"A MIGHTY MAZE! BUT NOT WITHOUT A PLAN" COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE LABYRINTH
Vahtang Hark Shervashidze, Master of Arts A.H.D.G. Expa.tia.te free o'er all this scene of Man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A viId, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot j Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1,5-8. I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my know ledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. Vahtang Mark Shervashidze 1 ABSTRACT The history of the labyrinth in Western thought is intimately connected with the development of Christianity and the philosophical movements associated with it. Roughly speaking, the labyrinth has passed through three periods of development. First, there were the Minoan and Greek sources of the Theseus cycle, which are the foundation of 1abyrinth-1 ore. The Greeks also provided the analogical structure which allowed the labyrinth to expand its repertoire of metaphor beyond mythology into literature. Secondly, perhaps due to the renascence of classical literature in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the labyrinth enjoyed some popularity in France and Italy. Here we must distinguish between purely conceptual, literary labyrinths and the artifactual examples which dot cathedral and church floors across the lie de France and Italy. These artifactual labyrinths have us at a considerable disadvantage. Unlike their literary counterparts, they appear sourceless, their meaning lost. This brings us to the last period of labyrinth development - the secularization of the labyrinth in the Renaissance. This final period saw the transformation of a religious symbol into a garden ornament. Nevertheless, the 2 labyrinth retained its power as a metaphor, infecting new worlds with its enigmatic appeal. In order to comprehend the depth of the labyrinth’s symbolism and document transition from the sacred to the profane, consideration must be given to many testimonies. For instance, it is equally a chapter in the history of garden design as it is labyrinth-lore. The sources for such a study, include: the -QcvSSACfxL , cwid. Mech&oJi ; Sc^ApWe Owd iVa HcWa, Volv pW* Ov\ n^cJcki^ de&cyi In this thesis I have attempted to trace the various ways in which the labyrinth has been used to encapsulate man’s comprehension of the concept of "cosmos" at various periods up to the Renaissance, with special reference to certain key episodes in the history of the labyrinth. CONTENTS Introduction with Notes 1 I: The Labyrinth in Ancient Greece 30 II: The Labyrinth in Virgil’s Aeneid 62 III: The Labyrinth in the Christian World 100 IV: The Concept of the Labyrinth in Dante’s CommedicL 156 V: The Labyrinths of the Hypnerotoma.chi3i Poliphllli 177 VI: Conclusion 206 Notes - I 214 11 220 11 I 224 IV 238 V 242 VI 252 Bibliography 253 F l Qor.es 1* (Q'b') If owe wifa the cruaW^ pattern.... Z. The. e^plo'iiis of- TVie-Seos. 3>.— c\. C-fC^CUA, COm«^. 10. *TV>e Palace s>\ay\. 11. The. k.e*^ pcvHewv • 12..-»3. Twro versions of "the TWe^d ^a/W. t*+. "The labtjri^tU as i5. Avi E^^ia&caaa- v/ase with Oaa i\\ usVab'erf cl la.(sH*d»\lWiiune 'I -T- > '( J TUvIOl . I (a. ”^c labjnatU of S». P^po^AfiAS ll. Avt OrtUDfltac \obvySnfls of Op'iza , ^eor^ia_ 2 \%. "The. lab^/'futU af Chores c^JjUedcsl. [°[. A Cjo** p cwvcj H\j£. rcrud- ^©ud t O^uwf^S. 20 . TVe- laU^rSAft« v.ia CWw^Wes CoJS^cJaTgI ua 1W s«XixWli\ CCaa^Uw!^ . *Da. Is +V raWtl" bura*^ 1W, sec*e> wa^ 1kc SCUacTuO^X^ ? Zl. The wesf Aaoade. , Cba^ncs aaa^I detail. 2.2-• R>l\pVhlo ua "tW ctcu/Li. wood- ZJb. "The plcuAeJ"CWtj S€aJS . l\. 3L5. A pbviefex/tj IcvJotjAwlti • H*1 c&du*1^ . olb • The ^!0x^i/v\a.vMA. yyvT'T^j Cc\,&A(\a*f. 1 INTRODUCTION The labyrinth has exerted a fascination over man’s imagination from prehistory to the present day. It is a symbol which occurs in many cultures far removed from one another physically, temporally and philosophically. Yet, after several millennia its evocativeness remains undiminished. It is, with its sibling the maze, a wellspring of perplexity and awe, and the fear these breed. But, to solve the mystery of the labyrinth is to win the hero’s laurel. In this thesis I have attempted to trace the various ways in which the labyrinth has been used to describe man’s comprehension of the concept of "cosmos" at key periods up to and including the Renaissance. The history of the labyrinth in Western thought is ultimately connected with the development of Christianity and the philosophical movements associated with it. Roughly speaking, the labyrinth has passed through three major periods of development. First, there were the Minoan and Greek sources of the Cretan cycle of legends which are the foundation of 1abyringht-1 ore. The Greeks, and later the Romans, amplified the analogical structure of labyrinth symbolism which allowed the labyrinth to extend its repertoire of metaphor beyond mythology into literature. 2 The most important innovation in both the structure and interpretation of the labyrinth in the classical - as opposed to the antique - period of the labyrinth’s development was Virgil’s extensive use of labyrinth symbolism in his epic poem the Aenied. Secondly, perhaps due to the renascence of classical literature in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the labyrinth enjoyed a restoration of popularity throughout Europe. Here we must distinguish between the purely conceptual, literary labyrinths and the artifactual examples which dotted cathedral and church floors across the lie de France and Italy, and, in the form of the turf mazes, of England’s pastures green! There are also examples of labyrinths formed by placing stones in a pattern, although these are almost exclusive to Scandinavia. These artifactual labyrinths have us at a considerable disadvantage, for, unlike their literary counterparts they appear sourceless, and their meaning lost. This brings us to our final period of labyrinth development - the secularisation of the labyrinth in the Renaissance. This period saw the transformation of a mysterious religious symbol into a garden ornament. Nevertheless, the labyrinth retained its power as a metaphor; infecting new worlds with its enigmatic appeal. 3 From its first conception, the labyrinth has been bound to the concept of heroism. A study of the labyrinth is equally a study of the adoption of the classical conceptions of heroism by early Christian thinkers and the eventual evolution of a purely Christian concept of heroism in Medieval chivalry (1). The Greek conception of the exceptional man endowed with arete, and tragically struck down by fate for his arrogance and hubris is represented by Theseus. He was the victim of the tension between the gift of fortune and the will to self determination. The Platonic hero who rises above the temporal flux of bodily passions by self-knowledge and self-transcendence, and who does not outwardly display his exceptionality, is represented by Aeneas; an individual whose every action dictated the genesis of an empire. Both these concepts of the hero were to transform the Biblical Judaic-Christian conception of heroism - blind obedience to complete an exceptional task with faith alone - by adding the elements of outward elegance and the quest for self-knowledge. This transformation emerges from the chivalric literature of the Middle Ages, and forms the basis of the cult of individuality which has been identified as the initiating presumption of the Penaissance (2). The importance of Virgil’s contribution to the development and elaboration of the metaphor of the 4 labyrinth cannot be overestimated. The pervasiveness of labyrinth symbolism in the Aenied provided an almost inexhaustible mine of interpretative information - some of Virgil’s own invention, some of it deriving from the Hellenic traditions of Augustan Rome. One of these traditions was the Troia.e lussus or Troy game. In the Aenied the mimetic war game is counter-pointed with the final battle between Aeneas and Turnus. With this bold stroke, Virgil in his epic modelled on the I1 1 i a.d linked the foundation of the Augustan empire to the mythological exploits of Aeneas. In so doing, Virgil elevated Aeneas to a new position of dominance in Roman history - a Roman Achilles - thereby extending the Platonic conception of heroism into the historical sphere bringing together the spheres of religion and politics. Furthermore, it was Aeneas’ labyrinthine journey into the Underworld which was the vehicle of the conjunction. This conjunction of spiritual and political power was to have profound effects on the development of the Christian Church and its rise to dominance in Western Europe, as the Roman empire became the Roman Papacy. If nothing else, it ensured the transmission of the labyrinth from Hellenic culture to the cultures of Northern Europe. This is most evident in the practice of naming labyrinths after Troy and in tracing the 5 heredity of European bloodlines to Trojan stock. I do not think it is too far-fetched to suggest that Virgil’s works, and in particular the Aenied and its commentar i es, made up the bulk o f the Antique "curriculum" which was revived i n the Caro1ingen and Ottonian renascences (3). This was the beginning of a movement which culminated in the Petrarchian opinion that "history was nothing but the praise of Rome" (4). It is also significant that Virgil came to be recognised as one of the pagan authors who "had succeeded in attaining before the birth of Christ principles which were as far as was possible without miracle or revelation, homogenous with Chr i stian i ty " (5). Thus Virgil’s works were submitted to forms of literary analysis previously reserved for Scripture alone: Litter a gesta docetj quid c redes allegoric Morales quod ages, quo tendes, anagogia (The literal meaning teaches you about what has happend; the allegorical meaning teaches you about what you believe in: the moral meaning teaches you how to believe: the anagogical meaning reveals your aspiration.) (6) The essentially polysemantic nature of Medieval language characterised in the four-fold exegesis brings special problems to the iconlogic interpretation of the labyrinth and yet, the solution of these problems offers rare insights into important "habits of mind" (7) of the 6 Middle Ages as we attempt to reconstruct the programmes which created the labyrinth. TOWARDS A USEFUL DEFINITION OF THE LABYRINTH The more familiar one becomes with the idea of the labyrinth, the more it seems to belong to those ideas, such as the Great Chain of Being, which have shaped the way we think. These ideas have an existence across cultural and intellectual boundaries. And it is with the popular cultural conception of the labyrinth that we must begin. Most of us first hear of the labyrinth as the name of the building which Daedalus designed for King Minos to imprison the Minotaur. The building was of such a complex of interweaving passages and dead ends that no one going in could ever find their way out. However, the Athenian hero Theseus, using a ball of thread to mark his way enters the labyrinth, kills the Minotaur and returns to Ariadne - Minos’ daughter - who had given him the thread out of love and pity. This description of the labyrinth is compounded of several elements: (1) The labyrinth is a building or at least some kind of structure, or possibly a complex of passageways through a cavern. (2) It is a prison. 7 (3) It is a complex of many confusing passageways. (4) There is a way through the confusion but one must return by the way one came in. So we must assume that the word labyrinth refers exclusively to a building or possibly a cavern of such bewildering complexity through which it is difficult or impossible to find one’s way without guidance. It was not unknown in Greek literature to extend this definition to include rhetorical, logical or moral proble s and other tortuous or entangled puzzles. The etymology of the word labyrinth is far from clear. The Greek labyrinthos has been transmitted practically intact from Ancient Greek to modern European languages, yet its derivation remains unknown. W.H. Mathews in his comprehensive overview of the labyrinth, reports that Max Mayer suggested that labyrinthos might have some connection with the Carian word labrys, denoting an axe and in particular the double axe, a symbol associated with Zeus Labrandeus (8). This etymology struck a chord with Arthur Evans’s discovery of many double axes and their ideograms at the palace of Knossos - the traditional home of the Cretan labyrinth. The combination of archeological evidence and Mayer’s proposed etymology quickly gained 8 pre-eminence in the dictionaries and may still be found there today. In the very same issue of the Journal of Hellenic Studies in which Evans had published his discovery, W.H.D. Rouse published a polemical rejoinder to many of Evans’s theories. Rouse was particularly severe on the derivation of l5byrinthos and its association with the double axe. His first attack was purely philological and questioned the metathesis of the r and the y from la.br ys to l5byrintbos and the addition of the termination - inthos. Secondly, he refuted Evans’s claim that the Knossian palace was the labyrinth of the Cretan cycle implying that the legends of Theseus’ adventures had coloured Evans’s opinion of the palace - "the palaces of Crete", Rouse said, "are the very last thing one would describe as a naze ... with fine open courtyards and straight corridors" (9). He could find little basis for Evans’s claim if we make a mental comparison between what the whole building must have looked like rather than the ruins explored by Evans. We shall see how Rouse’s opinions have been partially vindicated as succeeding archeological evidence has constantly modified Evans’s theories. Rouse’s final pronouncement on the subject is unequivocal: "There is nothing to suggest l5brys in the legendary labyrinth 9 except of the sound of the name" (10). However, while notice was given to Rouse’s dissenting voice Evans’s derivation of the word labyrinth was taken up by the chorus. A.B. Cook was one of the first scholars to modify Evans’s general theory that the palace of Knossos was the labyrinth. In his vast study of Zeus, Cook returned to the original Homeric reference to the Cretan cycle and identified the labyrinth with an orchestra or dancing ground for a sinuous dance known as the Crane. He contended that if the labyrinth is the place of the double axe, then it is the place where lightning fell from the sacred sky god, Zeus. Mimetic dances in [Zeus’] honour provide the requisite transition from ldibryinthos, "the place of the Double Axe" to the classical labyrinth, a dancing-ground made by Diadalos for Ariadne. The medieval maze with its ciel (sky) still retains a vestige of the original significance (11). Cook supposed the word labyrinth had some synonymy with both the place and the pattern of the dance, and the adjective labyrinthine could be used to describe the pattern of the dance or the dance itself. Now, while the pattern or the dance may be very complex they are antithetical to the ideas of confusion and perplexity associated with the labyrinth. A dance is the very enactment of order. 10 Richard Eilmann, a German antiquarian, drew attention to the rock caves at Gortyn which were also called labyrinths, and could lay claim to being the original labyrinth (12). However, he could not satisfactorily combine the “labyrinthine11 movements of the dance with the structure of the caves and claimed a literary contamination. The Etymo 1 og i a.nn Moigmim identified the original labyrinth as a mountain in Crete with a cave hard to enter and just as hard to leave, adding that, by metaphorical extension the word labyrinth is used to describe inescapable dilemmas in arguments (13). This explanation and etymology can be supported by reference to Plato and Plutarch. W.F Jackson Knight, one of the few English scholars of the 1 abyrinth, champions this view and adds his assertion that the common element of all labyrinths, literal, figurative and mimetic is the idea of exclusion and conditional passage. Knight’s thesis is examined more closely in my discussion of the use of labyrinth symbolism in Virgil’s Aenied. These ideas all played a part in the Medieval conception of the labyrinth. Often accompanied by their own nomenclature to better differentiate the decorous limits of the idea of the labyrinth, all played a part in the Medieval conception of the labyrinth and its use in 11 various contexts. I shall be discussing some of the less well-known, or downright obscure, terms, but for the present let us focus attention on the most common difficulties - the synonymy of labyrinth and maze. The origins of the word maze are even more clouded then that of labyrinth. The latter at least had some physical referent about which to speculate. Haze seems to have had an enigmatic entry into the English language of Chaucer’s time (14). Its strongest connection seems to be with the state of mind induced by the labyrinth: delusion or bewilderment. Mathews suggested that the word maze must have referred to something sufficiently familiar to furnish a ready illustration of the nature of the legendary structure of the labyrinth - the cut turf patterns formed in many parts of England, perhaps?(15) But why use the term maze at all? Chaucer used other, more classically correct synonyms such as domus Dedali (16) or the ’krinkeled’ house and this problem does not occur in French where the words labyrinthe and daedale are used. Perhaps the original intention of the word maze was to describe the state of mind of one lost in a labyrinth, as such this would predate Chaucer’s use of the word by nearly, a century. The Chaucerian word maze is used in connection with the making of a maze - '’The 12 house is krinkled ... . For it is shapen as the maze is wrought*' (Oxford English Dictionary). It is curious that there is no word to describe the action of traversing the labyrinth, but we can "tread" a maze. This action is also used in reference to a winding movement especially in a dance. Here ue are returned to the earliest Homeric reference to the labyrinth as the dancing ground of Ariadne. The maze, it then seems, may be the pattern described by the steps of the dance and the giddiness or confusion produced by its winding movements. The word maze also appears in German medieval literature in a remarkably similar context. The word maze appeared in the German chivalric literature of the thirteenth century. It was part of a dualistic system which defined chivalric practice. In this system maze and unmaze were closely related to ordo and inord ina.t i o. A /faze referred to a quality of action which was measured or ordered, as the philogist Wilson observed: ... if a man follows the vocation of knighthood with m*Sze, that is to say, ordinately, no one has a better chance of prospering, both in this world and the next. Ey the "measure"of knighthood [we] clearly understand everything that is best and noblest in chivalry ... (17). The relation between measure and order is brought into 13 fccus in the English phrase "to tread a measure" or to daice. Nor does it seem coincidental that German too sejms to have lost this "ordered" sense of the word maze anl translates the English maze as /rr^arten. But "measure" is translated as ma/9, which bears a phonetic sinilarity to the Medieval word. The Medieval sense of the word maze combines many of the elements which have been identified with the classical labyrinth, including the errantry of Theseus. However, Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne would definitely be out of order in a chivalric sense. It is likely that the faniliarity, which Mathews presumes, may have come from sone common root of the word maze in early chivalric literature. It is coincidental that the word maze and the genre of chivalry can also both claim origins in England. The cut turf patterns may be the relics of a narrative dance which celebrated the errantry of a hero anc his romance with a fair maiden. This means that the word maze is of comparatively late origin and may be considered one of the metaphorical extensions of the concept of the labyrinth, combining the ideas o f the dance, the strict limits of its pattern and the mental states which these produce. However, the concqpt of a maze neither superseded nor achieved synonymy with the concept of a labyrinth and it 14 is not until the seventeenth century when the synonoray between labyrinth and maze becomes unambiguously apparent. This synonomy was to continue to be a problem, as the definitions of labyrinth and maze were further confused as the word naze lost its connotation of dancing. MATHEWS’S DEFINITION OF THE LABYRINTH Mathews proposed some definitions which distinguish labyrinths from mazes: We may take "labyrinth" to signify a complex problem involving merely time and perseverance for its solution, "maze", on the other hand, being reserved for situations fraught, in addition, with the elements of uncertainty and ambiguity, calling for the exercise of the higher mental faculties ...(18). Due to the widespread practice of using the words labyrinth and maze interchangeably and the common extension of these words to describe any artificial or natural design which appears convoluted or intricate, Mathews laid down five limiting conditions on what may be called labyrinths or mazes. To be a labyrinth or maze a design must be Cl) a work of artifice, C2D with an element of purposefulness in the design, C3 D displaying a degree of complexity, C4) with communication between its component parts and C5) the interior and the exterior (19). But perhaps Mathews’s most important contribution to the 15 "technical" definition of the labyrinth was his use of the terms unicursal and multicursal to define the difference in design found in labyrinths and mazes: The word "unicursal" has hitherto been chiefly used by mathematicians to describe a class of problems dealing with the investigation of the shortest route between two given points or of the method of tracing a route between two points in a given figure without covering any part of the ground more or less than once, but there is no reason why we should not apply the adjective "unicursal" (= single course" or "once run") to denote those figures which consist of a single unbranched path, using the term "multicursal" as its complement, or antonym (20). Although Mathews suggests that for convenience we use the labyrinth to embrace mazes, he generally confines the use of the word maze to multicursal designs like those at Hampton Court and Versailles. This distinction has been accepted by scholars of the labyrinth and is considered the correct usage of these terms. A quick perusal of some of the designs of various labyrinths shows us that although they appear to follow certain conventions they are not identical. The variations in design which are likely to occur include: square or round, different number of orbits or variations to the pattern of the paths. These may be multiplied where dealing with purely 1 i terary creations which, while fulfilling Mathews’s criteria, are not limited to a single dimension, the structural limits of construction IS or a fixed context. There are also those labyrinths which are geometrically ordered, on the one hand, and those which are not; for example, (unicursal) meanders such as are found decorating the walls of the palace in Knossos, or (multicursal) such as the wilderness labyrinth at Versailles. THE LABYRINTH AND THE SPIRAL It is clear, from the artifactual evidence, that the labyrinth and the spiral are conceptually related and it is the spiral, which holds the key to the primitive aspects of the labyrinth’s significance. The simple two-dimensional spiral can express itself in many ways: It both comes from and returns to its source: it is a continuum whose ends are opposite and yet the same: and it demonstrates the cycles of change within the continuum and the alteration of the polarities within each cycle. It embodies the principles of expansion and contraction, through changes in velocity, and the potential for simultaneous movement in either direction toward its two extremities (21). When the spiral is extended into three-dimensions, forming a cone it is capable of representing the drama of the fundamental polarity between good and evil and the vacillations and choices of our movements between them: ... in three’ dimensions, the spiral may be envisaged either as the aspiring upward spiral 17 or as the downward vortex. The spiral is inherently asymmetrical and any choice of direction along the verticle axis also determines a right or left handed path: the choice of travelling with or against the sun (22) . The spiral then, has a significance embedded in the primitive level of our cultural consciousness. As such, not only do its geometric properties suggest a wealth of symbols, but it is also related to an embarrassment of other related metaphors. The path of the sun is an obvious example, as is the comparison with entrails and the descent into the earth. The sophistication of spiral symbolism by such sects as Neo-P1atonists is indicative of how far one may develop analogical ideas associated with the spiral without departing from its original meaning. In the T imSLens Plato proposed that planetary motion was helicoidal or spiral-form, resulting from the combination of the general revolution of the cosmos and the linear motion of the planets (23). Proclus is his commentary, In TimaeuiB, reaffirmed Plato’s theory of the helicoidal motion of the planets and identified this form of motion with the eternal archetype of temporal motions and the spiral-shaped iheliocoeides) God Chronos: As an intermediary form combing the extension of a line with the continuous curve of a circle it seemed to be the natural shape for a 18 god whose sense combined linear and circular motions and whose function was to act as intermediary between the dynamic complexity of the visible world and the stative circle of the Primal Intellect. While every circle is geometrically similar to every other circle and every straight line to every other straight line, spirals may be radically dissimilar in appearance (24). In the Platonic commentaries of Hermias, types of motion - circular, linear and helicoidal - had come to symbolise types of thought and spiral motion was associated with the processes of contemplating eternal truths, which seems to have been a combination of the "circular" contemplation of invisible things and the "linear" contemplation of externals. Perhaps the most influential developments in the evolution of the idea of spiral motion can be found in the writings of the Christianised Neo-Platonism of the Pseudo-Dionysius. In the Divine Nounes the spiral motion of the visible cosmos corresponds to the "motion" of God and his power to create order without any change in identity. This combination of the circular and linear "motions" of God (25) are manifested in "the human power to communicate divine understanding in discursive argument and ecclesiastical ritual" (2G). Thus the Areopagite proposed an affirmative method of attaining divine knowledge in which 19 Nature would then present itself to the student of the divine names not as a glass to be looked through darkly but as a great jewelled book to be read in the positive light of faith, a second Holy Writ revealing the mind of its eternal Author in a multitude of symbolic images (27). Although the labyrinth can be identified as a variation or deformation of the spiral, and therefore draw upon the spiral’s extensive image-reservoir, there is some speciality to its structure. The labyrinth has been transmitted by two traditions which are distinguished by their social context: a learned and artistic tradition associated with the Cretan cycle, and a popular tradition associated with games and dances. One of the main distinguishing factors of these two traditions is that one is predominantly textual, the other non-textual. On occasions these two strands of the labyrinth’s history intertwine and are mutually supportive, often they are not, and we are left with textless artifacts which challenge interpretation. A way out of the problem, these two traditions cause for theories of diffusion or interpretation, is to ignore the context and concentrate on the figure itself. The figure must have been anterior to the game or dance. Yet it did not really represent the [Cretan] labyrinth either. Therefore the known social ^contexts in which the figure was used do not explain its essential nature (28). a. Figure. \ a - b . (£ ev\c_ ui^A "tWjL cttaca-W»m p<\.^tew\ via \ck• je*M.$ "2- oaaJL “2> } uWcXv u/iU 4W'wa tki. C0^.Wc« erf "tUx loJo^nniK ^ 1^6m jqua poivi^s IS-lb efc- (jb^) "UtL labcjfW^ 0uvA6^y%, ^£ydw\ t HeAle^f | s).L. ^LaWy-t^ttA pv Vct>^"Tduja "?1 ^ 20 John Heller took up the theory that the basic, asymmetrical form of the labyrinth was generated from a cruciform pattern as part of a game (2G). (See Figure 1) By varying the central cross to form a symmetrical or multi-axial figure most versions of the labyrinth could be produced. Heller was reiterating the opinion first forwarded by Harold Colton, that the secret of the figure’s construction has been responsible for its continuity of form through so many centuries and over such wide areas, but ... in origin the figure was nothing more than a tricky or amazing design. It was not derived from a formal game or dance . ... but it was soon put to use by dance loving people. It did not represent the labyrinth of legend, but it was soon used to illustrate it. It was simply a figure known and spread by children ( puerorum ludicris compos tr i bus) and other ingenious people (30). On the basis of Heller’s opinion it would be difficult to attach significance to any particular form of the labyrinth’s design. However, the architectural context of many labyrinths - church labyrinths in particular - offer compelling evidence that some designs have a specific iconologic meaning within the narrow context of the Church and the wider context of religious belief and practice. It seems that if the figure has come to represent the labyrinth and all its symbolic baggage, then the problem is not one of interpretation of the * whole or any particular element, but in determining whether a particular interpretation is or is not correct in the given context. 21 ICONOLOGIC METHOD AND LABYRINTH INTERPRETATION The only way to begin to understand the iconology of the labyrinth is by surveying common elements. One must assume that there are some elements of the labyrinth’s design which have a significane because of their commonality (within specific contexts, of course) or one must abandon the search for meaning as impossible. The nature of significance - one sign:one referent - allows us to disassemble the labyrinth so that we may discover the possible meaning of its elements and then attempt to reconstruct the programme which generated any particular design. This course is fraught with many dangers and pitfalls, so one must be cautious. To begin with we must make a distinction between the problems of the origin and evolution of labyrinth symbolism and the problem of interpreting any particular from of the labyrinth. The search for the origins of the labyrinth suggests possible meanings for particular elements, providing the basis from wh ich the interpretation of a particular labyrinth , say the Chartres labyrinth, may be determined within its specific ecclesiastical context. This approach is in conflict with Heller’s opinion that the design "came" to represent certain stories or contexts but was not generated by them. Heller’s is a 22 bold and simple attempt to explain the wide temporal, cultural and geographic distribution of the labyrinth’s design at a very concrete level. However, it does not adequately explain why the design underwent constant modification. Why for instance was symmetry important? What was the significance of the cruciform pattern, or the number of orbits one appears to make around the central point? How did this change in time and in different cultural contexts? If the labyrinth is to be anything but a ludicrous figure these sorts of developments must be explained. Firstly, we can be certain that any particular form of the labyrinth has a meaning and coherence beyond a mere aggregation of significant elements. Thus to ascribe a meaning to any element in isolation is to risk getting it very wrong. To assume, even when you have independent evidence, that the meaning of any single element once discovered can be generalised also flirts with fallacy. Ernst Gombrich examined such problems in detail in his monograph Symbolic Images. The essence of Gombrich’s method was the assumption of a "rational conventionalism (31)" which rationalised the symbol after the event, finding the meaning "in" the symbol by a chain of rational associations. Acceptance of this "convention" means that we are 23 offered a large variety of possible meanings and select from them the one that seems demanded by the meaning of the surrounding text ... (32 ) . This is of particular importance for the exegesis of Medieval symbolism which was based on systems of metaphor alien to those we understand today: For in [the Neo-Platonic] tradition the meaning of a sign is not something derived from agreement, it is hidden there for those who know how to seek. In this conception, which ultimately derives from religious rather than human communication, the symbol is seen as the mysterious language of the divine (33). In order to overcome some of the difficulties of attempting the exegesis of such symbolism, Gombrich proposed a few rules. Firstly, that iconology - by which he understands "the reconstruction of a programme rather than the identification of a particular text (34)" - "must start with the study of institutions rather than with the study of symbols (35)". This provides a textual basis which at least allows reference to primary source material and a basis for critical interpretation. Secondly, Gombrich proposed an "exegetic game " : One would imagine a board in which the myth or figure to be "interpreted" is placed in the centre. Round it various concepts with their attributes are written in schematic fashion. Identical attributes are linked ... . The game consists in moving the counter of signification to a desired point and back to the centre along different lines (36). 24 And he continues in a footnote: The rules demand that the player should be able to quote a classical text in support of any link he wishes to establish. He is "cheating" when he starts changing the myth Cor figure] to suit the desired signification (37) . The one thing which is clear from Medieval iconology is that meaning derives from the network of inter-related parts within specific contexts. What is confusing is that the specific signification of these parts achieves a "resonance" above and below the given context, and has the appearance of levels of meaning as if there were a surface structure and various levels of deep structure. This is a fiction which illustrates the problem of deciding the correctness of any interpretation. The mistaken belief that there are "levels of meaning", some considered trivial and some considered significant, leads one away from the actual context in which the figure occurs and to the imposition of alien interpretations which although they may fit the figure cannot be established by the "rational conventionalism" of the "exegetic game". Meaning in the Middle Ages was derived from the relationship between pattern and symbolic significance. This can be seen artifactua11y in architecture: 25 A square for instance, is described as being contained within four straight lines: the number four is decisive while the relation of the four lines to one another (which we would qualify by indicating their length and by saying that stand at right angles to one another) is simply omitted. The geometrical form is, as it were, translated into arith metical figures (38). Or conceptually, as in the concept of symmetry: ... symmetry can be an informing principle. It imbues chaotic matter, endowing it with form from inside, and thereby giving it definition to become an object. Still the essence of the object is its form, this internal symmetry which is subliminal, below the level of sense perception, and therefore not subject to qualification. It is intel ligible to the intellect rather than palpable to the senses (39). Hence the translation of figure to form and form to figure. This process of translation had a peculiar effect upon the Medieval world view and its expression i n architecture: The floor-plan of the Medieval cathedral follows the form of the Roman cross, the cross on which Christ died, with a long nave, a shorter chancel and a transept. It is form expressed by symbolism rather than by narrative fiction, that is, the idea is made manifest through the conventional meanings of the cross rather than by means of a story. Nevertheless this form of the church, a reminder of Christ’s passion and resurrection, is the cohesive principle that holds the multifarious parts together. There is, however, no one vantage point from which the entire plan is visible. In fact, quite the 26 opposite, except for an upward thrust the visitor’s eye is invariably thwarted by screens and massive pillars and incidental chapels and a welter of miscellaneous decorat ion (40). In certain ways the church labyrinth parallels this description of the cathedral and the world view which generated it. The form of the labyrinth explicitly opposes conceptual knowledge or access to the design, or else, what need have we of the clue? Its symmetry is hidden both within the figure and in the essential return. Although we may experience the motion we are left to intuit the spiral and allow it to resonate the nadir of the fall and the apex of redemption. Perhaps it is the difficulty of a wholistic apprehension of the design which was singled out to signify those heroes of the labyrinth - Theseus, Aeneas, then Dante and Poliphilo, and always Christ - all of whom had the advantage of guidance. To know and understand the labyrinth is to partake of the mind of its maker. 