Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T14:36:31.763Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AN INTERPOLATION IN CLAUDIAN, DE RAPTV PROSERPINAE 2.343–7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

Kyle Gervais
Kyle Gervais*
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
*
kgervai2@uwo.ca
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his recent monograph on textual criticism, Richard Tarrant discusses the history, problems and practices of diagnosing interpolations in Latin texts, and persuasively argues for ‘restor[ing] interpolation to the editor's armoury’. In the hopes of better arming future editors, I identify a possible interpolation in the second book of Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae (= DRP). The passage in question describes the celebrations in the underworld that attend the wedding of Pluto and Proserpina; joining in the holiday mood, the Furies let their snaky hair down to enjoy a drink of wine while they light festive torches for the nuptials (DRP 2.343–7):

      oblitae scelerum formidatique furoris
      Eumenides cratera parant et uina feroci
      crine bibunt flexisque minis iam lene canentes 345
      extendunt socios ad pocula plena cerastas
      et festas alio succendunt lumine taedas.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 449 - 453
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

In his recent monograph on textual criticism, Richard Tarrant discusses the history, problems and practices of diagnosing interpolations in Latin texts, and persuasively argues for ‘restor[ing] interpolation to the editor's armoury’.Footnote 1 In the hopes of better arming future editors, I identify a possible interpolation in the second book of Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae (= DRP). The passage in question describes the celebrations in the underworld that attend the wedding of Pluto and Proserpina; joining in the holiday mood, the Furies let their snaky hair down to enjoy a drink of wine while they light festive torches for the nuptials (DRP 2.343–7):Footnote 2

oblitae scelerum formidatique furoris
Eumenides cratera parant et uina feroci
crine bibunt flexisque minis iam lene canentes  345
extendunt socios ad pocula plena cerastas
et festas alio succendunt lumine taedas.

343 sceleris A2C3L5R4 | formidandi- F1J4E2K1 | furoris] doloris J2 : timoris F2J4K1L6W : tumoris Heinsius || 344 cratera] paterasque L3 : craterasque L1 || 344–5 uina . . . | crine] crine . . . | uina R22 : uina . . . | ore Reinhardt || 345 lene] leta L1 : dulce W || 347 et g?, cett. mei : at J4E1K1L6R25 : ac* G2J9ψ1 : nunc F2?pc | faustas r, Heinsius olim | alio J3C1gL3ZE2R25 : aliae A1F1P5F2L1J4A2F3U

345 bibunt (F2 ul) : ferunt F2 || canentes : minantes F4ac

In this passage, I argue that line 346 should be bracketed as an interpolation and et festas emended to infaustas, yielding the corrected text:

oblitae scelerum formidatique furoris
Eumenides cratera parant et uina feroci
crine bibunt flexisque minis iam lene canentes
[extendunt socios ad pocula plena cerastas]
infaustas alio succendunt lumine taedas.

Forgetting their crimes and dreaded fury, the Eumenides prepare mixing bowls and drink wine with their fearsome hair and, turning their threats asideFootnote 3 and now gently singing, kindle their ill-omened torches with a different light.

The interpolation here would be the second in this passage. Ten lines earlier, Claudian describes the interruption of Ixion's and Tantalus’ punishments in honour of the wedding (335–7):

non rota suspensum praeceps Ixiona torquet,
non aqua Tantaleis subducitur inuida labris;
[soluitur Ixion, inuenit Tantalus undas]

Line 337 was first judged spurious by Heinsius, and, despite some notable voices to the contrary,Footnote 4 Gruzelier's summary judgement ad loc. seems appropriate: ‘This line cannot stand in a text which includes 335f.’. But her rationale for keeping lines 335–6 rather than line 337—namely that line 337 is less ‘in Claudian's style’ than lines 335–6—does not fully assess the situation. Two important points may be made about this interpolation. First, it explains and simplifies a more complex statement (335–6), and does so in a single hexameter. Second, despite its straightforward construction, its author shows some familiarity with the classical canon. More than simply combining the details of lines 335–6 (thus Heinsius:Footnote 5 ‘[uersus] ex superioribus duobus conflatus’), the line in fact adapts and combines material from two Ovidian underworld scenes: Met. 4.461 uoluitur Ixion et se sequiturque fugitque and 10.41–2 nec Tantalus undam | captauit refugam, stupuitque Ixionis orbis.Footnote 6

