Darcy A Krasne

My dissertation explores the ways Latin poetry reworks the mythological tradition of which it itself is a part. I approach this broad topic primarily from the angle of mythological variation—that is, the competing and sometimes contradictory versions of individual myths which are an inherent component of the Greek and Roman mythological system. In Greece, myths and their variants played an important role in interfacing religion with politics. Through three “case studies” on the works of Ovid and Valerius Flaccus, I demonstrate different ways in which Roman poets, too, could utilize the pluralities of the tradition for their own poetic and political ends. Combining close reading with both focused and synoptic views of mythology, my methods present an approach to mythological poetry that comes squarely to terms with mythic variation as a significant textual strategy. The result is a version of intertextuality where the “text” at issue is, in effect, the complete body of myth. I show in particular how Ovid and Valerius Flaccus use the pluralities of the mythic tradition to offer the reader intertextual associations and resonances.

Chapter 1 examines the Athenian hero Theseus in the poetry of Ovid. I argue that by sometimes referring to the hero as son of Aegeus and sometimes as son of Neptune, Ovid illuminates particular aspects of Theseus’s character depending on which father is brought to the fore, and that Theseus is associated more strongly with Neptune in the Heroides and with Aegeus in the Metamorphoses. I also look at how missing pieces of Theseus’s story are narrated through the seemingly unrelated tales that abut and interrupt the so-called “Theseid” in the central books of the Metamorphoses. Finally, I consider how Ovid’s belated connection of Theseus and Augustus in Met. 15 requires us to reexamine Augustus in the light of Theseus’s portrayal. As the princeps, like Theseus, claimed two fathers—his adoptive father, the deified Julius Caesar, and his mortal father, Gaius Octavius—we may possibly understand Ovid’s focus on Theseus’s paternity as a commentary on imperial propaganda regarding issues of inheritance, succession, and the right to rule.

Chapter 2 investigates the extended catalogue of curses in Ovid’s Ibis in relation to both the mythographic tradition and Ovid’s own poetic corpus. By elucidating parallels between the organizational structure of the catalogue and mythographic catalogues such as Hyginus’s Fabulae, I demonstrate how the Ibis plays with presenting itself in the manner of these mythographic texts while exploiting the polyvalency of the mythic tradition’s inherent mutability and syncretism. I also discuss how major themes of the poem, such as a prevalent emphasis on names and their suppression, and an identification of the poetic corpus with the poet’s own body, echo the thematic concerns of Ovid’s other exile poetry. Finally, I argue for identifying Ovid’s pseudonymous enemy “Ibis” with the Muses, whose “love/hate” relationship with Ovid is clearly expressed in the exile poetry.

Chapter 3 turns to Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica, which picks up on many of the same themes of name, identity, and mythic variation that I explore in the first two chapters. Conscious of his epic’s belated position in an extensive Argonautic tradition, Valerius is highly skilled at incorporating myriad versions of a single narrative incident through devices such as misleading foreshadowing and intertextual allusion. He also plays with mythic homonyms, blending together figures who share names so that they no longer fit into discrete existences. These reworkings of the tradition reflect an overarching concern with duality, manifest in paired characters, repeated episodes, and the poem’s emphatic bipartite structure: the first half presents positive models of fraternal interaction, while the second half is fraught with fratricide and civil war. I argue that the clear thematic parallels which Valerius draws between the Argonauts and the Flavian gens suggest reading the epic politically. In particular, I propose that the epic may reflect two possible futures for Rome, harmony or civil strife. The imperial heirs, Titus and Domitian, find an echo in the twin Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, who were the traditional mythical exemplum of fraternal piety for joint imperial heirs. Valerius’s split emphasis on positive and negative pairings confronts this problematic future and ultimately reads as a cautionary tale; the entire epic is crafted to promote its double vision.

This article proposes that untethering amerina at Stat. Silv. 1.6.18 from Pliny's mention of varieties of apples and pears called Amerina allows us to read the line as instead referring to a type of pastry originating in Umbrian Ameria, which is within ancient naming practices for pastries and fits better into the context of the catalogue in which the line occurs. In this case, the second half of the catalogue is closely akin to the crustulum et mulsum donative of wealthy Italian patrons in the early empire.

