The dead represented as alive and the living (self) represented as dead.
By Dr. Mario Erasmo
Cultural Historian
Professor and Head Undergraduate Coordinator
University of Georgia
Introduction
This living hand, now warm and capable
John Keats1
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d. See, here it is—
I hold it towards you.
Keats’s self-representation as a living corpse in the setting of a tomb dramatizes an exchange between the living and the dead and between poet and an unnamed interlocutor/reader. Even if he is a corpse, death will not come to the poet who will hasten the death of his interlocutor/reader as an escape from his haunting. The poet’s hand dominates the poem and seems to reach out beyond the page to assault the reader spatially and psychologically, as it forms a ring composition, now alive, now dead and alive. The interlocutor/reader’s death, however, will not destroy the poet whose corpse and poem will live on. In a variation of the theme of poetry as a vehicle for immortality, both poet and the poet’s corpse live on in a poem that seeks to destroy the very reader who is instrumental in securing the poet’s immortality.
The allusion to death ritual in Keats’s poem results in the figurative blurring of the living and the dead and the theatricalization of death ritual that produces many effects, including: narrative tension as to whether a character is dead or alive; the denial or removal of narrative closure that makes it more difficult to interpret a process rather than a completed act, especially in the case of someone in the act of living or dying who should otherwise be dead (or alive); the questioning of nature in the reversal of biological experience or fact and the questioning of death ritual. Biological or veristic ambiguity leads to a moral ambiguity: is a character dying or staying alive in a “morally correct” way? Should they be dead or are they cheating death? Are they fooling the living or betraying the dead?
Sallust’s description of the dead Catiline, for example, calls his mortality (and morality) into question through allusion to death ritual: Catilina vero longe a suis inter hostium cadavera repertus est, paululum etiam spirans ferociamque animi, quam habuerat vivos, in voltu retinens. (61.4)2 /. “Catiline was found far from his own men among the corpses of the enemy, still breathing a little and retaining the violent expression on his face which he had when alive.” Sallust focuses the narrative on Catiline’s face which is lifelike (still breathing and retaining a violent expression) but it is described in terms that evoke an imago.3 Thus, Catiline’s face serves as metonymy for his entire body but presents the reader with a paradox: Catiline is a cadaver and yet not a cadaver, but he is at once lifelike and funereal. Moreover, he seems to defy the narrative by continuing to live even beyond his death and the reader is confronted with a living corpse that is neither dead nor alive but whose description anticipates its appearance at his funeral.4
Seneca (Ep. 12.8–9) makes his condemnation of playing dead explicit when he describes the funerals which Pacuvius, the governor of Syria, held for himself:
Pacuvius, qui Syriam usu suam fecit, cum vino et illis funebribus epulis sibi parentaverat, sic in cubiculum ferebatur a cena, ut inter plausus exoletorum hoc ad symphoniam caneretur: bebi&wtai, bebi&wtai. Nullo non se die extulit. Hoc, quod ille ex mala conscientia faciebat, nos ex bona faciamus et in somnum ituri laeti hilaresque dicamus:
Vixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi.
Crastinum si adiecerit deus, laeti recipiamus. Ille beatissimus est et securus sui possessor, qui crastinum sine sollicitudine expectat. Quisquis dixit “vixi,” cotidie ad lucrum surgit.5
Pacuvius, who from habit made Syria his own, with wine and funeral feasts commemorated himself, thus he was carried into his room from the dinner table, while, among the applause of boys, this was sung to the accompaniment of music: “He lived, he lived.” Not just on this one day was he carried out to burial. Let us do this from a good motive and not from a bad one as he used to do, and going to sleep, let us say joyfully:
I lived and what course Fortune gave, I completed.
If God adds a tomorrow, we should accept it joyfully. That man is most fortunate and confident in self-possession who looks forward to the next day without worry. Anyone who has said, “I lived” will rise each day to advantage.
In playing dead, Pacuvius takes on a number of roles simultaneously: host, actor, and corpse as dinner guests (and musicians) willingly play mourners. Pacuvius mimics a commemorative death ritual (Parentalia) to anticipate his future death which Seneca attributes to a bad motive (ex mala conscientia), but it is not clear whether Seneca finds the imitation of the deceased itself more amoral than Pacuvius’ repeated role playing as a corpse as part of some carpe diem entertainment.6
Clarity on the morality of playing dead, however, emerges from Seneca’s condemnation, since he self-identifies with the dying Dido in his quotation of Aeneid 4.653 which is in the form of an epitaph. Seneca imagines himself close to death in order to appreciate life (rather than to entertain his dinner guests) but, ironically, his quotation of Dido comes as he is about to fall asleep and thus play dead himself. Thus, to Seneca’s mind, one’s motive defines the morality of playing dead and not just the imitation of the dead.
Recent developments in the American funeral industry point to the growing theatricality of modern funerary practices that mirror Pacuvius’ “living funeral” (or the extending of the theatricality inherent in displaying the deceased in a formal living room setting at a funeral home which is neither a living room nor a recreation of an activity common in many American living rooms) that mirror the theatricalized funerals of ancient Rome. The range of unique funeral services varies from the personal (such as the selection of music or a reading), to the representational (unique choice of funeral service or burial setting), and self-representational (the corpse as actor in their former role and setting).
These contemporary practices offer a useful perspective when considering the figurative impact of theatricalized elements of Roman funerals, in particular, role playing by the deceased, mimes imitating the deceased, and mourners who are spectators and actors in the illusion that blurs the distinction between the living and the dead. Wakes are staged as a theater experience by funeral directors who perform like stage directors and design sets for the deceased to act out their former identities even though their displayed bodies break the illusion of a reanimated corpse.7 Mourners extend the theatricalized experience: they become an audience entertained by the stage props, but they also emerge as actors perpetuating the dramatic illusion. At the Wade Funeral Home in Saint Louis, for example, staged funerals include “Big Momma’s Kitchen” in which mourners find the deceased in a family dinner setting with such props as a loaf of Wonder Bread on top of the refrigerator and real fried chicken on the stove. The website for the Funeral Home reveals other themes such as “The Woodsman,” “Military,” “Jazz,” and “The Gardener.” These various tableaux vivants feature corpse actors in the starring role of their own recreated biographies for an audience who joins in the dramatic illusion.
