In early June

 

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia). Frome, 3 June 2023.

In early June, the miracles come along so thick and  fast we easily miss them. Here's two. 

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, 

And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. 

(Matthew 3:1-4)

Most likely John the Baptist was living off insects, perhaps the Desert Locust (Schistocerca gregaria). (They are still a popular food, considered halal and kosher in the Middle East; you just need to avoid them if the swarms have been sprayed, or you'll get a nice dose of organophosphates and pyrethroids.)

ipse autem Iohannes habebat vestimentum de pilis camelorum et zonam pelliciam circa lumbos suos esca autem eius erat lucustae et mel silvestre

(Vulgate version of Matthew 3:4)

St Jerome, himself a desert dweller at one time, would have known all about eating locusts. Nevertheless, some time in the Middle Ages the idea arose that "lucustae" actually meant the pods of the carob tree (another useful survival food). Consequently, the name "locust" became attached to other pods and other pod-bearing trees, and that's how the beautiful tree in these photos acquired the name Black Locust (I haven't seen any explanation for what's black about it, though). It's native to two regions in the eastern USA, but is widely planted throughout temperate parts of the whole world, including the British Isles. I must admit I just call it "Robinia" (the Latin name is Robinia pseudoacacia). 

It's a tree with many aspects to it, as you can read on Wikipedia, but I just wanted to record its breathtaking beauty, especially in a good flowering year like 2023: the extended wet and gloomy spring must have helped. (In 2022, by contrast, we were in full-on drought conditions by June and the trees produced very few flowers).

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia). Frome, 3 June 2023.

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia). Frome, 7 June 2023.

Ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare). Chippenham, 2 June 2023.

My second miracle is even more commonplace: Ox-eye Daisies on a bank. 

If you were a newcomer to this uplifting sight, I think you'd be surprised that the rest of us make so little of it. 

Leucanthemum vulgare is native throughout the British Isles, also most of Europe including nearly all of Sweden, where it is called Prästkrage ("priest's collar", referring to the white ruff once worn by clerics). You would think that so showy and common a plant might have left more of a mark on our older literature, but so far I'm having trouble locating any references. Chaucer might have been referring to them -- but no, his daisies are "whyte and rede", so he must mean Bellis perennis, the lawn daisy. There is never any red in the rays of an ox-eye daisy. 

"Day's eye" refers to the habit of Bellis perennis (and many other Asteraceae species) of opening their flowers only during the day and closing them at night. 

However Ox-eye Daisies don't do this, and hence one of their other vernacular names is Moon Daisy. A field of them, fully open in the dusk and gazing at the moon, is one of the sights of our "white nights". 

One problem with looking for traces in older literature is that there is no settled name. John Gerard (1597) gives a good description, in Ch 203, "Of the great Daisy, or Maudlin-Wort". He supplies the Latin name Consolida media vulnerariorum. (Another of his plants,  the "White Oxe-eie", is described as looking similar but with compound leaves. -- That must be why, by the 18th century, the term "Ox-eye Daisy" had become established.) 

I haven't found any Middle English references to "Maudlin-wort". "Marguerite" or similar is mentioned in Lydgate, supposed to mean Leucanthemum vulgare. Likewise Middle English herbal references to "Whit bothen" or "Whit bothel"; "boþen" is an Anglo-Saxon herbal word, e.g. for Rosemary and similar herbs. "Orval" (usually meaning Orpine) seems to have also been applied to L. vulgare, at least once. I have only moderate confidence in these identifications.

Generally (based mostly on the University of Michigan's entry for "daies-ie")  you can derive a Latin herbalist scheme in which Consolida minor meant the "little daisy" (Bellis perennis), Consolida media or mediana meant the "great daisy" (Leucanthemum vulgare), while Consolida maior meant comfrey (Symphytum spp). But it's the last of these which is the normal meaning of consolida in Latin sources, and the extension to daisies may have been just local and sporadic. 

Ox-eye Daisy does have a herbalist tradition: Gerard witnesses to that, and Mrs Grieve , as ever, is helpful. The Ox-eye Daisy has an acrid taste and, according to Linnaeus, is avoided by cows and pigs, but eaten by horses, goats and sheep.

Ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare). Chippenham, 2 June 2023.

How to pronounce Arviragus / The Franklin's Tale

English Elm (Ulmus procera). Frome, 22 September 2021.

[Since the 1960s, this is about as big as the trees get in most of the UK. In their youth they are healthy, but once the bark becomes rugged enough it's sure to attract the Elm-Bark Beetle, which inadvertently introduces Dutch Elm disease, and the tree then dies. (In Brighton they take special measures to keep the disease at bay, so you can still see mature English Elms.) In the first Chapter of David Copperfield the "tall old elm-trees ... tossing their arms about", like the expectant Mrs Copperfield not knowing if it's a boy or a girl, signal an era that's long gone.]

This post is a singularly pointless bundle of notes, but it passes, I hope, through some interesting territory.

Arveragus is the name of the noble knight who marries Dorigen with great joy at the start of Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, and then (as knights do) takes off for a couple of years of knightly feats, leaving Dorigen to her own devices. The titular hero does just the same in Wolfram's Parzifal. But in Chaucer the story stays at home: we never hear or care about Arveragus' knightly feats, only that he's not here.

It's clear from the scansion that Chaucer pronounced the name on the second and fourth syllables: Arveragus.

The tale is set in Brittany and is announced as being a Breton lay (a well known medieval genre). Most scholars have believed that Chaucer confected the Breton setting: he adapted source material from Boccaccio (often one of his unacknowledged sources) and gave it a Celtic colouring. If this is true he did it very thoroughly. The name Arveragus could have come from Book IV of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History: one of the sons of Cymbeline, written Arviragus there and in Shakespeare's play. 

Certainly Chaucer's tale has marked differences from a Breton lay. But I do feel attracted to the argument by William Henry Schofield (1901) that there are indications in Geoffrey of Monmouth of the prior existence of exactly such Celtic traditions as appear in Chaucer's tale, both concerning Arviragus (famously happy marriage surviving sore trials) and Aurelius (magical rock removal). It's unprovable, but Schofield's basic contention is persuasive, that Geoffrey's fabulous history wasn't simply made up out of thin air but wove existing oral narratives into a framework of Roman history. So if he dwells on Arviragus' especially happy marriage it's because it was already proverbial.

(Schofield suggests that the original British form of the name was Arverus, with "ar" being a prefix and "ver" the root. The name, in the form "Arveri", appears on a Romano-British inscription.)

In Shakespeare's Cymbeline the name Arviragus appears frequently as a speech prefix and in SDs, but only once in the spoken text, and this appearance is inconclusive regarding pronunciation (taking into account the metrical freedom of late Shakespeare):

(Belarius.) ... The younger brother, Cadwal,
Once Arviragus, in as like a figure
Strikes life into my speech and shows much more
His own conceiving.

