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return as part of the crime and its punishment. The Eumenides at the beginning (430f.) become the Furies (literal or figurative) who avenge the violation of marriage later (59195, 657, 662). The torches (faces) of marriage, coming straight from a funeral, overdetermine the ominous atmosphere (Eumenides tenuere faces de funere raptas, 430). They soon become the metaphorical "torches" of Tereus' desire (480) and then of Procne's lust for revenge (614). And the birds of course recur at the cardinal point of Tereus' victorious lust (the eagle-simile of 51618) and its defeat and punishment in metamorphosis (66674). |
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The blanditiae with which Procne appeals to Tereus for her sister's visit (440, cum blandita viro Progne) return in her horrible vengeance for the crime that she has thus innocently set into motion (blanditiae, 626, 632). The joyful "leaping about" of Tereus at the apparent success of his plot (exsultat, 514) becomes the "leaping" of his son's boiling flesh in the caldron (pars inde cavis exsultat aenis, 645). The displacement of speech into weaving becomes a female "unveiling" that transforms apparent feminine helplessness into decisive and bloody action (cf. 566f., 576ff., 604). The male weapon of the sword or iron (ensis, ferrum) undergoes a parallel shift from agent to victim (551ff., 611f., 617, 643), until it fixes Tereus forever in his role of aggressive pursuer (666). As we have already noted, the repeated motifs of pietas, tears, night, fire, conquest, joy, weaving, speech and silence mark the major stages of crime and punishment.32 |
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Female Revenge and Its Problems:
Metamorphosis As Resolution or Irresolution |
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These symmetries suggest the working out of an immanent moral law in the Metamorphoses as a crime produces its own punishment. Yet there is a harsh asymmetry since the parallelism between the male violence of lust and the female desire for revenge is not exact. Not only is the former individual and the latter collective, but the women's crime develops only as a response to Tereus'. He was the initiator and aggressor; the women are avengers. Horrible as their vengeance is, it has justice on its side. Yet the dehumanization of all three characters in the final metamorphosis does not discriminate between degrees of guilt, and in fact rather encourages us not |
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32 For example, night: 472f., 486ff., 58890, 652; fire: 455ff., 460, 466, 492, 609, 614f., 645f.; silence: 574, 58385, 622f., 632, 660; joy: 514, 653, 660; tears: 471f., 504, 523, 535, 566, 585, 610f., 628, 665; pain or grief (dolor): 574, 583, 595, 671. See Anderson (1972) ad 490 and ad 67174. Note too how the motif of "not containing" one's passion moves from Tereus to Procne: nec capiunt inclusas pectora flammas, of Tereus' lust in 466; ardet et iram / non capit ipsa suam Procne, of Procne's vengeful wrath in 609f.: see Bömer (1976) and Anderson (1972), both ad 609f. |
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