The dead continue to role play as they assume their former identities and favorite activities in familiar settings in which mourners recreate their own relationships and interactions with the deceased as they simultaneously mourn and celebrate the deceased. The deceased, however, is not limited to role playing during a funeral wake—the “Celebrate Life Program” turns the ashes of the deceased into a firework display in which the deceased literally becomes the entertainment and not just a participant in the dramatic illusion of wakes.8
This chapter examines the living corpse, the dead represented as alive and the living (self) represented as dead through physical or figurative referents from funerary ritual. I focus on the author’s use of death ritual to call both the mortality and the morality of a literary character/historical personality into question, such as funeral rehearsals like Pacuvius’ and the figuratively dead widow, fictional and historic, which results in a text in which the referents themselves take on their own figurative (re)interpretations.9
The Living Corpse
In Propertius, 2.13B. 17–58, the poet plays dead as he describes his own cremation and epitaph to an uncaring Cynthia:
Quandocumque igitur nostros mors claudet ocellos,
accipe quae serves funeris acta mei.
nec mea tunc longa spatietur imagine pompa,
nec tuba sit fati vana querela mei;
nec mihi tunc fulcro sternatur lectus eburno,
nec sit in Attalico mors mea nixa toro.
desit odoriferis ordo mihi lancibus, adsint
plebei parvae funeris exsequiae.
sat mea sat magna est, si tres sint pompa libelli,
quos ego Persephonae maxima dona feram.
tu vero nudum pectus lacerata sequeris,
nec fueris nomen lassa vocare meum,
osculaque in gelidis pones suprema labellis,
cum dabitur Syrio munere plenus onyx.
deinde, ubi suppositus cinerem me fecerit ardor,
accipiat Manis parvula testa meos,
et sit in exiguo laurus super addita busto,
quae tegat exstincti funeris umbra locum,
et duo sint versus: QUI NUNC IACET HORRIDA PULVIS,
UNIUS HIC QUONDAM SERVUS AMORIS ERAT.
nec minus haec nostri notescet fama sepulcri,
quam fuerant Pthii busta cruenta viri.
tu quoque si quando venies ad fata, memento,
hoc iter ad lapides cana veni memores.
interea cave sis nos aspernata sepultos:
non nihil ad verum conscia terra sapit.
atque utinam primis animam me ponere cunis
iussisset quaevis de Tribus una Soror!
nam quo tam dubiae servetur spiritus horae?
Nestoris est visus post tria saecla cinis:
cui si longaevae minuisset fata senectae
†Gallicus† Iliacis miles in aggeribus,
non ille Antilochi vidisset corpus humari,
diceret aut ‘O mors, cur mihi sera venis?’
tu tamen amisso non numquam flebis amico:
fas est praeteritos semper amare viros.
testis, cui niveum quondam percussit Adonem
venantem Idalio vertice durus aper;
illis formosus iacuisse paludibus, illuc
diceris effusa tu, Venus, isse coma.
sed frustra mutos revocabis, Cynthia, Manis:
nam mea quid poterunt ossa minuta loqui?10Therefore, whenever death may close my eyes,
hear how you should carry out my funeral arrangements.
let there be no long procession that winds its way with my image,
nor a trumpet that vainly mourns my death;
nor let the posts of a couch be covered in ivory for me,
nor should my corpse lie on a bed in Attalic style.
nor let there be a sequence of fragrant plates for me,
rather, there should be the modest rites of a common funeral.
Enough, great even, if there were a procession of my three books,
my greatest gifts, which I will make to Persephone.
Of course you will follow with your breasts bared and beaten,
nor will you tire from calling out my name,
and you will place final kisses on my cold lips,
when the onyx jar full of Syrian oil is given.
Then, when the fire placed underneath has made me ash,
let a small clay urn receive my shade,
and let a laurel be planted near my small pyre,
that will cover the place of my cremation with shade,
and these two verses: HE WHO NOW LIES HERE AS CRUDE DUST,
ONCE WAS THE SLAVE OF A SINGLE LOVE.
Nor will the fame of my grave be less famous
than was the bloody tomb of the Phthian.
And whenever you arrive at your end, remember, white haired,
the way to these commemorative stones and come.
Meanwhile, be careful not to despise my buried remains:
Earth, aware of all, knows not a little about the truth.
I wish that one of the Three Sisters had decreed that
I would stop breathing in my child’s seat.
For why is the spirit saved for a doubtful hour?
The ash of Nestor was seen after three generations:
if some soldier on the ramparts of Troy had
reduced the term of his old age,
he would not have seen the corpse of Antilochus buried,
or asked, “O death, why do you come to me so late?”
Sometimes, however, you will weep for your dead friend:
it is right always to love men who have passed.
Witness, the savage boar who once pierced snow white
Adonis on the peaks of Mount Ida;
beautiful as he lay on those reeds where they say
you, Venus, went with disheveled hair.
But, in vain, Cynthia, will you call back my senseless shade:
for how will my diminished bones be able to speak?
