“Incest and Late Antiquity: Décadence?”

MARCO FORMISANO THERESE FUHRER (ED.) with the assistance of ANNA-LENA STOCK Décadence “Decline and Fall” or “Other Antiquity”? Universitätsverlag WINTER Heidelberg i Contents PREFACE ............................................................................................................... 3 MARCO FORMISANO: Reading Décadence – Reception and the Subaltern Late Antiquity ..................................................................................... 7 I. Décadence in Antiquity THERESE FUHRER: Das Interesse am menschlichen Scheitern – Antike Konstruktionen des ‚Niedergangs‘ einer Kultur ................................ 19 GILLIAN CLARK: Fragile Brilliance – Augustine, decadence, and “other antiquity” ................................................................................................ 35 II. Imagining Late Antiquity: Décadence and Modernity HELMUT PFEIFFER: Flauberts Versuchung der Spätantike ................................ 55 CARLO SANTINI: „Aus einem Staat, der an einem Sprachfehler zugrundegegangen ist“ – Musil tardo-antico ...................................................... 77 KARIN SCHLAPBACH: “Under the full impact of a catastrophic end” – Augustine and the fall of Rome in Hannah Arendt’s reading ........................... 97 III. The Fertility of Décadence MICHAEL ROBERTS: Friedrich Mehmel, Pompatic Poetics, and Claudian’s Epithalamium for the Marriage of Honorius and Maria ............................... 115 HENRIETTE HARICH-SCHWARZBAUER: Die ‚Lust‘ der Poesie – ‚Décadence‘ in den spätantiken Epithalamien (Claudius Claudianus, c. m. 25 und Sidonius Apollinaris, cc. 10–11; 14–15) ....................................................................... 133 DANUTA SHANZER: Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? ......................... 149 ii IV. Reception: Late Antique Poetics STEPHEN HINDS: ‘The self-conscious cento’ ................................................... 171 SIGRID SCHOTTENIUS CULLHED: Proba and Jerome ........................................ 199 JAN STENGER: Der ‚barocke‘ Stil des Ammianus Marcellinus – Vom heuristischen Nutzen eines folgenreichen Verdikts ............................... 223 ÉTIENNE WOLFF: Quelques jalons dans l’histoire de la réception de Sidoine Apollinaire .................................................................................... 249 V. Décadence: Good to Think With? ILARIA L.E. RAMELLI: Décadence Denounced in the Controversy over Origen – Giving Up Direct Reading of Sources and Counteractions .............. 263 CHRISTOPH MARKSCHIES: Décadence? Christliche Theologen der Spätantike über den Verfall von Moral und Glauben seit Kaiser Konstantin ................... 285 ANDREAS T. ZANKER: Decline and Kunstprosa – Velleius Paterculus and Eduard Norden ......................................................................................... 299 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS .............................................................................. 325 INDEX LOCORUM ............................................................................................. 1.) Scripture ................................................................................... 2.) Ancient Literature .................................................................... 3.) Medieval and Early Modern Literature .................................... 4.) Modern Literature .................................................................... 329 329 329 339 340 INDEX NOMINUM ET RERUM ............................................................................. 341 Danuta Shanzer Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? Introduction This paper1 starts from the premise that in literature incest is often associated with decadence.2 It begins with a “before” and “after” literary problem, that opposes Classical Antiquity (where incest as a literary theme is limited) and the Central Middle Ages (where it becomes highly popular) before zeroing in on the Late Antique Latin West to see how incest fared there. It briefly surveys some highlights of incest in Late Antique literary texts with greater detail devoted to a few special genres (hagiography, Romance, epyllion, and declamation). Special attention will be devoted to the exploration of incest in declamation. Throughout, the theme of decadence will be interwoven. Was the treatment of incest “decadent” in this “other antiquity”? Incest, Guilt, and Décadence “Incest” does not here mean the crime of incestum in the Roman sense that could include sexual intercourse with a Vestal Virgin,3 but sexual intercourse between 1 2 3 My warm thanks to Marco Formisano and Therese Fuhrer who made this memorable conference and the volume possible. My continuing gratitude to the kind librarians who support my research on both sides of the Atlantic: Dr. Sonja Reisner in Vienna, and Kimberley Lerch and Mark Wardecker in Urbana. I am especially grateful to Dr. Bé Breij of the University of Nijmegen, who responded with alacrity to a sudden email from a stranger, and with whom I have enjoyed a most stimulating and instructive interchange about Ps-Quintilian’s DM. As someone teaching in Vienna, I could begin with Arthur Schnitzler: Frau Beate und ihr Sohn, Berlin 1922. See Isid. orig. 5.26.24 for incestum used for stuprum in the case of Vestals. For the duality of the concept, see Philippe Moreau: Incestus et prohibitae nuptiae: L'inceste a Rome, Paris 2002, pp. 137–43: he notes how Amulius’ rape of Rhea Silvia-Ilia is incestuous in both senses. 150 Danuta Shanzer close family members.4 Incest was clearly a guilty pleasure and a sought-after topic in the literature of erotic pathemata5 and in authors such as Ovid.6 Oedipus was used to explore innocence, guilt, and redemption on a cerebral and sublime level. Incest could be a key component of the depiction of decadent and troubled societies. In the Oedipus Tyrannus the plague at Thebes mirrors the disease in Oedipus’ family.7 And in Roman Polanski’s movie Chinatown Noah Cross’ incest and the drought in Los Angeles may not be unrelated. But classical literary narratives about incest are comparatively few in number, and aside from those in historical,8 polemical,9 satirical,10 and rhetorical texts,11 primarily about figures from myth or from a mythological past.12 Incest mainstream later in the Middle Ages But by the central and later Middle Ages, the situation had changed. Increasingly more relationships were categorized as incestuous.13 And incest moved far closer to the literary center in a large number of 12th C. and later texts, both in Latin and 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 We look at genetic connections, but, in discussing ancient and medieval incest, one has to bear in mind that prohibitions could change and could also include relatives by marriage (e.g. the noverca). So the latter are not ruled out of discussion. J.L. Lightfoot: