Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8rzl6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-06T09:31:36.946Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A HIDDEN ANAGRAM IN VALERIUS FLACCUS?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2017

L.B.T. Houghton
L.B.T. Houghton*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
*
l.houghton@reading.ac.uk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Virgil's third eclogue, the goatherd Menalcas responds to his challenger Damoetas by offering as his wager in their contest of song a pair of embossed cups, caelatum diuini opus Alcimedontis (Ecl. 3.37), decorated with a pattern of vine and ivy. In the middle of this design, he says, are two figures. One is the astronomer Conon, and the other—at this point Menalcas, afflicted with a sudden loss of memory, professes to have forgotten the name of the second figure, and breaks off into a question (Ecl. 3.40-2): quis fuit alter, | descripsit radio totum qui gentibus orbem, | tempora quae messor, quae curuus arator haberet? Various candidates for the identity of this second astronomer have been suggested, one of the most favoured being Eudoxus of Cnidus, whose Phaenomena had been versified by the Hellenistic poet Aratus. In 1930 it was proposed by Léon Herrmann that Menalcas in fact answers his own question in his reference to curuUS ARATor at Ecl. 3.42: the solution to Virgil's riddle is already written into the question, in the form of the anagram of Aratus concealed within these two words. Strictly speaking, Hermann notes only that ‘Arator au v. 42 évoque le nom d’Aratos’; he and later exponents of the theory tend to ignore the preceding ‘-us’—but there seems no reason to exclude it if an allusion to the Greek poet is to be seen in the two following syllables.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 329 - 332
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

In Virgil's third eclogue, the goatherd Menalcas responds to his challenger Damoetas by offering as his wager in their contest of song a pair of embossed cups, caelatum diuini opus Alcimedontis (Ecl. 3.37), decorated with a pattern of vine and ivy. In the middle of this design, he says, are two figures. One is the astronomer Conon, and the other—at this point Menalcas, afflicted with a sudden loss of memory, professes to have forgotten the name of the second figure, and breaks off into a question (Ecl. 3.40-2): quis fuit alter, | descripsit radio totum qui gentibus orbem, | tempora quae messor, quae curuus arator haberet? Various candidates for the identity of this second astronomer have been suggested,Footnote 1 one of the most favoured being Eudoxus of Cnidus, whose Phaenomena had been versified by the Hellenistic poet Aratus. In 1930 it was proposed by Léon Herrmann that Menalcas in fact answers his own question in his reference to curuUS ARATor at Ecl. 3.42: the solution to Virgil's riddle is already written into the question, in the form of the anagram of Aratus concealed within these two words.Footnote 2 Strictly speaking, Hermann notes only that ‘Arator au v. 42 évoque le nom d’Aratos’; he and later exponents of the theory tend to ignore the preceding ‘-us’—but there seems no reason to exclude it if an allusion to the Greek poet is to be seen in the two following syllables.

Although this solution has been accepted by a number of scholars since Herrmann,Footnote 3 the theory receives little attention in the standard commentaries on the Eclogues,Footnote 4 no doubt because there remains room for dispute over the identity of the anonymous figure on Menalcas’ cup. The purpose of this note is to suggest the presence of a comparable technique in two passages in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica where there has never been any dispute over the referent of the lines in question; once again, however, the answer to a speaker's question might be seen to be insinuated by an anagrammatic formula in the wording of the question itself. At Argonautica 1.224-6, the seer Mopsus, in a moment of foreboding, looks ahead to the tragic outcome of the Argonauts’ quest, events beyond the chronological scope of Valerius’ epic but well known to his readers from other literary sources—most famously Euripides’ Medea and Seneca's play of the same name:Footnote 5

quaenam aligeris secat anguibus auras
caede madens? quos ense ferit? miser, eripe paruos, 225
Aesonide! cerno et thalamos ardere iugales!

Despite the anonymity of the subject of these lines, no reader of the Argonautica can have failed to realize that the vision constitutes a prophecy of Medea's infanticide in response to her betrayal by Jason. The story was sufficiently familiar to a literate audience that perhaps no further indication of the identity of the dragon-borne murderess caede madens was needed. It might also be argued that we should be wary of placing too much emphasis on the description, since Valerius uses the expression caede madens no fewer than four times in the course of his epic (in addition to this passage, see 2.274-5, caede madentem … domum; 5.454 [see below]; 6.415, currus caede madens).Footnote 6 The origin of the phrase, as commentators have pointed out, is Ovid's description of the brutal Age of Iron, when the virgin Astraea, goddess of Justice, finally abandoned caede madentis … terras (Met. 1.149-50).Footnote 7 Given the lapsarian associations of the voyage of Argo, often seen in antiquity as marking the end of the Golden Age,Footnote 8 this repetition of an expression from Ovid's account of epochal degeneration fits well with the overriding theme of Valerius’ poem.

