by Matt Cardin
Latin drama began in earnest with the comic playwright Plautus (T. Maccius Plautus). One play in particular is of interest in tracing the course of horror literature in the ancient world: Mostellaria (The Haunted House; ca. 200 BCE). Here no ghost actually appears; instead, the play deals with a clever slave, Tranio, who fabricates a ghost as a way of distracting Theopropides, father of the wastrel Philolaches. Tranio tries to maintain that the house in question has become haunted because its former owner had killed his guest (an appalling crime in Greco-Roman civilization), but the ruse collapses very quickly. The play is really a send-up of the superstitiousness and credulity that may have afflicted even wealthy and educated Romans.
In his memorable fifth Epode (ca. 38 BCE), Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus) speaks of the witch Canidia, who has “locks and disheveled head entwined with short vipers” and who utters a mad incantation intended to prevent a hapless youth from falling in love with any other woman but her. Then there is the utterly bizarre Poem 63 (ca. 55 BCE) of Catullus (C. Valerius Catullus), written in a highly unusual meter and telling of the hideous self-castration of Attis (spelled Atys by later writers), the son and lover of Cybele, the Great Mother of the gods. While nothing strictly supernatural occurs here, the vivid first-person depiction of religious frenzy and madness makes it virtually unique in ancient literature.
Also unique, but in a very different way, is the Satyricon (ca. 65 CE) of Petronius (T. Petronius Arbiter). What survives of this sprawling novel—if it can be called that—is probably less than one-fifth, and perhaps less than one-tenth, of the complete work. Its centerpiece is the Cena Trimalchionis (Trimalchio’s Dinner), where different speakers tell amusing or fantastic tales for the enjoyment of the guests. It is here that we find the first extant account of a werewolf in ancient literature. This blandly told story depicts a soldier who takes his clothes off, urinates on them, and turns into a wolf. He proceeds to howl and run off into the woods; the clothes, meanwhile, have turned to stone. Later the teller of the tale learns that a wolf has killed many of the sheep on a nearby farm.
Of the Metamorphoses (ca. 10 CE) of Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso) it is difficult to speak in small compass, for its very premise is supernatural: the transformation of human beings into all manner of animals, and even into plants. Along the way we have many gripping set-pieces, among them Perseus’s slaying of a sea monster and his rescue of Andromeda (4.663–764), a lengthy account of the witcheries of Medea (7.1–424), a rendering of the transformation of the maiden Scylla into a birdlike monster (8.1–151), and perhaps the most poignant surviving account (although many others must once have existed) of the failed attempt of Orpheus to rescue his dead wife Eurydice from the underworld (10.1–85). Ovid’s purpose is rarely to induce terror; instead, he seeks to evoke wonder at the very process of shape-shifting.
The most celebrated Roman account of the underworld is, of course, the Aeneid (ca. 20 BCE) of Virgil (P. Vergilius Maro), but here we are even farther from terror. The moving passage (book 6) describing Aeneas’s descent into the underworld to seek the shade of his father Anchises, and also that of his dead lover Dido of Carthage, whom he abandoned, is notable for Anchises’s magnificent prophecy of future Roman greatness. A later epic, the Bellum Civile or Pharsalia (ca. 65 CE) of Lucan (M. Annaeus Lucanus), treating of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey, is notable for the entire absence of the standard pantheon of gods, but features a striking passage (6.419–830) in which Pompey’s son seeks the counsel of the witch Erictho, who uses a “lunar poison” to reanimate a corpse and make him utter a prophecy.
The plays of Seneca the Younger (L. Annaeus Seneca, ca. 4 BCE–65 CE) are full of blood and thunder, among them Hercules Oetaeus, about the Hercules/Deianira story, and Medea. The Metamorphoses (ca. 180 CE) of Lucius Apuleius, usually translated as The Golden Ass, is a deliberate echo of Ovid, but focuses on a single metamorphosis: that of a man named Lucius into an ass. Lucius had seen a reputed witch named Pamphile turn herself into an owl and wished to become one himself; but the slave girl Fotis gives him the wrong potion, and he becomes an ass. The rest of the novel is an adventure story in which Lucius seeks to eat roses that will (for some unexplained reason) turn him back into a human being.
Terror and the supernatural are not absent from the work of otherwise sober historians. The Greek biographer Plutarch (46–120 CE) mentions ghosts with some frequency, as in Brutus (where Brutus confronts his “evil spirit”), Cimon (where the ghost of a murderer is seen haunting the public bath where he was killed), and elsewhere. Pliny the Younger’s famous letter to Licinius Sura (7.27; ca. 100 CE) speaks with apparent belief of a haunted house in Athens. The curious Peri thaumasion (On Wonderful Events; second century CE) by the Greek writer Phlegon of Tralles recounts the tale of Philinnion, a young woman who returned from the dead six months after her funeral because of her love for Machates, spending several nights with him before dying again.