Parthenius of Nicaea: the Poetical Fragments and the Erotika Pathemata, Oxford/New York 1999, p. 242, for the tally in Parthenius: one quarter of his narratives: 2 (Polymela and her father), 5 (Leucippus and his sister), 6 (Pallene), 11 (Byblis), 13 (Harpalyce), 17 (Periander and his mother), 28 (Larisa and her father), 31 (Euopis and Troezen), 33 (Assanon, son of Niobe, and his daughter). His most famous incest narratives are: Myrrha, Byblis, and Canace. For a detailed catalogue of father-daughter pairs, see Erwin Rohde: Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, 3. durch einen zweiten Anhang vermehrte Auflage, Leipzig 1914, p. 448 n. 1. For the plague, see Soph. OT 22–30 (description), 96–8 driving out the murderer(s) who defile the land; 106–7 for the murderers of Laios. See Tac. ann. 6.19 for Sextus Marius and his daughter. He was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock; 12.5.1 for Claudius. E.g. the Pro Caelio for Clodius and Clodia; Catullus 88 for Gellius’ sexual relations with his mother and sister. See Moreau (n. 3), p. 34. E.g. apocol. 8 for Claudius; Juv. 2.32 on Domitian with Suet. Dom. 22; likewise Plin. epist. 4.11 with Suet. Dom. 8.4. E.g. the imagined scenarios of Sen. contr. 1.3. This would include Seneca’s Oedipus and Phaedra. James A. Brundage: Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago 1987, p. 141, p. 163, and pp. 355–6 for problems created by the required seven degrees of affinity. These were reduced to four by Lateran IV in 1215. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 151 in various medieval vernaculars.14 Furthermore, these narratives about incest were not necessarily safely confined to a distant or mythological past. In this period the transgression got doubled with double incest.15 Central medieval incest became mainstream entertainment. What was the role of Late Antiquity, if any? Classical incest could induce a frisson of horror;16 it could also be explored in a provocative vein of transgressive titillation.17 Arguably, in the latter form, it could be filed in a “decadent” drawer. As someone with interests both in literary and social history, I began to wonder about what had happened, when it had happened, and why incest, a carefully distanced subject in antiquity, could become such a favorite in the Christian Middle Ages. What role did processes that started or occurred in Late Antiquity play in this evolution? Christianity and Incest: Polemic and Change The greatest obvious Late Antique change was the rise and institutionalization of Christianity. Its earlier stages are marked by lurid accusations of incest attested in African authors: Fronto, Tertullian (apol. 9.16), and Minucius Felix (Oct. 31.3). So incest played a part in early polemic against Christians and in Christian responses to pagans. New categories of incest evolved within the Christian church (e.g. condemnation of the Jewish levirate). In this period well-meaning people had publically to be educated about which marital relations were or were not incestuous, censured, and made to repent and mend their ways. Such is the 14 15 16 17 The obvious examples are the Judas legend; Albanus; Gregorius; Andreas of Crete. Eventually also, of course, the Arthur-legend, when Mordred becomes Arthur’s son. For later (and also folkloric) reception of the Oedipus legend, see Lowell Edmunds: Oedipus: the Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues, Baltimore 1985, and Lowell Edmunds/Alan Dundes: Oedipus: a Folklore Casebook, Madison 1984. Elizabeth Archibald: Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 1st ed., Oxford/New York 2001, p. 110. Cypr. ad Donat. (on the theatre), called it the horror antiquus: Cothurnus est tragicus, prisca carmine facinora recensere: de parricidiis et incestis horror antiquus expressa ad imaginem veritatis actione replicatur, ne saeculis transeuntibus exolescat quod aliquando commissum est. Admonetur aetas omnis auditu fieri posse quod factum est. Also Lact. inst. 6.20.28: Item tragicae historiae subiciunt oculis parricidia et incesta regum malorum et coturnata scelera demonstrant. Ovid, for example. 152 Danuta Shanzer stuff of episcopal letter-collections.18 In a sense the cure of souls and open discussion really “outed” incest.19 Incest cases developed contemporary and public faces. Christian Exegesis But while Christians were reproaching pagans with their incestuous gods (et soror et coniunx!), they faced their own embarrassment with the Old Testament. If one starts with only two human beings, incest will happen, even in the bestregulated families. Augustine, CD 15.16 is a locus classicus.20 He argues that “increase and multiply” necessitated (conpellente necessitate) what at first were incestuous marriages that required double kinship terms: Adam as pater et socer; Eve as mater et socrus. Their children were both soror and uxor and maritus and frater. But in the third generation, the grandchildren could marry first cousins. From then on religio prohibited incest. Contra naturam or contra humanam societatem? In his De octo quaestionibus, Augustine insisted that incest was a crime against society (placitum humanae societatis), not one against nature (like sodomy).21 There are different ways of regarding this position. One could see a perhaps unexpectedly Roman tolerance and understanding that incest is socially constructed and contingent upon time and place and human mores. As an unknown Olympian in the Apocolocyntosis put it: “Get with it, dumbo! You can go halfway in Athens; all the way in Alexandria.”22 Alternatively one could see a tail wagging a dog, or Augustine thinking a knight’s move ahead about what any general position on incest entailed and on which other fronts he might have to fight, e.g. the polygamy of the patriarchs. To reject the OT like a Manichee was not an option. This was presumably the best even a brilliant Christian intellectual 18 19 20 21 22 Consider Ambr. epist. 58 and 59; also for incestuous adultery in the correspondence of Avitus of Vienne, Danuta Shanzer/Ian Wood: Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose (Translated Texts for Historians 38), Liverpool 2002, pp. 285–90. I disagree with Otto Rank: The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend: Fundamentals of a Psychology of Literary Creation, Baltimore 1992, p. 271, who sees massive Christian repression emerging in the proliferation of Christian incest legends. Note its argument that incest prohibitions are also intended to spread caritas and necessitudines rather than concentrating them in double kinship terms. Intriguingly Augustine strictly avoids the word “incestum” anywhere in the chapter. The parallel that occurs is the polygamy of the patriarchs that does not qualify as a flagitium. See Aug. c. Faust. 22.5, for his defense of the OT against the Manichees. Apocol. 8. