious parallel such as Her. F. 1192–1200 (which is excluded because it lacks an interjection).
So far, the examination of the data seems to confirm the initial hunch that calculating composite scores of the relative frequencies for interjections, repetitions, elisions, questions, vocatives, and imperatives may serve as a rough indicator of emotional intensity, but does not reliably point to instances of tragic sermo praeruptus. This forces us to come up with a more precise definition of what sets “real” examples such as Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) and Sen. Med. 982–994 (Medea) apart. Another round of close reading suggests that the analysis needs to take these speeches’ “broken, choppy style”46 into account: brief staccato statements, rapid, at times incoherent and erratic movements of thought, sequences of short, often anaphoric questions.
Table 13.9
Top 5 speeches by relative question frequency according to digital analysis. Like table 13.8, the table represents hand-corrected data, ordered by composite score.
|
Passage |
words |
int |
rep |
elis |
quest |
voc |
imp |
total |
score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Sen. Thy. 999–1004 (Thyestes) |
31 |
0 |
5 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
2 |
13 |
0.419 |
|
Her. F. 1192–1200 (Hercules) |
55 |
0 |
10 |
4 |
5 |
2 |
1 |
22 |
0.400 |
|
Phaed. 713–718 (Hippolytus) |
37 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
13 |
0.351 |
|
Her. F. 1138–1186 (Hercules) |
292 |
1 |
18 |
17 |
34 |
6 |
7 |
83 |
0.284 |
|
Tro. 1103–1110 (Andromache) |
38 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
6 |
0.158 |
This last property suggests that ranking the speeches according to the relative frequency of questions may turn up better results. The resulting top five speeches (this time, speeches shorter than five lines were excluded from the search: see Table 13.9) all reflect the speaker’s intense inner turmoil: Thyestes right before the reveal that he has feasted on his sons (Thy. 999–1004), Hercules slowly realizing that he has slaughtered his own family (Her. F. 1138–1186, 1192–1200), Hippolytus fleeing Phaedra in horror (Phaed. 713–718), and Andromache after hearing of Astyanax’ death (Tro. 1103–1110).
Language-wise, these speeches are much closer to Val. Fl. 1.211–226 (Mopsus) than the top five speeches in the previous two searches: note the clustering of imperatives (cf. Val. Fl. 1.215–216) at Her. F. 1166, 1175–1177; Phaed. 713; Thy. 1002–1003, the clustering of vocatives (cf. Val. Fl. 1.215) at Her. F. 1176–1177; Phaed. 718, the short questions with and without anaphora (cf. Val. Fl. 1.217–220, 223–225) at Her. F. 1138–1139, 1193–1195; Thy. 999–1000; Tro. 1103–1105, and the staccato statements (cf. Val. Fl. 1.214–217) at Her. F. 1192–1194, 1199–1200; Phaed. 713–714. It must be noted, however, that ordering the speeches by relative question frequency also places interesting examples low on the list (such as Med. 982–994; Oed. 1024–1039), while ranking irrelevant passages high (such as Val. Fl. 2.249–253, 4.649–653).
Tweaking the results in the manners described above turns up a large number of passages in the corpus of Senecan tragedy which may be adduced as models for Mopsus’ peculiar speaking style at Val. Fl. 1.211–226. The computer analysis thus corroborates the hypothesis that Mopsus’ speaking style may be read as an evocation of a particular type of tragic speech. Yet what has also become clear from this experiment is that the automated detection of the sermo praeruptus pattern is rather challenging: although ranking the speeches according to relative frequency of questions and filtering out speeches not exhibiting all six features under review yields better results than simply ordering speeches by composite score, both measurements rank “real” sermo praeruptus examples low and assign high positions to speeches reflecting emotional turmoil more generally.