The tone of the elegy is ironic as the poet describes his death, mock-funeral, cremation, burial, and epitaph as future events that seem to be unfolding in the present. The “fictiveness of the rite,” as described by Feeney in relation to Tibullus’ poetry in the Introduction, reveals Propertius’ authorial agenda in alluding to funerary ritual: to contrast Cynthia’s future peformance of funerary ritual in the poem with her present neglect of the poet. The poet directs her response and our interpretation of her actions: the poet is both corpse and funeral director as the narrator and reader focus on Cynthia’s f ictive performance of funerary ritual (27 ff.), in which Propertius depicts his mistress as his wife, but that also adds to the illusion and irony of her performance. Cynthia’s reaction to the poet’s role playing as a dead lover is not described but the tone of his performance as corpse, while ironic in its allusion to death ritual, is playful and not intended to offend the reader.
The epitaph does not identify the poet by name, but rather he uses it to self-identify as a servus amoris who was faithful to one lover alone. Nonetheless, the grave will be famous, but whether because it will be associated with the poet specifically or appeal to a visitor/reader’s sympathy is not stated. While there is no mention of his beloved in the epitaph, the expression servus implies his love for a domina who may or may not take notice of his suffering and death. The epitaph is both text and pretext to communicate the poet’s love which will be read by Cynthia as she makes commemorative visits to his grave and reads the words of the dead (40–41).
Mythological allusions add to the tragic (and comic) tone. The poet’s tomb is compared to Achilles’, which was where Polyxena was slaughtered as Achilles’ bride (36–37). The poet also expresses a wish for an earlier death than that which came to Nestor who lived for three generations (43–50). Self-identification with two diverse mythological characters—the one died young, the other in extreme old age—adds to the irony. Propertius uses the expression, fas est praeteritos semper amare viros (52), with its pun on the verb to esteem and to love, that even makes it a religious and moral imperative to love the dead. Other mythological referents, such as Venus’ mourning of Adonis, provide an example, or even a script, for Cynthia to follow when performing her fictive rituals.
The last two lines of the poem call attention to the joke that Propertius’ corpse is currently animated and will continue to impact and engage Cynthia’s life after the poet’s death, much like Keats’ hand that defies time and space to haunt the living. Despite playing dead and alluding to death ritual, however, the elegiac context keeps the tone playful rather than offensive, by situating Propertius’ mock funeral and burial within the context of his elegies as a lover with a persona who is at the mercy of a domina.
Trimalchio’s Funeral Rehearsal
Pacuvius’ prestaging of his funeral as entertainment receives fuller treatment as a carpe diem topos in Petronius’ Satyricon. The freedman Trimalchio invites guests to his house for a dinner party, including the novel’s protagonists Encolpius, Ascyltus, and Giton. Trimalchio’s house becomes a source of conversation that constantly reacts to an ever-changing environment that requires ever-changing interpretations of the setting by characters and readers alike. Descriptions of funeral preparations accompany dinner courses in a complex interplay between conversation and food, as Trimalchio, obsessed with death, outlines details of his funeral and burial to his dinner guests (71–78).11 Since the meal begins before Trimalchio’s description and enactment of his funeral, guests unwittingly become participants of Trimalchio’s funeral in a reversal of Trimalchio’s modern corpse actors, like those at the Wade Funeral Home, who provide “entertaining” wakes and present themselves as literal spectacles for mourners who arrive at a funeral home to participate in the dramatic illusion and allusion. By feasting a living man who imitates his future dead-self, the guests participate in a reversal of the Parentalia, the festival in which Roman honored the dead with ritual meals at their graves.12
Among conversation on the brevity of life, Trimalchio gives directions for his tomb and epitaph, including plot size, an area for the cultivation of fruit and wine (cepotaphium), and a marker addressed to passersby that reads more like an entry in a will: Hoc monumentum heredem non sequatur / “Let this monument not accede to an heir.13 After describing measures that will be taken to ensure that no one will defecate on his tomb, Trimalchio describes the monument itself as a ship, with a statue of himself seated as a magistrate accompanied by a statue of his wife and various pets. The passerby is imagined as a reluctant or hostile visitor since Trimalchio takes measures to ensure that his name is tied to the monument: Horologium in medio, ut quisquis horas inspiciet, velit nolit, nomen meum legat / “In the middle a sundial, so that anyone wanting to see the time will read my name, whether he wants to or not.”
Trimalchio’s epitaph marks the location where his remains are buried and lists his accomplishments (71.12):
C. Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus hic requiescit. Huic seviratus absenti decretus est. Cum posset in omnibus decuriis Romae esse, tamen noluit. Pius, fortis, fidelis, ex parvo crevit, sestertium reliquit trecenties, nec umquam philosophum audivit. Vale: et tu.
Here lies Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus. He was voted a priest of Augustus in his absence. Although he was able to be enrolled in every office in Rome, he refused. Devoted, brave, faithful, he grew from humble origins, he left thirty million sesterces, he never listened to a philosopher. Farewell: even to you.
The epitaph implies membership to political clubs which Trimalchio took no interest in attending. The listing of his virtues mix moral qualities with his financial success and pride in his lack of education. Trimalchio addresses the passerby and even writes a response to ensure a dialogue with the living after death.
After describing his funeral monument and epitaph, and filling the dining room with funereal lamentation, Trimalchio asks, “ergo” inquit “cum sciamus nos morituros esse, quare non vivamus?” / “‘Therefore, he said, ‘since we know that we are all going all die, why not enjoy life?’” (72.2). The question is far from philosophical musing since the tasteless dinner conversation takes a turn for the worse when Trimalchio enacts his own funeral and turns his dinner guests into mourners (77.7–78.1–7):
“[ . . . ] Interim, Stiche, profer vitalia in quibus volo me efferri. Profer et unguentum et ex illa amphora gustum ex qua iubeo lavari ossa mea.”