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 153 could do with the text of the OT, while explaining the urgent necessitas felt by, for example, Lot’s daughters: nullus virorum remansit in terra qui possit ingredi ad nos iuxta morem universae terrae.23 Décadence v. Sputtering Decadence, like pornography, is in the eye of the beholder, hard to define, but recognized when seen.24 So we must deal with the reader’s subjectivity in gauging treatments in ancient texts: tone can range from the outraged and disgusted to the matter-of-fact and clinical to the salivating and lustful. But none of these Christian discussions seems decadent. Indeed the advent of Christianity, the cure of souls, and the need to discuss the anomalies of OT may have demystified and sanitized incest. In this period we can actually get some sense of why it was considered a bad thing rather than having to have recourse to theories about body fluids mixing in the wrong places.25 Incest (when committed by Christians) comes out far lower on my “sputterometer”26 than fornication, adultery, or homosexuality, even though it rated worse.27 Incest even fails to surface in Brown’s Body and Society.28 23 24 25 26 27 Lot and his daughters in Gen 19.30–8: ascenditque Loth de Segor et mansit in monte duae quoque filiae eius cum eo timuerat enim manere in Segor et mansit in spelunca ipse et duae filiae eius 31. dixitque maior ad minorem pater noster senex est et nullus virorum remansit in terra qui possit ingredi ad nos iuxta morem universae terrae 32. veni inebriemus eum vino dormiamusque cum eo ut servare possimus ex patre nostro semen 33. dederunt itaque patri suo bibere vinum nocte illa et ingressa est maior dormivitque cum patre at ille non sensit nec quando accubuit filia nec quando surrexit 34. altera quoque die dixit maior ad minorem ecce dormivi heri cum patre meo demus ei bibere vinum etiam hac nocte et dormies cum eo ut salvemus semen de patre nostro 35. dederunt et illa nocte patri vinum ingressaque minor filia dormivit cum eo et nec tunc quidem sensit quando concubuerit vel quando illa surrexerit 36. Conceperunt ergo duae filiae Loth de patre suo 37. peperitque maior filium et vocavit nomen eius Moab ipse est pater Moabitarum usque in praesentem diem 38. minor quoque peperit filium et vocavit nomen eius Ammon id est filius populi mei ipse est pater Ammanitarum usque hodie. For Potter Stewart’s important pronouncement, see: “I know it when I see it” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it. See Moreau (n. 3), pp. 66–9, citing the work of Françoise Héritier: Les deux sœurs et leur mère: anthropologie de l'inceste, Paris 1994, pp. 274–303, esp. for “fluid mechanics”. For an example of the sort of effusions the “sputterometer” measures, see Danuta R. Shanzer: Latin Literature, Christianity, and Obscenity in the Later Roman West, in: Medieval Obscenities, ed. by Nicola MacDonald, 2006, pp. 179–202, here: p. 201. Augustine makes the point explicitly in b. coniug.: 8.8 alioquin duo mala erunt, quorum alterum peius; aut bonum erit et fornicatio, quia est peius adulterium – peius est 154 Danuta Shanzer Thus two poles: limited consideration of incest in Late Antiquity, yet extensive work on the subject by literary scholars of the central Middle Ages; some failures to connect what might be relevant pieces of the puzzle.29 So now I’d like to narrow down to some significant genres and texts. Saints’ lives with incestuous themes: Father-daughter Some myths seem to persist in hagiography, and there were those who considered the myth of Oedipus to be among them. The great Hippolyte Delehaye once memorably and enticingly remarked, “L’histoire d’Oedipe, avec toute sa sombre horreur […] a été beaucoup lue au moyen âge, sous forme de Vie de saint.”30 He mentioned Gregory, Albanus, and Julian the Hospitaler, among others. But all of these are 12th C. The only one of this type that dates to late antiquity is the 6th C. Latin legend of Abraham31 and the Vita Mariae Meretricis,32 the text that was adapted by Hrotswitha in the 10th C. in her comedy Abraham.33 Both are remar- 28 29 30 31 32 33 enim alienum matrimonium violare quam meretrici adhaerere – et bonum adulterium, quia est peior incestus – peius est enim cum matre quam cum aliena uxore concumbere – et donec ad ea perveniatur, quae, sicut ait apostolus, turpe est etiam dicere, omnia bona erunt in conparatione peiorum. Moreau (n. 3), p. 30, notes that in the Roman world it ranked with parricide and cannibalism rather than with fornication and adultery. No index entries in Peter R.L. Brown: The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Lectures on the History of Religions n.s. 13), New York 1988; Aline Rousselle: Porneia on Desire and the Body in Antiquity, Family, Sexuality, and Social Relations in Past Times, Oxford/New York 1988, pp. 107–10 discusses the accusations in Tertullian and Minucius Felix. E.g. Archibald (n. 15) does not mention either the Abraham-legend or the Aegritudo Perdicae. While the latter hangs on one MS, the former, as re-worked by Hrotswitha, was of significance for the later Middle Ages. Francesca Rizzo Nervo: ‘Incidit in amorem filiae suae’ Rappresentazioni del rapporto incestuoso dal mito alla letteratura greca medievale, in: L'Eros difficile, ed. by Salvatore Pricoco (Soveria Mannelli 1998), who has done fine work collecting late antique material, while she discusses Secundus and the Acta Andreae and their thematic silence, does not note Val. Max. 1.8. ext. 2, where the wife of Nausimenes is struck dumb by finding her children committing incest. Hippolyte Delehaye: Les légendes hagiographiques, 3. éd. revue (Subsidia Hagiographica 18), Bruxelles 1927, p. 60, picked up on by René Aigrain: L'Hagiographie, Poitiers 1953, p. 231 who adds Dymphna fleeing her father to the tally, and also mentions the tale of “Peau d’Âne” and her father. Helene Homeyer: Hrotsvithae Opera, München/Paderborn/Wien 1970, p. 298. PL 73.289–92 for the Vita Abraham and 651–60 for the Vita Mariae. Homeyer (n. 31), pp. 303–20. