Sleeping Europa from Plato Comicus to Moschus and Horace

1 SLEEPING EUROPA FROM PLATO COMICUS TO MOSCHUS AND HORACE Introduction: Plato Comicus The rape (or threatened rape) of a sleeping Europa in Plato Comicus has curiously not attracted any attention from critics commenting on later texts which narrate the story of Europa. Yet the motifs of night, sleep, and dreaming play a prominent role in the Europa poems of both Moschus and Horace. This article will investigate the role of these motifs and argue for a closer connection between these two poems than has thus far been allowed. It will also maintain that, in both poems, the suggestion that the heroine was (or could be) raped in her sleep is lurking in the background and that, if taken into consideration, it can significantly expand our scope of interpretation and perhaps account for some features which would otherwise be hard to explain. While it is not unlikely that the two authors to be discussed here had direct access to Plato’s Europa,1 my argument does not rely on knowledge of this comedy, which could, after all, be parodying an earlier tragedy.2 Rather, the main thesis of this article is that a 1 Clement of Alexandria (late second – early third century CE) quotes four verses from Plato Comicus’ Ἑορταί; see fr. 27 K.-A.. However, H. Chadwick, ‘Florilegium’ in T. Klauser et al. (edd.), Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart, 1969), col. 1131–60, at 1144-5, argues that most citations of poetry in Clement must derive from anthologies. At any rate, Plato Comicus must have been widely read at least until the first century B.C.E.; see below with n. 63. 2 For this possibility see also below (penultimate paragraph). M. Farmer, Tragedy on the Comic Stage (Oxford, 2017), 92-3, suggests that, while the titles of several comedies by Plato Comicus seem to indicate tragic parody, the evidence is ‘slender and problematic’. For the practice of parodying or travestying mythical tragedy in late 2 classical or early Hellenistic version of Europa’s myth (which Plato Comicus may either reflect or be the source of) had the young woman raped in her sleep. This tradition, then, informs these two later poems, which may or may not have been directly influenced by Plato Comicus’ rendition. First, a closer look at Plato Comicus’ Europa: the most substantial fragment to have come down to us from this comedy, fr. 43 K.-A., transmitted in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae 9.367, reads thus: (Α) γυνὴ καθεύδουσ' ἐστὶν ἀργόν. (Β) μανθάνω. (Α) ἐγρηγορυίας δ' εἰσὶν αἱ παροψίδες αὐταὶ μόνον κρεῖττον πολὺ χρῆμ' εἰς ἡδονὴν ἤ τἆλλα. (Β) βίνου γάρ τινες παροψίδες εἴσ', ἀντιβολῶ σ᾽; (A) A sleeping woman is an inactive thing. (B) I agree. (A) But when she is awake, her 'hors d'ouevres' are a much better route to pleasure than the main course. (B) Then my question to you is: are there 'hors d'ouevres' of sex?3 Old and early Middle Comedy and how this may have led to the birth of New Comedy see H.-G. Nesselrath, ‘Parody and Later Greek Comedy’, HSCP 95 (1992), 181-95. A hexameter poem on Europa is mentioned in Paus. 9.5.8, but we unfortunately know nothing about its content. 3 The text printed in the most recent edition, by S. Pirotta, Plato Comicus. Die fragmentarischen Komödien. Ein Kommentar (Berlin, 2009), is identical to K.-A. The 3 Although assumptions must remain speculative as to the identities of the two interlocutors, the fragment implies that at some point in this comedy a woman, who in all likelihood must be Europa, was found sleeping. Commentators surmise that Speaker B, who is probably Zeus, was tempted to rape her in her sleep, while the more sexually experienced Speaker A advises him not to, arguing that one can derive much greater pleasure from having sex with a woman who is awake, due to her παροψίδες: these ‘side-dishes’ or, as Pirotta and Storey put it, ‘hors d’ ouevres’ must indicate the woman’s enthusiastic participation in sexual intercourse.4 Although this is, of course, an entirely plausible reconstruction of the scene, nothing prevents us from imagining a scenario in which the rape of a sleeping Europa has actually taken place at this point in the comedy. Speaker A could now be putting down his interlocutor, belittling his ‘accomplishment’, of which he may have bragged, and pointing out that he failed to secure the maximum amount of pleasure for himself. It might be useful to compare Terence’s Eunuch, based on a Menandrean comedy, where young Chaerea dons a eunuch’s garb, manages to be put in charge of the maiden Pamphile, and rapes her just as she has fallen asleep. Chaerea recounts all this in dialogue (starting at v. 560) with his friend Antipho, who pokes fun at him for his eunuch disguise. It is not inconceivable, therefore, that the surviving fragment portrays a moment not before, but after the rape of a sleeping Europa, with Zeus already having described the rape and now receiving a (serious or mock-) translation is taken from I. Storey, Fragments of Old Comedy (Cambridge, Mass., 2011). 