“The wise Euripides put in his poetic drama about the Cyclops that he had three eyes, indicating by this that he had three brothers and that they cared for one another and kept a watchful eye on one another’s places in the island, fought together, and avenged one another.
And he also adds that he made the Cyclops drunk and unable to flee, because Odysseus made that very Cyclops “drunk” with a ton of money and gifts so he would not “eat those with him up”, which is not actually to consume them with slaughter.
He also says that Odysseus blinded his one eye with torch fire, really meaning that he stole away the only daughter of Polyphemos’ brother, a maiden named Elpê, with “fire”, which means he seized her on fire with burning lust. This is what it means that he burned Polyphemos in one of his eyes, he really deprived him of his daughter. The very wise Pheidias of Corinth provided this interpretation saying that Euripides explained this poetically because he did not agree with what the wisest Homer said about the wandering of Odysseus.”
“What is the Odyssey about except about love,
A woman alone, pursued by many suitors while her husband’s gone.”
aut quid Odyssea est nisi femina propter amorem,
dum vir abest, multis una petita procis?
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1406b
“Alcidamas called the Odyssey a ‘fine mirror of human life’ ”
καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον
Michael Apostolios, Proverbia 14.56
“I will make your house a wooden horse”: this means I will make it disappear. Themistokles’ groom said this. It comes from the Wooden Horse at Troy, the one Odysseus used to take the city.”
“But I think that we old men might listen happily to someone reciting the Iliad and the Odyssey well and quickly declare that they were completely victorious! Who, then, would rightly be the winner—that’s the next issue, right?”
“Homer didn’t think it right to tell where he came from, who his parents were, no even what he should be called. Nope—instead, he’s happy if we don’t know the name of whoever composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.”
“Not too far off from Menoeceus’ grave is where people claim that Oedipus’ sons fought each other in single combat and died at each other’s hands. The battle is commemorated by a pillar on top of which is a stone shield. They also mark out the place where the Thebans claim Hera was tricked by Zeus into nursing Herakles as a child.
The whole area is called Antigone’s Drag. When she realized that she did not have the strength to carry her brother’s body, even though she wanted to, she came up with the back-up plan of dragging him. So she hauled him right up to Eteokles’ burning pure and pushed him on top.”
“Have the ancestors’ statues wear the prizes from your voice.
Put on your long Thyestes outfit in front of Domitius’ feet
Or maybe the mask of Antigone or Melanippe
And hang your lyre from a marble colossus.”
maiorum effigies habeant insignia vocis,
ante pedes Domiti longum tu pone Thyestae
syrma vel Antigones aut personam Melanippes,
et de marmoreo citharam suspende colosso.
Greek Anthology, 8.37.5-8
“You have obtained a blessed station! What about the mask
Of the girl in your hand, what play is she from?
Call her Antigone if you want or Electra–you’re not wrong either way
For both are at the peak of the playwright’s achievement.”
‘There’s some conflict in the stories about the heroine Antigone and her sister Ismene. For example, Ion claims in his dithyrambs that both sisters were burned to death in the temple of Hera by Laodamas, Eteocles’ son. Mimnermus, however, insists that Ismene was killed by Tydeus at Athena’s direction as she had sex with Periklymenos. These are the strange stories recorded about the heroines.”
Editor’s note: We are happy to bring you this amazing guest post. SA is always open for posts about ancient literature and the modern world. Feel free to reach out over email if you have an idea
While visual arts have been synonymous with classics for centuries, substantial research has connected the field of classics to performing arts, specifically theater, dance, and music. In his paper, The Novelty of Ovid’s Heroides, author Maurice P. Cunningham asserts that the originality of the Heroides lies in how they were written as “lyric-dramatic monologues to be presented on the stage with music and dancing.” I wish to take this argument one step further, for I believe that the Heroides are intrinsically connected to music, specifically the genre of lyrical jazz, through a shared emotional power that transcends language or form.