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 155 kably cheerful tales that rewrite the “Virgin in the Brothel”34 to the “Lapsed Virgin in the Brothel”. Father-daughter incest is latently present, but masquerading as threatened uncle-niece/spiritual father-adoptive daughter incest. The 6th C. author has a bit of fun with the ascetic visiting the stabulum, pretending to be a “John” in order to gain access to his niece and rescue her from a fate worse than death. Hrotswitha knew her literary history, for the plot of the Vita Mariae has obvious connections both to ancient comedy (e.g. the Rudens)35 and to the romance. And it lives on in the modern period as an urban legend about the misadventure of the father who comes unannounced to visit his daughter in her college dorm room and finds her turning tricks.36 But dark? Somber? Horror? Hardly! Darker Material in Romance: Father-daughter For darker material there is the Historia Apollonii, where the evil king Antiochus falls in love with his own daughter and rapes her, breaking the knot of her virginity. She is left trying to hide the flowing blood, but it falls onto the pavement and her plight is revealed to her nurse. Antiochus sets a riddle about the incestuous act itself to prospective suitors that is solved by Apollonius. HA RA 4: “scelere vehor, maternam carnem vescor; quaero fratrem meum, meae matris virum, uxoris meae filium: non invenio.”37 The story begins with incest and blood and is trisected by sanguinary effusions. Apollonius then has a daughter by a Cyrenaean princess called Archistratis. She is given up for dead in childbed after a hemorrhage (she isn’t), and the daughter Tharsia is left in friends’ custody and eventually is captured by pirates. At the end Tharsia’s identity (she ends up in a brothel) is only revealed when Apollonius (not knowing he is her father) after playing riddle games with her, shoves her and causes a nosebleed (HA RA 44). She laments her calamities and Apollonius realizes she must be his long-lost daughter. 34 35 36 37 On which, see Francesca Rizzo Nervo: La vergine e il lupanare. Storiografia, romanzo, agiografia, in: La narrativa cristiana antica. XXIII Incontro di studiosi dell'antichità cristiana. Roma 5-7 Maggio 1994, Roma 1995, pp. 91–9. Daemones is the father of Palestra. Consider the Bryn Mawr College urban legend about Rockefeller Hall (a.k.a. “Fucka-fella Hall”). See Georgius A.A. Kortekaas: Commentary on the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum, no. 284), Leiden et al. 2007, pp. 51–2, on difficulties of interpretation, particularly with the second part. There are epigraphic and epitaphic parallels for riddles about incest. See Hervé Belloc/Philippe Moreau: L'inscription de Brigetio CIL, III, 4346 (CLE, 440), in: Revue de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes 1 (2003), pp. 79–95. 156 Danuta Shanzer The initial incest scene is very brutal, spilled blood and all,38 and blood features in the Scheintod of Archistratis, as well as in the final anagnorisis of Apollonius and Tharsia. It functions as a Leitmotiv or basso ostinato, and must be in some way connected with theme of family relations, and catharsis and anagnorisis. This text is the direct source of many of the incestuous romance themes of medieval literature.39 It was apparently derived from an earlier Greek antecedent,40 but, as preserved, looks like an incestuous outlier in Late Antiquity: all is well that ends well, but with a dark underbelly. There is no serious engagement, however, with psychological states or motives in the HA. Aegritudo Perdicae: son-mother The Aegritudo Perdicae, written by a contemporary of Dracontius in late 5th C. Vandal Africa, may be the most notable treatment of incest from Late Antiquity. The story went through various permutations beginning as a tale with a happy ending about a son who fell in love with his father’s mistress or his stepmother and tried to conceal his desires and grew lovesick. A physician diagnoses the illness when his pulse races in the presence of the love object. He was able to consummate his passion because the father ceded her. By Late Antiquity however, she was indisputably his mother. People were using the story to think with. Jerome attests the legend (not by name) and statues depicting it. An epigram of Claudian’s survives (CM 8: De Polycasta et Perdice): Quid non saevus Amor flammarum numine cogat? sanguinis affectu mater amare timet. pectore dum niveo miserum tenet anxia nutrix, inlicitos ignes ia m fouet ipsa parens. ultrices pharetras tandem depone, Cupido. consule iam Venerem: forsan et ipsa dolet. If I understand it correctly, it may well qualify as decadent, for it seems to describe an incestuous urge for a babe in arms. But the story appears to be told as if 38 39 40 Compare Thomas Mann: Der Erwählte, Hamburg 1956. See Archibald (n. 15), pp. 95–101. See Georgius A.A. Kortekaas: The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre: a study of its Greek origin and an edition of the two oldest Latin recensions (Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum no. 253), Leiden/Boston 2004. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 157 the mother fell in love (Phaedra-motif),41 not the son, and one is left wondering how it could have developed (Anth. Lat. 211: De Perdicca): Eximius Perdicca fuit, qui corpore eburno Fulgebat roseisque genis, cui lumina blanda Fundebant flammas, crocei per colla capilli Pendebant variosque dabant sibi saepe colores. Fulvus poples erat, nitidus pes. omnia rident, Quidquid habet iuvenis. solus vincebat Adonem. This fragment (not, I think an ecphrastic epigram)42 from the Latin Anthology could also have been focalized by the gaze of the mother – unless the emphasis on Perdica’s beauty is simply intended to set up his appalling eventual starvation. The Aegritudo remains a puzzle. Martha Malamud has described it as a “text immediately attractive because it combines obscurity and the pleasures of perversity.” “It is puzzling because it ‘speaks our language’ so well.” “Unusually expressive of what we think of as post-modern anxieties.”43 Romano detected Christian ideas in the text44 only to be slapped down hard (and in part rightly) by Schetter.45 To me it seems an outlier, a throwback to the Classical world and, in some ways, to Ovid with an I-voice accorded incestuous desire. It seems to lack a moral and a center. Perdica’s neglect of Venus and Cupid can hardly be taken seriously as worthy of the punishment he receives. The incestuous act occurs in a dream in which Cupid impersonates the mother Castalia and embraces Perdica (complexusque dedit per somnia tristis imago, 80), and pierces him. The result is ardet in incestum. The mother is blameless: her kisses are plena pudoris. And we are carefully told that Perdica had been separated from his mother young, so did not recognize her as his mother at the time he dreamt. Both seem blameless. But Perdica seems to regard his dream-embrace as his own fault (Nox sceleris secreta mei, Nox conscia cladis, 117) and contrasts his dream-incest 41 42 43 44 45 Rightly Domenico Romano: Interpretazione della Aegritudo Perdicae, in: Atti dell'Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti di Palermo 20 (1960), pp. 169–93, here: pp. 191–3. Domenico Romano: Tradizione e novità nella Aegritudo Perdicae, I, in: Le trasformazioni della cultura nella tarda antichità. Atti del convegno tenuto a Catania, Università degli Studi, 27 sett.-2 ott. 1982, ed. by Claudia Giuffrida/Mario Mazza, Jouvence 1985, p. 384, suggested that it described a scene from a pantomime. Martha Malamud: Vandalising epic, in: Ramus 22 (1993), pp. 155–73, here: p. 155. Romano (n. 42), pp. 382–4. Romano does not say so explicitly, but one of his arguments seems to be that Perdica’s clear sense of his own guilt for “thought or dream crimes” must be Christian (cf. Mt 5.28). But it is possible that Aegr. 99: nam fari scelus est, est admitti quoque crimen refers to no more than the ultimate unspeakableness of incest. Willy Schetter: Vier Adnoten zur Aegritudo Perdicae, in: Hermes 119 (1991), pp. 94– 113, here: pp. 110–13. 