This chapter argues that Ovid recasts the bees from Vergil’s fourth Georgic as the avian Memnonides in Metamorphoses 13 in order to enact a cyclical process of ekpyrosis and palingenesis in natural philosophical, primarily Empedoclean, terms. It demonstrates, through an examination of fragments of Empedocles and several Lucretian passages, the pervasive availability of cosmogonic and cosmophthoric, as well as zoogonic and heliogonic, language throughout the episode. The narrative of Memnon’s cremation thus becomes part of a multistage analogical process that replicates the narrative of Phaethon’s incineration (Met. 2), looks forward to the regeneration of the phoenix (Met. 15), and implicates Rome’s perpetual powers of rebirth from the ashes of civil war.

In Argonautica 2, Valerius’ Argonauts are intertextually analogized to Lucretius’ ideal Epicurean “distant observer” while behaving contrary to Epicurean ethics; meanwhile, the helmsman Tiphys espouses a consolatory Stoic viewpoint of cosmic rationality. The resulting philosophical tug-of-war is critical for future interpretations of Valerius’ divine machinery and his epic overall.

A new interpretation of sole novo at Aen. 7.720 (frequently flagged as confusing by commentators). I propose it refers to the action of Sirius, based on various parallels referring to Sirius as "doubling" the sun and scorching crops, as well as on contextual parallels between this and nearby similes in Vergil's catalogue of Italian allies and their model similes in Homer's Catalogue of Ships. Following this reading, the referent of the simile becomes not (exclusively) the immense number of Sabines, but their destructive potential. Accordingly, I also propose punctuating with a comma, not a period, at the end of 7.721.

Of all the Flavian epicists, Valerius alone does not follow the Homero-Vergilian tradition that places the gods’ greatest opponent Typhon beneath the Campanian volcanic island Inarime (likely modern Ischia), retaining him instead under Mount Aetna (cf. Arg. 2.24–33).  I demonstrate in this paper, however, that not only does Valerius allude on several occasions to the Pindaric version of Typhon’s imprisonment (Pyth. 1.15–28), which locates Typhon under not just Aetna but the entirety of the Bay of Naples, but that he also in several different ways associates Typhon with the eruption of another Campanian volcano, Mount Vesuvius.  I further argue that he uses his audience’s awareness of the tradition which places Typhon under Inarime to implicate Vesuvius in the mythological pattern of volcanoes which imprison theomachoi.
Vesuvius appears twice in the Argonautica.  At Arg. 3.209–10, the increased frenzy of the nighttime battle at Cyzicus is likened to the rumblings of Inarime and Vesuvius.  While Inarime is traditionally mentioned in Roman poetry in conjunction with other volcanoes that sit above vanquished theomachoi, Valerius alone (until Claudian) links Inarime with Vesuvius, an initial hint that Vesuvius too belongs in that tradition.  A book later, the Harpies’ flight is compared to the ashes launched by Vesuvius’ eruption (Arg. 4.507–11), quickly followed by the appearance of the Harpies’ father, Typhon (Arg. 4.516–18).  This genealogy is unique to Valerius: the Harpies, who etymologically embody rapacious storm-winds, are regularly the daughters of Thaumas (Hes. Th. 265–9), whereas Typhon is the father of a different set of ill-blowing winds (Hes. Th. 869); Valerius conflates the two.  The Vesuvius-simile recalls Hesiod’s description of Typhon’ wind-children (Th. 872–80), while the advent and depiction of Typhon anticipate later descriptions of Vesuvius’ eruption (Plin. Min. Ep. 6.20, Dio. Hist. 66.23.5).  In addition, the revised genealogy allows Valerius to hint at philosophical theories which make winds responsible for volcanic action (cf. Lucr. DRN 6.639ff).
The volcanic landscape of Campania is commonly associated with scenes of civil war and gigantomachy in Flavian poetry, but Valerius’ poem is geographically divorced from Italy.  Nonetheless, he takes the opportunity of Vesuvius’ recent eruption to renew and expand the link between Campania and the divine gigantomachy.  Rather than indulge in a radical revision of Typhon’ location to place him under Vesuvius, Valerius associates them—and bolsters Vesuvius’ cosmic importance—through genealogy, proximity, imagery, and intertextuality, while simultaneously expanding and further Romanizing the framework of civil war and gigantomachy that underlies his own epic.

