Approaching the Ovidian story of Pygmalion, scholars mainly focus on the moment in which the artist carves his ideal woman out of ivory.Footnote 2 But the reasons that led him to sculpt the statue tend to remain in the background.Footnote 3 Ovid informs us that, before giving to ebur the shape of a uirgo, the ‘Paphian hero’ (Met. 10.290), shocked by the lascivious conduct of the Propoetides, had declared war on the whole of womankindFootnote 4 (Met. 10.238–46Footnote 5):
The Propoetides are defined as obscenae, that is, impious and indecent,Footnote 6 and for this reason Venus condemns them to give their bodies to anyone (corpora uulgasse). Thus they lose their pudor, blood dries in their faces and finally with little effort (paruo discrimine)Footnote 7 they are reduced to lifeless matter (in rigidum silicem uersae). The crimen committed by the Propoetides is extended by Pygmalion to the mens feminea in general (Met. 10.244–6).Footnote 8 Facing the feminine world, Pygmalion is blocked in his sexuality, and this is so significant that Ovid feels the necessity to express the same concept in three different ways: Pygmalion refuses to marry, decides to live alone and abstains from sexual relations (Met. 10.245–6 sine coniuge caelebs | uiuebat thalamique diu consorte carebat).Footnote 9
1.
Pygmalion's theory about the plurima uitia that nature has given to the mens feminea is obviously older than Ovid. In the Roman world, the deeply rooted stereotype of the wicked woman that underlies so many male fears finds its first complex expression in the comedies of Plautus, especially the Miles gloriosus, where, among other things, as Dorota Dutsch says, ‘the belief that female persuasion is a sort of sorcery takes its most elaborate form’.Footnote 10 The mulier in general and the mulier mala in particular are capable of inducing such a lack of confidence in men that they can no longer rely on their senses, as Plautus himself highlights in the Miles. Philocomasium is described as capable of making a man who has seen her believe that he has not seen her at all, using only the magical power of words (Plaut. Mil. 187–8Footnote 11):
Thus, women can use their arts to erase the reality that is before men's eyes. Furthermore, the man who has been subjugated by the ingenium muliebre (Plaut. Mil. 185) can lose control over his body; he is afraid that he has lost himself somewhere, he needs to find out if he is himself or someone else (Plaut. Mil. 428–32):
The terror that men feel for the mens feminea, which could provoke some kind of metamorphosis and make them lose themselves, is not far from the effect that the experience of the Propoetides has produced in Pygmalion. This explains his attempt to extract the shape of a woman from lifeless matter in an effort to regain his self-confidence.Footnote 13
2.
In this respect Pygmalion is not so different from the male character affected by impotence in Amores 3.7.Footnote 14 Both men in fact are incapable of having relations with women: in the case of Amores 3.7, as we shall see, this is due to a mysterious disfunction in the male body; in the case of Pygmalion, it depends on his declared repulsion for the whole of womankind, so that his statue is in fact an antidote to the ‘petrification’ induced by the Medusean Propoetides.