(Cymbeline III.3.102-105)

I suspect the stress pattern is meant to be second-and-fourth again: the rhythm of Arviragus matching that of his elder brother Guiderius and foster-father Belarius. (So I'm disagreeing with George Steevens.)

In Geoffrey of Monmouth Guiderius dies soon after becoming king. Arviragus becomes king in his turn and is the more important figure, reigning a long time, sometimes accepting the authority of Rome (he marries the Emperor Claudius' daughter) and sometimes rebelling.

He may have been a historical figure of the 1st century CE. As Geoffrey points out, he is referred to in Juvenal: A gift of a giant turbot to the Emperor is an omen, the flatterer Veiento claims, that "you will capture some king, or Arviragus will fall from his British chariot-pole". 

   -  v  v  /  -  v  v   /  -     v  v   /   -    ()  -   / -  v  v   /   -  v

 excidet / Aruira / gus. pere / grina est / belua: / cernis

(Satire 4, line 127)

Wikipedia gives the name as Arvirargus, which contradicts Chaucer's pronunciation and, so far as I can see, Juvenal's too. (But if you think my scansion is wrong, please let me know... it's been a long time since I parsed a dactylic  hexameter...)

The translators of Juvenal into English seem to agree with the stress on second and fourth. Dryden unfortunately never translated the fourth Satire, but here's Barten Holyday (1593 - 1661):

                                                        Yet came
Vejento short of him? struck with thy flame,
Bellona, he Divines: and, here, says he,
A wondrous Omen of Great Triumph see!
Some King thou shalt lead Captive, or at last
Arviragus from British Chariot cast.
The Beast is Forreigne: On his back behold,
Upright thy Darts stand! 

(Source.)

Dryden didn't think much of Holyday's over-literal translation, though he praised the notes. On Arviragus, the note is about the seeming contradiction of dates: Geoffrey of Monmouth placing him in the reign of Claudius (41 - 54 CE), and Juvenal in the reign of Domitian (81 - 96 CE). Schofield wondered if Geoffrey was misled by Juvenal's prudent naming of the Emperor: though he's in fact talking about Domitian he calls him "the bald Nero".  But then, as Holyday suggested, the same prudence might have led Juvenal to name a past rebel against the Empire rather than a current one. So Geoffrey may have ended up drawing the right conclusion about when Arviragus was active. 

(Juvenal announces his approach to naming at the end of Satire I, here in Dryden's translation:

Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time,

When entered once the dangerous lists of rhime;

Since none the living villains dare implead,

Arraign them in the persons of the dead.

)

Here's the passage about Arviragus in the translation by William Gifford (1756 - 1826):

Nor fell Veiento short:—as if possest
With all Bellona's rage, his laboring breast
Burst forth in prophecy; "I see, I see
The omens of some glorious victory!
Some powerful monarch captured!—lo, he rears,
Horrent on every side, his pointed spears!
Arviragus hurled from the British car:
The fish is foreign, foreign is the war."

(Source.)

Gifford's is a somewhat infamous name in English Literature (though not to Byron), but even Hazlitt acknowledged the qualities of Gifford's 1800 Juvenal translation; it looks very lively to me.

*

A lost play Arveragus was performed at the court of Charles I in 1636.

*

Which was the mooste fre, as thinketh yow?

Online text of the Franklin's Tale: 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22120/22120-h/22120-h.htm#franklin

The main source for the Franklin's Tale can be read in the link below (in a sixteenth-century English translation), and it's very good reading. It's the fourth of thirteen "Love Questions" that are themselves an episode within Giovanni Boccaccio's enormous romance Il Filocolo. 

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/authors/boccaccio/filoc.html

This particular Love Question is posed by a certain Menedon; as in Chaucer, it asks who showed the greatest liberality: the husband, the lover or the wonder-worker.  In Boccaccio (but notably not in Chaucer) there then follows a detailed debate.

In Menedon's tale, neither the husband nor the wife have names. The lover (i.e. the equivalent of Aurelius) is called Tarolfo. 

These characters lived, Menedon says, in his own memory and "in the countrey where I was borne", later described by Tarolfo as "the extremes of the west", and by Menedon (during the debate) as part of Spain. (Galicia? Might Schofield have been right, that Boccaccio too was drawing on Celtic story material?)

Unlike Arveragus the husband in this tale is never absent on business. Nevertheless his wife is pestered by the lovestruck Tarolfo, in the form of signs of attention, messengers, passing down the street outside, etc. She's completely loyal to her husband and thinks she'd better tell him about Tarolfo's behaviour before someone else does, so he doesn't suppose she encouraged it.  But then she worries that telling her husband is going to lead to a whole world of trouble, maybe even violence. So instead she comes up with the idea of putting a stop to Tarolfo's indiscretions by offering him a conditional promise that she'll never have to redeem:  OK, I'll give you my love if you can give me a May garden in the middle of January. (And in the mean time, quit hanging around.)

The bulk of the story consists of Tarolfo scouring the world for a way to do this, meeting an impoverished root-gatherer called Tebano and offering half his wealth to produce the required unseasonal garden; Tebano's deployment of herbal lore and observing the moon and pagan prayers, and his voyages around the world on a chariot pulled by dragons, gathering his herbs from exotic places. (His magical herbs are so powerful that even the dragons regain their youth.) And thus, in the midst of winter, Tarolfo has his blooming May garden. For good measure it even has the ripe fruits of August. 

The wife is sufficiently unconcerned to have a long appreciative look round the garden. But when she gets home reality hits, and she's very upset and in a quandary what to do. The husband, seeing her agitation, eventually prises the story out of her. He says, well you struck a deal and he's certainly delivered, so go and give him what you offered, but only this once. And I won't be cross with you, because I know you love me and you never meant for this to happen. But no more conditional promises, eh? So she dresses up and goes to Tarolfo and says: I'm here, do as you please. But once Tarolfo finds out that she's there with her husband's consent, he's struck by the husband's incredible generosity, makes his own generous surrender of his claim, and then the sympathetic Tebano makes the same surrender of his claim. 

Debating this, Menedon argues that the husband is the least liberal, because he offers such an insignificant trifle, something that costs him nothing; that Tarolfo is much more liberal, to give up the sexual satisfaction he's been burning for all this time; but the most liberal by far is Tebano, to give up the wealth he has fairly earned and return to a life of miserable poverty. 

But the queen has the casting vote, and she says that the husband is the most liberal of the three, though not the most wise: because what he offers up is his honour, which unlike a sexual conquest or a sum of money can never be replaced once it's gone. (The queen makes the point, as many modern readers of Chaucer have done, that anyway the husband is wrong to regard his wife's "promise" to Tarolfo as valid, since fulfilling it would break her prior marriage vow.)

*

This isn't a particularly scrupulous account of Boccaccio's tale, but I think it does get the tone about right. He extends himself on Tebano's pagan prayer and the crazy dragon journey, but he fairly rips through the rest of the story because, after all, it's only a prelude to the main course, which is the debate. This summary approach places little emphasis on the characters' emotions. It deals in the facts of the case, and its sped-up narrative even has a touch of fabliau: sexual shenanigans as matter for a hearty laugh rather than earnest ethical consideration. 