This paper examines the structure of the catalogue in Ovid’s Ibis. In the catalogue’s first half, Ovid highlights the important exilic themes of exile, nostos, and meter through repeating markers located at significant points, specifically a quarter of the way through and at the catalogue’s center (identified by a couplet that forms a ring-composition with the catalogue’s opening). In the catalogue’s second half, Ovid emphasizes poets and poetry, divine punishment, dismemberment, and the consumption of one’s own flesh and blood—again, recurrent themes in the exile poetry. Throughout, metapoetic language suggests both elegy and iambus, appropriately for the poem’s genre-crisis.

The prominence and interrelations of brothers and other close companions in Valerius Flaccus's Argonautica can be read against the epic's Stoic framework and its innovative and pervasive theme of civil discord. The Catalogue of Argonauts, which follows the order of Argonauts aboard the Argo, helps to illuminate the Argonauts' fraternal and social relations, but as the epic progresses, the piecemeal removal of Argonauts from the Argo causes a shift in their societal structure that echoes the cosmic dissolution perpetrated by their voyage.

(N.B. This paper was written in 2012 and updated in 2014; some marginalia in the PDF indicate a few further changes, but it should be taken for a work of that time. Like some others, I am posting it so that it can see the light of day.)

Although Valerius Flaccus does not indulge excessively in Apollonius-style aetia that explain the Argonautic origins of future landmarks and rituals, there is still a noticeably aetiological current running throughout his "Argonautica," primarily explaining the organization of a world that is already complete prior to the Argo’s launching. This enables the Argonauts of Valerius’s epic, which is heavily influenced by the later events of Seneca’s "Medea," to enact the crime that the chorus of Seneca’s "Medea" lays at their feet: the crime of dragging together divinely-imposed boundaries (Med. 335–339). Effectively, Valerius’s altered aetiology helps to define a world that is primed to be impacted by the Argonauts’ voyage in the same way that Seneca’s chorus claims it was, rather than a world that the Argonauts help to complete, as they do in Apollonius’s epic. In the Roman "Argonautica"’s middle region, however, Valerius alters his aetiological approach, using exclusively aetia drawn from Apollonius, and this unprecedented aetiological pattern occurs in particular following Tiphys’s death. This is one facet of the pervasive metapoetics that occupy the epic’s middle region (defined approximately as extending from the departure from Phineus’s kingdom, in Book 4, to the medial invocation of the Muse in Book 5). Tiphys, as the helmsman and guide of what scholars have identified as an ultimately poetic craft, has been serving as Valerius’s muse during the outward voyage, following Aratus’s celestial σήματα. His death, therefore, is catastrophic for the epic; without him, Valerius can only follow the terrestrial σήματα previously laid down by Apollonius as the Argonauts make their way to Colchis. At this point, Valerius is finally able to free himself from the intensified Apollonian narrative, invoking a new muse for the new song on which he now embarks: the “aetiology” of Seneca’s "Medea"’s Medea.

This paper investigates the extended catalogue of curses in Ovid’s Ibis, in particular the catalogue's literary significance and the reasons and methods behind Ovid's organizing principles and choice of themes. I demonstrate how the Ibis plays with presenting itself in the manner of mythographic texts while exploiting the polyvalency of the mythic tradition’s inherent mutability and syncretism. I also discuss how major themes of the poem, such as a prevalent emphasis on names and their suppression, and an identification of the poetic corpus with the poet’s own body, echo the thematic concerns of Ovid’s other exile poetry. Finally, I argue for identifying Ovid’s pseudonymous enemy “Ibis” with the Muses, whose “love/hate” relationship with Ovid is clearly expressed in the exile poetry.

