Erichtho

Erichtho by John Hamilton Mortimer

In Roman literature, Erichtho (from Ancient Greek: Ἐριχθώ) is a legendary Thessalian witch who appears in several literary works. She is noted for her horrifying appearance and her impious ways. Her first major role was in the Roman poet Lucan's epic Pharsalia, which details Caesar's Civil War. In the work, Pompey the Great's son, Sextus Pompeius, seeks her, hoping that she will be able to reveal the future concerning the imminent Battle of Pharsalus. In a gruesome scene, she finds a dead body, fills it with potions, and raises it from the dead. The corpse describes a civil war that is plaguing the underworld and delivers a prophecy about what fate lies in store for Pompey and his kin.

Lucan's role in Pharsalia has been much discussed by classicists and literary scholars, with many arguing that she serves as a antithesis and counterpart to Virgil's Cumaean Sibyl, a pious prophetess who appears in his work the Aeneid. Erichtho is also mentioned in Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy (wherein it is revealed that she once commanded Virgil to retrieve a soul from the lowest circle of Hell), and she makes appearances in both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 18th century play, Faust, as well as John Marston's Jacobean play The Tragedy of Sophonisba.

In literature

Lucan's Pharsalia

Erichtho was popularized by the Roman poet Lucan in his epic poem Pharsalia.

The character Erichtho seems to have been popularized by the poet Lucan,[nb 1] due to her appearance in his epic poem Pharsalia, which details Caesar's Civil War.[4][5] It is likely that the character was inspired by legends of Thessalian witches that had developed during the period of Classical Greece.[6] In the work, Erichtho is repugnant (a "dry cloud" hangs over her head and "when she breathes she poisons otherwise non-lethal air"),[4] and impious ("She never beseeches the gods, nor does she call the divine with a suppliant hymn").[7] She lives on the outskirts of society and makes her abode near "graveyards, gibbets, and the battlefields copiously supplied by civil war"; she uses the body parts from these locales in her magic spells.[8][9] Indeed, she delight in otherwise heinous and macabre acts involving corpses (for instance, "when the dead are confined in a sarcophagus […] then she eagerly rages every limb. She plunges her hand into the eyes, delights at digging out the congealed eyeballs, and gnaws the pallid nails on a desiccated hand.").[10][11]

She is a powerful necromancer; while she is surveying dead bodies in a battlefield it is noted that "If she had tried to raise up the entire army on the field to return to war, the laws of Erebus would have yielded, and a host—pulled from the Stygian Avernus by her terrible power—would have gone to war."[12] It is exactly for this reason that she is sought by Pompey the Great's son, Sextus Pompeius. He wants her to perform a necromantic rite so that he might be able to learn the outcome of the Battle of Pharsalus.[13] Erichtho complies; she wanders amidst a battlefield[nb 2] and seeks out a cadaver with "uninjured tissues of a stiffened lung".[15][16] She cleans the corpse's organs, and fills the body with a potion (consisting of, among other things, a mixture of warm blood, "lunar poison", and "everything that nature wickedly bears") so as to bring the dead body back to life.[17][18] The spirit is summoned, but, at first, refuses to return to its old body.[19] She then promptly threatens the whole universe by promising to summon "that god at whose dread name earth trembles".[nb 3][21] Immediately following this outburst, the corpse is successfully reanimated and offers a bleak description of a civil war in the underworld, as well as a rather ambiguous (at least, to Sextus Pompeius) prophecy about what fate lies in store for Pompey and his kin.[22]

Erichtho has often been seen as antithetical counterpart to the Sibyl of Cumae, a character prominently featured in Virgil's Aeneid.