*

Chaucer buries that worldly matter-of-factness in an exalted atmosphere of courtly love. His characters are feeling creatures, full of sentiment. In a prelude to the main story Arveragus is shown as an exemplary humble wooer who intends to maintain the same submissive devotion to his lady even now they are married. His wife Dorigen is (unlike the wife in Boccaccio) tormented by her own feelings of love for her absent husband and fears for his safe return to their dangerous coast. In Boccaccio the wife tells her husband: "I will rather rid my self of life, than do any thing displeasant to you, or dishonor to your person"; that hint becomes Dorigen's agitated list of the women she should emulate by dying rather than suffering dishonour. Likewise Tarolfo's passing remark to Tebano that he would gladly welcome death is enormously heightened by Chaucer, Aurelius' "two yeer and moore" of bed-ridden despair matching the two years of silent devotion to Dorigen that preceded the eventual revelation of his feelings for her. And though, in the denouement, Arveragus reflects some of the husband's sang-froid, he's unable to maintain it for long and breaks down in tears. Even Aurelius' brother (one of Chaucer's innovations) is seen to weep and wail. 

With this foregrounding of sentiment we can link the major new features introduced by Chaucer: the unusual set-up of his couple's marriage, with neither having the "maistrie" -- evidently responding to the preceding tales by the Wife of Bath and the Clerk, as Kittredge observed --, the Breton setting and  "thise grisly feendly rokkes blake". 

In Boccaccio, the wife's conditional promise to Tarolfo was well-motivated. Dorigen's, on the other hand, is strikingly unexpected. After her first uncompromising response to Aurelius ends with "Taak this for final answere as of me", this is what immediately follows:

But aftere that in pley thus seyde she:

"Aurelie," quod she, "by heighe God above,

Yet wolde I graunte yow to been youre love,

Sin I yow se so pitously complaine.

Looke what day that endelong Britaine

Ye remoeve alle the rokkes, stoon by stoon . . ."

It's positively tantalizing, the draping of this cold shower in such lacy curtains. And Dorigen's tease or sarcasm or whatever it is seems completely unnecessary: Chaucer has eliminated the motive. By doing so, he's created an enigma for his audience to decide for themselves. (Is Dorigen uncontrollably giving vent to her fears about the rocks and her husband's safety? Is she furious with Aurelius for pursuing her when defenceless and alone?) And yet, this dialogue between Dorigen and Aurelius is profoundly convincing, partly because of its switches of tack and tone. These people are many-sided, they scintillate, changing from moment to moment. 

It's a bit like how Shakespeare leaves it up to his audience to ponder Hamlet's delay or Iago's malignity: whereas, in Shakespeare's sources, Saxo's Amleth had a very good reason for delay and Cinthio's Ensign had a very clear though very bad reason for malignity (towards Disdemona, not her husband). Both Chaucer and Shakespeare whirl us into new narrative depths by sacrificing explanation.

*

It's an intriguing insight into Chaucer's creative process to see how he nevertheless retains some apparently dispensible elements of Boccaccio in transmuted form. 

In Boccaccio, the wife's sense of Tarolfo's irritating persistence was important to the plot. Boccaccio says: "Now for all this, Tarolfo surceased not, folowing the precepts of Ovid, who saith, that a man must not thorough the hardnesse of a woman leave to persever, bicause with continuance the soft water pierceth the harde stone." Chaucer dropped the lover's irritating persistence, yet he retained the worn stone image, applying it to the well-meaning friends who persist (with partial success) in trying to console Dorigen:

By proces, as ye knowen eeverichoon,

Men may so longe graven in a stoon

Til som figure therinne emprented be . . .

Likewise, the garden of Boccaccio's story, though it no longer comprises the "impossible" task, strangely lingers on: as the May garden where Dorigen is taken by her friends, where Aurelius sings and dances and reveals his love (but this time, it really is May); and where, at the end, Dorigen has arranged to meet Aurelius; though as it turns out they run into each other on the way. Nor has Chaucer forgotten about the midwinter aspect of Boccaccio's story: this becomes the beautifully described December season in which Aurelius and the "philosophre" return to Brittany. Finally, Tebano's prayer to night and the stars and Hecate and Ceres seems to have suggested Aurelius' prayer to Apollo and Lucina; though Tebano's prayer produces dramatic results and Aurelius' prayer produces no result whatever. 

*

Looking at these details of what Chaucer did with Boccaccio can seem sort of illegitimate. I mean, these transformations are emphatically not part of what Chaucer expected his audience to see. He did not expect them to have even heard of Boccaccio. You could say we've stopped looking at the front of the tapestry and are looking at the knots on the back. 

But then, we're not in Chaucer's audience any more. Reading six hundred years later, one of the things we keep coming up against is the alien nature of medieval art; the pervasive sense that, in spite of everything we enjoy and relish and admire and love, there are fundamental aspects of Chaucer's poetic that we don't entirely grasp. That Chaucer's narrative logic isn't quite like ours. That his idea of what is or isn't relevant often surprises us. And when we feel a restiveness, so that we impute e.g. sarcasm or irony or boredom or failure, these imputations feel less secure than they do with later writers. Medieval culture is complicated, sophisticated, full of differences to ours, and yet full of similarities that may be genuine, but may also mislead us. 

*

Loosely related!

Notes on Cymbeline: 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2017/11/thinking-again-about-cymbeline.html

Honour in Cymbeline:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2017/11/continuing-with-cymbeline.html

Diomedes

Coin showing forepart of a wolf in relief. Argos, c. 465-430 BCE

This is a coin my dad acquired recently. I'm not sure if it's a tri-obol or a hemi-drachma or both. The value seems to be determined by how much of the wolf you can see. So I'll call it a tri-wolf.

It's quite a thought. This coin may well have been in existence at the time of the first performance of Aeschylus' Oresteia (458 BCE), and almost certainly by the time Euripides wrote the Medea (431 BCE).

It made me think about the city of Argos in Greek mythology. An important place, but seemingly its mythology was not such attractive material for the tragedians as the gruesome chronicles of Mycenae and Thebes. 

Among the early heroes of Argos, Perseus stands out. Euripides wrote three lost plays that relate to him: Danae, Dictys and especially Andromeda. Another king, Adrastus, and his son-in-law Tydeus, are off-stage presences in two plays that do survive: Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes and Euripides' Phoenician Women.  The Virgilian tag "dulcis moriens reminiscitur Argos" (and dying he remembers sweet Argos) is much more famous than the minor character it refers to,  Antores in Aeneid, Book X.

It's Adrastus' successor, his grandson Diomedes, that most of us think of as the quintessential king of Argos. This is the Diomedes who was a Greek leader in the expedition against Troy and is such a memorable figure in the first half of the Iliad.

