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Medea in Metamorphoses 7: Magic, Moreness and the Maivs Opvs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Extract
It is now widely recognised that Medea's last words in her elegiac letter to Jason, Heroides 12, combine the terrible foreshadowing of infanticide with a telling metapoetic signature:
quo feret ira, sequar! facti fortasse pigebit;
et piget infido consuluisse uiro.
uiderit ista deus, qui nunc mea pectora uersat!
nescioquid certe mens mea maius agit.
(Ov. Her. 12.209-12)
Where my anger leads, I'll follow. Perhaps I'll regret my deed—
as I regret the attention I paid to my faithless husband.
Be that the concern of the god who now goads my breast!
Certainly, something greater is stirring in my mind!
Ovid positions Heroides 12 as ‘a “prequel” to his own Medea-tragedy’, that maius opus which notionally provides Medea with an appropriate generic setting in which to exact her revenge; elegy is too light a medium to bear the weight of so tragic a denouement. Heroides 12 thus concludes by adapting itself to the contours of the larger Ovidian career—a career in which he was to revisit the Medea-theme for the third time in Metamorphoses 7. There, her life-story is selectively told from the beginning of the Argonautic voyage and Medea's first infatuation with Jason to her magical intervention in his gaining of the golden fleece (1-158); from her rejuvenation of Jason's father, Aeson, to the dastardly way in which she induces the daughters of Pelias, Aeson's half-brother, to murder their father (159-349); and from the briefly told murder of her children at Corinth to her marriage to Aegeus and the attempted murder of Theseus, his son, at Athens (394-423). At this point Medea takes flight once more (424; cf. 350-93, in the wake of Pelias' murder) and disappears from the Metamorphoses for good—or, we might imagine, for yet more evil to be worked.
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NOTES
1. Hinds (forthcoming a), in section 3 on ‘Ovid's Medea in intertextual repertory’; cf. already Spoth (1992), 202-05, Hinds (1993), 39-43, Barchiesi (1993), 343-45, and Bessone (1997), 32f. Pace Knox (1986), I take it that Heroides 12 is certainly Ovidian; see contra Knox esp. Hinds (1993), and for bibliography on the whole question conveniently collected, see Huskey (2004), 275 n.7, to which add Fulkerson (2005), 42f.
2. For tragedy as maius opus cf. Ov. Am. 3.1.24 incipe maius opus (Tragedy herself urges Ovid to ‘begin a greater work’) with Trinacty (2007), 67f. For nescioquid…maius itself signalling generic enlargement cf. of the Aeneid Prop. 2.34.66 nescioquid maius nascitur Iliade (‘something greater than the Iliad is coming into being’) with Barchiesi (1993), 344f. At Her. 12.212 the Medea must (on the present reading) at least notionally be the later composition, but on the vexed chronological relationship of the Heroides and Medea see in summary Bessone (1997), 34 and n.64.
3. Cf. Sen. Contr. 2.2.12; Sen. Nat. Quaest. 3.27.13-14; Quint. Inst. 10.1.88, 98 with Peterson (1891), 85.
4. Newlands (1997), 181. Cf. Arcellaschi (1990), 274-77, on ‘Sensibilité et sentimentalité’.
5. See Bömer (1976), 200; Cecchin (1997), 82-84; Binroth-Bank (1994), 23-35; Auhagen (1999), 132f.; Galasso (2000), 1080; Pavlock (2009), 45-49; Kenney (2001); Kenney (2011), 212.
6. For this ‘focus…on Medea’, Rosner-Siegel (1982), 234.
7. See Otis (1970), 59-62; Bömer (1976), 200f.; Binroth-Bank (1994), 26-32, 42f.; Galasso (2000), 1080f.; Kenney (2011), 215f. on 32f., 218 on 47, and 227 on 86-88.
8. Disputed lines (see Reeve [1972], esp. 55), but (Kenney [2011], 214, on 20f.) evidently the text Ovid knew. On this passage in comparison with Met. 7.19-21 see Bessone (1997), 26f.; Cecchin (1997), 83f., also usefully compares the Vergilian's Dido's conflict between pudor and amor at Aen. 4.9-29.
