Roman comedy’s important ancient afterlife, though well recognised, had not received book-length treatment until recently. Iris Brecke’s revised doctoral thesis joins two recent monographs[1] in examining the issue. This slim volume aims to undertake a ‘systematic analysis’ of Terence in Ovid (ix), an underexplored relationship.[2] Brecke covers, in varying depth, all of Ovid’s amatory elegy, including the Heroides, Ars Amatoria, and Remedia Amoris. Tristia 2 appears as an important case of Ovidian self-reception, and the only work which directly mentions Terence. All the plays feature but the Eunuchus, mentioned nearly twice as often as the other plays combined, understandably dominates because of its popularity in antiquity. Two methodological issues emerge in the introduction. Firstly, Brecke notes that some Ovidian allusions to Terence are ‘small’ or ‘micro’ allusions, involving just a word or two, but which evoke the dramatist through contextual similarities. In fact, most of the allusions which Brecke identifies fall into this category. Secondly, the author declares (in a footnote) an ‘agnostic’ position on intentionality since readers generate all intertextual connections, even if one can still assume intention. She will elucidate ‘the intended and received meanings of the texts’ (xx, n. 49, her emphasis).
The main chapters, each handling a new text or theme, comprise three to four sub-chapters of close reading with introduction and conclusion. The sub-chapters are often paratactic, with little argumentative relationship between them. The connecting thread across the book is that Terence’s presence in Ovid adds deeper or ‘double’ meaning. However, Brecke’s readings are as painstakingly intricate as her conclusions are numerous; it would not do them justice to summarise them in any depth. Instead, I expand selectively.
Chapter one handles Tristia 2. Brecke first builds on the argument that Horace (Epist. 2.1) uses Terence allusively to exemplify a poet unfairly criticized due to his critics’ poor judgment.[3] Since Epist. 2.1 is an important model for Tristia 2, Brecke concludes that Ovid’s choice to include conuiua…Terentius (v. 359) is particularly apt. There is a hint of Ovidian irony too in that Terence had a negative biographical tradition derived from his plays. Next, Brecke links Ovid’s comparison of Augustus to Jupiter with Chaerea’s account in the Eunuchus of being inspired to commit rape by a painting of Jupiter and Danae. She argues that detonuit (Tr. 2.35), a unique instance in Ovid, recalls Chaerea’s description of Jupiter as qui templa Caeli summa sonitu concutit (Eun. 590), i.e. Iuppiter Tonans. Ovid, lamenting Augustus’ lack of clemency, instructs the emperor to follow Jupiter’s example, but then concedes idque facis (Tr. 2.40). Brecke senses a ‘double meaning’ (13) because idque facis recalls Chaerea’s confession of rape, illud…feci (Eun. 591). This approach is typical of the book. Some will find it ingenious; others will find the imaginative but loose connections tendentious. Also characteristic is that the connections deepen a pre-existing argument. Here, for instance, Brecke supports Jennifer Ingleheart’s reading that the comparison of Augustus to Jupiter hints at the emperor’s adulterous past.[4] Brecke avoids the conclusion that an allusion to Chaerea’s words would identify Augustus as a rapist. The remainder of this rich section links this initial point to the rest of Tristia 2 as well as other moments in Ovid’s oeuvre. Finally, Brecke connects Robert Germany’s ‘mimetic contagion’, which provokes rape in the Eunuchus, to the idea of corrupting art in Tristia 2. Ovid, she argues, hints at Augustus’ hypocrisy in not having the same stance towards mime and erotic paintings as he does to Ovid’s poetry.[5]
Chapter two tackles rape and status. The rape of the Sabine women and rape in comedy lead to citizen marriage. Brecke finds comic influence from Terence’s Eunuchus on the tale of the Sabine women in Ars Amatoria 1, which deepens the paradox of using the tale as an exemplum of elegiac love since the latter eschews marriage. The final section covers much ground, including Ovid’s blurring of the puella’s social status in the Ars Amatoria and the depiction of rape in the same poem. I focus on the latter because it is unfortunately provocative. Ovid tells the story of Deidamia’s rape to illustrate that grata est uis ista puellis (Ars 1.673). It is through rape that Deidamia discovers Achilles’ true identity (stupro comperit, Ars 1.698). Brecke detects an allusion here to Pythias’ discovery that the rapist in the Eunuchus is Chaerea (comperi, v. 825). Since Pythias reacts sympathetically to the rape, Brecke suggests that Ovid intentionally undercuts the premise, that force is pleasing, which the exemplum purports to demonstrate. This positive assessment of Ovid’s attitude towards women is not new. Brecke adds her own analysis of the rape of the Sabine women to Julie Hemker’s argument that Ovid’s detailed depiction of the women’s frightened reaction (Ars 1.117ff.) reflects his sympathy towards the victims of male violence.[6] Brecke, however, ignores Amy Richlin’s famous denunciation of Ovid’s voyeurism,[7] which included the criticism that Hemker underplayed how frequently rape is eroticized for the reader’s pleasure across the Ovidian corpus. Most problematically, Brecke omits the fact that Ovid makes the erotic enjoyment of female vulnerability explicit in the case of the Sabine women, potuit multas ipse decere timor (Ars 1.126). Readers will decide for themselves between these interpretations, but those inclined towards critique will be disappointed by Brecke’s lack of engagement with Richlin.