The narrator of Amores 3.7 is in the company of a beautiful girl (Am. 3.7.1 puella formosa), who is defined as bene culta (1), uotis saepe petita (2), tenera (53), who has eburnea … | bracchia Sithonia candidiora niue (6–7); she is compared to a song and to a tabella picta (61–2). But the male protagonist of Amores 3.7 is plagued by impotence and cannot enjoy the charms of the puella, just as Tantalus cannot reach the water or the fruits that are in front of him (51–2), just as a deaf man cannot hear Phemius’ singing (61), just as the blind Thamyras cannot see paintings (62).Footnote 15 His senses simply do not react. The cause is probably a spell (Am. 3.7.27–36Footnote 16):
The accident is reported to have been caused by a saga, who with her magical arts and Thessalian poisons is capable of numbing and harming living matter, and naturally men. So in Amores 3.7 we have two female entities, the sorceress and the girl, who with their artes (3.7.35 magicas per artes, said about the saga; 3.7.75 nullas per artes referring to the vain efforts of the puella) can dominate the male body, the former by paralysing it, the latter by activating it. Obviously the witch can be easily matched by Plautus’ mulier mala and by Pygmalion's Propoetides. But it is Ovid's girl who offers more than one point of contact with Pygmalion's effort to emerge from his celibacy and to regain an enthusiasm for marriage.Footnote 17
Here the puella seems to capture and perform the male anxiety provoked by the female body. Her features are similar to those of the statue that Pygmalion will sculpt. In Amores 3.7 the elegiac puella, generally described as marble-skinned,Footnote 18 even has eburnea bracchia Sithonia candidiora niue (3.7.7–8)—the only occurrence of the adjective eburneus in the Amores—which are then evoked in the niueum ebur carved by Pygmalion (Met. 10.247–8 interea niueum mira feliciter arte | sculpsit ebur).Footnote 19 Yet, it is she who must revive the ‘statue’ that is in front of her, the impotent paralysed narrator of Amores 3.7.Footnote 20 Faced with an insensitive body, both the puella and Pygmalion must use their ars and perform the same erotic/elegiac gestures, in a bid to animate their objects of desire.Footnote 21 In both cases we find oscula: Am. 3.7.9 osculaque inseruit cupida luctantia lingua; 48 oscula ferre; 55–6 sed, puto, non blanda, non optima perdidit in me | oscula; Met. 10.256 oscula dat; 281 dedit oscula; 291–2 oraque tandem | ore suo non falsa premit; 293 dataque oscula. In both cases we have blanditiae and the use of nicknames: Am. 3.7.11 et mihi blanditias dixit dominumque uocauit; 58 surdaque blanditiis saxa mouere suis; Met. 10.259 et modo blanditias adhibet; 268 appellatque tori sociam. In both cases there is fondling: Am. 3.7.13 tacta … membra; 41 illius ad tactum; 56 non omni sollicitauit ope; 74 molliter admota sollicitare manu; Met. 10.254 saepe manus operi temptantes admouet; 257 tactis … membris; 258 pressos … artus; 282 manibus quoque pectora temptat; 283 temptatum … ebur; 285 cera … tractataque pollice; 288 rursusque manu sua uota retractat; 289 temptatae pollice uenae. Footnote 22
Also the theme of ‘using’ the body of the other appears in both texts: the term usus and the adjective utilis occur when the male protagonist of Amores 3.7 touches the statue-like body of his puella, yet fails to become aroused (Am. 3.7.3 hanc tamen in nullos tenui male languidus usus; 15 inutile pondus; 45 quo sum tam turpiter usus; 49 quo regna sine usu?)Footnote 23 and also when Pygmalion manipulates the statue's ‘flesh’ with increasing success (Met. 10.286 ipsoque fit utilis usu).Footnote 24
We can also note a similar epistemological uncertainty. Touching the statue, Pygmalion fluctuates between the impression that it is ebur or corpus (Met. 10.254–5):
Similarly, the narrator of Amores 3.7 asserted that he was unsure whether he was corpus or umbra (Am. 3.7.16):Footnote 25
Finally, it is interesting to see that in both texts Ovid sees erotic tension as emerging out of a separation of mind and body:
Male anxiety short-circuits the connection between what the mind imagines or desires and what the body is capable of doing.