Ancient Greek and Roman civilization established a number of the major motifs that would be used in subsequent horror literature, including the ghost, the haunted house, the werewolf, the sorcerer/sorceress/witch, and monsters emerging from the depths of hell. While classical literature was largely the preserve of a small segment of the population during the Middle Ages, when literacy was restricted to a tiny intellectual elite, the horrific motifs in that literature were ripe for use whenever the heavy hand of Christian orthodoxy would be loosened to allow the appreciation of this “pagan” writing. While individual writers of the Middle Ages did find inspiration in classical writing, it took the radical scientific, philosophical, and aesthetic revolution of the Renaissance to restore this literature to a position of centrality in Western culture.
S. T. Joshi
See also: Horror in the Middle Ages; Part Two, Themes, Topics, and Genres: Ghost Stories; Religion, Horror, and the Supernatural; Part Three, Reference Entries: The Haunted House or Castle; Monsters; Transformation and Metamorphosis; Werewolves.
Further Reading
Colavito, Jason. 2008. “Introduction: From Prometheus to Faust.” In Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge, and the Development of the Horror Genre, 5–24. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Felton, D. 1999. Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Joshi, S. T. 2014. Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to the End of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hippocampus Press.
Lovecraft, H. P. [1927] 2012. The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature. Edited by S. T. Joshi. New York: Hippocampus Press.
Mark, Joshua J. 2014. “Ghosts in the Ancient World.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, October 30. http://www.ancient.eu/ghost.
Ogden, Daniel. 2009. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman World: A Sourcebook. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
HORROR IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The Middle Ages (or medieval period) is the term used to designate the period of European history between the end of antiquity and the beginning of the early modern era. As neither of these transitions occurred on a fixed date, there are no definitive dates for the beginning and end of the medieval period. Broadly speaking, the Middle Ages begins with the fall of the Roman Empire, usually classed as occurring with the deposition of the last Western emperor in 476 CE. The end of the Middle Ages is harder to place, as there are substantial regional differences in political, religious, and social development. Some historians suggest that the Middle Ages ended with Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas (1492); others suggest that the endpoint comes with Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press (ca. 1440), or with the Protestant Reformation (beginning in 1517). When attempting to characterize the entirety of the European medieval period, it is most common to use 1500 as an approximate endpoint—thus delineating a Middle Ages that lasted roughly 1,000 years.
In order to give more focus to the study of a millennium-long era, medievalists now fre
quently divide the Middle Ages into two or three subperiods. Some historians use the terms “high” and “low” to distinguish between the earlier and later parts of the era. English-speaking historians use “early,” “high,” and “late” to differentiate the periods of the Middle Ages, and this is the result of linguistic shifts across the era. Thus, the early Middle Ages refers to the period before 1066, when Old English (the Anglo-Saxon language) was the dominant spoken and written language in England. The High Middle Ages are the years following the Norman Conquest, when Anglo-Norman was the dominant language. An early form of Middle English began to develop toward the end of the High Middle Ages, leading to a decline in Anglo-Norman and the dominance of Middle English in the late Middle Ages (toward the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth).
It used to be common to find the term “Dark Ages” used to describe the medieval period. In fact, this term is still sometimes used to refer to the early Middle Ages. The phrase emerged as a way to differentiate the period from the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment that followed, and it was intended to conjure an image of a superstitious, ignorant, and barbaric period of European history. Developments in our understanding of the time have changed this perception, and more sensitive understandings of religious, intellectual, and social history have questioned this characterization. Although contemporary popular culture still often depicts the “darkness” of the period, scholarship has focused some attention on the cultural and intellectual achievements of the so-called Dark Ages. It is common nowadays to find medievalists challenging persistent misconceptions about the era, which include the myth of the “flat earth” belief, the idea that the Catholic Church suppressed scientific development, and the belief that diseases were universally misunderstood and mistreated.
The extent of time and space encompassed by a conception of the Middle Ages makes it difficult to summarize the significant shifts in religious, political, scientific, and literary culture during this time. However, there are some important developments that are worth noting for their impact on fiction writing. In 800 CE, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor, the first time the title had been used in Western Europe since 476. Charlemagne’s coronation marked the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire (though it was not explicitly called this until the thirteenth century). The Holy Roman Empire claimed ascendancy through its descent from the Roman Empire, and Charlemagne used his title to expand the lands of the Carolingian kings and to further develop a close allegiance with the papacy. The Holy Roman Empire was a powerful—though not undisputed—complex of territories in the Middle Ages, which came to include the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. Charlemagne himself is a key figure in both history and literature, as his legendary exploits were recounted in numerous narratives.
Along with the formation of the Holy Roman Empire and the coronation of Charlemagne, the Crusades would also play an important part in shaping European literature. The Crusades were a series of religious wars that were fought in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. While contemporary popular culture imagines these wars as a conflict between Christians and Muslims, taking place entirely in what is now the Middle East, there were, in fact, multiple conflicts involving Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Mongols—among others—and taking place in Asia, Africa, and Europe. While ostensibly a battle for the Holy Land, initiated in 1096, the Crusades had a huge impact on the political landscape of Europe. Not only did these wars lead to anti-Semitic violence across Europe, inflame tensions between Western and Eastern Christians, and enable the sacking of cities such as Antioch and Constantinople, the financial and military burden on Crusading territories was not insubstantial. Crusades in Northern Europe saw regions such as Livonia annexed and converted to Christianity, and the papacy was able to expand its control (and taxation) of the West through its success during the wars. Crusading nations were able to use seized and stolen property to fund local developments, and trading principalities (such as Genoa and Venice) were able to capitalize and prosper. In addition to this, the Crusades elevated the role of “knight” from that of a military horseman to a figure of elite aristocratic power. The Crusades added a religious dimension to the burgeoning code of chivalry first introduced by Charlemagne and his descendants.