27 NOTES 1. These definitions of heroism are taken from Isherwood,C. and Auden,W.H. Introduction to, Charles Baudelaire- Intimate Journals, Panther Books, London, 1969. 2. Bronowski,J. , Magic, Science and Civilisation, Columbia University Presss, New York, 1978. 3. Panofsky,E., Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, Russak, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1960. 4. Ib id. , p. 10. 5. Comparetti,D. Virgil in the Middle Ages (1895), George Allen and Unwin, London, 1966, p.115. 6. In, Gurevich,A.J., Categories of Medieval Culture (trans.) Campbe11,G.L., Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1985, p.83. 7. Gurevich’s term. 8. Mathews,W.H., Mazes and Labyrinths■ Their history and development, Dover, New York, 1970, p. 175. 9. Rouse,W.H.D., "The double axe and the labyrinth", Journal of Hellenic Studies, XIX, 1901, p.274. 10. Ibid., p.274. 11. Cook,A.B., Zeus-' A Study in Ancient Religion, Cambridge University Press, 1914, Vol.ll, pp.600-601 12. Knight,W.F.J. "Myth and Legend at Troy", Folklore, XIVI, 1935. 13. Ibid., p. 110. 14. Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1933. 15. Mathews,W.H., 1970, op.c i t., p. 176. 16. Ibid., p.176. 28 17. Wilson, B. , "Amor Inordinata in Hartmann’s Gregor ins", Speculum, LXI, 1966, p.96. 18. Mathews,W.H., 1970, op.cit. , p.176. 19. Ibid., p. 182. 20. Ibid., p. 184. 21. Puree,J., The Mystic Spiral • Journey of the Soul, Thames and Hudson, London, 1974, p.6. 22. Ibid., p.9. 23. Miller,J., Measures of Wisdom-' The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Chr istian Antiquity, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1986, p.497 (Timeans: 39a-b ) . 24. Ibid., p.449. 25. Circular motion represented "analysis and human union with God and contemplation of his goodness and beauty", and corresponding to the circular motion in the visible universe, and God’s eternal sameness; contemplation of identity. Linear motion represented the human understanding of the eternal world, corresponding to the linear motions of the visible cosmos and the process of visual perception themselves, and the outward flow of God’s creative energies and the procession of all things from a common source. Ibid., p.498. CM CD Ibid., p.498. Csld Ibid., p.500. CM 00 Heller,J.L., "Labyrinth or Troy Town?", Classical Journal, XLII, 1946, p. 133. 29. Ibid., p. 134. CO o Ibid., p. 136. 31. Gombrich,E.H., Symbolic Images, Phaidon Press, London 1972. 32. Ibid., p. 12. 33. Ibid. , p. 13. 29 34. Ibid., P-6. 35. Ibid., P-21. CO CD Ibid., p. 60. CO Ibid., Note 98. 38. Krautheimer,R., "Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture", Journal of Va.rbu.rg and Courtauld Inst i tute, 5, 1942, p.8. 39. Henninger,S.K., "The meaning of Symmetry", Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 1979, p.3. 40. Ibid., p.4. 30 I. THE LABYRINTH IN ANCIENT GREECE The labyrinth has been conventionally linked, on the one hand, with Theseus and the Minotaur and, on the other, with an Egyptian building described by many classical authors and identified by Flinders Petrie in 1888. Whether the Cretan labyrinth actually existed or not, and if it did whether it was or was not modelled on the Egyptian building has been much discussed. The debate, however, is one which we can safely ignore as what is of principal concern to us is the development, rather than the genesis, of the predominantly literary tradition surrounding the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. The labyrinth, as it is presented by the mythographers and iconographers, is not so much an artifact which determines an adventure as an adventure which determines the form of an artifact. The drd.ma.tis personae of this adventure include Theseus, the Athenian hero; Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, King of Crete; the Minotaur, a monster imprisoned in the labyrinth. The labyrinth itself furnishes the locus in which these characters interact, and it is this interaction which determines the interpretation of the structure of the labyrinth and also forms the basis for its iconologic portrayal. The whole resulting iconologic programme is one of subtlety, complexity and sophistication. The iconologic programme of the Cretan labyrinth is particular and can claim exclusive right to the term lSibyr inth for its description- The iconic respresentations ue shall be dealing with reveal the active threading of a single (un icursa.2 ) , though convoluted, path and not the many pathed ( mill t icursa.1 ) structures or designs we have come to know as muzes. Of course, this does not mean that the adventure itself does not have its genesis in a story about an actual labyrinth. But rather, that the iconologic transmission of the adventure superseded any actual structure as both the model and definitive case of what we call 1 abyrinth s. Theseus, Aariadne ... the labyrinth itself, have been described as mythological. Susan Langer defines myth as "the primitive phase of metaphysical thought, the first embodiment of general ideas" (1). Ernst Cassirer, employing Usener’s conception of the generality of language (2), characterised the production of myth as a progression from special to general or personal gods; that is, gods imbued with a personality. This is the ultimate consequence of anthropomorphism and has much to do with the special properties of names. The ascribing of a personality to a being produces a new being 32 which continues to develop by a law of its own. The concept of a special god, which expressed a certain activity rather than a certain nature, now achieves its embodiment and appears, so to speak, in the flesh (3). August Comte described this state of thought as theol og ica.1 - a childlike spontaneous tendency to explain natural phenomena by wills and not by laws. As Levy-Bruhl stated it: uTheology is here synonymous with anthropomorphism in the conception of causes'* (4). When causality is linked with personality, natural phenomena are recognised as the caprices of will: Anything may happen. Nothing is impossible, neither is anything necessary. The will of the gods suffices for a thing to happen or not to happen. Directly man has no power over nature; indirectly he can do everything, provided only that he can propitiate the divinities whose will is law (5). The positivist opinion seeks to reveal the deceit of the orientation provided by theology - it is when man’s impotence is greatest that his confidence in his own power is strongest (6). However, blissfully unaware, man’s confidence expresses itself first in legends: [the] transitional stage between the egocentric interest in folklore, focussed on a human hero, and the emergence of a full-fledged nature-mythology dealing with divine characters of highly general import ... which produces the culture-hero (7). And then, in the mythology of culture-heroes, the role and status of the culture-hero become complex issues as 33 Stories gather round him, as they gather round real heroes of history whose deeds have become legendary ... . But whereas the princes are credited with enhanced or exaggerated human acts the primitive culture-hero interferes with the doings of nature rather than of men; his opponents are not Saracens or barbarians, but sun and moon, earth and heaven (8). The difference between a culture-hero and an anthropomorphic god is immediately apparent. The hero has his basis - however darkly seen - in historical fact. He is linked with actual historical locations and is most definitely a man. As such he represents the relationship between man and the outer world and, more significantly, the change in that relationship from passivity to activity: Man ceases to be a shuttlecock at the mercy of outward impressions and influences; he exercises his own will to direct the course of events according to his needs and wishes (9). This cultural attitude finds admirable representatives in the mythological figures surrounding the labyrinth in what has become known as the Cretan cycle. THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE (i) Theseus There are three principal sources of information about Theseus and his adventures: the mythographers 34 Apollodorus and Diodorus Siculus, and the moralist and biographer, Plutarch. The different approaches of these accounts illustrate Langer’s argument for the evolution of the culture-hero through legend and mythology. The life of Theseus is most often divided into three sections - juvenile adventures on the road from Troezen to Athens; the Cretan cycle; other adult adventures and the kingship of Athens. This collection of stories has been described as: a curious hotchpotch, ranging from the solemn and mysterious ... to the trivial and derivative ... . The politically minded parts ... are barely mythical ... . The adventures modelled on Heracles, the disposal of robbers as well as the Amazon expedition as a whole, seen from the literary and artistic evidence to be substantially the creation of the seventh or sixth century B.C. (10). If only by exclusion, Kirk has indicated the speciality of the Cretan cycle as the pre-eminent episode in Theseus’ life: The Cretan adventure itself ... goes back at least to the time of Homer and Hesiod, and probably earlier. Indeed the Bronze age is plausibly reflected not only in the palace-labyrinth ... but also in the bull itself - for bull worship and bull games were a prominent fact of Hinoan culture - and in the idea of Athens as tributary to Crete which makes sense of the late Bronze Age but for no subsequent period (11). The Cretan cycle, by its very age, established the 35 legendary precedent for the later embellishments of Theseus’ heroic nature and his particular relationship with Athens (12). Yet the profundity of its religious symbolism betrays a myth which is drawn from the prehistory of Achaean civilisation. Bearing in mind the importance of the Cretan cycle in Theseus’ life, the accounts of his juvenile adventures may be interpreted as the essential prerequisites which would provide him with an archetypica11y heroic past (13). The most apparent reason for these embellishments was to associate Theseus with the divine hero Herakles, thus immediately raising his esteem to that of a demigod. Just so, Theseus’ early adventures emulate the labours of Herakles and set the stage for the drama of the Cretan cycle: And taking the road along the coast [from Troezen to Athens], as men say, since he emulated the high achievements of Heracles, he set about performing labours which would bring him both approbation and fame (14). The labours of Theseus and Herakles are connected by a figure which is soon to become familiar - a monstrous bull. The Marathonian bull was brought to Attica from Crete by Herakles, as the story goes: Minos, the son of Zeus and Europe ... prayed to the godhead to furnish him with a victim worthy of his own altar. Then on a sudden The Exploits of Theseus From a cylix in the British Museum In the centre Theseus has killed the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, which is also represented in the pattern on the building and round the edge. Above he is wrestling with Cercyon, then, to the ri^ht, he is killing Procrustes on his bed and Sciron on his rbck, taming the Marathonian Bull, binding Sinis to his tree, and killing Phaea and the sow. -W. The Ikoilgs o( Obi., V, VUi.X, yil, CeiCi &»r\ab. L-C. F\g\uce* 2. 36 appeared a bull of dazzling whiteness. Minos lost in admiration of it, forgot his vow and chose rather to take it as chief of his herd. Pasiphae was fired with actual love for it. Zeus therefore, being scorned by his son, sent the bull mad. It proceeded to lay waste, not only the fields, but even the walls of the Cretans. Herakles ... proved more than a match for it and brought it vanquished to Argos ... . But Hera ... drove it to Attike, where it was called the Bull of Marathon and subsequently slain by Theseus (15). Kerenyi has amply illustrated the "sphere of death" which surrounded Theseus in his labours (16) (Figure 2), and the Marathonian bull - whose progeny is the Minotaur - is a premonition of the "sphere of death" which is the labyrinth and the monstrous death which waits within. The genesis of the labyrinth itself, however, is strictly outside Theseus’ biography and is not included in the Cretan cycle. Theseus’ involvement with Crete and the labyrinth is determined by the Marathonian bull and his Athenian citizenship. He was included in the tribute of youths and maidens paid to Minos for the death of Androgeos in Attica (17): [The youthful tributes] were offered to the Minotaur, half man and half bull ... . This beast lives in the labyrinth, a maze usually identified with the intricate Minoan palace at Knossos. Theseus enters the maze and kills its occupant; Minos’ daughter Ariadne helps him escape either with the famous clue or with a magic crown of light that enables him to see in the dark. The tribute is now ended (18). 37 Beneath this simple adventure story lies a profusion of detail and contention. These details provide the chiaroscuro to an otherwise austere adventure. Common wisdom has it that there is not much more to heroes than their deeds (the later embellishments of chivalry notwithstanding). Theseus’ juvenilia are evidence of this, and thela.byr inth, rather than an exception to this rule, is a fine example. We know very little of Theseus other than the rudimentary motivations of "approbation and fame", and the later adventures carnal entanglements with Antiope queen of the Amazons, Phaedre, younger sister of Ariadne, the rapture of Helen, an attempt to abduct Persephone - are less than morally enlightening. Yet, as we shall see, the calibre of Theseus’ associates in the Cretan cycle and the carefully constructed juvenilia suggest an important figure who, as Langer says, "interferes with the doings of nature rather than with men" (19). For example, when compared with Herakles the labours are characterised by triumph within "the sphere of death" as represented by its monstrous occupants. However, Theseus is unable to make the ultimate step out of the "sphere of death" and the "sphere of men" and into immortality as a god. Thus if Herakles may be considered the god of human achievement, Theseus is the 38 patron saint, but no less mortal for the honour. It is perhaps the very mundaneness of Theseus’ character that has assured his contined importance. Herakles represents an aspiration which is utterly fantastic, whereas Theseus exists as testament to the intrusion of historical characters into established mythological patterns. Theseus embodies a moral standpoint and his inclusion in Plutarch’s collection of lives is evidence of this. Plutarch refers to Theseus as "steadfast" and of "immovable power" and confers on him the epithets Securer and Earth-stayer (20) which emphasise this connection with the world of men. However, Theseus’ exploits are - in the main - outside the world of men, and it is there to which we must turn our attention to understand the significance of Theseus for the emergent Athenian culture and many later generations. Kerenyi has described Theseus journey from Troezen to Athens as a progression along the Sacred Way (21), and this may be synonomous with the Elysian way: The word elysion, which signifies ... the abode of the divinised dead, is presumably related to eiys/e, a "way". The term is remarkable, and its applicability is not at once clear. We must suppose that the Greeks recognised a definite "Way" from earth to heaven, along which those honoured by the summons of Zeus might pass.(22). The physical counterpart of this Way has, in accordance 39 with Pythagorean teaching, been identified as the Milky Way, that is, "the road of souls traversing Hades in heaven." (23) A correlative to this idea may be found in the journey between Athens and Eleusis, where one was initiated into the mysteries, which in turn assure a journey along the celestial way. Macrobius was espousing a Homeric view when he described the tropic signs of Capricorn and Cancer as "gates of the Sun", that is, "they prevent it from further advance when such is forbidden by the solstice and turn it back to the pathway of that zone whose bounds it never quits." (24) These gates do not only limit the sun’s path but are also the gates through which souls pass from earth to heaven and vice versa. The sun then could be said to make a similar journey between these gates and the synchrony of this journey with the seasons, as marked by the solstice, suggests the concept of regeneration. Thus, Theseus is the hero who clears the way of death and allows free transport and guidance of souls along this way. The Cretan cycle is an older, but no less refined, conception of this journey. There is ample evidence to support the view that the labyrinth is a mimesis of the journey through Hades (25), and the battle with the Minotaur may be interpreted as a regenerative solar ritual which was periodically 40 re-enacted. Theseus was initiated into this rite and emerged as the new Sun. The ritual is answered by keeping it within the influence of Dionysos - the god responsible for inspiring the initiatory divine madness, and Aphrodite the goddess of love and generation (26). These aspects were of lasting importance for the sophisticated development of the labyrinth and the identification of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. The extent and correlational complexity of the structure can be fully appreciated once we have also considered the figures of Ariadne and her ill-fated brother, the Minotaur. (ii) The Minotaur The Minotaur, which heroes like Theseus seek to overcome, is a paradoxical figure whose very bestiality tells us more of the human. He was a god’s revenge, conceived of a marriage of greed and lust (27). The Minotaur was described by Diodorus as: Asterios, who is called Minotauros. His was the face of a bull, but the remaining parts were those of a man (28). Plutarch less emphatically quotes Euripides who had described the Minotaur as "Ca3 mingled form and hybrid birth of monstrous shape", and that, "Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him" (29). Euripides’ figurative descriptions, as opposed to Diodorus’ realistic description (30), furnishes Plutarch with an opportunity to explain how the figure of the Minotaur may have arisen. Taking Philochorus (31) for his authority, Plutarch relates the story of a Minoan general, Taurus, "who was not reasonable and gentle in his disposition, but treated the Athenian youth with arrogance and cruelty" (32). So, we have two versions of the Minotaur: the monster bred out of Minos’ greed and Pasiphae’s lechery, and a general called "the Bull", who, though human, displays a cruel and bestial nature. These relatively simple descriptions belong to the corruptions of a popular culture, but the figure of the Minotaur - like Theseus - belongs to a more general and sophisticated cosmogony. A.B.Cook has drawn attention to the similarities between the ravishment of Europa and Pasiphae’s coupling with a divine bull. Pasiphae herself is identified with an ancient oracular goddess "She who gives light to all" (33) who, Pausanias relates, was associated with Helios and whose name is an epithet for Selene or Artemis the 42 moon goddess: When, therefore, in the Cretan myth, the "bull of dazzling whiteness" approached Pasiphae in her cow Cform3, we are justified in supposing a union between the sun and the moon (34). Cook continues: ... the fertilising bull was in the long run identified with the sun. Apollodorus states that PslIos or Taios, the man of bronze, ... was by some called fauros. But PslIos or TslIos means "the Sun" and TdLuros means "a bull". It follows that some who wrote on Cretan mythology spoke of the Sun as "the Bull" (35). The offspring of the union between Pasiphae and the bull is characteristically celestial and indicated by the name of the Minotaur - Aster ion or Asterios - a name equally applicable to the sun and the moon as well as the stars, so that we would be justified in explaining the title Asterios, Asterion as god of all the celestial lights (36). The identification of the Minotaur with the sun has a special place in Cook’s theory of the labyrinth, which he derives from the si/SLStikSi pattern. He cites a coin (figure 3) with both Minotaur and labyrinth based on a swastika pattern. Cook relates the swastika Minotaur to a stone-carrying Minotaur in figure 5, who is in turn related to Talos and the bull (figure 4) (37). Further evidence of the swastika Minotaur is provided by a coin 43 (figure 7), whose obverse shows a Minotaur and the reverse a stylised star or sun. Thus, the Cretan cycle, in part, deals with a solar bull and a lunar cow who give birth to the semibovine Minotaur or star. Cook contends that this points to the celebration of a sun-moon marriage (38) symbolic of a cult of fertility and regeneration. The relationship between the Minotaur and Talos may have provided the basis for Plutarch’s debasement of the contest between Theseus and the Minotaur to the contest with the general Tauros, if Tauros is recognised as the champion and protector of Crete whose power over Athens ends with Theseus’ victory. A reconstruction of the Minotaur can now be assembled from the preceeding inquiries. The Minotaur of the solar ritual must be sacrificed in order to ensure a strong summer sun and fruitful season. We will remember that the Marathonian bull - the "father" of the Minotaur - was not sacrificed but driven mad and laid waste much of the land before it was killed by Theseus, who is synonymous with the ritual instrument of death. However, Theseus’ role as Elysian guide points to a Minotaur who must be overcome in order to achieve Elysian repose. Freedom from the tribute is, then, synonymous with freedom from death. One may even 44 construe the Minotaur as guardian of Hades who must be overcome for a soul to pass through the gates of the Sun and return newborn (39). The Minotaur as son of Minos, judge of souls in Hades (40), is also evident in this cast and Minos’ bull is an apt epithet for the judge and guardian of the Elysian way, as is his transfiguration as a star. It seems that an assuredly primitive myth of life, death and regeneration was not only anthropomorphised in Theseus and the Minotaur, but was developed in order to provide the basis for the religious belief in the regeneration of souls and a cosmic explanation of the seasons. Thus we see the Minotaur as clearly more than just a monster to be dispatched by a questing hero. However, before we can unfold this culture-myth in its entirety we must examine the connection of both Theseus And the Minotaur first with Ariadne and then with the labyrinth itself. ( iii) Ariadne Ariadne has been often dismissed as the romantic interest of the Cretan cycle. Ovid ref lects this sentiment in the Heroides (41), and it is certainly as the abandoned lover that she is best known. 45 The inscription "All for love" from the labyrinth at Lucca is testament to the perceived tragedy of Ariadne’s love. The tragedy is more piquant for the implication of Ariadne’s great loss - her father, her kingdom, her brother - and eventually her life. In some versions (42) Ariadne survives as the consort of Dionysos, in others she was slain by Artemis at the behest of Dionysos for betraying him with a mortal lover (43). The calibre of Ariadne’s lovers leads to the suspicion that she is of greater significance than a romantic ingenu. Kerenyi explains: [Ariadne] was famous under that name only, which in Cretan Greek signified "exceedingly pure", ar/-Aa£ne, but, she was also called Aridella Gin Crete] i.e. "exceedingly bright". Under these two names she had originally been a great goddess, "pure" as the queen of the underworld, "bright" as the queen of the sky (44) . Homer described the labyrinth as "a dancing floor for fair haired Ariadne" (45). It is significant that this, the first generally accepted reference to the labyrinth, is associated neither with Theseus nor with the Minotaur but with the "fair haired Ariadne". The epithet is usually reserved for a goddess. From this point other references to Ariadne’s divinity abound (46), and she is identified both with Aphrodite and Pasiphae, betraying a 46 close connection to cults of fertility and therefore with the ritual renewal of life suggested by the contest between Theseus and the Minotaur. The Homeric reference to a "dancing floor" further suggests ritual dance: In the Athenian view it was Aphrodite who helped Theseus out of the labyrinth, but it is not quite clear whether she guided Ariadne by her power or whether the hero met the goddess embodied in the queen’s CPasiphae] daughter. On Delos, however, a legend was preserved to the effect that Ariadne - evidently representing Aphrodite - gave Theseus a statue of the goddess and that the figure of the labyrinth was danced by the rescued youths and maidens as this statue was being set up (47). This version of the labyrinth ritual, called the "Crane dance" in Plutarch (48), places Ariadne within the sphere of the labyrinth and Kerenyi has identified her with the "mistress of the labyrinth" to whom libations of honey are offered (49). Ariadne, like Theseus, is a character of culture-myth and as such is ascribed historical as well as mythological status: According to Kleidemos, the Athenian historian, Theseus made peace with Ariadne when, after the reigns of Minos and his son, she became queen of Crete - a humanised version of the fact that the "mistress of the labyrinth" was the true divine queen of Crete (50) . However, Ariadne never concedes her divinity to the same extent as Theseus, and her role in the labyrinth rituals always remains mysterious. Ariadne is identified both 47 with the mother of the Minotaur and the instrument of his sacrifice. As mother, Ariadne is identified with the moon and an underworld goddess whom Kerenyi contends is the archetypal reality of the bestowal of soul, of what makes a living creature an individual ... . The image of this event is the woman as conceiver, who bestows soul upon living creatures, and the reflection of this image is the moon, a mythological seat of the soul (51). Thus, on certain Cretan coins, Ariadne represents a view of the nocturnal world ... a totality that came into being through the combination of the four meander patterns ... . This view of the world became still more complete when astronomical signs were added beside the four meander patterns: one or two sickle moons one waxing and one waning - and in the middle, inside the labyrinth, a star (52). (See figures 6 and 8) This nocturnal representation may be identified with the Underworld and forms an essential complement to the celestial nature of the sun-heroes and the Minotaur - her brother - a star within the labyrinth. This completes the image of regenerative power. Not wholly separate from her role as mother is Ariadne’s role as guide - of which there are two versions. Popular versions of the Cretan cycle have Ariadne asking the assistance of Daedalus (the architect of the labyrinth) and being given a ball of thread - the famous clue which enabled Theseus to escape after killing the 48 Minotaur (53). However, Plutarch does not include Daedalus in his account (54) and Kerenyi shows this preference, claiming it was Ariadne’s own cleverness (55). This latter version, apart from being my personal favourite, is important because it emphasises the essential feminine aspects of spinning - the origin of the thread - which reinforce the mother image, and both sets in train and delimits a series of associations which are carried throughout the labyrinth’s iconographic history. In Diodorus* version Ariadne gives Theseus a crown of shining jewels which she had received as a wedding garland from Dionysos and which Theseus used to light his way in the dark labyrinth. This is certainly the anthropomorphic translation of stellar guidance which points along Theseus’ Elysian way: [Dionysus] considered [Ariadne] worthy of immortal honours because of the affection he had for her, and placed among the stars of heaven "the crown of Ariadne" (56). Thus, Ariadne is the personification of a multivalent nocturnal goddess. She is in a very literal way the theatre within which the contest of Theseus and the Minotaur is enacted. The scope and range of Ariadne’s activity within the Cretan cycle support the opinion that she is a diety of ancient conception whose 49 specialty has never quite been overcome, and in whose personification is a gaudy drape which conceals the depth of her true significance and influence. THE MISE-EN-SCENE (i) The Labyrinth There was an Egyptian building which, Diodorus relates, was constructed by Mendes: a tomb known as the labyrinth which was not so remarkable for its size as it was impossible to imitate with respect to its ingenious design; for a man who enters it cannot easily find his way out, unless he gets a guide who is thoroughly acquainted with the structure. And some say that Daedalus, visiting Egypt and admiring the skill shown in the building, also constructed for Minos, the king of Crete, a labyrinth like the one in Egypt, in which was kept, as the myth relates, the beast called Minotaur. However the labyrinth in Crete has entirely disappeared ... but the one in Egypt has stood intact in its entire structure down to our lifetime (57). Strabo in his Geography gave a similar description of an Egyptian building, which he claimed was a single storey structure used for administration: crypts ... which are long and numerous and have winding passages communicating with one another, so that no stranger can find his way either into any court or out of it without a guide (58). Pliny in the Na.tura.1 History agrees with these general 50 descriptions, but adds: Host authorities suppose that it was reared as a building sacred to the Sun, and such is the common belief (59). These descriptions of the Egyptian labyrinth contain some factors whose familiarity is soon recognised and some not yet introduced. For example, Diodorus claims it was a tomb and therefore related to the underworld, Elysium, and antithetically the sun. Among the ideas we have not considered is its relation to kingship and the complexity of its structure. These are some of the aspects of the Egyptian labyrinth which find representation in the Cretan cycle. It has been suggested that the labyrinth evolved from a form known as the "palace sign" (figure 10) - the representation of a religious and ritual centre (60). Figure 10 51 The next development of the "palace sign" shows a duplicated and interlocking pattern Cfigure 11] (61). It is clearly the earliest form of what was known much later as the Greek key-pattern or meander, which by its constant association with royal persons and cult objects points to the significance it enjoyed in its earlier form. Figure 11 The Egyptians’ zoomorphic and anthropomorphic concep tions of royalty and cosmology lend support to the purview of the Cretan cycle I am seeking to establish. There is certainly a marked resemblance between the "palace sign" and the labyrinth patterns depicted on some coins (see figure 6 )~. Kerenyi suggests a conflation of the meander and the labyrinth: The meander is the figure of a labyrinth in linear form. In the third to second centuries B.C. we find the figure and the word unmistakeably related (62). But one cannot claim his unqualified support; elsewhere he says: 52 The angular form [of the labyrinth] makes its first appearance on the coins from the fourth century B.C., and only later, on those from the second century B.C., does the rounded form appear as though in an effort to recall the dance figure (63). [See Figure 9b] Yet he also claims, The straight lines were easier to draw, and so the rounded form was easily changed into the angular form (64). [See Figure 9a] These contradictions seem to indicate that while the labyrinth and the meander or "palace sign" are not identical, the meander may describe a "labyrinthine structure"; a relationship of similarity but not identity. Kerenyi’s contradictions and the relatively late evidence of the coins notwithstanding, it is clear that the labyrinth had been assimilated into Greek culture as symbolic of the Cretan cycie, and perhaps the Minoan palace with its connotations of royalty. Cook explored one branch of this idea when he proposed ... the swastika as the earliest assertainab 1e form of the labyrinth. That much disputed symbol has a voluminous literature of its own, and critics are not yet unanimous as to its ultimate significance. But among recent [sic] investigators there is something like a consensus in favour of the view that it was a stylised representation of the revolving sun. On this showing, the original Cnossian labyrinth was not the great palace unearthed by Sir Arthur Evans, at least not the whole of that palace, but was a structure which somehow lent itself to an imitation of the sun’s movement in the sky ... . Probably it was an 53 orchestra or "arena" intended for the performance of a mimetic dance (65). This assertion of Cook’s is obviously drawn from the Homeric description of the labyrinth and the performance of a mimetic dance of the revolution of the sun. He cone 1ude s: On the one hand, in Cretan myth the sun was conceived as a bull. On the other hand, in Cretan ritual the labyrinth was an orchestra of solar pattern presumably made for a mimetic dance (66). Parenthetically, Cook adds it would seem highly probable that the dancers imitating the sun masqueraded in the labyrinth as a bull ... . CThe Minotaur] was the crown prince of Knossos in ritual attire, and his bull mask proclaimed his solar character (67). This opinion is supported by J.G.Frazer, who proposed that Cnossos was the seat of a great worship of the sun, and that the Minotaur was a representation or embodiment of the sun-god. May not then Ariadne’s dance have been an imitation of the sun’s course in the sky? And may not its intention have been, by means of sympathetic magic, to aid the great luminary run his course on high? ... In Egypt also, the king,who embodied the sun-god, seems to have solemnly walked round the walls of the temple for the sake of helping the sun on its way (68). Kerenyi has also charted a dimension of this idea which, although his analysis is similar in outline to Cook’s, leads to an emphatically different source. 