9. For the triangulation of fr. 2, Her. 12.211 and Met. 7.55, Bessone (1997), 26-28 and 281f., with Arcellaschi (1990), 290-95, and now Kenney (2011), 219, on 55. Fr. 2 plena deo is apparently (Sen. Suas. 3.6) a Vergilianism, for Borthwick (1972), 412, possibly ‘Vergil's own alternative or a popular misquotation’ for his description of the Sibyl at Aen. 6.51 (where Borthwick hazards nondum plena deo for iam propiore dei); further, Della Corte (1970-71), 87, and (1971) with Nisbet and Hubbard (1978), 319, on Hor. Carm. 2.19.6.
10. Bessone (1997), 281.
11. Kenney (1973), 137 = Kenney (2002), 79; Kenney (2001), 264; Kenney (2011), 230, on 101-03; already Glenn (1986), 89.
12. See Binroth-Bank (1994), 84-87; Anderson (1972), 256, on 104-06, 110-14.
13. For Jason reduced here to a mere puppet manipulated by Medea see Kenney (2001), 262-67, with (2011), 229, on 100-58.
14. Shades of medical terminology enhance Ovid's tongue-in-cheek seriousness (Myers [1994], 46f.); for Lucretian flavour see also Kenney (2011), 233. But the sensational effect is wittily undermined in light of the armed men born of the dragon's teeth in the Cadmus episode at 3.101-14: the crop at 7.121-24 is but a déjà-vu outgrowth of earthborn youth (cf. Vial [2010], 109-13).
15. Bessone (1997), 160, usefully compares Catullus' Ariadne (64.100-02).
16. For this ‘epic periphrasis’, Anderson (1972), 261; heros is stressed yet further by the phrase's position first in the line (cf. Kenney [2011], 237), and also by Ovid's unique placement here of the noun before an adjective denoting ancestry or place of origin (Bömer [1976], 240, on 156).
17. Cf. Rosner-Siegel (1982), 237 n.22: ‘Cum coniuge is quasi formular and, given the strength of muneris auctorem and spolia altera, bears little weight and surely does not reflect any real emotion, love, or loyalty on Jason's part.’
18. Newlands (1997), 187.
19. Newlands (1997), 187; my emphasis.
20. For lacrimae of joy, TLL 7.2 837.72-838.8.
21. For ingentibus here with a possible etymological play on gens (‘family’), cf. p.65 below with n.80. For the hint of hubris in both ingentibus and ausis, Kenney (2011), 239.
22. After Rosner-Siegel (1982), 239. On this magic scene, ‘sans précédent dans la littérature’, Tupet (1976a), 401-08; Tupet (1976b), 579-82; Fauth (1999), 109-14; and now Masselli (2009).
23. On the link with Circe (cf. 14.247-440), Segal (2002), esp. 11-26, after Segal (1968), 438f. The link between aunt and niece is strengthened by their shared ululatus (7.190, 14.405); for ululatus associated with witches, Watson (1991), 162 and n.462, with Masselli (2009), 117f.
24. Rosner-Siegel (1982), 239.
25. Cf. the hint of imperative force in et dabitis (217) with Kenney (2011), 244; in retrospect, this forcefulness is nicely foreshadowed by the adolescent Medea's hyperbole in lines 46f., where she ‘will force’ (cogam) the gods to bear witness to Jason's pledge of faith to her.
26. For the proverbial phrase, Nisbet and Hubbard (1970), 15f., on Hor. Carm. 1.1.36 sublimi feriam sidera uertice (‘I shall touch the stars with my exalted head’). For Pavlock (2009), 41f., Ovid's Medea seems via the Horatian allusion ‘to appropriate this [high Horatian] status in the poetic sphere for herself’; cf. Kenney (2011), 220, after Kenney (2001), 276, for her vision at 7.61 ‘of a sort of apotheosis’.
