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Ratis Avdax: Valerius Flaccus' Bold Ship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Martha A. Davis
Martha A. Davis*
Affiliation:
Temple University
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Extract

Surprises await the reader who approaches the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus expecting to find a pleasant but unchallenging version of the content of Apollonius Rhodius' epic retold in Vergilian style. The poem is much more than ‘a thrilling tale that has absorbed and delighted readers and hearers’ and much more than an imitation of the work of two great predecessors. If we consider the matter of story line alone, Valerius differs from Apollonius. He included the rescue of Hesione by Hercules, which was part of the myth of Argo but not used by Apollonius, and he created an entire book (Book 6) full of new material by recounting how Jason and the Argonauts joined Aeetes in a civil war at Colchis. The syntax, long supposed to be Vergilian, on closer examination appears to have departed from Vergil's ways.

Valerius made his individuality clear from the beginning of his epic:

      prima deum magnis canimus freta peruia natis fatidicamque ratem, Scythici quae Phasidis oras ausa sequi mediosque inter iuga concita cursus rumpere flammifero tandem consedit Olympo.
      (Arg. 1.1-4)
      I sing the straits first navigable for great sons of gods and the prophetic ship that dared to seek the shores of Scythian Phasis, that dared to burst a course between clashing rocks, that settled down at last on fiery Olympus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 18 , Issue 1-2 , 1989 , pp. 46 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1989

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References

1. The quotation represents the opinion of Hadas, Moses, ‘Later Latin Epic and Lucan’, CW 29 (1936), 153–57Google Scholar, at 155.

2. See for example von Albrecht, Michael, ‘Die Erzählung von Io bei Ovid und Valerius Flaccus’, Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschafi, n.F. 3 (1977), 139–48Google Scholar, at 148: ‘Wir sehen, dass Flaccus auch in der Syntax eigene Wege geht, die ihn von der vergilischen Tradition entfernen.’

3. I have cited throughout my essay the most recent edition of the poem, that of Ehlers, W.-W., Cai Valeri Flacci Setini Balbi Argonauticon Libri Octo (Stuttgart 1980)Google Scholar.

4. Burck, Erich calls attention to this strange omission in ‘Die Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus’ in Das Römische Epos (Darmstadt 1979), 208–53Google Scholar, at 234. He concludes that Valerius may have wished ‘durch eine neue Leitidee die Eigenleistung einer neuen geistigen Durchdringung des mythologischen Stoffes beweisen’.

5. An extensive examination of the proem of the Argonautica is made by Lefèvre, Eckard, Das Prooemium der Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus: Ein Beitrag zur Typik epischer Prooemien der römischen Kaiserzeit (Wiesbaden 1971)Google Scholar.

6. As in fact Shelton, J.E. did in A Narrative Commentary on the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, Diss. Vanderbilt 1971Google Scholar, 1: ‘The Argo is to win a place among the stars (4). This apotheosis of the ship, as it were, may be seen as a symbol of the fame which all those who take part in the voyage are to obtain.’

7. Kleywegt, A.J., ‘Praecursoria Valeriana (I)’, Mnem. 39 (1986), 313–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, treats, at 313–5, the problems caused by prima: ‘The very first word of the poem contains, in my opinion, more difficulties than have been observed hitherto’ (313).

8. Lefèvre (n.5 above, 11–16) observes the placement of ausa by Valerius and draws the parallel to Catullus 64.6. He believes that the reference to the poem that gives us the first Roman assertion that Argo was the first ship enabled Valerius to combat the ‘Nüchternheit’ of his model Apollonius and make the poem truly Roman. While this does not convey the full import of Valerius’ choice and placement of ausa, it does provide explanation for a difficult point (Why is a bold ship the theme of the epic?) by consideration of allusion, and contrasts with the approach of Scaliger, who rewrote the opening lines rather than accept them. Lefèvre cites the ‘Umdichtungen’ on page 15.

9. For detailed analysis of the golden age theme in Latin literature, see Thomas, R. F., Lands and People in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographic Tradition (Cambridge 1982)Google Scholar. Thomas’ notes provide access to extensive bibliography on the subject.

10. See Breisach, Ernst, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, Modern (Chicago 1983)Google Scholar, chapters 4–6, for a summary of the various interpretations of history in Roman culture as reflected in its literature.

11. For examples of the ship as metaphor for literary composition see Curtius, E., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Trask, W.R. (Princeton 1953)Google Scholar, 128ff.

12. Shelton (n.6 above, 1) lists three recurrent themes that are introduced in the first four lines of the epic: prima, peruia and ansa sequi. Since he connects these themes only with the Argonauts and their bold deeds, his point of view is very different from mine.

13. Page duBois gives an account of kinship theory as implied to the ancient world in Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being (Ann Arbor 1982)Google Scholar. She shows that woman as chattel played an important role in the economic structure of society (see esp. 37–40). Much of what she says about Euripides’ Medea is applicable to the Medea of Valerius Flaccus.