158 Danuta Shanzer with Oedipus’, who was nescius. He challenges Amor masochistically with a variety of possible suicides. Even though there are moments of fine poetry, the Aegr. strikes one as a not entirely successful thought-exercise46 with decadent moments, such as the repulsive description of Perdica’s cadaveric emaciation.47 The poem does not seem to be a pure epyllion and one could speculate about a possible missing link in its pedigree.48 I will return to this point. Incest Instrumentalized and Incest Tortured I would like to move on to what for me seemed most interesting – if intractable. We have seen hidden incest as the subject of a riddle and incest as the subject of diagnosis for the faithful nurse (Historia Apollonii) or master physician (Hippocrates or Erasistratos) in the Aegritudo. It lurks silently until the right person can make it speak. Incest is connected fairly early on with silence49 (and not just in modern self-help literature!). Literally infandum, it struck an Athenian mother dumb to find her children in the act.50 The most famous linkage of silence and incest appears in the Vita Secundi Philosophi.51 This deeply misogynistic would-be Pythagorean hagiographical text is an inversion of the legend of Periander and his mother (Erotica Pathemata 17). Instead of the aggressively incestuous mother seducing her son in the dark in secret, here the son, separated from his mother for years, returns and decides to test women’s virtue by presenting himself as her lover. She fails the test (though he doesn’t actually perform the act), he tells her who he is, and she immediately hangs herself. To punish himself for his cruel speech he vows eternal silence. Secundus abused and instrumentalized what would have been incest as a test of female virtue – which failed. Casta est quam nemo rogavit! In Huysmans’ Là-bas there is a naughty passage where falling in love with one’s own work is said to be the worst kind of incest, for it is not half, but wholly 46 47 48 49 50 51 E.g. Bungles such as: Does Castalia know or not after Hippocrates’ speech? What of the matronae in her Brautschau? Aegr. 250–9. Which has a whiff of the disputational or the rhetorical. Ps.-Cypr. De aleatoribus 6: hic concrepat aleae sonus, illac silentio operatur incestus. Lact. epit. 9.2: quid haec significant nisi incestum, quod poetae non audent confiteri?, Rufin. HE 5.1.14: conmenti sunt adversum nos velut Thyestaeas cenas et incesta Oedipia perpetrantes et alia, quae ne proloqui aut cogitare nobis fas est. Val. Max. 1.8. ext. 2. See Ben E. Perry: Secundus, the Silent Philosopher (Philological Monographs 22), Ithaca 1964. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 159 one’s own child.52 I probably should be worried about being too much of an incestuous dog returning to her vomit in detecting some relationship between a longterm project of mine and my topic in this paper. But the risk seems worth taking. Testing interests me in connection with my work on the evolution of different sorts of ordeals from the classical world through Late Antiquity into the early Middle Ages. And I am particularly interested in the process of retorsion: taking something applied as a test (e.g. torture) and using it voluntarily in an ordeal. Incest used as a legal stratagem There are at least two texts that deploy incest as an effective legal stratagem, like Pliny’s sacrifice test applied to Christians (assumption: “Real Christians won’t curse their god.”). If one is so sure of someone’s course of action if the point under dispute is/isn’t so, it can become a test. “Real mothers won’t allow their babies to be cut in two”, went the premise of Solomon. “People don’t commit incest knowingly.” Claudius, according to Suetonius, is said to have tried such a stratagem. He tried to force a woman to marry a man she refused to acknowledge as her son.53 The stratagem seems to have succeeded. The same device shows up in Ps.-Quintilian, Decl. Min. 306: Expositus negatae matris nuptias petens, where a young man who was exposed claims marriage as a legal award (praemium) from a woman who denies that she is his mother.54 The piece is developed as the woman’s lawyer’s speech. And the “Sputter factor” is very low. Indeed the defense is that the woman refuses to marry not because she is his mother, but because she is too old. It includes the immortal paraprosdokian: est quaedam etiam nubendi impudicitia – which is not, in this case, incest!55 Declamationes maiores But two other declamations are far more important – Ps.-Quintilian, Major Declamations 18 and 19 (Infamis in matrem). A father killed his handsome son in the process of interrogating him under torture about whether he committed incest with his mother. The mother asked what he had found out from the youth. The 52 53 54 55 See Joris-Karl Huysmans: Là-Bas (Down There), trans. Keene Wallace, Toronto 1972, p. 171. Suet. Claud. 15.2: feminam non agnoscentem filium suum dubia utrimque argumentorum fide ad confessionem compulit indicto matrimonio iuvenis. Michael Winterbottom: The Minor Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian (Texte und Kommentare 13), Berlin/New York 1984, pp. 130–5. Ps.-Quint. Decl. Min. 306.29. 160 Danuta Shanzer father refused to speak. The mother sued the father on a charge of mala tractatio. DM 18, which I will not discuss in detail, is the prosecutor’s speech for the mother and a serious criticism of torture.56 DM 19 presents the defense speech of the father in his own voice. Various scholars have noted that the speeches are obsessed with speech and silence, particularly No. 19.57 It never, for example, uses the word “incest”.58 Bé Breij, who has worked extensively on these two strange texts, analyses their intellectual peculiarities and strategies59 as a function of their nature as “figured” declamations, which she helpfully defines as “one in which the main accusation or defense – for reasons of delicacy or as an effective means of insinuation – is hidden behind one that is more acceptable or feasible”.60 She focuses on the rhetorical technique and how it dances around incest.61 I, on the other hand, am inclined to try to read them in part as legal-intellectual riddles62 about torture. In this insane situation, if one may be permitted to read it as a “real” drama, the problem lies here. Whether the mother and the son actually committed incest or not is unclear. But within the narrative frame, the mother (who must know the truth about whether they did or not) seeks to find out what the son said.63 One could reconstruct her reasons and decision-making as follows: 1. They did commit incest, and he made a true confession, and she will be next (torture succeeded in revealing truth) 2. They did commit incest, but he kept silent (torture failed to reveal truth; she is still safe). 