It is striking, however, that on two of the four occasions on which Valerius uses this phrase, it is employed with reference to the same unnamed figure. At Argonautica 5.451-4, the poet takes advantage of another context of prophecy to adumbrate the gruesome consequences of Jason's venture. The second of the two doors of the temple of Sol displays future events at Colchis, as depicted by the workmanship of Vulcan, who as a divine craftsman possesses foreknowledge of developments outside the frame of Valerius’ narrative: note praesaga … arte (5.433) and compare the divine foreknowledge exhibited by Vulcan, haud uatum ignarus uenturique inscius aeui, in the ecphrastic model at Virgil, Aen. 8.627 (Argonautica 5.451-4):Footnote 9

haec tum miracula Colchis
struxerat ignipotens nondum noscentibus, ille
quis labor, aligeris aut quae secet anguibus auras
caede madens. odere tamen uisusque reflectunt.

Lines 453–4, which gain emphasis from being the conclusion of Valerius’ ecphrastic description, closely reproduce the phrasing of 1.224-5, quoted above.Footnote 10 In both cases the subject of the ominous prognostications is the same, and in both instances the audience is left to supply a name for that individual: Medea. In view of this, I cannot resist pointing out that Medea's name is actually present in both passages, reversed, in the formula cAEDE Madens. As in the Virgilian lines with which we began, the answer to the riddle—or, in these cases, the precise point of reference of the prophecy—is thus immanent in the words in which that enigma is couched. Whatever claims might be advanced for the performative context of the recitatio, on some level Latin poetry was written to be read,Footnote 11 and in an original text without word division and presented in uniform capitals, the anagram might have been more noticeable than in a modern printed edition where the letter m is separated from the preceding characters.

Such a suggestion is in keeping with the oracular nature of the passages in question, both of which present an (at least superficially) opaque forecast of the future by a figure with vatic powers.Footnote 12 Acceptance of this somewhat tentative proposal is not necessary for a recognition of the dramatic irony in both passages—unlike Mopsus and the recipients of his prophecy, and the viewers of Vulcan's artwork (nondum noscentibus, 5.452), the reader knows precisely what is being foretold, and is fully aware of the identity of the unnamed female perpetrator of these later horrors.Footnote 13 None the less, I think it adds something to that dramatic irony that confirmation of this identity can be found in the very wording of the seemingly cryptic lines in which the name is ostensibly occluded.

Meanwhile, like the late Don Fowler, but perhaps with more reason, I await the arrival of the men in white coats …Footnote 14

References

1 See e.g. Clausen, W., Virgil: Eclogues (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar, 102 on Ecl. 3.40; Fisher, R.S., ‘Conon and the poet: a solution to Eclogue III, 40–2’, Latomus 41 (1982), 803–14, at 803Google Scholar.

2 Herrmann, L., Les masques et les visages dans les Bucoliques de Virgile (Brussels, 1930), 149 with n. 3Google Scholar. Herrmann later retracted his interpretation in favour of identifying the unnamed astronomer with the Roman Nigidius Figulus: Herrmann, L., ‘Notules sur les Bucoliques virgiliennes’, Les études classiques 16 (1948), 371–3Google Scholar.

3 For discussion, see Ross, D.O. Jr., Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome (Cambridge, 1975), 23–4Google Scholar (‘The answer, Aratus, needed no gloss for Virgil's readers’, 24); Fisher (n. 1); Springer, C., ‘Aratus and the cups of Menalcas: a note on Eclogue 3.42’, CJ 79 (1983–4), 131–4Google Scholar; de Callataÿ, G., ‘Quis fuit alter?: Aratos, le Palinure de l'Enéide’, BIBR 62 (1992), 175–92Google Scholar; O'Hara, J.J., True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 1996), 81 n. 335, 247Google Scholar; Prioux, E., ‘Deux jeux de mots sur le nom d'Aratos: note sur Virgile, B. III, 42 et Aratos, Phaen. 2’, RPh 79 (2005), 309–17Google Scholar; Saunders, T., Bucolic Ecology: Virgil's Eclogues and the Environmental Literary Tradition (London, 2008), 18–19 Google Scholar.

4 There is no mention of it, for instance, in Coleman, R. (ed.), Vergil: Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 114–15Google Scholar, or Clausen (n. 1), 102–3, although the latter lists items by Fisher and Springer cited in the notes above.  The more recent commentary of Cucchiarelli, A., Publio Virgilio Marone: Le Bucoliche (Rome, 2012), 217 Google Scholar observes ‘il nome stesso di Aratus potrebbe esser suggerito dal sost. arator’.