4 Kassel – Austin explain: ‘βίνου παροψίδας intellege τὸ προσκινεῖσθαι et quae fusius enarrat Ar. Lys. 227-231.’ 4 erotodidaxis from a more competent lover, who is here pointing out the disadvantages of having sex with a sleeping woman.5 Moschus The first poem to be considered here, and the one chronologically closer to Plato Comicus, is Moschus’ epyllion, which presents the sexual awakening and subsequent abduction of an acquiescent (if not openly desiring) Europa. This poem opens at night time, with Europa asleep in her father’s house and Aphrodite sending her a dream in which two women, the personifications of Asia and (the as yet unnamed) Europe, fight over her. The latter will win her over, ‘not without her consent’ (v. 14: οὐκ ἀέκουσαν). It has frequently been noted that, for the sequence of the sleeping (and dreaming) Europa and her trip to the meadow, Moschus drew inspiration from the dreams and subsequent erotic encounters of Nausicaa in Odyssey 6 and Medea in Argonautica 3.6 However, the verbal echoes from the Odyssey and the Argonautica do not tell the whole story, and, in fact, highlight the problematic nature of Europa’s dream in terms of narrative continuity. It has been pointed out, for example, that, 5 On the limitations of attempts to put lost comedies back together based on snippets from Athenaeus see S. Douglas Olson, ‘Athenaeus’ Aristophanes and the Problem of Reconstructing Lost Comedies’ in S. Chronopoulos and C. Orth (edd.), Fragmente einer Geschichte der griechischen Komödie / Fragmentary History of Greek Comedy (Heidelberg, 2015), 35-65. 6 See, especially, the commentaries of W. Bühler, Die Europa des Moschos. Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Wiesbaden, 1960), comm. on 8-15; N. Hopkinson, A Hellenistic anthology (Cambridge, 1988), 201; M. Campbell, Moschus. Europa. Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Hildesheim, 1991), 7. 5 unlike the dreams of Nausicaa and Medea, which actually provide the incentive for their respective trips out of the house, Europa’s dream does not lead to any particular action on her part: even though it makes her upset initially, she then gets on with her everyday activities.7 Moreover, Homer and Apollonius are not the only models on which Moschus relies for the dream sequence: the presence of the two personified continents in Europa’s dream is reminiscent of Atossa’s dream in Aeschylus’ Persians (181-7), while Io’s recurring nightmares, which led to her expulsion from her father’s house in the pseudo-Aeschylean Prometheus Bound (645-54), provide another model from tragedy.8 Kuhlmann has read Europa’s dream against the background of these two tragedies, and detected a clear discrepancy between the introduction of the dream as γλυκύν … ὄνειρον in the first line of the poem and the ‘dark’ subtext of Aeschylean tragedy.9 7 See M. Fantuzzi – R. Hunter, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2004), 216. 8 For the unwilling Io of [Aesch.] Pers. as a foil against which Moschus’ Europa appears all the more active and passionate see R. Schmiel, ‘Moschus’ Europa’, CP 76 (1981), 261-72, at 267-9, who also suggests that Moschus’ heroine is more ‘liberated’ in comparison to both Nausicaa and Medea. Io is, of course, depicted on Europa’s flower-basket (vv. 43-62). 9 See P. Kuhlmann, ‘Moschos' Europa zwischen Artifizialität und Klassizismus. Der Mythos als verkehrte Welt’, RhM 147 (2004), 276-93, at 288; cf. idem, ‘The Motif of the Rape of Europa: Intertextuality and Absurdity of the Myth in Epyllion and Epic Insets’ in S. Bär and M. Baumbach (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Epyllion and Its Reception (Leiden, 2012), 473–90, at 478. 