The forty-first book of Nonnus' Dionysiaca takes as its central theme Beroë, the sea nymph identified with the city of Beirut in Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon). Nonnus associates Beroë closely with Amymone.Footnote 1 She is pursued sexually by both Dionysus and Poseidon, with the latter proving victorious, a story which Nonnus recounts in the next book of his poem. In Book 41, however, the narrative focuses upon the foundation of the city and Beroë’s birth. Nonnus initially dwells on Beirut's geographical setting and its first inhabitants, before turning to the birth of Aphrodite, who is said to arrive first at Beirut, not Cythera or Cyprus as in other accounts (Nonnus, Dion. 41.97–119).Footnote 2
In lines 143–54, the poet turns to the birth of Beroë, who is said to be the daughter of Ocean and Tethys:
Beroë, root of life, nurse of cities, boast of kings, having appeared first, twin of Aion and contemporary of the universe, seat of Hermes, land of Justice, city of laws, place of Euphrosyne, house of Paphia, dwelling of the Erotes, pleasing shrine of Bacchus, abode of the Archeress, delight of the Nereids, house of Zeus, court of Ares, Orchomenos of the Graces, star of the land of Lebanon, coeval of Tethys, of the same time as Ocean, who begat Beroë in his bed of many fountains, joining with Tethys in watery marriage rites. Beroë, whom they named Amymone, when her mother bore her on an underwater bed as a result of moist love.Footnote 3
The primordial origins of Beirut are already a central theme in lines 51–142,Footnote 4 a theme which echoes through the rest of the book.Footnote 5 The parentage of Ocean and Tethys again underscores the antiquity of Beroë, who is πρωτοϕανής (‘first-appearing’, 41.144).Footnote 6 The story that Beroë’s parents are Tethys and Ocean is nonetheless short-lived, extending across only five lines. Immediately following this, the poet narrates an alternative, longer version of Beroë’s birth, in which her parents are not Tethys and Ocean but Aphrodite and Adonis. This begins:
There is a younger legend, that her mother was Cythereia herself, the pilot of human generations, who bore her all white to Assyrian Adonis. She completed the nine cycles of the moon carrying her load: Hermes, arriving in time with his swift feet, and carrying a Latin tablet which was herald of the future, came to the birth of Beroë to help with the labour.
This new birth narrative (41.155–236) shares similarities with the birth stories of the first part of the book, even as it marks a departure from what has preceded it. Most strikingly, Beroë’s birth evokes the account of Aphrodite's birth at the outset of the book (41.97–118), according to which Aphrodite, born from the sea, first touches land at Beirut. As Beroë matures, she takes on the full appearance of her mother and is observed with fear by the nymph Thetis (41.232–6):
She had entirely the same appearance as her mother, and shining feet. Emerging from the ocean, Thetis, jumping in dance with her snow-white foot, saw another silver-footed Thetis. She hid herself in shame, fearing once again the utterance of Cassiopeia.
Praise of Beroë’s beauty is bestowed directly by the narrator through the comparison of mother and daughter, then focalized through the eyes of the sea nymph Thetis, whose continued fear of Cassiopeia alludes to Beroë’s own claims to beauty.Footnote 7 The passage therefore exemplifies different modes of allusion, explicit and oblique, which operate in its engagement with the earlier story of Aphrodite's birth. Following the direct comparison with Aphrodite in the passage, the figure of Thetis emerging from the sea and moving across the surface of the water with her feet (ταρσῷ, 41.234) subtly evokes the earlier story of Aphrodite's birth from the sea (ἐξ ἁλὸς ἀρτιλόχευτον, ‘newly born from the sea’, 41.99) and movement across the ocean, where a great deal of emphasis is placed on Aphrodite's feet and steps (καὶ θεὸς ἰχνεύουσα δι’ ὕδατος, ‘the goddess moving through the water’, 106; οὐ πόδα χερσῷ / Κωλιάδος ῥηγμῖνος ἐϕήρμοσεν, ‘she did not put her foot upon the dry shore of Colias', 107–8; σιγαλέην ἀνέκοπτε χαρασσομένην ἅλα ταρσῷ, ‘she struck up the sea which she cut with her feet’, 114; ποσσὶν ἀμοιβαίοισιν ὀπίστερον ὤθεεν ὕδωρ, ‘she pushed the water behind her with alternating feet’, 116; ποδῶν δ’ ἐπίβαθρα θεαίνης / ἐξ ἁλὸς ἐρχομένης ναέτης ἐψεύσατο Κύπρου, ‘those footsteps of the goddess emerging from the sea are lies of the inhabitants of Cyprus', 117–18). Beroë is of course not moving across the ocean, but running with Artemis in the hunt; however, the figure of Thetis, as well perhaps as the emphasis on Beroë’s own shining feet (πόδας αἰγλήεντας, 233), marks the differences as much as the similarities between mother and daughter.