27. See Phillips (2002); on Medea's Thessalian tour, Tupet (1976a), 404f., with Binroth-Bank (1994), 117-20, and now Masselli (2009), 150-73.
28. Cf. OLD s.v. 5a; Lewis and Short s.v. subjectus B (p.1776); Kenney (2011), 244f., on 220, 222 and 223.
29. Segal (2002), 14.
30. Newlands (1997), 187.
31. For line 278 alluding to Medea's ‘power of overturning the world’, Kenney (2011), 252.
32. For Ovid's version possibly derived from Aeschylus' Nurses of Dionysus (Διονύσου τϱοφοί), itself perhaps a satyr-play, Bömer (1976), 277.
33. Rosner-Siegel (1982), 240. In line 276, maius Tarrant (2004), 191, but for the claims of munus (also in the MSS) reassessed see Baldini Moscadi (1996) = Baldini Moscadi (2005), 235-46. More fruitful is the attention that Baldini Moscadi draws to the marked recurrence of munus in the Medea episode (it evolves from Medea's gift/service of love to Jason in 7.93 and 157 to munus associated with Bacchus at 296, with Pelias' daughters at 310). Cf. Kenney (2001), 267: ‘The word muneris (Met. 7.157) foreshadows another, lethal, gift to be bestowed in the sequel, the poisoned robe.’
34. Cf. Newlands (1997), 188 (‘Medea seemingly acts alone purely for malice's sake’). For doli possibly with a play on Medea's name via Greek μήδεα see Pavlock (2009), 49, with Hunter (1989), 185, on Ap. Rhod. 3.826 μήδεα ϰούϱης and Bessone (1997), 285, on Her. 12.212, and cf. Kenney (2011), 212, on 11 frustra. Medea, repugnas.
35. As a term of reproach cf. Her. 6.19 (there used of Medea by Hypsipyle).
36. For Euripides' Πελιάδες, TGF frr. 601-16 pp.550-54 Nauck-Snell; Aphareus, TrGF 1 p.239 Snell-Kannicht; further, Simon (1994), esp. 270, on ‘Literarische Quellen’.
37. Winter (2009), 3; cf. Wise (1982), 24 (the ram's transformation ‘gratuitous℉).
38. Winter (2009), 3f. Cf. 5: in ancient pictorial representations the daughters are usually shown before the killing, and ‘[s]ome bring weapons or eagerly observe the cauldron, some seem to be lost in (moral?) thought, while others turn away in horror’ (further, Simon [1994], 272). For their hesitation in the literary tradition cf. Apollod. 1.9.27 (‘to win their confidence she cut up a ram’), Diod. 4.52.1 (‘when the maidens received the proposal [to boil Pelias’ body in a cauldron] with hostility, she devised a second proof’), Hyg. 24 (Alcestis resistant but won over by the ram).
39. On this passage see Winter (2009), 6-9, stressing Medea's appeal to pietas; on lines 339f. in particular, Frécaut (1989), with Ovidian parallels for the verbal paradoxes.
40. Winter (2009), 11.
41. Newlands (1997), 190. Cf. on this line Glenn (1986), 91; Binroth-Bank (1994), 137; Galasso (2000), 1100; Kenney (2001), 282f.; Kenney (2011), 258.
42. Anderson (1972), 281.
43. Cf. on this point Kenney (2011), 260f., on 368-70.
44. Cf. on this point Pavlock (2009), 50; Binroth-Bank (1994), 141f.
45. A different ending to the Cycnus story is given by Antoninus Liberalis 12, citing Nicander and Areus (Hyrie there transformed into a bird, not a lake): see Forbes Irving (1990), 257, with Papathomopoulos (1968), 100 n.18, and Bömer (1976), 292, on 7.371; cf. also n.55 below.
46. Otherwise an unknown story: Forbes Irving (1990), 313. But for the grandson identified as one Phocus see now Cowan (2011), esp. 150-55—part of a most penetrating account of Medea's larger itinerary as a ‘rhetoric of obscurity’, or both a physical and a narratival praeteritio.