These two points also apply to line 346.Footnote 7 This line explains and simplifies uina feroci | crine bibunt, an image that previous readers have found difficult. Tardioli sought to make the Eumenides, and not their snakes, drink wine, reading feroci | crine as an ablative of quality rather than instrument.Footnote 8 Reinhardt also tried to deprive the snakes of their drink by emending crine to ore.Footnote 9 The manuscript variant ferunt (for bibunt) further suggests the confusion caused by what Gruzelier ad loc. allows is ‘the somewhat bizarre picture of the Furies giving the snakes a drink of wine’. In fact, with the Eumenides’ bibulous hair, Claudian challenges not only his readers’ general mythological knowledge (namely that the Furies have snakes for hair) but also their specific literary competence. In Statius, the Furies water their snakes in the rivers of the underworld: Theb. 1.90–1 resolutaque uertice crines | lambere sulphureas permiserat anguibus undas [Cocyti], 4.55–6 huc mergere suetae | ora et anhelantes poto Phlegethonte cerastas, 11.95–6 exultantque recentes | Cocyti de fonte comae.Footnote 10 Claudian's point for his learned readers is therefore that his Furies allow their snakes a drink of wine, different from their usual Statian drink, in honour of the special occasion.

Thus line 346 is not, in fact, ‘merely a repetition of the idea of 344f. in different words’.Footnote 11 It is a repetition that makes explicit what Claudian has stated implicitly, and solves the literary riddle he has offered his readers: with its alliterative pocula plena and its idiomatically Statian cerastae,Footnote 12 line 346 adapts Theb. 4.55 poto Phlegethonte cerastas to provide the context needed for a full understanding of Claudian's uina feroci | crine bibunt.Footnote 13 It would be uncharacteristic of Claudian's dense and challenging style to produce so clever and difficult a phrase as ‘they drink wine with their fierce hair’ only to offer an explanation one line later.Footnote 14 But it seems reasonable to suppose that an interpolator, who had perhaps already provided a learned but straightforward summary of lines 335–6 with the insertion of a hexameter at line 337, might also provide a learned but straightforward explanation of Claudian's point in lines 344–5 with the insertion of another hexameter at line 346.

The removal of line 346 from the text requires another emendation in the following line, the change of et festas to infaustas to avoid a superfluous conjunction.Footnote 15 This emendation is not merely a necessary second step after bracketing line 346; it is, I believe, also desirable on its own merits. The transmitted festas … taedas is an obvious phrase to describe wedding torches; it appears elsewhere in Valerius Flaccus, Statius and Claudian.Footnote 16 It is, however, an odd description for the Furies’ torches, which are instead normally ill-omened, and especially when present at weddings (cf. Ov. Met. 6.430, Sen. Med. 15–17, Stat. Theb. 11.491–2 and, especially, Ov. Her. 6.45–6 at mihi nec Iuno, nec Hymen, sed tristis Erinys | praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces).Footnote 17 Furies’ torches elsewhere in DRP are certainly ill-omened. They are faces profanae (2.215), pestiferae taxi (3.386) and, most significantly, lit with an infaustum lumen (1.38–41):

contraque Tonantem
coniurant Furiae crinitaque sontibus hydris
Tisiphone, quatiens infaustoFootnote 18 lumine pinum,
armatos ad castra uocat pallentia Manes.

Von Albrecht notes the structural link between this scene and ours: at the start of Book 1, Hell is ready to wage war on Heaven because Pluto wants a wife; by the end of Book 2, Hell is happy and peace is restored because Jupiter has given Proserpina to Pluto.Footnote 19 Emendation to infaustas in 2.347 would underscore this link (infausto lumine is the only appearance of the epithet before our passage) and would emphasize the striking change in atmosphere. Furies ready to foment chaos are a fixture of Latin epic, but Claudian's innovation here is to show them with their usual horror set aside (oblitae scelerum formidatique furoris). He twice expresses this shift with epigrammatic force, juxtaposing a stereotypical epithet for the Furies with an unexpected festive action: just as the Furies’ hair is usually ferox but today drinks wine, so too are their torches usually infaustus but today are lit alio lumine.

This ‘strange / different light’ is highly allusive (as were the Furies’ drinking snakes). It is, we have seen, different from the appearances of Furies’ torches at other weddings in Latin poetry, and different from the ‘ill-omened light’ of Tisiphone's torch in Book 1. Finally, it is, implicitly, clear and bright, different from the smoky ‘black light’ of the torch used by Virgil's Allecto: Aen. 7.456–7 sic effata facem iuueni coniecit et atro | lumine fumantis fixit sub pectore taedas.Footnote 20 With the juxtaposition infaustas alio, Claudian thus pointedly and learnedly expresses his Furies’ innovative place in the tradition. But et festas renders alio redundant and thus robs it of much of its force.

