by Daisy Dunn
1 A cotyla held about half a pint.
2 Held on the thirteenth day of the month Anthesterion; being the first day of the great festival Anthesteria.
CUPID CRUCIFIED
Cupid Crucified
Ausonius
Translated by Deborah Warren, 2017
Ausonius (c. AD 310–c. 395) was a Latin poet and teacher from Bordeaux, known in Gallo-Roman times as Burdigala. He was also a Christian, which may come as a surprise, for his poetry often feels thoroughly pagan. Among his many careers, Ausonius served as tutor to the future emperor Gratian (ruled 367–383 AD). Like the Greek novelists before him, Ausonius took a picture as the inspiration for this intriguing tale of the distress that Cupid – love – has caused women in literature. Here, love finally gets his comeuppance.
Preface
From Ausonius to my dear “son”:
Have you ever seen a picture painted on a wall? You’ve certainly seen one and remember it. Naturally this painted picture in Zoilus’s dining room in Treves: lovesick women fix Cupid to a cross—not women of our time, who sin of their own free will, but those heroines who excuse themselves and blame God—some of whom our Virgil lists in the Fields of Mourning. I admired this painting for its beauty and subject. Afterwards I translated my dazzled admiration into the ineptitude of my poetry: except for the title, nothing pleases me; still, I send you my meanderings. We love our own warts and scars and, not content to fail alone in our defects, we seek that they be loved by others. But why do I defend this little poem so zealously? I’m sure you’ll like whatever you know is mine: this I hope more than that you praise it. Farewell, and remember your “father” affectionately.
Cupid Crucified
In heaven’s fields, which Virgil’s muse describes,
where a myrtle grove conceals distracted lovers,
heroines held their rituals—and each one
bore her mark of her long ago death—
wandering through vast woods in grudging light,
through reedy goat’s-beard, heavy flowering poppy,
and silent, still lakes and unmurmuring streams
whose flowers sigh through banks in misty light,
mourning the names of youths and kings of old:
gazing Narcissus; Oebalus’ Hyacinth;
gold-haired Crocus; Adonis, purple-dyed;
Ajax of Salamis, limned with tragic pain.
All the griefs that spur sad memories
after death, with tears, sorrowing loves
call heroines back again to their lost lives:
pregnant Semele, deceived, moans in birth and destroys
a burning cradle, and brandishes the fire
of a thunderbolt. Mourning her worthless gift,
Caenis grieves—changed back to her former shape,
having been pleased with her gender as a man.
Procris, stabbed, is tending to her wounds
and even now loves Caephalus’s deadly hand.
The girl at Sestus goes headlong from the tower
bearing her smoking clay lamp; and mannish Sappho,
who’d die from the barbs of love for a man of Lesbos,
threatens to leap to death from cloud-wrapped Leucas.
Sad Eriphyle shuns Harmonia’s necklace,
doomed by her son, unlucky in her marriage;
the whole tale also of Minos’s lofty Crete
flickers, a faint image of a depicted scene:
Pasiphae follows the tracks of the snow-white bull;
deserted Ariadne holds the ball of threads,
in her hand; regretful Phaedra recalls her tablet
left behind. One bears a noose, one the sham
of a vain crown; it shames the third to enter
and hide in Daedalus’s heifer. Laodamia
laments two stolen nights of doomed delights
with dead and living lovers; in another place
others, fierce with drawn swords, Thisbe, Canace
and Tyrian Dido loom: one bears her husband’s sword,
the second her father’s, the third her guest’s.
And horned Luna, with torch and starry crown,
strays as once over Latmos’ rocks,
having pursued the sleeping Endymion.
A hundred others dwelling on love’s old wounds
re-live the torments with sweet and gloomy plaints.
Between them reckless Cupid on rattling wings
has scattered the shadows of black fog. All of them
knew the boy and, memory returning,
saw their common offender, though the damp clouds
obscured his belt gleaming with golden studs
and his quiver and the flame of his bright red torch.
They recognize him, though, and try to vent
their vain force on their one foe—met in a place
not his own where he’d wield wings ineffective
in thick gloom—and they press him as a swarm:
they pull him trembling and vainly seeking refuge
into their mass, mid-throng.
A myrtle is chosen,
familiar in that sad grove, loathed as the gods’ revenge—
with this, once, spurned Proserpine tortured Adonis
who thought of Venus. Hanged on its high branch,
chained, hands behind his back, feet bound,
they grant the weeping Cupid no lesser sentence.
Love, accused, is condemned with no trial or judge.
Each, eager to absolve herself of blame,
shifts her own guilt into another’s crime.
All, blaming him, argue the indications
for his justifiable killing. They consider
their attack a sweet vengeance that seeks to redress their grief
each in the way she was ruined. One holds a noose;
one shows the false spectre of a sword; another
a rough cliff, ghost-river, threat of the ocean, a sea
though calm in its depths, raging: some brandish flames
and wield torches hissing flameless. Myrrha opens
her full womb—hurls at the trembling boy her tears
shining as amber drops of a weeping tree. A few intend
mere mockeries but in the guise of pardons,
so a sharp shaft under his pierced skin can draw out
tender blood from which the anemone springs
or their lamps move wanton lights toward the boy.
