Chapter IV · VALERIUS FLACCUS
Reading edition
What is known of the life of Valerius Flaccus—Romance in his theme—Predecessors—The story of the Argonautica—Apollonius of Rhodes and Valerius—How was the epic designed to end?—The Roman element—Comparative lack of vogue—Features of his language—Metre—Qualities of style.
C. Valerius Flaccus[1279] belongs, at least in part, to the time of Vespasian. If we accept “Balbus Setinus” or “Setinus Balbus,” the additions to his name in subscriptiones of the Vatican MS., then he may have been a native of Setia, but whether that was the Setia in Campania or one of two Setias in Spain it is impossible to determine. No special Spanish qualities are discoverable in him, and he was Roman enough to serve on the committee of fifteen for sacrifices.[1280] Almost at the outset of his Argonautica, in invoking the emperor, he refers to Vespasian’s service in British seas, to the recent capture of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70, and to the supposed likelihood that Vespasian’s younger “offspring” (proles), Domitian, might celebrate his brother’s exploits:
O thou yet more renowned for opening The ocean, since the Caledonian wave (That erst disdained our Trojan-blooded race) Hath yielded to thy sails, O sire revered, Raise me above the herd, and cloudy earth. Show favour to a bard who sings the fame Of heroes of old days and deathless deeds. Thine offspring shall unfold (for he hath skill) Judaea’s fall, and how his brother, smirched With Salem’s dust, launched firebrands everywhere, War-maddened all along the towered walls.[1281]
Beginning his epic, therefore, soon after 70, he made slow progress; for in the third and fourth books[1282] he alludes to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, and apparently he never completed the eighth book. Quintilian, writing in the early nineties of the century, is the only classical writer who mentions him. His words of regret over his recent death (multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus, X. i. 90) suggest that Valerius died about A.D. 90.
In the Quest of the Golden Fleece Valerius had a subject which no one could make entirely dull. The tale of the earliest of ships,[1283] the Argo, of its hazards by sea and land, of the love between Jason and the outlandish princess Medea, and of the perilous winning of the dragon-guarded treasure contains the same inherent romance as that which colours adventures upon the Spanish Main, so that Heredia’s line in Les Conquérants might equally well have been written of Jason’s crew,
Ils allaient conquérir le fabuleux métal.
Here too were voyagers for whom, under the perpetual imminence of the unknown, each night brought hopes and dreams of heroic morrows. This is the stuff of which epics can be made. Valerius, luckier in choosing such a theme than Lucan and Silius were in drawing upon history, could hardly fail, notwithstanding the trammels of his episodes, to catch and convey some gleams of its pure roseate charm. The story of Statius’s Thebaid stirs in the bosom little perceptible emotion; but it is otherwise with the fortunes of the Argonauts. A primeval glamour plays round a legend which may be older than the tale of Troy: and we can be sure that it is older than the composition of one of the Homeric poems as we have it, for in the Odyssey Jason’s fabled ship is mentioned as in all men’s minds.[1284]
In a story so old, Valerius had many predecessors. He was not even the first Roman poet to handle it. Varro of Atax had based a work on the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, and a reference in Probus[1285] to Varro makes it likely that his poem was accompanied with a commentary whence Valerius might have derived material. Ancient Greek writers on the myth, Herodotus, the Attic tragedians, Apollodorus and Diodorus seem to have furnished Valerius with subject-matter, but whether directly, or indirectly through scholia on his chief source, Apollonius, it is hard to say.[1286] Later Greek writers also contributed their portion; and his geographical learning, as in the catalogue of peoples in Book VI, came more probably from Eratosthenes than from the elder Pliny. To his material sources Valerius added inventions of his own, and treated the whole in a style upon which the influence of Virgil and of Ovid are unmistakeable.