54 At the very outset of his account Kerenyi distinguishes the ancient labyrinth from those devices we most commonly call "mazes": ... the present-day notion of a labyrinth as a place where one could lose one’s way must be set aside. CThe ancient labyrinth] is a confusing path, hard to follow without a thread, but provided one is not devoured at the mid-point it leads surely, despite twists and turns, back to the beginning (69). The suggestion is that the labyrinth was not the closed structure which the prison described by Plutarch (70) suggests: The meander and spiral lines point to an open labyrinth which if one turned at the centre - was a passage to the light (71) The idea of a return indicates a close relationship between the labyrinth and the spiral. For example, Robert Graves has described the New Grange spirals as ... double ones: follow the lines with your finger from outside to inside and, when you reach the centre, there is the head of another spiral coiled in the reverse direction to take you out of the maze again (72). Thus the meander and the spiral together form the basis of the labyrinth - an open pattern, an elaborated swastika perhaps, but necessarily containing a return. Taking the meander pattern as his clue, Kerenyi 55 identified the labyrinth with significant areas of the palace at Knossos: The winding stairways leading to the temple terrace were characterised as labyrinths by the meander pattern. Here we have at least two elements classifying the labyrinth: the staircase is a spiral, a winding path, and this path leads upwards ... (73). The connotation of "upward" or "downward" movement of the spiral may be considered commonplace, as must the further connotation that upward movement is supernal and downward movement infernal. The supernal spiral is consonant with movement towards the light - a more ethereal plane: The corridor at Knossos leads towards the most important source of the palace’s light: a courtyard framed in seven columns. This situation tells us what dci-pu-ri-to-jo meant to the Hinoans: "a way to the light" (74). This argument completes our account of the cognation o f the labyrinth with the soul ’s journey to Elysium. The mystery of this journey implies the concept o f initiation and therefore of conditional closure (75) and may have led to the connotation of imprisonment which became attached to the labyrinth. The sun is, after all, trapped between the gates of Cancer and Capricorn but does make a decisive turn at the solstice in the metaphorical depths of winter, only to return as the sun 56 of a new summer. When the cosmological symbolism of the Elysian Way is wedded to the religious symbolism of Hades ... the path to Hades is ... neither straightforward nor single. If it were, there would be no need for a guide, because surely nobody could lose his way anywhere if there were only one road. In fact, it seems likely that it contains many forkings and crossroads to judge from the ceremonies and observances of this world ... (76), We are, then, able to imagine how a complex tomb whose name was the "labyrinth", came to be seen as symbolic of both the procession and the prison (77). Escape or rebirth from this charnel house presupposes not only a hero but also a guide. In the two versions we have already discussed Ariadne was Theseus* guide and, although it is generally accepted that she was aided by Daedalus, evidence exists for a solo effort. This view gains credence if one considers the role of mother and sister which are combined in the title "mistress of the labyrinth". Ariadne may literally be said to embody the clue to the mystery of the labyrinth, and the clue may lie in her oracular power which initiates Theseus* unbinding of the mystery. The graphic expression of this view can be seen in various illustrations of the "thread" emerging from Ariadne’s body (see Figures 12 and 13). & 12. V^Sio\s. a£ W. iWrti h 57 Kerenyi’s summary of his explanation of the labyrinth contains many of the ideas we have discussed: The Minotaur of the older myth was bull and star at the same time. If he lived in the labyrinth, he lived with the "mistress of the labyrinth", his mother, the queen of the underworld; he lived in the underworld to be sure [literally in the bowels of the earth] but not in the place from which there was no issue. In Minoan Crete the star whose early rising was celebrated was Sirius. Here a duality and parallelism might be observed. The star appeared in the sky; the light emerged from a cave ... . At Knossos, the way to "the mistress of the labyrinth" and back again was danced publicly on a certain dance ground. The mistress was at the centre of the true labyrinth, the underworld; she bore a mysterious son and conferred the hope of a return to the light (78). The explorations of Kerenyi and Cook reach common ground in the suspiciously "labyrinthine" Celtic mythology. Here Ariadne is identified with Arianhod, "the Silver Wheel", and Caer Sidi, "the revolving castle" and these are all representations of the Corona Borealis (79), otherwise known as "Ariadne’s crown". Arianhod, we are told, ... may not be a debasement of Argentinm and rota "silver wheel" but Ar-ri-an, "High fruitful mother" who turns the wheel of heaven; if so Arianhod’s Cretan counterpart Ariadne would be Ar-ri-an-de, the de meaning barley,as in Demeter (80). The image of Ariadne as a generative goddess is already 58 familiar, so too is the solar ritual in which Theseus and the Minotaur also have their parts: The Sun-god is born at midwinter when the Sun is weakest and has attained his most southerly station, therefore his representative, the Sun-king, is killed at the summer solstice when the sun attains his most northerly station. The relation between Caer Sidi and Caer Arianhod seems to be that the burial place of the dead king was a barrow on an island either in the river or the sea, where his spirit lived under the charge of oracular or orgiastic priestesses; but his soul went to the stars and there hopefully awaited rebirth in another king (81). The character which I have not yet considered is Daedalus, the reputed architect or builder of the labyrinth. In even the earliest accounts Daedalus has an important role in the entire Cretan cycle. He is involved in the conception of the Minotaur (82), the building of the labyrinth, and he may have supplied Ariadne with the clue which enabled Theseus to escape from the labyrinth. One wonders just what role this figure plays in the drama, as we have seen that Daedalus can be excised from the story without any disruption, implicit or explicit, to its significance. The clue to Daedalus’ significance seems to lie within the labyrinth itself, or rather, in its complexity. The labyrinth has been generally described as a place of skilful design, so intricate that the unfamiliar were in 59 need of a guide. The other legends concerning Daedalus centre on this same factor of skill (83). This is reflected in t*he synonymy of the word diadallen with po ik i 11 e in, as words which define skilful craftsmanship (84) : For Homer there were many diadalla, even apart from Daidalos CsicD. Every skilfully performed piece of workmanship was a d iadolon. This adjective, applied to objects made with skill, preceded other forms of the word. The masculine and feminine, da.ida.los and daidale, are derived from it, since the word connotes a characteristic of a thing, or rather of many things, of a daidala. Daidalos and Daidale, as names respectively of a mythical master and a goddess, were not early divine names. They were products of a living mythology, but not of the earliest Mediterranean mythology or that which the Greeks brought with them to Greece (85). Thus we can assume Daedalus was the personification of technical skill - techne, which may indicate a quite different order from that of the unwavering moral concerns, personified as heroes such as Theseus. Daedalus cannot claim independent, personal existence in the same way as Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. He represents an attribute or "prosthesis" which is morally neutral in itself. Expanding Kerenyi’s suggestion that such a "personification" may be the product of a "living mythology" we can consider Daedalus the product of a proto-scientific culture which has begun the discursive 60 process which would eventually separate factual values from "the mythical mode of world envisagement"(86). The misalliance between Daedalus and Ariadne (in particular), lends humanity to a predominantly divine design. Daedalus has been said to embody: that curiously disinterested almost diabolic human phenomenon, beyond the moral bounds of social judgements, dedicated not to the morals of his time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of thought - single hearted, courageous and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free (87). It is, perhaps, both the diabolic aspect of Daedalus’ building and the belief that "the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom" (88) which has kept Daedalus fresh in the collective memory even in a sacramenta1ised cosmos which subordinates all action to moral concerns. CONCLUSION: It is clear that while Theseus and the Minotaur represent the active males in the cosmic drama of the birth of life, the labyrinth really belongs to Ariadne and is the womb of the ritual rebirth of the sun. The labyrinth represents the higher plane of Elysium and the underworld tomb of death, as well as the journey of the hero who is the progenitor of new life. The multivalent 61 roles of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur are also clearly indicative of the processes of personification, even trivialisat ion, which results in anthropomorphic explanation of the cosmos. Many of the concepts of the labyrinth and its inhabitants surface in the Christianity of the Middle Ages. However, the transition from a pagan, pantheistic mythology to the monotheology of Christianity was not effected directly. It was left to later and more palatable pagans, such as Virgil, to translate the heroes and gods of pagan myths into the embodiment of moral ideals, as once they had been the embodiment of cosmology. 62 II. THE LABYRINTH IN VIRGIL’S AENE1D The interpretations of the Cretan cycle we explored in the preceding chapter were aided by the conjunction and complement of artifactual and literary sources. For example, Kerenyi leans heavily on the Cretan coins and Cook on the swastika form orchestra floor. We even presume, though not without some reservation, that Pliny and Strabo have provided us with eye-witness accounts of an Egyptian building. However, if we are to bridge the Adriatic and attempt to trace the transmission of the labyrinth from Hellenic to Roman culture we must depend almost totally on literary evidence. To complicate matters further we find only one very detailed source, so that rather than dealing with the collective expression of a cultural tradition we are faced with what maybe an idiosyncratic interpretation of individual genius. This is the problem of the Aeneid of Virgil. The task of analysing the labyrinth in Virgil’s Aeneid lies in the disentanglement of the various conceptual threads Virgil has woven into his epic poem. The implications of Virgil’s use of the labyrinth’s pattern irradiate the Aeneid. The pattern is represented in two ways: overtly, by literal reference to the labyrinth of the Cretan cycle, or, covertly, by semantic reconstruction of identifiable features of the labyrinth 63 such as returning paths and the associations with kingship and death. For the present it is unimportant to make detailed interpretations of what the pattern, or any instance of it, may actually mean, but simply to note that the pattern of the labyrinth, once identified, is repeated consistently. It is justifiably proper to begin the analysis of the labyrinth in Virgil’s Aeneid with Aeneas’ encounter with the layrinth’s image at the Cumaean gate in Book VI: In fori bus letum Androgeo; turn pendere poenas Cecropidae iussi, misernm/ septena yuotannis corpora, natorum * stat duct is sort ibus urna. Contra elata mart respondet Gnosia tellus; hie crudelis amor tauri suppestayue furto Pasiphae mixtumque genus protesyue biformis Minotaurus inest, Veneris monument a nefandae hie labor ille domus et inextricab11 is error; magnum reginae sed em miseratus amorem Daedalus ipse dolos tecti ambagesyue resolvit, caeca regens filo vestigia. (VI:20-30) On the doors is the death of Androgeus; then the children of Cecrops, bidden, alas! to pay as yearly tribute seven living sons; there stands the urn, the lots now drawn. Opposite, rising from the sea, the Gnosian land faces this; here is the cruel love of the bull, Pasiphae craftily mated, and the mongrel breed of the Minotaur; a twi-formed offering, record of monstrous love; there that house of toil, a maze inextricable; but lo! Daedalus, pitying the princess’s great love, himself unwound the deceptive tangle of the palace, guiding blind feet with the thread. 64 Not only does this incident have a precedence due to its unequivocal evocation of the Cretan 1abyrinth, but i t is, as we shall see, contained within the pivotal episode of Aeneas* adventure. The Trojans aimless wandering can only end after Aeneas journeys to the underworId to seek the advice of his dead father Anch i ses. This journey, more than any other, i s the hallmark of Aeneas* heroism: Aeneas went down into the underworld, crossed the dreadful river of the dead, threw a sop to the three headed watchdog Cerberus, and conversed, at last, with the shade of his dead father. All things were un fo1ded to him: the destiny of souls, the destiny of Rome, which he was about to found, and in what wise he might avoid or endure every burden. (1) In the above synopsis, Campbell strongly suggests Aeneas’ underworld adventure parallels those of other famous heroes, of whom Hercules is quite obviously foremost in Virgil’s mind: ... pa.uc i, quos aequus amavit Inppiter aut ardens ei/exit ad aethera vtrtus, dis geni11 potuere. (VI:129-131) Some few, whom kindly Jupiter has loved, or shining worth uplifted to heaven, sons of gods, have availed. 65 The story, so far as the /lene/d is concerned, tells of Aeneas* visit to the cave of the Sibyl at Cumaea and the commencement of the Underworld expedition. The sculptured temple gateway presented to Aeneas marks the beginning of the adventure and can be shown to be mimetic of it. The temple of Apollo, the home of the Sibyl, was reportedly constructed by Daedalus and the gate commemorates incidents in his career, beginning with the lechery of Pasiphae, the construction of the original labyrinth, and the heroism of Theseus and Ariadne, and ending with the death of Icarus. We can see that the labyrinth is crucial to Daedalus’ career and reputation and it is clear that it is central to the story as presented in the Aeneid. This may be read as a standard cautionary tale consonant with classical interpretations of both Daedalus and Theseus. However, although the Sibyl herself dismisses the images as "empty pleasures", the description of the Cumaean gates, literally the doorway to Aeneas’ Underworld journey, can be no accident or mere embroidery. When considering labyrinth patterns in Virgil two alternatives present themselves. Firstly, that the pattern of the Cumaean gates is one of a series of "labyrinthine" patterns which, although related to literary formulas, outside the Aeneid, draw their 66 importance from within the structure and context of the epic itself. Secondly, that the pattern of the Cumaean gates is the representation of an archetypal system of associated images of the labyrinth which lie outside the /lene/cZ and illuminate Virgil’s metaphors by drawing them into a wider context. The strength and longevity of the labyrinth as a powerful icon has come primarily from its aura of complexity and disorientation - inextr ic&bl is error. The finding of the clue and the following of the path to its conclusion and back again is synonomous with being able to tread a straight line of undeviating purpose through a surrounding chaos: sed rei/ocare gr&deum super asque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hie labor est. (VI:128-129) ... but to recall thy steps and pass out to the upper air, this is the task, this is the toil. Thus, the element which, in my opinion, Virgil focused upon is the metaphor of aimless wandering versus decision and direct action. Considered i n this way the importance of book VI is reaffirmed because it i s the watershed of Aeneas * act ions and the 1 ocus of his private heroism which it is the purpose of this epic to make public. The consultation with Anchises i n the 67 Underworld confirms Aeneas’ destiny both as a man, and as the founder of Rome, which till then had often been uncertain: The deceitful wanderings of the labyrinth and the monstrous result of illicit love that lies at its heart, are analogous to the physical wanderings of Aeneas and the spiritual errors of his own passion for Dido from which he was able to extricate himself only by the thread of divine aid. (2) The purpose of the labyrinth, both in the Cretan cycle and in the Aeneid, is to provide a locus occnltns, or place of power. A special space in which an extraordinary circumstance or insurmontab 1e difficulty gives the hero the opportunity to display the qualities which set him apart from other men. The "magic" of the place and "magic" of the hero are inter-related; what is inextr ica.bl is error for the man, is the "right" way for the hero. THE LABYRINTH AND VIRGIL’S VISION OF THE UNDERWORLD The Aeneid opens with the conclusion of the Trojans’ unsuccessful seven year voyage to found a new state. This is in itself a labyrinthine image characterised by aimlessness, and it is left to Aeneas to give his people direction. While exploring the countryside and its 68 woods - a commonplace symbol of concealment and di sorietation (3) - Aeneas receives the guidance he so badly requires from Venus his mother: iamque ascendebant collem, qui plur imus urbi tmminet adversasque aspectat desuper arces. ( I : 4 19-420) And now they were climbing the hill that looms large over the city and looks down on the confronting towers. This meeting with Venus in the woods was not the first occasion, chronologically, on which Aeneas received guidance from a "divine female". In book II Aeneas recounts the final battle and his flight from Troy after he has realised that Troy must fall and a vision of Hector urges him to lead the surviving Trojans to a new land (4). Aeneas prepares to leave carrying his father, Anchises, on his back, holding his son and being followed by his wife Creusa. However, Aeneas and Creusa become separated and he returns to burning Troy to search for her: principio muros obscuraque lumina portae, qua. gressumjextulera.nl, repeto et vestigia retro obervata sequor per noctem et lumine lustro; horror ubique animo, simul ipsa silentia terrent. ( 11 :752-755) At first I seek again the walls and dark gateways whence my feet had issued: I mark and follow back my steps in the night, scanning them with closed eye. Everywhere dread fills my heart, the very silence too dismays. nr rr ) • 'Pi^uyg. Tka (aLv^rmik as a dhj or “Vimua*. 69 Virgil has Aeneas not merely wandering in Troy, but trying to solve its labyrinth (See Figure 14), retracing his steps so that he may come upon his goal - " inde domnm, si forte pendem, se forte tulisset, me refero" "Then homeward I turn, if haply - if haply she had made her way thither!" (11:756). This journey leads him not to his wife but to the Trojan refugees he will lead to Rome. At first he ignores them, calling the Creusa until her ghost appears and implores him to accept his destiny and not jeopardise it for love of her. long a tibi ex/si /a, et i/a stum marts aegnor ar andum, et terram Hesperiam irentes, nb i Lydius arra inter opima viraum lent fluit agmine Tbybr is, illtc res lactae regnumque et regia, coniunx parta tibi ( 11:780-784) Long exile is thy lot, a vast stretch of sea thou must plough; and thou shalt come to the land Hesperia, where amid the rich fields of husbandmen the Lydian Tiber flows with gentle sweep. There in store for thee are happy days, kingship, and a royal wife. This initial excursion establishes Aeneas’ willingness to enter and resolve the mysteries posed by the labyrinth - to chance being lost in the inextricablis error, to wander and die unfulfilled. However his sense of direction, synonomous with his sense of duty, and the aid of a divine, loving female lead him to his destiny. 70 Likewise the forest labyrinth is clearly a semantic representation of the pattern of confusion and respite through divine intervention which are repetitions of the Cretan labyrinth depicted on the Cumaean gate. This structure is recognisable in the quest for the golden bough, the essential prerequisite for Aeneas’ Underworld j ourney. The forest of the golden bough in book VI is reminiscent of book II but is labyrinthine character is intensified by the addition of an element of danger. The forest of book VI is described as: t tur in antiyuam silvam, stabula alta ferarum; (VI:179) They pass into the forest primeval, thedeep lair of beasts; (5) This is the distinct echo of the labyrinth as the home of the minotaur. Again it is Aeneas alone who must venture into the wilderness to search for the golden bough - re-enacting his search for Creusa in book II. atyue ha.ec ipse suo tristi cum corde volutat aspectans silvam immensam, (VI: 185-186) And alone he ponders with his own sad heart, gazing on the boundless forest, Again, Aeneas despairs of achieving his quest - finding the golden bough in the "boundless forest" (VI:186) and 7 1 prays for help. Venus his ever indulgent mother sends aid in the form of two doves whose mission is to "steer a course into the grove" (VI : 194-195). Virgil restates the directional theme in similar words to those of Creusa’s search: Sic effatus vestigia, pressit, obervans, quae signaferant, quo tendre pergant. (VI:198-199) So speaking, he checked his steps, marking what signs they bring, whither they direct their course. Not surprisingly Aeneas achieves his quest. Virgil has expanded the concept of direction by drawing analogies between situations in which one can become lost, both literally and figuratively. Thus Troy is related to the labyrinth depicted on the Cumaean gate, which is in turn related to Aeneas’ search for the golden bough and the journey to the Underworld. Key metaphors in this iconologic system are heroism, the labyrinth - whether it be forest, town or Underworld - and the "right" path. This preliminary labour sets the stage for the journey to the Underworld. As the Cumaean labyrinth is a recollection of the Trojans wandering and Aeneas’ adventures, he declares: 72 ... non ulla laborum, vlrgo, nore mi facies in opinare surgt omnia, praecepi a t More specifically Aeneas is referring to his return to Troy, thus confirming its labyrinthine status and conflating it with the underworld journey. On one journey he spoke to the ghost of his wife; on the other the ghost of his father; on both he gained advice affecting his destiny. Virgil’s description of the lower world reminds us of the atmosphere of Aeneas’ search for Creusa amid darkened thresholds Cobscura liminiaJ> and of a Troy transformed into a vision of Hell by the Greek attack. In book II Aeneas returns to his own house and other familiar places such as Priam’s palace and Juno’s sanctuary which Virgil describes in architectural terms. Highbarger has observed that Virgil, although calling the entrance to Orcus a cave, applies many architectural terms to it: Such technical words as vestibulum,1imen, and fauces apply strictly only to the Greco-Roman house as is most clearly seen at Pompei and Hercu1aneum (6). 73 The significance of the architectural description lies in its correspondence with classical descriptions of the labyrinth, such as those of Pliny and Diodorus (7). However, Highbarger turns to the Greco-Roman house for his description of the labyrinth, rather than to the literary tradition of the Egyptian or Minoan palaces (8). This gives the Virgilian description a familiar dimension of domestic reality for its Roman audience. It also explains the similarity between the "infernal" Troy and the Underworld, the latter confirming the former as another simile for the labyrinth. The path to the underworld is described as open night and day (VI: 127) and the whole region of peril and labour is the 4omnia silvae (VI: 131). The journey and the danger of the forest is not unique to Aeneas, and Virgil emphasises the heroic nature of Aeneas by comparing his exploits in books II and VI to Nisus and Euryalus in book IX. The comparison between Aeneas and the tragedy of the two Trojans also serves to illustrate the fate of those who yield to temptation. We are first introduced to Euryalus and Nisus in book V when Nisus aids Euryalus in winning a footrace at Anchises’ funeral games (9). The story of their exploits in book IX is basically this: 74 [Nisus and EuryalusD long to accomplish a great deed, either because, as Nisus says, the gods have inspired them or because a man’s desire for glory becomes to him a god. When their plan is approved by the military authorities, the two men go forth and, discovering the Rutulians asleep, manage to slay a great many. Euryalus is spotted by a group of horsemen. As he tries to escape he is hindered by the branches of trees and by the spoils he is carrying. Nisus manages to escape, but, unable to see his friend, retraces his steps and discovers Euryalus has been captured by the horsemen. From his place of hiding he manages to kill two of the horsemen. When Volcens, the leader of the troop, kills Euryalus to avenge these deaths, Nisus can no longer remain in hiding ... . He kills Volcens and is killed himself, falling on the body of his friend (9). It has been suggested that this episode exemplifies the difference between true heroism and vainglory: ... the amor mentis of VI: 133, the desire of Aeneas to brave entrance into the world of death to meet his father finally in Elysium, nearly parallels Nisus and Euryalus’ ardorem mentibus (IX:188), the yearning for heroism ... Nisus and Euryalus are so overwhelmed by temptation that subsequent events both literal and symbolic - the turn to the left and the involvement in the labyrinthine woods of death - are inevitable (10). One hardly need add that these events are parallel with Aeneas’ search for Creusa. The locus occultus for all these adventures is the labyrinth which Virgil has used as the common context of his metaphors. The city of Troy is related to the city of Dis (and the underworld in general through the 75 architectural symbolism), which, in turn, is related in atmosphere - to the woods. So in book IX when Virgil describes the woods: silva. fuit late dumis atque ilice nigra horrid a, quam densi complebant undique sentes; rara per occultos lucebat semita calles. (IX:381-383) The forest spread wide with shaggy thickets and dark ilex; dense boughs filles it on every side; here and there glimmered the path through the glades. They can immediately be identified with the labyrinth, so it is not surprising to learn that Euryalus tenebrae ramorum onerosque praeda impediunt fallitque timor regione viarum (IX:384-385) is hampered by the shadowy branches and the burden of his spoils, and fear misleads him in the line of paths. Nisus, like Aeneas, has no problem in finding his way safely. However, he likewise finds he has become separated from his friend. Here Virgil seems clearly to be reflecting once more on the context of book II, not merely in the common resolution to endure yet again all difficulties in renewed search for someone lost, but in the very imagery itself (12). "Euryale infelix, qua te regione relique? quare sequar, rursus perplexum inter omne revolvens fallacis silvae?* simul et vestigia retro observata legit duminsque silentibus errat. (IX:390-393) 76 "Unhappy Euryalus, where have I left thee? Or where shall I follow, again unthreading all the tangled paths of treacherous woods Therewith he scans and retraces his footsteps and wanders in the silent thickets. Virgil uses dramatic irony to emphasise the difference between Aeneas and the foolhardy pair. The choice of paths is synonymous with a choice of action within the locus occultus. The correct choice will solve the tnextr ica.bl is error. It is also commonplace that the choice is either to the left or to the right (13). The left hand representing ill omen, ranging from wickedness to awkwardness; the right hand its antithesis, representing straightforwardness and dexterity. Thus it is easy to predict that Aeneas* path should turn to the right: ... hie locus est, partis ubi se via findit in ambas: dextera qua Ditis magni sub moenia tendit, hac iter Elysium nobis; at laeva malorum exercet poenas, et ad impia Tartara mittit. (VI:540-543) Here is the place where the road parts in twain: there to the right, as it runs under the walls of great Dis, is our way to Elysium, but the left wreaks the punishment of the wicked, and sends them on to pitiless Tartarus. Euryalus and Nisus to the left: tamque propinqua.ba.nt ca.stris muroque sublba.nt, cum procul bos iaei/o flectensis limite cernunt ... (IX:371-372) And now they were nearing the camp and coming under the wall, when at a distance they see [Nisus and Euryalis] turning away by a pathway to the left. 77 This path, Virgil has already informed us, led to Tartarus and punishment. Aeneas carries the golden bough as the badge of his speciality and permission to enter Elysium, ironically Euryalis carries a stolen helmet as the badge of his vulgarity. The golden bough allows Aeneas to complete his task, whereas Euryalus’ helmet leads to his discovery and certain death. Virgil returns to the context of book II to indicate Aeneas’ strength of character by contrasting it with Euryalus’ and Nisus’, who suffer an excess of furor and cuptdo, madness and lust. The analogy of a beacon is evident: it can be a helpful guide, yet its nature defies concealment. The golden bough and the helmet are both beacons, one signalling enlightenment, the other betrayal. The role of the beacon is qualified in book II, when Aeneas is rescued from furor by the dazzling apparition of his mother - Venus - when he is going to kill Helen and satisfy his rage: exarsere, ignes ammo; sub it ira cadentem ulciscij patriam et sceieratas sumere poenas. (I I:575-576) Fire blazed up in my heart; there comes an angry desire to avenge my falling country and extract the wages of her sin. Venus appears para per noctem im luce refulslt - in pure 78 radiance gleaming through the night (11-590), and explains reasonably that the blame for the fall of Troy lies not with humans but with the gods; she does this by lifting the cloud which dulls Aeneas* vision, so that his own reason may enlighten him. Thus the gleaming from the golden bough discolor mitte aur / per ramos aura refulsit (VI:204) - and the presence of the doves is both a reaffirmation of Venus* commitment to Aeneas, and symbolic of his own efforts to obtain enlightment by personal labour. This light, bright, clear, true, contrasts with the glimmering flash of Euryalus’ helmet - adversa refulsit (IX-373) - which is weak but sufficient to betray his presence. We have seen how Aeneas was prey to his rage, but we have also seen Aeneas temporarily lost in his lust (cupido) for Dido. As Campbell put it: ... Aeneas* desertion of Dido to assume manfully his epochal, hard, historical role as founder of Rome ... it is ROMA against AMOR, the task of the day against the mysteries of the night; time and its call against eternity ( 14) . Aeneas* desire for Dido and the comfortable life must be considered congruent with Euryalus’ desire for vainglory and booty. Again Aeneas is aided by a vision of Mercury 79 bestowing upon him a clarity of sight (IV:268-276) which enables him to make the break with Dido. Aeneas’ invo1vement with Dido i s 1 ikened to the Underworld journey, as both are consummated in a cave: spelunca.m Dido dux et Troi&nus eandem deveniunt, Prima. et Tellus et pronub a Iuno dant signum; fulsere ignes et consc ius Aether conubiis, summoque uiularunt vert ice Nymphae. ille dies primus Lett primusque melorum causa futt. (IV: 165-170) To the same cave come Dido and the Trojan chief, Primal earth and nuptial Juno give the sign; fires flashed in the Heaven, the witness to their bridal, and on the mountain-top screamed Nymphs. That day was the first day of death, that first cause of woe. Virgil made a paradox of the imagery. Instead of "new life" arising out of the nuptial cave it is the beginning of suffering and death. On the other hand the journey to the Underworld - the realm of the dead marks the beginning of a period of great creativity and activity for the Trojans and the commencement of their "new life" in Rome (15). So far we have seen how Virgil manipulated the labyrinth pattern in many various situations. The information conveyed on the Cumaean gates and subsequent Underworld journey provides a structure which can be applied both retrospectively and prospectively, as in the search for Creusa, the relationship with Dido, and Nisus and Euryalus. 80 THE LABYRINTH AND THE TROIAE LUSUS There is another literal reference to the Cretan labyrinth which can stand independently of the structure of the labyrinth patterns illustrated above, that is the Troiae Lusus of book V. This pattern, which can also be assumed to depend on the interpretation of the Cretan labyrinth for some of its meaning, links the Aeneid to literary paradigms outside the immediate sphere of the Cretan cycle by drawing on other literary reproductions of the labyrinth. The process of distinguishing between the Cretan labyrinth of the Troiae iasus and the Cumaean gates generates an interpretation of the Cumaean pattern and seeks to expand the context of its validity. olli discurrere pares atque agm ina tern i diductls solvere choris rursusque vocati convertere vtas infertaque tela, tulere. tnde aiios ineunt cursus aliosque recursus adversi spatiis, alternosque orbibus orbis imped iunt, pugnaeque cient simulacra sub arm is; et nunc ter They galloped apart in equal ranks, and the three companies, parting their bands, broke up the columns; then recalled, they wheeled about and charged with levelled lances. Next they enter on other marches and other Fi Art EltwaM ttoe with Om. iliutWffon af a 'Tua'iv 81 countermarches in opposing groups, inter weaving circle with alternate circle, and making an armed mimicry of battle. And now they bare their backs in flight, now turn their spears in charge, now make peace and ride on side by side. As of old in high Crete, 'tis said the Labyrinth held a path woven with blind walls, and a bewildering work of craft with a thousand ways, where the tokens of the course were confused by the indiscoverable and irretracable maze: even in such a course do the Trojan children entangle their steps, weaving in sport their flight and conflict. The Trot ae Lusvls was a mimetic combat which was performed in Virgil’s Rome, but also appears, illustrated, on an Etruscan vase (see Figure 15), perhaps betraying the pre-Augustan source of some of Virgil’s inspirations: Not only does the Etruscan origins of Aeneas’ "Troy-town" recall the Etruscan version of lulus’ "Trojan-game" as represented on the Etruscan vase under its Etruscanised name "Truia" (="Troia") but it further suggests Virgil’s awareness of the fact that labyrinths or mazes are frequently called "Troy-town" or simply "Troy" - nomenclature which, although now apparently confined to northwestern Europe, was probably of southeast European origin ( 16). Whatever Virgil’s inspiration may have been, the inclusion of this labyrinth pattern is no less subordinate to Aeneas' story as unfolded in the Aeneid than any of the other similes: Virgil describes the foot manoeuvres of Aeneas' real combat Cwith Turnus] in terms unmistakably reminiscent of those describing the horse manoeuvres of lulus’ troop (17). 82 Five circles they cover at full speed, and unweave as many this way and that; for no slight or sportive prize they seek, but for Turnus* life and blood they strive. Thus Virgil compares the "game" of the Trojan youths and serious warfare. Meanwhile, Aeneas’ combat with the Latin champion Turnus recalls another desperate fight - the fall of Troy - and Aeneas’ personal willingness to secure the outcome: hand minus Aeneas tortos legit obvlos orbis vestigatque vtrum et disiecta per agrinra magna voce vocat. (XII:480-482) Nonetheless Aeneas threads the winding maze to meet him, and tracks his steps, and amid the scattered ranks with loud cry calls him. (This is an obvious repetition of the search for Creusa.) It is through the battle with Turnus that the Troiae Lusus is brought into context with the other labyrinth patterns. Virgil strengthens this bond by likening Turnus to a lion, thus linking him with Aeneas in book II - enraged for Helen’s blood - and Nisus in book IX - a rage for slaughter. This serves to bolster Turnus’ heroic character, making him a more fitting opponent for Aeneas and to complete the pattern which links Turnus’ fate, not to Aeneas, but to Nisus (18). 83 The image of Turnus as a bestial hero who is doomed to be tracked down and killed, in a labyrinth, by a more humane hero takes on a familiar aspect when Virgil describes the final battle: cum duo conversis inlmica. in proelia. taur/ front thus incurrunt; pa.vida. cessere magistri. ( X11 : 7 16 ) When two bulls charge, brow to brow, in mortal batt1e. This lends a distinctly sacrificial tone to the description of the heroes and their conflict, and is related to the role each has been assigned within the Aeneid, but perhaps also to the sacrificial basis of the Cretan legend. Hornsby has observed that ... the simile Cof the Iro/ae iususl does not indicate what lies at the heart of the labyrinth; it stresses only the complexity of the maze; the purpose is not mentioned, with the result that it always remains incomplete ( 19) . From the viewpoint of book V this is certainly true. It is not until book VI that the Minotaur is placed in the labyrinth, not until book IX that his bestial nature is given an explanation, and not until book XII that the pattern is completed. However, Hornsby also sees the Tro/ae Lusus as the precedent to the Cumaean gates, as a pro and retroactive mimetic of the Trojans’ and Aeneas* 84 wanderings, and the eventual consummation of their destiny at Turnus* expense: The boys are engaged in manoeuvres which for the time being are harmless, but eventually ... such manoeuvres will play a part in the deadly seriousness of warfare where an error will have grievous consequences. The Cretan labyrinth [presumably at the Cumaean gate] anticipates this change. But the intricate movements of the Trojan youth compared to the labyrinth suggest not a pattern of their action, a pattern not understood until its completion, but also the pattern of the wandering, false starts and errors of the Tojans themselves as they seek Hesperia Cor Aeneas* enlightenment in the underworld] (20). The ludicrous aspect of the Troiae is emphasised by Virgil’s description of the boys as delphinnm slmilesj qui per maria. umida nando Carpathium Libycumque secant luduntque per undas. (V:594-595) dolphins that, swimming through the wet main, cleave the Carpathian or Libyan seas and play amid the waves. However, as is the case with Virgil’s other similes, the dolphins - and particularly their movements - form the basis of an analogical system within the Aeneid. Thus we find, in book IX, that when Turnus tries to fire the Trojan ships: Cybele saves her own Idean ships from the flames by transforming them into sea nymphs Cof dolphinlike behaviour] (de1ph inumque modo IX: 119) - a comparison whose defensive context at once recalls the similarly dolphinlike behaviour (delphinum similes V:594) of the performance of lulus* labyrinthine trot a (21). 35 W.F. Jackson Knight, basing much of his argument on the etruscan vase takes the defensive metaphor further: The very enactment by moving in a labyrinthine path may be expected to exercise a labyrin thine exclusive effect. That is the meaning of a maze dance or other maze ritual. The movements of the performers are intended to weave a magical entanglement and spread a field of magical force to exclude all that is not wanted to enter the guarded place (22). Apart from noting the mysterious (23) connotation of the zTroiae, Knight also suggests an explanation of the use of "labyrinthine" as a descriptive commonplace for places which were hard to enter: Troy was labyrinthine in being hard to enter just like the prison which the Cretans, according to Plutarch, explained the real labyrinth to have been ... . If labyrinths or mazes were common objects of thinking at or soon after Trojan times, they offered a very ready description of the almost impenetrable Trojan defence (24). Crutwell also suggests a metaphor based on exclusion or defence which is more subtle but no less powerful: Virgil applies identically the same terms, "they entangle circles with circles" (orbibus orbis impediunt), to the process of dynamically shaping both Aenas’ Roman shield (V11:448-449) and lulus’ "Trojan" game (V:584-585) - a verbal repetition betraying some mental association between both of them and that entangling or weaving process (impediunt texuntyue V:593) which results in the one convolutionary pattern (25). 