Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:46:51.447Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

LONGUS’ NARRATOR: A REASSESSMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2020

Calum A. Maciver
Calum A. Maciver*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

An influential position in the scholarship on Longus is that the narrator of Daphnis and Chloe is dissociated from, and ironized by, the author. Two articles by John Morgan, in particular, have propounded this interpretation. Morgan argues that Longus’ narrator relates the story with simplicity and naivety, and in ignorance of the more complex subtleties to which only Longus and the more discerning reader have access: ‘Daphnis and Chloe is told by its narrator as if it were a simpler and more conventional story than it really is, and invites its reader to read it in the same way. One way to describe this textual duplicity is to think in terms of a surface “narrator's text” and a deeper “author's text”. We can conceive the narrator, as established by the prologue, as a distorting and simplifying lens between the story and us. As readers we effectively have the choice of accepting what we see through the lens (that is the “narrator's text” as the “narrator's narratee”) or of correcting it and reading around the narrator (that is reading the “author's text” as the “author's narratee”).’ This type of separation of author and narrator is identifiable in Petronius’ Satyrica, in which the first-person narrator Encolpius who tells his story in hindsight is ridiculed and his narration destabilized by the hidden author who ‘is also listening, along with the reader, to Encolpius’ narrative—and along with the reader is smiling at it’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 827 - 845
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics at St. Andrews in 2018: I would like to thank the audience for their questions and the panel organizers, Jo Norton-Curry and Nick D'Alconzo, for the invitation. I am indebted to Ewen Bowie, Yvan Nadeau, Richard Rawles and CQ's referee for their comments on the written version. Finally, I thank three successive cohorts of students in my Longus Greek Honours class at the University of Edinburgh (2009, 2017, 2020), who, above all, helped to shape my views on the novel.

References

1 Morgan, J., ‘Longus’, in Nünlist, R., Bowie, A.M. and de Jong, I.J.F. (edd.), Narrators, Narratees and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2004), 507–22, at 509Google Scholar supplies the caveat that ‘it is not possible or methodologically desirable systematically to disentangle these two levels’ (i.e. of narrator and author), but he does nevertheless attempt to provide clear instances of demarcation of voice and function, especially in terms of tone and knowledge. For recent works which accept Morgan's position, see e.g. Alvares, J., ‘Innocence, art and experience in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, in Cueva, E.P. and Byrne, S. (edd.), A Companion to the Ancient Novel (Chichester, 2014), 26–42, at 29Google Scholar and Kossaifi, C., ‘The legend of Phatta in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, AJPh 133 (2012), 537–600, at 585Google Scholar. Neither of two recent important books on the novel—Temmerman, K. de, Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel (Oxford, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Whitmarsh, T., Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar—engages with Morgan's work on Longus’ narrator, or attempts to separate out two distinguishing levels of voice in Longus.

2 Morgan (n. 1) and J. Morgan, ‘Nymphs, neighbours and narrators: a narratological approach to Longus’, in S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman and W. Keulen (edd.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond (Leiden, 2003), 171–89.

3 See, too, Morgan, J., Longus: Daphnis and Chloe (Oxford, 2004), 17–20Google Scholar and passim.

4 Morgan (n. 2), 178.

5 G.B. Conte, The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius's Satyricon (Berkeley, 1996), also discussed in Morgan (n. 2), 172.

6 The discussion of Whitmarsh (n. 1), 78 is key: ‘Readers without the benefit of Genettian narratological categories would have been more disposed to identify a narrative “I” more or less directly with the author.’ This is even the case where the narrator is not anonymous but antonymous to the author (as Augustine's comments on Apuleius’ narrator make clear [August. De civ. D. 18.18]).

7 See Morgan (n. 2), 180–1 with Morgan (n. 1), 516–17.

8 Morgan (n. 1), 516.

9 Especially at Morgan (n. 2), 178–9. I cannot cover all of Morgan's points, but will focus on the most salient arguments.

10 Morgan (n. 2), 178–9.

11 Important recent discussions of Longus’ preface include Lauwers, J., ‘A pepaideumenoi's novel: sophistry in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, AncNarr 9 (2011), 53–76, at 59–66Google Scholar, and Whitmarsh (n. 1), 93–6; see further Morgan (n. 3), 145.

12 ἐν Λέσβῳ θηρῶν ἐν ἄλσει Νυμφῶν θέαμα εἶδον κάλλιστον ὧν εἶδον· εἰκόνος γραφήν, ἱστορίαν ἔρωτος. The Longus text throughout is from M.D. Reeve (ed.), Longus: Daphnis et Chloe (Leipzig, 19942), and all translations are my own.