Jazz, a uniquely American folk art form, traces its lineage to the spirituals sung by enslaved Africans in the American South. Jazz arose organically from the experience of oppressed people, who had very little formal education, let alone access to classical literature. It seems ludicrous to compare the two art forms, but lyrical jazz resonates emotionally with Roman elegy. Whether it is Sulpicia or Etta James, artists reach into the abyss of the human experience to pull out captivating tales of loss and longing, considering how love and heartbreak are fundamental parts of the human condition. Both Ovid’s Heroides and lyrical jazz represent the vulnerability and heartache of the central female characters by portraying personal truth as reality, illustrating raw emotional reactions to abandonment, and appealing to shared common tropes.
The heroines of lyrical jazz narratives and of the Heroides both accept their own biased personal realities as the objective truth. In Ovid ‘Heroides’ V: Reality and Illusion, Edward M. Bradley notes how “the only formal expression of objective reality we encounter within each poem is defined exclusively by the turbulent flow of emotions running through the mind of the heroine” (159). We see this pattern clearly in Epistula V, a letter from Oenone to Paris, in which she acknowledges how he cruelly abandoned her in favor of Helen of Sparta, yet describes a scene featuring them together. She paints a picture of Paris and herself lying under a tree:
Epistula 5.15-18
Often you might gather between [where] we lay [under] the ceiling’s tree, And having been mixed when the grass presented the swelling to the leaves; Often above straw bedding and deep hay lying down the small wicker hut was kept off the frost”
Saepe greges inter requievimus arbore tecti
mixtaque cum foliis praebuit herba torum.
Saepe super stramen fenoque iacentibus alto
defensa est humili cana pruina casa
“Greges; you might gather,” a present subjunctive of characteristic, indicates that Oenone has built a fantasy world for herself in which Paris is still hers; she ascribes idealized behaviors to Paris that do not reconcile with his current actions. She describes a world that is peaceful, removed from the turbulent realities of her circumstances amidst the Trojan War, since she cannot cope with the loss of her idyllic life with Paris.
Paris and Oenone by Pieter Lastman, oil on panel, 1610, High Museum of Art
In accordance with Bradley’s observation, Ovid chooses to focus on Oenone’s emotional narrative, forgoing the objective sequence of events that his audience would be familiar with. Jazz lyricists have this exact focus. Jazz indeed is a “turbulent flow of emotions” represented in music, whose audience solely receives a subjective portrait of a story based on a highly emotional account rather than a clear factual report. In Nina Simone’s song “If I Should Lose You,” she presents numerous hypothetical scenes, describing what would happen if she lost her beloved. She cries that “If I should lose you, the stars would fall from the skies, if I should lose you, the leaves would wither and die.”
The lyrics do not provide the listener any information about Simone’s actual circumstances, but the listener does receive a rich portrait of Simone’s emotional landscape. In fact, the audience does not know that Simone’s beloved is actually gone until the song’s penultimate couplet: “I gave you my love, but I was living a dream.” Here, through the switch from conditional subjunctives earlier in the song to this indicative past tense, Simone recognizes that she deceived herself. The lyrics are too heavily invested in describing her heartache to give any tangible narrative details to the listeners until the end. Both Epistula 5 and this lyrical jazz piece are more interested in portraying emotional scenes with florid imagery than offering a clear sequence of events.
Another common theme between lyrical jazz and the Heroides is how women process abandonment in romantic relationships. Earlier in Phyllis’s letter, she relives the day her beloved abandoned her and wishes in hindsight that the night Demophoon left was her last night living. She cries, “Heu! Patior telis vulnera facta meis; Oh! I suffer wounds having been made by my own weapons!” (Epistula 2.48). Phyllis blames herself for Demophoon’s actions, and processes her own abandonment by punishing herself and assuming all responsibility. She further laments that “speravi melius, quia me meruisse putavi; I hoped for the best, because I thought that I deserved it,” (Epistula 2.61).
The sheer emotion in her speech clearly demonstrates the strength of her heartbreak and her overwhelming shame, especially when remembering her former naivete, her previous belief that merit would bring about ideal circumstances in love. The perfect tense of “speravi; I hoped,” “putavi; I thought,” and “meruisse; I deserved” alludes to a personal growth, as she reflects on a previous childish persona. Use of the perfect tense denotes completed past action, indicating that she is no longer the naive person who would trust traditional notions of love and relationships.