The hexameters of the eight books reach a total of 5593, and Book I is the longest (851). Greek though the theme be, the poet’s aspiration is that his “utterances may fill the cities of Latium” (l. 21). The narrative opens with the jealousy felt by Pelias, king of Thessaly, towards Jason, the son of his brother Aeson, and his crafty plan to despatch his nephew on the dangerous Quest of the Golden Fleece under the pretext of revenge on Aeetes of Colchis for the murder of Phrixus. Jason feels the lure of glory, prays for the favour of Juno, and at Minerva’s command builds, decorates and solemnly launches the Argo. Heroes flock to man her—Hercules brings the youth Hylas, and Chiron his ward Achilles. Sunset comes and
Dotted along the crescent bay are lights That show not lands as yet to mariners,[1287]
because there are no mariners! Orpheus whiles away the hours of night with a relevant ballad on the drowning of Helle by falling into the sea from the back of the golden ram, and on the escape of Phrixus, her brother. When the Dawn-goddess comes, “setting the sea a-shimmer with the morning sun,”[1288] it is to display the adventurers in readiness for their start, which takes place after Jason’s parents, Aeson and Alcimede, have given utterance to their grief at the parting. A catalogue of the crew is added in about 130 lines (352-483). Their number is fifty, including Acastus, Pelias’s son, who joins stealthily at the moment of sailing. It is one of Valerius’s many departures from Apollonius that he more subtly represents Jason as inducing his cousin to share the dangerous voyage, whereas Apollonius makes him join voluntarily. Another difference is his introduction of the catalogue at a considerably later point than in Apollonius—an improvement, because he has first roused the human interest in the heroes. To the signal of three trumpet-blasts the galley sets forth, Telamon stroking on port-side and Hercules on starboard, with Orpheus to give time to the rowers, Argus in charge of ship-repairs, and Tiphys as pilot. The sailing has not passed unnoticed in heaven. The Sun-god, sire of Aeetes, whose domain is threatened, complains to Jove, Mars supporting the complaint, while Juno and Pallas oppose it. It is the old celestial machinery conventional in epic. As in Virgil, Jove replies, unfolding destiny with a Roman note prophetic of other empires,[1289] and, again as in Virgil, the hero’s ship is menaced by a storm which Neptune calms. Meanwhile, Pelias’s impotent grief over the secret departure of his son in the Argo is vigorously described. He can strike at Jason through his parents, as he declares in Latin reminiscent of Virgil:
Here too, thou robber, thou canst suffer wounds: Here there be tears and thy beloved sire.[1290]
But the old folk resolve to forestall the cruelty of the king, and drain a cup of bull’s blood. The death of Aeson and his consort is the occasion for a picture of the under-world strongly marked by Virgilian influence. Both in ideas and language the last twenty lines of the book recall Aeneid VI: e.g. the new adaptation of the Twin Gates; the joys of light, dance and song in the abodes of bliss; and the type of life on earth that is a passport to happiness.[1291]
The feeling that the Argonauts were “the first that ever burst” into a silent sea is skilfully suggested early in Book II by the description of sundown:
The sunset hour had doubled every fear, When now they saw heaven’s face revolve, while hills And plains were wrested from their eyes, and round Lay darkness heavy. E’en the peace of things— The great world’s silences—affrighted them, And stars, and sky begemmed with streaming locks. Then, as one who in land unknown is lost, Still wandering on his journey through the night, Finds ne’er a rest for eye or ear, but all Around the blackness of the earth, and trees, That seem to meet him blacker for their shade, Deepen his dread of night—not otherwise The heroes felt alarm.[1292]
Guided by the stars, they make Lemnos; whereupon a digression relates how it came that Vulcan loved and Venus hated the island. Digression though it be, it is a well-told tale (which in turn influenced Statius) concerning the murder by the Lemnian women of their husbands returning from war, and Hypsipyle’s rescue of her royal father in an old ship. Her love for Jason is a copy in miniature of Dido’s for Aeneas. Jason, like the Trojan prince, has to be reminded of his mission; and there is grief in Lemnos when the Argonauts leave. The book contains a further incident—the rescue by Hercules and Telamon of the daughter of Laomedon from the sea-monster, and the scheming of the mean-souled Laomedon to avoid giving the rescuer the promised reward of white horses. Putting to sea again, they pass the narrows between Europe and Asia and are welcomed by King Cyzicus in his town.