86 The introduction of a new element - the shield - takes things into a new dimension. It is through the shield that Virgil brings about a congruence of several labyrinth metaphors and suggests a likely prototype: Aeneas* sevenfold shield, made for his mother Venus by Vulcan with circles whose impenetrability is contrasted in Virgil’s thought with the penetrability of the circles of the sevenfold shield of Turnus iclipei ... septumpl icis orbis XII:925) is by Turnus himself expressly compared (XI:438-440) with Achilles* fivefold shield made for his mother Thetis by Hephaistos [Illiad XV111:369-617); so that ,since Achilles’ shield contained a glyptic representation of Ariadne’s labyrinthine dance as performed on Daidolos’ dancing floor at Knossos in Crete, the labyrinthine pattern of Ariadne’s Cretan dance must from the first have been associated in Virgil’s mind with the admittedly Homeric prototype of Aeneas* shield (26). The choice of the shield is perspicacious as it is not only the point of convergence of the labyrinth system of the Aeneid, and a link with the fundamental Greek legend through the Homeric prototype, but is also an unequivocal statement of the formulation and function of epic poetry which is central to the commentary and deployment of Vigilian symbolism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The epic poet has been compared to God; his poem a microcosm of the universe; its purpose: "the presentation of the miracle of cosmic diversity framed 87 into forma 1 unity and order as the proper adornment of the heroic will" (27). When Chapman produced his ce1ebrated translation of Homer in 1598 he felt that Homer ... intendtecU by the Orbituagie of the Shield the roundness of the world; by the foure mettalles, the foure elements, viz. by gold, fire, by brasse, earth for the hardness, by Tinne, water for the softness and inclination to fluxure, by silver, Aire for the grosnes and obscuritie of the metal before it is . , _ refined. That which he ca 11 s ©(VTuy# ‘C-€.UTt\HAt he understands the Zodiack, which is said to be triple for the latitude it contains and shining by reason of the perpetual course of the Sun made in that circle, by c^ey^eeov •c&Xoc/c,the Axeltress, about which heaven hath his motion etc (28). Thus this prototyypica1 shield is a cosmographic representation of the world. It served the practical purpose of uniting the events of the epic within a symbolie image of the significant universe - "an inchoate, implicit, collective understanding of what things in the world are of most significance to men " (29) . The events depicted on Achilles shield describe the world of peace so that they may throw into relief the world of war. One presumes the culture depicted on Achilles’ shield is both the fount of Achilles’ strength and the prize or treasure wars are fought to protect or win. The shield represents nature and culture as 88 meaningful structures and contrasts conflict with the communita.s of the "Crane" dance, which is mimetic of Theseus* victory over the Cretans. Similarly, Aeneas* shield depicts both the prize and treasure for which he is fighting - the Augustan empire. As Virgil puts it: cittol lens nmero farnSLinque et fata, nepotum. (VIII:731) uplifting on his shoulder the fame and fortunes of his children’s children. And just as Theseus* Crane dance and Ariadne’s labyrinth are depicted on Achilles* shield, lulus’ Trojan game and the labyrinthine city of Tartarus are evoked on Aeneas’ shield. Virgil achieves this not only by the repetition of semantic structures but also by providing a linking image: ... the pattern of lulus* "Troy-game", both in Sicily and in Italy (V:596-602), was the pattern not only of Dedalus’ Cretan Labyrinth (V:588-593), and so also of Ariadne’s Cretan dance as represented on the Homeric prototype of Aeneas* Roman Shield, but also of dolphins gambolling in the waves (V:594-595); and that the Greek name for this maze pattern as imitating the Cretan labyrinth, was the "Crane" (Q*ve/o5> ) (30). Again we note the protective nature of the labyrinth: The simile of the dolphins forms a link between the Trojan youths and the nymphs so 89 that the activity of the nymphs in book X reflects on the boys of book V and indicates that the boys will be like the nymphs, for they, too, will eventually protect what Aeneas* is to found, and that protection will extend to the future as the appearance of dolphns on Aeneas* shield CVIII:674D hints as well as Anchises prophecy tells (31). THE LABYRINTH AND THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES: A HELLENIC CONTINUUM The shield is a lens through which Virgil’s conception of the labyrinth is refracted. It represents the macrocosm of the poem, being a description - literally and analogically - of the events of Aeneas* epic adventure and, also a microcosm of the world of the emergent Augustan empire which it is the purpose of the poem to glorify. The shield is the signification of the text of the Aenetd, a view which I feel Virgil makes explicit in the various contexts in which he employs the word text itself. In V:589, textnm is used to denote the veaving of the Cretan labyrinth - indeprensus et irremesibi is error (a bewilering work of craft) (32), and a little further on, V:593, textnntque refers to the vezving of the Trojan game. These two texts are brought together in ”cllpei non erSLrra.bile textum” (VIII:625) - the fabric into which these two images are woven. 90 In the context of the shield the labyrinth is transformed from simile to analogy - the movements of the Trojan game are like the undiscoverable and irretraceable maze, as they are similarly complicated patterns, but the pattern of the Trojan youth is representative of the "thousand ways" of a labyrinth and, by analogy, the seven years of "fuges et proetia,” (flight and conflict) of the Trojans. It is Aeneas who must bear this shield and achieve the quest so that the prophesised Augustan dynasty can assume its glory. Yet as is the case with Theseus it is the youths whom he saves who will celebrate the victory. In this context it seems indubitable that Virgil considered the "labyrinth" a heroic quest. The hero of this quest, is not enigmatic but truly archetypal, arising in all times and in all societies (33). The principal hero of the Greco-Roman world was Herakles/Hercules, whose twelve labours and assumption into Olympus set a precedent of aspiration so strong that comparison with him was considered a reward in itself. Theseus, we also know, is like Herakles in many ways, perhaps, the most alike of any of the heroic pantheon suggesting an intimate connection with him. However, Theseus, unlike Herakles, has a distinctly mundane persona: 91 [It was] the desire of the Athenians, and especially the tyrant Peisistratus to make of him a great national hero. They did so in two ways: by associating him as closely as possible with Heracles, the fceau idea.1, and by ascribing to him various political and benevolent acts that were held to be the beginnings of Athenian democracy (34). The relevance of Theseus’ heroic nature to Aeneas out now to be fairly clear. The aim of the Aeneid was the celebration of Augustan Rome and its hero is placed in much the same context that Peisistratus places Theseus. The hero in these two myths is representative of a national character, or to be more correct of a popularly perceived national character. They are not individuals but desirable national types. thus in amy of his actions Aeneas, the founder of Rome, mimics Theseus, the founder of Athenian democracy. Jackson Knight has said that The past which Virgil handled in the Aeneid is complicated and uncertain. Virgil’s poetic meaning is concerned with old values and symbols which are eloquent below the threshold of full consciousness; he assimilates them, and renders them in his poem, in the full characteristically poetic manner, mysteriously conscious of the common racial past alive in his individual apprehension (35). It was Jackson Knight’s opinion that Virgil knowingly repeated or revived narrative patterns commonly associated with the labyrinth, that is, the patterns of 92 "mystery" and "initiation". Thus the structure of his epic could be described as "labyrinthine". One should be dubious of this opin ion wh ich takes the "labyrinth ine " motive for granted. Jackson Knight thinks that: Troy was very much a "labyrinthine" city. Accordingly, "labyrinthine" myth would be expected to provide the accretion, with the result which we find; a "labyrinthine" account of the events (36). The evidence for this claim is based on the similarity between Troy as a city which was "hard to enter", and the Cretan prototype which Plutarch describes as a "prison" and "hard to enter". However, many versions of the Theseus cycle, including that of Virgil himself characterises the labyrinth as inextr tca.ble error, easy to fall into, hard to leave. this is the most common conception of the labyrinth, which has been enhanced since the rise of the many pathed, blind alleyed maze, and it may be a more plausible explanation of the form of the Aeneid, than Knight’s "labyrinthine" argument. Yet, Knight’s argument is still a persuasive the extremely detailed exposition of the labyrinth as representative of a ritual of exclusion or protection and initiation, not without applicability to the Aeneid. 93 The labyrinth is the common locus of both Theseus’ and Aeneas* adventures. While it can never be certain which sources Virgil looked to for his Theseus, Plutarch makes it clear that many were available. Indeed, the labyrinth and the Underworld are more closely related than the contiguity of the Cumaean gate and the Underworld suggests. The use of architectural symbolism to describe the "House of Orcus" is consonant with architectural descriptions of Pliny and others. The guidance of Venus and the Sibyl may also have had their genesis in Theseus’ story which is complete with an offering of a bough of a consecrated tree. More remarkable is the almost ritual sacrifice of Turnus and his identification with the Minotaur. Aeneas* journey to the Underworld begins at the "Gate of Horns" (VI:282) representing the entrance to the realm of ghosts (37). This portal presents Aeneas with another obstacle - the three headed dog Cerberus. Here is a parallel, not with Theseus but with Herakles, another hero who invaded the Underworld. The connection with Theseus is found in the name of the gateway - "Gate of Horns". The change from the Oriental concept of the bull as guardian of gates or doors to the later Greek practice of using dogs to guard palaces is therefore reflected in the 94 description of the Gate of Hades as guarded by Cerberus (as in Hesiod) but at the same time called the Gate of Horns (in Homer) (38). This then places the Minotaur, or similarly bull-like creature, in the same locale as Virgil’s Underworld labyrinth. This association is strengthened by the report (Dicaearchus in Plutarch) that the Crane dance "certain measured turnings and returnings imitative of the windings and twistings of the labyrinth" (39) - is danced around the Ceratonian Altar, so called from its consisting of horns taken from the left side of the head (40). The Athenians are supposed to have amplified or embroidered Theseus* reputation to make him a worthy representative of the democratic state they so highly valued. Virgil seems to be conscious that Aeneas must also be worthy of being the Augustan ancestor. In allegorical terms, the achievment of Aeneas’ quest is contingent upon his attainment of a state of enlightenment. Thus the story of the Aenetd’s first six books is the story of Aeneas* development and initiation, if you will. We have already noted the incidents prior to book VI in which Aeneas is exposed to the light of reason. This light is natural to men but becomes clouded by the 95 ... four classes of evil [which] represent the base tendencies of the body that the soul must first put aside when it leaves the earth and journeys to the realms of Orcus below for its complete purification. At the same time they indicate the difficulties that the soul is destined to encounter when it comes down from its heavenly abode for the first time to dwell on earth for a season in a physical body, which therefore becomes a kind of prison of the soul and thwarts its highest purposes because of these earthly afflictions (41). A contrast between clear and sullied light is presented in the comparison of the golden bough with Euryalus’ helmet. The golden bough is a symbol of Aeneas’ spiritual state. It is left at the palace of Pluto to attest to the growth of Aeneas’ knowledge, a knowledge which makes him impervious to the remonstrations of the "false dreams" around the threshold of Orcus and comforts him through the darkness of Hades. Thus Aeneas’ journey to the Underworld is a spiritual journey, dependent on the achievment of a certain standard - as yet incomplete - of enlightenment. "The genial boon of light" (1:302), and its antithesis, darkness, are recurring metaphors in the Aeneid but particularly in book VI. The woods at the beginning of the journey to the Underworld, Dis, and under the walls of Tartarus are characterised by darkness (42). Virgil achieves much the same effect for Elysium, which is characterised by light: for example, compare the 96 incertam luna.m, caeiun condidit umbra, and rebus nox abstulit atra colorem (V 1:268-272) with For tuna.torum Nemorum sedesque fceatas. largior hie campos a ether et lumine vest it pupureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. (V1:639-641) Here an ampler ether clothes the meads with roseate light, and they know their own sun and stars of their own. Virgil distinguishes between aer/aether and lux/lumen in his descriptions of mundane and heavenly life. These distinctions may be understood in the Platonic terms of "true heaven, the true light and the true earth" (43). The soul is prevented from participating in the true by l its imprisonment in the body: ... quantum non noxia corpora tardant terrenique hebetant artus moribundaque membra, hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, neque auras dispictunt clausae tenebris et carcere caeco. (VI:731-734) harmful bodies clog them not, nor earthly limbs and mortal flames dull them. Hence their fears and desires, their griefs and joys; nor discern they the light, pent up in the gloom of their dark dungeon. Yet, life is itself a type of light, lumen, and may be furbished or elaborated by a "golden bough". This brings us to the choice of paths which is vital in both Aeneas* journey and the misadventure of Nisus and 97 Euryalus. Apart from the obvious connotations of the choice of paths to left and right discussed above (44), Highbarger draws attention to an apparent contradiction of direction when Anchises seems to glide down from heaven (VI:722-723), yet we know also that Anchises is in the Elysian fields, below the Earth. Highbarger contends that Virgil is drawing on the Platonic imagery of the Myth of Er: CErJ said that, when the soul had left the body, he journeyed with many others until they came to a marvellous place where there were two openings side by side in the earth and, opposite these, two others in the sky above. Between them sat Judges who, after each sentence given, bade the just take the way to the right upwards through the sky, first binding them in front signifying the judgement passed upon them. The unjust were commanded to take the dounva-rd roa.d to the left, and they bore evidence of their deeds fastened on their backs (45). However, there are longstanding precedents which are particularly relevant to Virgil’s context: Plato has codified the commonplace associations of right- handedness and virtue and left-handedness and vice. Contingent upon the choice of right and left is the choice of virtue or vice. In Hesiod’s description, Evil one may attain easily and in abundance: smooth is the way and it dwelleth very nigh. But in front of virtue have the deathless gods set sweat: long is the way thereto and steep and rough at first. But when one has reached the top, easy is it thereafter despite its hardness (46). 98 This description promotes a sentiment very similar, if not identical, with the Sibyl’s description of the Underworld journey in VI: 121-123. Aeneas’ choice of paths is in accordance with his nature, although there is evidence, during the fall of Troy and the dalliance with Dido, that Aeneas left to his own devices may not always make the correct choice. Each of these episodes, then, is to be identified with a labyrinth. These situations are analogic. They depend upon the element of inextricable error, rather than any physical similarity to the Cretan archetype. The predominant philosophy underlying the Aeneid and Aeneas* activities is Stoicism. And, apart from any personal devotion to it which Virgil may have had, it was also the philosophy of the court The prince [Augustus] undoubtedly favoured Stoicism, and his reason would not be far to seek. In its Roman practice and inter pretation, it laid strong emphasis on duty, and a stern, self-denying self-control. It was likely, in consequence, to build law- abiding men, ready to serve and prepared to suffer and obey (47). The importance of the journey to the Underworld lies in the symbolic fulfilment of Aeneas’ quest. He is no longer just a man, but a hero whose role is predestined by (VI:889) fazsae venientis a.more - the love of fame. 99 The importance of both the Platonic and Stoic elements lies in their ability to reconcile Virgil and the pagan philosophy he represents with the coming ages of Christianity. Platonism provided a "mythology" of reason; the more efficacious in that allegory and symbolism were traditional with Christianity, in itself a mystical religion and long accustomed to seek in the enigmas of the prophets and the parables of the Jews and Christ Himself a deep significance hidden beneath the obvious meaning of the words (48). This was coupled to a Stoicism which ... sought a meaning in pain and suffering and taught an attitude toward them. Its doctrine at this time was not unchristian (49), Thus the employment of allegorical methods of exegesis was ensured, as was the continued relevance of pagan poets and authors to an increasingly Christian society. 100 III. THE LABYRINTH IN THE CHRISTIAN WORLD The lengthy excursions into the Antique and Classical worlds have brought us from the heights of ancient culture to a new land, into the gloom of the valley walls. Apollo no longer shines in the sky and Theseus* Elysian Way is obscured by cloud. There is a new religion - there is only one God. We have left the society of Theseus and Aeneas built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state; it set the safety of the commonwealth, as the supreme aim of conduct, above the safety of the individual whether in this world or in a world to come (1). This community was replaced by "the selfish and immoral" doctrine of "the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation" (2). The Dark Ages have fallen, Christianity has replaced pantheism, and: The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of Heaven ... . A disintegration of the body politic set in. The ties of the state and the family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into individual elements and thereby relapse into barbarism; for civilisation is only possible through the active cooperation of the citizens and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common god. Hen refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind. In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which 101 they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around them (3). I have quoted J.G. Frazer’s description of the Dark Ages at length as it is such a fine example of the opinion that we can justifiably discount a millennium of history and bask in the new dawn of the Renaissance after a troubled sleep. Even with the magnanimity of the prevailing historical opinion, we would not be amiss if we leapt boldly from the Roman civilisation to the Carol ingian renascence, or even the Rena. issa.nce of the twelfth century. Unfortunately it would neither be correct, nor fair, to ignore the enterprising few who managed to keep their lamps primed and burning. The comparison of the Shield of Aeneas with the Shield of Achilles, connected the Aeneid not only to the roots of epic poetry and mythology in Homer’s Illiad, but also to the influential interpretations of the Homeric scholia.. This established a tradition of erudition and interpretation which was continued in the commentaries on Virgil from Roman times to the Middle Ages. The importance of Greek and Roman thought to the development of Christian theology may be exemplified by the translation and incorporation of the image and legend of the labyrinth into Christian iconography. The "moral" cosmography - natural phenomena described as the 102 products of divine will - of Plato and Virgil form the text of the Greco-Roman labyrinth and the Shield of Aeneas is the symbolic image of the labyrinth at this point. The Medieval interpretation of Virgil’s poetry was to reach its culmination in the twelfth century exposition of the Chartrian Bernardus Silvestris. This tradition of poetic interpretation has its roots in the grammatical analyses of Donatus and Servius and was given an added dimension by Macrobius and Fulgentius. It was to develop into a complex system of exegesis which sought to subordinate the natural, social and individual worlds to a theological conception of the cosmos not unlike the Greco-Roman culture-myths. It was the pedagogic importance of Virgil’s grammar which ensured that however deep the gloom a light shone above Virgil’s flawless dactylic hexameters wherever Latin was spoken (4). The methods of exegetical analysis were not confined to secular literature and were equally applicable to Scripture as the writings of Philo of Alexander attest. The principal difference between grammatical and exegetical analysis was that metaphor was replaced by allegory in which there is not merely a translation of image or context but the concealment of meaning beneath the semantic and syntactic structure of 103 the text. But what of the labyrinth in the period between the writing of the Aeneid? and the sophisticated exegesis of Bernardus? TWO EARLY CHRISTIAN LABYRINTHS It is during this period that the labyrinth is first identified in a purely Christian context. These are the labyrinths of S. Reparatus of Orleansville in Algeria (c.324 A.D.) (5) and the rhetorical labyrinths of Gregory of Nazianzus in the Orstio theologies. (6). Both these labyrinths - one artifactual, one textual - bear comparison with the Virgilian conception of the labyrinth exemplified in the Shields of Aeneas and Ach i 1 les. The S. Reparatus labyrinth is a unicursal meander based on patterns often found as a mosaic decoration on Roman floors (see Figure 16). In its centre is a seemingly haphazard arrangement of letters based on the words SAHCTA ECLES1A (Holy Church). It is obvious that this labyrinth is made up of four interdependent meander patterns which could represent the quadripartite universe, and the elemental division of matter. And perhaps, more particularly, be likened to the universes schematically described on the Shield of Aeneas. This 16 104 brings with it the suggestion that: the final message of the shield must be that Rome controls the totality of all four world-divisions; only then will the identification of imperinm and cosmos be complete (7). This idea of the identification of cosmic control and imperialism is reversed by a beleagured Christianity who claimed a cosmic empire superior to any mere government. Santarchange1i has pointed out that the church of S. Reparatus is a modified basilica. (8). This wedding of politics and religion suggests that the adoption of the imperial architectual style and form may betray an intention to recreate a religious imper turn, and therefore a religious cosmos. Frazer’s claim that early Christian society was disintegrating can be contested by the counter claim that the military model of urban expansion was assumed by the Church militant and Rome by the clvita.s de i. The noun, eceles la. originally signified ’an assembly of citizens summoned by a town crier* (9). Thus promoting a social as well as religious unity. The S. Reparatus labyrinth suggests the paradox that although the universe - represented by the four meanders - surrounds Sa.ncta. Eclesia, the Holy Church, it is contained within the Holy Church, that is, the actual 105 building of S. Reparatus. This may be related to the Aristotelian conception of space which defines both limit and position: Aristotle’s system ... is concerned not with distance but with situations, and it is intended to answer such questions as where one is and where one is going. This essentially dramatic intelligibility of motion demands a stable universe fixed around a real centre, bounded by an actual limit (10). The arrangement of the letters SANCTA ECLES1A far from being haphazard betray an order consonant with the design of the meanders surrounding it. The "play on words" (11) emphasises the centre letter * S *, which i s shared by all possible readings of SANCTA ECLES1A and is clearly the starting point of this "letter labyrinth". The significance of the letter labyrinth and its relationship with the meanders becomes obvious when one considers their numerological similarity. If we examine a single quadrant of the letter design we notice the letters are arranged in groups of seven (the whole pattern is formed by sharing the central row of letters, picking out a cruciform pattern). The ’septernary mystique* as Geoffrey Ashe calls it (12) crosses many cultural boundries and the plethora of associations of the number seven defies any definitive interpretation but has been considered to be of general 106 cosmic significance. This septernary inclination extends to the meanders which have seven circuits in each quadrant making 28 in all. This epitomises the universality and perfection of the design of the entire figure as not only does 7x4= 28, but 28 is also a perfect number, that is, the sum of all its factors: 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28. The numerological significance of the labyrinth is indicative of the growing "conviction that the unity and order of the world can be rationally comprehended" (13). The cosmographic significance of the labyrinth lies in the essentially religious comprehension of nature - the true unity and order of the world resides within the mysteries of the Holy Church. Han has a place in the universe, and his destiny depends on occupying it, taking his stand in it; religion’s chief imperative (rele^ere: to pay attention) is that man take cognisance of where he is (14). The citizenship of Holy Church, as with the citizenship of Rome, placed particular emphasis on the rights of one admitted to the civitSLS de i (15). Baptism, the initiation into the mystery of Christianity, revealed a world where there are no ethically neutral forces or things; all things and all agencies are active elements in the cosmic conflict between good 107 and evil and in the universal process of sal vat ion ( 16). This is correlative with the Virgilian concept of "theological space", illustrated in the Shield of Aeneas "according to which localised events may be universalised by reference to the divine forces that control the extrahuman universe" (17) - which interprets the entire span of the Roman imperturn in the terms of Aeneas* singular act s. This may be compared to the "humble" acts of martyrdom of the early bishops such as I gnatius : startingly unimportant and unnecessary in the eyes of the World yet essential to Ecclesia’s triumph over the World since they drew attention to Christ’s martyrdom, demonstrated the insignificance of earthly life, and strengthened the faith of the whole Christian communi ty. (18) This interpretation of the S. Reparatus labyrinth i s underpinned by what was to be identified as the Alexandrine allegorical world view which had begun with Philo and was gaining prominence in the Rroman Christian church and which we shall observe with St. Augustine. The use of labyrinthine metaphors is Gregory of Nazianzus second theological oration of 380, allows us to compare the Roman and Byzantine world views at a time when there was still intercourse between them (19) 108 What Cnossian dance designed by Dedalus for a maiden can compare with the harmony and abundant beauty of their movements [the orderly motions and complicated flight patterns of cranes]? What Cretan labyrinth was ever so hard to traverse and to wind through (as a poet would say) or ever turned back upon itself so manytimes through the cunning tricks of its construction? I shall not even mention the treasure-rooms of ants, or their treasure keepers, or their store of food meted out in quantities appropriate for each season or all other details we know from accounts of their marches and their leaders and the excellent order of their activities. OrSLtio theo 1 og /ca, II, XXV (Or, 28.25) (20) In this oration on "the natural intelligence of unintelligent creatures" Gregory displayed his orational skills by employing the lugism&ta. (from the verb *lugzio’, *to bend*) (21) of the Sophists. Gregory’s oration turned Homer on his head as the Cnossian dance recalled the lofty image of Achilles* shield transformed to the world of insects and birds. The complexity of understanding nature is mirrored in the "cunning tricks of construction" ( technes soph isma.ta.) of the oration itself and imagined as the mind-boggling design of the Cretan labyrinth. In order to understand the chosen form of Gregory’s oration and its impact we must dwell briefly on the milieu of Constantinople of this time. Gregory, like his brother Cappadocians, believed that Christian education would preserve the flower of Greek wisdom 109 without becoming polluted by pagan superstition. Thus the classical authors furnished the vocabulary of expressing the human potential for virtue, and while the writings of Plato and the Stoics could strengthen the soul, the Bible remained the chief inspiration and fount of wisdom and solace as the soul searched for release from the world. Gregory’s oration is couched in this Sophisticated style and was directed at the Eunomians, then dominant in Constantinople, and their arrogant supposition that the nature of God could be comprehended by human reason and Aristotelian analysis. This was an anthema to mystical theologians like Gregory. Natural reason is too easily diverted by the intriguing puzzles like the flight of cranes or the orderly habits of ants and only faith can confirm the greater existence of God. Gregory sought to reconstruct this image in the lug lsmdLta. of his rhetoric, where the difficulty of following the argument, let alone understanding it, is explicit: The dual theme of complexity and difficulty is highlighted by the symbolic images of the Cnossian dance and the Cretan labyrinth, which should perhaps be interpreted as a single image since Gregory evidentally pictured the winding of the chorus on the dance floor of Dadelus as a dynamic extension of the winding path of the maze ... . The maze dance is an arresting image in this context because it invites two responses to the cosmos [fascination and bewilderment with the intricacy of the cosmos, and the inconceivably 1 10 simple faithful vision of God] which effectively cancel each other out and leave the contemplative soul momentarily stranded in perplexity (22). For Gregory Orthodox theology is the "thread" out of the deceptive paths of the labyrinth which scientific research and philosophical speculation cannot supply. This led to a specific interpretation of the Cretan cycle which paid particular attention to the Geranos dance (23). In Plutarch’s version, the dance did not only imitate the windings of the labyrinth but also commemorated the release from the tribute to Crete and is a ceremony of praise and thanksgiving. This same metaphor can be seen in Gregory’s reference to the Geranos dance: the Cnossian dance is an allegory of salvation in which Christ figures as the New Theseus, Satan as the infernal Minotaur, and the Saved as the apocalyptic successors of the happy band who danced for joy after the terrors of the maze (24). The metaphor of the dance had a particular potency for Gregory, which seems to have been shared by other Christian writers such as Marius Victorinus (25). The dance is elevated to an almost sacramental importance as a figure of spiritual unity in which the faithful participated rather than a figure of speech by which the educated expressed their distinctive prejudices Cof the argument from design] (26). Gregory was to pursue this image in his later invective against Julian (c.363); i n reference to the dance of David before the ark he suggests the dance i s "a mystical symbol of the many twists and turns i n the course of one who moves nimbly and swiftly in a way pleasing to God." (Oratto 5.35) Miller goes on to suggest the transformation of the mazy dance of the pagans into the ... smooth unbroken melodic line of psalmody accompanying the charitable acts and serene meditations of the faithful as they step smoothly and gracefully along the "oft turning course", the "polystrephos poreia", of the worldly labyrinth (27). The intimate connection beuteen the labyrinth and the dance so apparent in the Cretan cycle, the Trojan game and in Nazianzus* writings becomes clouded and all but lost in later manifestations of the labyrinth which seem to concentrate on the artifactual design rather than active apprehension of what it is to traverse a labyrinth. This is undoubtedly the result of histori ography, as textual references to labyrinths and their function became increasingly rare and we were left to speculate upon an intriguing design. This has not been aided by the absence of investigation into Patristic interpretations and use of the labyrinth other than those reproduced here (28). However, it is undeniable 1 12 that dance and movement within the labyrinth is one of its essential features. I am drawn to Miller’s suggestion that Nazianzus may have motivated the changing of the image of the Cretan maze to the ''smooth unbroken” line of the later Christian labyrinths. Gregory developed an anti-elitist conception of salvation, the rhetorical complexities of the orations notwithstanding - in which God "leads all things towards unity" and which placed faith above reason: the shock of the first fall Cof Lucifer] could not undermine the eternal foundations of Ecclesia or interrupt the perpetual concord of the angels who remained above, it would unsettle the children of Adam whenever they contemplated God’s grandeur in the harmony of nature and realised that hidden in the mazes of the Dadelian dance was a horned monster, the Coryphaeus of the Damned, who was banished forever from the "choros enermonios" (29). The path of the Dadelian dance becomes a journey through the world as the soul searches for enlightenment and repose. This is the journey to Jerusalem - the new Salem or place of rest. This spiritual journey which is implicit in all labyrinths is crucial to the understanding of the development of Christian Medieval thought and, more than just a metaphor or parable, betrays a particular relationship with nature and man’s place in the cosmography: 1 13 The world of Christianity was no longer one of "beauty", for the world was sinful and subject to the judgement of God, and Christian asceticism rejected it altogether ... . God’s most wonderous works are to be seen, not in the creation of the world but in its redemption, and in life eternal. Christ alone saved the world from the world ("Chrlstus mundum de mnndo liberavit"). ... man stands on the path which leads both to the Holy City of the spirit, the heavenly Jerusalem or Zion, and to the city of the Antichrist (30). This idea of pilgrimage involves the ideas of space and motion which form the basis of the transit ion from cosmography to cosmology. We have encountered the Medieval synonymy of space and place or posit ion in the descript ion not only of the labyrinth but also o f religion itself. This synonymy arises out of the belief that space is naturally heterogeneous, divided into localities governed by a strict theory of decorum: A body tends by its weight towards the place proper to it - weight does not necessarily tend towards the lowest place but towards its proper place. Fire tends upwards, stone downwards. By their weight they are moved and seek their proper place ... . Things out of their place are in motion: they come to their place and are at rest (31). The task of man is to return to the "homeland of the soul", not only a place but the state of existence whose paradigm is the Garden of Eden - Salem (32). The possibility of ever achieving freedom from Adam’s original sin and death promotes the importance of Christ’s sacrifice in the process of redemption of Man and the restoration of Adamic communion with God. 1 14 THE AUGUSTINIAN INFLUENCE ON INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE AND ALLEGORY The Augustinian tradition taught that the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that muses upom many things (33). It implies that spiritual reality is alienated from man by the inadequacies and temptations of earthly existence. However, indirect access to spiritual reality or divine knowledge may be possible by contemplation and understanding of the unstable, corruptible, visible world: invisible things are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are ma.de (34) [emphasis added] . Augustine often repeats this phrase and he elaborated a system of interpretation based on the microcosm-macrocosm analogy and allegory (35). Augustine’s conception of the micro/macro analogy is couched in the language of Platonic mathematicals and was to have a profound effect on the Christian attitude towards the study of nature. Taking the scriptural teaching that When he willed to give weight to the wind and measured out the waters with a gauge, when he made the laws and rules for the rain and 1 15 mapped a route for thunderclaps to follow, then he had it in sight, and cast its worth, assessed it, fathomed it. (Job 28:25-27) (36). Augustine developed a rigorous numerology which, if it did not actually sanctify number, elevated its comprehensiveness to the status of doxology. The scriptural basis for this philosophy was guaranteed by Ambrose’s application of allegorical method which was borrowed from the Hellenic exegesis of Homer. As T.R.Glover remarked: "The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive", was a favourite text with CAmbrose]’ (37). The development of this doctrine was closely influenced by Hellenic philosophy, particularly by the Platonic duality between ideal and apparent reality and the anthropomorphic application of the micro/macro analogy (38). Augustine himself admits that he 1 16 read the books of the Platonists and had been set by them towards the search for a truth that is incorporeal, I came to see Your invisible things vhich are understood by things th&t are ma.de (39). In the Phaedo, Plato described the difference between apparent reality and the true world: If someone could reach to the summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he puts up his head he would see the world above, just as the fishes see our world when they put their heads out of the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognise that that is the true heaven, and the true light and the true earth (40). The apparent world is separated but derived (41) (although the process of derivation is imprecise) from the true world, which is veiled by the myopia of our intellects, which only strive to reproduce heavenly order on earth. Gurevich remarked that: The medieval mind starts from the principle that un i vers i tabs, wholeness, whether it be society, nation ,church,corporation, kingdom, is conceptual and therefore takes precedence in the real world over its individual members. It is the wholeness which is real; the individual parts comprised in it are derivative contigencies (42). The reconciliation of the mundane individual with the divine universal was to be the enduring task of Medieval ph i 1 osophy. It was the reliance on the order of the universe which 117 separated Augustine from the Gnostics and Manichees who drew, from what they took to be the all-pervasive estrangement and disorder of the world, conclusions which were over spiritual and antinomian, exaggerated, and desperate (43). In contrast to this paranoid conception of the world, Platonism, and in particular the I/maeus, offered optimism and respite: the Timaens and the literature to which it gave rise preserved, through the centuries in which a contempt towards the visible world was prevalent in the accepted Church doctrine, the memory of the Hellenic appreciation of the rational beauty of the universe (44). The Platonic opus offered access to the true world in the development of the analogy between the mind of the Demiurge and the mind of man, and, through its influence on poets, commentators and critics offered a wealth of classical literature to the Middle Ages. By the twelfth century secular literature was believed to illustrate "the ideal fusion of learning and its expression, saptenta and eloquentia" (45), and was identified with the body of texts of the great auctores of whom Plato and Virgil are most prominent. The authority of the auctores was assumed, even though they were pagan: 1 18 because of a deep conviction that they were pointing by the same images to the same realities as the Jewish and Christian traditions. Here the enormous reverence for antiquity, and the exhilarating sense that it is not distant but contemporary, is inseparable (46). Thus we find Fulgentius’ Virgil speaking to us directly "settling into the manner of an orator, with two fingers held up straight like a capital letter I, and pressing the third finger with the thumb" (47), which we were supposed to note is the traditional pose of both pagan sage and Christian bishop or teacher. The growing acceptance and importance of literature exposed a structural system which offered the apprehension of experience, nature, and ultimately God, through language. The most important of these linguistic structures was metaphor, which in its elaborate Medieval form generated its own vocabulary. The dominance of language was completed by an overwhelming reliance on fabulous etymologies for the interpretation of both secular literature and scripture. The Platonic analogy (48) which linked the structure of the world-soul to the individual soul ensured that: Metaphor was a fundamental tool of those rationalist philosophers who sought knowledge of God from the study of the structure of the universe and the complex laws, causes and analogies by which it is linked to the human mind (49). 