But there are also fundamental differences. While Pygmalion makes the transition from fantasy to reality and succeeds in transforming the eburnea uirgo into a living girl, the eburnea puella of Amores 3.7 has no such effect on the inert body of her man precisely because she is only metaphorically eburnea. She is in fact a living puella possessed of a mens feminea which scares men.Footnote 26 The narrator says that her touch is so prodigious that it might rejuvenate Nestor and Tithonus; that her blanditiae are such as to move oaks and rocks:
These seem to be witchy features: the puella and the saga tend to converge.Footnote 27 This is all the more evident if we consider that despite all the art of the puella—or perhaps precisely because of it—the body of her partner does not react, as if it had been touched by a lethal poison (gelida cicuta recalls the Thessalicum uenenum mentioned at Am. 3.7.27 as one of the possible magical causes for impotence) rather than by the pretty girl who is trying to arouse him (Am. 3.7.13–14):
Furthermore, unlike Pygmalion's statue, which blushes but remains silent, this puella makes the mistake of speaking (a rare thing in the Amores and in elegy in generalFootnote 28), and bursts realistically onto the scene to castigate her partner for his sexual failure (Am. 3.7.77–80):
After these words, which are probably harsher than any carmen or uenenum, Ovid's elegy ends and the narrator is left alone, presumably still reduced to a truncus iners (Am. 3.7.15):Footnote 29
This line is recalled in later Ovidian oppositions between rough matter and matter as refined by an artist: for example Ars am. 3.219–20 quae nunc nomen habent operosi signa Myronis, | pondus iners quondam duraque massa fuit; Met. 1.7–8 rudis et indigestaque moles | nec quidquam nisi pondus iners (in opposition to the action of the Demiurge).Footnote 30 The term truncus could suggest the image of something unhewn, or only partially shaped, like in Juvenal's eighth satire, where truncus is an adjective referring to a herm: 8.52–5 at tu | nil nisi Cecropides truncoque simillimus Hermae. | nullo quippe alio uincis discrimine quam quod | illi marmoreum caput est, tua uiuit imago.Footnote 31 As Hans Peter Obermayer has noticed, Ovid's impotent protagonist, by defining himself as truncus, in the sense of ‘mutilated’, seems in a way to be castrated.Footnote 32 Moreover, as it is well known, the association of truncus with iaceo hints parodically at famous epic descriptions of trunci iacentes. Footnote 33
Scholars are right to connect this passage to the first verse of Horace's eighth satire (Sat. 1.8.1Footnote 34):
Interestingly, Ovid enriches the allusion by associating the noun truncus with the adjective iners, ‘without art’. This adjective, in Amores 3.7, not only is consistent with the impotence theme,Footnote 35 and meant to recall the artes of the puella/saga, but also could derive from Horace's faber, mentioned in the second verse of the eighth satire (Sat. 1.8.2–3):
The Horatian truncus ficulnus is rough matter, and needs an art to be refined. The faber faces an alternative that reminds us of the uncertainty present in the Ovidian texts: in fact, he has to choose what to make of the inutile lignum, either something ordinary, like a stool, or a wooden statue representing the male uis, the god Priapus. This god in Horace's satire fights against the dangers represented by the witch (Sat. 1.8.17–36). In the end of the satire, in any case, the vigorous god seems to have overwhelmed Canidia and Sagana, the hags who threaten him (Sat. 1.8.46–50). Yet, he has overwhelmed them only in fiction, not in reality: Priapus in fact is a statue—just like the woman shaped by that other faber, Pygmalion. He is the idealized representation of male uis, useful to soothe men's fear of being reduced to trunci inertes.
3.
As it is well known, the loss of male uis which affects Encolpius in Petronius’ Satyricon is hypothetically attributed to the vengeance of Priapus. Women in Petronius, as we will see, whether they are more than statuesque or old witches, can only support or contrast the god's will, but they cannot soothe Encolpius’ impotence.
Here I wish to examine the theme of the statue, used by Petronius when describing the beauty of Circe, the woman with whom Encolpius experiences impotence for the first time. The hyperbolic beauty of the more than statuesque Circe is reminiscent of Pygmalion's creationFootnote 36 (Petron. Sat. 126Footnote 37):
nec diu morata dominam producit e latebris laterique meo applicat, mulierem omnibus simulacris emendatiorem. … osculum quale Praxiteles habere Dianam credidit. iam mentum, iam ceruix, iam manus, iam pedum candor intra auri gracile uinculum positus: Parium marmor extinxerat.
But this woman also bears in her name the sign of the mulier mala, of the saga who endangers male uis. The following passages in the narrative evoke, as scholars have acknowledged, Ovid's impotence scene.Footnote 38 In a comic ironic key, Petronius develops many ideas from Amores 3.7 and at the same time demeans Pygmalion's tale.
Circe's reaction to Encolpius’ impotence tellingly expands the reaction of the Ovidian puella, who not by chance had blamed the accident on a Circe (Aeaea uenefica).Footnote 39 Circe in this way reveals herself to be a statue—indeed, more than a statue—only in a metaphorical sense: actually, when the metaphor of the statue fades away, the normality and fleshiness of her body emerge with extreme realism (Petron. Sat. 128):Footnote 40
‘quid est?’ inquit ‘numquid te osculum meum offendit? numquid spiritus ieiunio marcet? numquid alarum negligens sudor?