6 Kuhlmann’s argument that a reader would be un-pleasantly surprised by the content of Europa’s dream, especially if (s)he recalled the gloomy precedents of Atossa and Io, can be taken further. A reader familiar with the comedy of Plato Comicus or another text in which Europa is raped in her sleep might, in fact, already be apprehensive when reading in the first verses that Europa, ‘still a virgin’ (v. 7: ἔτι παρθένος), is sound asleep in the upstairs part of her father’s house (v. 6: ὑπωροφίοισιν ἐνὶ κνώσσουσα δόμοισι). The specificity of the sleeping arrangements not only creates a ‘Hellenistic’ feel of domesticity,10 which could, in fact, have already been present in Plato Comicus,11 but also evokes an atmosphere of loneliness, in which Europa might be vulnerable to being raped by a god.12 The very first line of the poem, Εὐρώπῃ ποτὲ Κύπρις ἐπὶ γλυκὺν ἧκεν ὄνειρον, perfectly encapsulates the ambivalence about what is going to happen to Europa (and what her role in it might be) by pulling the reader towards two different directions. On the one 10 See C. Merriam, The Development of the Epyllion Genre Through the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Lewiston, 2001), 63-4. 11 On the domestic coloration of Plato Comicus’ plays see R. Rosen, ‘Plato Comicus and the Evolution of Greek Comedy’ in G. Dobrov (ed.), Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy (Atlanta, 1995), 119-37. 12 For Europa’s loneliness see E. Sistakou, ‘The Dynamics of Space in Moschus’ Europa’, Aitia 6 (2016) [URL: http://aitia.revues.org/1482], at 13-15. For a comic Zeus preparing to seduce or rape a lonely heroine at night see the fourth-century B.C.E., Paestan phlyax vase which shows the god advancing with a ladder towards Alcmene’s bedroom window, while Hermes lights the way with a lamp; Vatican Museums 17106. Plato Comicus’ Νὺξ Μακρά must have also included such scenes of nocturnal action. 7 hand, the dream is explicitly defined as sweet (but for whom, Europa herself or Aphrodite?). On the other hand, the verb employed for Aphrodite’s sending of the dream, ἐπὶ … ἧκεν in tmesis, implies a violent act. The verb ἐφίημι has connotations of aggressiveness: it can be used for launching spears and arrows (as in Od. 24.180), sending death (as in Il. 4.396), and laying hands on someone (in a hostile sense, as in Od. 20.39). Even more impressively, this verb can mean ‘to put the male to the female’13 – a definition which would see Aphrodite leading the masculine ὄνειρος to mate with the passive, sleeping Europa (imagined as a domesticated animal).14 In this first line, Europa is already ‘raped’ in her sleep, and, although this does not happen in the literal manner of the fragment from Plato Comicus, a reader aware of such a tradition would perhaps confront the ‘sweetness’ of the dream with more suspicion than the usually ‘romantic’ takes of modern readers. When we come to the dream itself, we notice another discrepancy between its description first by the external narrator (vv. 8-15) and then by Europa herself in direct speech (vv. 21-7). Europa emphasises her own excitement and desire (v. 25: 13 See LSJ, which gives the following examples: Hdt. 3.85 (ἐπῆκε ὀχεῦσαι τὸν ἵππον) and 4.30 (σφι ἐν τῇ τῶν πέλας ἐπιεῖσι τοὺς ὄνους), and Arist. Hist. An. 630b33 (ὁ ἐπιμελητὴς περικαλύψας τὴν μητέρα ἐφῆκε τὸν πῶλον). 14 Contrast τὸ … ὄνειρον in v. 17. For the poem’s ‘constant interplay between the language applicable to animals and that applicable to men’ see Fantuzzi – Hunter (n. 7), 219. A metaphor from the semantic field of pasture animals already appears in this first section of the poem, where the ‘true’ dreams seen in the third part of the night are said to ‘roam afield’ (v. 5: ποιμαίνεται); see Hopkinson’s (n. 6) comm. ad loc. 8 πόθος) for the unknown woman,15 who welcomed her ἀσπασίως (v. 26), as if she were her own child. The external narrator presents a far more violent picture: the two women are fighting (v. 8: μάχεσθαι), and the ‘foreigner’ pulls Europa with the force of her ‘powerful arms’ (v. 13: κρατερῇσι βιωομένη παλάμῃσιν), although the girl is still ‘not unwilling’ (v. 14: οὐκ ἀέκουσαν). So, whereas Europa’s account elides the violence and re-interprets the dream as a calm transition into a new family,16 the external narrator suggests that Europa is raped by a very masculinised woman17 – the detail of the strong arms is, as Fantuzzi and Hunter argue, indicative of ‘rape by a male’.18 Moschus’ Europa is, then, not only metaphorically raped (by the dream) while she sleeps, but also dreaming of being, metaphorically, raped. 