The men of Argos, again, and those who held the walls of Tiryns, with Hermione, and Asine upon the gulf; Troezene, Eionae, and the vineyard lands of Epidaurus; the Achaean youths, moreover, who came from Aegina and Mases; these were led by Diomed of the loud battle-cry, and Sthenelus son of famed Capaneus. With them in command was Euryalus, son of king Mecisteus, son of Talaus; but Diomed was chief over them all. With these there came eighty ships.

(from the Iliad, Book II, translated by Samuel Butler)

He was always my favourite of the Greek heroes when I was a boy. His image seemed uncomplicated and pleasing. Though we don't see him doing much except slaughtering large numbers of Trojans, Homer somehow contrives to make us love him. His reckless courage is second to none. Yet he lacks Achilles' petulance, Menelaus' jealousy, Agamemnon's high-handedness, Odysseus' absence of principle. Without any particular stake in the Greek expedition, Diomedes is reliably loyal, makes no enemies on his own side, and seems to give sound advice. A practical man, someone you'd want on your team.

[Agamemnon] then left them and went on to others. Presently he saw the son of Tydeus, noble Diomed, standing by his chariot and horses, with Sthenelus the son of Capaneus beside him; whereon he began to upbraid him. "Son of Tydeus," he said, "why stand you cowering here upon the brink of battle? Tydeus did not shrink thus, but was ever ahead of his men when leading them on against the foe- so, at least, say they that saw him in battle. . . . Tydeus slew every man of them, save only Maeon, whom he let go in obedience to heaven's omens. Such was Tydeus of Aetolia. His son can talk more glibly, but he cannot fight as his father did."
  Diomed made no answer, for he was shamed by the rebuke of Agamemnon; but the son of Capaneus took up his words and said, "Son of Atreus, tell no lies, for you can speak truth if you will. We boast ourselves as even better men than our fathers; we took seven-gated Thebes, though the wall was stronger and our men were fewer in number, for we trusted in the omens of the gods and in the help of Jove, whereas they perished through their own sheer folly; hold not, then, our fathers in like honour with us."
  Diomed looked sternly at him and said, "Hold your peace, my friend, as I bid you. It is not amiss that Agamemnon should urge the Achaeans forward, for the glory will be his if we take the city, and his the shame if we are vanquished. Therefore let us acquit ourselves with valour."
  As he spoke he sprang from his chariot, and his armour rang so fiercely about his body that even a brave man might well have been scared to hear it.

(from the Iliad, Book IV, in Samuel Butler's translation. This passage is discussed in detail in Ch 1 of Barker, Elton T. E., and Joel P. Christensen. 2019. Homer's Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts. Hellenic Studies Series 84. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_BarkerE_ChristensenJ.Homers_Thebes.2019.)

The tragedians preserved Diomedes' unblemished image, because for the most part they took no interest in him.  He had done nothing very dreadful, and nothing very dreadful had happened to him.

True, he appears in Rhesus, a peculiar play traditionally (but surely incorrectly) assigned to Euripides.

Rhesus does what no other Greek tragedy does: it takes a bit of Homer (Iliad, Book X) and makes a play out of it. The result is exciting, but it's more like a serial episode in an adventure story than a tragedy. The whole play takes place at night. Diomedes is typically imperturbable, bloodthirsty, a seeker of honour but without personal ego; the perfect soldier.

Here's an extract from the 2010 translation by George Theodoridis:


Enter Odysseus and Diomedes, furtively, guardedly. Both have their swords drawn.

They have just killed Dolon so they are carrying some “spoils.” Possibly Dolon’s wolf skin and sword, shield, belt, etc.

Suddenly a sound of chains clashing against other metal is heard within.

Odysseus  Diomedes, what was that noise?
Was that a clash of swords my ears picked up or was it something unimportant?

Diomedes  Nothing important, Odysseus.
Some horse’s harness hit against the rails of a chariot.
It got me frightened as well at first, but then I figured out what it was.
No, just the noise of a harness.

Odysseus  Right…
Careful you don’t bump onto any guards in the dark.

Diomedes  I always walk carefully.

Odysseus  But what if you do? What if you wake someone up, do you know the watchword they use?

Diomedes  Yes, Odysseus, it’s “Phoebus.” Dolon told me.

Odysseus  Look here! Enemy beds. No one in them!

Diomedes  Yes, Dolon told me there’d be no one here.
This is where Hektor sleeps.
My sword is ready for him!

They slowly enter Hektor’s tent, check it out and come out again.

Odysseus  I wonder what it means. Where do you think they might all be? Could they be setting up some ambush for us?

Diomedes  Probably. Cooking up some scheme somewhere, no doubt.

Odysseus  Now that Hektor is on a winning streak, nothing will stop him. He’s become very daring, our Hektor!

Diomedes  So, what do we do now, Odysseus?
The man is clearly not in his tent and so, well, there go our hopes of capturing him.

Odysseus  I think we'd better hurry back to our ships.
This man is being protected by the same god that’s giving him all these victories.
We'd better not go against Fate.

Diomedes  Why don’t we go over and, with these swords, cut off the head of Aeneas? As well as that of Paris, the Trojan I hate the most!

Odysseus  Too dark, Diomedes! Too risky and too difficult to find them. This is their camping ground.

Diomedes  But it’s a shame to go back to the ships without inflicting some pain upon our enemy!


*

Some indeed say that, back in Argos, Diomedes' wife was unfaithful to him (his punishment for wounding Aphrodite in the arm, outside the walls of Troy). This story might have been the foundation for a tragedy. In the lost epic Nostoi, it appears that Diomedes returned safely to Argos. But in other accounts he never succeeded in returning home. Instead, he sailed off to the heel of Italy and founded a new colony (Argyripa in Apulia).

Reverse of the Argos coin: incused with the letter alpha (for "Argos"?) and volute decoration.

Coin from Metapontion showing head of Athene, c. 350 BCE

Diomedes became the object of hero cults in Metapontion (aka Metapontum, Metapontium), as well as Cyprus and other colonies in "Magna Graecia". Perhaps that historic reverence for Diomedes was something Virgil recalled when he gave the warlike Diomedes the unexpected role of peacemaker in the Aeneid.