3. They did not commit incest, but he made a false confession under torture (torture created a false guilty verdict), and she is in trouble.64 4. They did not commit incest, and he kept silent (torture didn’t work: 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 See for example, DM 18.11: omnium quidem, iudices, incertorum suspiciones pessime semper a corporibus incipiunt, nec bene de cuiusquam moribus illam partem hominis interroges, quae non animo, sed dolore respondet. E.g. Erik Gunderson: Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self, Cambridge/New York 2003, p. 191. Noted by Bé Breij: Pseudo-Quintilian's Major Declamations 18 and 19: two controversiae figuratae, in: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 24.1 (2006), pp. 79–104, here: p. 88 and Bé Breij: Incest in Roman Declamation, in: New Chapters in the History of Rhetoric, ed. by Laurent Pernot, 2010, pp. 197–214, here: p. 212. Breij, Pseudo-Quintilian (n. 58), pp. 87–8 and pp. 99–104. Breij, Incest (n. 58), p. 206 n. 45. E.g. ibid., 212–3: that DM 18 argues against incest and insinuates murder, and that DM 19 piles up insinuations. Breij, Pseudo-Quintilian (n. 58), p. 100, rightly notes the intellectual amusement in unraveling the argumentation, motives, and insinuations. Despite the father’s sophistic tendentious argument that she already knows. See his tendentious point: DM 19.2: ipsius animus potest scire, quid filius meus dixerit, quae me putat habere quod dicam. See DM 18.12: o dignum patrem, cui dicat innocens filius ‘feci’! This is precisely the situation envisaged in Jerome, Ep. 1. Perhaps no coincidence. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 161 a legal impasse). Instead the father stalls and tortures her by refusing to let her know, the ultimate mental cruelty!65 We must strategize. If the son had confessed (1 or 3), there is no reason why the father shouldn’t have told her – unless psychologically he didn’t want to know himself.66 But the son’s silence (2 and 4) still leaves room for rumor and paranoia.67 The father uses explicit arguments that could be analyzed as a composite riddle: 1. That he cannot say why he killed his son and 2. That he isn’t sorry he killed him.68 3. The fact that he killed him speaks for itself.69 4. That the son wished to die, so his father would be silent.70 As in Apollonius, the reader is meant to leave with the impression that only one answer fits the actual circumstances. At the same time, the father damagingly acknowledges that there is no point in interrogating someone for whom admission would be nefas.71 Incest cannot be legitimately admitted. Yet, we hear, it is impossible not to kill one’s son with good reason, when he was being tortured before.72 The very quaestio seems proof of guilt. We should be appalled. But we also need to acknowledge that the subject explored is a serious one, namely torture and truth: “Judges, suspicions about all things that are uncertain, do very badly always to begin with bodies, nor do you do well, to question that part of a human being about someone’s character that responds not with courage, but with pain.”73 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 See DM 18.16: hoc complorat, hoc ferre non potest, quod nihil parricida respondet […] invenisti tormenta matris. Even though at DM 19.8 he explicitly denies it: Ego vero non sum questus de iuvene nec tibi, nec captavi, ut illum mecum et mater odisset. Look at DM 19.14: si potes scire an mentiar scis quid dixerit. The speeches show some terrifying glimpses into abusive families. This may be implied by DM 13: monstrum erat inenarrabile, quod nollem deprehendere, quod ferre non possem; also DM 13: idem patris adfectus est torquere, ut scias, occidere, ut nescias. He notes that she doesn’t seem to believe that he didn’t find anything out, as if she knew what he said. See DM 19.10: nihil me comperisse non credit, tamquam sciat, quid dixerit. DM 19.2: cur filium occiderim indicare non possum, nec paenitet, quod occidi. DM 19.5: ita tibi non videtur omnia respondere pro filio, qui dicit ‘occidi’? DM 19.8: Vicit nos modo iuvenis ille constantia; mori voluit ut taceremus. Implying either: admitting the incest, so he wouldn’t be questioned more, or inviting death, so his father wouldn’t have further cause to question or anything to reveal. DM 19.9. See also DM 19.14: non explicant tormenta quaestionem quae occident. DM 19.10: non potest non ratione occidi filius cum ante torquetur. See DM 18.11: omnium, quidem iudices, incertorum suspiciones pessime a corporibus incipiunt, nec bene de cuiusquam moribus illam partem hominis interroges, quae non animo sed dolore respondet. 162 Danuta Shanzer Comparisons to the Aegritudo One could make some interesting comparisons to the Aegritudo 1. Reverentia for blood relations makes us most reluctant to confess – even under torture to the death. Est aliquis etiam a sanguine suo secretus affectus genusque reverentiae, ut tacenda minime velis scire carissimos, quaedam non possis verberibus, eculeis eruere, et plerosque videas fortiter supra sua secreta morientes.74 The desire to maintain secrecy even under torture can be compared to Aegr. 213: inprobe, quae mandas non possum dicere matri. tormentis adfige tuis, constringe catenis, non fateor.75 In DM 19.2 the son is described as refusing to fight back, and ultimately as being willing to die: cum iam mori vellet, occisus est.76 At the end of the Aegr. comes a catalogue of possible suicides: poison, opening a vein, jumping off a cliff, and finally the noose. And the noose wins, for the monster love will die choked inside Perdica.77 One might compare how the demented father in the DM claims that by beating his son to death he is lacerating personified mala Fama: Torquere me filium putas? invidiam facio populo. videor mihi illis verberibus lacerare Famam!78 Perdica seems about to commit suicide to prevent further thought crimes and pain. The father thought it essential that the son not commit suicide, so as to maintain the innocentia of the domus: suicide would have been an admission of guilt.79 In the classical world, desperation leads to suicide, and there is no need to reiterate the number of incest victims who kill themselves.80 There could well be a declamatory background to the Aegritudo also.81 And as for Claudian’s kinky 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 DM 19.7. Cf. also DM 19.12 where the father describes his use of the rack and the fidiculae. DM 19.4. DM 19.12. The father notes how the son’s spirit was consumed by his own silence and the beating, and fire closed off his breath and his voice. DM 19.9. DM 19.10. Starting with Jocasta, Val. Max. 1.8. ext. 3 for a brother and sister at Athens; even the infamia: Silanus in Tac. ann. 12.8.1. For more see Rizzo Nervo (n. 29), p. 243. Valerius Maximus implies that incest can thereby be expiated: See Val. Max. 1.8. ext. 3: illi nefarium concubitum voluntaria morte pensarunt. In general terms (“la tradizione progimnastica”) suggested by Romano (n. 41), p. 200, and Romano (n. 42), p. 379. One might triangulate in from Calpurnius Flaccus, Decl. 22 (the stepmother who seeks to marry her stepson) and 48, the man who committed adultery with his own wife, and especially from Sen. contr. 