Most of Book III is occupied with two incidents—the fight against Cyzicus and the capture of Hylas by a water-nymph. The former is a fatality due to a mistake pathetic in intention but in essence incredibly grotesque. The Argonauts have sailed away laden with farewell gifts from Cyzicus. Now, the goddess Cybele nurses a grudge against the royal house for the slaughter of one of her sacred lions during a hunt. It is, therefore, brought about that Tiphys, the steersman, is sunk in deep slumber and that the Argo drifts back to Cyzicus’s city, where in the dark enemies are fancied to be at hand. The battle thus begun in error lasts, we are expected to believe, through much of the night, and the Homeric slaughter wrought by the Argonauts is told with a realism considerably overdone: bones and jaws resound beneath the blows, and the land is white with scattered brains! (sparsusque cerebro albet ager, 166). The mighty boon (donum ingens) of being killed by Hercules leads one victim to the knowledge that a dreadful blunder has been made, and after the king has fallen by Jason’s spear, Jupiter intervenes. With the dawn Tiphys realizes that they have been fighting against a friendly state: it is a tragic recognition, like a frenzied Bacchanal’s return to her senses. Jason is filled with grief over his host of yesterday and arranges for elaborate funeral honours. This affords an opening for an exposition of the philosophy of the soul and of conscience by the soothsayer Mopsus, who ordains ceremonies of expiation. Artificial scapegoats are employed, upon which, by a curious ritual magic, the anger of the hell-powers is to be diverted, and so the Argonauts row away light-hearted. The rebound from sorrow to happiness is reflected in the jocular rivalry among the oarsmen and by the humorous description of the “crab” caught by Hercules which smashes his oar and sends him floundering back on several others. Fresh trouble, however, comes with another landing: and some pretty description marks the story of how Hylas in hot pursuit of a stag stoops to drink at a brook and is drawn into it by a water-nymph. A series of similes illustrates the restless anxiety of Hercules as he calls in vain for the missing youth:
“Hylas” again and “Hylas” yet again He shouts through distant wilds. But naught replies Save woods and wandering echo’s rivalry.[1293]
The Argonauts become impatient over the prolonged absence of Hercules, and debate (with traces of the rhetoric in a controuersia) whether they should sail without him. In the end, after Jason, with reluctance, has loosed the cable, his men grieve to miss the lion’s skin and see the empty bench:
As the ship goes, all yet shout “Hercules” And “Hylas” all—names lost amidst the waves.[1294]
In Book IV the chief incidents are the appearance of Hylas in a vision to announce his fate to Hercules; the arrival of the Argo at the land of the Bebryces, whose arrogant boxer-king, Amycus, is humbled by Pollux; Orpheus’s song of Io’s transformation into a heifer, in reference to the legendary name of the Bosphoros; the freeing of blind old Phineus from the torment of the Harpies, and his foretelling of the main stages of the Argonauts’ adventures; the narrow escape of the Argo from the Clashing Rocks (“how,” reflects Jason, “could they on their return voyage ever thread their way through again?”—a hint of the poet’s intention to bring them back by a different route); and the attainment of the Euxine, where a dull and unpoetic description is inserted. Their welcome from the prince of the Mariandyni is all the warmer because, like them, he loathed King Amycus: as Valerius remarks in one of his comparatively few sententiae,
Sure bond it is to face the selfsame foe.[1295]
At the beginning of Book V death has thinned the number of the Argonauts, and fresh comrades join who relate their exploits in following the arms of Hercules against the Amazons. By night the noise of the Chalybes can be heard at work on implements of war—evil inventions which had brought into activity the Hates, the Angers and the avenging Fury. Caucasus is next sighted—the scene of Prometheus’s torment, and it so chances that Hercules has arrived to free the Titan that very day. Next comes the first sight of the Colchian land, with a fresh invocation to mark a new portion of the epic. Their hardest task is now before the Argonauts, and Jason reminds them that nothing must prevent their bringing back the Fleece:
Necessity should never know a qualm (rebus semper pudor absit in artis).
Medea, King Aeetes’s daughter, after a night of ominous dreams, is early astir with her handmaidens. She is likened to Proserpine:
As o’er Hymettus’ flowery ridge in spring Proserpina once led the dance, or ’neath Sicilian crag, by Pallas stepping close, Yet linked to loved Diana, and more tall Than any, with no rival in her train Till that day when she blenched and at the sight Of Hell had all her comeliness dispelled.[1296]
Valerius describes her, when she first sees the strangers, as a shy girl with nothing in her manner to suggest the sorceress. She depends for reassurance on her old nurse, who recognizes the aliens as Greeks. The mutual impressions of hero and heroine follow: she, reduced to silence, draws back a few steps, but has eyes for him alone; he concentrates attention on her as a princess among the foreign women. Answering his courteous appeal, Medea declares herself daughter of Aeetes and instructs him about his way. So Jason proceeds shrouded in a mist of invisibility to the audience-chamber of the king in the Sun-god’s temple. In all this there is a contamination of epic sources, and a modelling of incidents upon earlier poems. The meeting of Jason and Medea is based partly on Odysseus’s meeting with Nausicaa in Homer, partly on Aeneas’s meeting with Venus under the guise of a huntress in the Aeneid. Jason, like Aeneas, proceeds in a miraculous cloud of concealment. The first interview with royalty in the Argonautica., as in the Aeneid, takes place in a temple. Just as there were tableaux on the walls from the Trojan war to interest the hero of the Aeneid, so for Jason there are provided, thanks to the prophetic skill of Vulcan, pictures of the Golden Fleece and the coming expedition of the Argonauts. This parallelism is one of the cramping conditions of ancient epic, and when it passes the bounds of the pleasantly reminiscential the reader feels that the poet has sacrificed his individuality to standard authority.