Because the sixth book of Pharsalia is seen by many scholars to be a reworking of the sixth book from Vergil's Aeneid, Erichtho is often viewed as the "antithetical counterpart to Virgil's Cumaean Sibyl.[23][24] Indeed, both fulfill the role of helping a human gain information from the underworld; however, while the Sibyl is pious, Erichtho is wicked.[23] Andrew Zissos notes:

The vast moral chasm between Erictho and the Sibyl is nicely brought out by Lucan's account of their respective preparations. While the Sibyl piously insists that the unburied corpse of Misenus (exanimum corpus, Aen. 6.149) must be properly buried before Aeneas embarks on his underworld journey, Erictho specifically requires an unburied corpse (described similarly as exanimes artus, 720) for her undertaking. As [Jamie] Masters points out, there is a clear connection between Erictho's cadaver and Virgil's Misenus. This facilitates one further inversion: whereas the Sibyl's rites begin within a burial, Erictho's conclude with a burial.[23]

Masters, as Zissos points out, argues that the Sibyl's commands to bury Misenus and find the Golden Bough are inverted and compacted in Lucan: Erichtho needs a body—not buried—but rather retrieved.[25] Many other parallels and inversions abound, including: the difference of opinions about the ease of getting what is sought from the underworld (the Sibyl says only the initial descent to the underworld will be easy, whereas Erichtho says necromancy is simple),[25] the opposing manner in which those seeking information from the underworld are described (the Sibyl urges Aeneas to be courageous, whereas Erichtho criticizes Sextus Pompeius for being cowardly),[23] and the inverted manner in which the supernatural rites proceed (the Sibyl sends Aeneas underground to gain knowledge, whereas Erichtho conjures a spirit up out of the ground).[23]

Dante's Inferno

Erichtho is mentioned by name in Dante Alighieri's work Inferno.

Erichtho is also mentioned by name in the first book of Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, Inferno: in Canto IX, Dante and Virgil are initially blocked access to the gates of Dis, and so Dante, doubting his guide and hoping for confirmation, asks Virgil if he has ever travelled to the depths of Hell before. Virgil responds in the affirmative, explaining that at one point he had journeyed to the lowest circle of Hell on behest of Erichtho in order to retrieve a soul for one of her necromantic rites.[26][27][28] Simon A. Gilson notes that such a story is "without precedent in medieval sources, and highly problematic".[27] As a result, explanations for this passage have abounded. It has been contended that the passage is either: an invention of Dante's,[29][30] an allusion to a lost medieval legend,[31] a reworking of medieval concepts about necromancy, a literary parallel to Christ's Harrowing of Hell,[26] simply an echo of Vergil's supposed knowledge of Hell (referring to his description of the underworld in the Aeneid),[26][32] or merely a reference to the aforementioned passage from Lucan.[30] Gilson contends that it reinforces the fact "that Dante's own journey through Hell is divinely willed" and "this is achieved at the expense of the earlier necromantically inspired journey undertaken by Virgil."[33] And although it is a literary anachronism to connect Virgil to Erichtho, given that Lucan—the creator of Erichtho—was born around fifty years after the death of Virgil,[26] this connection successfully plays upon the popular Medieval belief that Virgil himself was a magician and prophet.[30]

Other

Erichtho is also a character in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 18th century play, Faust. She appears in Part 2, Act 2, as the first character to speak in the Classical Walpurgisnacht scene.[34][35] Erichtho's speech takes the form of a soliloquy, wherein she references the Battle of Pharsalia, Julius Caesar, and Pompey.[36][37] She also alludes to Lucan, claiming that she is "not so abominable as the wretched poets [i.e. Lucan and Ovid] painted me.[38][36] This scene immediately precedes the entrance of Mephistopheles, Faust, and Homunculus to the rites that result in Faust's Dream Life Sequence as a knight living in a castle with Helen of Troy—until the death of their child shatters the fantasy and Faust returns to the physical world for the conclusion of the play.[39]

In John Marston's Jacobean play The Tragedy of Sophonisba, which is set during the Second Punic War, the prince of Libya, Syphax, summons Erictho [sic] from Hell, and he asks her to make Sophonisba, a Carthaginian princess, love him.[40] Erichto, via the "power of sound", casts a spell that causes her to take on the likeness of Sophonisba; she subsequently sleeps with Syphax before he is able to realize her identity.[41] Many critics, according to Harry Harvey Wood, "have dismissed [this scene] as revolting."[42]