1 19 Augustine had established the premise that invisible things could be studied and understood by the study of visible things. So ue find that by the twelfth century symbolism informs an important part of philosophical and religious discourse. Augustine formulated a semiology which assumed the symbolic. He drew distinctions between signa. naturai/a and signa. data - the latter being instituted by men or God (for example, insignia, political or ecclesiastical signs of rulership, vestments, etc.) - and signa. propria. and signa. tra.nsla.ta. (for example, the word la.mb is the signa. propria, of a domestic animal but it is also the signa. tra.nsldita. of the sacrifice of Christ). Tra.nsla.tio became the commonest word for metaphor in the twelfth century. This system of signification led to the belief that: To this symbolic universe there corresponded a sacred rhetoric in which tropes such as metaphor, metonymy and allegory played a considerable role (50). The terms usually used to describe the structure of these metaphors became synonymous with the metaphors themselves: integumentum and involucrum (literally covering and wra.pping) (51). Argnmen turn had a variety of meanings, peculiar to the time and foreign to our understanding of the word today: 120 a proof, or a fictitious event that could not have happened, or the summary of a plot such as was prefixed to the plays of Terence, or a persuasion by way of analogy ... . "But [claimed William of Conches] when ar£umentum is taken to mean a fictitious event which could not have happened then it is what the theologians call allegory, that is alien discourse " (52). This system is underwritten by the Platonic duality of the ideal and the mundane, and the Hacrobian idea that knowledge is hidden benea.th or veiled by appearance. Nature, alienating by [withholding] an understanding of herself from the uncouth senses of men by enveloping herself in variegated garments, has also desired to have her secrets handled by more prudent individuals through fabulous narrative (53) . The importance of literature and the auctores in this scheme is - in the view of William of Conches - to be seen in relation to the signification of beauty: when what the words signify is honourable and true, and the words themselves too are honourable, though feigned ... this is the only kind of fiction that both signifies something extremely beautiful and unfolds it in beautiful words! (54). Here we see the words themselves take on an ethical valency and assume an importance independent of context. The most common method for uncovering the moral value of a word was etymology, which disclosed "the hidden essence of the manifestation it denoted", by a polysemous concatenation of semantic associations, for example: 121 Occidens is the west, the place where the sun goes down, but the medieval etymologist derived the word, not from occ ida.re Cob + cadereJ, meaning "to fall down", "to set", "to wane", but from occidre Cob + caedreJ, meaning "to kill", "destroy", and in the symbolism of the heavenly directions which finds such graphic representation in cathedral layout, the west facade was associated with the last judgement (55). The overbalancing not only of etymology but of all aspects of intellectual experience towards the ethical interpretation of nature expresses the distinet ion between the opus conditiones, the universe as created, and the opus r esta.ur suit i ones y the universe seen in the light of the Incarnation: For restaurant/o means precisely the recovery of man’s original communion with the divine Wisdom, and this involves the perception of nature not simply as a harmonious work of the divine artificer, but as illuminated and transformed for man by the psychological effect of the Incarnation (56). No longer is Wisdom to be ... fear of the Lord. Understanding? - avoidance of evil (57). (Job 8:28). The Incarnation provides a hope that Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect, but then I shall know as fully as I am known. (I Corinthians 13:12) 122 This meeting of the Platonic and Pauline sets the theological context in which we must examine the labyrinths of the twelfth century and, in particular, the great Chartres labyrinth. THE CHARTRES LABYRINTH: BERNARDUS * INTERPRETATION OF VIRGIL The Chartres labyrinth, constructed in 1200 or 1201 is a large (approximateHy 13 m. in diameter) unicursal labyrinth which was said to contain a bronze plaque depicting Theseus, the Minotaur and Ariadne at its centre. It spans the width of the nave of the cathedral towards the western end. It is arranged within eleven concentric "circles". One enters the labyrinth by the left hand path, traversing the first four circles before one begins the bewildering series of quarter and half tracks which coil back and between one another, until the centre "rose" is reached. Although one "spirals" around the labyrinth, the spiral has been deformed to suit the needs of the labyrinth’s programme. After two quarter sections the path straigthens from the sixth to the eleventh circle, takes one completely around the centre - through the seventh to eleventh circles back to the sixth circle before 123 carolling away to the outer circles; only to make a speedy straight track f rom the first circle to the sixth. Two quarter sect ions complete the sixth and seventh circles, and then a straight track from the seventh circle delivers one at the centre. (Figure 18) The importance of its position within the cathedral is emphasised by its being the counterpoint of the rond-point (where the nave and narthex intersect, (Figure 19) (58). It is also below the great western rose window. John James, who has made exhaustive and detailed studies of the sacred geometry of Chartres, has been scrupulous with the labyrinth and has given a detailed account of its geometrical design and numero1ogica1 significance (59). The obvious question now is, why concentrate on Chartres? The first, and rather glib reason is convenience: in the preceding discussions we have noted the importance of Plato and Virgil in the development and interpretation of labyrinth symbolism, and both these amctores play a prominent role in the intellectual life of the cathedral school at Chartres, and may provide vital textual evidence which could assist an interpretation of the 1abyrinth. Secondly, the Chartres pattern is often repeated and ~TV\C Iftbymlit 0^ CWfas CollgilfAi A tamp6u/ii5Yi ke.TWfiU'l Hl)L Lj t& ML WdJ (GmiL tW rW-poiwt , Cktrir e£. 124 appears distinct from the meander type of S. Reparatus (60) . This may disclose a parallel tradition in labyrinth design, and therefore interpretation. Finally, Chartres was the first of the Gothic cathedrals dedicated especially to Notre Z)ame, and was the "centre of the cult of Mary in France, if not in Western Europe" (61) . This immediately suggests paralleles between the roles of Mary and Ariadne and the possibility of these surfacing in the Mariological literature. If indeed the Mariological significance of Chartres lies not only in the "Sacred Tunic" (62), but also in the profundity of the Chartrian interpretation of the Incarnation, the image of Mary undergoes an important transformation at Chartres as Mary comes to represent the embodiment of divine knowledge. In the Platonic climate of Chartres, this idea was to promote the study of Nature as the vehicle and embodiment of divine knowledge, just as Mary was the vehicle and embodiment of the Wisdom of Christ. This had far reaching theological as well as philosophical effects. When coupled with a T/maean interpretation of creation: when divine power and wisdom and goodness are beheld in the creation of things, we fear one so powerful, worship one so wise, and love one so benevolent (63). 125 The study of Nature becomes subsumed under theology the Sacra Pa^/na. This attitude, while present in the work of Chartrian writers in general, i s epitomised i n the works of Bernadus Silvestris, who was chancel lor at Chartres around 1156. Among his works is a Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil’s Aeneid. The almost scriptural status of the auctores, which we remarked in Fulgentius’ depiction of Virgil (64), rests on the assumption that: the poets gave such a marvellous account of the world of reality, surely they must possess an especial knowledge, an extraordinary vision to be explored and exploited in every possible way ... . The pure soul was possessed of a poetic inspiration, a kind of madness, which inspired it to write poetry. Poetry could not be learned from art: the normal person attempting to write by art alone would fade into nothingness before the singer who enjoyed inspirational possession. (65) These inspired, poetic descriptions of "reality" leaned heavily on ancient allogircal methods of interpreting myth which: made possible a synthesis of cosmic-antropo- logical symbolism with biblical history and ... post biblical history and imagination (66). Bernadus began his Commentary by dividing the first six 126 books of the Aenetd according to the Fulgentian allegory of the six ages of man, so that Aeneas symbolises the soul in its pilgrimage through life. The figure of /leneas himself asserts the Macrob i an/P 1 aton i c degradation of the soul etymologically, as "ennos and demas, that is ha.bitor corpor is; olemas (body) also means bond idem a); the body therefore, can be said to be the prison of the soul" (67). Aeneas quest to found a new city is also understood in complementary terms: The city is the human body in which the spirit [Aeneas] dwells and rules. Just as in the city there are four divisions (mansiones), so also in the human body there are four divisions or sections (68). Bernadus presented an anthropomorphic view of society based on Platonic analogies between man and society and also between man, society and the structure of the universe as the term mansio is a borrowing from astronomy (69). The theme of descent into corporeal nature is reinforced by the ironic derivation of Crete (the beginning of the Trojan journey) as "cres/s theos, that is, indicium divinum, "divine judgement" (70). Thus Aeneas is representative of Everyman who began his descent with the divine judgement in Eden. The emphasis of this theme reaches its greatest strength in the commentary on book six which is longer and more detailed 127 than all the preceding books put together. It comes as no surprise that ue have found the sixth book of the Aeneid to be the watershed of Aeneas’ epic career and the focal point for the labyrinth symbolism in the Aeneid. Bernadus understands Aeneas* descent into the Underworld as the soul’s descent into the human body - /nfernam, the lower region (71). This descent, he says, is fourfold: the first is natural [when the soul descends into the baby at birth], the second is virtuous [when man takes up the study of the mundane in order to be drawn to the divine], the third is sinful [when happiness and satisfaction are sought by complete immersion in worldly things], the fourth is artificial, ... when a sorcerer by necromantic operation seeks through execrable sacrifice a conference with demons and consults them about future life! (72) Bernardus presented us with the difference between the pagan and Christian study of the opus conditiones and in particular with how this affected the Chartrian programme of study. Bernadus identified Cumea as the honeste ma.nsiones - honest dwellings of the philosophical or liberal arts. The Sybil dwells or inheres in them, as scible the divinum consilium which is intellegenti a through which man comes to understand divine things (73). Following 128 the example of Seneca, Bernardus interprets the Cumean gates as depicting the artes and the smctores (74). The portals of the "house of interior labour" - labor intus: just as Theseus performs great labour in the maze of the labyrinth, so Aeneas must go through an analogous maze on his journey to ui sdom (75). Bernardus believed that all knowledge began with the practitioners of the liberal arts, the auctores - "those who propose to come to philosophy, read all the playful fables of the authors" (76). However he was also careful to follow the Macrobian distinction between narrat/o fabulosa and f&bula. (77) which determined which myths or fables have some foundations which are allegorized. The Aeneid obviously falls into this category as does the Cretan cycle. Theseus is called divine and good - "tbeos is deus "god" and eu is bonus "good" ". Bernardus interpreted Theseus as the rational and virtuous man who has descended to the Underworld according to descent of virtue (78). Here we have a good example of the synthetic interpretation of myth, which Ladner identified with the auctores (79), as Bernardus moves from the Cretan cycle to Theseus* attempt to kidnap Persephone with his friend Perithous (80). The central metaphor of this allegory is the difficulty of the return - Theseus was rescued by 129 Herakles but Perithous remained trapped - for anyone can descend to the temporal through knowledge and habit but not just anyone can return: iafcour: difficulty, Opus: usefulness. To return is laborious and useful: to remain is easy and useless (81) • Bernardus i s using the figure of Theseus to bind together the quest for wisdom and the necessary detachment from the tempations of the world if the quest is to succeed. The world is symbolised by Aeneas* dalliance with Dido and her offer not only of love but also kingship. Again Bernardus synthesises several aspects of both myths in a novel image of the Minotaur. He draws our attention to the sacrifice of seven bullocks in Aeneid V1:38. These bullocks represent: the seven movements which lead the body in different directions: movement forward, backward, right, left, above, below, circular. They must sacrifice (mactare) the bullocks, that is check attentively and, in a way, kill and resist the body everywhere (82). Dido is identified with these bullocks, not only by the context - we recall that Aeneas had to be jolted out of his sojourn in Cartharge by Mercury (83) - but also by a Fulgentian trope about "wandering sight": The shipwreck of unstable youth is now over and done with, and Palinurus lost overboard; Palinurus is for pianonorus, that is, 130 wandering sight, as [Virgil] said in book 4 C362-364] about the appearance of lust: "The eyes of Dido lighting upon Aeneas roved about his whole person in a voiceless stare"; and in the Eclogues (84) [Virgil] speak[s] of wandering footsteps of the bullock (85). The lust of Dido is obviously related to the crudel is amor taur / of Pasiphae and its product the Minotaur. The emphasis on vision as the primary sense of temptation stems from the Platonic promotion of vision for the acquisition of knowledge. This was transformed into the "lust of the eyes" by St. Augustine (86). The Augustinian context is aptly applied to the Cretan cycle as it goes on to censure the "freaks" of the theatre of which the Minotaur must be considered a type. Theseus can be recognised as the Chartrian ideal of man with typological similarities with Christ Incarnate: partly a mortal and partly a god, we take [Theseus] to be wisdom, which is divine in its theoretic part and human in its practical part. And thus his name is fitting: Theseus is called deus /bonus, "the good god" - theos is deus,"god", and eu is fconum, "good". He is called a god because of the theoretical knowledge of the divine, and he is called good because of the practical knowledge which teaches the human good, that is, the honest life. For integrety is the greatest good in life (87). By comparison, Augustine characterises the Incarnate Christ as, 131 not the body of a man only, or an animating soul without a rational mind, but altogether man; and I thought he was to be preferred to all others not as the very Person of truth, but because of the great excellence of his human nature and his more perfect participation in wisdom. CItalics added] (88). This kind of characterisation of Christ Incarnate is vital to the twelfth century conception of the opus restauranttones as a return to the condition of man before the Fall, as restoration involves a double movement, "*a rediscovery of the divine likeness within and a renewal of participation in the cosmic harmony"’ (89). Bernardus* interpretation of Virgil, and, indirectly of the Cretan cycle, offers a tantalising hypothesis for interpreting the Chartres labyrinth. If nothing else, there is ample evidence that pagan myths and legends retained a currency which was negotiable in Christian theology. There is also reason to believe that the labyrinth may be a symbol of the negotiation. But, first, let us briefly review some of the theories of the interpretation of the Chartres form of the labyrinth. Fv TViC lafcijtSv\\U m CtaxfWtS Co&uixU'&i.. 132 THE CHARTRES LABYRINTH: REVIEW OF INTERPRETATIONS Opinions of the Chartres labyrinth are in favour of a cosmological interpretation. John James observes that In Piacenza, the labyrinth is set into a mosaic floor, and most of the space is taken up with the signs of the Zodiac. In Chartres the Zodiac is represented more often than any other subject except the essential scenes of Christ’s Nativity and Death (90). Following the intuition that the Zodiac was an important pattern for the cathedral, James preposes an arrangement of the Zodiac within the folds of the Chartres labyrinth. This interpretation of the path described by the labyrinth followCs] the classic pattern of the Evo1ution-Invo1ution with the five steps in which God created the universe followed by seven in which man finds his way back to him (91) . Added to this, James gives a detailed numero1ogica1 argument for the dedication of the labyrinth and, not surprisingly, the entire cathedral to Mary (92). James* interpretation also harmonises the labyrinth with the macrocosm as represented by the cathedral (93): 112 cogs surrounding the labyrinth represent the 112 positions (four elementary qualities x four degrees with 133 seven subdivisions) which between them explained all materials found in manifest creation; 112 is also the number of years the moon takes to repeat its Metonic cycle six times, and this is the cycle which determines the date for Easter. These are but an example of James’ ingenuity in discovering the geometric basis for the labyrinth within the plan of the cathedral and I commend his paper for its wealth of provocative detail. Keith Critchlow et a1. also forward a cosmological interpretation of the Chartres labyrinth which is based on the Macrobian descensus through the spheres of the planets, the Zodiac, together with the Supreme God, mind and the world-soul, with earth stationary in the middle (94). This interpretation is interesting as it reconciles Chartrian Platonism with the structure of the labyrinth. The most interesting supposition of Critchlow et al.’s interpretation is the correpondence between the labyrinth and the western rose window. James, too, noted a numerological similarity in their design which he did not consider surprising because they were both the work of the same master mason (95). The window, it seems, would almost exactly cover the labyrinth if the wall were projected onto the nave. Critchlow et ai, contend that 134 by retracing his steps and "ascending" back out of the maze at last the traveller returns to its entrance, his gaze is likely to rise up to the great twelvefold rose windows. That which was a stone pattern on the west front as he entered has been transformed into light (96) . The emotive effect of this contiguity of image is undeniable. However, James feels that Critchlow et a1 have mistaken the geometry which linked the central "rose" of the labyrinth to the window (97). But this does not seriously affect the impact of their argument. A sensible middle ground between the emotional- revelation of Critchlow et slI and James’ rational- revelation is held by Guy Freeland’s impressions after "treading" the Breamore "Hiz-maze" - a Chartres form turf labyrinth: I entered the labyrinth. I found very quickly that the geometry of the maze interacting with my sensory faculties established a natural pace - a rather swift, peculiar sort of walk. After a while a distinctive rhythm was set up; the surrounding copse was set in motion; only the centre was still. The path takes one very quickly into the inner regions near the centre; but then one is shot out to the outer regions - one seems to be getting further away from the goal. The final straight to the Mount came as something of a shock. It was all over; I stood on the Holy Hill; the labyrinth was the centre of the universe; I was at the centre; the labyrinth was the universe around me (98). U thd rabbit Wrow W seorcl wo^ irtte U\£. Wuid.£(A Scu/icVuaAj^ 135 There were two conclusions Freeland drew from his experiences: the labyrinth unravels the paradox that one can be near the goal of life yet far away from it, far away yet near. Indeed there is no predetermined course one can set ... [and] the way is mapped ... there are no traps or blind alleys. The only condition is to keep moving (99) . The task, as I see it, is to extract the common elements from these interpretations of the labyrinth and wed them to the traditions of the Middle Ages. There are three major themes which I believe inform the labyrinth in the Middle Ages: pilgrimage, the o!arAness of sin and sal vat ion. THE LABYRINTH IN THE MIDDLE AGES: PILGRIMAGE The labyrinth has often been linked with pilgrimage^ either figuratively - as the examples above illustrate, taking the concept of spiritual pilgrimage as given - or historically: ... the church labyrinths came into use for precisely the same reason as the stations of the Cross, namely the conquest of the Holy Land by the Turks, and the consequent cessation of pilgrimages (100). Let us deal with the historical view of pilgrimage first. The opinion that labyrinths replaced actual 136 pilgrimages seems to have grown out of a penitential interpretation of the labyrinth associated with Trollope’s illustration of monks on their knees traversing, one can hardly say "treading", a maze (101). On its own this is, perhaps, a defensible position, but the concept of pilgrimage was so refined in Medieval theology that the weight of evidence is against such a simplistic interpretation which distorts the concept of pilgrimage to fit the values of a Protestant culture. The Medieval concept of pilgrimage grew out of the sense of alienation or estrangement of man and his world from God as the result of original sin. We have already discussed the Platonic embroidery of this concept and its effects on the methods of scriptural and secular exegesis. Just as Augustine confessed his journey toward God through the temptations of the world, Gregory the Great conceived the viator or traveller who seeks only temporal comfort: temporal comfort on this earth is to the just man what the bed in an inn is to the v/ator, to the traveller on his journey: he will rest in it bodily, but mentally he is somewhere else (102). Ladner in his study of Medieval ideas of alienation and order noted that: 137 The topoi of xeniteia and peregrination of pilgrimage, of homelessness, of strangeness in this world, are among the most widespread in early Christian ascetic literature ... (103). These ideas refute Schnapper’s opinion that the labyrinth is the substitute for pilgrimage. It is the symbol of pilgrimage; a far more powerful connotation. The symbolic pilgrimage of the labyrinth is borne out by the associated ideas of order. Between complete alienation of man from God stood order. We are familiar with the analogical conception of nature by which divine order was apprehended, and we have also considered the concept of supernatural universal order in Virgil. The Underworld journey of Aeneas provides a context for the assertion that the order of the world would become spirit ually lifeless if it did not transcend itself through various modes of alienation from what seemed the ordinary scheme of things (104). It is clear that Bernardus Silvestris conceived the figure of Theseus in this way and that his role as Elysian guide or guardian, who although privy to the divine remains "earthbound " (105), is preserved i n this context. This is a presage of the Thomist conception of Christ as viator: 138 Christ Himself during this earthly life, though always a full comprenensor of God, His Father, nevertheless was still a i//ator, because, like all human wayfarers, he was incarnate in a body (106). This makes sense of the "earth-stayer" paradox. Order is reflected in the labyrinth through its cosmological construction. The immutable cosmos is suggested by the unvarying Zodiac or twelve houses of the sun which mark its position each month. The sun is the most important image in the labyrinth of the Cretan cycle and can be seen revived in the Easter symbolism of Christianity. It might be said to "wander " amongst the houses of the Zodiac. However, the eleven circles to which the Chartres form of the 1abyrinth reduce i s predated by septernary labyrinths like those of S. Reparatus. The cosmological pilgrims in this case must be the seven planets or "wanderers". Geoffrey Ashe contends that even though the planets have left their legacy in the names of the days of the week - an important septernary cycle - the original basis of the septernary mystique was the seven-starred constellation of Ursa Major. The Great Bear marked the hub of heaven, the axle and pivot of the cosmos (107). This idea was transferred to Christianity in two ways. Firstly, Christianity identified one point on the 139 surface of the world as the hub, and it is indisputable that this was identified with Jerusalem; the centre of the Chartres labyrinth (108). Jerusalem is, in turn, identified with Eden and the tortus conelusus, for its vision is the opus restdLiirSLtiones which is symbolised by the rose, as in the centre of the Chartres labyrinth. Eithne Wilkins has captured the conjunction of contexts which takes place in this image: The multifoliate rose that suggests a labyrinth, an infinitely unfurling mandala, the "far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose", of which Yeats wrote that some seek it in the Holy Sepulchre, some in the wine-vat (of Dionysus), is recognised, either obscurely or explicitly, as the flower of the universe, at once the mystery at the heart of things and the ineffable order that is called cosmos ( 109). Secondly, it may have given rise to the identification of the planets with the septentriones or seven oxen who, when yoked together and subjugated, turn the mill of heaven. For example, we not only have Bernardus’ conception of the seven oxen (110) but also William of Conches’ distinction between rational and erratic mot ion : To this end, then, God gave men eyes: since man perceives two motions in the heavens and similar ones in himself, then by whatever means the divine ratio subordinates the erratic motion Ci.e. of the planets] to the rational motion of the firmament, just so should he subjugate the erratic motion of the flesh to the rational motion of the spirit, which is the end of moral philosophy (111). 140 Understanding heavenly motion had a very real and practical meaning for the twelfth century Chartrians: The notion ... that self knowledge depends on knowledge of the universe is inseparable from the conviction that a man may in part determine the course of his own life by exploiting the knowledge implanted in the stars, and learning what to do and what to avoid ( 112). The "stars", then, were the symbol of man’s unceasing motion toward the ideal rest in God, the centre of the Universe. They were also the guides of that pilgrimage. Here for the first time we find not only Theseus, but also Ariadne. Wilkins has identified the Orphic mysteries as the first to transform the conception of recurrent rebirth into a spiritually decisive permanent rebirth. This was symbolised in the word for ring or circle: Stephanos, a crown of flowers, a wreath (of roses?), a chaplet. The "mystic initiate" has escaped from the Wheel of Purgation, he passes ... over the ring or circle that includes the bliss he longs for, he enters and perhaps passes out of some sort of sacred enclosure ... the putting on of garlands or stemmSLta. was the final stage of initiation for hierophants and other priests ... ! Exactly so the Christian saints entering Paradise are shown being crowned with chaplets of roses (113). This chaplet of roses was translated into the decade wreath: 14 1 a corona in the sense of a halo, the roses equivalent to an emanation of spiritual light from the head, like those worn by Ariadne in the labyrinth (114). The identification of Ariadne with the Corona Borealis or Ursa Major, depending on whether you choose to believe Graves or Ashe, only strengthens the argument by reinforcing the septenary associations (115). The metaphors of guiding light leads us to the next theme - the da.rk.ness of sin, which may be considered an aspect of the concept of pilgrimage. THE LABYRINTH IN THE MIDDLE AGES: DARKNESS OF SIN Guy Freeland called upon the imagery of darkness when explaining his perambulation of the labyrinth’s outer limits surrounded by the darkness of the copse. He likened the experience to the nights of St. John of the Cross: which spiritual persons call purgations or purifications of the soul; and here we call these nights, for in ... them the soul journeys, as it were, by night, in darkness (116). The image of the darkness of sin, on the other hand, can also be found in Augustine: For a body, to be is not the same thing as to be beautiful, otherwise a body could not be 142 ugly; similarly, for a created spirit, to live is not the same thing as to live wisely, otherwise such a spirit would remain immutable in wisdom. But it is good for it to adhere to You aii/ays, lest the light it had gained by turning towards You it might lose by turning away from You, and so fall back into a life similar to the abyss of darkness (117). Augustine continues putting the emphasis on Original Sin, the primary mode of alienation: But we, who by our souls are a spiritual creation, have turned away from your light. In this life i/e vere heretofore darkness, and we labour in what is still left of our darkness until i/e are made Thy justice in Thy only-begotten Son (118). There is a synonomy between darkness and death which is at the core of the Greco-Roman labyrinth and which is clearly evident in Augustine and the famous Pauline dictum that "now we see through a glass darkly" (119) Darkness, the punishment for Original Sin, is the symbol for imperfection, corruptibility and death. So too we have knowledge of the world only in a "dark manner" (120) or as a "dim reflection" (121). The world is mysterious, dark and closed. Macrobius specifically relates the concept of mystery to the labyrinth: Thus the mysteries themselves live covered in labyrinths of imagery (figurarum cuniculus) ( 122). 143 The Macrobian labyrinth is related to the burrow of a rabbit and is underground away from the light, but also a secret artifice (123). It is also related to "covering" or "hiding", a sense assumed by William of Conches in his definition of integumenta - "for as rabbits take cover in such labyrinths, so truth is enclosed, in darkness as it were, in integumenta" (124). The synonomy between integument a and involucra adds form to this figure of the labyrinth. Involucrum is indeed a "wrapping", but it also carries a connotation (invol- utus) of darkness and obscurity but with the added sense of involvere orbem - to make a circle, that is, come back to the same point whence one started (125). These rhetorical labyrinths, like their spiritual counterparts, have precedents in Greek and Roman literature. Plato described a rhetorical labyrinth in the Eutbydemus (291 B): Then it seemed like falling into a labyrinth, we thought we were at the finish, but our way bent round and we found ourselves as it were back at the beginning, and just as far from that which we were seeking at first (126). And Lucian, in the play Hermontius, uses the labyrinth for moral counsel: 144 We will copy the stratagem of Theseus and take a thread from Ariadne in the play, and then enter every labyrinth. So that by winding it up we shall discover what to hold onto ... it comes to me from the sages, "keep sober and remember to disbelieve." For, if we are not prepared to believe everything that we hear but rather act like judges and let the next man have his say, perhaps we may escape the labyrinth with ease (127). The difference between the resigned pessimism of Plato and the optimism of Lucian is given spiritual expression by Wilkins: The living universe is a bonfire of agony (it is a Buddhist phrase) and, if life merely goes round in cycles of conflagration for ever, living is intolerable: one must find a way to escape from recurrence, from the turning of this cosmic wheel. The difference between the "pessimistic" Hindu and Buddhist view and the "optimistic" Christian view lies perhaps in the attitude to the circle: in one, life revolves on the circumference, with a possib ility, given the necessary effort towards attaining enlightenment, of gradually moving towards the centre; in the other ... the centre informs all and must be reached here and now ( 128). Again we see the concerns of rhetorical method, moral counsel and mysticism reflected in one another with no strict division between rationalism and mysticism. This provides the context in which rhetorical terms such as integumentum or involucrum could also connote a mystical or mysterious insight, the rhetoric of the opus res ta.ura.nt iones. 