Wild Animals in Roman Epic

274 Pages·2012·1.06 MB·English

Wild Animals in Roman Epic

Submitted by Laura Joy Hawtree to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in September 2011.

This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright
material and that no material from this thesis may be published or used in any way
without proper acknowledgement.

I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified
and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a
degree by this or any other University.

Signature:................................................
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Abstract

Roman epic authors extended, reinvented and created new wild animal representations
that stood apart from traditional Greek epic renderings. The treatment of wild animals in
seven Roman epics (Virgil’s Aeneid, Lucan’s Civil War, Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
Statius’ Thebaid and Achilleid, Valerius’ Argonautica and Silius’ Punica) forms the
basis of this thesis, but the extensive study of other relevant works such as Homer’s
Iliad and Odyssey and Apollonius’ Argonautica allows greater insight into traditional
Greek renderings and throws Roman developments into starker contrast.
Initial stages of research involved collection and detailed examination of almost
900 epic references to wild animals. The findings from this preliminary research were
analysed in the context of Pliny’s Natural History, Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, and
other ancient works that reveal the Greeks’ and Romans’ views of wild animals. The
accumulation of such a range of evidence made it possible for patterns of development
to become evident. This thesis focuses on the epic representation of animals and
considers a number of questions: 1) How Roman epic authors represented animals’
emotions and employed creatures’ thought processes. 2) How Roman epic authors
examined the difference between wild and tame animals and manipulated the
differences and similarities between humans and animals and culture and nature. 3)
How wild animals were aligned with scientific and cultural beliefs that were particular
to Roman society. 4) How animals were employed to signify foreign countries and how
some epic animals came to be symbolic of nations. 5) How Roman epic authors
represented particular aspects of animal behaviours with fresh insight, sometimes
ignoring traditional representations and historiographic sources.
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Contents

Abstract 1

Contents Page 2

Acknowledgements 4

Abbreviations of Ancient Authors and Works 5

1. Introduction
1.1 The Argument and its Implications 6
1.2 Wild Animals outside Epic 7
1.3 Wild Animals in Roman Epic 10
1.4 Animal Selection 12
1.5 What is a Wild Animal? 13
1.6 Ancient Animals in Modern Scholarship 16
1.7 Roman Epic Authors 19
1.8 Methodology 24

2. The Lion
2.1 Greek Understanding 26
2.2 The Romans and the Lion 27
2.3 Homer and the Angry Lion 32
2.4 Redefining the Heroic Lion 40
2.5 The Expressive Lion and Gender Innovation 44
2.6 Questioning Anger 52
2.7 Realism 54
2.8 Conclusion 58

3. The Deer
3.1 Romanised Deer 59
3.2 The Deer: Wild or Tame? 70
3.3 The Conscious Deer 85
3.4 Conclusion 98

4. The Tigress
4.1 Imagining the Tiger 100
4.2 The Prominence of the Female 102
4.3 The Maternal Tigress 106
4.4 The Representative of the Exotic East 115
4.5 Conclusion 121

5. The Owl
5.1 The Greeks and the Fortunate Owl 122
5.2 The Roman Omen-Owl 124
5.3 The Romans and the Epic Owl 127
5.4 Conclusion 137
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6. The Wolf
6.1 Greek and Roman Understanding 139
6.2 Homer’s Savage Wolf 141
6.3 Innovations in Multiple Epics 145
6.4 Innovations by Author 153
6.4.1. The Wolf and the Shepherd in Virgil 153
6.4.2. Wolf Cowardice in Statius 161
6.5 Conclusion 164

7. The Snake
7.1 Contact with the Snake 166
7.2 Epic Snakes as Benevolent Messengers 168
7.3 The Snake as a Pet 175
7.4 Epic Renderings of the Snake as a Pet 178
7.5 Snakes as Creatures with Thoughts and Feelings 191
7.6 Conclusion 196