15 For the possible hint of sexual excitement in ἀνεπτοίησαν ὄνειροι (v. 23) see Bühler’s (n. 6) comm. ad loc. For the idea that Europa’s (sexual) attraction to a woman can contribute to the poem’s humour see Kuhlmann (n. 9, [2004]), 279-80. 16 J. Smart, ‘Intertextual Dynamics in Moschus’ Europa’, Arethusa 45 (2012), 43-55, at 53, argues that Moschus’ poem ‘has “smoothed over” Persephone-like moments of suffering, a strategy in which Europa is herself made to collude’. 17 The ‘foreign’ woman is, of course, more powerful because she ‘is’ (or prefigures) Zeus, but the Orientalising view of Europe as manly and Asia as effeminate could also play a role here. 18 See Fantuzzi – Hunter (n. 7), 217, who also point out that this re-imagining of the dream ‘exploits a doubleness in the Greek male view of female sexuality’, although the dominant interpretation will be, at the end, the one that Europa herself appears to support: that ‘no woman is carried off “unwillingly”’ (219). Campbell (n. 6), 24, also points out that this is the language ‘conventionally associated with violent acts of rape’. 9 It is significant that, when she awakes, Europa still has the two women right before her eyes (vv. 18-19: ἀμφοτέρας δέ / εἰσέτι πεπταμένοισιν ἐν ὄμμασιν εἶχε γυναῖκας), because the dream was as vivid as a waking vision (v. 17: τὸ γὰρ ὡς ὕπαρ εἶδεν ὄνειρον).19 The persistence of this vision even after Europa has woken up suggests that this first rape (by and in the dream) is, to a certain extent, a real event: it is an extraordinary dream (or even apparition)20 that spills over into waking reality. At the same time, Europa’s difficulty in both separating dream from reality and identifying the person she saw in the dream (and, supposedly, desired) is very characteristic of the epistemological issues perennially surrounding rape, whereby the victim (and others) might wonder what actually happened, as opposed to what she may have imagined, who the perpetrator was, and to what extent she may have been complicit.21 Close to the end of the poem we will find Europa riding the bull and yet again wondering who her rapist is (v. 135: τίς ἔπλεο;). Even though Moschus has presented a daring Europa, who fondles the bull and does not hesitate to mount his 19 On the enargeia of Europa’s dream see M. Paschalis, ‘Etymology and enargeia: Re-reading Moschus’ Europa (vis-à-vis Hor. C. 3.27)’ in C. Nifadopoulos (ed.), Etymologia. Studies in Ancient Etymology (Münster, 2003), 153-63, at 153-55, who also draws a connection between Europa’s ‘wide-open’ eyes in v. 18 and the ancient etymologising of her name. 20 See v. 21 (τίς μοι τοιάδε φάσματ' ἐπουρανίων προΐηλεν;), where φάσμα can refer to a dream or apparition. 21 Europa’s brief speech in vv. 21-7 begins with three consecutive questions: τίς μοι τοιάδε φάσματ' ἐπουρανίων προΐηλεν; / ποῖοί με στρωτῶν λεχέων ὕπερ ἐν θαλάμοισιν / ἡδὺ μάλα κνώσσουσαν ἀνεπτοίησαν ὄνειροι; / τίς δ' ἦν ἡ ξείνη τὴν εἴσιδον ὑπνώουσα; 16 Europa is raped in her sleep might make that association for her. Her second question would thus admit an answer which diverges from the authorised narrative: the heroine is neither awake and guilty nor having a false dream, ‘free from stain’, but sleeping and having a lucid dream of her rape (lucid in that, even though fleetingly, she is aware of it being a dream). There are further elements in the poem which reinforce the notion that Europa is having a dream or vision, perhaps while being raped. The last stanzas of her lament (vv. 57-66) are taken up by a speech, in which her father urges her to commit suicide, offering up two alternative ways in which she could do so (hanging herself with her girdle or jumping off some sharp rocks), if she did not want to become her lover’s concubine and a slave to a barbarian mistress. The standard view is that this is an imaginary speech, in which ‘the girl puts into her father’s mouth an assessment of her situation which she herself has no reason to deny’.37 In fact, this speech by Europa’s father is introduced abruptly in v. 57 (‘vilis Europe’, pater urget absens), with an oxymoron between the ‘physical pressure’ implied by urget and the physical distance of absens.38 Another way of interpreting this verse would be to see in absens the 37 Williams (n. 28), 140. 