Dis Manibvs Robert Germany
This book has two objectives, one successful and the other much less so. The first is to define and exemplify the ancient phenomenon of ‘mimetic contagion’, which G. defines as ‘the viewer's tendency to imitate or absorb behaviours or ethical qualities from an artwork’ (p. 81). In this, G. has persuasively identified, explicated and substantiated an important trope that spans the literature, philosophy, art and archaeology of Greek and Roman cultures; his contribution is significant and deserves wide consideration. His work is learned, demonstrating impressive command of scholarship from disparate areas of the discipline. G.’s second objective is to use an instance of mimetic contagion in Terence's Eunuchus to resolve the play's largest interpretative crux, the matter of the rape of Pamphila by Chaerea. On this issue, G.’s argument falls short on many points and ultimately does not meaningfully advance our understanding of the play. The introduction and Chapters 1 and 4 focus primarily on Eunuchus; Chapters 2–3 and the epilogue on mimetic contagion in various works of art and literature in the ancient world; and Chapter 5 on a mix of both, with much free association and logical red herrings.
Mimetic contagion, G. contends in his introduction, is distinct from metatheatre, ecphrasis, phantasia and energeia (pp. 17–26), although it is not quite clear how G.’s mimetic contagion differs from ‘ekphrastic contagion’ (T. Whitmarsh, Ramus 31 [2002], 111–25, cited by G., p. 66). The phenomenon is a reversal of the normal pattern of mimesis, whereby life imitates art instead of the other way around – in other words, a reversal not generally conceived of in modern scholarship, which depends on ‘thinking of artefacts as inert objects perceived by rational agents’ with only one ‘stream of agency’, from human to object (p. 49). Chapter 2 offers a desultory browse through Greco-Roman culture for moments of possible erotic mimesis and ranges from frescoes and mime to curse tablets and mirrors, from Homer and Heliodorus to Suetonius and Ovid. The effect is one of many close readings not well integrated.
The most extended discussion of mimetic contagion comes in Chapter 3. The emblematic image is of Parrhasius’ victory over Zeuxis in a painting competition: he painted a curtain so realistic that Zeuxis tried to draw it back (Pliny NH 35.65). The power that art can have over the human mind is thus the source for both suspicion of and pedagogical interest in mimesis among ancient philosophers (evident at, e.g., Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.10, Aristotle, Politics 1340a). A lengthy section on ‘Mimetic contagion and (Platonic) mimesis’ (pp. 77–94) rehearses the familiar analysis of Plato's take on the role of poetry in the Republic and the Timaeus. In the latter text, G. suggests, ‘[m]imesis is not only central to the operation of the world as we know it, it is so precisely because of mimetic contagion’, for the Demiurge imitates the ideal world, the gods he creates imitate his work, and humans’ role is to imitate the cosmos created by the gods (pp. 88–91). The chapter concludes, after a dip into Wilde's ‘The Decay of Lying’ and Irigaray's ‘Plato's Hystera’, with the observation that ‘[m]imesis … can only be represented transitively, in the contagious passage from one imitation to the next’ (p. 94).
Chapter 4 uses the cultural importance of imagines and exempla in ancient Rome to argue persuasively that ‘at least some portion of the original audience of the Eunuch would already have considered representational art to have an ethically contagious effect, particularly on the young’, which G. also connects to the topos among ancient historians that Rome's importation of Greek art and of visual representations of humans played a role in Rome's moral decline (pp. 97–101). In Chapter 5 we find consideration of mimetic contagion at the end of Xenophon's Symposium (pp. 134–40), while the epilogue examines a particularly interesting instance of mimetic contagion, Lucian's story in How to Write History of tragedy fever caused in Abdera by an effective performance of Euripides’ Andromeda.
G.’s interpretation of Eunuchus starts, in his introduction, from the centrality of Chaerea's rape of Pamphila to the play's structure and plot, which includes a series of circumstances seemingly designed to get Chaerea and Pamphila together alone. Central in turn to Chaerea's violent act is the painting of Jupiter raping Danae, which Chaerea treats as inspiration. Consequently, ‘various types of “role-playing” cluster around the painting and share its basic dynamic of mimetic contagion’ (p. 17). The introduction ends with a comparison of Chaerea to sexualised vandalism of Rembrandt's Danaë (pp. 26–7).
Chapter 1 amounts to an apologia of Chaerea the rapist based on wilfully naïve readings of the text. G. asserts that, since Pythias is not an eyewitness and Pamphila does not say what has happened, Chaerea is ‘our only window on to the backstage event’ (p. 28; a troubling assertion, given how often in the modern legal system the testimony of alleged rapists is privileged over evidence against them). Chaerea's post-rape conversation with Antipho about his disguised attempt to get access to Pamphila ‘gives strong confirmation of the plan's innocence’ (p. 37). G. uses arguments from philosophical conceptualisations of rape to categorise it as an attack on personhood, and therefore as historically constrained, and thus as less traumatic in ancient cultures than modern society (pp. 40–1), despite the evidence from the play itself that Pamphila has suffered profound trauma. This chapter's argument is marred by misreadings large and small (e.g. the suggestion that wine is ‘significantly exculpatory’ of rape in comedy, p. 46; claims that Greek and Latin lacked words for rape, p. 40; omission of the important plot point in Terence's Hecyra of the rapist's theft of his victim's ring, p. 44) and the missed opportunity (passim) to point out the exploitation in Eunuchus of multiple meanings of ludus/ludere, ‘play’ and ‘trick’ but also ‘defraud’ with both financial and sexual senses.
Chapter 4 identifies a metatheatrical aspect of the mimetic contagion caused by the Jupiter/Danae painting, which functions as a script for Chaerea and Pamphila (pp. 107–10). G.’s observation of ‘the adhesive quality of role-playing in the Eunuch’ (p. 111) – that Chaerea, once caught, is stuck as eunuch until Thais releases him – is compelling. Particularly intriguing in this chapter is G.’s rhetorical question, which merits further exploration and contemplation by comedy scholars: ‘If an artistic representation of a rape can incite a viewer to imitation, what about a play that contains a rape?’ (p. 107). Chapter 5 characterises the rape as ‘an alien element from the world of mime’ (p. 126) and attempts a strained connection with a debatable interpretation of a Campanian oinochoe in order to claim that Chaerea is a stupidus figure who mimics the archimimi Phaedria and Jupiter (pp. 141–6).
On the whole, the problems with G.’s analysis of Eunuchus are pervasive and deep-seated enough to make the monograph unhelpful to scholars of the play. For a book-length study of the most notorious rape in ancient comedy, there are a distressing number of important and relevant works on rape and specifically on Eunuchus omitted from G.’s bibliography and argument, including work by W.S. Anderson, B. Dufallo, S.L. James, M. Leisner-Jensen, K. McCarthy, Z.M. Packman and A. Richlin. At the same time, I come away convinced mimetic contagion is an actual and heretofore overlooked aspect of ancient experience. G.’s exposition of it merits praise and attention from scholars of ancient literature, art and philosophy alike. G. includes several passages that are as enlightening as they are digressive: discussion of castration in Eunuchus and Plautine comedy (pp. 111–16), for instance, and an excellent re-evaluation of the problem of the Hecyra prologues, in which G. argues that Terence uses his prologues to position his plays as distinct from the more active, supposedly mime-like, default for Roman comedy (pp. 126–31). Similarly, Chapter 6 offers an etymology and cultural accounting for the Latin term contaminare with a survey of the history of modern Quellenforschung of Roman comedy, a worthwhile if off-topic excursus. This book will, I believe, prove more valuable in excerpts than in toto.
