Bacchatur demens: Manic maiden seers and the evolution of a type (Lucan, Virgil, Roman Empire).

摘要

In his De Bello Civili, the Latin poet Lucan portrays two prophetic females in extravagantly physical terms: the eroticized Delphic Pythia, and her dire opposite, the repulsive Thessalian witch. In her wild, manic state of possession by Apollo, the Pythia is said to 'whirl like a bacchant, out of her mind,' bacchatur demens. Why should this priestess, who has nothing to do with Dionysus, be described in overtly Dionysiac terms? By the first century AD, there has arisen in literature a prophetic female type with characteristic attributes accumulated from the literary portrayals of other possessed female figures. These prophetic females become a vehicle by which individual poets can acknowledge and respond to a predecessor, emulating or departing from a prior tradition by manipulation of stock ingredients of the type. Using primarily a philological approach---that is, close reading of various ancient texts, I first try to identify the constituent parts of the stock character, then disentangle the threads of its origins, and finally, examine how rearrangement of these parts is used by Latin poets as a tool for intertextual engagement with literary predecessors.