145 The labyrinth emphasises the very notion of redemption which is at the heart of Christian rhetorical method - knowledge of God and redemption through* knowledge of the world. I feel confident that this identification of rhetorical methods with labyrinthine structures was more than word play. Mathews reports that the central plaque of the labyrinth of Amiens cathedral (completed in the thirteenth century) represents Bishop Everard and the three architect s (129). He , presumably, bases his report on an accompanying i nscription. Janet Bor d agrees that one of the figures is probably Everard de Fouilly , the bishop responsible for the construction o f the cathedral, and the three remaining figures represent other "masters of the work" (130). This, however, need not necessarily refer to the architects. Everard himself was described as Causa efficiens Cof a poem Laborintil dicitur fuisse expertissimus clericus magister Everardus Alema.nna.Sj d ictus Everadus qua si egregius, versificatorj excellens, rithmista, arduusj rhetor dictatorj valde, solemn is. Titulus est Laborintusj quasi laborem haben intus (131). The title of Everard’s poem is explicitly related to the labor intus of Silvestris, but also to the misery and penance of the world found in Hugh of St. Victor, who called Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Peter Lombard and Peter of Poitiers the "four labyrinths of France" 146 (132). The poem is an argument of rhetoric and outlines the "commandements de la Grammaire" and "Poesie" (133). The possibility that the central plaque refers to les The conjugation of darkness, mortality and the im perfection of humanity is encapsulated in an inscription which may, or may not, have been attached to a labyrinth: Look upon this mirror and behold in it thine own immortality! Thy body shall become dust and food for the worms, But thou thyself thall live eternally; this life is hard to live. Beg and pray to Christ that thy life may be lived in Christ That by the Easter festival thou mayest be awakened and come out of the labyrinth. By these five lines of verse I instruct thee in the secrets of death (135). 147 THE LABYRINTH IN THE MIDDLE AGES: SALVATION This brings us to the third theme of the medieval labyrinth: salvation, In the preceeding discusions of pilgrimage and darkness ue have also seen their opposites: guidance and the enlightenment of order. We have noted the optimism of the opus restaurattones, and the roles of Theseus, Ariadne, Mary and also Christ Incarnate, as guiding and mediating influences between humanity and divinity. I would now like to develop these ideas within the theme of sal vat / on. The nonpareil symbol of Christian salvation is the Paschal mystery; its signal act is Christ’s resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday. The symbolism of Easter (136), more than any other Christian festival, is based on the defeat of death/darkness by light/life which is embodied in the Risen Christ. This is no more evident than in the gospel of St. John (137). After the famous "beginning", John describes life as the ... light of man, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpwer, (John, 1:4-5) This light is also identified with the Vord: The Word was the true light that enlightens all men (138). (John, 1:8-9) 148 The light/life relationship contains a strong connotation of guidance, out of the darkness of sin/death and into eternal life/light. The relationship between Christ and life and light is exemplified in the Johanine description of the resurrection of Lazarus. The first of the metonymic relationships between Christ and light is established in the episodes of the stoning of the adulterous woman (John, 8:1-12), which is recognised within the eschatological tradition as a sign of Jesus judgement of the world. St. John draws a parallel between sin and darkness which is dispelled by Jesus * "light": I am the light of the world; anyone who follows me will not be walking in the darkness; he will have the light of life (139). (John:8:12-13) The significance of the redemptive aspect of Christ’s judgement is not realised until the resurrection of Lazarus. The symbolism of light and life forms the basis of many hymns which transform the Son of Righteousness into the Sun of Righteousness: Awake from sleep, Rise up from the dead Christ thy Lord enlightens thee, Christ, the Son of Righteousness, Created before the Horning Star Giving life by His rays (140). 149 Part of the Paschal celebrations at Auxerre cathedral illustrate the adaptation of the labyrinth to Easter ceremonies: the religious dance known as the peiota: The Dean or his deputy received Cthe golden ball or pelota3 from the newly inducted canons; it had to be of such a size that it could be held with both hands. With one arm around the ball the Dean seized with his other hand the hand of the nearest priest and in this way a long chain, possibly a ring was formed. The Dean struck up the Easter hymn Victimi Pa.scha.li Landes (141) in which all joined to the accompaniment of the organ. The long chain of men performed the three-step dance (tripudio) round the labyrinth inlaid upon the floor in the nave of the cathedral, at the extreme west, and the Dean threw the ball alternatively to one or more of the dancers (142). The passage of the golden ball around the labyrinth is generally taken to represent the death and resurrection of Christ - the Sun (143). The generality of this tradition is well founded, as Backmann reports: ... in Sweden, for example, stone settings in the form of labyrinths are preserved. They seem as a rule to mark the burial places of iron or bronze ages. On the other hand they were not laid in Christian times, though this is only a supposition. Alin mentions that, according to the peoples of Nordholland, their forefathers in their childhood went out early in the morning of Easter Day to such a labyrinth and "go treddenborg", i.e. went through the passages of the labyrinth. This custom, in Alin’s view, goes back to prehistoric sun and fertility cults, an unnecessary assumption, since the custom is in full accord with early Christian usages in respect to the labyrinth. There too the labyrinth represents the underworld and the rite suggests death and resurrection (144). 150 The connection between the Paschal mysteries of Christian faith and traditional pagan associations and interpretations of the labyrinth are apparent. In addition, I suggest, the Johanine gospel displays a thematic concordance with pagan interpretations of the labyrinth which is remakably coincidental. This extends to the Marian importance in the anecdote: "Woman, this is your son." Then to the disciple he said, "This is your mother." (John, 19:26-27) The use of the term "woman" is unusual and is a repetition of the Wedding Feast at Cana when Jesus chided Mary, saying, "Woman, why turn to me, my time has not come yet" (John, 2:4-5), and suggests a deeper significance of Mary in the Johanine gospel. The common interpretation is that Jesus declares Mary the new Eve (145), the spiritual mother of all the faithful. The connection with the miracle of the water and wine - the first miracle - points to Christ’s future glorification of Mary. It also exemplifies the role of mediator which was pressed with ever increasing emphasis on Mary. Chartres cathedral, we have noted (146), was the first of the great cathedrals of Notre Dame continuing the belief that Mary was Mother of all future disciples: 15 1 The cathedral was referred to as the "celestial court of the Mother of God" selected by the Virgin as her "special residence on earth" and preferred by her to all other sanctuaries dedicated to Notre Dame ... . It v/as here that Our Lady dwelt among her people [italics added] (147). Indeed Notre Dame was the centre of Chartres: the major fairs - economic mainstays of the community - coincided with the four feasts of the Virgin (148) and the five great windows of the cathedral do her honour. Freeland has described a plausible and decorous analogy between Mary and Ariadne: It is through Mary that we come to Christ. It is Wisdom, according to Ecc1esiasticus, who walks with us on tortuous paths. So Christ with Mary had laid out the sure and certain path to salvation (149). There are other consanguinities between Mary and Ariadne : their intercessiona1 assistance, and their generative aspects, meet in the archetypal i mage of a woman spinning (150). *... indeed the mythical, the magic-laden feminine occupation par excellence; even now we still say "on the distaff side" and "spin a yarn". The reason why Mary was spinning purple thread for the Temple veil when the angel manifested himself is surely that, although not divine, she corresponds typo logically to the Great Goddess, who is a spinner and weaver of destiny and the mistress of all such acts as binding, plaiting and knotting; the great Mother who spins bodily tissue of the Holy Child out of herself ( 151) . * 152 In addition, the rose, a long accepted symbol of Mary appears in the centre of the Chartres labyrinth: The six petals reflect the perfect six-sided figure and the first perfect number set in the form of the Rose of Paradise whose calyx contains the Godhead. But unlike the perfect figure which is normally closed, with no point of entry, the centre of the labyrinth has been eased open to let us in (152). It is a commonplace Catholic practice to seek intercession and mediation through Mary. The importance of Mary in Chartrian thought elevates this intercessional role to the status of revelation (153). It is from within the body of Mary - either the labyrinth Rose or supplanting the mandalora in the tympanum of the west facade (Figure 21) - that the Incarnate Christ is revealed, and with this revelation the theophanic vision is restored to man. The light of the cathedral - "the transcendental reality that engenders the universe and illuminates our intellect for the perception of truth" (154) - filters through Mary who shines like Ariadne’s crown guiding the pilgrims. "Uvt wes^ $< mU i CWta iv y 153 CONCLUSION The three themes we have been discussing in relation to the interpretation of the Medieval labyrinth arose out of the general concepts of Medieval cosmology. The concept of pligrimage, for example, so eloquently imaged by the labyrinth, implies that motion is generated by the desire of a misplaced body to return to its natural place of rest. This is a development of the Aristo telian concept of space and the quadripartite elemental theory of matter, which were hallmarks of the School of Chartres. A confounding aspect of such Medieval cosmology is that it seems to have no operational language which can translate the essentially "poetic" form of the theophanic vision into physical laws. For example, we are not presented with a theory of motion but of the compulsion and loss of love. There is a functional relationship between the conception of vision as the fundamental sense of human understanding and the language of illumination of a "dark" cosmos which can only be apprehended indirectly, and in a discourse scaled down from cosmic forces to human emotions. The language of illumination reflects the indirect apprehension of nature and makes speaking symbolically more "real" then speaking of actual sticks and stones. 154 This had the effect of characterising the relation of human under standing to truth which makes it almost impossible to distinguish clearly between intellectual and mystical experience (154). The objective of this symbolic discourse was the restoration of the original communion with the mind of God before man had to bother himself with such trivialities as food, clothing and shelter. However no matter how sophisticated the language of theophany could become man still had to live with sticks and stones and provide himself with food and shelter. In the twelfth century these concerns gave ... dignity to work of many kinds, a rise in the status of technology relative to the traditional liberal arts and an awareness of man’s power to impose disciplines of his own, mechanical and cultural, on the fabrics, mund i of which he was an integral part (155). And while raising the status of man’s own disciplines led to the development of a rigorous, "scientific" theo logy which has rarely been surpassed in both logical cohesiveness and detail, it also generated a tension between "that integrity which is uniquely the stamp of the Logos" ( 156). Dronke has shown that although Chartres was repre sentative of the "old" Latin traditions which had been 155 long familiar to grammarians and allegorists and which provided the language of the theophanic discourse, it was also receptive to the "new" traditions of Aristote1ianism in medical and mathematical texts, including those of the Arabic commentators which were starting to infiltrate the West and were to provide the form of the discourse which would culminate in Natural Philosophy. The peculiarly Chartrian way in which the "new" confronted the "old" was the attempted recon ciliation of the Aristotelian concepts of hylomorphism with the Platonic concept of forms being Ideas in God (157). It was, perhaps, the inadequacies of this attempt to reconcile Aristotle with Plato which led to the degradation of the once novel and exciting Chartrian discourse into stock phrases (158). This may have been the reason why the Chartrian Platonists were so easily dismissed by history and the image of their philosophy - the labyrinth - consigned to the same obscurity. 156 IV. THE CONCEPT OF THE LABYRINTH IN DANTE’S CONNED 1A The medieval conception of the labyrinth depends upon the theophanic vision of the universe; in no place is this vision more evident than in the Commedia of Dante. The Commedia has been described as a "medieval synthesis"; it is, in its own way, the ultimate expression of the universal ism of knowledge which characterises medieval philosophy (1). Into a hundred cantos Dante crowded the science that he had gathered from Brunetto Latini, and perhaps from Bologna: the astronomy, cosmology, geology, and chronology of an age too busy living to be learned. He accepted not only the mystic influences and fatalities of astrology but all the cabalistic mythology that ascribed occult significance and powers to number and alphabet (2) The Commedia exhibits a unity and generality usually reserved for theology. It is a poema. sacro comparable not to other poetic fiction but only to writings of a theological cast. Dante is God’s scribe; his poem embodies a distinctively scriptural mode of figure or allegory, and our accessus to it must be via a study of the Bible and patristic exegesis (3). Dante shows a full awareness of the exegetical tradition of which he is the heir. On the one hand he knew from Aquinas that no human author was capable of writing as 157 God had written, that the fourfold exegesis (literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical) was to be used only as a means of understanding Scripture (4)» Yet, he claimed that if the work be taken allegorically its subject is Man insofar as by merit or demerit ... he is exposed to the rewards and punishments of justice ... . The aim of the whole and the part is to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and to guide them to a state of happiness (5). Thus, the stated theme of Dante’s poem is spiritual pilgrimage and redemption: themes with which we are already familiar. Dante made it clear that his model was the Exodus - Adam’s progeny on the way toward Israel and redemption. Dante extended this allegory with the introduction of Virgil as guide and author who will show him "another road" with which, by implication, Virgil is already familiar - the journey through the Inferno. Dante accomplished the synthesis of the themes of pilgrimage through darkness and eventual redemption by drawing typological parallels between Christian scripture and the guide to salvation and redemption provided by Aeneas. It is in Dante’s work that we see the Christian transfiguration of the Aenetd: 153 the pagan counterpart of the Old Testament, the authoritative history of the seed of Troy on its way to becoming Christian, as the Old Testament is the history of the Hebrews on a parallel path (6). It is in Virgil’s vision that Dante modelled the characteristically labyrinthine vision of tnfernum developed in the sixth book of the Aeneid. Dante, like Virgil (7), prefigures the descent into the Underworld in terms which must be related to significant events deep within the narrative and which establishes the propriety of both the pilgrim and the pilgrimage. It is also where we first encounter unmistakeab1y labyrinthine symbolism: Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. (Inferno, 1, 1-3) The wood we know from Virgil is identical with the labyrinth in which, by definition, the way is lost; it was Virgil who coined the phrase "inextricable error” (Aeneid,, VI:27). This wood, "wild, rugged, harsh" (Inferno,1,5), was "so bitter that death is hardly more so" (Inferno, 1,7). It is the express purpose of the poem to relate, however fearful, the things which Dante saw in order that he may also tell of the guidance he received. This prologue, it has been remarked, is the 159 rehearsal of the ninety nine cantos which follow (8). It is Dante’s first attempt at enlightenment as he ascends a hill guided only by the light of the sun "that leads men aright by every path" (Inferno, 1,18). The ascent itself was made "so that the firm foot was always the lower" (Inferno, 1, 30) that is, rounding on the right hand. However, the way is soon blocked by three beasts: a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf. Dante loses all "hope of ascending", he is no hero in any classical sense and when he meets Virgil during his hasty descent he implores his aid. Virgil explains that Dante must "go by another way if you would escape from this wild pi ace": for this beast, the cause of your complaint, lets no man pass her way, but so besets him that she slays him. (Inferno, 1, 91-96) I believe that this is a description of the labyrinth of error. Virgil also makes it plain that because Dante does not have the stuff of heroism ("Why do you return to so much woe? Why do you not climb the delectable mountain, the source and cause of every happiness?" (Inferno, 1, 76-78) he must, in effect, take the long road through Hell and Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise. The infirmity of purpose which Dante displays in the 160 first canto is questioned in the beginning of the second. Dante recalls two uho, although mortal, journeyed into infernum, Aeneas and St. Paul, but asks: But I, why do I come there? And who allows it? I am not Aeneas (9), I am not Faul (10); of this neither I nor other s think me worthy. (Inferno, II, 31-33) Virgil explains that a lady "so blessed and so fair"(Inferno, II, 53) has interceded on Dante’s behalf and obliged him to be Dante’s guide. Beatrice, to whom Virgil is referring, is an amalgam of three divine females who seek to succour Dan t e i n h i s journey; Beatrice is moved by the mutual love she and Dante share; she will be his final guide to paradise. She is also said to represent Divine Wisdom and is the complement to Virgil or Reason (11). Lucy, possibly Dante’s patron saint, is the second of the divine ladies. It is she who entreats Beatrice to assist Dante - "why do you not succor him who bore you such love ...?" (Inferno, II, 104-105 - and w i 1 1 later 1 i t e r a 1 1 y lift him towards his celestial vision. Lucy, i n t ur n , has been prevailed upon by "a gracious lady" in heaven - the virgin Mary (never directly named in the Inferno) who has it in her power to "break the judgement there above" (Inferno, II, 96) and permit Dante this pilgrimage. Thus we see programmed levels of intersession and, reflexively, knowledge: Virgil is simply the servant of Grace: from her, in the person of Beatrice, he takes his commands, and to her, in the person of Beatrice, he conducts the soul. In other words, although there is a distinction, there is no real antagonism between Faith and Reason ... . The truths of Christian Theology presuppose those of Natural Science and Philosophy. Just as Paul speaks of law as our pedagogue to bring us to Christ [Ga1 atians:3 1 ] , so Dante calls Virgil or Reason, "the sweet pedagogue" C Purga. torio:Xlll ( 12 ) . The opening cantos of the Inferno provide many indications that Dante may have had the labyrinth, or at the very least labyrinthine symbolism, in mind when he was constructing his poem. The woods may be considered commonplace and by their connection with Eden’s forest and the waters of the flood they become cognate with Original Sin, the fall and the mortality which was its curse: ideas associated with the labyrinth in the Middle ages. Likewise the intercedence and aid of a divine female is at the very heart of the labyrinth’s mystery; it is through her power as genetrix that life can arise from the place of death. What is missing so far in Dante’s account is a thorough exposition of the monstrous death which waits within the labyrinth. The paramount symbol of darkness and death in the CommedtcL is Lucifer who is eternally embedded in a tomb 162 of ice at the centre of the world; but Lucifer’s agents are everywhere. The three beasts of the forest of Canto I represent the Devil as the temptations of the world, impeding the way of redemption: The lion would then represent ... "the vainglory of life", the she-wolf would symbolise the "lust of the eyes", or greed in its wider sense, and the leopard "the lust of the flesh", meaning that enchantment with created things, human or otherwise, which can cause a man to forget the Creator, who lies concealed in them and beyond them (13). There are other monsters on Dante’s journey into Hell, many of them from classical mythology. The figures of Minos, Cerberus, Geryon and, of course, the Minotaur serve to link Dante with the great classical heroes and, in turn, typo1ogica11y link them to the "heroism" of the death and resurrection of Christ and his total victory over the Devil. Ralphs makes her prospect of the Inferno quite clear: Dante’s hell is a kind of labyrinth, the descent into which is a winding away from the light (14). On the second circle, or the commencement of Hell proper, stands Minos the judge. This, in one sense, is Minos’ mythological role (15), but Dante has debased the proud king and made him a monster whose encircling tail condemns sinners to the appropriate circle of their 163 crimes. There could be many reasons for this debasement so that Minos could represent "the evil conscience of the lost", the horrible and disturbed conception of the justice of God, which is one of the chief punishments of the hardened and impenitent soul (16). In coi'relation with this opinion, Minos is not of course the real judge of these sinners. God is their judge, but in Minos they see themselves. Minos is more brute than human, and the tail with which he encircles himself is a representation of hell (17). It must also be remembered that the transformation from wise ruler to monster was not unprecedented in antiquity. Minos did not sacrifice the bull of Zeus as he had promised, but added it to his own herd: The return of the bull should have symbolised his absolutely selfless submission to the functions of his role. The retaining of it represented, on the other hand, an impulse to egocentricism, se1f-aggrandisment. And so the King "by the grace of God" became the dangerous tyrant Holdfast - out for himself ( 18 ) . Minos’ sin, though different in degree, is not unlike the covetousness of the she-wolf or Lucifer himself. It is envy and greed combined, which strikes at the heart of the communion for which all things were made, and which precipitated the Original Sin. 164 When we meet the Minotaur - who may be considered an alternate Minos - at the entry to the circle of the violent he has hardly changed from his Cretan roots (19) and remains "an image of sheer blind destructiveness eating up all that is best in man" (20). The conection with Theseus is also made more explicit. Dante enters Dis as a new Theseus who twice braved the Underworld and survived, so much so that Virgil taunts the Minotaur: Perhaps you believe that here is the Duke of Athens, who dealt you your death up in the wor1d? (InfernOjXII,16-18) But what of Dis the city of Hell? Dis is the city of the Antichrist - the absolute antithesis of Jerusalem: the natural order of things is turned upside down: the Lord of Hell, instead of holding his state in the city above, is bound fast in the dungeons below (21). Dis is also called the City of Heresy and represents the ultimate sin of incontinence of the intellect. It is a fortified city whose deep moats, the iron walls, and the garrison of fiends cannot but signify the vast danger and difficulty of penetrating the dark problems of the faith, of exploring the labyrinth of doubt (22). 165 Virgil expects to gain relatively easy access into Dis and is angered that he should be denied access to the "do lesome city" {Inferno, Mill,77). I)ante is perhaps recalling Aeneas’ experience at the gates of Tartarus to which the Golden Bough gave him entry. Virgil and Dante have no such prize, nor, we are led to believe, could they have because Reason is insufficient when ranged against the arch-heretics who are the fallen angelic guardians of Dis. Dante does however call upon another concept from the Aeneid in his description of the journey through Dis - the path to the right or left hand. At the end of canto IX Dante is quite explicit: Then, after he had turned to the right hand, we passed between the tortures and the high battlements. (Inferno, IX, 132-133). He continues in canto X: Now, along a solitary path, between the wall of the city and the torments, my Master goes on and I follow after him. "0 supreme virtue," I began, "who lead me round as you will through the impious circles, ... . (Inferno, X, 1-6). This, when considered with the dangers of the incontinent intellect, must represent the dexterous and virtuous path through the city of doubt. The end of the tenth canto is marked by a similarly distinct change of direction: 16G Then he turned his steps to the left and leaving the wall, we made our way toward the middle path, by a path that strikes into a valley which even up there annoyed us with its stench. (Inferno, X, 133-136) The origins of this left hand track to the lower levels of Hell is to be found in Virgil’s description of "pitiless Tartarus" in /4ene i d: VI , 543 (23). However, virtue alone is not sufficient to keep one on "the straight way". Dante exemplifies his opinion toward virtue and heroism by a comparison between himself, Aeneas and Ulysses. Comparing Aeneas to Ulysses, Dante is very close to Silvestris’ comparison of Theseus and Per itho us (24): Ulysses is condemned among the evil counsellors of the Eighth Circle; his ostensible sin the ambush of the horse which made the gate by which the noble seed ol the Romans went forth. (Inferno, XXVI, 59-60) However, the covert reason lor Ulysses’ damnation is prefaced in Dante’s recollection that I sorrowed then, and sorrow now again, when I turn my mind to what I saw; and I curb my genius more than I am wont, lest it run where virtue does not guide it; so that, if kindly star or something better has granted me the good, I may not grudge myself that gift. (Inferno, XXVI, 20-24) Expected page number 167 is not in the original print copy. 168 epistemologically, but also morally: What medieval man perceived as a unity, finding its completion in the Godhead, did possess a unity - for it represented the moral universe of medieval mankind (27). For Dante, intellectual incontinence and the quest for esperienza. and canosenza are the Original Sins, and the centre of Dante’s horrific vision of Hell: The darkness, restriction and cold of the "tomb" of Lucifer is a condition of the heart. It represents the evil root in Dante’s soul (or in the heart of the world), the ultimate in darkness or negation (28). The structure of the journey to the centre of the world and the subsequent journey to the Earthly Paradise are based on a pattern of conversion which entails both descent and ascent. This pattern must be understood as more than the Macrobian descensus ad infernos, as it depends on the redemptive power of Christ to ensure the success of the ascent. Dante draws on the Augustinian idea that conversion (29) must first entail a descent: But to what high place shall you climb, since you are in a high place and have set your mouth against the heavens? First descend that you may ascend, ascend to God. For in mounting up a^a/nst God you fall (30). It was the enormity of Original Sin which for Dante makes descent a necessity: 169 Man could never make satisfaction within his own limits, being unable, by subsequent obedience, to descend so low in humility as, in his disobedience, he had aspired to ascend; and that is why it was impossible for man to make satisfaction by himself. (Par aof /so, VII, 97-102) The pattern of descent and conversion and ascent is related to the pattern of the labyrinth. The decisive turn which is at the centre of the labyrinth is synonymous with conversion. Thus we would expect other similarities between the turn and conversion and this is what we find. The turn which Virgil and Dante make at the centre of Hell and therefore o f the earth i s mysterious. Dante is confused about how i t has been achieved: ... draw me out of error. Where i s the ice? And he there [Lucifer], how is it that he is fixed thus upside down? And how, in so brief a time, has the sun made transit from evening to morning? (OInferno, XXIV, 102-105 Dante conceives the centre of the earth as "the point to which all weights are drawn from every part". It is generally agreed that this is an expression of the Aristote1ian-Pto1emaic conception that the centre of the earth is the centre of gravity for the whole universe. However, although the Aristotelian system was the basis of the philosophy of natural place, Augustine and Aquinas made substantial changes to this system by 170 placing the motive force of love in retroaction to weight. Augustine, we have noted (31), is careful to say that weight does not necessarily tend towards the lowest place. The role of a redemptive Christ in this scheme is also consonant with the Aristotelian elemental philosophy, that is, the four elements. Christ is identified with the highest element - fire: "by your gift we are on fire and borne upwards; we flame and we ascend (32) ". The i mage reservoir of fire and f 1 ame contain the conceptions of "the way to the light", and the role of sun-heroes such as Theseus as typo logically identical to Christ These are all images which are clearly reflected i n the medieva1 concept ion and interpretation of the 1abyrin th. Augustine came tantalisingly close to both a description of the labyrinth and a gloss of the Commedta.: Where are you going, to what bleak places? Where are you going? The good that you love is from Him: and insofar as it is likeness for Him it is good and lovely; but it will rightly be turned to bitterness if it is unrightly loved and be deserted by Whom it is. What goal are you making for, wandering around and about by ways so hard and labourous? Rest is not where you seek it ... . You seek happiness of life in the land of death, and it is not there. For how shall there be happiness of life where there is no life (33). There is a reflective relationship between cosmology and theology: the experience of the physical world and the structure of the cosmos are employed as natural proofs of the unity and truth of the theological principles. This mixture of cosmological and theological metaphors is an expression of the unity of the theophanic vision. A prime example of the metaphorical correlation between theology and cosmology can be found in Dante’s treatment of circular motion in the Commedia. Circular, or spiral, motion and the centre point around which it inscribes its course are of primary importance to the labyrinth as it has been figured since prehistoric times. The development of the labyrinth as a metaphorical confrontation of man with a moral cosmos patterned on the physical cosmos reached its final phase in the Commedia. (34), and although there are no literal references to the labyrinth in the Commedia. it is clear that Dante often evokes the complement. of cognitive images identified with the labyrinth. The pattern of movement within the Commedia. has been described as follows: In the Inferno Dante moves in a narrowing leftward spiral to the centre oi the sphere earth, where he overcomes Satan. In the Pugatorio the direction of the spiral is reversed, and it ascends, but again it is inward to a centre represented by the Tree reaching up to heaven or the fountain flowing "from the divine will". In the Farad iso the movement is apparently outwards, but this is because Dante sees all as a in a mirror until 172 his brief vision of Christ ... and the sight of the inf initessimal point of light representing God ... . Then everything is turned inside out and the heavens appear as wheels turning round that point as centre (34) . It is instructive to compare the reversing inside out of the spiral in the Parad iso with Guy Free 1 and ’ s experiences of the Breamore Miz-maze (35). The suddenness of achieving the centre and the just as sudden realisation of the surrounding universe provoked a mystical experience ("I felt that I somehow understood what life - and death for that matter - was all about. What I felt I could formulate in words, however, was infinitely less than what I felt I understood" (36).) There can be no doubt that the labyrinth is a contempla tive device - a mandala. Wilkins has described the process of contemplation as the con structCion 3 of a microcosm, reflecting at once the order and the endlessness of the universe outside and the universe that each of us unfathomably is. A mandala that is well made becomes a burning glass, a mirror of the centre that is both beyond and within ... "Return within yourself", St. Augustine says, "for it is in the inward man that truth dwells". What he is recommending is contemplation. One can contemplate only by marking out limits within which to keep one’s attention, by ringing oneself in, as in the use of the mandala or the beads (37). 173 Or the labyrinth, as Freeland's experience illustrates. Con temp 1 ation, in Wilkin’s definition, is a subjective structuring of space as a means of attentive consideration. It is related to the word temple through the language of augury and the arts ol divination: To contemplate, then, is to mark out a space, a circle, and fix one's attention on what is within it, uniting oneself as far- as possible with the numinous forces there concentrated ( 38 ) . For Dante, the concentric motion within the spirals is a con temp 1 ation and a communion: motion in relation to the centre is a symbol for communion - partaking of God’s very self and moving with this motion, yet without being God (39). The relation of motion to the centre point forms the basis of Dante’s philosophy and is an ample expression of a characteristically medieval epistemology (40): Now do I see that never can our intellect be sated, unless that Truth shines on it, beyond which no truth has range. Therein it resteth as a wild beast in his den so soon as it hath reached it; and reach it may; else were all longing futile. Wherefore there springeth, like a shoot, questioning at the foot of truth; which is a thing that turneth us towards the summit, on from ridge to ridge. {PcLr&diso, IV: 1 18-132) 174 Could the "wild beast", whose intellectual appetite for truth has been whetted by the desire to know what things are, be the counterpart of the rapacious she-wolf of the Inferno? "The lust of the eyes" had been transformed into the love of knowledge with the only condition that it reflect divine unity (41). As such it is moved not by "lust" or "greed" but by love. Knowledge gained by the love of God and by God is not the passive revelation of mystics but the active, indeed heroic, apprehension o f the rational beauty of order, the divine design. This theme of natural attraction through sensible beauty to rational order recurs continually in Dante, especially in the Comedy, and particularly in respect of two principal sense-objects: the face of Beatrice and the glory of the stars. And pulling against this attraction from beauty and order goes the reverse movement of egoistic cupidity, whose symbol is the Siren or the Wolf or money or simply "the earth" (42). We find in Dante the reaffirmation and embellishment of the idea of the labyrinth as the quest for knowledge as man’s pilgrimage through the world (43). Dante shifts the counter of signification and identifies the locality of pilgrimage as Purgatory not Internum. The reasons for this are immediately apparent. The souls in Hell may not be pilgrims, their damnation is eternal. Dante consigns all pagan mythological figures - including Virgil - to the Inferno as they cannot partake of the 175 redemption, because they did not know Christ. They represent, in the language of the labyrinth, those who have been damned by the monster at the centre of the labyrinth or have died in inextricablis error. So, although in the poem the Inferno is not the locus of pilgrimage, it retains that sense allegorically. Purgatory, on the other hand, is the place of forward movement where souls recreate Exodus, singing "In exitu Israel de Aegypto". It is here that Dante comes to learn, not of the da.rk.ness of sin, but the way of sa.lvation through a new apprehension of natural order: The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakening into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love, that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you. ( Pnrgditor/o, 18 : ) The mount of Purgatory represents the arduous task of the pursuit of "the true"; Beatrice, the ardour which motivates the quest. The Earthly Paradise is the new Eden where man has redeemed his place before the Fall. This is man’s proper place - here he is at rest, yet partaking of the celestial motion through communion with 176 the cosmos and God: I, I the soul, through the senses of the body. I asked the whole frame of the universe about my God and it answered me: "I am not He, but He made me" (44 ) . 