38 See Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc.; in their summary of the poem (317), they rewrite this verse, as, ‘‘‘Wretched Europa,’’ I imagine my father saying’. Lowrie (n. 36), 309, claims, ‘Europa apostrophizes her absent father’, which is clearly not the case. A reader might attribute the speech to Europa herself after reading, later on, that Venus was present by her side during her lament (v. 66: aderat querenti) – her father’s speech might be perceived as being part of that lament. But this verse could equally raise the possibility that it is the goddess (present, by Europa’s side) who either impersonates her absent father or sends the vision to her; more on this below. 17 insubstantiality of a dream or vision, which can still feel present and pressing for the one experiencing it.39 It might also be relevant at this point to recall the dream which narrativises and substitutes Ilia’s rape by Mars in Ennnius’ Annals. In that dream, Ilia hears her father’s voice address her, and, although she desires to see him, he remains invisible (v. 47: Nec sese dedit in conspectum corde cupitus). The way Ennius introduces Aeneas’ words also plays with the paradox of hearing someone, who is probably invisible (and therefore ‘absent’) as he speaks,40 in the context of a vision: exim compellare pater me voce videtur / his verbis (vv. 43-4). Aeneas ‘is seen’ or ‘appears’ (although he is himself not seen) to address her with his voice – compellare here does not imply reproach, although this is part of the semantic field of the verb, which is, at least visually, also very close to compellere; urging and reproaching, though, are exactly what Europa’s father is doing. Right after the end of her father’s speech, and without listening from Europa herself again, the poem draws to its close by staging an epiphany of Venus, who appears suddenly at vv. 66-7 (aderat querenti / perfidum ridens Venus), and will be the one to inform Europa that the bull was in fact Jupiter and that half the world will 39 The vocabulary of absence and the paradox of ‘absent presence’ are especially pertinent in the context of dreams, as Ovid’s poetry will later show. See, e.g., Her. 13.107-12 and 15.125 with the comments in P. Hardie, Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002), 133-7, and 138 for dreams which substitute for sexual intercourse. 40 See Skutsch (n. 24), 199-200, for the argument that Aeneas does not speak to Ilia coram but remains invisible throughout the dream. 18 bear her name. The question here is: why Venus?41 In Moschus it is Zeus himself who reveals his identity to Europa (vv. 153-61). Venus is here ‘smiling treacherously’ (perfidum ridens),42 but the only god who can properly be called perfidus in the story as it has been told thus far is Jupiter. A late antique Virgilian cento on Europa will conclude precisely be calling Jupiter ‘a treacherous plunderer’ (perfidus … praedo).43 My suggestion is that Venus appears here to put an end to the nightmare or hallucination that Europa is experiencing, and which, in a way, is still the same ‘sweet’ dream (a dream of the heroine’s rape) she herself had prepared and sent in the opening lines of Moschus’ poem. Tellingly, perhaps, Venus picks up the aetiological 41 The only explanation for the presence of Venus that has been offered thus far has to do with a fragment from Pherecydes, transmitted in the V-scholia on Od. 11.322, in which Aphrodite appears to Ariadne while she is lamenting her abandonment by Theseus, and consoles her, telling her she is to be the wife of Dionysus, and will become famous (Διονύσου γὰρ ἔσεσθαι γυναῖκα, καὶ εὐκλεῆ γενέσθαι). See Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26), comm. on 74-5; cf. S. Harrison, Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace (Oxford, 2007), 197, who argues that the narrative pattern suggests a literary text, which may even have been Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women. 42 For the conventional, and occasionally enigmatic, smiles of Venus see Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc., with references to Hes. Theog. 205 and Theoc. 1.96, where Aphrodite smiles treacherously. 43 Anth. Lat. 14.35 Reise: perfidus, alta petens abducta virgine praedo (= Verg. Aen. 7.362). On this poem see S. McGill, Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (Oxford, 2005), 83-4. Catullus’ Ariadne (for whose influence on Horace’s Europa see above, n. 35) calls Theseus perfide twice in the first two lines of her lament (64.132-3). 