13 There is one single instance of the narrator referring to himself in the first person (οἶμαι, 1.32.3). The ego of the main narrative must be assumed to be the same ego of the preface, with no evidence to suggest that the personae are differing.

14 ὥστε πολλοὶ καὶ τῶν ξένων κατὰ φήμην ᾔεσαν, τῶν μὲν Νυμφῶν ἱκέται, τῆς δὲ εἰκόνος θεαταί (praef. 1). Ewen Bowie points out to me (rightly) that καὶ τῶν ξένων implies that it is locals too (one of whom may be this narrator) who come because of its reputation. On the significance of viewing, enargeia and novelistic openings, see R.L. Hunter, A Study of Daphnis & Chloe (Cambridge, 1983), 40–1.

15 πολλὰ ἄλλα καὶ πάντα ἐρωτικά (praef. 2).

16 The pleasure of mythologizing and fiction is emphasized throughout the novel. Cf. 2.3.1, 2.7.1 and the discussion below.

17 Morgan (n. 1), 508.

18 This Morgan recognizes and discusses in his commentary: (n. 3), 146.

19 See especially Whitmarsh (n. 1), 94–5 and F.I. Zeitlin, ‘The poetics of eros; nature, art and imitation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, in D.M. Halperin, J.J. Winkler and F.I. Zeitlin (edd.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990), 417–64, at 432–3.

20 De domo 2: ‘The same rule about sights does not apply to both uneducated and educated men’ (οὐχ ὁ αὐτὸς περὶ τὰ θεάματα νόμος ἰδιώταις τε καὶ πεπαιδευμένοις ἀνδράσιν).

21 λόγῳ ἀμείψασθαι τὴν θέαν.

22 e.g. ἡ γραφὴ τερπνοτέρα (praef. 1), πόθος (3), κτῆμα δὲ τερπνόν.

23 Cf. Whitmarsh (n. 1), 96: ‘The narrator is vying, competitively, with his source.’

24 On educational elitism of this period, see principally Whitmarsh (n. 1), 100–1.

25 On the identity and significance of the figure Philetas, see Bowie, E.L., ‘Theocritus’ seventh idyll, Philetas and Longus’, CQ 35 (1985), 67–91, at 71–4Google Scholar; Hunter (n. 14), 76–83; and Morgan (n. 3), 5.

26 ἐφίσταται (2.3.1), in the manner, as it were, of a divine epiphany or dream visitation. See Morgan (n. 3), 178, who compares 2.23.1.

27 On the parallelism, see Morgan (n. 3), 149; the idea of labour as literary endeavour is Alexandrian. The final words of the novel, ποιμένων παίγνια, have also been identified as an insertion of the title of Philitas’ bucolic collection: E.L. Bowie, ‘Metaphor in Daphnis and Chloe’, in S. Harrison, M. Paschalis and S. Frangoulidis (edd.), Metaphor and the Ancient Novel (Groningen, 2005), 68–86, at 82–3.

28 Cf. 2.8: Philetas leaves having taught them these things (τοσαῦτα παιδεύσας), just as the narrator in the preface promises that his pleasurable possession will educate those who have never been in love (τὸν οὐκ ἐρασθέντα προπαιδεύσει, praef. 3).

29 Morgan (n. 1), 520.

30 Morgan (n. 1), 520.

31 This has further implications for the type of reader required to unpack the sophistication of this text. Cf. E.L. Bowie, ‘The readership of Greek novels in the ancient world’, in J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore, 1994), 435–59, at 452: ‘This [i.e. the nature of Longus’ literary allusions] requires readers who are mature, alert and well-educated.’

32 Pace Morgan (n. 1), 517 n. 29, in particular.

33 A similar style and generality in description, however, are to be found in the opening words of Philetas to Daphnis and Chloe, whereby he describes his garden (especially 2.3.1–4). McCail, R., Longus: Daphnis and Chloe. A New Translation (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar, ad loc. is set out to illustrate the careful balancing of clause length and rhythm of both the preface and Philetas’ words.

34 Morgan (n. 1), 508.

35 A point expertly discussed by Lauwers (n. 11), 60, who states that the aorist of ‘completed’ action in the preface indicates ‘that Longus consciously composed this proem retrospectively, that is, after the writing down process and in full knowledge of the story itself as he wrote it down … [The author] is aware that his readers do not know the story yet’.

36 Cf. B.P. Reardon, ‘Achilles Tatius and ego-narrative’, in J. Morgan and R. Stoneman (edd.), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London, 1994), 80–96, at 86.