47. Cf. Antoninus Liberalis 18, citing Boios, with Forbes Irving (1990), 108, 110 and esp. 226. 48. For the story of Ctesylla and Hermochares see Antoninus Liberalis 1 (citing Nicander) with Bömer (1976), 291f., on 369; Forbes Irving (1990), 232; Celoria (1992), 107f. (‘a tragic variant of the better known apple-story of Acontius and Cydippe’); and now Pavlock (2009), 52 and 154f. n.30, with Kenney (2011), 260f., on 368-70.
49. For the story see Parthen, . Erot. Path. 34.1Google Scholar with Bömer (1976), 289, on 361, and esp. Lightfoot (1999), 545f.; and now Pavlock (2009), 55f. and 157 nn.43 and 44.
50. Otherwise an unknown story: Bömer (1976), 289, on 359.
51. Background: Bömer (1976), 294, on 383. But the link with Medea is of course all the more chilling if Ovid alludes in natorum uulnera (383) to an attack on the children, not on Combe; see Forbes Irving (1990), 229: ‘Whether she is escaping a murderous attack from her sons or whether it is her sons who have been wounded is difficult to say.’
52. Contrast Buxton (2010), 35, on Medea ‘looking down…on the locations of numerous previous metamorphoses and thus reminding us that flight constitutes for Medea an alternative to the form of escape represented by metamorphosis’ (my emphasis).
53. Cf. for the story 11.54-60, where Lesbos is explicitly mentioned; for the linkage of the two passages, Bömer (1976), 288, on 358, with Pavlock (2009), 57. Kenney (2011), 259, on 357f., raises reasonable, but (to me) not compelling, objections to the Orpheus allusion, instead positing a reference to ‘un'altra, più antica tradizione’.
54. For the Telchines, whose name is for Ovid ‘a literary and proverbial term for malicious beings’, Bömer (1976), 290f., with Forbes Irving (1990), 178 (‘several stories tell how the gods finally destroy the Telchines’). For their evil eye (366), and for the possible literary/Callimachean implications of their presence in 365-67, see Pavlock (2009), 51 (‘like the Telchines, Medea is capable of bewitching with her brilliant eyes those whom she loathes’; both the Telchines and Medea are implicated in ‘a debate about poetics’); and now Kenney (2011), 260 (line 365 in particular is ‘preziosità alessandrina, forse in omaggio a Callimaco’).
55. For the story in Antoninus Liberalis and Ovid's deviation from it, see n.45 above. For the relation of Cycnus and Phylius ‘obviously closely modelled on Heracles' service under Eurystheus’, Forbes Irving (1990), 257; for the story suggesting Ovid's ‘affiliation with Callimachus and Hellenistic poetics’, Pavlock (2009), 52-54.
56. Newlands (1997), 180.
57. See Newlands (1997), 180, 192-208.
58. Pavlock (2009), 59.
59. Pavlock (2009), 60; my emphasis.
60. Cf. Liveley (2011), 78 (‘her journey seems to cast a magical influence upon the lands below’); Salzman-Mitchell (2005), 108 (‘what she sees actually includes various metamorphoses, thus turning Medea into a figurative reader of the whole epic’ [my emphasis]). For Lenoir (1982), Medea's otherworldly character is underscored by her transition from ‘un itinéraire maritime’ (i.e., in route her flight at first resembles a boat journey) to the conceptual viewpoint/flight-path of ‘une carte géographique’ (cf. 55: ‘une carte est abstraction, signe, symbole; elle relève de l'intelligence, et non du vécu’).
61. Liveley (2011), 78.
62. For the difference from the version in Antoninus Liberalis 22 (citing Nicander), Bömer (1976), 287, on 353, with Forbes Irving (1990), 314, Celoria (1992), 164, and now Kenney (2011), 258. At 1.325f. Deucalion and Pyrrha are said to be the sole survivors of the great flood; now introduced as a third survivor, does Cerambus serve at 7.353-56 gently to challenge, even undermine, Ovid's reliability as ‘primary narrator’? The point matters because of my own developing argument below for the emergence in 7.350-90 of a rival poetics conjured by Medea, as if a fifteen-unit Metamorphoses-in-miniature.