Jason’s claim to possess the Fleece angers Aeetes, but he dissembles and promises it as recompense if the Argonauts will help him against the menace of his brother Perses. It is a promise which causes commotion among the gods.
Much of the fighting against Perses and his catalogued allies in Book VI is wearisome. It is one of the innovations made on the story by Valerius, but we do not follow Jason on the battle-field with the love-lit gaze of Medea, when Juno, disguised as Medea’s sister, has led her to the town walls to watch the conflict. There is a note of pity for this girl ignorant of coming ill and the victim of a scheming goddess:
So gleams the lily white, pre-eminent Amid the hues of spring; but short her life: Her glory hath brief flourishing—e’en now The dark wings of the South o’ershadow her.[1297]
Jason performs deeds of prowess and Perses is defeated. With nightfall the din of battle dies away.
If Book VI has dull stretches, the last two books are the most attractive and possess great human interest. This is notably true of Book VII; for it traces the growth of Medea’s passion for Jason, the mental conflict between loyalty to her father and love for a stranger, and the avowal of their affection by the lovers in the temple of Diana. The speeches, though coloured inevitably with some rhetoric and some Virgilian echoes, show real emotion.
Aeetes disdainfully breaks his promise and makes a new proposal—the fire-breathing bulls must be yoked by Jason, and the crop of warriors from the dragon’s teeth must be sown. His perfidy meets with a spirited reply from Jason:
Not this the recompense, Aeetes, nor The hope you offered to the Argonauts, When first we donned our armour for your walls. What means this change of faith? What craft is planned By your commands? Another Pelias, Another ocean here I see! Nay, come, Ye princes all, combine to hunt my life With hate and hests. But ne’er shall my right hand Or hope desert me. ’Tis my wont to bow To orders, not to quail before the hard. One boon I pray for—whether yonder crop Whelms me with its own spear-growth, or the fire To-morrow swallows me with threatening maw— Send hence to Pelias’ cruel ears the news That here died men, and that, had you kept faith, Jason could have regained his country safe.[1298]
Alarmed for the hero, the lovesick princess wanders distraught in the palace; and still more passion is breathed into her soul by Venus under the form of Circe, daughter of the Sun. Her inward struggle is vividly represented—which shall she favour, father or alien? She is trapped (prensa). Would that earth could swallow her, and so she might escape accursed suggestions. Now she will, now she will not betray her father; but at last, overcoming scruples, she turns to her most potent drugs to aid Jason. Possessed of these magical charms, she passes out into the night, and, after a final hesitation, through the city gates. Here Medea is a dual personality, now a timid maiden with a sense of modesty and a regard for duty, now an astonishingly powerful enchantress capable of controlling the passage of Night and the heavenly bodies. In Diana’s temple they confront each other. Jason breaks silence:
Pray, maiden, act not like thy cursed sire; Unkindness fits no countenance like thine.[1299]
Protesting against the king’s ingratitude and perfidy, he declares his unalterable resolution:
Ne’er shall I quit this land without the Fleece: Thou shalt not first behold me fail my race.[1300]
Scarce lifting her eyes, the Colchian princess half resentfully, half scornfully, asks Jason why he ever came to her land; why he, a Thessalian foreigner, should look for aid from her. Her final entreaty is that, finding help elsewhere, he should let her go back to her father innocent as yet of treachery. But Jason snatches the proffered charms with avidity; henceforth irrevocably she is the guilty betrayer of her father. Round her lover she must put a sevenfold spell, and instruct him how to face the dread crop of warriors:
Be mindful, pray, of me: Medea’s self Shall ever in return remember thee.[1301]
She calls him hospes and he calls her coniunx, a contrast designed to recall Dido and Aeneas;[1302] and when Jason imprecates fire and destruction upon himself if he should forget Medea’s sacrifice of royalty and home, the tragedy of their broken love (though Valerius never completed the tale) is foreshadowed. The lists are made ready for his ordeal against the fire-breathing bulls and the furrow-sprung warriors; and Jason, with the aid of Medea’s magic and counsel, proves victorious.