8. The Eagle
8.1 The Greek Eagle 198
8.2 The Roman Superior Eagle 200
8.3 Military and Political Symbolism 201
8.4 Turning the Eagle to the Sun 204
8.5 The Eagle and Epic Identity 211
8.6 The Eagle Omen and the False Omen 218
8.7 Conclusion 222

9. The Elephant
9.1 The Lack of Homeric Elephants 223
9.2 The Carthaginian Experience 224
9.3 Roman Understanding 225
9.4 The Elephant as a Symbol 230
9.5 Undermining the Carthaginian Elephant 233
9.6 Conclusion 256

10. Conclusion
10.1 Emotional Development 258
10.2 Wildness as a Topos 259
10.3 Scientific and Cultural Alignment 260
10.4 Perceptions of Self and Otherness 261
10.5 Hindsight and Literary Response as Innovation 261

Bibliography 263
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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my PhD Supervisor, Professor Eleanor Dickey, whose assistance
throughout the writing of this thesis has been extremely beneficial to me. I am very
grateful to her for her time, as well as her many interesting and useful insights. I would
also like to thank Professor Daniel Ogden and Dr Rebecca Langlands, who read
chapters of this thesis when it was submitted for upgrade.
My thanks goes to the University of Exeter for funding me through my PhD and
making this work possible and to the University of St Andrews, for developing my first
interest in Classics.
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Abbreviations of Ancient Authors and Works

In the great majority of cases abbreviations of ancient texts in Latin follow the
conventions found in the OLD:
Glare, P.G.W. (1984) Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

In the great majority of cases abbreviations of ancient texts in Greek follow the
conventions found in Liddell and Scott:
Jones, H.S. and Mckenzie, R. (1940) A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th Edition, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.

Exceptions are to be found in the following list:

Athen. Athenaeus
Deip. Deipnosophists

Aug. Augustus
R.G. Res Gestae

Hist. Aug. Historia Augusta

Isoc. Isocrates
Ant. Antidosis
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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 The Argument and its Implications

The study of wild animals in Roman epic enhances our understanding of those epics and
allows us to appreciate innovative literary developments. For example, when Ovid
describes how Procne killed her son, he compares her to a tigress dragging off a fawn:

nec mora, traxit Ityn, veluti Gangetica cervae
lactentem fetum per silvas tigris opacas,
utque domus altae partem tenuere remotam,
tendentemque manus et iam sua fata videntem
et 'mater, mater' clamantem et colla petentem
ense ferit Procne, lateri qua pectus adhaeret,
nec vultum vertit; satis illi ad fata vel unum
vulnus erat, iugulum ferro Philomela resolvit;
vivaque adhuc animaeque aliquid retinentia membra
dilaniant...

Ov. Met. 6.636-645.1

“She hauled Itys off without delay; just as a tigress by the Ganges drags the unweaned
young of a deer through shady woods. Procne reached an isolated part of the high palace
while Itys, stretching out his hands now saw his fate. “Mother, mother” he shouted;
while he was seeking to reach her neck Procne struck him with a dagger. She cleaved
him at the place between the rib and the breast bone but did not turn her face away. One

1 For more extensive discussion of this passage see section 4.3.
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wound sealed his fate well enough: Philomela slit his throat with the dagger, and they
tore his limbs apart even while they were still retaining some breath...”.2

Neither Homer nor Apollonius Rhodius mention tigresses in their epics:
tigresses are a Roman epic phenomenon and have their own unique characterisation.
The Roman epic tigress is a savage and cruel creature but also displays strong maternal
instincts. Thus, Ovid’s comparison of Procne with a tigress cleverly highlights her
predatory nature while also emphasising the unnatural direction of her predation. Procne
kills her own child in the manner that a tigress would kill another’s child: in effect
Procne is more inhuman than a tigress.
Of course, most animals that appear in Roman epics are also found in Greek
epics, but in those cases the Roman conception of the animal often differed from
previous representations of the creature. If we do not take Roman views of animals into
account, our insight into the epic representations of these creatures and the
developments of those representations are sure to be limited. It is clear that Roman
readers were aware of the traditional roles various species played in Greek literature, but
they also had other, more direct ways of forming their opinions of wild animals:
Romans enjoyed access to the arena and could view animals in the Colosseum, they
may have seen animals paraded in public during triumphs, and a few even kept wild
animals as pets. Some began to see wild animals as creatures with thoughts and feelings
and portrayed wild animals smpathetically.