63. See Forbes Irving (1990), 207f., on Nicander fr. 62 Gow and Scholfield (1953), 144f.
64. Pavlock (2009), 56; my emphasis.
65. See p.61 above and n.53.
66. Cf. Pavlock (2009), 55f. (‘Ovid alludes specifically to his own narrative of the Trojan War as a subject bereft of heroic meaning’).
67. For the Menephron story ‘point[ing] to the content of the narrative devoted to Orpheus's songs in book 10’, Pavlock (2009), 58.
68. See n.54 above.
69. See Lightfoot (2009), 226f., on ‘Sufferings in love’.
70. Further, Williams (2009), 157f.
71. On this point, Kenney (2011), 259f.
72. For Arachne, Orpheus and Daedalus (inter alios) as representatives of the poet, e.g. Pavlock (2009) with (on Arachne) esp. Harries (1990), 76f.; Pygmalion, e.g. Elsner (1991), 154, with important qualifying remarks in Tissol (1997), 80 and n.127; Anderson (1989) on Orpheus and Daedalus as well as Pygmalion; and now Johnson (2008), with emphasis on ‘how Ovid's episodes of artistic performance, always fraught with stress and danger for artists, establish a universal formula for successful art in the Metamorphoses: the accurate calculation and fulfillment of the expectations of powerful audiences’ (46).
73. Ovid uses maius opus eight times, but explicitly of a literary work only here and at Am. 3.15.24 (for which n.2 above); further, Ingleheart (2010), 98, on Tr. 2.63.
74. If we factor in Medea's arrival at Corinth, a sixteenth metamorphosis presents itself at 7.392f. (‘Here, in the earliest times, old tradition has it, our human bodies sprang from rain-swollen mushrooms’); and three more follow in quick succession if we then also factor in her flight from Corinth to Athens in 399-401 (Periphas, Phene and Alcyone changed into birds; see Anderson [1972], 286, for background). Where Medea goes in Metamorphoses 7, magic happens, whether through her artes or through tangential connection with her, as in the ‘strange tale, unique here’ (Anderson 285) of Corinth's magic mushrooms. But if we accept that the fifteen micro-metamorphoses that we have so far witnessed loosely replicate or vie with the Metamorphoses itself, do these further metamorphoses pointedly extend Medea's ‘text’, our alternative poem-of-change, into a maius opus of more than fifteen chapters/units/occurrences—a maius opus that symbolically outdoes Ovid's own production?
75. See p.60 above with nn.41 and 42.
76. Compressed chronology: Ovid gives no signal of any time-lapse between the arrival of Medea and Jason in Corinth and Jason's subsequent leaving of Medea to marry Creusa. But cf. Apollod. 1.9.28: ‘They went to Corinth, and lived there happily for ten years before Creon, king of Corinth, betrothed his daughter Glauke [/Creusa] to Jason….’
77. For the story's probable tragic precursors, and its possible inclusion also in Callimachus' Hecale, Galasso (2000), 1104, with Hollis (1990), 68 (fr. 5) and 143, on fr. 5.7, and now Kenney (2011), 267, on 404-24. For the literary sources conveniently compiled, Sourvinou-Inwood (1979), 22-24.
78. Rosner-Siegel (1982), 243.
79. For the hint of hubris here see n.21 above.
80. Keith (1991), 73f.; further, Hinds (1993),41 n.71.
81. See Apollod. 1.9.28 with Frazer (1921), i.125 n.4; on the killing of Perses and the restoration of Aeetes as the plot of Pacuvius' Medus,see Boyle in the introduction to this volume, 10-13.
82. See in summary Knox (1995), 3-12, and (2002), 118-22.