Non est moratus Stichus sed et stragulam albam et praetextam in triclinium attulit iussitque nos temptare an bonis lanis essent confecta. Tum subridens “vide tu” inquit “Stiche, ne ista mures tangant aut tineae; alioquin te vivum comburam. Ego gloriosus volo efferri, ut totus mihi populus bene imprecetur.” Statim ampullam nardi aperuit omnesque nos unxit et “spero” inquit “futurum ut aeque me mortuum iuvet tamquam vivum.” Nam vinum quidem in vinarium iussit infundi et “putate vos” ait “ad parentalia mea invitatos esse.” Ibat res ad summam nauseam cum Trimalchio ebrietate turpissima gravis novum acroama, cornicines, in triclinium iussit adduci fultusque cervicalibus multis extendit se super torum extremum et “fingite me” inquit “mortuum esse. Dicite aliquid belli.”
Consonuere cornicines funebri strepitu. Unus praecipue servus libitinarii illius qui inter hos honestissimus erat tam valde intonuit ut totam concitaret viciniam. Itaque vigiles qui custodiebant vicinam regionem, rati ardere Trimalchionis domum, effregerunt ianuam subito et cum aqua securibusque tumultari suo iure coeperunt.
“[ . . . ] In the meantime, Stichus, bring out the shroud in which I want to be buried. Bring the ointment and a taste of wine from that jar from which I ordered my bones to be washed.”
Stichus did not delay but brought the white cloth and bordered toga into the dining room and Trimalchio ordered us to test whether they were made of good wool. Then smiling, he said, “Stichus, don’t let mice or moths touch it or I will burn you alive. I want to be carried out for burial magnificently so that everyone will say a kind prayer for me.” Immediately, he opened a jar of nard and smeared all of us, then said, “I hope that this will be equally as pleasant in death as it is to me alive.” Next he ordered wine to be poured into a bowl and said, “Pretend that you have been invited to my parentalia.” The whole thing was reaching a nauseating level when Trimalchio, grounded in his shameful drunkenness, ordered new entertainment and horn players to be led into the dining room. Propped up on many cushions and stretched out along the length of his couch, he said, “Pretend that I am dead. Say something nice.”
The horn players made a mess of the funeral music. Especially one, the slave of the undertaker and the most respectable man among them, blew so loudly that he woke up the whole neighborhood. So the watchmen who were guarding a neighboring region, thinking that Trimalchio’s house was on fire, quickly broke the door open and, like always, began to cause a commotion with their water and axes.
Trimalchio’s directions to his slaves to produce items that would be used in his cremation and burial place him in the alternating roles of corpse and funeral director. Trimalchio’s directions, however, are not given in a chronological order that reflects funerary practice; rather they are given in random order from cremation, burial preparation, wake, graveside commemoration, to laid-out corpse: Trimalchio asks for items that would be used to quench his cremation fire and describes the collection of his cremated remains (ossilegium) before he describes his pre-cremated appearance in his funeral shroud. Guests are then invited to pay respects at his tomb in an enactment of the parentalia. Finally, Trimalchio stretches out on a couch and imitates his own future corpse and asks his guests to pretend that he is dead and pay him compliments. The arrival of the fire brigade puts a comic end to Trimalchio’s funeral rehearsal and allows some of his guests to escape. Trimalchio’s “rescue” by the fire brigade simulates his resurrection in yet another inversion of funerary ritual.
Intertexts also marginalize Trimalchio’s funeral enactment: Seneca’s condemnation of Pacuvius, the governor of Syria, who acted out his own funeral as entertainment, points to the amorality of playing dead.14 Claudius, who witnesses his own funeral cortege in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis (12), as Mercury leads him from heaven to the underworld, is already dead and does not take an active role in directing the rituals. The description of the funeral and public lamentation mock Claudius’ deification and the intelligence of the emperor himself: Claudius, ut vidit funus suum, intellexit se mortuum esse (12.12–13).15 In Suetonius’ narrative of Nero’s final moments before his death (discussed in chapter 5), Nero gives burial directions to his slaves out of expediency and his concern for the size of the grave and his impromptu epitaph reflect his cowardice and fear of decapitation and his vanity. Unlike Trimalchio, however, Nero does not play dead in anticipation of his imminent death.
Trimalchio, like his counterpart Pacuvius, alternates between his roles as host, a corpse, and a funeral director. Dinner guests are turned into mourners and actors since Trimalchio observes their actions and gauges their sincerity. The chronological confusion of ritual elements and the sensory assault on his guests magnify the vulgarity and absurdity of Trimalchio’s behavior. Despite the melodramatic humor of the scene, from an aesthetics of mortality perspective, Trimalchio’s enactment or even rehearsal of his funeral is a perversion of death ritual and his request that his guests and household staff demonstrate the grief that they would show for him after his death, while he is watching, exemplify his amoral character. This moral lapse and the impropriety of his behavior are reminscent of Pacuvius’ own and Seneca’s condemnation of it as originating ex mala conscientia. Literary intertexts place Trimalchio’s behavior within a satiric topos but in a class all his own.
The Entombed Widow
Petronius uses funerary ritual as a literal backdrop in the tale of the Widow of Ephesus (111–113) which Eumolpus recites (as reported by Encolpius) on Lichas’ ship to intercede on behalf of Encolpius and Giton who have been discovered by their former patrons, Tryphaena and Lichas, from whose amorous attentions they escaped earlier in the novel. The story revolves around a widow who figuratively plays dead, by mourning the death of her husband in his tomb, until she gives in to temptation and has sex with the soldier who was guarding the crucified bodies of criminals nearby, and with whom she flees at the end of the tale.16
The widow’s husband is buried in a “mausoleum crypt in the Greek manner” (in hypogaeo Graeco more corpus (111.2) which means that the body is not cremated in the Roman custom but laid to rest intact.17 The mausoleum provides a dramatic setting that focuses the narrative on three characters (the widow, her maid, and the soldier) within an enclosed space whose actions take place within view of the husband’s corpse (and perhaps the corpses/sarcophagi of others). The reader (and Eumolpus’ audience) is introduced to the widow first by reputation (her public display of grief is described as a spectacle, spectaculum [111.1] that turns her mourning into a performance before an audience), and then by a demonstration of her deep grief through excessive ritual mourning as she occupies the mausoleum with her husband. The widow becomes a figurative corpse in her constant mourning and shunning of life:
Sic afflictantem se ac mortem inedia persequentem non parentes potuerunt abducere, non propinqui; magistratus ultimo repulsi abierunt, complorataque ab omnibus singularis exempli femina quintum iam diem sine alimento trahebat.