Even Venus herself, his mother, guilty
of similar sin, enters this fray unafraid.
Not rushing to plead for her surrounded son,
she redoubles his terror and kindles their wavering rage
with bitter goads, and blames her own disgrace
on her son’s crimes, since she suffered the hidden chains—
caught with Mars; since for her shame at her child,
the stigma of Priapus from the Hellespont
was mocked; and Eryx, cruel, and Hermaphroditus
only half-man. Words weren’t enough:
with her red wreath Venus beat the boy, suffering
and fearing worse; she pressed red dew from his body struck
with repeated blows, roses fastened together,
already red, drew blood more fiery red.
The fierce threats died away, the punishment having seemed
now greater than his own offenses, and Venus
about to become the offender. The heroines
themselves intervene and each prefers to blame
her own death on cruel Fate. Then the fond mother
gives thanks at their having withdrawn their grievances
and forgiven her boy and pardoned his crimes.
And then such visions in nocturnal shapes
upset his sleep, disturbed by empty terror,
which Cupid, having suffered most of the night—
the fog of sleep at last dispelled—flees, leaves
the ivory gate and flies u
p to the gods.
A CLASSICS STUDENT
Confessions, Book I
Saint Augustine
Translated by Peter Constantine, 2018
Augustine (354–430 AD) wrote his Confessions after he became a bishop in Hippo, a Roman city in what is now Algeria, in North Africa. He used the work to reflect on his life experience, especially the misdemeanours of his youth, prior to his discovery of God. His mother was a Christian but his father was not. In many respects Augustine represents the union of classicism and Christianity. In this extract he recounts his struggles to learn – and more importantly enjoy – classical literature. He can quote from Virgil’s Aeneid, particularly the episodes surrounding Dido’s suicide (see Story 49), but Homer, he recalls, was a struggle. Like many pupils, his feelings towards the subject he was studying were influenced by his feelings towards its teachers; his Greek tutors, he writes, ‘goaded me with fierce threats and punishments’. He nevertheless recognised ‘the sweetness of the Greek heroic tales’. Saint Augustine evidently enjoyed a good story.
I have still not managed to fathom the reasons why I hated Greek, which I studied as a boy. Yet Latin I truly loved; not what my first masters taught me, but what I later learned from the men we call grammarians. For I considered my first lessons of reading, writing, and arithmetic as great a burden and punishment as any Greek lesson. And yet, as I was flesh, a passing breath that does not return, did this not come from the sin and vanity of life? The first lessons were in fact better than the later ones, because they were more sound. Through them I acquired, and still retain, the ability to read whatever I find written and to write whatever I want; whereas in my later lessons I was forced to retain the strayings of an Aeneas I did not know, forgetting my own, and to weep over a dead Dido who killed herself for love; while I, without a tear, was prepared to pitiably die away from You through such works, my God, my life.
What is more pitiable than a pitiful being who does not pity himself but weeps at the death of Dido for love of Aeneas; a pitiful being who does not weep over the death he is suffering because he does not love You, O God, light of my heart, bread of the mouth deep within my soul, vigor that impregnates my mind and the vessel of my thoughts. I did not love You, and fornicated against You, and as I did so I heard from all around cries of “Well done! Well done!” for the friendship of this world is fornication against You; and “Well done! Well done!” is what they shout in order to shame a man who is not like them. For all this I did not weep, but wept for Dido, “who with a dagger did the lowest ends pursue,” just as I, having forsaken You, pursued the lowest of Your creations, dust turning to dust. Had I been forbidden to read these works, I would have suffered at not being able to read what made me suffer. And such foolishness is considered a higher and better education than that by which I learned to read and write.
But now may my God call out in my soul, Your Truth proclaiming to me, “This is wrong, this is wrong! Your first lessons were better by far!” For I would readily forget the strayings of Aeneas rather than forget how to read and write. The doors of the grammarians’ schools are indeed hung with precious curtains, but this is not so much a sign of high distinction as a cloak for their errors. Let not those whom I no longer fear cry out against me while I confess to You what my soul seeks, finding peace in condemning my evil ways and loving Your good ways. Let not the sellers and buyers of high learning cry out against me. If I ask them whether it is true that Aeneas once came to Carthage, as the poet says, the less learned will reply that they do not know, while the more learned will say that he never did. But if I ask with what letters the name “Aeneas” is written, everyone who has learned this will answer me correctly, according to the agreement and decision that men have reached concerning these signs. Likewise, if I should ask which was the greater inconvenience, forgetting how to read and write or forgetting those poetic fictions, who would not know what answer someone in possession of his senses would give. Thus as a boy I sinned, preferring empty learning to learning that was more useful, going so far as to love the former and hate the latter. “One plus one is two, two plus two is four” was a hateful incantation, while the sweetest dream of my vanity was the wooden horse filled with armed men, the burning of Troy, and even the ghost of Creusa.