1.2 Wild Animals outside Epic

2 All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
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Epic material offers some insight into the perception and treatment of wild animals in
the Roman world, but we can gain a more thorough understanding of the epic
manipulation of the wild animal by considering it in the context of other sources.
Didactic and scientific works root epic wild animals in contemporary beliefs of the day
and so help us to understand why epic writers treated wild animals in the way they did.
Whereas the epic manipulation of the wild animal is often restricted to similes or
appearences that motivate the plot, the depictions of wild animals in less restrictive
literary genres offer us more comprehensive overviews and thus allow us to spot
innovations and deviations from common beliefs.
The comparison of various sources allows us to understand how much Romans
knew or thought they knew about certain species. We can work out how Roman epic
perceptions of wild animals developed and how they compared to the perceptions
embodied in the Greek epics that pre-dated them. It is vital to consider the wider context
of epic animal references in order to discover innovations that were fundamental to the
Roman epic authors. Only by doing so may we judge the extent to which the epic author
was adapting his material to the genre or complying to the standard account of animal
behaviour.
When we consider epic accounts alongside their literary counterparts we can re-
evaluate passages that seem corrupt or bizarre in isolation. For example in his epic
account Silius compares Hasdrubal to a beaver that bites off his own testicles in order to
evade capture (15.485-487). Interestingly Pliny records the belief that beavers actually
behaved in this way to escape their captors (Nat. 8.47.109), and so this grotesque simile
would not have struck Roman readers as ridiculous; rather it highlights Hasdrubal’s
desperation to escape encirclement and documents Silius’ grasp of contemporary animal
lore.
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Aristotle’s Historia Animalium and Pliny’s Natural History offer us valuable
insight into the behaviours of a wide range of wild species as perceived by Greek and
Roman writers. Anecdotes and humorous sketches of animal behaviour are included by
Pliny and afford understanding of the Romans’ delight in some animals and dislike for
others. Pliny clearly enjoys describing the antics of elephants and monkeys3 but also
appreciates the fact that animals such as moles, frogs and locusts may be highly
destructive (Nat. 8.43.104). Pliny’s work is invaluable in helping us understand the
thoughts of the Romans as a whole.
Aristotle includes a similar range of information but often gives more
anatomical descriptions and emphasises animals’ physical habits, movements and other
such biological topics of interest. Both Aristotle and Pliny grapple with mans’
relationship with wild animals; Aristotle states that children are not unlike wild animals
(H.A. 7.1.588a:30-588b:5), while Pliny records that some animals such as elephants
have the capacity to fall in love with humans (Nat. 8.5.13-14) and judges that elephants
possess a level of intelligence closest to man (Nat. 8.1.1). The information contained in
these two works helps to make the range of wild animal references in epic both more
accessible and more intelligible.
Other literary sources also contribute to our understanding of Roman wild
animals. Martial’s De spectaculis refers to animals in the spectacles of the arena and
refers to one occasion when a lion turns against its trainer (Sp. 12). He appreciates the
overwhelming strength and rage of a provoked rhino (Mart. Sp. 11) and chooses to
interpret the circus trick of the kneeling elephant as a compliment to the Emperor (Mart.
Sp. 20). Some of Martial’s observations make it possible to gain a stylised insight into
the workings and level of elaborate showmanship found in the Roman arena.

3 Plin. Nat. 8.2.5, 8.80.216.