Neither her parents nor her relatives were able to lead her away, a woman so shattered and following death through starvation; finally the magistrates, after being rejected, left. This woman was mourned by all as a unique example who already let five days go by with any food. (111.3)
T herefore, after playing the widow in public, the widow plays dead in her husband’s mausoleum, and even looks the part as she is symbolically entombed/buried alive in order to continue to mourn the death of her husband until (presumably) death also comes to her.
After the soldier, who is guarding the bodies of crucified criminals, notices a light among the monumenta, he investigates the cause and discovers the widow and her maid (111.7–9):
Descendit igitur in conditorium, visaque pulcherrima muliere primo quasi quodam monstro infernisque imaginibus turbatus substitit. Deinde ut et corpus iacentis conspexit et lacrimas consideravit faciemque unguibus sectam, ratus scilicet id quod erat, desiderium extincti non posse feminam pati, adtulit in monumentum cenulam suam coepitque hortari lugentem ne perseveraret in dolore supervacuo et nihil profuturo gemitu pectus diduceret: omnium eandem esse sedem et domicilium, et cetera quibus exulceratae mentes ad sanitatem revocantur. At illa ignota consolatione percussa laceravit vehementius pectus ruptosque crines super pectus iacentis imposuit.
T herefore, he went down into the tomb and when the most beautiful woman was first seen he stood still as though disturbed by some appartition from the underworld [imagines]. Then when he saw the corpse and studied the tears and her face scratched from her nails, he took the situation for what it was, the woman was not able to endure the loss of her dead husband. He brought his own dinner into the tomb and began to urge the grieving woman not to persist in her useless grief or harm her breasts in lamentation: the same end and resting spot awaits us all, and other things with which troubled minds are recalled to health. But she, uncaring of consolation, struck and tore her breast more violently and laid the hair that she pulled from her head onto the chest of her dead husband.
The soldier, after mistaking the widow for an apparition from the underworld, sees physical signs of mourning and tries to get her to eat and drink to rejoin the living. The practical maid accepts the wine and food and then works on getting the widow to drink and eat by quoting Anna’s advice to Dido in Vergil’s Aeneid in which she urges her sister not to be a widow who does not remarry (univira) out of loyalty to her husband’s memory: Id cinerem aut manes credis sentire sepultos? / “Do you think that ashes and the buried shades can feel this?” (4.34). The maid quotes a second line from the same scene in the Aeneid, but this time from Anna’s advice to Dido to consider remarriage for the security of her kingdom: Placitone etiam pugnabis amori, / nec venit in mentem quorum consederis arvis? / “Do you even resist a pleasant love, nor has it entered your mind whose lands you have settled?” (4.38–39). The maid’s second allusion draws attention to the setting and political reality of Dido’s refusal to remarry, but in the widow’s case, the setting is her husband’s tomb which should provoke the opposite response. The initial quote from the Aeneid momentarily raises the tone of the story and the dignity of the widow, but the second quote causes the reader to rethink the allusion and the tone of the comparison.
The widow gives in to the arguments of food and then her lust for the soldier. The text is not explicit whether the widow and the soldier have sex within view of the husband’s corpse, but there is a double entendre to the mourner’s assumption that the widow was expiring over the corpse of her husband (112.3):
Iacuerunt ergo una non tantum illa nocte qua nuptias fecerunt sed postero etiam ac tertio die, praeclusis videlicet conditorii foribus, ut quisque ex notis ignotisque ad monumentum venisset putaret expirasse super corpus viri pudicissimam uxorem.
So they lay together, and not just on this one night did they make love but also on the next night and even the third day. The doors of the tomb were naturally closed, so that any relative or stranger who came to it would think that this most chaste woman had died over the corpse of her husband.
T hus, the widow betrays her husband and her reputation by not observing his death for a decent length of time and failing to do so in his very tomb. T he widow also betrays her epic intertext since allusions to the Aeneid add a mock epic tone which may also cause the reader to question Dido’s commitment to her dead husband.
Meanwhile, one of the bodies of the crucified criminals was removed while the soldier was having sex with the widow in the tomb. When the soldier threatens to commit suicide to avoid punishment, the widow offers to place the body of her husband on the cross (112.7–8):
Mulier non minus misericors quam pudica “nec istud” inquit “dii sinant ut eodem tempore duorum mihi carissimorum hominum duo funera spectem. Malo mortuum impendere quam vivum occidere.” Secundum hanc orationem iubet ex arca corpus mariti sui tolli atque illi quae vacabat cruci adfigi. Usus est miles ingenio prudentissimae feminae posteroque die populus miratus est qua ratione mortuus isset in crucem.
But the woman was no less compassionate than she was chaste. “The gods,” she said, “do not allow me to look on the two deaths of the two men most dear to me at the same time. I prefer to hang a dead man than to kill a man who is alive.” Following this speech, she ordered the body to be taken out of his tomb and to be attached to the cross which was empty. T he soldier took advantage of this idea of the most thoughtful woman and on the next day, the people marveled at how the dead man had climbed onto the cross.