Indeed, et festas may have originated, like line 346, as an attempt to explain one of Claudian's allusive and compressed expressions (hair drinking wine, ill-omened torches shining alio lumine at a happy wedding). As before, textual variants suggest the confusion: aliae replaces alio in several manuscripts.Footnote 21 Either attempted explanation could have found its way into Claudian's text first. The intrusion of line 346 would have required the subsequent insertion of a conjunction to join lines 346 and 347. Alternatively, the change of infaustas to et faustas would have left one conjunction too many, creating a perceived lacuna for line 346 to fill.Footnote 22 Finally, it does not seem implausible that an early reader of Claudian, armed with a knowledge of Classical Latin poetry and with some poetic talent of his own, might have solved all of Claudian's riddles at once and produced the current text in a single move.

Footnotes

I wish to thank Neil Bernstein, Christopher Brown and Michael Dewar for their insightful and challenging comments, as well as the members of my 2015 Claudian seminar for listening patiently to this argument in its inchoate form.

References

1 Tarrant, R.J., Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism (Cambridge, 2016), 85–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He notes that the diagnosis of interpolations was once an integral part of textual critics’ toolkit, but that in the last century the subject has become contentious. His discussion draws on a typology of interpolation proposed in his ‘Toward a typology of interpolation in Latin poetry’, TAPhA 117 (1987), 281–98Google Scholar, and on his edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar, in which he brackets approximately 100 lines.

2 I reproduce the text and apparatus criticus of Hall, J.B. (ed.), Claudii Claudiani carmina (Leipzig, 1985)Google Scholar, supplemented at the bottom with two variant readings for line 345 from the apparatus criticus of Charlet, J.-L. (ed.), Claudien: Œuvres. 1. Le rapt de Proserpine (Paris, 1991)Google Scholar. In the face of an extremely complex tradition (over a hundred manuscripts from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, multiple routes of transmission, pervasive contamination), both editors adopt an eclectic approach (Hall [this note], x–xi; Charlet [this note], liv–lv). The readings each of them cites are largely drawn from a list of representative manuscripts (fifteen for Hall, twelve for Charlet), chosen, significantly, ‘non ut optimos … sed ut notitia dignos’ (Hall [this note], xi), but exceptions are frequent. For instance the variant ac (for line 347 et), which Hall's asterisk marks as a lectio fortasse recta, is found in none of his fifteen chosen manuscripts.

3 Gruzelier, C. (ed.), Claudian: De Raptu Proserpinae. Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar, ad loc. (following Clarke, A.K., ‘Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae’, PCA 27 [1930], 38–41, at 40Google Scholar) notes the double meaning of flexisque minis, which describes both the general figurative turning aside of the Furies’ usual menace (flectere minas describes the averting of Hercules’ threats against Troy [Sen. Tro. 719–20] and Neptune's against the Argo [Val. Fl. 1.219]) and the specific literal bending down of their snakes to drink wine (cf. Verg. G. 3.241 tollentemque minas and Stat. Theb. 11.313 cecidere minae, of snakes assuming and relaxing menacing postures; the concrete sense for minae of the pinnacles of a wall [e.g. Verg. Aen. 4.88; cf. TLL 8.994.3–15] helps to suggest the idea here of the Furies’ snakes as threatening projections from their heads, temporarily bent down).

4 Charlet (n. 2) sees the repetition in lines 335–7 as typical of Latin poets from Virgil onwards, and keeps all three lines, as do Birt, T. (ed.), Claudii Claudiani carmina (Berlin, 1892)Google Scholar and Koch, J. (ed.), Claudii Claudiani carmina (Leipzig, 1893)Google Scholar. Hall, J.B. (ed.), Claudian: De Raptu Proserpinae. Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar leaves open the possibility that lines 335–6 are spurious, and line 337 genuine. Gruzelier (n. 3), Jeep, L. (ed.), Claudii Claudiani carmina. I: Carm. I–XXIV (Leipzig, 1867)Google Scholar and Onorato, M. (ed.), Claudio Claudiano: De Raptu Proserpinae (Naples, 2008)Google Scholar reject the line.

5 Cited by Hall (n. 4).

6 These passages are the only instances of nominative Ixion and the clausula Tantalus und- in extant Latin epic (nominative Ixion also appears twice in Horace and Senecan tragedy, and once in Phaedrus).

7 Both lines might therefore have originated from the same source: a lost hexameter poem on the wedding of Pluto and Proserpina, or a composition exercise to recast the theme of Claudian's passage, or simply the pen of a learned glossographer.

8 Tardioli, M., Claudien: De Raptu Proserpinae. Introduction et commentaire (Nancy, 1971)Google Scholar, cited by Charlet (n. 2), ad loc. For the correct interpretation, see Charlet (n. 2) and Gruzelier (n. 3), ad loc.