Notes

  1. ↑ There is some debate as to where Erichtho first appeared. Heroides XV by Ovid features a reference to furialis Erictho. In 1848, Karl Lachmann argued that the poem itself was crafted after the publication of Lucan’s Pharsalia by an unknown author in the style of Ovid. He contended that Erichtho was an invention of Lucan's alone.[1] Lachmann’s argument was highly influential, although S. G. De Vries eventually pointed out that Lucan could have easily lifted the name from Ovid, or both had taken the name from a now-lost source.[2] De Vries’s argument and A. Palmer’s subsequent work on the poem suggest it is indeed the product of Ovid.[3]
  2. ↑ What this battlefield is a vestige of is never made clear in the poem. Dolores O'Higgins, however, contends that it is the aftermath of the Battle of Pharsalia, and that Erichtho is effectively jumping into the future. O'Higgins argues that this bending of time is "a conscious display of the vates' power."[14]
  3. ↑ According to Andrew Zissos: "The identity of the deity mentioned obliquely by Erictho here has been the source of much scholarly debate. Suggestions have included the mysterious deity Demiurgus (Haskins 1887 ad loc., Pichon 1912: 192), Ahriman (Rose 1913: li–lii); Hermes Trismegistus (Bourgery 1928: 312), and Yahweh (Baldini-Moscadi 1976: 182–3). All of these identifications are plausible, but none conclusive—a point which is in itself suggestive: Lucan may have wished to avoid picking one ultimate nether deity over another, particularly given that it was accceptable practice in magical rituals not to offer a precise designation. Since aporia in divine matters is one of the conceptual pillars upon which Lucan's epic is built is, it likely that the poet is exploiting the conventional obfuscation of magical formulae for his own artistic program."[20]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Thorsen 2014, p. 101.
  2. ↑ Thorsen 2014, p. 103.
  3. ↑ Thorsen 2014, pp. 97, 103, 121.
  4. 1 2 Solomon 2012, p. 40.
  5. ↑ Clark 2011, p. 38.
  6. ↑ Clark 2011, pp. 4, 38.
  7. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.523–524.
  8. ↑ O'Higgins 1988, p. 213.
  9. ↑ Thomas 1897, p. 389.
  10. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.538–543.
  11. ↑ Thomas 1897, p. 413.
  12. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.633–636.
  13. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.413–506.
  14. ↑ O'Higgins 1988, pp. 218–219.
  15. ↑ O'Higgins 1988, p. 218
  16. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.630.
  17. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.667–671.
  18. ↑ Clark 2011, p. 34.
  19. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.721–729.
  20. ↑ Zissos, Andrew. "Commentary for Lucan 6.719–830". Silver Muse. University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on May 25, 2003. Retrieved April 18, 2016. To access the commentary, one must click on the left-hand sidebar labeled as such.
  21. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.744–746.
  22. ↑ Lucan, Pharsalia, ll. 6.750–820.
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 Zissos, Andrew. "Cast of Characters: Erictho". Silver Muse. University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on May 25, 2003. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  24. ↑ Masters 1992, p. 180.
  25. 1 2 Masters 1992, p. 190.
  26. 1 2 3 4 Solomon 2012, p. 41.
  27. 1 2 Gilson 2001, p. 42.
  28. ↑ Dante Aligheri, Inferno, ll. 9.22–27.
  29. ↑ Dante & Musa 1995, p. 274.
  30. 1 2 3 "Erichtho: Circle 5, Inferno 9". Danteworlds. University of Texas, Austin. Retrieved April 14, 2016.
  31. ↑ Dante & Sinclair 1961, p. 126.
  32. ↑ Virgil, Aeneid, 6.562–565.
  33. ↑ Gilson 2001, p. 43.
  34. ↑ Goethe, Faust, ll. 7004–7039.
  35. ↑ Goethe and Thomas 1897, p. 388.
  36. 1 2 Goethe and Latham 1892, pp. 367–368.
  37. ↑ Goethe and Thomas 1897, p. li.
  38. ↑ Goethe, Faust, ll. 700–7008.
  39. ↑ "Summary and Analysis Part 2: Act II: Classical Walpurgis Night: Pharsalian Fields, By the Upper Peneus, By the Lower Peneus, By the Upper Peneus (II), Rocky Caves of the Aegean". CliffsNotes. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
  40. ↑ Wiggins 2015, 1605–1606.
  41. ↑ Love 2003, p. 24.
  42. ↑ Wood 1938, p. xii.

Bibliography

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, May 04, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.