T he resourcefulness of the widow and the reversal of death ritual at the end of the story give the ending its humor: she unburies her husband (and subjects his corpse to a criminal’s punishment) while she undergoes a metaphorical rebirth/resurrection from his tomb to marry the soldier. The confusion of the populace only adds to her amoral victory since it is their (incorrect) interpretation of her character and actions while mourning that lead to her cunning departure with her sterling reputation seemingly intact.
T he paradoxical ending of the tale depends on death ritual: the widow plays dead in her grief but she betrays her husband’s memory in his own tomb within days of his burial. Moreover, she leaves his body unburied and on a criminal’s crucifix as she secretly leaves town with the soldier. The widow’s amoral yet humorous disregard for her dead husband, in favor of her new lover, contrasts with her reputation and outward signs of mourning. It also contrasts with her epic intertext, Dido, since Petronius’ allusions to the Aeneid suggest commonality between the characters of the widow and Dido.18 The tomb as backdrop to the widow’s mourning and her disrespect for her former husband serve as an aesthetic focal point to her amorality. The sailors listening to Eumolpus laugh at the widow’s cleverness but not Lichas (113.2), who interprets himself as an intertext to the betrayed husband of the tale and the target of Eumolpus’ authorial aim.
T he tomb of the widow’s husband is the setting of both his burial and her subsequent wedding, which is a reversal of the literary topos of the virgin Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, who is sacrificed on Achilles’ tomb on her wedding day, thus turning her wedding into her funeral (see discussion below of Seneca’s Troades). The story is a Milesian tale designed to shock through irony and paradox, but the story employs complex narrative strategies: Although Eumolpus claims that the story happened in his lifetime, it alludes to literary intertexts from Homer’s Odyssey to Vergil’s Aeneid; thus it is and is not a tale based on reality (the fictional reality of the novel) and it is and is not a literary topos. The setting is Ephesus but the focus is on the universality of the characters’ actions rather than their locale. Neither the widow nor the soldier is named, and thus the story becomes an Everyman’s tale that exploits the folly of human behavior.
Seneca’s Dead Widow
Narratives on the deaths of prominent men (exitus illustrium virorum) were popular at the beginning of Nero’s reign and Tacitus incorporates noteworthy suicides in his Annales following the Pisonian conspiracy. The suicide of Seneca in 65 CE, in particular, provided Tacitus with a subject whose philosophical writings often contrasted with his political activities. Tacitus extends the irony between Seneca’s moralistic persona and his expedient/selfserving behavior to the narrative of his death to exemplify his hyprocrisy and pomposity. Seneca’s wife, Paulina, does not escape the scathing indictment of hypocrisy leveled at Seneca; Tacitus uses a description of her attempted suicide and allusion to death ritual to cast her as a living corpse who cheats death amorally to remain among the living.19
The theatricality of Tacitus’ narrative, as with his earlier account of the death of Agrippina that is framed as a tragedy, turns characters into actors and the reader into an audience member:
Ubi haec atque talia velut in commune disseruit, complectitur uxorem et paululum adversus praesentem fortitudinem mollitus rogat oratque temperaret dolori neu aeternum susciperet, sed in contemplatione vitae per virtutem actae desiderium mariti solaciis honestis toleraret. illa contra sibi quoque destinatam mortem adseverat manumque percussoris exposcit. tum Seneca gloriae eius non adversus, simul amore, ne sibi unice dilectam ad iniurias relinqueret, ‘vitae’ inquit ‘delenimenta monstraveram tibi, tu mortis decus mavis: non invidebo exemplo. Sit huius tam fortis exitus constantia penes utrosque par, claritudinis plus in tuo fine.’ post quae eodem ictu brachia ferro exolvunt. Seneca, quoniam senile corpus et parco victu tenuatum lenta effugia sanguini praebat, crurum quoque et poplitum venas abrumpit; saevisque cruciatibus defessus, ne dolore suo animum uxoris infringeret atque ipse visendo eius tormenta ad impatientiam delaberetur, suadet in aliud cubiculum abscedere. et novissimo quoque momento suppeditante eloquentia advocatis scriptoribus pleraque tradidit, quae in vulgus edita eius verbis invertere supersedeo.
At Nero nullo in Paulinam proprio odio, ac ne glisceret invidia crudelitatis, iubet inhiberi mortem. hortantibus militibus servi libertique obligant brachia, premunt sanguinem, incertum an ignarae. nam ut est vulgus ad deteriora promptum, non defuere qui crederent, donec implacabilem Neronem timuerit, famam sociatae cum marito mortis petivisse, deinde oblata mitiore spe blandimentis vitae evictam; cui addidit paucos postea annos, laudabili in maritum memoria et ore ac membris in eum pallorem albentibus ut ostentui esset multum vitalis spiritus egestum.
When he had said these and similar things as if for public hearing, he embraced his wife and, somewhat contrary to his current show of strength, he gently asked and begged that she limit her grief and not endure it for long, but to bear it in dignified solace through contemplation of her husband’s life conducted with virtue. Instead, she resolutely demanded to die with him and asked for the executioner’s stroke. Seneca was not opposed to her aspiration and at the same time out of love, did not want to leave to harm one so cherished by himself. “I offered the attractions of life to you” he said, “but you prefer the glory of death: I will not begrudge you becoming an example. May this resolve of so brave a death be shared by us both but there will be more fame in your death” After he spoke, they cut their arms with the same stroke of the blade. Seneca, because his body was old and slight through austere living, released a slow flow of blood so he also cut the veins in his shins and behind his knees. Worn out from the brutal pain and so that he would not weaken his wife’s resolve through his own suffering and lose his own determination in seeing her agony, he asked her to go to another room. But even in his final moments, his eloquence was at hand and he recited many things to summoned secretaries which I will not relate since they are in circulation, published in his own words.