Chapter three treats the Remedia Amoris. Brecke argues that Ovid’s defence of his poetry, that he follows generic precedent, recalls the same defence in Terence’s prologues. Specifically, Ovid evokes Terence by stating that Thais should not play Andromache’s role (Rem. 385). Brecke argues for a reference to the meretrix of the Eunuchus because of the play’s popularity. But she helps her case by omitting the Greek literary context of the preceding lines, in which Ovid notes that Cydippe is unsuited to Homer and Achilles inappropriate for Callimachus. And Brecke surely misses the most prominent intertext, a similar antithesis in Propertius where the lena tells the puella to behave as Thais …Menandri (4.5.43), a reference to his eponymous play, rather than as Medea. Echoing the lena makes this an amusing moment of Ovidian self-satire. The section concludes with another allusion which creatively links dehumanizing language in the Eunuchus with the Remedia, Ars Amatoria, and Acontius and Cydippe’s letters in the Heroides. The remaining sections explore the influence of Terence’s development of the metaphor of lovesickness, including as a sickness with a cure, on the Remedia. Though Brecke acknowledges that Lucretius’ De rerum natura and Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes are important sources for Ovid, she argues for a distinct Terentian influence as well. There is good material here on a range of matters. For example, the suggestion that the presence of comedy highlights the absence of the comic cure, marriage, in elegy. Convincing too is the link Brecke makes between the metatheatrical self-awareness of Parmeno, a proto-praeceptor, in the Eunuchus and Ovid’s self-description, partes conciliantis ago (Rem. 524).
Chapter four turns our attention to seruitium amoris. Brecke argues that the Eunuchus had an important influence on love elegy’s later deployment of the paraclausithyron and seruitium amoris, particularly where the two tropes are combined. To support the case, she offers a close reading of Ovid’s treatment of the locked-out lover in the Ars amatoria (2.511 – 34), suggesting that it responds to Phaedria’s exclusion from Thais’ house in the Eunuchus. The next two sections argue that comedy’s presence reveals seruitium amoris to be a pose rather than a genuine loss of control. Brecke links, for instance, Chaerea’s self-awareness of role playing (simulabar, v. 606) to a theatrical metaphor in the Ars (fac … , quas partes illa iubebit, agas 2.198). Characteristic of Brecke here is that the connection is supported by an allusion in Horace (non es quod simulas? Sat. 2.7). Not because Ovid has read Horace, but because Horace’s reading of the same scene in the same way supports her case. The connections are inspired, but there are the usual caveats about intentionality. More convincing in terms of intention is that the presence of the comic seruus callidus, a controlling figure, in Acontius’ characterization (Her. 20) reveals the hollowness of his seruitium amoris. The final section finds the influence of Parmeno, the comic slave in the Eunuchus, on the Ovidian praeceptor in the Ars Amatoria. Gnatho, the parasite who provides the play’s solution, is also influential. But the comic solution, sharing Thais, puts in relief the defined status of comedy’s characters in contrast to the blurry situation of elegiac figures, and the harsher consequences they might face for being in love. Thus comedy works at several levels in Ovid.
Chapter five explores militia amoris. Brecke traces the motif’s shape in Amores 1.9 to the opening scene of the Eunuchus, and the description of the soldier-rival in Amores 3.8 to Parmeno’s stereotypical description of Thraso in the same play. The second section interprets the female use of military language at the opening of the Hecyra as the programmatic reversal of Chaerea’s perspective in the Eunuchus. The relationship of reversal, Brecke argues, is the same one we find in Ars Amatoria 3 in relation to the other books, a point supported by allusions in books one and three to the same passage of the Eunuchus. The final section argues that Terence’s Adelphoe is especially important in the development of breaking down doors in militia amoris. This lies behind a discourse on violence in Tib. 1.10, Prop. 2.5, and Ars 3.565 – 576. The section concludes with analysis of all three Terentian paraclausithyra to show that they have military undertones, and thus are appropriate for the later development in elegy. This is well-executed Quellenforschung.