37 As e.g. Morgan (n. 2), 176 notes.

38 Morgan (n. 2), 177. On the topos of the exegete, see Whitmarsh (n. 1), 99–100.

39 Cf. Lauwers (n. 11), 60.

40 In Longus’ preface the position of ecphrasis in progymnasmata is central: Fernández-Delgado, J.A. and Pordomigo, F., ‘Musical ekphrasis and diegema in Longus’ novel’, GRBS 56 (2016), 696–708, especially 697–8Google Scholar.

41 On the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of paratexts, see G. Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (transl. J.E. Lewin) (Cambridge, 1997), 196–236.

42 Cf. C. Imbert, ‘Stoic logic and Alexandrian poetics’, in M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat and J. Barnes (edd.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford, 1980), 183–216, at 206–7.

43 The preface also contains technical vocabulary denotative of literary style: R.L. Hunter, ‘Longus and Plato’, in id., On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception. Part 2: Comedy and Performance, Greek Poetry of the Roman Empire, The Ancient Novel (Berlin and New York, 2008), 775–89, at 785.

44 The adjective occurs fourteen times outside the preface: 1.15.1, 1.21.5, 1.22.3, 2.10.1, 2.11.3, 2.37.3, 2.39.1, 2.39.2, 3.4.3, 3.13.2, 3.19.1, 3.33.4, 4.13.1, 4.17.1.

45 On the implications of these terms, see Goldhill, S., Foucault's Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality (Cambridge, 1995), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 For discussion of the representation of Eros in Longus, see Chalk, H.H.O., ‘Eros and the Lesbian pastorals of Longus’, JHS 80 (1960), 32–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 The grove of the Nymphs in the preface is similarly nurtured by one source, described as a single spring which nourishes all things, both the flowers and the trees (μία πηγὴ πάντα ἔτρεφε καὶ τὰ ἄνθη καὶ τὰ δένδρα). The similarity of subject-matter and vocabulary further links the two gardens as symbolic spaces for literary sophistication and inspiration. Chalk (n. 46), 36 rightly sees this fountain as symbolic of Eros.

48 For the Platonic implications and underlying allusions of the Philetas episode, see F.-G. Herrmann, ‘Longus’ imitation: mimesis in the education of Daphnis and Chloe’, in J. Morgan and M. Jones (edd.), Philosophical Presences in the Ancient Novel (Groningen, 2007), 205–30, at 207.

49 Morgan (n. 2), 176. Zeitlin (n. 19), 150 comes closest with the translation ‘and everything pertained to eros’.

50 At the end of the novel, as the reader gains a glimpse into the future lives of Daphnis and Chloe, the narrator relates that the couple erected an altar to Eros the Shepherd after they had adorned the grove and had hung up the eikones (presumably the same as those described in the preface—see Hunter [n. 14], 42–3).

51 Imbert (n. 42), 207. Morgan (n. 1), 517 argues that the narrator fails to connect the eikones at 4.39.2 with the paintings described by him in the preface, but he does not account for the deliberate disconnection between the paratextual preface and the actual narration within the four books, whereby the narrator never explicitly recalls the preface. The same holds true, for example, of the separation within Lucian's True History: see e.g. the discussion of S. Saïd, ‘Le je de Lucien’, in M.F. Baslez, P. Hoffmann and L. Pernot (edd.), L'invention de l'autobiographie d'Hésiode à Saint Augustin (Paris, 1993), 253–70, at 263–6.

52 Cf. Zeitlin (n. 19), 149–50: ‘A sophist rhetorician who would match the graphē of his writing to the graphē of the painting he sees.’

53 Morgan (n. 2), 178–9. For further discussion of the idealized vs real countryside, see S. Saïd, ‘Rural society in the Greek novel, or the country seen from the town’, in S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel (Oxford, 1999), 83–107, especially 85 and 106–7, and Whitmarsh (n. 1), 96–9, who places particular stress on the role of urban paideia in the contrast.

54 Cf. Hunter (n. 14), 16 on the blurring of human and divine in the identity of the pair.

55 On Longus and Theocritus, see L.R. Cresci, ‘The novel of Longus the sophist and the pastoral tradition’, in S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel (Oxford, 1999), 210–42, and—for a more nuanced discussion—E.L. Bowie, ‘Caging grasshoppers: Longus’ materials for weaving “reality”’, in M. Paschalis and S. Panayotakis (edd.), The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel (Groningen, 2013), 179–97.