177 V, THE LABYRINTHS OF THE HYPNERQTOMACHI A POLIPHILI The Hypnerotom&chicL Poliphili, or The Strife of Love in a Drea.m (1), as it is called in English, is thought to have been written about 1466-67 (2) by Francesco Colonna, a Venetian monk. Although not always considered good literature (3), it has left a legacy of beauty and, sometimes, grotesque grandiloquence strewn across the gardens of Europe. John Addington Symonds, not one of the Strife's critics, claimed it represented "the most fruitful instinct of the Renaissance", a world transformed, in which The cloister is quitted for the world, religious for artistic ecstasy, celestial for earthly paradise, scholasticism for humane studies, the ascetic for the hedonistic rule of conduct (4). This new attitude brought forth new champions, who, though "modern", were the heirs of the vital traditions of the classical past. So there grew up a movement which sought to modernise the Classical gods and heroes, who were resurrected in Renaissance iconology. The labyrinth and its vast image-reservoir constituted such a tradition and the preceeding discussions are testament to its vitality. The Strife of Loi/e, I believe, gives us a long and 178 lingering look at the labyrinth at its culmination. The way in which Colonna insinuates the labyrinth into his allegory - the half-finished metaphor and the sly allusion - is in a sense comforting, as it implies the commonplace or traditional. The cultural span of the Strife is also interesting. It is a romance entailing a quest, and so may be considered an essentially medieval work. Yet this old genre has been so infused with the Renaissance attitude toward the discovery of the world and the rediscovery of antiquity that it is transformed into a definitive statement of the vision which would carry man into the seventeenth century. In order to understand the part that labyrinths play in Colonna’s allegorical scheme, we must make a short examination of the environs of the Strife of Love. The tale opens with Poliphilo’s lamentations about love: whose revered Idea, is deeply imprinted within [him], and lives ingraven in the secret of [his] heart, from which proceeds this so great and incessant strife, continually renewing this] cruel torments without intermission, [he] began the conditions of those miserable lovers, who for their mistresses’ pleasures desire their own deaths (5). It is the pursuit of this Zdea, i n its woman 1 y incarnation, Polia, that constitutes the theme of the Strife of Love. The Strife is an allegory on the search for Polia - the 179 personification of that most esteemed knowledge, the prise a theologi a or Ancient Wisdom (6). Poliphilo’s love for Folia is so strong that he is willing to kill himself to satisfy it. These morbid thoughts precipitate a dream, which in effect transports Foliphilo into a place where his desires are externalised: the garden of love. The journey through this garden is rightly described as a quest - a journey "from impoverishment to possession". This has been illustrated many times over- in medieval literature, for example Erec’s quest for the "Joy of the Court", in Chretian de Troyes’ Erec et Enide (7). The common ground of these two stories is the Medieval transformation of the classical labyrinth from a building to a garden (8). Foliphilo finds himself in, not so much a garden, but a ruin (many of which were reconstructed in the Renaissance as gardens). Ibis place is filled with colossal statues, many of which are hollow. Foliphilo explores the interior of some of these. This is, perhaps, indicative of Colonna's attrtude to knowledge, where the surreal is more important than the obvious. Two keys are dominant in this section of the text: the major, the passage of time; the mrnor, the travail of knowledge. ISO The travail of knowledge is understated by Colonna, if only because it forms such an integral part of the whole allegory. The journey is a travail, the moulding of primal matter into beauty and proportion is a travail (9), and so it comes as no surprise that Poliphilo is told that: in this world, whosoever will have any blessing that shall do him good, he must leave the body, which is ease and idleness, and betake himself to travail and industry, which is in the head ( 10). Colonna manipulates these "keys" in order to bolster his principal theme. The ranking of major and minor here is determined by the degree of accent placed on the principal theme of the Strife of Love - the pursuit of the prise a theologis.. The flight of time is turned into an elegaic desire in which Colonna mourns the, excellency of past wits, and the perfect golden age, when Virtue did strive with Fortune, leaving only behind him, for a heritage to this world, blind, ignorant and a grudging desire of worldly self (11). The importance which Colonna places on the teachings of prise a theologi a as symbolised by a poarch, and is mirrored in its almost gravitational attraction of Poliphilo who declares: 181 I was more desirous to behold and peruse that triumphant poarch and gate as more l&vful to remain there than any other-where [italics added] (12). It seems more than coincidental that, on the very next page, Poliphilo fleeing from a dragon runs into the dark recesses of the building: penetrating through diverse crooked torments ambiguous passages and unknown ways (13). This is a major departure from the classically heroic model and has more in common with Dante than Aeneas or Theseus. It is Poliphilo’s fear of the dragon, symbolicof misfortune, which plunges him, unwarily into: the inextricable frame of the prudent Z?aedaius, so full of ways and winding turnings, one entering into another, to deceive the intent of the goer out ... ( 14) . Here Poliphilo is confronted with a labyrinthine gateway. Just when he thinks he is done for, a last minute plea to God uncovers an altar with an ever-lasting lamp. The altar light is symbolic of the love Poliphilo has for Polia. A love which can dispel darkness and save him from death. The darkness, we are told in a margin note (Dallington again), is se1f-inf1icted: i ;'ie aark p i a c o i a igra : e and t he wisdom o i t n i s wo: ; 1 wn ic:. i s ric t h i ng e ; se but mere 1 O ; i '/ i i O i . * 3o ?o * : pn i ic i s a a 1 t o pass f r om ciar kness and i gnorance into t ne ciea: i.ghx of knowledge guided by his love, frese n tiy, h e :• o m e s t o a pleas a n t so u n t r y , w h 1 c n can be constiued to be the Garden of Eden. Here Poiophiio meets five nymphs .;o> and chivairic as ever he places himself at their disposal. These nymphs have a strong effect on Po1iphi io ; Whereupon 1 at that present thought myself most happy, only in the oeholding of such delights, because I was not able to resist the burning flames which did set upon me in the furnace of my heart i i7). The senses , therefore, represent the pleasure o f be ho i ding the world. However, they lead to passion and i u s t (18), wnlch Po1iphi:o rn ust overcome as he i s pledged t o love the pure light o f knowledge, which 1 s P o 1 i a The ny mpus discovering this , lead Po1ipn i 1 o to an audience with the queen of this land - Eleuterilida - Li terty or Free w l 1 i. The role of Queen Eleuterilida is to represent Coionna’s value of liberty or " free will '. It is pure, and unadulterated by moral concerns, which are themselves d e pe n de;; r u.po a t he e x i a t e ace o l s in, I n i s l a n o aor e evident than in his personification of liberty/will: 183 I would have xhee to understand, that the chief workman in the creation of nature, did make nothing comprable to rue, neither can the earth snow thee greater treasure than to come to my presence and taste my bounty, obtain my favour and participate of my quality (19). The queen appoints two guides which will lead Poliphilo through.the land, explaining its marvels till they reach three gates at which he will choose his fate and hopefully be united with his Polia. The guides are Logistica (Season) and Thelemia (Wish). The three gates are in the realm of Queen Telosia - the name meaning end or goal. The three choices the gates pose are the monastic life (Glory of God), chivalry (Glory of the World) and love (Mother of Love). Logistica recommends the two former, but Poliphilo chooses love and reason deserts him. He is eventually reconciled with his Polia, but not before learning that all human things are nothing but a dream. Now, to the description of the actual labyrinths in the Strife of Love. When we were first introduced to ‘Poliphilo he was contmplating suicide and crying himself to sleep. In the first of his dreams he finds himself in a dark wood and, fearing wild animals, attempts to escape: taking myself to my feet, I wandered this way, now that way, sometimes to the right hand sometimes to the left: now forward, then back ■ SO L The plo^ehxAj seois. 184 again, not knowing how to go among the thick boughs and. tearing thorns bearing upon my lace, rending my ciothes and holding me sometimes hanging in them, whereby my haste in getting forth was much hindered ... without any help but only keeping the sun still upon one side, to direct me straight forward ... desiring the help of the pitifull Cretesi&n Ai'i&dne, who for the destroying of her monstrous brother the Minotaur gave unto the deceitful Theseus a clew of thread to conduct him forth of the intricate labyrinth, that I also by some such means might be delivered out of this obscure wood. (20) (Figure 22) It is obvious, though not quite explicit, that Poliphilo is entrapped m a labyrinth. It is also obvious what Poliphilo thinks of Theseus’ reward to Ariadne for saving his life (21). Its presence at the beginning of the quest recalls the Virgilian labyrinth Aeneas encounters at the Cumaean gates (22). The Cumaean representation of the labyrinth is described as a monimenta or sign to be understood allegorically as the house of interior labour or thougnt (23): the gateway to knowledge and truth. This labyrinth in the Strife can be similarly considered. Its purpose is not to disorient those who enter, but to orient them towards or within a higher or purer plane of existence - "upward transcendence" as Huxley calls it (24). Poliphilo’s dream distances the reader from the mundane world, while the labyrinth provides the gateway to the quest (25). 135 Tne orienting influence in this labyrinth i s the sun . AS Poliphilo describes it, tne sun is not h l s goal , but ri l s beacon. It allows nim to keep on course to his goal, i.e. out of the dark wood and into the light. Poiipnilo also ailudes to the clew which he understands Ariadne gave to Theseus and wnich represents Polipnilo’s own wish. Ariadne is "pitifuli" and Theseus is deceitful 11 , because it was not the clew of thread, but the forsaken love with which it was given that enabled Theseus to escape from the labyrinth. Poliphilo is blinded by his fear for himself and his freedom; Polia is obscured from his understanding, so he remains stranded: Thus everyway discontent, I did endeavour with all force and diligence to get forth, wherein the more I did strive the more I found myself entangled and so enfeebled with weariness that on every side I feared when some cruel beast should come and devour me, or else unawares to tumble down into some deep pit or hollow place. Where for more trembling than in mustulent Autume be the yellow coloured leaves, ... I lifted up my heart to God ... [and] found myself in a short space gotten at liberty, like a new day crept out of a dark and tempestous night (26). The metaphors of enlightenment are strengthened by the dawning “out of a dark and tempestous night". This makes even more sense when read with the seasonal allusion. Poiipniio’s travails have been long and have 186 brought him to the enfeebiement of the "autume" of his life. Poliphilo fears that in his weakness he will lose his life to some devouring beast which has made the labyrinth its home. It is only Poiiphiio’s faith in his God and in release that. enables him to extricate himself, but not until he has made his "last confession". At this point, Francesco Colonna and Poliphilo regard each other and find they are the same. Poliphilo represents the memory of youth in middle age. This is the overture to the lamentations of the Janus-faced dancers, underscored by the motto Tempus Amisso. The labyrinth, therefore, is life. The real life which Colonna is pointing to is not a garden but a briar thicket. Its twists and turns confuse and its barbs impale, holding the human spirit in their vulgar embrace till it is too weak to resist and it succumbs. The "last confession" is an apt conceit as the Poliphilo who emerges from the labyrinth is made new, reborn like each new day. Poiiphiio’s weariness is replaced by a thirst, which after the celestial harmony is revealed to him, cannot be slaked. The thirst for knowledge which this symbolises eventually leads Poliphilo into the second dream state in whicn he will be further initiated into nis quest. Poiiphiio’s journey represents his growing intimacy both with the external world macrocosm, and with his own desires - microcosm. The 187 world is transfigured through Poliphilo’s desire, his polymorphous libido cathecting all that will lead to fulfilment. The second labyrinth is situated beneath the temple of Venus and Cupid - the divinities ruling the service of courtly love, but also representative of the "descent" into the collective commonplace, the body, "criminal nature" (27)". On entering the temple poarch Poliphilo glimpses himself in a mirror of black marble and is scared. His fear in this instance is short-lived as he di scover s that: the place that occasioned this] disquiet now offered unto [him] the ground of all sciences, historied in a visible manifest and expert painting (28). One of these historical paintings, not unlike those described in the Aeneid at the Cumean gates (29), concerns the labyrinth: I beheld ... the wanton and lascivious PdLSiph&e burning in infamous lust, lying in a Machine or frame of wood, and the Bull leaping upon that which he knew not. After that the monstrous minotaur with his ugly shape shut and enclosed in the infamous 1abyrinth (30). Poliphilo’s discovery of his reflection and the painting are related by their contiguity. The painting, the 188 microcosm revealed of knowledge, is combined with an emblem from the ruined garden, which exhorts Poliphilo to take of this treasure as much as thou wilst. Yet I warn thee, take from the head and touch not the body (31). Poliphilo had neither the mission, nor the inclination to venture into this Underworld. So Colonna, like Dante, resorted to another of the labyrinth’s dra.ma.tis personae: a devouring beast. Colonna manipulates the representations of the "beast" with virtuosity. If you will recall, Polihpilo was afraid of being devoured by a wild beast in the briar labyrinth. Once free from the briar labyrinth, Poliphilo is pursued by a wolf and so unwillingly discovers the poarch he is now entering. The wolf is the symbol of greed and ravening lust (32). Thus, its chasing of Poliphilo to the portal of knowledge refers to the lust for knowledge of the world and the wealth it will bring. The wolf and the dragon have one thing in common - they both represent the "devouring beast", who is death to those who enter the labyrinth until the time of the hero is come. The initial appearance of the wolf is supported by a pun on the name of the builder of the pyramid - "Lychas the Libyan" - as Friez-David (33) explains: 189 AVKOi means wolf, a candelabra. These two words seem to have been fused in the name of the builder to give it a double meaning. If the wolf, the symbol of ravening lust, has built the pyramid, it means that it is the lust of power and universal knowledge which had reared these dizzy heights (34). However, though it can be construed that the "wolf" has raised the pyramid, the temple beneath it belongs to Mother Love. Poliphilo draws the distinction between good and bad architecture and scorns "accursed horrible covetessness". As Theseus is conjoined with Pirithous and Minos with the bull (Mino’s Taur) , so does the wolf represent the beast within: the devourer and consumer of all virtue, a still biting and everlastingly greedy worm in Cthe hearts of men] that is captivated and subject to the same, the accursed let and hindrance to well disposed wits, the mortal enemy of good Architecture, and the execrable Idol of this present world, so unworthyly worshipped, and damnably adored. Thou deadly poison to him that is infected with thee, what sumptious works are overthrown and by thee interdicted (35). Yet, the wolf also represents a source of light within the darkness of the labyrinth. The dragon is given a similar treatment. In one sense, it is like the wolf, external to the labyrinth. But it draws upon an iconic reservoir all its own. The dragon is a rich image, whose allegorical pedigree is both mythological and Christian: 190 As a reptile, the dragon belongs to the sub-human realm of cold-blooded creatures. As a fabulous monster, it seems to man dangerous, unfamiliar, unnatural and utterly alien. It is venomous, cold as metal, yet it spits fire, and thus unites the opposites in itself. It is also an antidiluvian cieature - for the monk who wrote our story perhaps the incorporation of Leviathan or Luciler the fallen angel. In this creature Satan himself, the wicked adversary, appears and drives the dreamer into hell (36). Although Friez-David gives an adequate outline of the dragon, it takes a detailed definition of it to appreciate Colonna’s mastery of the icon. The fear which the dragon inspires was sufficient to have affrighted Mars himself, ... or to have made tremble the strong and mighty Hercules, ... and to call Theseus back from his begun impress and bold attempt, and to terify the giant Typhon, and to make the proudest and stoutest heart whatsoever to quail and stoop (37). In desperation and exhaustion Foliphilo calls upon God and instantly discovers a little light. The light comes from an altar lamp, which faintly illumines three gold statues. This recalls the pun on "Lychas", the architect’s name. Knowledge is the candelabra which illuminates the Trinity of gold (33). This is Poliphilo’s decisive turn at the centre of the labyrinth. He has invoked the heroes, prayed to God, and now finds the return route. 1 o 1 i ph i 1 o has accomplished all this without any of the moral dilemmas which beset Theseus. There is no fear that he will desert his Ariadne (39). Poliphilo has now reached a new place which he describes as "no habitation but for civil people, or rather for Angels and noble personages". He does not know whether to remain there, it "perchance being not lawful" (40), yet he is loathe to return to the darkness and death. The vision of his love and the things he has seen inspire his bravado and transform the man into the hero: There is no cause that should lead me to turn back again ... . Is it not better to hazard a man’s life in the light and clear Sun, than to die and starve in a blind darkness ... . And into such a state 1 was afraid the Dragon had brought me, that so excellent and marvellous works, and rare inventions, in a manner- impossible for any human creature to perform, worthy to be manifested and by myself diligently preserved ... (42). Poliphilo is granted an audience to many grand festivals in the land of Queen Liberty and especially to her palace and gardens. Here he encounters the last labyrinth in the Strife of Lore. The guides which Poliphilo is granted, if you remember, are the nymphs Logistica (Reason) and Thelemia (Wish). Poliphilo, in company with Logistica, views the labyrinth from the summit of a mount. The design he describes is 192 a large compass made in the form of an intricate labyrinthine alleys and ways, not to be trodden, but sailed about, for instead of alleys to tread upon, there were rivers of water (42). The importance of this labyrinth lies in the fact that it does not compel Poliphilo to sail it (43). The correct mental attitude, based on humanist ethics, allows transcendence of the mundane existence represented by this labyrinth. Poliphilo is privileged, he can view it from the mount and have its significance explained with impunity. This labyrinth is "Life" and its message is the passing of time and eventual death. These familiar themes are revived within this new motif. The conceit of the rivers and flowing waters adds gravity to Logistica’s warning that "Whosoever enters cannot come back" (44). Within the labyrinth are distributed seven mounts, separated by seven circles. At once it embraces the seven planets, the seven ages of man, and the seven ages of mankind (in the Augustinian system) - all of which are cyclical time-keepers. This labyrinth is certainly septenary and unicursal; its main characteristic, however, is the lack of a decisive turn. There is no way back. This distinguishes it from the other Strife labyrinths, which Poliphilo must both experience and escape. 193 Symbolic of the death or misfortune which can overtake us at any time is a ... deadly devouring old Dragon, he is utter destruction to some, and others are not hurt to death by him. He cannot be seen nor shunned, neither does he leave any assaulted, ' but either in the entry or in their journey he destroys or wounds (45). This dragon is also called "The wolf of the gods, who knows no compassion". We begin to wonder now if Poliphilo is so privileged, he has been through it all before. In a single gesture Colonna casts down his hand and familiar symbols tumble before us. Indeed, he has intended that Logistica be our guide and mentor. Yet again, we find Colonna exhorting us to marvel at his ingenuity. The pleasure of this text is analysis: the following of paths of the iconologic programs which twist in labyrinthine metaphors until the decisive turn is reached and the image is completed. The septenary programme of the labyrinth strikes a chord "Everyplace", but is, I think, most closely related to the cycles of astrology and planet symbolism: for example, Colonna tells us that the first set of revolutions is called Aries (46). Each planet is given seven revolutions, thus representing a complete cycle. The journeyers in this labyrinth enter in by the first 194 mount, which bears the inscription, "Worldly fame is like the drops of water in rain". It is these raindrops merged together which bear the seekers after "worldly fame" to their doom (47). The journey thus begun takes place in a little ship with a prosperous wind, and, securely at pleasure, the fruits and flowers fall down upon their hatches (48). Are these flowers the same as those picked by the janus-faced dancers? Undoubtedly they are, but they also allude to the season, spring, which is ruled by Mars, whose astrological sign is Aries. Before we travel into this labyrinth, let us go back and locate its genesis in the text, so that we may better understand the programme. When Poliphilo meets the nymph s, who are his five senses, they lead him to the place of Queen Eleuteri1ida. While not a 1abyrin t h itself, the pa 1 ace had many features in common with the garden 1abyrinth. For instance, it shares the septenary 1 ayout. To reach an audience with the queen Poliphilo must first pass through three fences like a straight wall, ... with a gate in the middle of the same trees (49). l '¥S£sr------—Th*------/ ml—^ ~ t^=? Qu€£v\ UdLcx in -\Vie "ceJLes-Kod w palace., Fiau^^>3 24* 195 He then comes into a fountain court, where he meets the first of three portesses, Cinosia.. The name Cinosia refers to dog-headedness, so that it is, in all probability, Cerberus transfomed. As Cerberus guards hell, so do the nymphs guard heaven; what is below is also above. The most important of these guardians is the last - Muemosnta or memory, as she instructs Po1iph i 1 o not to doubt of anything, but that I should steadfastly follow the royal persuasion and healthfull counsel of the Queen, and persevere in the execution thereof, for that end without doubt would be to my content (50). It is Polihpilo’s recollection of the wonders he has seen which exhort him to believe in the truth and goodness of the vision presented to him - prior knowledge makes understanding easier. The vision itself is celestial - a square court of sixty-four squares set in the manner of a chess board - a form and number both suited to the image. Around this square are placed benches or houses above which sparkle jewels, representing the "seven Planets with their natures and properties" (Figure 23). To the left: Against the seven Planets were there seven Triumphs over the subjects of the same pre dominant planets (51). 196 To the right : I beheld their seven harmonies and friendly aspects, and the passage of the blood, with the qualitative receiving and retiring and circulating entrance, with an incredible History of the celestial operation accedent (52). On the last wall: with a regular correspondence and harmony of the rest, in the Jewels to the opposite and symmetrical congress of the Planets, with their virtuous inclinations, were expressed in the shape of elegant nymphs, with the titles and signs of their creatures (53). This seems very much like a rhetorical mnemonic place, which epitomises the nature, form and function of the cosmos - macro and micro. There is a veritable glut of 7*s: sixty-four has seven factors, all of which are double the peceeding one (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64); there are seven nymphs, triumphs, harmonies and planets, making a total of twenty-eight, a perfect number (28 = 1 + 2 + 4- + 7 + 14: i.e. it is the sum of all its possible factors excluding itself). The Queen offers Poliphilo a place in association with Philosefia.. Poliphilo accepts the seat and finds that he sits in the house of Mercury. The history displayed behind him is testament to the dual nature of Mercury we have been assuming. It tells how the benignity of his good disposition is depraved, when he is the malignant tail of the Scorpion (54). 197 Poliphilo’s seat in this house represents man’s condition of Original Sin. Although he has the ability to "become all", he is also the materia. lapidis, transforming substances par excellence, penetrating bodies like a poison - "Wercurius lethal is est". This is the double nature of Hercurius, ... the dragon that devours, fertilises, begets, slays, and brings itself to life again. Being hermaphroditic, it is compounded of opposites and is at the same time their uniting symbol: at once a deadly poison, basilisk, scorpion, panacea and saviour (55). One can only conclude that Colonna is again drawing a distinction between "good" and "bad" knowledge, as he did with architecture. The secret of transcending the inconstancy of man’s Mercurial nature is locked within the labyrinth, though Poliphilo already seems to have discovered it. The above example highlights the basic problem facing the iconologist: not "what does this mean?" but rather, "what can it mean?" This is ameliorated somewhat by imposing certain strictures, such as a "theory of decorum" upon the interpretation of the iconologic programme. However, we have seen Colonna turn each image to his own ends to create a complex tapestry of allusion and nuance. While never violating the etiquette of iconology, he is able to present us with multivalent images which obscure interpretation. A plourt^Oufij labyrinth • 11 cctA+kfij jTuyju-c TV\«_ 1 rwLVVY\ Caieviia/ 198 Returning to the labyrinth, after the "first seven revolutions of Aries the journeyers come to the second mount. The programmatic interpretation suggested by the palace points to planetary symbolism, though there is still scope to admit other images from within the other thematic structures of the Strife. Time is indicated by the sets of seven revolutions representing the seven ages of man and also the number of years spent in each age. So, in one sense, this labyrinth is the embodiment of the life-span. It is threaded not by Ariadne, but by Clio. The physical metaphor bolsters the planet symbolism, which defines the character i stics of each age as well as supplying, in tandem with astrology, a seasonal motif. Thus Aries becomes manhood - impulsive and courageous, but it is also symbolic of the time of spring - the beginning of a new cycle. It is a literal metaphor. The other is more allusive - we do not begin to quest until reaching manhood, like Aeneas or Theseus. The second mount is populated with young women, who agree to accompany the journeyers. The time of manhood is also the time of marriage or trysting. Once a choice of companion is made by the journeyer "she will never abandon or leave him". The young women examine the "honey" of the journeyers and they straightways know the property of the honey, and the goodness thereof, ... (56). 199 The honey is symbolic of knowledge and eloquence, which are also attributes of Apollo, who is the god of the Sun. The order of the planets may be pre-Copernican, but is not necessarily classically geocentric, in which the orbits of Mars and the Sun are adjacent. Thus, if we assume that the second set of revolutions represent the Sun, then the third would be Venus (57). The current from the first to the second mount was aided by "a merry wind". This may indicate forward movement in time. In putting off from the second mount, to come to the third Cof which no description is given], they find the current of the water somewhat against them, and stand in need of oar s (58). If the third revolution is Venus, then the age corresponding to it is adolescence. It now seems that we are making a backward movement in time. This apparent retrograde motion may have its precedent in the Medieval commentaries on the Aeneid. For example, Bernardus is aware that as a historical commentator Virgil had a choice of two possible orders of events: natural order (narrat/o natural is) or the order of artistic creation inarratio art if icialis) (59). The Aeneid is an example of na.rra.tio ar t i f ic i al is. Its narrative had just the retrograde pattern of Colonna’s 1abyrinth. 200 It is with a modicum of caution that I submit that the pattern of the Aeneid is reflected in Colonna’s labyrinth, including the allusion to the sea journey in its watery circles. The close correspondence between Poliphilo at the labyrinth and Aeneas at Tartarus is more than chance. So too is the terror of the beginning of Colonna’s labyrinth in martial Aries and Virgil’s opening line "Arms and the man I sing". The "romance" which enraptures the journeyers at the second mount may also be a correlate to Aeneas’ enrapture by Dido. The apparently retrograde course from adolescence to infancy is very arduous and unrewarding. This revolution is ruled by the Moon - the planet of inconstancy. As the tides flow and ebb, and the face of the Moon changes between illumination and darkness, so is their pleasure "variable and unconstant". The women of the mount are similarly inconstant - "combatting and fighting" (60). Mercury is next. The progress is forward in time once more - "there is need of great study and labour to pass on" (61). The fifth mount is interesting as it draws upon the Mercury variations for its image. It is also a reflection of Poliphilo’s encounter with his reflection in the black marble. The fifth mount is 201 speculable, like a mirror uher in they see their representations, and in that they take great delight, and with a fervent desire they pass on their laboursome course (62). This mount represents Mercury the revealer. It is harvest time and all the work and travail of the year is shown to be fruitful. But the true message the mount contains is Medium tennure bea. t i: the beauty and happiness of an autume garden soon passes into winter. So too, happiness had its season, it then passes with time. The thrill and delight in what our labour s have produced is equally short-lived. Time seems to hasten, and in complicity: the Waters by reason of the broken circles begin to be very sliding towards the Centre, so that with small or no rowing they are brought to the sixth mount (63). As we draw close to winter there is nothing we can do to postpone the inevitable. The ruling planet is Jupiter, representative of wisdom and understanding. Colonna’s allegory again betrays close links with the Aeneid. At the sixth mount the journeyer finds elegant Women, with a show of heavenly modesty and divine worship, with whose amiable aspects and countenances, the travaillers are taken in their love condemning their former with despite and hatefull abhorannce. And with these they fall acquainted, and pass the seven revolutions (64). 202 These women are contrasted with the former lovers just as Theseus spurned Ariadne and Aeneas Dido (65). However, the new love brings no solace, and it cannot dispel the atmosphere of the last circuits, which are heavy with the sense of loss (66). Du Bartas called Saturn "the spouse of Memory" (67), and it is the memory of the past loves and lost opportunities that serves to make the seemingly inescapable gloom of the centre more poignant. The life represented by this labyrinth is the life of worldly pleasure of the "lust of the eyes" - "which hath in it so many sundry delights" (68) but also entails the vexing futility of the briar and the foreboding of eternal darkness when the journeyers see themselves "subject to such miserable and inevitable necessity" (69). It seems as if there are no petitions here, that no-one can escape the inevitability of time and death. "And then CLogistica] smiling said: over the devouring throat of this Centre, there sits a severe judge, balancing every one’s actions, and helping whom he would help. And because it would be too tedious to tell thee all, let this much heretofore suffice" (70) . This enigmatic declaration by Logistica is something of a denouement after the pages of description of the 203 labyrinth and is less than enlightening. One can only presume that the creed of salvation is assumed and Colonna felt no need to explain it. However this does not altogether concord with the atmosphere of mystery conjured by words such as "mystical", "marvellous" and "secret", with which Colonna describes the labyrinth. We must be content to unravel the metaphor and like Poliphilo be not content: only to behold, but also to understand by CLogistica/Reason3 the secrecy of these things, which he could not go to know, wherein CLogistica/Reason3 has satisfied him (71). Poliphilo has been saved not only by his own reason which has accompanied him on his initial journey and by Logistica, or celestial reason, who has revealed the mystery, but also by the architect who constructed this garden. As Poliphilo’s journey continues he learns to exercise his facility for reason as order and harmony are displayed before him in the works of the architect. The architect in Colonna’s view represents the principle of order. He is analogous to the musician who strives to elaborate simple themes, but retains their essential order and harmony. This analogy can be exploited in two ways. First, it may be considered to be representative of the mandate given to man by God after creation. 204 Thus, The "artist", writers such as Augustine, Anselm, Hugh and Bonaventure so often insist in their discussions of the creative process, is structurer. He is also an imitator of the idea held firm and well shaped in his mind. Though he may work with mutable images, the one idea remains true and discernable through the numbers of his varied structures (72). Secondly, it is also representative of the archetypal power which orders the universe, namely, God. We must remember that Poliphilo was equally awestruck by the architecture surrounding him as he was by the music of the spheres. The devotional aspect of Colonna’s analogy can be seen in his summation of the poarch and the act of design which it symbolises: ... that clear and perfect light, which sweetly and with our unconstrained wills draws our dim sighted eyes to contemplate and behold the same. For none (unless it be he who of set purpose refuses to behold it) but his eyes would dazzel with continued desire to see it (73) . Poliphilo through the divine visions he had seen, has become imbued with the light of reason. He has solved the mystery of the labyrinth and is therefore a hero. Perhaps Colonna baulked at proclaiming Poliphilo a god, yet Poliphilo shares in Christ’s godhead, as a symbol of salvation, through his association with Theseus: Our blessed Saviour is the true Theseus who was persecuted in his infancy, and in his life time overcame many Monsters, but far more in 205 his death; he went down to hell and from thence delivered mankind, which had been there detained in everlasting chains of darkness, if he had not ascended, who by his own, and not by any other power, delivered man from endless captivity (74). But there is an added dimension to Poliphilo’s heroism which is alien to Theseus. Poliphilo is first and foremost the champion of knowledge and understanding. He may not be able to "deliver man from endless captivity" but he demonstrates how man can mitigate the sentence by the exercise of reason and free will, by altering the world we live in to mirror the magnificent order our minds reveal to us. 206 VI. CONCLUSION The Cretan Cycle It is clear that the Cretan cycle provided more than just the cast of characters, or the script, or that most fascinating setting, but remained dra.ma.tlc and I have treated it as such. It illustrates the classical concepts of heroism and tragedy but it is also embedded in the social, political and religious structures of the Athenian state. The characters of the Cretan cycle embody all the virtues and vices of humanity: heroism, wit and love, greed, violence and lust. The hero is the servant of the state who will further its ambitions by conquest and alliance. In return the state elevates the hero by recognising his singular acts which come to represent the community. The further the elevation reaches towaards apotheosis - the more state policy becomes state religion. Theseus never achieves the godhead of Herakles but he must be considered aa type of god - the best product of his society. Likewise, the Minotaur is the product of the worst excesses of the same society, and likewise, never achieves pure evil, always retaining a trace of pity for his condition. The Minotaur must be regarded among those who have been misguided and wander in a house of perplexity and misrule. 