That Beroë’s mother should be Aphrodite rather than Tethys hardly calls into question her primordial ancestry. According to Hesiod's account in the Theogony (173–205), Aphrodite is a daughter of Ouranos, of the same generation as Tethys and Ocean. It is therefore particularly striking that the alternative and extended mythological account is explicitly characterized as youthful (ὁπλοτέρη ϕάτις, ‘younger legend’, 155): the unique nature of the phrase underlines the playful contrast of old and new, as Nonnus explores novelty in both mythological time and poetic tradition.Footnote 8
We cannot be certain that the story of Aphrodite's maternity is a creation of Nonnus, but as Chuvin remarks: ‘Cette version “récente”…paraît d'abord porter la marque d'une mythologie plus littéraire, plus conventionelle que l'autre…..Cette fille d'Aphrodite et d'Adonis était trop facile à imaginer et elle est certainement artificielle, de création en effet ‘récente’, sans être forcément sortie de l'imagination du poète.’ (This “recent” version…appears at first to carry the mark of a more literary mythology, more conventional than the other…. This daughter of Aphrodite and Adonis was very easy to imagine and she is certainly artificial, indeed of “recent” creation, without necessarily being drawn from the imagination of the poet.’)Footnote 9
In what follows, I will focus upon the presentation of the story of Beroë’s birth by Aphrodite and Adonis as an ὁπλοτέρη ϕάτις, suggesting that Nonnus' variant accounts of her parentage reveal a chronologically layered engagement with the tradition of didactic poetry. His alternative story of the birth of Beroë looks back to Aratus' story of Dike, while, earlier in the book, in the ‘older’ mythological story of Aphrodite's birth and arrival at Beirut, echoes of Hesiod and possibly Empedocles (Aratus' predecessors) create a traditional, even primordial, atmosphere against which the ‘young’ myth of Beroë’s parentage is set.Footnote 10
The word ϕάτις has a longstanding place in discussions of poetic authority. Pindar, for example, evokes ϕάτις in his first Olympian Ode (ἦ θαύματα πολλά, καί πού τι καὶ βροτῶν / ϕάτις ὑπὲρ τὸν ἀλαθῆ λόγον / δεδαιδαλμένοι ψεύδεσι ποικίλοις ἐξαπατῶντι μῦθοι, ‘Yes, wonders are many, but then too, I think, in men's talk stories are embellished beyond the true account and deceive by means of elaborate lies'; Pind. Ol. 1.28–9Footnote 11 ), where the truth of poetic tales is in question. Closer to what we see in Nonnus, in the fourth book of Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica, the poet offers the alternative explanation for the sickle said to be buried on the island of Drepane, which gives the island its name (4. 982–7):
At the head of the Ionian strait, set in the Keraunian sea, is a large and fertile island, where is buried, so the story goes (your gracious pardon, Muses! It is against my will that I related a story told by men of earlier generations), the sickle with which Kronos pitilessly cut off his father's genitals. Others say that it is the reaping scythe of chthonian Demeter.Footnote 12
Apollonius first gives the story told by ‘earlier men’ (προτέρων) before providing the alternative account given by ‘others’ (οἱ).Footnote 13
With the phrase ὁπλοτέρη ϕάτις, Nonnus, too, juxtaposes variant mythological accounts, but also raises the issue of poetic anteriority: Beroë’s antiquity as a nymph and city, a vaunted theme in the poem, is re-explored in relation to the age of Nonnus' poetic sources. The problematization of poetic authority in accounts of birth has already arisen earlier in the book when Nonnus recounts the story of Aphrodite's birth. As noted briefly above, the poet recounts that Beroë first receives Aphrodite after her birth in the sea, not Cyprus, or Corinth, or Cythera (41.97 ff.). This is subsequently underlined by the statement that the story of her first footsteps in Cyprus are lies of that island's inhabitants (41.117–19):Footnote 14
And she went upon Beroë. The claim that the goddess stepped foot upon Cyprus when emerging from the sea is a lie of that island's inhabitants. Beroë first received Cypris.