This type of character growth is also represented in Etta James’s “Fool That I Am,” where she regrets her past actions, calling herself a “fool that I am for falling in love with you and a fool I am for thinking you loved me too.” James laments her former naivete and her foolhardy belief that her beloved actually loved her back. The repetition of “fool that I am” and the past tense of “you loved me” both suggest feelings of shame surrounding her past innocence. Both heroines respond to abandonment by criticizing themselves; they are both ashamed of how they naively believed that their lovers would stay.
Beyond shared content, Ovid uses several direct tropes that carry over into jazz canon. In his paper Discourse Tendency: A Study in Extended Tropes, Don L. F. Nilsen observes that “tropes function at the levels of semantics (meaning) and pragmatics (interrelationships between language and culture),” noting that “some tropes… become so developed and so extended that they actually become the discourse.”Not only do both elegy and lyrical jazz discuss the same emotions, they also portray the same reactions to those emotions and eventually become synonymous with those emotions. We see such in Dido’s letter to Aeneas, where the traditional trope of sleeplessness invokes Dido’s infatuation with the young hero: “Aeneas oculis vigilantis semper inhaeret, Aenean animo noxque quiesque refert; Aeneas clings always to my sleepless eyes, both the night and serenity bring Aeneas back to my mind,” (Epistula 7.25-26). She depicts herself as literally unable to sleep since Aeneas is constantly at the forefront of her mind.
Andrea Sacchi, “The Death of Dido”. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen. 17th CEntury
This image of the insomniac lover was a common trope in Roman elegy and remains a common representation of lovesickness in lyrical jazz. In Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” many vocalists, including the likes of Ella Fitzegerald and Barbra Streisand, mourned how they “couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t sleep when love came and told me I shouldn’t sleep.” Similarly, in the song “Prisoner of Love,” Etta James sings about how “I’m not free, He’s in my dreams awake or sleeping.” Both representations of sleeplessness emphasize a lack of power; they cannot sleep because they are overwhelmed by the pressure of love. The representation of the sleepless nighttime lover contributes to the emotional landscapes of these women, and merges with the underlying messaging to such a deep degree that lyrical jazz reflects representations from antiquity.
While Roman elegy and lyrical jazz belong to two separate millenia, the similarities between the two art forms are overwhelming with regard to the heroines’ alternate perceptions of reality which lead to unfiltered emotional reactions to abandonment. Each heroine’s consuming emotions of love, fear, doubt, sadness, and anxiety are expressed in similar tropes. The narrators live in an emotionally skewed reality, fueled by tropes common to love, to heartache, and to abandonment.
Maya Martinez is a high school senior at Friends Seminary studying Latin and Spanish. She is particularly interested in the connections between antiquity and the modern world and aims to make the field of classics both accessible and exciting to the general public. She is fascinated by the way in which translation impacts the overall narrative and how history alters a work’s legacy, particularly: what is remembered, what is forgotten, and what is changed. In the fall semester, she will attend Brown University where she plans to continue her engagement with Classical Literature. This is her first publication.
Works Cited
“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.” Performance by Ella Fitzgerald. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book, Verve Label Group, 1956. Spotify. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Bradley, Edward M. “Ovid ‘Heroides’ V: Reality and Illusion.” The Classical Journal, vol. 64, no. 4, Jan. 1969, pp. 158-62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3295901. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Cunningham, Maurice P. “The Novelty of Ovid’s Heroides.” Classical Philology, vol. 44, no. 2, Apr. 1949, pp. 100-06. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/267476. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
D’Angelo, Frank J. “Prolegomena to a Rhetoric of Tropes.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 6, no. 1, fall 1987, pp. 32-40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/465948. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Farrell, Joseph. “Reading and Writing the Heroides.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 98, 1998, pp. 307-38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/311346. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“Fool That I Am.” Performance by Etta James. The Second Time Around, Argo Records, 1961. Spotify. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.
Fulkerson, Laurel. “Writing Yourself to Death: Strategies of (Mis)reading in Heroides 2.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, no. 48, 2002, pp. 145-65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40236218. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“If I Should Lose You.” Performance by Nina Simone. Wild Is The Wind, UMG Recordings, 1966. Spotify. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “Discourse Tendency: A Study in Extended Tropes.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3, summer 1989, pp. 263-72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3885294. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“Prisoner of Love.” Performance by Etta James. The Chess Box, UMG Recordings, 2000. Spotify. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
A few years back, Erik made a post about Moonface’s Album of Songs about the Minotaur. It made me think a lot about the story from the Minotaur’s (Asterion’s) perspective. In general, the narratives that include him are about Theseus. Here are some passages about Pasiphae and the Minotaur.