When Venulus began, the murmuring sound
Was hush'd, and sacred silence reign'd around.
"We have," said he, "perform'd your high command,
And pass'd with peril a long tract of land:
We reach'd the place desir'd; with wonder fill'd,
The Grecian tents and rising tow'rs beheld.
Great Diomede has compass'd round with walls
The city, which Argyripa he calls,
From his own Argos nam'd. We touch'd, with joy,
The royal hand that raz'd unhappy Troy.
When introduc'd, our presents first we bring,
Then crave an instant audience from the king.
His leave obtain'd, our native soil we name,
And tell th' important cause for which we came.
Attentively he heard us, while we spoke;
Then, with soft accents, and a pleasing look,
Made this return: 'Ausonian race, of old
Renown'd for peace, and for an age of gold,
What madness has your alter'd minds possess'd,
To change for war hereditary rest,
Solicit arms unknown, and tempt the sword,
A needless ill your ancestors abhorr'd?
We -- for myself I speak, and all the name
Of Grecians, who to Troy's destruction came,
Omitting those who were in battle slain,
Or borne by rolling Simois to the main --
Not one but suffer'd, and too dearly bought
The prize of honor which in arms he sought;
Some doom'd to death, and some in exile driv'n.
Outcasts, abandon'd by the care of Heav'n;
So worn, so wretched, so despis'd a crew,
As ev'n old Priam might with pity view.
Witness the vessels by Minerva toss'd
In storms; the vengeful Capharean coast;
Th' Euboean rocks! the prince, whose brother led
Our armies to revenge his injur'd bed,
In Egypt lost! Ulysses with his men
Have seen Charybdis and the Cyclops' den.
Why should I name Idomeneus, in vain
Restor'd to scepters, and expell'd again?
Or young Achilles, by his rival slain?
Ev'n he, the King of Men, the foremost name
Of all the Greeks, and most renown'd by fame,
The proud revenger of another's wife,
Yet by his own adult'ress lost his life;
Fell at his threshold; and the spoils of Troy
The foul polluters of his bed enjoy.
The gods have envied me the sweets of life,
My much lov'd country, and my more lov'd wife:
Banish'd from both, I mourn; while in the sky,
Transform'd to birds, my lost companions fly:
Hov'ring about the coasts, they make their moan,
And cuff the cliffs with pinions not their own.
What squalid specters, in the dead of night,
Break my short sleep, and skim before my sight!
I might have promis'd to myself those harms,
Mad as I was, when I, with mortal arms,
Presum'd against immortal pow'rs to move,
And violate with wounds the Queen of Love.
Such arms this hand shall never more employ;
No hate remains with me to ruin'd Troy.
I war not with its dust; nor am I glad
To think of past events, or good or bad.
Your presents I return: whate'er you bring
To buy my friendship, send the Trojan king.
We met in fight; I know him, to my cost:
With what a whirling force his lance he toss'd!
Heav'ns! what a spring was in his arm, to throw!
How high he held his shield, and rose at ev'ry blow!
Had Troy produc'd two more his match in might,
They would have chang'd the fortune of the fight:
Th' invasion of the Greeks had been return'd,
Our empire wasted, and our cities burn'd.
The long defense the Trojan people made,
The war protracted, and the siege delay'd,
Were due to Hector's and this hero's hand:
Both brave alike, and equal in command;
Aeneas, not inferior in the field,
In pious reverence to the gods excell'd.
Make peace, ye Latians, and avoid with care
Th' impending dangers of a fatal war.' . . .


(from Aeneid, Book XI, in John Dryden's translation.)

Reverse of the Metapontion coin, showing an ear of barley

Metapontion, on the gulf of Tarentum, was a colony of Achaea in the Peloponnese

Thus matters stood with Diomedes for the next 1200 years. But then there was a dramatic development.

Somewhere near the city of Tours and some time before 1173 CE, Benoît de Sainte-Maure composed his 30,000-line poem Le Roman de Troie. He drew on Dares Phrygius, a Trojan priest -- who "Fu de Troie norriz e nez" (Prologue l. 95) -- and Dictys Cretensis, a Greek serving under Idomeneus, who left a war diary. (As for Homer, "clers merveillos / Et sages e esciëntos" though he was, he'd lived a hundred years after these events, and had introduced foolish stories of the gods fighting on each side.) 

Benoît also added some material of his own, in particular the tragic courtly-love-gone-wrong story of Troilus, Briseida and her smooth seducer Diomedes. The story passed via Boccaccio (who renamed its heroine Criseida) to Chaucer, then Henryson, then Shakespeare, then Dryden.

Here's how Chaucer's poem continues from the point when Troilus has to part from Criseide (because of a hostage exchange); Diomede is here to escort her to the Greek camp.


               With that his courser torned he a-boute
               With face pale, and un-to Diomede
               No word he spak, ne noon of al his route;
               Of which the sone of Tydeus took hede,
               As he that coude more than the crede
               In swich a craft, and by the reyne hir hente; 
               And Troilus to Troye homwarde he wente.

               This Diomede, that ladde hir by the brydel,
               Whan that he saw the folk of Troye aweye,
               Thoughte, `Al my labour shal not been on ydel,
               If that I may, for somwhat shal I seye, 
               For at the worste it may yet shorte our weye.
               I have herd seyd, eek tymes twyes twelve,
               "He is a fool that wol for-yete him-selve."'

               But natheles this thoughte he wel ynough,
               `That certaynly I am aboute nought, 
               If that I speke of love, or make it tough;
               For douteles, if she have in hir thought
               Him that I gesse, he may not been y-brought
               So sone awey; but I shal finde a mene,
               That she not wite as yet shal what I mene.' 

               This Diomede, as he that coude his good,
               Whan this was doon, gan fallen forth in speche
               Of this and that, and asked why she stood
               In swich disese, and gan hir eek biseche,
               That if that he encrese mighte or eche
               With any thing hir ese, that she sholde
               Comaunde it him, and seyde he doon it wolde.

               For trewely he swoor hir, as a knight,
               That ther nas thing with whiche he mighte hir plese,
               That he nolde doon his peyne and al his might
               To doon it, for to doon hir herte an ese.
               And preyede hir, she wolde hir sorwe apese,
               And seyde, `Y-wis, we Grekes con have Ioye
               To honouren yow, as wel as folk of Troye.'

               He seyde eek thus, `I woot, yow thinketh straunge, 
               No wonder is, for it is to yow newe,
               Thaqueintaunce of these Troianis to chaunge,
               For folk of Grece, that ye never knewe.
               But wolde never god but-if as trewe
               A Greek ye shulde among us alle finde 
               As any Troian is, and eek as kinde.

               `And by the cause I swoor yow right, lo, now,
               To been your freend, and helply, to my might,
               And for that more aqueintaunce eek of yow
               Have ich had than another straunger wight,
               So fro this forth, I pray yow, day and night,
               Comaundeth me, how sore that me smerte,
               To doon al that may lyke un-to your herte;

               `And that ye me wolde as your brother trete,
               And taketh not my frendship in despyt; 
               And though your sorwes be for thinges grete,
               Noot I not why, but out of more respyt,
               Myn herte hath for to amende it greet delyt.
               And if I may your harmes not redresse,
               I am right sory for your hevinesse,

               `And though ye Troians with us Grekes wrothe
               Han many a day be, alwey yet, pardee,
               O god of love in sooth we serven bothe.
               And, for the love of god, my lady free,
               Whom so ye hate, as beth not wroth with me.
               For trewely, ther can no wight yow serve,
               That half so looth your wraththe wolde deserve.

               `And nere it that we been so neigh the tente
               Of Calkas, which that seen us bothe may,
               I wolde of this yow telle al myn entente;
               But this enseled til another day.
               Yeve me your hond, I am, and shal ben ay,
               God help me so, whyl that my lyf may dure,
               Your owene aboven every creature.