6.2 on the father who cedes his new wife to his son, which is clearly related to the Antiochus and Stratonice legend. See Joseph Mesk: Antiochos und Stratonike, in: Rheinisches Museum 58 (1913), pp. 366–94, here: p. 385 and p. 387 n. 2. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 163 incestuous desires for a newborn – it is mentioned quite explicitly in DM 18.3: natum de te continuo […] impatientius complexa quam reliqui parentes. non in nutrices nec in ministeria seposuit: suis aluit uberibus, suo fovit amplexu. The treatment of unmentionable and sexual crimes without witnesses and the effectiveness of torture and the possibility of cure/redemption/closure are serious themes in DM 18 and 19. The controversiae are currently regarded as revised and adapted in the late 4th C., even if not written then,82 and should be read against the background of later Roman justice.83 And these declamations and one other can help elucidate what is going on in Jerome, Ep. 1.84 Speaking about Incest in Christian Legend Christian legend (Greg. Tur. Mir. Andreae 4) shows the happier shape of things to come. A beautiful puer was approached by his mother, but refused to have incest. She then accused him before the proconsul. He confessed his plan of silence to the apostle Andrew. Better to die than to admit his mother’s crime. He asked Andrew to pray the Lord to save his life. We then move to the court, where the boy is silent. The mother suddenly weeps. Andrew accuses her openly. She accuses him. The Proconsul sews the boy in a sack and throws him in a river and locks Andrew up. A miraculous earthquake intervened, the mother died, the proconsul was converted, etc. In this story the voluntary confession saved the innocent boy’s life. It earned him a miracle. This would be the shape of things to come. 82 83 84 Bé Breij: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Major Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian: a Commentary, Diss. Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 2007, pp. 91–2. One could start with the notorious adultery trials of 365/366 in Amm. 28.1. See Amm. 28.1.10 on the need for suppliciis acrioribus (both torture and punishment). In 28.1.11 Valentinian decreed that no one was exempt from torture. 28.1.16 narrates the beheading of Cethegus for adultery; 28.1.24: Praetextatus and others sent to request exemption from torture for senators; 28.1.28: women who were tried and executed for adultery: Charitas and Flaviana, the latter stripped. The executioner was burnt for the latter offense against modesty. 28.1.46: Rufina put to death for adultery. Danuta Shanzer: Beheading at Vercellae: What is Jerome, Ep. 1, and why does it matter?, in: Zwischen Alltagskommunikation und literarischer Identitätsbildung. Kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte lateinischer Epistolographie in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter, ed. by Gernot Michael Müller (Roma aeterna. Beiträge zu Spätantike und Frühmittelalter), Stuttgart forthcoming. 164 Danuta Shanzer Back to the Middle Ages The popularity of the incest-legends is concentrated around the year 1200,85 at precisely the time that regular confession was becoming mandatory.86 In the central Middle Ages incest is used in a highly intellectual way as a “limit case” for preaching the effectiveness of penance and for dissuading from desperation.87 All it shows is sin and suffering, and there is no interest in the guilt and psychology of the knowing perpetrator.88 It can be a felix culpa.89 In Late Antique pagan literature, by contrast, incest is still treated as unutterable and therefore incurable. Tone and Color But what of decadence and incest in Late Antiquity? I leave you with a tricky point that I have avoided discussing: Christianity in these declamations90 and 85 86 87 88 89 90 Ulrich Ernst: Der Gregorius Hartmanns von Aue (Ordo. Studien zur Literatur und Gesellschaft des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit 7), Köln/Weimar/Wien 2002, p. vii. See Concilium Lateranense can. 21: Omnis utriusque sexus fidelis postquam ad annos discretionis pervenerit omnia sua solus p eccata co nfitea tu r fid eliter saltem semel in an no p ro p rio sa cerdo ti et iniunctam sibi poenitentiam studeat pro viribus adimplere suscipiens reverenter ad minus in pascha eucharistiae sacramentum nisi forte de consilio proprii sacerdotis ob aliquam rationabilem causam ad tempus ab eius perceptione duxerit abstinendum. Alioquin et vivens ab ingressu ecclesiae arceatur et moriens christiana careat sepulture: in: Josephus Alberigo et al.: Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, Bologna 1973, pp. 230–71. For the importance of confession in exempla, see Jacques Berlioz: “Quand dire c'est faire dire”. Exempla et confession chez Etienne de Bourbon († v. 1261), in: Faire croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle. Table ronde organisé par l'Ecole française de Rome (Rome, 22-23 juin, 1979), ed. by André Vauchez (Collection de l'Ecole française de Rome 51), Rome 1981, pp. 299–335. As Friedrich Ohly: The Damned and the Elect: Guilt in Western Culture, Cambridge 1992, p. 4, points out, this is the stated intent of the OFr. Vie de Saint Grégoire. For desperation, see ibid., p. 6. Also Archibald (n. 15), p. 232. Volker Mertens: Gregorius Eremita: Eine Lebensform des Adels bei Hartmann von Aue in ihrer Problematik und ihrer Wandlung in der Rezeption (Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 67), München 1978, p. 12, emphasizes the point. Archibald (n. 15), p. 132: Gregorius and Albanus are “comedies in the Christian sense”. The original theme of the declamation is attested in Quint. inst. 9.2.79–80. See Breij, Pseudo-Quintilian (n. 58), pp. 86–7. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 165 their possible connections to early 4th C. history.91 DM 19.12–13 ends with a nightmarish description of the novum genus quaestionis: O si quis in illam vos secreti nostri potuisset adhibere praesentiam! vidissetis novum genus quaestionis. stabam senex furiis monstrosae feritatis accinctus, manibus exertis, hinc ignibus, hinc verberibus armatus. super ora, super oculos iacentis adsistens clamabam: ‘furiose, demens, tace!’ et ille velut exustis amputatisque, per quae dolor exit in verba, fuit adtonitus, amens. quotiens admotis ignibus ad aliquam corporis partem totum pectus inposuit! quotiens hia tu o ris a vid e fla mma s adversu s exeun tia verba co lleg it! cum vero iam totus calor verberibus expulsus viribus novissimi doloris erumperet, pertractis ab ima pectoris parte suspiriis b revissime collecti sp iritus, ille, quo red ditu r an ima, singu ltu s fu it similis excla ma tu ro n escio qu id, q uod et tu fo rta ssis audires. occupavi, fateor, et advocatis, quas iam consumpseram, viribus, manibus, telis totoque corpore pariter adnisus, antequam mentiretur, occidi. Misera temporis illius recordatio! deficientem in manibus meis filium vidi, aspexi ora pallentia, frigidos anhelitus, interrupta suspiria et animam magno silentio exeuntem. This comes very close to a martyr act in violence: stunned, as if all the members through which pain can talk had been cut or burned off, the son embraces his torture, drinks in the flames to prevent himself from speaking. We hear his final 91 Gualtiero Calboli: Il Conflitto tra paganesimo e cristianesimo nel IV sec. D.C.: Declamazione e storiografia, in: Studi offerti ad Alessandro Perutelli, ed. by Paolo Arduini et al., Lucca 2008, pp. 159–80, here: p. 159, has suggested that DM 18–19 may be connected with Constantine’s murder of Crispus and Fausta. Zos. 2.29.2–4, allegedly derived from Nicomachus Flavianus, claims that Crispus was thought to have had a liaison with his stepmother Fausta. Other sources exhibit a Phaedra-typology. While Calboli (163) is surely right to see an area of encounter and conflict in the historiography of the incident, a close connection with Ps.-Quint. DM 18 and 19 seems both unproven and unlikely. He presents no “smoking guns” to support his suggestion other than (166) some coincidences in the late 4th C. environments of the DM and of the slanders of Constantine, which he dates to the later 4th C. (169) as he does DM 18 and 19 (either as composed or as adapted). The central weaknesses of his argument that necessitate constant special pleading are: 1. The DM concern a biological mother and son (admitted by Calboli 166). He counters that the correspondence didn’t have to be precise in a declamatio figurata (168), for it was intended to preserve “deniability” for politically sensitive material. 2. A further major difference: that there is no threat to the mother of DM 18, though Calboli (170) sees here merely a preliminary phase before Fausta was attacked.91 But how would that jibe with a late 4th C. date, as opposed to one contemporary with Constantine? At the end (176) Calboli suggests that the DM were produced in a pagan environment, but intended to start or maintain a dialogue between pagans, Nicene and Arian Christians, and Jews. Calboli seems to be arguing that the pagan condemnation of incest is approaching that of Christians (177). These final conclusions are stated rather than argued. 166 Danuta Shanzer utterance with which the spirit is given up: a choking breath, briefly gathered like someone about to utter something or other (nescioquid). The mother might have heard it. Could this be a blasphemous parody of the penultimate [foreign] words of one version of the Crucifixion with contrast-imitation?92 The soul left with panting that became cold, broken sighs, and, at the last, great silence.93 Décadence, Silence, and the Severed Head I would like to end with a theme that unites incest and speech and silence with decadence, nothing other than the Banquet of Herod. The son of DM 19 may have died innocent and certainly died in silence, but Rumor babbled on both before and after his death.94 Rumor is the voice of the nameless many. But the voice of one crying in the wilderness proved intolerable to the incestuous Herodias, as recounted in the Synoptic Gospels (Mt 14.1–12; Mark 6.14–29; Lc 3.19–20; 9.7–9). The story of Salome’s dance, Herod’s imprudent vow, and the beheading of John are familiar from the unadorned narrative in Mark. But it is the reception of this narrative, the possibilities that writers and artists saw in it, that color it and animate it. Severed heads haunt the nightmares of fin de siècle decadence. One need go no further than the unforgettable, if disconcerting, illustrations in Bram Dijkstra’s wonderful Idols of Perversity.95 And for literature contemplating art we have Huysmans’ famously febrile ekphrasis of Moreau’s paintings of the lubricious Salome.96 But painting is a two-dimensional medium without sound effects. We contemplate scarlet gore in peace – of a sort. It is Ambrose, who would have known a thing or two about beheadings,97 however who leaves us with the most eloquent speaking witness to incest. For sheer decadence, if not for bad taste, nothing outdoes his graphic De virginitate 3.6 on the severed head of John the Baptist:98 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 See Mt 27.46 for: heli heli lema sabachthani and 27.50: Iesus autem iterum clamans voce magna emisit spiritum. Contrast Lc 23.46. For fama, see DM 18.1; 18.3; 18.8; 19.3; 19.4; 19.13; 19.14. For rumor, see DM 18.1: coram rumore, 18.2; 18.3: cum rumore populi, impudens rumor, 18.4; 18.6 (passim), 18.7; 18.8; 18.12; 18.15; 18.16; 18.17; DM 19.3; 19.5; 19.6; 19.8; 19.9; 19.13. Bram Dijkstra: Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine in Fin-de-Siècle Culture, Oxford 1986, pp. 376–401: “Judith and Salome: Priestesses of Man’s Severed Head”. Joris-Karl Huysmans: À Rebours, Paris 1884, pp. 71–80. See 76–8 for the head. See Danuta R. Shanzer: Some Treatments of Sexual Scandal in (Primarily) Later Latin Epistolography, in: In Pursuit of Wissenschaft: FS for William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. by Stefan Heilen/Robert Kirstein et al., Hildesheim 2008, pp. 393–414, here: p. 404. Ed. PL 16.187 ff. The context, not unexpectedly, is a condemnation of unwise oaths. Incest and Late Antiquity – Décadence? 167 Intuere, rex acerbissime, tuo spectacula digna convivio. Porrige dexteram, ne quid saevitiae tuae desit; ut inter digitos tuos rivi defluant sancti cruoris. Et quoniam non exsaturari epulis fames, non restingui poculis potuit inauditae saevitiae sitis; bibe sanguinem scaturientibus adhuc venis exsecti capitis profluentem. Cerne oculos in ipsa morte sceleris tui testes, adversantes conspectum deliciarum. Clauduntur lumina non tam mortis necessitate, quam horrore luxuriae. Os aureum illud exsangue, cujus sententiam ferre non poteras, conticescit, et adhuc times. Lingua tamen, quae solet etiam post mortem officium servare viventis, palpitante licet motu, damnabat incestum. The eyes are closed, the mouth is silent, yet the tongue, known to talk after death, even though it can but quiver, kept on condemning Herod’s incest. The first Christian preacher had the last word.99 And it wasn’t silence. 99 Beheading at a banquet was also a pagan Roman declamation topic. See Sen. contr. 9.2 for Flamininus and the whore who had never seen a man beheaded. 9.2.4: Inter temulentas reliquias sumptuosissimae cenae et fastidiosos ob ebrietatem cibos modo excisum humanum caput fertur; inter purgamenta et iactus cenantium et sparsam in convivio scobem humanus sanguis everritur. Also 9.2.17: praetorem nostrum in illa ferali cena saginatum meretricis sinu excitavit <ict>us securis.