Chapter six concludes the book. Brecke summarises what interests Ovid about Terence, ‘his elegance and style, and his humanitas’, with his ‘insight’ into ‘the nature of his characters and their actions’ (139). Ovid’s Terence, then, is the same as everyone else’s Terence. It is partly the humanism of Terence which leads Brecke to focus on him rather than Plautus or comedy more generally. Brecke’s Ovid, in turn, is sincere, and not, as many have held, the Ovid whose allusions strip the material of its original seriousness (e.g. Am. 1.1.1f.). This volume is published in De Gruyter’s Trends in Classics series, which promises ‘innovative, interdisciplinary work’. Brecke, however, conservatively treats Terence as a stable repository of meaning.here is little interest, for example, in how reading Ovid might lead to a new interpretation of Terence. Nor is there treatment of the complex ancient reception of comedy, especially the interest in comedy as a special type of literature, a speculum or imago of daily life (Donatus, Excerpta de comoedia 5.1.5; Cic. Ros. Am. 47), with Terence, in contrast to Plautus, as the expert in this kind of realism. Though not the only mode of Terentian reception,[9] thorough interrogation of this question would have been worthwhile in the case of Ovid, a poet invested in issues of representation. Relatedly, Polt has argued that the connection between Roman comedy as performed and ideas of social life as role play were key to its Catullan reception, but Brecke does not offer comparable historicization.[10] In this issue, and others, many readers will feel Polt’s absence from the bibliography.
Does Brecke prove that ‘to fully understand the works of Ovid, Terence is crucial reading material’ (139)? The question intriguingly suggests an immanence, maybe even an intention to Terence’s presence. From this perspective the book is not persuasive. In fact, the harder Brecke works in making connections, the more one feels that they are the product of her own ingenious, creativity. Therefore, the patient reader, who is perhaps not too bothered by the question of intention, will be rewarded with several worthwhile close readings. The production quality is good, though there are some typographical errors.[11] There is an index locorum but no general index.
Notes
[1] M. Hanses (2020), The life of comedy after the death of Plautus and Terence and C. B. Polt (2022), Catullus and Roman comedy: theatricality and personal drama in the Late Republic. Cf. Katharina Hermann’s published doctoral dissertation, (2013) «Nunc levis est tractanda Venus». Form und Funktion der Komödienzitate in der römischen Liebeselegie. The last two works are not in Brecke’s bibliography.
[2] An exception being S. L. James (2016), ‘Fallite fallentes: rape and intertextuality in Terence’s Eunuchus and Ovid’s Ars Amatoria’, Eugesta 6, 86-111.
[3] R. Müller (2013), ‘Terence in Latin Literature from the Second Century BCE to the Second Century CE’ in A. Traill & A. Augoustakis (Eds.), A companion to Terence, 363-379.
[4] J. Ingleheart (2010), A Commentary on Ovid, Tristia, Book 2.
[5] R. Germany (2016), Mimetic contagion: art and artifice in Terence’s Eunuch.
[6] J. Hemker (1985), ‘Rape and the founding of Rome’, Helios 12, 41-47.
[7] A. Richlin (1992), ‘Reading Ovid’s rapes’ in A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and representation in Greece & Rome, 158 – 179.
[8] See Elena Giusti’s criticism of this approach, (2023), ‘Virgilian criticism and the intertextual Aeneid’, Mnemosyne, 76(5), 871-895.
[9] See G. Pezzini (2021), ‘Terence and the speculum uitae: ‘realism’ and (Roman) comedy’, HSCPh 111, 101-161.
[10] Polt (2022).
[11]‘I addition’ (xxii), repetition of Ars 3.332 (1, n.1), ‘Terence’ Eunuchus’ (18), jf.’ (33, n.31), ‘wolfs’ (42, n.60), ‘Eunuchus’ (68), ‘And’ (72, n.44), stages have three rather than ‘tree’ houses (83, n.18), ‘para-clausithyron’ (85), ‘Chareas’’ (102), ‘suspicions’ (104), ‘Hecyra’ (126), ‘1.10.61-6.,’ (132), ‘amauti’ for ‘amauit’ (133), ‘Aeschnius’ (137), ‘sexes’ needs a closing quotation mark (144), Müller is out of alphabetical order (152).