               `Thus seyde I never er now to womman born;
               For god myn herte as wisly glade so,
               I lovede never womman here-biforn
               As paramours, ne never shal no mo.
               And, for the love of god, beth not my fo;
               Al can I not to yow, my lady dere,
               Compleyne aright, for I am yet to lere.

               `And wondreth not, myn owene lady bright,
               Though that I speke of love to you thus blyve;
               For I have herd or this of many a wight,
               Hath loved thing he never saugh his lyve.
               Eek I am not of power for to stryve
               Ayens the god of love, but him obeye
               I wol alwey, and mercy I yow preye.

               `Ther been so worthy knightes in this place,
               And ye so fair, that everich of hem alle
               Wol peynen him to stonden in your grace.
               But mighte me so fair a grace falle,
               That ye me for your servaunt wolde calle,
               So lowly ne so trewely you serve
               Nil noon of hem, as I shal, til I sterve.'

               Criseide un-to that purpos lyte answerde,
               As she that was with sorwe oppressed so
               That, in effect, she nought his tales herde,
               But here and there, now here a word or two.
               Hir thoughte hir sorwful herte brast a-two.
               For whan she gan hir fader fer aspye,
               Wel neigh doun of hir hors she gan to sye.

               But natheles she thonked Diomede
               Of al his travaile, and his goode chere,
               And that him liste his friendship hir to bede;
               And she accepteth it in good manere,
               And wolde do fayn that is him leef and dere;
               And trusten him she wolde, and wel she mighte,
               As seyde she, and from hir hors she alighte.


(Troilus and Criseyde, Bk V, ll. 85 - 189)


We are much less favourably disposed to this Diomede than to the hero of the Iliad or the patriarch of the Aeneid; and yet I find him credibly the same person, though now seen from a harsher perspective. I still perceive the same intelligence, the same courage; the combination of self-confidence and modesty; the shrewd calculation, the easy friendliness, the ability to contain his feelings. What chance have a forcibly separated Troilus and Criseyde against Diomede's sheer effectiveness?

*

Apparently Diomedes was the favourite Greek hero of the composer Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. The music of his large-scale opera Diomedes oder die triumphierende Unschuld (Diomedes, or Innocence Triumphant), performed at Bayreuth in November 1718, is unfortunately lost, except for five of its seventy-plus arias. Far the best known is Bist du bei mir (long thought to be by Bach; it was transcribed for soprano in his wife Anna Magdalena's notebook: she was an accomplished singer). According to the surviving Bayreuth libretto, the aria was originally sung by Diomedes in Act III Scene 8.

Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden

zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh.

Ach, wie vergnügt wär so mein Ende,

es drückten deine schönen Hände

mir die getreuen Augen zu.

If you are with me, then I will go gladly

    unto [my] death and to my rest.

Ah, how pleasing were my end,

if your dear hands then

shut my faithful eyes!

(The words were probably Stölzel's own. I wish I could find some account of this libretto online but so far I can't, so the only thing I know about the plot is the names of three other characters: Mosthenes, Copele and Desania.)

"Bist du bei mir", sung by Laura Heimes:

On Shakespeare's (and Dryden's) Troilus and Cressida:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/04/a-choice-of-pandars.html

upon May

Stachys sylvatica. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

Together we will find a way
In the first days of May . . .

The 4th of May. These celebrated early days of May, invoking so many snatches of lyric but not where they came from.

Accelerating climate change means it feels more like late May. The cherry blossom is long gone, the grasslands swell. But I'm still scratching around in the deepening shade of the woods, where there are secrets to be found. The woods of West Swindon are rather mysterious places.

Here's a shapely group of fresh Hedge Woundwort (Stachys sylvatica, Sw: Stinksyska).

Stachys sylvatica. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

Valborgsmässoafton, Walpurgisnacht, is the evening of 30th April, and then it's May Day, the first of a clutch of family birthdays: my nephew Nick on 1st May, and my sister Miranda on 3rd May.

Chaucer seems to have attached some importance to 3rd May, too. He selects it as the date  that Palamon broke out of his prison (The Knight's Tale), the date of the action of The Nun's Priest's Tale), and the date Pandare was afflicted by love-sickness (Troilus and Criseyde).

John P. McCall (MLN vol 76, No. 3 (Mar 1961), pp. 201-205) suggested that Chaucer thought of it as a day when lovers feel their desires with especial keenness, and that Chaucer inferred this from Ovid's Fasti, where 3rd May is assigned to celebrations of the goddess Flora.

But May, of course, was when most stories happened.

Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles     (William Langland, Piers Plowman, Prologue, line 5)

But love, whilst that thou mayst be loved again --
Now, whilst thy May hath filled thy lap with flowers,
Now, whilst thy beauty bears without a stain --
Now use the summer smiles, ere winter lowers.   (The beginning of Samuel Daniel's Delia Sonnet 32)


THESEUS
No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May, and hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity.       (A Midsummer Night's Dream, IV.1.137-139)

[Shakespeare momentarily forgetting the date implications of his title?]

Silene dioica. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

In dappled sunlight on a woodland edge, Red Campion (Silene dioica, Sw: Rödblära). 

Common throughout GB. Its distribution in Sweden is rather peculiar; it's common through most of Sweden, including most of Norrland, but less so in the east of the country from Stockholm southwards (the region that is typically richest in plant species), and rare in Gotland and Öland. I can only suppose that some other plant or plants are so favoured by Baltic conditions that they contest its niche. 

Cynoglossum germanicum. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

Green Hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum germanicum). Rare in the UK, absent from Sweden.

The photo below gives a better idea of the plant's size at this time of year.

Cynoglossum germanicum. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

Aquilegia vulgaris, Anemone nemorosa, Stachys officinalis. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

A classy grouping, on a woodland edge, of Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris, Sw: Akleja), Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa, Sw: Vitsippa) and Betony (Stachys officinalis formerly called Betonica officinalis, Sw: Humlesuga).

Aquilegia vulgaris. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

Stachys officinalis. Swindon, 4th May 2020.

Shady conditions usually mean that plants take longer to flower, but since shade also means shelter, it sometimes triggers an individual plant to flower exceptionally early, like the Betony above.

Betony is common through most of the British Isles, except Ireland and northern Scotland. In Sweden it's an extreme rarity, known only in a handful of southern sites.

The unrecounted storm

Emily in the garden

[Image source: https://chaucereditions.wordpress.com/1910s/1912-emily-underdown-the-gateway-to-chaucer/ ]


And how asseged was Ypolita,
The faire, hardy queene of Scithia;
And of the feste that was at hir weddynge,
And of the tempest at hir hoom-comynge;

(The Knight's Tale, 23-26)

This is from Chaucer's (or rather, the Knight's) brief summary of a whole lot of material that he intends to pass by in order to focus on the story of Palamon and Arcite.