19 theme that was introduced in Moschus’ poem when Aphrodite sent upon Europa the dream of the two, fighting continents – a theme that was never revisited in that poem,44 and thus allows Horace to create a kind of intertextual ring composition. It is also significant that Venus only speaks now, ‘when she had enjoyed herself enough’, or, literally, ‘when she had played enough’ (v. 69: ubi lusit satis),45 and that the same verb is used for the false dream that may be ‘playing with’ Europa in v. 40 (ludit imago). We know from Lucretius that lovers are like people who are asleep and dreaming, and that ‘in love Venus tricks lovers with phantoms, and they cannot sate 44 The absence of an aetiological coda at the end of Moschus’ Europa has led some critics to consider the poem incomplete; see Hopkinson (n. 6) 215-16 with arguments against that view. On the undeveloped aetiological theme see also R. Hunter, ‘Theocritus and Moschus’ in I. de Jong, R. Nünlist, and A. Bowie (edd.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2004), 84-97, at 96; more recently, A. Morrison, ‘Erotic Battles? Love, Power-Politics and Cosmic Significance in Moschus’ Europa and Eros on the Run’ in J. Clauss, M. Cuypers, and A. Kahane (edd.), The Gods of Greek Hexameter Poetry: From the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity and Beyond (Stuttgart, 2016), 197-211, at 200-3, detects a contrast between the suppressed aetiology in Moschus’ poems and the strongly aetiological narratives of the Homeric Hymns. 45 For the suggestion that Venus’ satiety is metapoetical, intended to bring the poem to its close, see Lowrie (n. 36), 313. Berres (n. 35), 81, suggests that behind the smiling Venus are the knowing reader and Horace himself. For a metapoetic reading of the whole poem see R. Kilpatrick, ‘Remember us, Galatea: Horace, Carm. 3.27’, GB 3 (1975) 191-204, who argues that Europa represents the book collection, which Horace is reluctantly sending on its journey. 20 themselves by gazing at bodies’ (4.1101-2: sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis / nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram).46 By making Venus appear here at the end of Europa’s lament (and dream / hallucination?), Horace is both alluding to the dream in Moschus, suggesting that it only ends here, and making a more general point about the furor (v. 36) of love, which, as in Lucretius, makes people see, not the truth, but ‘vain imaginings’ and simulacra.47 This could, then, work as a warning to the mysterious Galatea of the propemptikon, who may be going abroad with a (dubious) lover,48 and stars in her eyes. On my reading, Galatea is 46 On this passage and the transition it marks between the simulacra of dreams and the hallucination of love see Hardie (n. 39) 158-9; the text and translation are taken from there. 47 For the furor of erotic love in Lucretius see especially R. Brown, Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De rerum natura 4.1030–1247 (Leiden, 1987). For the Epicureanism of Horace, especially in relation to sex, see, most recently, J. Kemp, ‘Fools Rush In: Sex, “The Mean” and Epicureanism in Horace, Satires 1.2’, CCJ 62 (2016), 130-46. 48 For the whole mythological section of the poem as a warning to Galatea see, e.g., Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26) 319-20 and 330; and Harrison (n. 41), 193-4. For the view that Galatea and Europa represent every young girl on the brink of sexual maturity see Strauss Clay (n. 26), who argues that Horace assumes here the role of an auspex nuptiarum, allaying the future bride’s fears and assuring her of the happy outcome. For similar universalising elements in Moschus’ poem see Fantuzzi – Hunter (n. 7), 216 and 219. K. Heldmann, Europa und der Stier oder der Brautraub des Zeus. Die Entführung Europas in den Darstellungen der griechischen und römischen Antike (Göttingen, 2016), 129-30 and 156-8, follows Strauss Clay in seeing here a positive 21 warned that what may begin as a ‘sweet’ dream can easily turn into a nightmare – a hellish, dark reality, in which she will lack both control and knowledge of her true situation, and be at the mercy of her all-powerful (and perhaps adulterous like Jupiter) lover. What Venus says to Europa is in part conventional (mostly towards the end, where she prophesies her great fortune, vv. 74-5: magnam … fortunam) and in part startling. First, she orders her to cease from her angry outburst, ‘for the bull you hate [or do not see?] will give you his horns to tear’ (vv. 71-2: cum tibi invisus laceranda reddet / cornua taurus). Venus echoes Europa’s own furious words in vv. 46-8, where she had wished to gash the bull with steel and smash