Book VIII: Only one course is now open to Medea. In terror at her own acts and afraid of her father, she bids farewell to the palace and joins her lover in the forest. There is still the Fleece to win. To enable Jason to carry it off, she charms the guardian Dragon to sleep, though, as she bends over the prostrate beast which hitherto she has fed, she cannot but utter her sorrow for it when it wakes to realize the theft. But now there is need for despatch; and the supporting tree yields up the Fleece to the hero, while melancholy gloom gathers in the place; but elsewhere the land is lit up by the brilliant gold as he bears it away. Cheers rise from his men: the Argo draws near to meet him; and he hastens aboard with Medea.
Meanwhile dismay invades the palace on the discovery of her flight. Her mother, who has hitherto played no part, comes into the story with a rhetorical apostrophe to her fugitive daughter—she would fain scratch the face of the robber; she would have Fleece or any other sacred thing taken, if only Medea were given back; and details (singula) now too late recur to the queen’s mind that should have betrayed Medea’s love for the Thessalian; that was why she had no appetite (nullae dapes)! The scene changes: the lonely princess is at sea, the one woman among foreigners, uncertain whether the man for whom she has sacrificed so much will make her his bride. This anxiety ends, however, with their marriage in the island of Peuce. But the festivities are disturbed by the arrival of Medea’s brother Absyrtus with a fleet which Valerius wishes his readers to believe was very suddenly built. The Argonauts grumble over the prospect of attack from their Colchian pursuers, and would restore the girl if they might keep the Fleece. Jason does not hold out boldly against his men’s advice, but, with groans and qualms about his plighted troth, meditates treachery to his bride. So, within less than one hundred lines of the abrupt close, Valerius brings out the worst in Jason’s character. Divining his cowardice, Medea remonstrates with argument and question and irony. Is she a captive on the vessel? May she not hear the plans proposed?
Most faithful husband mine, I know no fear; Yet pity me and keep thy marriage vows At least as far as some Thessalian port— Then cast me off in thine own house! Thou knowest ’Twas thou, and not thy crew, swore faith to me. Perchance they may have right to give me up; But thou hast not the same prerogative, And I must drag thee back with me; for I, The guilty maid, am not their only quest: All on this ship alike are fugitives.[1303]
Is he afraid, she asks, of her brother’s ships? Still even against a greater fleet she deserves to be defended.
Would God my love had not dared all for thee, But felt a scruple! Nay, bethink thee now Of fresh commands—Alack, is cruelty So tongue-tied? Can this shamefast mien of thine Bode aught but harm? I ask thee, who wert once Mine own loved Jason—is it right that I, That I, with suppliant breath, should pray to thee?[1304]
A night of agony over Jason’s pusillanimous ingratitude has wrought a change on the beautiful girl:
She comes not now the glory of her race Nor the illustrious grandchild of the Sun, Nor yet the flower of youthful savagedom, As once when from the tree Chaonian She bore the radiant Fleece in joy and ’mid The mighty names of Greece on Pallas’ prow Stood forth a Maid that seemed the Goddess’ peer.[1305]
Swayed two ways, Jason tries to say soothing words to Medea, and the epic breaks off leaving its hero discredited. The poet has, however, enlisted our sympathies for Medea, as Virgil has done for Dido.
Even the sketch just given serves to show that Valerius was not a slavish imitator of Apollonius of Rhodes. Certainly he owed him much in episodes, similes and ideas. But under each of these three heads he also shows independence. Episodes are amplified, abbreviated, or transferred, and original episodes are introduced; if some similes are copied, fresh ones are invented; and, if there is a certain amount of close rendering of the Greek text, there is, besides, a great proportion of the poem which is due not merely to borrowings from Homer and the Latin of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan and Seneca’s tragedies, but to Valerius’s own genius. Thus, while it is instructive to estimate his debt to Apollonius, it is equally instructive to remember the contrasts between them, and competent critics have studied this question.[1306] Broadly, in construction and probability of narrative he excels his Greek forerunner; but Valerius is most distinctively himself when he displays his gift of description, which is, on the whole, free from the flagrant vices of rhetoric and sometimes reaches a high level of beauty, and when he applies his psychological ability to the character of Medea. One cannot fail to see that in his unfolding of her love he is not tied to the Apollonian account: one notes the influence of Virgil’s Dido: one suspects Ovid’s influence as well; but there is no reason to deny to an artist like Valerius his own large share in elaborating his heroine’s passion.