Aphrodite is notable also as a figure whose parentage is prominently disputed within the poetic tradition. According to Hesiod's account in the Theogony (173–205), she is born from the severed genitals of Ouranos when they drop into the sea, whereas in Homer (Iliad 5.370 ff.) she is said to be the daughter of Zeus and Dione, who comforts her daughter when she is injured in battle. It is then particularly appropriate that Aphrodite, whose parentage and birth are disputed in tradition, gives birth to a daughter whose own nativity has alternative and competing versions.Footnote 15
If the account of Aphrodite's birth is preparatory for the birth narrative of her daughter, Nonnus recalls within the story of Beroë’s birth a poetic model that explicitly problematizes poetic tradition and authority. When Beroë emerges from Aphrodite's womb, the world rejoices and animals consort with each other in an inter-species celebration, a baroque golden-age scene (185–211).Footnote 16 The baby Beroë is received by her nurse and midwife, the virgin Astraea (212–17), who is the ‘rearer of the golden race’:
Virgin Astraea, rearer of the golden race and nurse of the whole universe, received Beroë, still a baby and yet laughing, from her mother into the embrace of her arms; and she nourished her at her wise breast, as the child babbled words of law. Gushing forth streams of laws with her virgin milk, she wet the child's lips.
This passage seems to recall Aratus' narrative digression on the Maiden constellation in his Phaenomena, 96–136, where the Maiden is said to be the daughter of Astraeus (96–105):
Beneath the two feet of Bootes you can observe the Maiden, who carries in her hand the radiant Spica. Whether she is the daughter of Astraeus, who, they say, was the original father of the stars, or of some other, may her way be peaceful! There is, however, another tale current among men, that once she actually lived on earth, and came face to face with men, and did not ever spurn the tribes of ancient men and women, but sat in their midst although she was immortal. And they called her Justice.Footnote 17
The naming of the virgin (παρθένος) AstraeaFootnote 18 as nursemaid in a golden-age atmosphere undoubtedly recalls Aratus' Maiden (Παρθένος) constellation, daughter of Astraeus, even if this does not single out Aratus as a source.Footnote 19 In Aratus, the constellation Parthenos is identified explicitly with Dike, who interacts with and looks after the golden race. When men decline in the silver race, she distances herself from humanity and then departs permanently to the sky at the arrival of the bronze race, who suffer in discord and lawlessness. Dike is also a prominent figure in Nonnus' celebration of Beirut, a city well known for its law school, and in his account of Beroë’s birth.Footnote 20 In the first celebration of the city, she is addressed as the ‘lawmaker’ (θεμιστοπόλου, 10) and there are frequent further references to law. In a subsequent celebration she is the ‘plain of Justice’ (Δίκης πέδον, 145). Both Themis and Hermes attend Beroë’s birth carrying Roman law tablets (159–65). At Beroë’s arrival in the world, Aion wraps her in the swaddling clothes of Dike (σπάργανα πέπλα Δίκης, 179). As regards the virgin Astraea and her particular connection to justice, she gushes forth streams of laws (ῥοὰς βλύζουσα θεμίστων, 216), while Beroë, still a baby, precociously babbles forth lawful words (ἔννομα παππάζουσαν, 215). This strong presence of Dike/justice is integral to the celebration of the city. Combined with other elements of the birth, it recalls the delivery of Dardanos in Dionysiaca 3.195–9, the founder of Troy and ancestor of the Romans, who is nursed by Dike herself (ὃν κομέεσκε Δίκη τροϕός, 3.196).Footnote 21 It also, however, strengthens the evocation of Aratus.