These words, reversing the Ovidian precepts of Ars amatoria Book 3,Footnote 41 end up assimilating Circe to Horace's repulsive uetulae in the Epodes (8 and 12).Footnote 42 The negative effect of Circe's reaction on Encolpius is, unlike in the parallel scenario of Amores 3.7, explicitly registered (Petron. Sat. 128):
perfusus ego rubore manifesto etiam si quid habueram uirium, perdidi, totoque corpore uelut laxato: ‘quaeso,’ inquam, ‘regina, noli suggillare miserias’.
Furthermore, Petronius focusses realistically on the female anxiety surrounding male sexual failure, for which Circe wrongly blames herself.Footnote 43
Just as in the Ovidian scene, Encolpius explicitly adduces some kind of ueneficium as a pretext, at least as far as it emerges from the fragmentary text (ueneficio contactus sum). Magic itself is treated by Petronius in comic terms—its rites provoke repulsion but not terror; indeed, the old hag called to solve the problem obtains a positive, although provisional, result (another pseudo-witch will intervene but always in vain). The temporary sexual resurrection of Encolpius is described with great irony (Petron. Sat. 131):
hoc peracto carmine ter me iussit exspuere terque lapillos conicere in sinum, quos ipsa praecantatos purpura inuoluerat, admotisque manibus temptare coepit inguinum uires. dicto citius nerui paruerunt imperio manusque aniculae ingenti motu repleuerunt. at illa gaudio exsultans ‘uides’ inquit ‘Chrysis mea, uides, quod <aiunt > aliis leporem excitaui?’
The intervention of the anicula (admotisque manibus temptare coepit inguinum uires) recalls Pygmalion's manipulation of the statue (Met. 3.254 saepe manus operi temptantes admouet), which recalled the girl's efforts in Am. 3.7.74 (molliter admota sollicitare manu): the anicula devotes herself to Encolpius’ ‘truncus iners’—just like the eburnea puella of Amores 3.7 and like the Paphian hero, who devoted himself to the ebur—and moreover she is successful, while being neither eburnea nor statuesque.
We have to remember that Petronius seems to place impotence, its causes and its therapy, within basically male boundaries. The female presence is important but not crucial. The narrative of the Satyricon, as I mentioned, probably starts from Priapus and seems to end with Mercury. It is precisely Mercury—and not a salvation-bringing statue portraying the perfect woman—who, if Gian Biagio Conte is right, gives back to Encolpius the power of a herm, bearing in mind that there is always a Hermokopides ready to threaten its virility (Petron. Sat. 140):Footnote 44
dii maiores sunt, qui me restituerunt in integrum. Mercurius enim, qui animas ducere et reducere solet, suis beneficiis reddidit mihi quod manus irata praeciderat, ut scias me gratiosiorem esse quam Protesilaum aut quemquam alium antiquorum.
Hence if Priapus, the god of virility, has taken Encolpius’ uis away, it is Mercury's psychopompic aspect which restores his sexual energy.
Let us return in conclusion to Pygmalion. We have seen that he manages to break out of his condition of being sine coniuge caelebs, by contrasting the vices that nature has given to the mens feminea with an ideal woman carved out of ivory. It is precisely man's ability to be faber and to transform nature, creating a woman from inert matter, making of a truncus a Priapus, shaping herms and, if necessary, restoring them, that restores order. Yet, as we have seen, the mind and body of women tend unrelentingly to undermine that order. The woman is the stranger who cannot be integrated or fully appropriated by the masculine subject. A woman who manipulates nature and attempts to create an order of her own is not a faber but a saga or a Gorgon, and a man has to cut off her head. And she threatens, like Dido, in the version that Mercury gives of her, to reduce male uis to herself, making him uxorius (Verg. Aen. 4.266). Or, to get back to Plautus’ mulier mala, she threatens him with the state in which he perceives his mind and body as other, and becomes, as in Am. 3.7.76, immemor sui.