Dryden, paraphrasing Chaucer, has this:

The Town besieg'd, and how much Blood it cost
The Female Army, and th' Athenian Host ;
The Spousals of Hippolyta the Queen ;
What Tilts and Tourneys at the Feast were seen ;
The Storm at their Return, the Ladies Fear :

(Palamon and Arcite, I. 19-23)

Chaucer's source for the story was Boccaccio's Teseida. He reduced it mightily: The Knight's Tale is 2250 lines: the Teseida is 9896 lines, coincidentally (?) the same number as Virgil's Aeneid. But while Boccaccio recounts Theseus' Scythian adventure at some length, there is no tempest in the Teseida. It was Chaucer's own idea.

Why he included it we can only speculate. Probably there was no big significance, it just seemed like the right sort of story-element for a romance. Storms occurred e.g. in Arthurian romances, or in other Boccaccio stories, such as Cymon and Iphigenia; and of course in the most popular part of Virgil's epic, the story of Dido.

"At hir hoom-comynge" might seem to imply that the storm was raging at the very moment the newlyweds entered Athens, but we soon discover that they haven't quite arrived there yet. Maybe Chaucer envisioned a storm at sea towards the end of their return voyage from Scythia.

*

Dryden embellishes Chaucer's unrecounted storm with "the Ladies Fear". That additional detail might seem rather ill-chosen in this instance:  would this "hardy" warrior-queen and her sister be so stereotypically fearful? But Dryden is rightly registering a certain paradox. The Hippolyta we meet in The Knight's Tale is, whatever her warrior-queen past, now an impeccably royal consort; when she influences her husband it's not by challenging his authority but by the sweetly irresistible plea of feminine sensibility. As for the Emily who comes to do May's observance in the palace garden, there's nothing at all Amazon-like about her. Boccaccio had begun this transformation himself. Initially he presents her as having only a single breast, like all Amazon warrior-maidens, but as the Teseida proceeds he makes her into a portrait of his own real-life love and sheds all such martial details. In Chaucer's tale, Emily and Hippolyta are fair damsels in the mode of medieval romance.

So far as we know Boccaccio made up the central story (though a few details, mainly about Arcite, might derive from a Byzantine source). In his story, Emily's desire to remain a virgin is connected with her being an Amazon. Chaucer doesn't mention this, so it comes across as an attractive girlish freak, evidence of Emily's chaste-mindedness (and, most importantly, malleable to male authority when the time comes).

I don't want to be heavy-handed about what is, after all, a romance and a made-up one at that, but still, it's hard not to notice that The Knight's Tale begins with a man (Theseus) winning his bride (Hippolyta) by attacking her, and ends with a woman (Emily) being forced against her will to marry, following another violent contest -- though in this case the physical violence is at any rate between the men and not directed towards her. Chaucer himself isn't oblivious to the tensions within his tale, but later authors seem to amplify them.

*

Dryden brings out those tensions at once.

In Scythia with the Warriour Queen he strove,
Whom first by Force he conquer'd, then by Love ;

(Palamon and Arcite, I.7-8)

In 1700 it was hardly possible to use "Force" in the context of "Love" without making the reader think momentarily about rape.

As we saw earlier, his summary of the war with the Amazons involves the "Blood" of both sexes. Dryden isn't bothered about being tactful.

And he assigns quite new motives for Emily wanting to remain a virgin:

Like Death, thou know'st, I loath the Nuptial State,   }
And Man, the Tyrant of our Sex, I hate,                    }
A lowly Servant, but a lofty Mate.                            }
Where Love is Duty on the Female Side,
On theirs mere sensual Gust, and sought with surly Pride.

(Palamon and Arcite, III. 227-31)

Dryden was not intending feminist revisionism, he simply lived in a different age. Moving from Chaucer's tale to Dryden's is like moving from "chivalry" to (that related word) "cavalier". One could be staunchly a cavalier, but it could no longer be idealized in quite the same way as the earlier term. No longer shielded by religion, the modern exemplar of arms and gallantry and sexual conquest was now in the public domain, a topic of secular debate in which women's voices, too, were starting to be heard.

*

Theseus and Hippolyta, the model royal couple who tranquilly preside over A Midsummer Night's Dream (and later The Two Noble Kinsmen) were in effect the invention of Boccaccio and Chaucer. (We know of two lost Elizabethan plays about Palamon and Arcite, so it might have been one of those that was Shakespeare's direct source.) The ancient classical stories about Theseus and his Amazon dalliance (sometimes Hippolyta, sometimes Antiope) are far less tranquil: in some of them, Theseus kills his Amazon girl-friend, in others she tries to kill him. (After all, these myths had to fit in with the more famous story in which Theseus is married to Phaedra.) Shakespeare did have an inkling of this wilder substrate: he knew (from Plutarch) about Theseus' rape of Perigune.

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigouna, whom he ravishèd ...

(A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.1.80-81)

And this sunniest of his comedies contains a few other shafts of this darker light. It's there from the start.

Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries ...

(A Midsummer Night's Dream, I.1.17-18)

The tournament

[Image source: https://chaucereditions.wordpress.com/1910s/1912-emily-underdown-the-gateway-to-chaucer/ ]

*

The Knight's Tale goes back a long way with me... I encountered it, as a child, in a marvellously illustrated re-telling. Some of those illustrations are still vividly present to me: the rivals quarrelling in the tower while Emily wanders in the garden below; the bloody fight in the grove; the stricken Arcite lividly swaying on his horse. I'm disappointed that I couldn't find those images online: the ones here (from the useful chaucereditions site), come from a 1912 Gateway to Chaucer by Emily Underdown, "With Sixteen Coloured Plates and Numerous Marginal Illustrations after Drawings by Anne Anderson".

If I'm honest I don't think I've ever cared quite so much for the tale since. That child's version stuck to the story and its scenes of action, needing no further commentary. Chaucer begins like that, and no-one tells a story better. But he slows right down for the description of the temples, the young people's prayers, the gods' debate, Arcite's funeral rites, Theseus' philosophical musings...  Here were the great passages admired by my university teachers, the meditations on violence, fortune and misfortune, the vanity of this life and the mystery of death. A childish part of me still feels there's a heavy price to pay.

Appius and Verginia

Appius Claudius, presiding, in the centre; his stooge Marcus Claudius on the left; Verginius slaying Verginia on the right

[Image source: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/libertatis-virginia-killed-by-her-father-to-protect-her-from-appius-claudius-221779. An early sixteenth-century painting in Campion Hall, University of Oxford. It has been ascribed to the circle of Bramantino or Defendente Ferrari.]




The early books of Livy tell the thrilling tale of the early history of Rome: the most formative account, perhaps aside from the Old Testament, of how a nation starts.


It is an overwhelmingly male-dominated picture, but there are three early stories in which women are prominent, always as valuable objects in a man's world. Two I've touched on before, the rape of the Sabine women and the rape of Lucretia.


