Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Corporealities
- 1 Rhetorical red herrings
- 2 Behind the scenes
- 3 The beast within
- 4 From the horse's mouth
- 5 Bella intestina
- 6 Regurgitating Polyphemus
- 7 Scars of knowledge
- 8 How to eat Virgil
- 9 Ghost stories
- 10 Decomposing rhythms
- Conclusion: Licence and labyrinths
- Appendix I The use of fundere and cognates in the Satyricon
- Appendix II The occurrence of fortuna or Fortuna in the Satyricon
- Appendix III Aen. 4.39 at Sat. 112: nec venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis?
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- Index of subjects
Appendix III - Aen. 4.39 at Sat. 112: nec venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Corporealities
- 1 Rhetorical red herrings
- 2 Behind the scenes
- 3 The beast within
- 4 From the horse's mouth
- 5 Bella intestina
- 6 Regurgitating Polyphemus
- 7 Scars of knowledge
- 8 How to eat Virgil
- 9 Ghost stories
- 10 Decomposing rhythms
- Conclusion: Licence and labyrinths
- Appendix I The use of fundere and cognates in the Satyricon
- Appendix II The occurrence of fortuna or Fortuna in the Satyricon
- Appendix III Aen. 4.39 at Sat. 112: nec venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis?
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- Index of subjects
Summary
I would argue that this line cannot, as Rose suggests, be used in a simple erotic sense. Rose's argument relies on understanding arva as a very general, non gender-specific term for genitalia (with the implication that here it is being used of a man, presumably the soldier), yet there is no evidence of arvum being used in any erotic context other than female: the fertility of field/furrow/land/earth is conventionally associated with women, just as ploughing or digging up land is often used metaphorically to refer to penetration by a male. The example Rose gives of a similar use of garden/field to mean male pudenda is Priapea 5.3–4:
Quod meus hortus habet, sumas impune licebit
si dederis nobis quod tuus hortus habet
(Bücheler)However, this poem, set in Priapus' domain, clearly puns on hortus to express Priapus' sexual proposition: ‘I'll show you my garden, if you promise to let me have yours.’ hortus here therefore refers not to his penis, but to the victim's rear end, about to be penetrated by the mischievous ithyphallic god. As Adams notes in his discussion of fields, etc. referring metaphorically to female genitalia, ‘Nominal metaphors of the type in question were readily transferable to the male anus’. Admittedly, it is tempting to see arva refer to men in the context of the Satyricon, given the use of sedere at 126.10 and 140.7: if this were the case, Pecere's note on the possible discrepancy in the line's reference to past happenings (consederis) rather than the future erotic opportunities we are dealing with here, might be redundant if we were to view the line as referring to the widow's past sexual experiences which, the maid now argues, are of a very low rank compared to this ‘pleasing love’.
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- Information
- Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction , pp. 208 - 209Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002