9 Cited by Hall (n. 4).

10 Gruzelier (n. 3), ad loc. notes the first two passages.

11 Gruzelier (n. 3), ad loc.

12 Statius’ Furies have cerastae for hair at Theb. 1.103, 4.55, 9.174 and 11.65. Cerastae are found in Megaera's hair at Claud. Ruf. 1.96, but the only other description of a Fury's hair in DRP names hydri rather than cerastae: 1.39–40 crinitaque sontibus hydris | Tisiphone (cf. Verg. Aen. 7.447 tot Erinys sibilat hydris).

13 A line from earlier in Claudian's scene (2.319 uertunt emeritos ad pascua nota iugales) may have provided another model for the structure of the interpolated line. The composition of line 346 would thus follow, more subtly, the combinatorial method used in composing line 337: uoluitur Ixion + Tantalus undam produced soluitur Ixion inuenit Tantalus undas, and uertunt emeritos ad pascua nota iugales + poto Phlegethonte cerastas produced extendunt socios ad pocula plena cerastas.

14 Stylistic assessments of Latin poetry are perilously subjective, although the judgement of Gruzelier (n. 3), xxiii–xxiv is worth citing: ‘no word is ever wasted and all, especially his verbs and adjectives, work extremely hard. This results in lines of felicitous brevity …, in the verbal paradox to which he is addicted …, and also in clever sententia …’. On the other hand, repetition and variation are of course pervasive in Latin poetry, and are especially characteristic of what Roberts, M., The Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, 1989)Google Scholar describes as the ‘jewelled style’ of Late Antiquity. The challenge thus lies in determining when a repetition departs from an author's usual style. (Gnilka, C., Prudentiana I, Critica [Munich, 2000]Google Scholar negotiates this problem throughout his study of interpolations in the text of Prudentius, whose repetitions eclipse those of Claudian; pages 16–67 address interpolations in Claudian.) Repetition that serves only to simplify and explain a compressed and clever expression is not typical of Claudian's style. Compare, for example, Roberts's discussion ([this note], 25–7) of the repetitions and variations in DRP 1.231–6 and 3.344–52; DRP 1.89–91, where the repetition is a succession of three equally epigrammatic phrases; DRP 1.133–7, where an elaborate antithesis is developed through repetition and parallelism; DRP 2.262–3 and 2.313–15, where an initial longer expression (sed mihi uirginitas pariter caelumque negatur and mox ipse serenus | ingreditur facili passus mollescere risu) is followed by a repetition that is actually more compressed and epigrammatic (eripitur cum luce pudor and dissimilisque sui). Judgements in these matters inevitably differ: for instance Charlet (n. 2), ad loc. does not feel that even the repetition in lines 335–7 is uncharacteristic of Claudian's style.

15 The initial syllable of line 347 is transmitted variously as et, at, ac and nunc, while faustas is a variant for festas in one fifteenth-century manuscript (and was once endorsed by Heinsius). See also below for alio corrupted to aliae, which suggests confusion over Claudian's meaning.

16 Val. Fl. 8.240, Stat. Silv. 3.5.70, Claud. IV Cons. Hon. 644; note also festae faces at Claud. Nupt. 202–3 and DRP 3.409.

17 Cf. also Claud. Ruf. 1.83.

18 infesto is a minor variant here.

19 von Albrecht, M., ‘Proserpina's tapestry in Claudian's “De raptu”: tradition and design’, ICS 14 (1989), 383–90, at 386Google Scholar.

20 Cf. also Sen. Med. 15 atram cruentis manibus amplexae facem, of the Furies at Medea's wedding.

21 This and ferunt for bibunt (and Reinhardt's ore for crine) may be added to leta for lene and to minantes for canentes to suggest persistent confusion with this image of the Furies at play.

22 Interpolation via intrusive gloss or parallel is common enough, but a likely instance at Claud. Stil. 1.302–5 illustrates the process that could have occurred in our passage: line 304 quis Briareus aliis numero crescente lacertis entered the text as an elaboration on line 303 bracchia centum, leading to subsequent changes in lines 303 (non to quae) and 305 (possent to posset) to repair the syntax (see Gnilka [n. 14], 8–27 with further discussion by A. Coşkun in his review of Gnilka [BMCR 2001.11.17]). For interpolation to fill a perceived lacuna, see, for example, Tarrant (n. 1 [1987]), 288–9. The other generally accepted interpolations in DRP were motivated by real or perceived lacunae: see Hall (n. 4), on 1.139–41 (lines 139 and 140 were each attempts to complete the syntax of lines 137ff. after the loss of lines 141–214 from part of the tradition) and Gruzelier (n. 3), on 2.118 (an attempt to bridge an abrupt scene transition, which reflects either a small lacuna or typical late antique style).