This background is necessary for understanding some of the important changes in literature that occurred during the Middle Ages, which would have a big impact on the fiction that followed in later centuries. Some of the changes in literary trends as a result of events such as the Crusades are still clearly visible in contemporary literature.
There was no concept of “horror” as a genre in medieval writing. However, there are a number of tropes in contemporary horror fiction that have their ancestors or predecessors in medieval writing. Distinctions between “fiction” and “nonfiction” are also a more modern concept, so it is necessary to look at a broader range of types of writing in order to discern elements of horror in medieval narratives.
Literary storytelling in the Middle Ages took a number of different forms, including histories, chronicles, epics, and (later) romances. Medieval historiography worked differently than its modern counterpart, and so there is some crossover between these forms. A narrative that was designated as a “history” might, to modern audiences, seem like a work of fiction; the idea was that it revealed some “truth” about the world, even if it was not grounded in precise adherence to actual circumstances and events. In this way, some of the earliest stories of King Arthur were entitled histories, though the character later appeared in epic and romance narratives as well.
One of the best-known pieces of Old English literature is the epic poem Beowulf. Composed between 750 and 1000 CE (the exact date is unknown), this narrative describes the adventures of the eponymous Geatish king as he destroys the monsters besieging the Danish kingdom, ascends to the throne of Geatland, rules peacefully for fifty years, and then dies in a final battle with a dragon. The narrative makes a number of allusions to historical individuals, but also creates a fictional hero for whom there is no “real life” counterpart. The poem survives in only one manuscript, and there is little evidence of its being known in the later Middle Ages; however, it was rediscovered in the early modern era and successfully translated in the nineteenth century. At first, the poem was studied for its linguistic and historical implications, but in 1936 J. R. R. Tolkien gave a groundbreaking lecture in which he argued that the poem is, at its heart, about monsters. The monsters of Beowulf—Grendel, his mother, and the dragon—have been of abiding interest to scholars and creative writers ever since.
A Timeline of Horror in the Middle Ages
ca. 441–451
Beginning of Anglo-Saxon incursions and migration to Britain.
476
Deposition of Romulus Augustulus, last emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
ca. 750–1000
Composition of Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem about kings and monsters.
800
Charlemagne crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome.
1066
Norman conquest of England.
1096–1099
First Crusade: Pope Urban II sends military assistance to Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos to fight the Turks.
1147–1149
Second Crusade: Pope Eugene III, Louis VII of France, and Conrad III of Germany are defeated by Seljuk Turks.
ca. 1170
Erec and Enide, the first of Chrétien de Troyes’s romance poems, is completed.
1189–1192
Third Crusade: King Henry II of England, King Philip II of France, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa attempt to conquer the Holy Land. Henry dies and is succeeded by King Richard I (known as Richard the Lionheart). Frederick Barbarossa also dies en route to the Holy Land.
ca. 1190–1200
The lais of Marie de France, short romance tales of chivalry and the supernatural, are comple
ted.
1202–1204
Fourth Crusade: Crusaders sack the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire, destroying relations between Western and Eastern Christians for centuries to come.
ca. 1340
The Auchinleck Manuscript is produced, including the Middle English romances of Sir Degaré, Floris and Blancheflour, Sir Orfeo, and Amis and Amiloun.
1347–1350
The Black Death ravages Europe, killing about a third of the population.
ca. 1380
Composition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a Middle English Arthurian romance.
ca. 1440
Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press.
1476
William Caxton introduces the printing press to England.
Despite its modern popularity, Beowulf is somewhat unusual as a piece of medieval epic poetry, though it does share some key concerns with later Norse poetry and Icelandic sagas, and there is little evidence of its influence on later narratives. The more influential forms of epic that circulated in Europe were tales of the military exploits of historical (and legendary) kings, and of the men who served them. In the late eleventh century, a form of Old French narrative poetry called chansons de geste (literally “songs of deeds”) began to emerge, telling stories about the exploits of Charlemagne (the “Matter of France”), King Arthur (the “Matter of England”), and the heroes of the Trojan War (the “Matter of Rome”). As the genre developed, the knights who served the legendary kings began to be the central focus of the chanson de geste (reflecting the growing power of the aristocratic knight in the wake of the Crusades). Fantastic and supernatural elements also began to be added, including monstrous enemies—particularly giants—and the use of magic. These elements were introduced as part of the hero’s development: monster-slaying was an important attribute of heroism, and the world of adventures began to incorporate exotic and preternatural realms.