So why did I hate Greek literature, which also sings of such feats? Homer too is skilled at weaving such tales, delusive in the sweetest way, and yet when I was a boy he was bitter to my taste, as I suppose Virgil might be to Greek boys forced to study him as I was forced to study Homer. Clearly it was the difficulty of learning a foreign tongue that sprinkled as if with gall the sweetness of the Greek heroic tales, I did not know a word of Greek, and to make me learn, my tutors goaded me with fierce threats and punishments. As an infant I had not known a word of Latin either, but I learned it from cooing nurses and their jesting and laughing and happy games; I learned it by paying attention, without torment or dread. I learned Latin without the threat of punishment, for my heart goaded me to bring its concepts to life, something I could not have done had I not already learned a few words—not from tutors, but from those who talked to me, and in whose ears I also strove to bring forth what I thought and felt. This clearly proves that free curiosity has a greater power to make one learn than severe enforcement. And yet enforcement curbs the unbridled wandering of that curiosity by way of Your laws, O God, Your laws from the tutor’s cane to the martyr’s trial, Your laws that mix for us a wholesome but bitter potion, calling us back to You from the pestilent delight that has drawn us away from You.
Lord, hear my prayer: that my soul not falter under Your discipline, nor that I falter in avowing before You the mercies through which You have rescued me from my most evil ways; I pray that You become sweet to me beyond all the seductions I pursued, that I may love You most fervently and clasp Your hand with all my heart, and that You will rescue me from all temptation, even to the end. O Lord, my King and God, may whatever I learned that was useful in my childhood serve You: my speaking, writing, reading, and counting. For when I was learning all that was worthless You gave me Your discipline and forgave my sin of delighting in those vain things. These things did give me many useful words, though they can also be learned in things that are not worthless, the safe path along which children should walk.
But woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who can resist you? When will you run dry? How long will you drag the sons of Eve down to that vast and dreadful sea which even those who cling to wood can barely cross? Did I not read in you of Jupiter the thunderer and adulterer—he surely could not have been both, but was presented as such so that a fictitious thunder might mimic and pander to real adultery. For who among our robed orators will lend a sober ear to a colleague from his own forum crying out: “These are Homer’s inventions, transferring human qualities to the gods; how much better if Homer had transferred divine qualities to us!” It would have been truer to say that these are indeed Homer’s inventions, but that he is attributing a divine nature to dissolute men so that their shameful acts will no longer be shameful, and that those who commit them are seen to be imitating not fallen men but celestial gods.
And yet, O infernal torrent, it is into you that the sons of men are cast along with the fees for their studies, in order for them to learn all that is worthless; and it is given great importance when publicly, in the forum, within sight of the inscriptions of the laws decreeing the tutors’ salaries from public funds, the pupils’ extra fees to their tutors are decreed. Infernal torrent, you lash at your rocks and roar: “This is why words are learned, this is why eloquence is acquired, the eloquence so vital to inducing others to do one’s will and implement one’s purpose.” It is as if we would not have known expressions such as “shower of gold,” “lap,” “deceiving,” “temples of heaven,” had not Terence in his play brought a lewd young man onto the stage who takes Jupiter as his model for debauchery as he gazes at a mural “that shows the god sending forth, as in the legend, a shower of gold into Danae’s lap,” a
nd so deceiving the woman? And look how the young man is incited to wanton lust through celestial guidance: “Such a great god!” he says. “He rocks the temples of heaven with his thunder! And I, little man that I am, should not do as he did? I did so, and with pleasure.” Words are certainly not learned more easily with the help of such vileness, but through such words vileness is committed with greater confidence. I do not reproach the words, for they are precious and exquisite chalices, but I reproach the wine of error that was offered us in these chalices by drunken tutors; and if we did not drink this wine of error we were beaten, and had no sober judge to whom we could appeal. And yet, my God, before Whom I now recall this without fear, I learned all this readily, and, wretch that I was, delighted in what I was learning, and was called a boy of great promise.
Permit me, my God, also to say something about my innate talent, Your gift, and the foolishness on which I squandered it. I was set a task that greatly worried me because of the prospect of praise or shame, and the dread of being beaten: the task was to speak the words of Juno as she raged and grieved, unable as she was to “keep the Prince of Troy from seeking the shores of Italy,” even though I knew she had never spoken such words. But we were forced to go astray in the footsteps of those poetic creations, and to say in plain speech what Virgil had said in verse. The declaimer who was most praised was the one who best brought forth, shrouded in the most fitting words, the grandeur of the feigned characters in their passion of rage and grief. What is it to me, my God and true life, that my declamation was applauded over that of so many of the pupils of my age and in my class? Is all this not smoke and wind? Was there nothing else on which to exercise my talent and my tongue? Your praises, Lord, Your praises through Your Scriptures, would have trellised the young vines of my heart, and foolish nonsense would not have snatched at it, vile prey for winged scavengers. There is more than one way for man to pay homage to fallen angels.