56 M. Payne, Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction (Cambridge, 2007), 15.

57 This idealization is in line with the general pattern in the Greek novels, wherein ‘the country is a pleasant picture of the Golden Age ready to be enjoyed’ (Saïd [n. 53], 90).

58 Morgan (n. 2), 176.

59 The synthesis of bucolic with the novelistic, along with comic elements, is called a ‘bold experiment’ by B. Effe, ‘Longus: towards a history of bucolic and its function in the Roman empire’, in S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel (Oxford, 1999), 189–209, at 189, who proves (at 190) that Longus promotes the bucolic above all.

60 Saïd (n. 53), 98.

61 Morgan (n. 2), 180.

62 ἀναπλάττω is used at 1.11.1, discussed below.

63 This latter expression is similar to the formulation by Socrates at Pl. Ti. 26e (τό τε μὴ πλασθέντα μῦθον ἀλλ᾽ ἀληθινὸν λόγον εἶναι πάμμεγά που).

64 Dionysophanes’ view does not quite parallel that of the narrator. At 2.34 Lamon tells the story of Syrinx and Pan (the novel's second inset tale of three), a version he heard from a Sicilian goatherd (an allusion to Theocritus himself). The quality of the telling is praised by Philetas as a mythos sweeter than song itself (2.35.1). Thus, the status of mythoi and of their relation to logos, a recurrent theme of the novel, reappears. Morgan (n. 1), 16–17 gives an excellent overview of the discourse within the novel on this subject.

65 Schlapbach, K., ‘Music and meaning in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe: the inset tales in their performative settings’, Phoenix 69 (2015), 79–99, at 88 n. 32Google Scholar states that ‘it is hardly a coincidence that the verb that refers to Lamon's activity is not μυθολογεῖν but simply “to tell” (ἀφηγήσασθαι, 2.33.3)’. This is not extempore creation.

66 As Morgan (n. 3), 237 states, Dionysophanes’ thinking is ‘not just a snooty implication that country folk are stupid … the invention of such a tale would require a level of literary education unlikely outside the town’.

67 Contra Morgan (n. 1), 513, who assigns the judgement to the narrator himself, and whose comment at 513 n. 17 on the parallel with Lykainion is misguided—it is not only the urban characters in the novel who see the superiority of urban characteristics.

68 On the debate on the precise meaning of this passage, see Herrmann (n. 48), 227–8.

69 The 1983 motion picture directed by Bill Forsyth, Local Hero, is a very apt comparandum. The impoverished Scottish villagers are money-mad and are willing to sell everything they have to a Texan oil company who wish to create a refinery in the area; the American visitor, on the other hand, there to make the deal, gradually forsakes his old corporate ways in favour of the sentimentalized idyll he finds on the Scottish west coast.

70 On class difference and exploitation in Longus, see T. Whitmarsh, ‘Class’, in id. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel (Cambridge, 2008), 72–87.

71 Cf. Saïd (n. 53), 106: ‘Daphnis and Chloe stand as much apart from the work of the fields as the author or the readers of the novel.’

72 Scholarship has focussed to a great extent on the worrying implications of violence for Chloe, given the parallels between her and the parthenoi of the inset tales. See, above all, Winkler, J.J., The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (London, 1990), 116–20Google Scholar. But it should also be emphasized that the education and the musical skills of the parthenoi parallel Chloe's too, given e.g. the similar vocabulary of the Echo inset tale (3.22.4–23.2).

73 Note Schlapbach (n. 65), 84 on μυθολογεῖν: ‘to produce a story that elucidates something.’

74 θρυλεῖν (in the passive voice) is usually translated here as ‘common talk’ (cf. LSJ s.v. II), but I follow Schlapbach (n. 65), 84, who convincingly suggests that the participle refers to the song of the wood-pigeon, given the primary meaning of the verb as ‘chatter, babble’ (LSJ s.v. I).

75 ‘All novel heroes and heroines are pepaideumenoi’: de Temmerman (n. 1), 208.

76 It is at the level of knowledge of the realities of life, and in particular the mechanics of love, that he fails, but this is very much in keeping with his bucolic-literary characterization, set apart from the real world.

77 They are compared to starlings or jackdaws (a conflation of the similes at Il. 16.583 and 17.755, for which see Morgan [n. 3], 188–9).

78 On the rhetorical skill of Daphnis as a reflection of contemporary practice, see Morgan (n. 3), 188 (on 2.16.1).

79 Whitmarsh (n. 1), 96 n. 135 must be correct in seeing οἷα, which introduces the description of Astylus as a rich young man come to the countryside in pursuit of exotic pleasure, as an internal reference back to the Methymnians (especially given the similarity of vocabulary).

