[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This collection of eight essays and an introduction by Andrew Zissos has its origins in a 2014 conference, “Unity and Inconsistency in Flavian Epic,” with the aim of continuing James O’Hara’s work in his Inconsistency in Roman epic (2007) (BMCR 2007.10.22). Zissos poses two overarching questions: “Do the Flavian epicists share patterns or modes of inconsistency? Is there anything specifically ‘Flavian’ about inconsistency in the Flavian epics, and if so, how might one set about accounting for—or historicising—it?” (p. 3). Building on O’Hara’s pathbreaking analysis of the phenomenon in Roman epic through Lucan, Zissos sets about establishing both a stable definition of “inconsistency” and a coherent typology of its various manifestations. While striving for greater theoretical rigor, Zissos follows O’Hara in sorting examples of inconsistency into two broad categories: first, an “objective” category of “self-contradictory” narrative elements (what Zissos calls “continuity errors,” a concept taken from film studies) and, second, a “subjective” category of “generic mixing” in the areas of “style and subject matter.” That said, Zissos excludes O’Hara’s examples of “unreliable internal narrators” from his own categorization, instead associating them with the “Rashomon effect”. Likewise, Zissos draws more attention to the three “levels of referentiality” in narrative epic—“the diegetic,” “the creatorial or metapoetic,” and “the external or extrafictional” (p. 11)—and explores how “a text’s different referential levels may become entangled with one another in ways that produce inconsistency” (p. 12). His examples, drawn from Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus, set the stage for the rest of the volume, which includes four chapters on the Argonautica, two on the Thebaid, one on the Punica, and one on all three of these epics (but nothing on the Achilleid, unfortunately, as Zissos acknowledges in his Introduction).
In the first of the four chapters on the Argonautica, “Foreknowledge and deviation in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica,” Attila Ferenczi examines “an apparent continuity error arising from a contradiction between two passages in Valerius Flaccus” (p. 22) that refer to the death of Aeson as narrated in 1.700–850. Ferenczi begins with a close intratextual reading of the two passages in question (3.301–303, read in the light of 2.1–5, and 1.693–699, read in the light of 1.156–162). In the face of the obvious inconsistency between Jason’s presence and absence of mind regarding his father’s fate, Ferenczi asserts that the contradictory accounts reflect broader concerns about the gods and prophecy that pervade the epic. He then extends the analysis to consider the relationship between the brothers Aeetes and Perseus as a foil for that between Jason and his uncle Pelias. In comparison with the Aeneid and Lucan’s Bellum civile, Ferenczi concludes that the passages from the Argonautica “argue for the presence of a gap between unitarian theoretical approaches and the poetic praxis of the Flavian era” (p. 37), a strong claim with wide-ranging implications.
In chapter 2, “Phineus and the ira deorum: Inconsistency and interpretation in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica,” Emma Buckley opens with a full review of the scholarship on inconsistency in the Argonautica in order to focus on the inconsistencies inherent in the episode of Phineus and the Harpies in 4.423–636, which, she contends, complicate any purely “optimistic” reading of the book as a whole. Buckley grounds this claim in a close reading of the scene in Apollonius and Valerius; she observes that, “in sum, Valerius’ Phineus sounds clear, unambiguous and knowledgeable, an improvement on his Apollonian counterpart: but his speech is also partial, manipulative and tailored to his audience” (p. 51). Like Ferenczi, she then extends the analysis, in this case to consider the theodicy of an inconsistent Jupiter, and suggests an allusion to life in Rome after A.D. 69.
In chapter 3, “Unity and power: Valerius Flaccus, Apollonius and the election of Jason,” Helen Lovatt reconsiders the election of Jason in Apollonius 1.317–362 and the passing reference to it in Valerius 3.699–702 in order to “address… the politics of reading and the politics of genre through the phenomenon of inconsistency and its interactions with rhetoric, intertextuality and intentionality” (pp. 65–66). Lovatt suspects that the scene may be original to Apollonius, albeit with clear Homeric echoes; likewise, she suspects that the scene in Valerius, the debate about whether the Argo should continue on its voyage without Hercules, owes a heavy debt to Aeneid 11. Lovatt’s closing remarks on authorial intentionality offer a (thoughtful and respectful) counterpoint to Stover’s more positive reading of Valerius’s politics, culminating in the categorical claim that “the complexity of Valerius’ Argonautica resists a univocal reading: rather than validating Flavian rule, Valerius leaves us at sea in a shifting flood of words, memories and ideas” (pp. 83–84). In the last of the quartet of chapters on the Argonautica, “ Juno audax: Rethinking genre in the Argonautica,” Jessica Blum-Sorensen strives to complicate reductive readings of the structure of the poem which divide it into two clearly demarcated halves, with an “epic” beginning and a “tragic” end. Instead, “by tracing the language of audacia, of transgression, through the Argonautica, [she] argue[s] that the semantic value of transgression depends on the generic orientation of a particular focaliser” (p. 86). Accordingly, Blum-Sorensen traces the use of forms of audere and its cognates across the poem, from Venus’s intervention to punish the Lemnian women, to Juno’s intervention to remove Hercules, to the scenes of civil war along the shores of Cyzicus and in the fields of Colchis. Through this close reading of “the vocabulary of transgression in the Argonautica,” she concludes that “the Argo’s audacia forbids consistent adherence to an epic script” (p. 106).