14. I have no patience with persons who insist on a literal reading of these lines because of a desire for biographical information about Valerius Flaccus. He may very well have been a member of the quindecimuiri sacris faciundis (as proof of which only these lines in his epic have ever been adduced), but that would only enhance, not change, the nature of his poetic personality. Every element in 1.5–7 can be linked to literary reference, as the chaste house is to Catullus 64; and every example of religious ritual in the remainder of the epic can be traced to sources in literature, obviating the need for reference to some function of Valerius as priest in the real world (e.g. the washing of the statue of Cybele in the river Almo at Arg. 8.239–42, which Ovid described in Fasti 4.327ff.). For my point of view see for instance Newman, J.K., Augustus and the New Poetry (Brussels 1967), 180Google Scholar n. 1; The Classical Epic Tradition (Madison 1986), 221Google Scholar n.70; and Culler, J., Structuralist Poetics (Ithaca 1975), 165Google Scholar.

15. The notes to Eclogue 4 provided by Robert Coleman in his commentary (Cambridge 1977) include remarks on the development of the golden age theme from Hesiod on, with appropriate remarks on the parallels between Eclogue 4 and Catullus 64. For detailed analysis of the golden age theme in Roman literature, see Thomas (n.9 above). Thomas cites Newman Augustus (n.14 above) in tying the uates tradition of the Augustan and post-Augustan poets to the search for loci amoeni with the conditions of the golden age (25).

16. Gian Biagio Conte demonstrates this in a comparison between the two Ariadnes in The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Vergil and Other Latin Poets (Ithaca 1986), 60–63Google Scholar.

17. The most convincing estimate of the length of the epic, which has come down to us as seven books and 467 lines of an eighth, is that of Schetter, W., ‘Die Buchzahl der Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus’, Phil. 103 (1959), 297–308Google Scholar. Schetter concludes that we are missing only the end of the eighth book, probably completed by the author and lost to us in the vicissitudes of transmission.

18. The Flavian epics all show signs of this technique of grafting text on text. Statius describes in Thebaid 5 what happened to Hypsipyle after the events of the Argonautica. Silius Italicus writes his epic on the Punic Wars in such a way that it stands between the Aeneid and the Pharsalia and indicates its place there with allusions beyond the effect of mere narrative content (see Ahl, F., Davis, M., Pomeroy, A., ‘Silius Italicus’, in ANRW 32.4 [1986], 2492–2561Google Scholar, esp. 2502.

19. See Lefèvre (n.5 above, Section 6) for thorough remarks on the allusions Valerius makes in this part of the proem to a number of authors, among them Lucan. Lucan’s catalog of Pompey’s forces in Pharsalia 3 includes not only the section on stars used for navigation but also reference to the ominous voyage of Argo and the loss of the golden age.

20. See Lefèvre (n.5 above, 26f.) on the recusatio in the proem.

21. This appearance of libertas in the poem is a hapax legomenon.

22. I have taken the liberty to translate rege not as ‘king’, which would be proper for the time element in the myth of Argo, but as ‘despot’, which is what it meant to Roman readers if applied to events after the ‘historical’ fall of the Tarquins. The Caesars had restored in Valerius’ day the absolute power of kings that was forbidden under republican government. Burck, Erich, Vom Römischen Manierismus (Darmstadt 1971)Google Scholar, seems to take the world plan of Jupiter in the Argonautica as something Romans would approve (27–31), though he points out the underlying tragedy in the epic (28) in association with this passage, and throughout his treatment of post-Augustan literature shows that fear and hatred of the tyrant form the basis of Roman mannerisms. See also I.R. McDonald, The Flavian Epic Poets as Political and Social Critics, Diss. North Carolina 1970.

23. The ekphrasis in the Argonautica is treated by Frank, E., ‘Works of Art in the Epics of Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus’, RIL 108 (1974), 837–44Google Scholar. Frank sees an optimistic prediction of the protection of Argo by Thetis in the first scene on Argo’s hull and reads the depiction of the Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs as a symbol of the triumph of civilization over savagery. Newman, too, mentions the ekphrasis briefly (Classical Epic [n.14 above], 222f.). He says that the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs is ‘an example famous since the Odyssey (XXI.295ff.) of the power of drunken lust to destroy civilized order’. Newman sees the entire painting on Argo as a prediction of the failure of the marriage of Jason and Medea: ‘In the context of the Argonautica, all these allusions, including that to Galatea and her snubbed Cyclops, show what is to be expected from the marriage of Jason and Medea.’ He goes on to emphasize the ‘polarity’ in the ‘power of wine for good or ill’ and lists a number of images of Bacchus in pleasant or sinister aspect that occur in the poem (223–26).

24. Vergil promised a return to golden age existence in Eclogue 4, tried to locate it in the simple life of the Italian countryside in the Georgics and described it in the pre-Trojan past of Italy and in the underworld in the Aeneid. Though Valerius is undoubtedly influenced by Vergil’s golden age passages, he draws also on Horace, especially Epode 16: see Thomas (n.9 above, passim, esp. 24f.). The golden age as obtainable in Hades may have been suggested to Valerius by Tibullus 1.3, in which a sea voyage, a description of the golden age and a description of the Elysian Fields are juxtaposed.

25. See Arg. 4.558. On the teaching function of the poet-prophet see Desport, Marie, L’lncantation Vergilienne (Bordeaux 1952)Google Scholar, esp. 55.

26. It is interesting that in the Argonautica Valerius can praise for traditional virtues very few characters, among them Jason’s parents (who die in their beliefs), Hypsipyle, Hercules, Pollux and Phineus. See Breisach (n.10 above, 64) for remarks on the reaction of historians to foreign influence in Italy.