80 On New Comedy and Longus, see Hunter (n. 14), 67–70 and, more broadly, Bretzigheimer, G., ‘Die Komik in Longos’ Hirtenroman Daphnis und Chloe’, Gymnasium 95 (1988), 515–55Google Scholar. On the Methymnians as belonging to the world of New Comedy, see Morgan (n. 3), 186.

81 This is not a passage discussed by Morgan (n. 1) or Morgan (n. 2).

82 4.2–3.

83 Cf. Theoc. Id. 20.3–4, a passage which neatly sums up such an opposition.

84 As Saïd (n. 53), 107 states, this life they choose is not one of hard rustic labour, but a continuation of the pastoral idyll.

85 Cf. Effe (n. 59), 202–3.

86 The examples I furnish are mostly taken from Morgan (n. 1).

87 Morgan (n. 1), 509.

88 Morgan (n. 1), 509.

89 Morgan (n. 1), 510.

90 Morgan (n. 1), 509–10.

91 Morgan (n. 1), 509.

92 Cf. E.R. Dodds, Euripides Bacchae (Oxford, 19602), 193 (on lines 920–2). Longus’ narration also owes something to an ecphrastic description of battle more generally (cf. Theon, Progymnasmata 118–19 Spengel).

93 Cf. Verg. Aen. 4.469–70: Dido, maddened, sees visions of the type seen by Pentheus (Eumenidum ueluti demens uidet agmina Pentheus | et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas). A.S. Pease (ed.), Publi Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus (Cambridge, MA, 1935), on line 469 quotes Schol. Dan.: et bene ‘uidet agmina’ expressit furentem, cum ait ‘uidet’, non ‘existimat’, sed ‘putat se uidere’, a view which neatly sums up the nature of a Bacchant's perspective.

94 Morgan (n. 1), 509.

95 See Cioffi, R., ‘Seeing gods: epiphany and narrative in the Greek novels’, AncNarr 11 (2014), 1–42Google Scholar, at 1 n. 2 for an exemplary list of this phenomenon.

96 Cf. LSJ s.v. σπουδαῖος II. Cf. Lucian, Ver. hist. 1.1.5.

97 Contrast Morgan (n. 1), 510.

98 See Bowie, E.L., ‘The Greek novel’, in Swain, S. (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel (Oxford, 1999), 39–59, at 56Google Scholar. Even the style marks out the novel as untypical: Rohde, E., Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer (Leipzig, 1914 4), 515–21Google Scholar.

99 Morgan (n. 1), 516.

100 Morgan (n. 1), 516.

101 Morgan (n. 3), 156 (on 1.8.3): ‘i) the narrator laughs at DC's rusticity; but ii) in so doing distances himself from the author, who knows that the shepherd is the analogue of Eros as supreme natural force (2.7.2).’

102 The classic discussion of the novel's self-strategy for self-control is now Goldhill (n. 45), 1–45.

103 Dorkon < δέρκομαι: Morgan (n. 2), 182.

104 Morgan (n. 2), 182.

105 Note the allusion to Pl. Symp. 207b in ἐρωτικῶς διετέθη, where the sexual instincts of animals are discussed (Morgan [n. 3], 163).

106 See, above all, Goldhill (n. 45), 26–7.

107 I do not engage here in the long debates about the episode's euphemistic details and the ending ‘as for the rest, nature itself taught what had to be done’ (3.18.4). The best discussion is still Goldhill (n. 45), 20–30.

108 Morgan (n. 2), 184, who compares Pl. Phdr. 245b.

109 Morgan (n. 3), 212 (on 3.18.2).

110 Morgan (n. 3), 211 (on 3.16.2) has an excellent discussion.

111 The Odyssean allusions arguably undercut attempts to read serious undertones in this episode, contra e.g. Winkler (n. 72).

112 Morgan (n. 1), 517.

113 The other long digression in the primary narrative is found at 2.1.4, on the nature of the low-growing vines in Lesbos. There is a short comment by the narrator on the fine quality of Lesbian wine at 4.10.3. Neither passage is comparable with the ridiculous content at 1.30.4.

114 Reeve (n. 12), ad loc.

115 Morgan (n. 3), 2: the novel puts forward ‘a mise en scène in an idealized and chronologically indeterminate past’.

116 Bowie, E.L., Longus: Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge, 2019), on 1.30.6Google Scholar, where he notes, too, the other similar uses of μαρτυρεῖν in both Longus and Achilles Tatius, both of whom seem to be imitating Herodotus.