In a future iteration of this experiment, the automated identification of sermo praeruptus in speeches included in the DICES database may be improved by taking into account the following parameters which the present analysis has neglected: (a) weighting of features (short staccato questions as at Sen. Her. F. 1138 and Val. Fl. 1.223–225 are a more reliable indicator than e.g. a high frequency of repetition), (b) sentence length (note the sequence of brief statements at Sen. Ag. 722–724 and Val. Fl. 214–217), (c) feature density (note the clustering of elision at Sen. Med. 902–904 and Val. Fl. 219–221, which conveys a vivid sense of the speaker’s disturbed mental state), (d) clusters of short questions and/or brief statements as part of longer speeches (as at e.g. Sen. Oed. 939–941; Tro. 1103–1105).47 Other key sermo praeruptus features, such as the obsessive repetition of a single thought (see e.g. Sen. Her. F. 958–964; Val. Fl. 211–213) or—the opposite—sequences of rapidly shifting thoughts (see e.g. Sen. Med. 988–992; Val. Fl. 218–226) are more difficult to detect automatically, yet adjusting the parameters of analysis in the manner I have just laid out would certainly identify many speeches with just these content features.
Ultimately, such a refinement of parameters would facilitate the computational detection of passages where characters in epic adopt the speech of tragic actors and momentarily turn the epic poem into a tragic spectacle. For it to be successful, the automated analysis would have to highlight intriguing Argonautica passages (identified by close reading) such as e.g. 2.290–299 (Hypsipyle’s farewell speech to Thoas), 3.290–313 (Jason’s funeral speech for Cyzicus), 3.510–520 (Juno’s angry monologue before the abduction of Hylas), 7.9–20 (Medea’s opening “prologue speech”), and 7.437–455 (Medea hesitatingly offering help to Jason which entails betraying her fatherland), which all look like particularly promising candidates for further analysis.
Acknowledgements
The writing of this article was funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) [grant ID: 85114] and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [grant DOI: 10.55776/ESP429].
Parkes 2021, 112.
Harrison 2007, 25; Arist. Po. 1448a19–24; Pl. R. 394b–c.
Parkes 2021, 108. For unity of time, see Arist. Po. 1449b13–14. Aristotle does not explicitly postulate unity of place in the Poetics, but, not least because of the practicalities of staging, the principle is still widely upheld in ancient drama (cf. Curley 2013, 88), although it is worth pointing out that the fabulae praetextae may have shown greater flexibility in this respect (cf. Ginsberg 2015, 226). For the adoption of tragic space in the Thebaid, see Kreuz 2024.
See e.g. Ambühl 2024, who discusses the difficulty of upholding clear distinctions between (epic) ira and (tragic) furor.
Harrison 2007, 25–33 provides an overview of the building blocks of genre (the “generic repertoire”).
For the concepts of “generic marker” and “clustering”, see Cowan 2021, 43–44. Cf. Parkes 2021, 126.
Papaioannou, Marinis 2021, 1–9.
Ambühl 2019, 176–180.
For Vergil’s Dido episode as a tragedy, see Hardie 1998, 62–63; Harrison 2007, 208–210; Lovatt 2013, 55–56.
On this simile, see Papaioannou and Marinis 2021, 1; Ambühl 2019, 182. Servius notes ad loc.: Tragice dixit, imitatus Euripidem (“He spoke in a tragic manner, imitating Euripides”).
On this simile, see Ambühl 2019, 183.
For an overview of treatments of the Theban myth in Greek and Roman tragedy, see Braund 2006, 263–264.
On these epic elements in Senecan tragedy, see Baertschi 2015, 171.
See also the chapter of Delucchi (chapter 6) in this volume for a cross-generic epic-tragic dialogue in imperial Greek hexametric poetry.
See most recently the volume Elements of Tragedy in Flavian Epic (edited by Papaioannou and Marinis).
For the reception of Senecan tragedy in Flavian epic, see e.g. Augoustakis 2010; Buckley 2014; Davis 2016; and the contributions in Papaioannou and Marinis 2021.
For the crucial distinction between “exemplary models” and “code models”, see Conte 1986, 31.
Tarrant 1976 on Ag. 724; Fitch 1987 on Her. F. 960–964, 1138 ff.; Boyle 2019 on Ag. 720–725. Additional examples adduced by the commentators are Med. 934–939, 958–966; Oed. 936–957.