In its construction as a series of thought-experiments, mythology frequently reflects on the question of who a hero’s parents are.  If there are competing answers, the reason often pertains to local identity, or it may hint at a deeper level of mythological significance that informs the hero’s own identity.  However, in terms of mythic thought, conflicting genealogical traditions do not necessarily insist on our choosing between them.  In this paper, I focus on one instance of genealogical variation, the two fathers of Theseus (Poseidon and Aegeus), and how these alternate traditions (and, by extension, the character of Theseus) come into play in Ovid’s poetry, as well as examining what the broader poetic significances of Ovid’s choices are.  I argue that by sometimes referring to the hero as son of Aegeus and sometimes as son of Neptune, Ovid illuminates particular aspects of Theseus’s character depending on which father is brought to the fore (or actively rejected, such as in the case of Her. 10.131–2), and that Theseus is associated more strongly with Neptune in the Heroides and with Aegeus in the Metamorphoses, thus emphasizing his piratical nature in the former and his civilizing Athenian side in the latter.  I also look at how missing pieces of Theseus’s story are narrated through the seemingly unrelated tales that abut and interrupt the so-called “Theseid” in the central books of the Metamorphoses and how, against the background of these “replacement” tales and in the hyper-watery realm of Achelous’s grotto, we see the Neptunian side of Theseus briefly emerge at the heart of the epic, undermining his otherwise strongly Athenian presentation.

In Book 6 of the De Rerum Natura, Lucretius investigates connections between volcanic activity, earthquakes, winds, and lightning bolts; Philip Hardie (Hardie 1986) has famously shown the ways in which Vergil draws on the structures and associations of this book, in his Aeneid.  Valerius Flaccus also draws on the themes from DRN 6 and on Vergil’s “re-mythologized” adaptation to create an inter- and intratextual network of images and meaning within his Argonautica.  I propose to investigate Valerius’ use of one additional theme from DRN 6 that seemingly did not make it into Vergil’s implementation of the system (at least not on Hardie’s reading): the theme of fever and disease, which for Lucretius serves as a human parallel for volcanic activity (Garani 2007).
Although largely unremarked except as discrete episodes, both literal and metaphorical disease are prevalent in Valerius’ epic.  Actual physical illness is largely limited to the plague which strikes down the Argonauts Tiphys and Idmon at the headwaters of the Acheron, among the Mariandynoi (Arg. 4.594–8, 5.1–31), and to a plague that initially afflicts the Trojans after Laomedon’s defrauding of Neptune (2.475–6), but a spiritual malaise afflicts the Argonauts en masse after the accidental nighttime slaughter at Cyzicus (aegra mens, 3.365; lues, 3.373), and Medea is of course plagued by love-sickness throughout the second half (e.g., pestem latentem, 7.252).  Furthermore, terms like lues and pestis are frequently used of figures that exist fully or partially within Valerius’ network of volcanic and seismic imagery (e.g., the Harpies are luem at 4.432 etc, while the cosmos-shaking sea-serpent that harries Troy is pestis at 2.498), helping to underscore the Lucretian connection between the two, and potentially bringing under consideration other passages that integrate the language of disease.
In addition, recognition that Valerius is leveraging this Lucretian system sheds light on an odd phrase that has long been dismissed or awkwardly explained by scholars, namely the image of Typhoeus sacras revomentem pectore flammas (2.25) as he flees from the gods.  Attempts to justify the adjective sacras have ranged from Mozley’s translation “accursed” to Poortvliet’s rationale that “the flames are sacrae because they have been brought about by Jupiter’s thunderbolt” (Poortvliet 1991: 39); but we can now offer the alternative that the phrase alludes to sacer ignis, one Lucretian term for the disease which he treats in DRN 6 (Commager 2007, Fowler 2007), and entirely fitting given that Typhoeus is himself one of the mainstays of the volcanic system in Valerius.
Where the remainder of the Lucretian themes that Valerius imports are largely concerned with the geological, cosmological, and meteorological, the recognition that Valerius’ numerous fevers, plagues, and various sickness-related images are also bound up in this system opens a new dimension that is equally concerned with the eschatological and ontological.  Moreover, in keeping with Valerius’ largely Stoic fashioning of his cosmos, his engagement with Lucretius’ analogy between fiery human sickness and fiery terrestrial volcanism helps to reaffirm that humans are a microcosm of the macrocosmic system.