The Aratean passage is also relevant to the ‘younger’ Nonnian account of Beroë’s birth as a text which itself raises the possibility of variant birth stories. In lines 98–101, Aratus reports that some say that Astraeus is the Maiden's father, some that she is the child of ‘another’ (τεῦ ἄλλου, Phaen. 99). Here ϕασιν refers to Hesiod, where Astraeus is the ‘original’ (ἀρχαῖον) father of the stars (Hes. Theog. 378–82), while the opaque τευ ἄλλου seems to refer to Zeus, whose evocation at the outset of the Phaenomena closely links him to Dike, his daughter in Hesiod (Theog. 902).Footnote 22 Dike's interaction with the men of the golden race recalls Zeus's own orderly Stoic presence in the cities of men in the first lines of the Phaenomena: [Δίκη] ἀγείρομένη δὲ γέροντας / ἠέ που εἰν ἀγορῇ ἢ εὐρυχόρῳ ἐν ἀγυιῇ (‘gathering together the elders, either in the market-place or on the broad highway’, 106) echoes the prologue μεσταὶ δὲ Διὸς πᾶσαι μὲν ἀγυιαί, / πᾶσαι δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἀγοραί (‘filled with Zeus are all highways and all meeting-places of people’, 2–3).Footnote 23
In both Nonnus and Aratus then, alternative birth narratives closely link offspring to their parents celebrated earlier in the poem, and in both cases these alternative narratives underline the theme of justice. Aratus is also concerned with poetic novelty: yet another story circulates (λόγος γε μὲν ἐντρέχει ἄλλος, Phaen. 100) that the Maiden, identified with Dike, once lived among men. This, Aratus' own narrative, interacts with the older Hesiodic narratives about Dike and the myth of races, as well as with the didactic poetry of Empedocles, but also strikes out on its own.Footnote 24
Hesiod's account in the Works and Days of the myth of races (Op. 106–201) and his insistence on the importance of justice (Dike) in the cities of the prosperous and upright (256–85) is also broadly relevant to Nonnus' celebration of Beirut as a seat of justice. In Hesiod, cities that observe justice live in a peace and prosperity reminiscent of the golden race (Op. 225–37: the city thrives, there is no famine, women bear children, they do not travel in ships), whereas, when justice is not observed (238–45), there is disaster and the whole city suffers (πολλάκι καὶ ξύμπασα πόλις κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀπηύρα, 240). Yet Hesiod is not in the foreground here as a poetic model. The figure of the virgin Astraea suckling Beroë stands, I would suggest, as emblematic of poetic inspiration. Nonnus' Beroë is suckled by Aratus' Dike, who as a Muse figure in the Phaenomena engages with Hesiodic and Empedoclean models.Footnote 25
There is ultimately a layering of didactic models in the movement from the first part of Book 41 to the new narrative departure of the ὁπλοτέρη ϕάτις (155). The qualification of the virgin Astraea as ‘rearer of the golden race’ (χρυσέης θρέπτειρα γενέθλης, 214) looks back to Nonnus' earlier mention of the golden race in his initial celebration of Beirut as a primordial city (51–67), where archaic and early classical didactic models are powerfully evoked:
Here lived a people as old as Dawn, whom Nature begat asexually according to some law free of marriage – without wedding, fatherless, unborn, motherless. Binding together the four mixed elements, she formed a wise child moulded with water and the fiery vapour in the air, and through her seedless labour breathed life into the offspring in the pregnant mud. To these Nature gave perfect shape: for they did not have the form of primeval Cecrops, who, scraping the earth with the poisonous coils of his legs, crawled with serpentine feet. He was a dragon in his lower half, but above the waist up to the head appeared as an incomplete man, strange in shape and of two skins. Nor did they have the savage form of Erechtheus, whom Hephaestus begat, having joined his nuptial dew with a furrow of Earth. Rather, the golden crop of men who first appeared was brought forth in the image of the gods, rooted in the earth. And they lived in the city of Beroë, the first-sown seat that Cronos himself built when, by the plan of wise Rhea, he placed a jagged dinner in his voracious throat. Having as midwife (Eileithyia) for the heavy burden a stone, which shot forth the many children of the afflicted generation, he sucked up greedily the flood of a whole river like a cloud and took into his boiling chest water to ease his pangs, releasing the burden of his belly. His pregnant throat chased and disgorged his twice-born sons one after the other, who had as their birth passage a labouring throat.
The first crop of men of the golden race (χρύσειος…στάχυς ἀνδρῶν, 65), perfect in form and made in the image of the gods, that lives in Beirut recalls in broad strokes the Hesiodic myth of races. The preceding technical description in its overall style perhaps also evokes the didactic poetry of Empedocles, who in his poem On Nature is concerned with four material elements or roots in the universe (fire, air, water, and earth; compare above Dion. 41.54–7) that form everything, including gods and men, and also describes his own golden race, free of strife and united by love.Footnote 26 Mention of the four elements themselves is commonplace,Footnote 27 but in the context of the creation of the golden race this seems to point to Empedocles. Nonnus may well have known Empedocles.Footnote 28 The story that follows immediately upon this in lines 67–76 is again archaic fare, which looks back to Hesiod (Theog. 453–500): that Kronos swallowed his children to prevent them from overthrowing him, only to be tricked by Rhea into swallowing a rock that forced him to regurgitate the children.
Recollection in the Astraea episode of Nonnus' earlier treatment of the theme of the golden race serves to mark the difference between these mythological sections in terms of the poet's encounter with poetic heritage. The ὁπλοτέρη ϕάτις (41.155) unequivocally raises the matter of chronology and innovation in the poetic tradition and brings with it the exploration of a younger, Hellenistic didactic model: Aratus' Phaenomena, which itself had previously innovated upon Hesiodic and Empedoclean archetypes.Footnote 29