Fitch 1987 on Her. F. 1138 ff.
Galli 2007 on Val. Fl. 211–226 (all quotations translated from the original Italian).
Zissos 2004b, 319–323. Cf. e.g. Lovatt 2013, 53–55.
Zissos 2008 on Val. Fl. 1.226. On the “theatricality” of Mopsus’ “stagey prophecy”, see Lovatt 2013, 53–55.
On tragic visuality/spectacularity, see Curley 2013, 3–4.
Lovatt 2013, 54.
Eur. Med. 1244; Sen. Med. 132, 594, 970, 1013.
On the importance of fear (and other emotions) in the Argonautica, see Schirner in this volume (chapter 12) and more specifically p. 286 where she also discusses Mopsus’ terrifying speech.
Cic. Phil. 3.16; Hor. Ars 278–280; Ov. Am. 2.18.15; cf. Hor. Ars 80; Ov. Rem. 375; Mart. 3.20.7, 5.5.7, 7.63.5, where only the cothurnus (but not the palla) is mentioned. For the cothurnus as “arch metageneric indicator”, see Zissos 2004b, 323.
Zissos 2004a, 31.
Zissos 2004b, 319–323; Lovatt 2013, 53–55.
The scoring mechanism, like the DICES database itself, considers the speech as its basic unit, which makes it difficult to differentiate for speeches of a more composite nature (e.g. changing between addressees). See the introduction to this volume, esp. p. 28 for more considerations. For similar reasons, Forstall and Verhelst (chapter 18, 423) opt for smaller units of evaluation, using rolling windows of five lines. Burns (chapter 9) likewise works with a rolling mean score.
See above n. 9.
La Cerda apud Pease 1935 on Aen. 4.595.
See e.g. Zissos 2008, xxxiv–xxxix.
See above n. 17.
Both plays have thematic relevance for the Argonautica and have been shown to be important models for Valerius (cf. Buckley 2014).
See e.g. Davis 2016, 66–72; Van der Schuur 2021, 167–168.
Ach. 1.529 et me Phoebus agit likely constitutes a metaliterary nod to the Argonautic model (note that Mopsus, son of Phoebus, is described as totus … dei at 1.207). Ach. 1.535 quaenam … improba virgo (of Deidamia) at the end of Calchas’ prophecy echoes Val. Fl. 6.681–682 improba … / virgo (of Medea) and mirrors Mopsus’ inquiry into the identity of the anonymous woman near the end of his own vision (likewise introduced by quaenam; cf. Fantuzzi 2013, 163–164).
See Newlands 2016, 145–147 on the elegiac stock-character of the abandoned woman (relicta).
For recitatio in Flavian literary culture, see Augoustakis 2016, 382–385.
As Boyle 2008, xxxvii–xxxix notes, in the imperial period, tragedies might have been experienced in a variety of ways (i.e. full-scale public theatre productions, private performances, recitatio, virtuoso recital of a tragic speech or episode, or singing of a tragic aria). On the “performance debate”, see Boyle 2008, xl–xliii.
Conte 1992, 107.
Despite my above examples of epic aristeia and tragic anagnorisis as solid fixtures within their respective generic systems, even the most stereotypical elements of genre may be subjected to generic recoding: Horace turns epic proelia into lyric proelia virginum at Carm. 1.6.17, Ovid’s elegiac nocturna bella at Am. 1.9.45 are certainly no epic nyctomachies, and Hercules’ epic rerum amor at Val. Fl. 2.381 contrasts with the Argonauts’ elegiac amor for the women of Lemnos (cf. 2.356).
See
See
Fitch 1987 on Sen. Her. F. 1138 ff.
Climactic tragic speeches are often marked by a “fusion of furor and ratio” (Boyle 2014, 351 on Med. 893–977), so that the sermo praeruptus pattern is often embedded within more regular speech patterns, making its automated detection difficult in an analysis focused on full speeches.
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