It is, on several grounds, likely that the incompleteness of the epic was caused by the author’s death rather than by the ravages of time.[1307] Some of the charges of inconsistency and disconnectedness brought against Valerius by critics might have been averted, it is contended, had he lived to revise his epic. All the same, it must be remembered that Valerius took years over his work and might never have removed such blemishes. As Professor Summers points out, Statius’s echoes of Valerius’s language suggest familiarity with his poem; but of about a score of allusions which Statius makes to the Argonautic legend none bears on the return voyage of the heroes, and this is just the portion which is missing in Valerius. An interesting problem turns on the author’s design for finishing his epic. One may conjecture that he contemplated four more books to equate the number with Virgil’s twelve; and it is a plausible guess that he would have, in his closing books, evinced still more independence of his Greek model. Since he elects to place Jason’s marriage in Peuce, he presumably would have dropped the visit to Phaeacia. There is another feature which, while it illustrates his individuality, at the same time lends colour to the belief that he meant to bring his heroes into connexion with Italy.[1308] This feature is the frequency of the allusions to Rome and her customs which the poet engrafts upon this epic of early Greek mariners. Surprise is scarcely felt that at the beginning we should find his autobiographic hint about the Sibyl’s tripod in his house, or his references to recent Roman history in his invocation to Vespasian, or his desire that his poem should be famed in Latin-speaking cities.[1309] But the recurrent Roman note in the course of the narrative is more significant. Jove is made to foreshadow the coming of empires which must include Rome; Hypsipyle’s renown is to last as long as Roman chronicles; and allusions are made to Jupiter of the Alban mount and to the connexion of Rome with Troy.[1310] In the sixth book there is an anticipation of the military emblems of Rome; a likening of the battle between Perses and Aeetes to internecine strife between Roman legions; and illustrations are drawn from shipwrecks on the Latian coast and from hunting in Umbria.[1311] In the next book Jason is said to be as much dismayed by Aeetes’s refusal to keep his promise as a Tuscan pilot looking for the Tiber mouth but blown upon the quicksands off Africa; and Venus, disguised as daughter of the Sun, pretends to be consort of the Italian Picus and “queen of the Tuscan main.”[1312] These and other instances incline one to believe that Valerius was leading up to a sort of Italianization of his Greek theme in its later phases, in which case he would have been at once more national and more Virgilian. For, just as the later half of the Aeneid has its scenes laid in Italy, so Valerius may have decided to imitate Virgil in bringing his Argonauts back by a route more familiar to a Roman reader than that by which they ventured out to Colchis. If the adventurers were to sail homewards by way of the North Sea past Britain and Gaul, this would have fittingly accorded with the address to Vespasian in the opening book; and poetic justice might have been done by prolonging the epic to include the death of Jason’s enemy Pelias.
The fact that there is only one classical mention of Valerius (that by Quintilian recognizing his death as a loss to literature) does not suggest that he had a wide vogue. Yet his influence is traceable in Statius and Silius;[1313] and Juvenal may be thinking of him in his gibe at the conveyance of “the gold of the stolen fleecelet.”[1314] After age-long oblivion, attention was once more directed to his poem by Poggio’s discovery at St. Gall in 1417 of a manuscript containing Argonautica I-IV, 317. In spite of considerable poetic quality Valerius is not a readily quotable author. There is little criticism of life in him—little even in the way of the sententia: so readers have not found much to lay hold on, and his influence has been lessened. Thus, in estimating the classical sources of a work like William Morris’s Life and Death of Jason it is the relation to Apollonius rather than that to Valerius that one makes prominent.