his horns (lacerare ferro / et frangere … cornua monstri), but the precise meaning of Venus’ prophecy is unclear. Is this an oblique reference to the return of the god no longer in his bull-form or to imminent lovemaking or both?49 An attractive suggestion is put forward by Gordon Williams, who would like to print “cornua” and “taurus” as better representing the ‘amused contempt of Venus’ remarks’: Horace would be ‘hinting at an interpretation of the legend which viewed the appearance of Jupiter in the form of a bull as a fantasy of the girl’s imagination’.50 Reinforcing a dark and Lucretian take on the playfulness message for Galatea, but bases his reading on the assumption that the rape of Europa in Graeco-Roman sources before Nonnus always represents a ‘Brautraub’ (meaning that Europa will become the god’s wife). To my mind, ‘Brautraub’ might lie at the primitive roots of the myth, but does not apply to either Moschus (who mentions the jealous Hera in v. 77) or Horace. 49 See Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26) comm. ad loc. 50 Williams (n. 28), 141, goes on to argue that such an interpretation fits in well with Horace’s consistent attitude towards the legendary and supernatural: ‘here, as 22 of Venus, Horace would thus be making the goddess acknowledge her part in causing Europa to see Zeus as a ‘bull’ with ‘horns’. But if Venus is suggesting that Jupiter’s bull-guise is but a figment of Europa’s imagination, will this not also mean that the whole affair of her abduction and the bull-ride across the sea only happened in her imagination (or dreams) too? The next line spoken by Venus, v. 73, is equally enigmatic: uxor invicti Iovis esse nescis. This can be read in two ways: Europa does not know that she is the wife of almighty Jupiter or does not know how to be, how to play the part of, Jupiter’s wife.51 The first alternative implies a Greek construction and is not favoured by most commentators,52 but even if we dismiss it, the second alternative, as Gordon Williams again points out, does not imply that Europa already knows she is Jupiter’s wife, but rather combines this new information with the command that she needs to behave as elsewhere, he introduces an element of rationalizing which, without destroying the traditional features of the basic legend or warping them into a crude “explanation”, yet relieves the poet from the necessity of reproducing legends simpliciter, as if he took them at face value.’ 51 On the difficulties of this sentence see the extensive discussion in Berres (n. 35), 59-60 and 72-4, with further bibliography, and, more recently, I. Sticker, ‘Uxor invicti Iovis. Zur Funktion des Europamythos in Horaz´ Ode 3,27’, Hermes 142 (2014), 40417, at 408. 52 See Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26) comm. ad loc. On the other hand, D. West, Horace, Odes III. Dulce Periculum: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2002), 232-3, prefers the first interpretation, detecting ‘a number of oddities with Greek flavour’ in Venus’ words. 23 his wife.53 It is probably also the case that Venus is revealing not only the true identity of Europa’s lover, but also the very fact that she is now a wife (uxor is both emphatic and ironic; Jupiter has another wife). But how is it that Europa is (not ‘will become’) a wife,54 if no sexual encounter has been described or even referred to? The reader might be as surprised as Europa herself to hear that she already is Jupiter’s wife. The problem of Europa’s ‘absent rape’, as Michèle Lowrie calls it, has puzzled critics.55 On the one hand, the heroine’s lament and self-reproach make more sense, if Jupiter has already raped her. On the other hand, no such rape is mentioned, Europa begins speaking as soon as she lands on Crete, and shows no awareness of the fact that the bull that carried her off is not really a bull.56 Perhaps Europa’s rape is ‘absent’, although real and with consequences, because it happens while she is dreaming or having a vision. If Europa’s experience, up to Venus’ epiphany, is placed within the realm of dreams, her ignorance of her true situation not only makes sense, but can also be seen to parallel another Ilia, this time Ovid’s. After being raped by Mars in her sleep, she awakes by the river strangely languid, but does not know why this is so (Fasti 3.25: languida consurgit, nec scit cur languida surgat). The dream, in her case, 53 See Williams (n. 28), 139-40. 