The third is the story of Appius and Verginia. In later European literature this became detached, e.g. in Jean de Meung and in Chaucer's Physician's Tale (one of those minor Canterbury Tales you tend to forget).  Shakespeare refers to the story, e.g. when Titus Andronicus regetfully slays his daughter or when Desdemona asks for a little time before being strangled. In these later renderings, Verginius' slaying of his innocent daughter has become a type of honour-killing, not indeed to be imitated but to be admired.


But Livy's original story is more complex because it places the whole episode within the political story of the second Decemvirate; ultimately, it's about what happens to a society that doesn't have a right of appeal. The wider context makes a difference. Livy and his readers couldn't forget that Appius, more than anyone, had been responsible for the ten tables, the foundation of Roman law. But now power had gone to his head. The centurion Verginius and ex-tribune Icilius (Verginia's betrothed) are grossly wronged by Appius' despicable abuse of judicial power, but they are also, in Livy's eyes, plebeian  firebrands who are dangerous to the body politic. When Appius refers to typical tribune-like troublemaking, we know he's abusing this argument to serve his own ends, but we've learnt to know the kind of thing he means.  Livy, let's face it,  doesn't often find himself on the popular side.  And in a political context, if our first reaction to a terrible event is about deciding who's blameless and who's most to blame, the deeper question comes to be about how society can recover from the evil. So when with profound irony Appius himself resorts to saying "I appeal!", and is rejected by the new tribunes (Verginius and Icilius among them), the story registers disquiet about the tribunes themselves becoming tyrants: will justified revenge turn out to be as bad as the original crime, or will Rome manage to negotiate the rocky road back to the rule of law?




Amid all this male debate the figure of Verginia herself is only fleetingly seen, but here are a few sentences:




*




...There was a girl of humble birth that Appius wished to debauch; her father Lucius Verginius, who was serving with distinction on Algidus as a centurion, was a man with an excellent record in both military and civilian life, and his wife and children had been trained in the same high principles as himself. He had betrothed his daughter to an ex-tribune named Lucius Icilius, a keen and proven champion of the popular cause. This, then, was the girl -- at that time a beautiful young woman -- who was the object of Appius' passion. His attempts to seduce her with money and promises failed, so when he found her modesty proof against every kind of assault, he had recourse to a method of compulsion such as only a heartless tyrant could devise. Taking advantage of her father's absence on service, he instructed a dependant of his own, named Marcus Claudius, to claim the girl as his slave and to maintain the claim against any demands which might be made for her liberty. One morning, therefore, when she was entering the Forum to attend the school, Claudius -- the decemvir's pimp -- laid hands on her, and, asserting that she, like her mother before her, was his slave, told her to follow him, and threatened to take her by force if she refused. The poor girl was dumb with fright, but her nurse shouted for help and a crowd quickly gathered.... (pp. 215-16)


[Appius ruled that]... Anyone was entitled to bring an action, and in other cases in which people were claimed as free, the demand was legal; but in the present case, where the girl was subject to her father, there was nobody else to whom the master could surrender custody, and for that reason he gave judgment that the father should be sent for and that meanwhile the claimant -- Claudius -- should not relinquish his right but should take charge of the girl and promise to produce her in court when the person said to be her father arrived in Rome. The judgement was patently unjust, but though there was plenty of muttering and indignation nobody ventured to speak openly against it... (pp. 216 -17)


At dawn next day the excitement in the city reached a new height. Verginius entered the Forum leading his daughter by the hand -- he in mourning, she in rags. ... (pp.218-9)


...Appius gave judgement for the plaintiff and declared Verginia to be his slave. This monstrous decision was received with stupefaction, and for several minutes no-one uttered a word. Presently Claudius began to push his way through the group of women to where Verginia was standing -- to claim his property. The women burst into tears, and suddenly Verginius shook his fist at Appius and called out: "I betrothed my daughter to Icilius, not to you -- I meant her for a marriage-bed, not for a brothel..." (p. 219)


Verginius looked around for help, but there was none. In a moment his mind was made up: "Appius," he cried, "if I spoke too harshly, a father's heart was to blame, and I ask your pardon. This whole business bewilders me -- let me question the nurse here, in my child's presence; then, if I find I am not her father, I shall understand and be able to go more calmly." Permission was granted, and he took Verginia and her nurse over to the shops by the shrine of Cloacina -- the new shops, as they are called today.  Then he snatched a knife from a butcher, and crying: "There is only one way, my child, to make you free," he stabbed her to the heart. Then, looking behind him at the tribunal, "Appius," he said, "may the curse of this blood rest on your head forever!" .. (p. 220)


Verginius caused a greater upheaval in the army even than he had done in Rome. His arrival was immensely impressive: long before he reached the camp he could be seen because of the crowd of some four hundred citizens who accompanied him out of sympathy for his lacerated feelings; his naked weapon was still in his hand, and his clothes were covered with blood. ... (p. 221)


Of the two appeals for pity, that of Verginius was felt to be more just. It was the end of all hope for Appius: he refused to face his trial, and killed himself.   ... (p. 232)


Marcus Claudius, the man who had claimed Verginia, was prosecuted and condemned, but was spared the extreme penalty at the request of Verginius himself and went into exile at Tibur. Thus not a single man who had any share in the guilt of Verginia's death remained, and her ghost, which so long had wandered from house to house in search of satisfaction, found rest at last.  (p. 233)




Livy, 3.44 - 3.59, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (The Early History of Rome)






*


And whan this worthy knyght Virginius
Thurgh sentence of this justice Apius
Moste by force his deere doghter yiven
Unto the juge, in lecherie to lyven,
He gooth hym hoom, and sette him in his halle,
And leet anon his deere doghter calle,
And with a face deed as asshen colde
Upon his humble face he gan biholde,
With fadres pitee stikynge thurgh his herte,
Al wolde he from his purpos nat converte.


"Doghter," quod he, "Virginia, by thy name,
Ther been two weyes, outher deeth or shame,
That thou most suffre; allas, that I was bore!
For nevere thou deservedest wherfore
To dyen with a swerd or with a knyf...."


(Chaucer, Physician's Tale, ll. 203 - 217)








*


There are two surviving Appius and Virginia plays from around Shakespeare's time, an early one (1576) by "RB" and a late one probably mostly by John Webster (date disputed, perhaps late 1620s). There's an interesting PDF article by Dena Goldberg about both plays (I'm having difficulty giving the link, but if you do a Google search you'll find it).  The text of the Webster play is also available on-line and it looks well worth a read. In it he returns the well-worn story to the detail of Livy, though in one respect he changes it: his Appius is conceived as an upstart commoner on whom great power has been bestowed (somewhat in the Duke of Buckingham mould...); whereas Livy's Appius was an uncompromising aristocrat, a leading light of the senatorial families.












Appius.      See, see, how evidently Truth appears.
                  Receive her Clodius.
Virginius. Thus I surrender her into the Court
Kills her.
                 of all the Gods. And see proud Appius see,
                 although not justly, I have made her free,
                 And if thy Lust with this Act be not fed,
                 bury her in thy bowels, now she's dead.
Omnes.     O horrid act!