The language[1315] of Valerius is an interesting complex. As in the treatment of his epic theme he was both borrower and innovator, so with his style. Deeply influenced by Virgil and other predecessors, he yet strikes into fresh paths of expression: he even coins words. Among the compounds (many of them dactylic) which he loves, he revives old epithets like auriger, omnituens; uses rare ones, like astrifer, gemmifer, luctifer (in Seneca also); notably shares some with Ovid like piniger, reparabilis, turifer; and others, like monstrifer and monstrificus, with the elder Pliny. The adjectives astrifer, flammiger, undisonus recur in Statius; flammifer (which is Ennian, Lucretian and Ovidian), auricomus (Virgilian), securiger, and others, recur in Silius. But he has adjectives that are entirely his, aegisonus, arcipotens, implorabilis, intemerandus, soligena, just as he has ἅπαξ εἰρημένα among his verbs like protono, superincendo, and among his nouns like a(d)spiramen, lustramen, ouatus (“rejoicing”), memoratrix, mugitor, the last term being used in one of his references to volcanic activity:
As bellower Vesuvius pants, when he In wrath awakes the panic-stricken towns.[1316]
There are also forcible applications of words in new connexions, or extensions of meaning: e.g. Medea adnuitur thalamis (V. 258), “Medea is granted to the marriage-couch”; inuasit habenis murmur (VII. 605), “attacked the horse’s neighing with the reins,” i.e. “set bit and bridle to its mouth”; ueteris sub nocte cupressi (I. 774), “beneath the night-like shadow of an old cypress-tree,” resembling the phrase noctem implicat (VII. 598) of entangling a bull in a cloud of darkness, or Juvenal’s tenebrae for “a dingy hovel.” Fragor expresses vigorously news that comes in a crash:
A startling rumour spreads it thro’ the town— “The King is summoning a thousand hands!” (regemque fragor per moenia differt mille ciere manus, I. 753).
The mixture of convention and boldness in Valerius makes him an intensely interesting linguistic study.
Despite his profound debt to Virgil, and traces of lines with a still more archaic flavour, the technique of Valerius’s verse is predominantly Ovidian. He recalls Ovid in dactylic movement, in lack of varied pauses, and in smooth versification. This smoothness of post-Ovidian poetry, which was based on a comparative avoidance of elision, missed that subtle entanglement of word with word which Virgil artistically employed to counteract some of the heaviness of the Latin language. Valerius has not the technical skill of Statius in hexameters: he is often monotonous in rhythm, in repetitions of words within a few lines, and in over-symmetric arrangement. Yet he is less monotonous than Lucan, although when the test is intellect, Valerius is unquestionably Lucan’s inferior. It is easy to illustrate some phases of his monotony: in Book VIII, a short one of 466 lines, one can count at least 35 dactylic verbs (implicat, prosilit, etc.) forming the first foot of the line, without counting other dactylic words like uellera (at least four times), immemor (at least twice). Some of his endings too are monotonous: e.g. proles four times in less than ninety lines in Book IV,[1317] although we may accept this as an echo of ancient epic phraseology. It is also convention which prompts his alliterative effects such as these in his later books:[1318]
impingit pecorique pauor qualesue profundum per chaos occurrunt caecae sine uocibus umbrae (VII. 401-2)
or
iam magis atque magis mentem super alta ferebat (ib. 473)
or
fata domus luctumque ferens fraudemque fugamque (VIII. 135)
More subtle is the onomatopoeic effect which he achieves in describing the gloomy sea-cave
That knows nor daylight’s gifts nor starry flame, Ill-starred abode that rocks to ocean’s boom (infelix domus et sonitu tremibunda profundi).
To the credit of his common sense, he is less rhetorical than either Lucan or Statius. He rants less. He indulges in fewer epigrams. In eight books his sententiae do not exceed a dozen.[1319] Doubtless, his similes are too numerous,[1320] but they are, as a rule, brief. Unfortunately, though some have beauty, others are in bad taste, like the comparison of the love-sick Medea to a dog going mad; and others are far-fetched, like the comparison of the flight of the Harpies to the rain of ashes from Vesuvius in eruption.[1321] He has his lapses into absurdities, hyperbole and artificiality. In the battle of Book VI there are extravagant details which recall Lucan; and the danger of mythology can be seen when Jason, instead of the simple question, “Where is Hercules?” asks, “Where is he who was equal to the monsters sent by his stepmother?”[1322] Such mythological allusions play their part along with inverted order of words and compact forms of expression in producing an effect sometimes far from clear: even though he is relatively free from laboured conceits, he falls far short of Virgil’s classic lucidity. There is undoubtedly in Valerius descriptive power, varied incident, vivid narrative, and the perennial attraction of the way of a man with a maid. Except for this last psychological interest his merits are mainly related to the objective and concrete with little to suggest that he had reflected profoundly on life or had any guidance or solace to offer to humanity.