54 Contrast Aphrodite prophesying to Ariadne Διονύσου γὰρ ἔσεσθαι γυναῖκα in the fragment from Pherecydes cited above, n. 41. 55 See Lowrie (n. 36), 311, esp. n. 109, for scholarly attempts to deal with this problem. 56 Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26) comm. on 50, suggest that, if Jupiter has already raped her, she might be reluctant to mention it explicitly (it could be added, especially if he did so as a bull). But that still does not explain why this is not otherwise indicated in the text. 24 was entirely symbolic and had nothing to do with the specifics of her sexual violation by Mars.57 The fact that Horace leaves his heroine in the dark until the very end of the poem highlights (and forces the reader to think about) the same epistemological problems Moschus’ Europa had grappled with at the end of her own vision: what exactly happened, how much of it was true and how much a product of the heroine’s imagination, and to what extent did she wish for it to happen? And is there any way these questions can be answered with certainty? One final word should be said regarding the ode’s tone and generic affiliation. With few exceptions,58 scholars have found this entire poem playful and ironic,59 while the section on Europa has been seen as a parody of either Hellenistic epyllion or tragedy.60 Stephen Harrison, in particular, has outlined a plethora of tragic tropes which are used to comic effect in the Europa section, starting from the very introduction of the myth, which evokes an exemplum of consolation from tragedy, and ending with the theatrical fashion of Venus’ epiphany, reminiscent of a deus ex 57 For Ennius’ Ilia being either ‘carried off’ or ‘raped’ by Mars see above, n. 25. 58 For one such case, see E. Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford, 1957), 194, who argues for ‘unmitigated seriousness’. 59 For the propemptikon as a spoof on the technicalities of augury see Williams (n. 28), 138; also, in more detail, West (n. 52), 225-9, who sees it (and the rest of the poem) as a burlesque. For its connections with love-elegy see Harrison (n. 41), 194, who also notes that Europa’s words evoke ‘the world of clever declamation’ (195). 60 For parody of epyllion see K. Büchner, ‘Review of Perfidum ridens Venus. L'ode III 27 di Orazio con versione ritmica ed esegesi by Corso Buscaroli’, Gnomon 14 (1938), 636-9, at 639, with criticism in Berres (n. 35), 83-6. Cf. West (n. 51), 234. For para-tragedy see below. 25 machina offering an aetiological compensation for present sufferings.61 More remarkably, the suggestion of alternative methods of suicide in the speech of Europa’s father is a motif of Euripidean origin already parodied by Aristophanes in Frogs 11734, while Europa’s threats of revenge against the bull in vv. 45-6 can find parallels in comedy (for example, Ter. Ad. 311-21).62 Now, Plato Comicus was apparently still widely read and admired in Horace’s contemporary Rome: an inscription on a statue base from first-century BCE Ostia identifies the bust it must have supported as ‘Plato, the poet of Old Comedy’.63 It is not far-fetched, therefore, to assume that Plato’s (probably para-tragic) Europa was known to Horace, and, perhaps, had some part in shaping his own version of the myth and influencing its tone. At the same time, positing a comic (and para-tragic) Europa as one of the models behind Horace’s Europa should not reinforce interpretations of the heroine as ‘hysterical’ or ‘silly’ and the poem as a ‘literary spoof’ or ‘melodrama … calculated to entertain rather than move the reader’.64 Rapes in New Comedy, at least, are not funny in themselves, and 61 See S. Harrison, ‘A Tragic Europa? Horace Odes 3.27’, Hermes 116 (1988) 427-34. Fraenkel (n. 57), 194, had already noted that the beginning of Europa’s monologue adopts a pattern from Attic tragedy (‘a passionate utterance is after the first phrase interrupted by the speaker himself, who is carried away by the feeling that what he has been saying is wrong because it is not true or only partially true and in any case does not go to the root of his grief’), which can also be found in Terence (Haut. 93). 62 See Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26) comm. on 45-6; cf. Lowrie (n. 36), 312 n. 112, with further bibliography. 63 For this inscription see T18 K.– A. 64 For Europa as ‘hysterical’ see Berres (n. 35), 72; Nisbet – Rudd (n. 26), 320 and 332. West (n. 52), 230, calls her a ‘silly girl’. For the poem as ‘spoof’ see West (n.