In the first of the two chapters on the Thebaid, chapter 5, “Gaining the stars in Statius’ Thebaid: The proem versus the poem,” Ruth Parkes reads the fate of the emperor Domitian, as well as that of several of the epic’s main characters through the lens of contemporary politics. In surveying a wide range of passages from throughout the poem, Parkes identifies “a discrepancy in the epic as regards the possibility of gaining the stars through the exercise of virtus in the arena of warfare” (p. 113). Where the proem charts a/the course for Domitian’s future catasterism, the narrative itself portends a worse fate for most of the characters in the poem. Parkes contends that “th[is] discrepancy between proem and poem [is] an intentional inconsistency—and one freighted with ideological significance” (p. 119), as Domitian continued to infringe on the prerogatives of the aristocracy in order to strengthen his hold on power. In chapter 6, “The power of inconsistency: Genre, gender and authorial control in Statius Thebaid 8,” Jean-Michel Hulls conducts a close reading of the narrative of Atys and Ismene in order “to explore the ways in which Statius tests the limits of consistency especially in relation to ideas of gender and genre” (p. 124). He concentrates on two specific moments: first, the reactions to the death of Amphiaraus and the choice of Thiodamas to succeed him; second, the single combat between Atys and Tydeus. Throughout, Hulls remains attuned to instances of both intratextuality and intertextuality (e.g., Thebaid 8.444 truncam ~ the decapitated bodies of Priam in the Aeneid and Pompey in the Bellum civile). Ultimately, he asserts that the “inconsistencies reduce Book 8 to a blur of voices, conflicting and ambiguous attitudes, the power of which is always contested” and that, “if nothing else, Statius is consistently inconsistent” (pp. 145–146).
In the only chapter dedicated to the Punica, chapter 7, “Hannibal crossing the Ebro: A missing scene in Silius Italicus’ Punica,” Dániel Kozák probes “the geographic and narrative inconsistencies in Silius Italicus’ treatment of the Ebro crossing” (p. 149), including due consideration of the complex intertextual relationship between Hannibal’s (non-)crossing of the Ebro in the Punica and Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in the Bellum civile. Kozák begins with a review of the question whether the Ebro Treaty included Saguntum or not, a brief consideration of the two passages where Silius suppresses any mention of the Ebro, and a succint comparison between the narratives of Punica 3 and Livy book 21. Thereafter, Kozák undertakes a close reading of the passages from elsewhere in the Punica where the Ebro is explicitly mentioned: in attempting to interpret this inconsistency, he reads this collection of passages both intratextually and intertextually, and he tentatively concludes that, when read alongside Lucan, the (non-)crossing of the Ebro in Silius “may perhaps be seen as an early step towards the metaphorisation of the Rubicon as the river marking the point of no return” (p. 169).
To close the volume, in chapter 8, “Variations on Sarpedon: Flavian responses to a Virgilian incongruity,” Antonio Río Torres-Murciano traces the reception of the death of Sarpedon (Iliad 16.431–505) first in Vergil, in the death of Pallas (esp. Aeneid 10.467–472), and then in Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Statius. Río Torres-Murciano “argue[s] … that the allusion to Sarpedon in the Aeneid both hides and reveals an unresolved tension between the limited freedom for manoeuvre of the Stoicising Jupiter, constrained by the unchangeable fatum which he himself embodies, and the sovereign—though not exercised—ability of the poetic supreme god inherited from Homer to alter an individual destiny” (p. 171) and that the Flavian epicists were all very much alive to these underlying tensions in both passages.
All in all, the volume succeeds in demonstrating that there is, indeed, something “specifically ‘Flavian’ about inconsistency in the Flavian epics.” In the introduction, Zissos acknowledges the imbalance of articles on the Argonautica and justifiably speculates that more work simply needs to be done on Silius and Statius in order to level the playing field. (Other examples of inconsistency in the Punica that come to my mind include the discrepant accounts of the death of Regulus, Fabius’s abandonment of cunctatio, and Hannibal’s (non-)crossing of the Mediterranean in the lacuna in book 17.) More broadly, the contributions to this collection succeed in continuing (and advancing) the conversation about the scope, nature, and purpose of inconsistency in Roman epic. The volume not only picks up more or less where O’Hara had left off but also offers a new level of theoretical rigor that could be profitably applied to a reading of the phenomenon in, e.g., Quintus Smyrnaeus or Claudian’s De raptu Proserpinae. By extending the analysis across an even wider range of texts (if not genres), future scholars would inevitably learn even more about the role of inconsistency in ancient narrative, as well as the degree to which inconsistencies (real and imagined) are a function of authorial intent.
Authors and titles
Introduction: Theorising Inconsistency in Flavian Epic (Andrew Zissos)
- Foreknowledge and Deviation in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica (Attila Ferenczi)
- Phineus and the Ira Deorum: Inconsistency and Interpretation in the Argonautica (Emma Buckley)
- Unity and Power: Valerius Flaccus, Apollonius and the Election of Jason (Helen Lovatt)
- Juno Audax: Rethinking Genre in the Argonautica (Jessica Blum-Sorensen)
- Gaining the Stars in Statius’ Thebaid: The Proem Versus the Poem (Ruth Parkes)
- The Power of Inconsistency: Genre, Gender and Authorial Control in Thebaid 8 (Jean-Michel Hulls)
- Hannibal Crossing the Ebro: A Missing Scene in Silius Italicus’ Punica (Dániel Kozák)
- Variations on Sarpedon: Flavian Responses to a Virgilian Incongruity (Antonio Río Torres-Murciano)