Hesiod, Fr. 145.13–17
“When he looked in her eyes he longed for her
[and she gave herself over to the bull]
After she was impregnated, she gave birth to a powerful son to Minos,
A wonder to see: for he had the appearance of man
Down to his feet, but a bull’s head grew on top.”
“In every myth there is also Daidalos’ corruption”: People say that because Pasiphae lusted after a bull, she begged Daidalos to make her a wooden cow and, once he had set it up, to put her in it. When the bull mounted her as a cow he made her pregnant. The Minotaur was born from this. For certain reasons Minos was angry at the Athenians and he took from them seven maidens and the same number of youths. They were thrown to the beast. Since origin and responsibility for these evils were attributed to Daidalos and he was hated for them, this was translated into the proverb.”
Heraclitus the Paradoxographer, 7 Concerning Pasiphae
“People claim that [Pasiphae] lusted after the Bull, not, as many believe, for an animal in a herd—for it would be ridiculous for a queen to desire such uncommon intercourse—instead she lusted for a certain local man whose name was Tauro [the bull]. She used as an accomplice for her desire Daidalos and she was impregnated. Then she gave birth to a son whom many used to call “Minos” but they would compare him to Tauro because of his similarity to him. So, he was nicknamed Mino-tauros from the combination.”
“[in] Pasiphae
The Kyprian goddess [sewed]
Longing [….]
To the son Eupalamos
The wisest of the craftsmen
She told Daidalos [about]
Her sickness. Credible oaths
She ordered him to make [so that]
So that she might have sex with the bull
But keep it secret from her husband
Minos, the oppressive-archer,
The general of the Knossians.
But when he learned of the tale,
He was overtaken by worry and
[about his] wife….
“Of all the women, Briseis felt the most terrible grief
in her heart within, the companion of warring Achilles.
She turned over his corpse and tore at her fine skin
With both hands and from her delicate chest
Bloody bruises rose up from the force of her blows—
You might even say it was like blood poured over milk.
Yet she still shined even as she mourned in pain
And her whole form exuded grace.
This is the kind of speech she made while mourning:
“Oh what endless horror I have suffered.
Nothing that happened to me before this was so great
Not the death of my brothers nor the loss of my country,
Nothing exceeds your death. You were my sacred day
And the light of the sun and the gentle life,
My hope for good and tireless defense against pain—
You were better by far than any gift, than my parents even—
You were everything alone for me even though I was enslaved.
You took me as your bedmate and seized me from a slave’s labor.
But now? Some other Achaean will take me away in his ships
To fertile Sparta or dry and thirsty Argos
Where I will again suffer terrible things working away,
Apart from you and miserable. I only wish that
The earth had covered over me before I saw your death.”
In the tradition of Greek Myth, Hektor’s son Astyanax is well-known for being killed during the sack of the city. Other traditions weren’t having this. To wit, Servius:
Servius Danielis on Vergil, Aeneid, 9.264
devicta genitor (sc. Aeneas) quae cepit Arisba]
“Which his father took once Arisba was conquered…”
“(And yet, according to Homer, Arisba sent aid to the Trojans and was overcome by Achilles)…the city is called Arisba after the daughter of Merpos or Macareus who was the first wife of Paris. According to some authors, Abas, who wrote the Troika, related that after the Greeks left Troy, the rule of this city was given to Astyanax. Antenor expelled him once he had allied himself with the states neighboring where Arisba’s location. Aeneas took this badly and took up arms for Astyanax; once the expedition was prosecuted successfully, he returned the kingdom to Astyanax.”
[[atqui secundum Homerum Arisba Troianis misit auxilia et ab Achille subversa est …]] dicta est Arisba ab Meropis vel Macarei filia, quam primum Paris in coniugio habuit. quidam ab Abante, qui Troica scripsit, relatum ferunt, post discessum a Troia Graecorum Astyanacti ibi datum regnum. hunc ab Antenore expulsum sociatis sibi finitimis civitatibus, inter quas et Arisba fuit. Aeneam hoc aegre tulisse et pro Astyanacte arma cepisse, ac prospere gesta re Astyanacti restituisse regnum.