5 On the prophecy of Mopsus, see especially Strand, J., Notes on Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica (Gothenburg, 1972), 57–65 Google Scholar; Kleywegt, A.J., ‘Praecursoria Valeriana (II)’, Mnemosyne 40 (1987), 107–23, at 110–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hershkowitz, D., Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica: Abbreviated Voyages in Silver Latin Epic (Oxford, 1998), 26–7Google Scholar; Fucecchi, M., ‘ Quem circum vellera Martem / aspicio? (Val. Fl. 1, 223 s.), ovvero: l'ira e i dubbi di una divinità “disorientata”’, in Spaltenstein, F. (ed.), Untersuchungen zu den Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus. Ratis omnia vincet III (Munich, 2004), 107–31, at 107–8Google Scholar; Zissos, A., ‘Terminal middle: the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus’, in Kyriakidis, S. and De Martino, F. (edd.), Middles in Latin Poetry (Bari, 2004), 311–44, at 319–23Google Scholar; Zissos, A. (ed.), Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica Book 1: A Commentary (Oxford, 2008), 186–97Google Scholar; Davis, P.J., ‘Medea: from epic to tragedy’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 192–210, at 195 with n. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Zissos (n. 5 [2008]), 197; Kleywegt, A.J. (ed.), Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, Book I (Leiden, 2005), 140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Zissos (n. 5 [2008]), 197; Kleywegt (n. 6), 140, who also compares Ovid, Met. 13.389 and 14.199; for these and further parallels, see Poortvliet, H.M. (ed.), C. Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica Book II (Amsterdam, 1991), 164 Google Scholar on Argonautica 2.274.

8 See e.g. Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic. Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1991), 319, 330–1Google Scholar; Zissos (n. 5 [2008]), xxii, and 302 on Argonautica 1.498-502; Bernstein, N.W., ‘ Romanas veluti saevissima cum legiones Tisiphone regesque movet: Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica and the Flavian era’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 154–69, at 157Google Scholar.

9 On Valerius’ ecphrasis, see generally Manuwald, G., ‘Die Bilder am Tempel in Kolchis’, in Eigler, U. and Lefèvre, E. (edd.), Ratis omnia vincet. Neue Untersuchungen zu den Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus (Munich, 1998), 307–18Google Scholar; Hershkowitz (n. 5), 20–4; Heerink, M., ‘Valerius Flaccus, Virgil and the poetics of ekphrasis’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 72–95 (on this passage, see 92–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, S.J., ‘Proleptic ekphrasis in Flavian epic: Valerius Flaccus and Statius’, in Manuwald, G. and Voigt, A. (edd.), Flavian Epic Interactions (Berlin, 2013), 215–27Google Scholar.

10 On the repetition of 1.224-5, see Kleywegt (n. 6), 140; Zissos (n. 5 [2004]), 341–2; id. (n. 5 [2008]), 196; Buckley, E., ‘Valerius Flaccus and Seneca's tragedies’, in Heerink, M. and Manuwald, G. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Valerius Flaccus (Leiden, 2014), 307–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 313: ‘Mopsus’ final question … is an enquiry that will find its answer in the later ekphrasis of Book 5 …’ (cf. Buckley, E., ‘Visualising Venus: epiphany and anagnorisis in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica ’, in Lovatt, H. and Vout, C. [edd.], Epic Visions: Visuality in Greek and Latin Epic and its Reception [Cambridge, 2013], 78–98, at 79–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

11 See especially Parker, H.N., ‘Books and reading Latin poetry’, in Johnson, W.A. and Parker, H.N. (edd.), Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 2009), 186–229 Google Scholar.

12 Castelletti, C., ‘A “Greek” acrostic in Valerius Flaccus (3.430-4)’, Mnemosyne 65 (2012), 319–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar observes of his proposed acrostic AIDOS at Argonautica 3.430-4 that ‘this acrostic shows at the same time a doctrina sacerdotalis … and a doctrina poetica’ (322; see also 321: ‘The acrostic can be perceived as a commentary on the scene, made by the poet in margine, or as a ritual word expressed in such a way by the priest himself.’).

13 Cf. Hershkowitz (n. 5), 26 n. 82: ‘the repetition of the prophet's words in the description of the reaction to the temple door stresses the lack of comprehension both on the part of Mopsus and the Colchians about the future, in questions which the comprehending reader can easily answer’.

14 Fowler, D.P., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7.601-4)?’, CQ 33 (1983), 298 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further examples of Valerian wordplay, see Castelletti, C., ‘Riflessioni sugli acrostici di Valerio Flacco’, GIF 60 (2008), 219–34Google Scholar (with bibliography on recently identified acrostics in other Latin authors); id. (n. 12). Katz, J.T., ‘The Muse at play: an introduction’, in Kwapisz, J., Petrain, D. and Szymański, M. (edd.), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (Berlin and Boston, 2013), 1–30 Google Scholar, at 6 comments that ‘[i]t is striking that a number of articles about Greco-Roman acrostics have a question mark in the title’; although on a different kind of wordplay, the present note now takes its place alongside them.