But Nero, since he did not hate Paulina personally, and so that his reputation for cruelty would not spread, ordered her death to be prevented. At the urging of soldiers, slaves and freedmen tied up her arms and staunched the blood, but it is unclear whether she was unconscious. The public, however, is drawn to less favorable versions and there were some who believed that as long as she feared that Nero was implacable, she sought the glory of a shared death with her husband, then was persuaded when offered the brighter prospect of a pleasant life; she lived on for a few years afterwards, in praiseworthy memory of her husband; on her face and limbs was a pallor that showed how much vital blood she had lost. (Ann. 15.63–64).20
In Tacitus’ account of Seneca’s suicide, Seneca is the initial protagonist who directs his own and his wife’s suicide and interprets them in-progress. Seneca is both emperor and author: although condemned to die, he takes control of his suicide and the narrative which he interprets, in particular Paulina’s seemingly faithful and voluntary decision to die with her husband. How could he not? The exemplum of Seneca’s life has made Paulina morally virtuous, so Seneca accepts her offer to commit suicide with him immediately without doubting her sincerity. Seneca is aware of the posthumous glory of her deed to his own reputation if she accompanied him in death and it was seen as her choice.21 The direct words of Paulina to her husband are not reported, however, which gives Tacitus’ narrative an intentionally ambiguous quality: the reader must accept her intentions and his interpretation as sincere or both as examples of self-aggrandizement.
Although a character in the scene, Paulina is relegated to a supporting role and the reader, as does Seneca, loses sight of her when Seneca orders that she be moved to another room. Paulina, therefore, does not witness Seneca’s suicide and she is figuratively in the wings or backstage while Seneca enacts the final moments of Socrates. Nero’s prevention of Paulina’s death interrupts the dramatic action in time for her to survive and thus he emerges as a deus ex machina figure in the narrative who can order one to die or to live. Nero’s reversal indicates that he was aware how her suicide would be “read” by contemporaries. So Nero now controls the life and death of the characters and the direction of the narrative. Like a dramatist, he changes the script of Paulina’s suicide. The digression on Paulina’s subsequent life represents a temporal shift of narrative events: Paulina’s future after the death of Seneca to the present suicide of Seneca. Both suicides, however, are interconnected from a narrative and historical perspective.
The narrative lingers on the life of Paulina, following her suicide attempt, and gives her an epilogue in which she is symbolized by her deathly appearance, with emphasis placed on the pallor of her face and limbs. The evocation of an imago or ancestor mask is ironic: earlier, in saying goodbye to his friends and servants, Seneca pompously leaves the model of his life to them in his will, which Tacitus describes as an imago: imaginem vitae suae (Ann. 15.62). Seneca seems to have conferred the same model to his wife. The slaves who saved her could not tell whether she was alive or dead, and now the public (and Paulina’s own ambiguous appearance) is confused as to whether she is alive or dead.
The image of a deathlike Paulina and the reporting of gossip that interprets her as a hypocrite even as she presents herself in public as a devoted widow adds a comic tone to the narrative, turning her biography into a tragicomedy. Paulina is out of context among the living and she plays dead as she is transformed from character to actor during her suicide attempt to character when allowed to live, but again to an actor after Seneca’s suicide. Paulina imitates the actions of a mime at a funeral who wore an imago of the deceased who was imitated by him at his funeral. The funereal role playing assigned to Paulina is similar to the earlier assumed role playing of Aemilia Lepida in the Annales who evoked her own funeral and the imagines of her ancestors, when entering the Theater of Pompey, to evoke sympathy from the audience and resentment toward Tiberius, who had accused her of treason.22
Contemporary interpretation of Paulina’s motivations and actions are reported as malicious gossip (nam ut est vulgus ad deteriora promptum), in which Paulina’s suicide attempt and devotion to her husband was self-serving: only when condemned to die would she commit suicide and feign devotion to her husband to increase his and her own glory but, when pardoned, she chose to live. The course of action preferred by the populace seems to be that Paulina should have shown devotion to Seneca and disregarded Nero’s order to live, so now, more than a testimonial of her devotion to her husband, her continued life advertises her hypocrisy instead.23 Tacitus’ narrative also questions Paulina’s sincerity: comic details surround Seneca’s pompous suicide and his unresponsive body, but why does it take so long for Paulina to die? When ordered to live, her mortality was still in doubt: incertum an ignorae raises the question, did she prolong her suicide to outlive her husband and perhaps to change her mind?
The questioning of Paulina’s sincerity is related to the narrative of Octavia’s death in which she is described as a living corpse (Ann. 14.64):
Ac puella vicesimo aetatis anno inter centuriones et milites, praesagio malorum iam vitae exempta, nondum tamen morte adquiescebat. paucis dehinc interiectis diebus mori iubetur, cum iam viduam se et tantum sororem testaretur communisque Germanicos et postremo Agrippinae nomen cieret, qua incolumi infelix quidem matrimonium sed sine exitio pertulisset. restringitur vinclis venaeque eius per omnis artus exolvuntur; et quia pressus pavore sanguis tardius labebatur, praefervidi balnei vapore enecatur. additurque atrocior saevitia quod caput amputatum latumque in urbem Poppaea vidit.
But the girl in her twentieth year surrounded by centurions and soldiers, with the expectation of calamity and already void of life, nevertheless, was not yet soothed by death. Ordered to die a few days later, she claimed that she was not Nero’s wife but only his sister and invoked their shared relatives, the Germanici, and later even invoked the name of Agrippina, under whom she was unharmed—certainly she had experienced an unhappy marriage but it was without death. She was bound and the veins on each of her arms were opened; but because she was overcome with fear, the blood flowed slowly so she was suffocated by the steam of an exceedingly hot bath. An even crueler savagery was added: her head was cut off and brought to Rome for Poppaea to see.