“In these halls, I [Andromache] produced this male child / after sleeping with Achilles’ son, my master]:
One source says that she bore only one son to Neoptolemos while others say that there were three: Pyrrhos, Molossos, Aiakos and a daughter named Troas. Lysimachus, in the second volume of his On Homecomings, writes that Proxenos and Nikomedes the Akanthian report in Macedonian Matters that Andromache gave birth to those who were just mentioned, and from Leonassa, Kleodaios’ daughter, [he fathered?] Argos, Pergamos, Pandaros, Dorieus, Genyos, Danae and Eurylockus. They also say that Pyrrhos received the kingdom from his father and that the country was named Mossia to give honor to Molossos.”
“…Ill-fated Elpenor, the one Kirke’s home stole away–
Like Antiphanes and man-eating Polyphemos–
Of the immortal [ ] [stories like that] I will tell you..
[fragments]
…and the trials of Penelope.
Don’t disbelieve that Odysseus has returned home,
When you see the scar that not even Penelope has seen.
Quit the stable, Philoitios. I will relieve you
Of trembling before the suitors to wander with your cattle.
I will make your household free for you. But in turn
All of you take up arms by my side against Eurymakhos and the rest
Of the suitors. You are well versed in their evil
Just as Telemachus and prudent Penelope are.
Cowherd, pledge yourself…
Become….
I wrote a whole book about the Odyssey and just found out about this fragment. It is dated to the 3rd/4th century CE by Roberts in Catalogue of the Greek Papyri in the John Rylands Library. The hexameter is clearly later than Homer, but the story it tells is interesting: the bulk of the fragment seems to have Odysseus trying to convince the cow-herd Philoitios to join him in the fight against the suitors in exchange for a promise of manumission. This concept is really alien to the Homeric Odyssey
Philoitios is something of a silent double for Eumaios in the Odyssey as one of the “good” enslaved people. He closes the door on the suitors in book 21 (240) but speaks rarely. When He does, in book 20, he asks Eumaios who this stranger is, and confirms that he looks like a kingly man. He expresses sympathy with the stranger and tells Odysseus in disguise how much he misses his former master. Odysseus tells him that Odysseus will soon come home.
Odysseus, zijn zoon Telemachus, Eumaeus en Philoetius verlaten gewapend het paleis en gaan onderweg naar de vader van Odysseus: Laërtes. Minerva verbergt hen in duisternis op klaarlichte dag, zodat ze ongezien wegkomen.
“Not too far off from Menoeceus’ grave is where people claim that Oedipus’ sons fought each other in single combat and died at each other’s hands. The battle is commemorated by a pillar on top of which is a stone shield. They also mark out the place where the Thebans claim Hera was tricked by Zeus into nursing Herakles as a child.
The whole area is called Antigone’s Drag. When she realized that she did not have the strength to carry her brother’s body, even though she wanted to, she came up with the back-up plan of dragging him. So she hauled him right up to Eteokles’ burning pure and pushed him on top.”
“Have the ancestors’ statues wear the prizes from your voice.
Put on your long Thyestes outfit in front of Domitius’ feet
Or maybe the mask of Antigone or Melanippe
And hang your lyre from a marble colossus.”
maiorum effigies habeant insignia vocis,
ante pedes Domiti longum tu pone Thyestae
syrma vel Antigones aut personam Melanippes,
et de marmoreo citharam suspende colosso.
Greek Anthology, 8.37.5-8
“You have obtained a blessed station! What about the mask
Of the girl in your hand, what play is she from?
Call her Antigone if you want or Electra–you’re not wrong either way
For both are at the peak of the playwright’s achievement.”
‘There’s some conflict in the stories about the heroine Antigone and her sister Ismene. For example, Ion claims in his dithyrambs that both sisters were burned to death in the temple of Hera by Laodamas, Eteocles’ son. Mimnermus, however, insists that Ismene was killed by Tydeus at Athena’s direction as she had sex with Periklymenos. These are the strange stories recorded about the heroines.”