The narrative is sympathetic to Octavia who is presented as a victim of an unjust fate.24 Although there are similarities in the description of her death and that of Paulina’s, Octavia emerges as a victim and not an opportununist: she is a living corpse who is not yet comforted by the release of pain in death and her suicide is slow due to fear retarding the flow of blood. She is then placed in a bath, like Seneca, to ease the flow of blood. As soon as the narrative pronounces her dead, Octavia is decapitated (like a military enemy) and the fickleness and insecurity of Poppaea further shock the reader. The severed head alludes to the ritual of ossilegium in which a body part, normally a finger, was cut before cremation and placed in an urn with the cremated remains (see discussion below). Since Octavia’s death is treated as an aversion of a national disaster, her decapitation can also be read as a sacrificial act to ensure the well-being of the emperor and the state. The text does not indicate whether Octavia’s head was rejoined with the rest of her body for cremation.
The recounting of events in Octavia’s life that precedes the description of her death (14.63) serves as an epitaph (textual marker) in which Octavia is contextualized as a victim and a corpse before her actual death, since her wedding day was also the day of her funeral:
huic primum nuptiarum dies loco funeris fuit, deductae in domum in qua nihil nisi luctuosum haberet, erepto per venenum patre et statim fratre; tum ancilla domina validior et Poppaea non nisi in perniciem uxoris nupta, postremo crimen omni exitio gravius.
To Octavia the first day of her marriage was like a funeral, led into a home in which there was nothing but misery, with her father removed by poison and soon after her brother. A maid was more powerful than her mistress and after Poppaea’s engagement, there was only misery for Nero’s wife. Last, the charge [of sterility] was worse than all the ruin.
The severed narrative, the epitaphic summary of her life, and her description as a living corpse before her actual death reflect Octavia’s decapitation. The allusions to and the corruption of funeral ritual make Octavia an even more sympathetic character whose narrative treatment contrasts with that of Paulina.
The digression on Paulina’s suicide attempt interrupts the narrative of Seneca’s suicide (Ann. 15.60–64), and therefore prolongs it.25 Tacitus mocks the modeling of his suicide after Socrates’ (Plato, Phaedo 117 ff.), especially the fact that Seneca had hemlock prepared beforehand as he quotes the Athenian practice of capital punishment:
Seneca, interim, durante tractu et lentitudine mortis, Statium Annaeum, diu sibi amicitiae fide et arte medicinae probatum, orat provisum pridem venenum quo damnati publico Atheniensium iudicio extinguerentur promeret; adlatumque hausit frustra, frigidus iam artus et cluso corpore adversum vim veneni. postremo stagnum calidae aquae introiit, respergens proximos servorum addita voce libare se liquorem illum Iovi liberatori. exim balneo inlatus et vapore eius exanimatus sine ullo funeris sollemni crematur. ita codicilis praescripserat, cum etiam tum praedives et praepotens supremis suis consuleret.
Seneca, meanwhile, since his death was drawn out and lingering, called for Statius Annaeus, a longtime friend of his and his doctor, and asked for the poison, previously prepared, that killed criminals in public trials at Athens which he gave. When it was given to him, he drank it to no avail, already his limbs were cold and not conducive to the force of the poison. At last, he entered a pool of hot water and sprinkling it onto the nearby slaves said that he was making a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. Then carried into the bath, he was suffocated by its steam and was cremated without a solemn funeral as he had specified in his will which contained his final instructions, written when he was wealthy and powerful. (Ann. 15.64)
The syntax participates in the comically lingering death of Seneca: the inclusion of interim within the clause denotes a return to the subject of Seneca’s suicide following the digression on Paulina, but it also implies that the suicide was still in progress during the digression and while Paulina was enjoying her post-suicide reentry into society. Alliteration also calls attention to the repeated failed suicide attempts: adlatumque hausis frustra, frigidus iam artus et cluso corpore adversum vim veneni. Seneca’s lingering death and the slow flow of blood from his aged body give connotations of greed and hypocrisy to his suicide.26 Seneca is presented as a living corpse in death which complements the ambiguous mortality of Paulina who is a living corpse in life.
As a living corpse, Seneca’s final actions take on added signficance: the bath is an evocation of the bathing of a corpse ritual (lustratio) which serves as a subsitution for it since it takes place immediately prior to his cremation. Seneca, as a living corpse, seems to imitate Pacuvius, the governor of Syria, whose behavior he condemned (Ep. 12.8–9), and thus now contradicts his own morality about playing dead. Even death does not seem to stop Seneca’s loquacity: after noting that he was cremated without ceremony, Seneca’s will is mentioned to keep him “talking” even after speech was no longer possible. The writing of the will at the height of his power contrasts with his pretentious desire for a philosopher’s death, for which he planned a humble funeral in advance.27
The narrative of Seneca’s suicide in Tacitus’ Annales illustrates the pomposity and hypocrisy of Seneca by prolonging the narrative of his suicide with details of his quoting of Socrates’ death, an account of his wife’s contemporaneous suicide and digression on her subsequent survival, and his body’s unresponsiveness to various forms of suicide. The clinging to life of both husband and wife can also be read as a cheating of death: Seneca and his body as an autonomous agent refuse to leave the pages of history quickly and Paulina’s survival is presented as a moral crime to various people: to her dying husband who thought both were committing suicide together; to society which marks her deathly appearance; and even to Tacitus and the reader. Paulina’s characterization changes from virtuous to amoral through the aesthetics of mortality and the reader’s moral reception and interpretation of her actions affect how Seneca’s suicide is read. Tacitus emerges as a dramatist/funeral director who stages Seneca’s suicide and Paulina’s survival as a tragicomedy that turns the reader into an audience member.
Chapter 1 (13-34), “Playing Dead”, from Reading Death in Ancient Rome, by Mario Erasmo (The Ohio State University Press, 2008), published by Project Muse under and Open Access license.
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