207 The real importance of the Cretan cycle lies in the provision of a surprisingly rich lode of images which could be wrought into a definitive expression of the derangement of humanity in an increasingly complex world. Theseus’ role was expanded to be the guide of souls through a cosmos which like the labyrinth was a complex work of art which was impossible for an ordinary man to understand. And while Theseus emerges as the central figure in this story, much significance is also placed on Ariadne and the Minotaur both of whom also assume cosmic roles in the drama of life and death. The labyrinth of the Cretan cycle serves as both the inspiration and the symbol of the clue, the right track, the short cut which would reveal meaning and order in seeming chaos. However, even given the undeniable power of the Cretan cycle, the longevity and range of labyrinth symbolism is due largely to the imagination of the labyrinth of Virgil in the Aeneid. The scope of labyrinth symbolism in the Aeneid is so vast that it not only assumes all important aspects of the labyrinth of the Cretan cycle but expands the idea of the labyrinth as the image of the world. The labyrinth of the Aeneid is comprehensive, but elusive. Virgil chose certain characteristic aspects of the 208 labyrinth, for example, inextric&blis error, and presents it to us in several contexts, in each a fresh analogy and each supporting, amplifying and even quoting one another. Among the most enduring of Virgil’s labyrinthine analogies are the labyrinth as the Underworld, and more sp ecifically Tartarus or Hell, and the labyrinth as the wilderness or wild wood. These analogies gave rise to metaphors whose influence is undiminished today, and can be clearly seen as the most powerful metaphors of the labyrinth in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Virgil and the Vision of Hell: Virgil’s vision of Hell was particularly important for the development and acceptance of a Christian concept of the labyrinth. Virgil prepares us for his vision of hell in the description of the sacking of Troy in Book II. He weds this image of fire and destruction, and Aeneas’ search for his wife to Aeneas’ journey to the Underworld and the description of Tartarus, the home of the damned. The importance of Aeneas’ journey to the Underworld is that he is not compelled to dwell in Tartarus but can journey on to the Elysian fields and eventually return to the world above bearing the valuable advice of his father Anchises. Aeneas was enabled to make this journey because of the divine 209 guidance firstly of Venus, his mother, and then of the human Sybil. This thread of guidance dominates Virgil’s conception of the labyrinth. The pattern which Virgil established is clear and can be seen to be a correspondent with the Christian pattern of salvation and was interpreted as such. The excellence of Virgil’s grammar ensured that Virgil’s epic metaphors also enjoyed a wide audience. And although Gregory of Nanzianzus may have depended chiefly on a Greek Sophistic model, the Virgilian vision of community symbolised bythe Troiae Iusus, may be glimpsed in Gregory’s vision of the choral dance. Of course, the most important Christian interpretation of Virgil’s metaphors was to emerge in Dante’s Commedia.. Dante’s conscious reworking of Virgilian metaphors in the strictly Christian contexts of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven have become paradigmatic Medieval images whose resources are still being mined to the present day. It is also in the Commedia. that we find the clearest image of the unicursal labyrinth - there is but oneroad to God which dominated the graphic representation of the labyrinth throughout the Middle Ages. The choice of paths is replaced by the "right road". It is merely a change of emphasis but one which was the essential aspect of the Christian interpretation and depiction of the labyrinth. 210 Dante’s frequent political asides and other allusions to the Florentine society from which he was exiled serve to remind us that Virgil’s epic and the Cretan cycle had groundings in social and political reality. This message was not lost in Christian interpretations of the labyrinth, as the labyrinth came to symbolise the temporal world of temptation and sin, and the task of man was to transcend the mundane by following the thread of the Scripture and the example of the new Theseus- Christ. However, for all the authority and influence of the Christian world view, dominated by the doctrine of salvation, the Renaissance brought new pressures to bear on the Christian church and the labyrinth was reformed along with the dogma. Virgil and the Wilderness: The image of the labyrinth which was to dominate the Renaissance and symbolise the secular search for order and meaning, was the wild wood. The first labyrinthine analogy which Virgil introduces in the Aeneid is the "boundless forest". Aeneas wanders lost in this forest until granted clear sight by Venus his mother. Virgil repeats this scenario in the crucial Book VI of the Aeneid as Aeneas must search another 21 1 forest for the Golden Bough uhich uill be his passport to Elysium. Virgil compares these journeys of Aeneas with the ill-fated sortie of Nisus and Euryalus in a forest which is full of brambles and the lair of beasts. These metaphors figure in the literary pedigree of many writers through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and into the Modern day. It is the dark wood in Dante chose to begin his pilgrimage. And the wild wood is one of the special loci occultns of the chivalric romance. It is a place of enchantment, separate from the work-a-day world. Aron Gurevich has pointed out how importantly the forest figured in the life of Medieval man - the forest: was attractive because of its resources, such as fuel, game, and fruits, and terrifying be cause of the dangers hidden in it - wild animals, robbers and other miscreants, ghostly beings and werewolves, with which human fantasy liked to populate the mysterious world surrounding the settlement (1). As the cities grew and the forests dwindled man came to a new appreciation of nature, and where the sylvan glade was inaccessible he sought to recreate its atmosphere in the artifice of his garden. The Hypner otoma.c h i a Poltphili is representative of this movement. Colonna employs all the Virgilian forest metaphors in both their original, and in their Dantian forms and it was the imagery of the Hypner otQma.ch i a which was actually 212 recreated in gardens, and so the wilderness labyrinth entered into the vocabulary of landscape design. It is instructive to compare two later Renaissance versions of the wilderness labyrinth - Shakespeare’s and Bacon’s. David Ormerod has examined Shakespeare’s use of labyrinth imagery in A Midsummer's Right's Dream (2) and in emblems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has related these to earlier interpretations of the Cretan cycle, but does not give due acknowledgment to the tradition of wilderness imagery engendered by Virgil’s original metaphors. However, he does acknowledge the obvious connection between maze dancing, the Troiae Iusus and the English practice of naming the turf mazes after Troy (3). These images represent the romantic legacy of labyrinthine interpretation which has helped to obscure the important role the maze of the image of the labyrinth has played in the development of Western thought. Francis Bacon, too, can trace a Virgilian pedigree in many of his ideas and Pauolo Rossi speaks of an "uninterrupted stream" of Medieval allegory - six editions of Servius* Commentary on Virgil between 1470 and 1475 (4). But more importantly, given Bacon’s influential position in the development of modern scientific thought, Rossi identified and characterised Bacon’s conception of science in unequivocally 2 13 labyrinthine terms: Bacon’s doctrine of scientific knowledge is entirely conditioned by his conception of the universe as a labyrinth and forest filled with "so many ambiguities of way", "deceitful re semblances of objects and signs", "natures irregular in their lines and so knotted and entangled" (5). The attitude that man can find a way out of this labyrinth - and that the way lay within his power and did not necessarily depend solely on divine guidance are ideas which can be found in Colonna and other garden architects. The garden - the actual transformation of nature - is one of the most fertile products of the human imagination and has represented man’s relationship with Nature throughout the ages. In Bacon’s hands Colonna’s fanciful garden images help found a powerful new "theology": Human understanding can never penetrate the mysteries of God and the final laws of nature: these are matters for revelation and faith. On the other hand, man is gifted with the power to perceive the workings of nature and thus to dominate it. This is the way of salvation, of redemption from original sin (6). This can also be seen to be the fulfilment of the Chartrian program of natural philosophy - but it has a new image. 214 NOTES I. THE LABYRINTH IN ANCIENT GREECE 1. Langer, S.K., Philosophy in a New Key- A Study in the symbolism of reason, rite and art, Mentor, New York, 1951, p.1. 2. From Usener,H. , Gotternamen. Versuch einer Lehre von der religiosen Begriffsbildung (Bonn, 1896) in Cassirer, E. , Language and myth, (trans.) Langer, S.K., Dover, New York, 1953, pp. 15-16. 3. Cassirer, E., 1953, op. cit., p.21. 4. Levy-Bruhl, L., The Philosophy of Auguste Corate, Augustus M. Kelly, Clifton, 1973, p.37. 5. Ibid., pp.41-42. 6. Ibid., p. 42 7. Langer, S.K., 1951, op. cit., p.156 8. Ibid., p.157. 9. Cassirer, E., 1953, op. clt., p.19. 10. Kirk, G.S., The Nature of Greek Myths , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974, p.155. 11. Ibid., p.155. 12. See below, p.91. 13. Somerset, F.R.,(4th Baron Raglan) The Nero: A study in tradition, myth and drama, Watts, London, 1949. 14. Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History (12 vols.), (trans.) Oldfather, C.H., Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1961, IV, 59. Hereafter cited as: Diodorus, Book, Chapter. 15. Vatican Mythographer, 1, 47 in Cook, A.B., Zeus * A study in ancient religion, Cambridge University Press, 1914, Vol.1, p.467. 16. Kerenyi, C., The Heroes of the Greeks, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978. 215 17. Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives (11 vols.), (trans.) Perrin, B., Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1959, Vol.l, Theseus, XV, 1. Hereafter cited as: Plutarch, Theseus. Chapter, Paragraph. Appolodorus, The Library Vol.l (trans.) Frazer, J.G., Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, 1961, Epitome. I. 7. Hereafter cited as: Appolodorus, Book, Chapter, Paragraph. 18. Kirk, G.S., 1974, op. c i t., p. 153 19. See note 8, above. 20. Plutarch, Theseus. XV, 1. 21. Kerenyi, c., 1974, op. c it., p.222. 22. Cook, A.B., 1914, op. c it . , Vol.II, 23. Aristotle, Meteorlogica in, Cook, A.B., 1914, op.cit., Vol.II, p.43. 24. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, (trans. and notes) Stahl, W., Columbia University Press, New York, 1957 1, 12, 1-3. 25. See below p.49 ff. 26. Plato, Phaedrus, (trans.) Fowler, H.N., Leob Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, 1917, 265-B. 27. See Diodorus, IV, 77. 28. Diodorus, IV, 77. 29. Plutarch, Theseus, XV, 2. 30. The "realism" of Diodorus’ description has been the basis for popular depictions of the Minotaur in which the metaphor is completely buried under an excessively realistic cow costume. "He was shaped like a man, but an incredibly huge and brutally muscular man covered with short, dense brown fur. He had a man’s face, but a squashed beastialized one, with poisonous red eyes, great buck teeth, and leathery lips. Sprouting out of his head were two long, polished horns. His feet were hooves, razor-sharp." Evslin, B., GodSj Demigods and Demons•' An encyclopedia of Greek mythology, Scholastic Book Services, Sydney, 1975, p.141. 31. Philochorus was an Athenian historian who flourished in the reign of Ptolemy Philopater, about two hundred years B.C. He wrote many valuable pieces of which nothing remains except some fragments preserved by other writers. 216 Langhorne, J. and Langhorne, W. teds.], Plutarch's Lives, Vol.l, London, 1803, p.56. 32. Plutarch, Theseus, XVI, 1-3. 33. Cook, A.B., 1914, op. cit., Vol.l, p.522. 34. Ibid., p.522. 35. Ibid., p.468. See also Figure 36. Appolodorus, Library, III, 1,4. 37. Talos was ’a living statue cast in bronze ... an indesctructib1e sentry for the island of Crete ... . Whenver a ship approached he would hurl huge boulders at it, driving it off’, Evslin, B., 1975, op. cit., p.2 14. 38. Cook, A.B., 1914, op. cit., Vol.l, p.435. 39. See below p.55. 40. Appolodorus, Library, III, 1,2. 41. Ovid, The Heroides of Ovid V, VII, X, XII, (ed.) Kennedy, E.C., Macmillan, London, 1948, X, 99-118. Glossing the verse: "Would that you had never come to Crete and that I had not helped you to stay the Minotaur - though he could never have pierced your hard heart. I have been betrayed by sleep, by the winds and by your broken word." 42. Appolodorus, Epitome, 1, 9-11. 43. Hesoid, Theogony, 947-49 "And golden Dionysus took to wife," in Hesoid■ Theogony, Vorks and Days "The fair haired Ariadne, Minos’ child", Theognis■* Elergus (trans.) Wender, D. , "The son of Kronos saved her from death and age." Penguin, Harmondsworth , 1976. 44. Kerenyi, C., 1974, op,. cit., p.230 • 45. Homer, Iliad (tran s. ) Murray, A.T. , Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, 1931-39, XVII, 590-595. CD Kerenyi, C., Dionysos: Archetypal image of indestructible life, Bollingen Series LXV, Princeton University Press, 1976, p.103 and p.109. 217 47. Ibid., pp. 106- 107. 48. Plutarch, Theseus, XXI. 49. Kerenyi, C., 1976, op. cit., p.105. 50. Ibid., p.102 51. Ibid., p.124. 52. Ibid., p.105. 53. Appolodorus, Epitome, 1, 8-9. 54. Plutarch, Theseus, XIX. 55. Kerenyi, C., 1978, op. cit., p.231. 56. Diodorus, IV, 61. and "Ariadne’s crown translated to the stars to run its course with Helios." Nomos, Dionysiaca, (trans.) Rouse, W.H.D., Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1962 57. Diodorus, I, 61. 58. Strabon, Geography, (trans.) Jones, H.L., Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1959, XVIII, 17, 1, 37. 59. Pliny, Na.tura.1 History ( 10 Vols. ), (trans. ) Eicholz, D.E., Leob Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1938-63, 10, XXXV I-XXXV I I I . 60. Deedes, C.N., ’The Labyrinth’, in, The Labyrinth: further studies in the relation between myth and ritua.1 in the ancient world, (ed. ) , Hooke, S.H., Society for promoting Christian knowledge, London, 1935, p.4. 61. Ibid., p. 7. 62. Kerenyi, C., 1978, op,. cit., p . 90 . 63. Ibid., p. 97. CD Ibid., p. 96 65. Cook, A.B., 1914, op. cit., V o 1 . 1 , 66. Ibid., p.490. 2 18 67. Ibid., p.491. Cook takes the depiction of locks of hair seemingly protruding from behind a bull mask in figure 2 as evidence of this masquerade. 68. Frazer, J.G., The Golden Bough-' Astudy in magic and religion Third edition, Macmillan, London, 1912-1915. 69. Kerenyi, C., 1978, op. cit., p.93. 70. Plutarch, Theseus, XVI, 1. 71. Kerenyi, C., 1978, op. cit., p.94. 72. Graves, R. , The White Goddess- A historical grammar of poetic myth, Faber and Faber, London, 1948, p.103. 73. Kerenyi, C., 1978, op . cit., p . 9 1. 74. Ibid., p.95. 75. " ’Mystery’ comes from a word which means "shut", in the ancient sense it means a series of rites belonging to a secret and esotheric religion closed to all but initiates." Knight, W.F.J., "Cumean Gates" in Virgil Epic and Anthropology, (ed.) Christie, J., Allen and Unwin, London, 1967. 76. Plato, "Phaedo", in, The Last Days of Socrates (trans.) Tredennick, H., Penguin, Harmondsuorth, 1975. 77. A complicated cave system at Gortyna was also identified as a labyrinth. There is a close connection between Gortyna and Knossos as both were sites of bull worship - the bull and Pasiphae, at Knossos, and, the bull and Europa, at Gortyna - and regenerative goddesses. See also, below, p.78 f. for another possible connection between Gortyna and Cumea. 78. Kerenyi, C., 1978, op. cit., pp. 117-118. 79. Graves, R. , 1948, op. cit., pp.99-103. 80. Ibid., p.37 1. 81. Ibid., p.111. 82. Diodorus, V, 77. 219 CO CO Diodorus, IV, 77. 00 Kerenyi, C., 1978, op. cit., p.99. 85. Ib id . , p. 00 CD Langer, S.K., 1951, op. cit., p.173. CO Campbell, J., The Hero with a Thousand Sphere, London, 1973, p.27. CO CO Ibid., p.26. 220 II. THE LABYRINTH IN VIRGIL’S AENEID 1. Campbell, J.,1973, op.ctt.,p.32. see also the discussion of Silvestris’ commentary on the Aeneid which only treats the first sixbooks, and principally the sixth whose commentary is longer than the other five put together, pp. 122 ff. 2. Hornsby, R.A., Patterns of Action in the Aeneid•• An Interpretation of Virgil’s Epic Similes, University of Iowa Press, Iowa, 1970, p.53. 3. See p.70 for a further discussion of "woods" in the Aeneid. 4. 11:288-297. 5. ’CServiusD gives the reason why the return of spirits is not easy since everythingis polluted and stained: for by the woods he means dens of darkness in which rage and lust hold sway.’ Putnam, M.C.J., The Poetry of the Aeneid, Haarvard University Press, New York, 1966, pp58-59. The description of the woods as the lair of beasts corresponds with descriptions of the labyrinth and the character of the Minotaur. 6. Highbarger, E.L., The Gates of Dreams, Johns Hopkins Press, Ba11imore, 1940, p.77. 7. Pliny, Natural History, XXXVI, 13, 84-94, op.cit. and Diodorus,I,61. 8. "... the great number of rooms, the large amount of space given up to gardens ihorti), colonnades, and other elements of comfort. Such a house, often occupying an entire block, must have given the impression of a maze to one who was used to simple living." Highbarger, E.L.,1940 op.cit, p.104. 9. Feder, L.Ced.] 1980, Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Literature, Harper, New York, p. 17. 10. Putnam, M.C.J.,1966 op.cit., p.59. 22 1 11. See above p.7. The allusion to animal lairs also suggests the primal nature of the beast who dwells within the forest. For example,when Virgil compares Nisus to a lion (IX:340-343) he "indicates how the hunger for fame and glory reduces its victim to the level of an animal- unthinking and unreasoning ... . " Hornsby, R.A., 1970 op.c/t.,p.66. This is coincidental with several versions of the Cretan legend when Tauras/Asterion is portrayed as the champion of the labyrinth whom Theseus must overcome. 12. Putnam, M.C.J., op.cft.,pp.54-59. 13. For further discussion see Wagener, A.P.,1912 Popuiar Assoc i s,t i ons of Right and Left in Roman Literature, Baltimore. 14. Campbell, J., 1968, The Masks of the Gods IV• Creative Mythologyj Viking Press, New York, p.307. 15. See Knight, W.F.J., 1967, op.cit, p.272. 16. Crutwell, R.W., Virgil’s Mind at Vork * An Analysis of the Symbolism of the Aeneid, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1946, pp.92-93. Crutwell also catalogues the classical references of the performance of the Troiae Lusus. Ludicum Troiae, the "Sport of Troy" (Tacitus, Annales,XI,xi) was an alternative name for that Troiae Lusus the "Game of Troy" (Suetonius, Claudius, xxi), whose performance was Troiam Ludere, "Sports" or "mockeries" (Lucretius, II, 47), applied to Roman cavalry manoeuvres as contrasted with actual warfare, is used by Lucretius (11:41,324) in connection with those belli simulacra cientes whose Virgilian echoes are the phrases pugnaeyue ctent simulacra and ludo ... belli simulacra ciebat (V, 585 and 674) applied to lulus* Sicilian performance of sportive cavalry manoeuvres in the Troiae Lusus. p.87. 17. Ibid., p.86. 18. Compare (IX:337) impastus ceu plena leo per ovtlia turbans - an unfed lion rioting through full sheepfolds; and (IX:792-793) ceu saevum turba leonem cum tel is premit infens is - as when a crowd with levelled spears beset a savage lion. The use of the lion and tiger as a vehicle for a simile calls to mind Nisus who was similarly compared, and, in the light of what happened to that youth, the simile implies that a like fate ultimately awaits Turnus. Hornsby, R.A.,1970 op. cit., p.69. 222 19. Ibid., p.53. 20. Ibid., p.53. 21. Crutwe11,R.W., 1946 op.cit., p.93. 22. Knight,W.F.J.,1967 op.cit., p.202. 23. Ibid. p.204. 24. Ibid., p.216. see also Knight,W.F.J., "Myth and Legend at Troy", Folk-Lore, KIVI, 1935, pp.103-106, for a discussion of the labyrinthine explanation of the Trojan Horse. 25. Crutue11,R.W.,1946 op.cit., p.83. V:584-585 - advers i spatiis, alterutsque orbibus orbus/ imped iunt, pugnaeque cient simulacra, subarm i. - Next they enter on other inarches and other counter marches in opposing groups, interweaving circle with alternate circle, and making an armed mimicry of battle. VI11:447-449 - ingentem clipeum informant, num omnia contra/ tela Latinomm septenosque orbibus orbus imped iunt. - A giant shield they shape, to confront above all the weapons of the Latins, and weld it sevenfold, circle on circle. 26. Ibid., pp.88-89. 27. Whitman,C.H., Homer and the Homeric Tradition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1958, p.206. 28. Chapman’s Homer-’ the Illiad, the Odyssey and the lesser Homerica Ced., introduction, notes, comments and glossary] Nicoll, A.,1967, Princeton University Press, Princeton. 29. Redfield, D., 1975, Nature and Culture in the Illiad, University of Chicago Press, p. 187. 30. Crutwe11,R.W.,1946 op.cit., p.83. 31. Hornsby, R.A., 1970,op.cit.,p.54. 32. See the discussion of diedella above p.59 f. 33. See, Somerset, F.R., (Lord Rag 1 an), 1949, op.cit. 34. Kirk, G.S.,1974 op.cit., p.52. 223 35* Knight, W.F.J.,1967, op.ctt. 36. Ibid., p.216. 37. Highbarger,E.L., 1940, op.cit., pp.80-81. 38. Ibid., note 61, p.45. 39. PLutarch, Theseus, XXI. 40. Ibid. 41. Highbarger , E. L. , 1940, op.cit., p.110. The four classes of evil: "the common diseases and sorrowful afflictions of suffering men both physical and mental, second, the passions that take possession of men in time of war, external and internal, and work their destruction; the misleading, false and deceitful dreams which may come to one and which are sent by infernal messengers; the sinister opposing forces of life that only great heroes can overcome". 42. See above: p.65. 43. Plato, Pha.edo, 108-A in The Last Days of Socrates, (trans.) Frederick,H., Harmondsworth, 1975, Penguin,108-A 44. See above, pp.70-71. 45. Plato, Republic, (trans.) Cornford,F. M. , 1966, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1966, (X:613-614). 46. Hesiod, Poems a.nd fragments, (trans. ) Mair,A.W., 1908, Oxford University Press, Oxford pp.286-292. 47. B1aik1ock,E.H., 196 1, The Hero of the Aeneid, University of Auckland Bulletin no.59, Classics series no.3, pp.18-19. 48. Comparetti,D., Virgil in the Middle Ages, (trans.) Benecke,E.F.H., 1966 (2nd.ed. of 1908), Allen and Unwin, London p.105. 49. Blaiklock,E.M., 196 1, op.cit. p.20. 224 III. THE LABYRINTH IN THE CHRISTIAN WORLD 1. Frazer,J.G., 1912-15, op.cit., XXXVI, (Oriental Religions of the West). 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Comparett i , D. , 1966, op.cit.,p.93. 5. Mayer,W., *Ein labyrinth mit versen’ , Sitzungsber ichte der konigltche bayerische Aka.da.mie der Vissenschaften, Munich, 1882, ii, pp.267-300. 6. Miller,J., Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1986, p.344 7. Hardie,P.R., Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1986, pp.352-353 8. Santarchang1i,P., Le Livre des Labyrinths: histoire d’un mythe et d’un symbole, Gallimard, Paris, 1974, p.285 9. Miller,J., 1986, op.cit., p.369 10. Comito,T., The Idea of the Garden in the Renaissance, The Harvester Press, Hassocks, 1979, p.27 11. The French term for such a puzzle is jeu des lettres, literally, game of letters which seems to be understood in much the same sense as ’Troy-game’ rather than the English sense of a ’play on words’ or pun. 12. Ashe,G., The Ancient Wisdom, Sphere, London, 1979, p.27ff. 13. Gurevich,A.J., Categories of Medieval Culture (trans.) Campbe11,G.L., Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1985, p.289 14. Comito,T., 1979, op.cit., p.31 15. The cardinal condition for intergration into medieval society was the act whereby an individual was received into the Christian fellowship. 225 Exceptional sacramental significance was given to the act of baptism, and a soul which had not participated in the mystery could not enter heaven, even if it was the soul of an innocent infant.*, Gurevich,A.J., 1985, op.cit., p.299 16. Ibid., p.288 17. Hardie,P.R., 1986, op.cit., p.352. 18. Hiller,J., 1986, op.cit., p.374 19. "As graduates of the school of theology founded by Origen at Caesarea in Palestine after his exile from Egypt, the Cappadcian Fathers were well versed in the Christian Platonism of the Alexandrine school and consequently were more sympathetic to Origenist cosmology than the majority of their Orthodox contemporaries." Ibid, p.367 20. Ibid., pp.344-345 21. "... a derogatory term the Cappadocian Fathers employed to denote the intricate arguments and truth-bending rhetorical devices of their teachers, the Sophists, and their intellectual adversaries, the Arians and Neop1atonists. The term was drawn from the theater, where it signified the contorted postures and sinuous writings of dancers and also the twists and turns of complicated melodies accompanying displays of "orchesis" " (p.346). Hiller goes on to describe the principal use of the term "lugismos" to Aristophanes where it is used to describe the twists and turns of sophistic speech in The Frogs, the characteristic twisting and bending of the dancer’s torso in the Dionysian dance, in The Va.sps. Nazianzen appears to have transferred these meanings to the term ’lugisma’. As a musical term ’lugisma’ suggested to him the soft, sinuous and fatal melodies of the Sirens. Ibid., p.549, note 3. 22. Ibid., pp.350-351 23. See above p.49 ff. 24. Hiller,J., 1986, op.cit., P.352. 25. Victorinus is said to have ascribed the invention of the strope-antistrope-epode structure of Greek choral poetry to Theseus in imitation of the path 226 of the labyrinth. Ibid., p.550, note 6. 26. Ibid., p.354. 27. Ibid., p.389. 28. An extant Orthodox labyrinth can be found on a relief panel from a Georgian Orthodox church (c.827) at Opiza (Figure 17). Here the labyrinth is replaced by an open spiral. Mepirashivi1i,R. and Tsintsadze, V. , The Arts of Ancient Georgia., Thames and Hudson, London, 1979, p.244 29. Hiller, J., 1986, p.cit., p.361 30. Gurevich, A. J. , 1985, op.cit., p.58 31. Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of St. Augustine, (trans.) Sheed,F.J., Sheed & Ward, London, 1945, (Book 13, IX). 32. Psalm 76.2 identifies Salem as God’s abode on earth. 33. Augustine, Confessions (7:XVII). 34. Ibid. (7:XVII). 35. The difference which I am implying between analogy and allegory is of function against description. By analogy I mean a "system or process designed to reproduce in some new medium the structure or web of relationships in an original! (Shib1es,W.A., An Analysis of Metaphor in the Light of V.M.Urban's Theories, Monton, The Hague, 1972, p.156). While allegory is the "describing of one thing under the guise of another", (Oxford English Dictionary). Allegories are sometimes used to describe analogical relationships. 36. All Biblical quotations from Jerusalem Bible, Standard Edition, 1966, unless stated otherwise. 37. Glover,T.R.,L tfe and Letters in the Fourth Century, Cambridge University Press, 1901, p.209. 38. "The kernal of Plato’s ethics is the doctrine that man’s reason is divine and that his business is to become like the divine by reproducing in his own nature the beauty and harmony revealed in the cosmos, which is itself a god, a living creature 227 with soul in body and reason in soul ... ." Cornford,F.M., Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1911, p.34. 39. Augustine, Confessions, (7:XX). 40. This description is very similar to the Johanine vision in Revel ation, 4. The trapdoor into heaven idea is clearly illustrated in many representations of this passage in Medieval art. 41. "The universe is an organised totality, and the principle of this organisation, no less than the terms of the organised whole, is such that mind, even when conversing with itself alone (and being in this way dialectical), exhibits the structure of reality. The reality itself is dialectical, or, to use a less committed word, dialogical. As parts are related to each other precisely in the same way in which single steps of a dialogue are. For further discussion see Malan,P., From Platonism to Neo-Pl aton ism, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1960. 42. Gurevich,A.J., 1985, op.ctt., p.294. 43. Ladner,G.B., "Homo Victor: Medieval Ideas on Alienation and Order," Speculum, XLII, April 1967, p.239. 44. K1ibansky,R., The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages, The Warburg Institute, London, 1939, p.29. 45. Wetherbee,W., The Cosmography of Bernard Silvestris, Columbia University Press, New York, 1973, p.13. 46. Dronke,P., "New Approaches to the School of Chartres", Anurios de Estudios Medieval is, Vol.6, 1969, p.136. 47. Fulgentius, "The Exposition of the Content of Virgil according to Moral philosophy", (trans. and intro.), Whitebread,G.L. in Fulgentius the Mythographer, Ohio State University Press, 1971,p. 121 and note 5,p.l45. 48. "As the Timaeus, even in its fragmented medieval form, illustrates in fascinating detail, man’s physical constitution corresponds to that of the universe: he is composed of the same elements and 228 subject to the same physical laws. The human soul differs from the anima mundi only in its liability to confusion by the fallible senses." Wetherbee,W., Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The literary influence of the School of Chartres, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1972. 49. Ibid., p. 17 50. Ladner,G.B., "Medieval and modern understanding of symbolism: a comparison", in Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages■ Selected Studies in History and Art, Edizione de storia e Letteratura, Rome,1983,pp.242-243. On the role of the seven liberal arts in sacred rhetoric: "They are [the souls’] solace, imprisoned by the flesh and its passions, and they are empowered to set [the soul] on the path which leads to her true home; for they teach her to participate in the harmony, to gauge the proportions and dimensions of her cosmic environment, and to intuit its archetypal pattern, and in the process enable [the soul] to realise her intrinsic dignity and its divine origin." Wetherbee,W., 1972, op.cit., pp.21-22. 51. For a discussion of these terms see Dronke,P., Fabula- Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism, E.J.Brill, Leiden, 1974, pp.4-5. Dronke also discusses the possible "natural occurence" of integumentum and involucrum by pointing to what was thought of the structure of the world. 52. Ibid. p. 19, Dronke is paraphrasing and quoting William of Conches (c. 1080-1 154 ) , a prominent Chartrian. The use of the term alien would seem to be more than coincidental. 53. Macrobius in Wetherbee,W., 1973, op.cit., p.14. 54. William of Conches in Dronke,P., 1974, op.cit., p. 30. 55. Gurevich,A.J., 1985, op.cit., p.291-292. 56. Wetherbee,W., 1972, op.cit., p.54. 57. See above p.3f. 229 58. Lethaby is mistaken that the Pagan origins of the labyrinth relegated it to the non-sacred end of the church. Chartres shows a placement within the mundus but with thoughtful consideration and orientation toward the sanctuary. Letherby,W.R.,Arch itecture, Mysticism and Myth (1891), The Architectural Press, London, 1974, p.162. 59. James,J., "The mystery ofthe great labyrinth Chartres cathedral", Studies in Comparative Religion, 2, 1977. 60. The Chartres labyrinth is absolutely the same design as one on the door jamb at Lucca, with this difference that the former, thirty feet across, is ornamented at the centre, and the latter is but a scratched line. This one in turn is exactly like that on the Hereford Hap of the World, and that one also in the sketch book of Viliars de Honecourt, with the only exception that the last is reversed. These four, then, severally in Italy, France and England, are absolutely related - in form and proportion, number of walls and planning of their revolutions, they are transcripts of one another or a common original. Lethaby,N.R., 1974, op.cit., p.152-153. This design also appears in a Visigothic manuscript of the etymologies of Isidore of Seville of the eleventh century. Bord,J., op.c i t. , p. 85. 61. Simson, 0. The Gothic Cathedral • The Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1956, p. 160. 62. The tunic or shirt that the Virgin Mary was said to be wearing at the birth of Christ. Ibid. p.160. 63. William of Conches a student of Bernard of Chartres in Wetherbee,W., 1972, op.cit., p.31. 64. See above, p.119. 65. 0 * Donne 11,J.R., "The sources and meaning of Bernard Silvester’s Commentary on the Aeneid," Medieval Studies, 24,1962, p.237. 66. Ladner,G.B. 1983, op.citp.251. This compression and synthesis of mythology with biblical history can be seen in Medieval histories such as Mathew of Westminster’s, The Flowers of History: especially 230 such as reiate to the affairs of Britain from the beginning of the world to the year 1307, where no distinction is made between biblical history and Greek mythology, for example, Joshua is said to be a contemporary of Bacchus. 67. Ibid., p.241. 68. Ibid., p.242. 69. Ibid., p.242. 70. Silvestris, Bernardus, Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil’s Aenetd, (trans.) Schreiber , E. G . & Haresca,T.E., University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1979, p.66. 71. Ibid., p. 32. 72. Ibid., pp.32-33. 73. "The notion ... that self-knowledge depends on knowledge of the universe is inseparable from the conviction that a man may in fact determine the course of his own life by exploiting the knowledge implanted in the stars, and learning what to do and what to avoid." Wetherbee,W., 1973,op.cit., p.9. Silvestris, 1979, op.cit., p.35 and 0’Donne 11,J.R., 1962, op.cit., p.245. 74. 0’Donne 11,J.R. , op.cit., p.244. 75. Silvestris, 1979, op.cit., p.114, note 18. 76. Ibid., p.39. 77. Dronke,P. , 1974, op.cit. p.2021. 78. Silvestris, 1979, op.cit., p. 79. See above p.119 f. 80. "Theseus and Perithous [Perithous is called the god of cicumlocution, for peri is circum, "round about", and theos is deus, "god"3 descend to the underworld to carry off Proserpina. When merchants learn the course of the sun and moon and the natures of the stars, they love to philosophise about mundane matters, but their "wisdom" drives out true wisdom. Indeed their garrulity greatly defeats true eloquence." Ibid. p.84. 231 81. Ibid., p. 56. 82. Ibid., p.40. 83. See above, p.78. 84. Eclogues 6:58. 85. Fulgentius, 1971, op.clt., p.148, see also note 2 for further discussion of this idea, and: "For over and above that lust of the flesh which lies in the delight of all our senses and pleasures ... there can also be in the mind itself, through those same bodily senses, a certain vain desire and curiosity, not of taking delights in the body, but of making experiments with the body’s aid, and cloaked under the name of learning and knowledge" Confessions, 10:XXV. 86. Silvestris, op.cit., p.83. 87. Augustine, Confessions, op.cit., 7:XIX. 88. Wetherbee,W. 1972, op.cit., p.208. 89. James,J., 1977,op.cit., p.104. 90. Ibid., p.104. For the complete interpretationa1 scheme see pp. 106-107. 91. The labyrinth has 31 curved tracks and 4 straight ones, and 35 spells the initials "BMV" which stands for "Blessed Virgin Mary", in Latin of course. Ibid., p.109. 92. "The same all-embracing tendencies [of compre hension] are present in the structure of the cathedral, which is designed to be a complete and perfect model, a palpable and visible embodiment of the divinely ordered cosmos." Gurevich,A.J., 1985, op.cit. , p.289. 93. James,J., 1977, op.cit., pp.104-110. 94. Critch1ow,K., Carroll,J. and Lee,L.V., "Chartres maze: a model of the universe and journey of the soul", Research into Lost Knowledge Orga.nisa.tion Trust Occasional Paper, 1, Cambridge, 1975. 95. James,J., 1977, op.cit., p.108. 96. Critchlow,K. et al . , 1975, op.cit., p.20. 232 97. James,J., 1977, op.cit., p.109. 98. Free1 and,G.A., "Unravelling the Labyrinth?" Parer^on, 30, 1981, p. 16. 99. Ibid, p.16. 100. Schnapper,E., The Inward Odyssey, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1965, p.l8ff. 101. Trollope,E., "Notes of ancient and medical labyrinths", Archeo 1 og ical Journal, XV, 1858. 102. Ladner,G.B., 1967, op.cit., p.235. 103. Ibid., p.237. 104. *... to make yourself a stranger (a1 ienum) to the deeds of the world, and, ... to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.’ Ibid., p.240. 105. See above, p.38. 106. Ladner,G.B., 1967, op.cit., p.241. 107. Ashe,G., 1979, op.cit.. p.122. 108. Chartres labyrinth was known as "Chemin de Jerusaiera"; James,J., 1977, op.cit., p.93. See also Ezekiel 5:5. The antithesis of Jerusalem was Babylon - "the city of confusion" that "generates the sterile mind of those who are not disposed to the order of the right life". Ladner,G.B., 1967, op.cit., p.235. See below p.170 f. 109. Wilkins,E., The Rose Garden Game* The symbolic background to the European prayer-bead, Victor Gollancz, London, 1969, p.109. See also below pp. 110. See above p.131 f. 111. Wetherbee,W., 1972, op.cit., p.41. 112. Wetherbee,W., 1973, op.cit., p.8. 113. Wilkins,E., 1969, op.cit., pp.84-85. 114. Ibid. p.169, note 56. 115. Ashe,G., 1979, op.cit., pp. 115-119; for Graves’ opinion see pp. above. Compare both these views 233 with Mackenzie,D.A., The Migration of Symbols a nd their relations to beliefs and customs, Kegan Paul, French, Trubner, London, 1926. The ancient custom of making a sacred circuit to the right appears to have been intended to stimulate the Great Bear (Ursa Major) constellation to revolve in the proper direction. There was a danger - so it was believed - that it might jam or else spin in the wrong direction. The stellar cult’s belief in this connection was taken over by the sun cult, and it can still be detected as an "import". In the Scottish Highlands, for instance, the newly-born sun of summer - the "big-sun" - is suposed to "dance" and whirl round three times to the right on May Day (Beltane). The sun thus imitates the "Dancing Dervishes" who gave the "Great Bear" a lead. p.123. 116. Free 1 and,G.A., 1981, op.cit., p. 16 & p.23, note 3. 117. Augustine, Confessions, op.cit., 13:11. 118. Ibid. 119. I Corinthians, 13:12. This translation King Ja.mes Version. 120. Ibid. This translation Doua.y Version. 121. Ibid. This translation Jerusalem Version. 122. In Dronke,P., 1974, op.cit., p.43. 123. White,J.T. & Riddle,J.E., A Lcit i n-Eng 1 i sh Dic tion&ry, Longmans, London, 1872. 124. Dronke,P., 1974, op.cit., p.49. 125. White, J.T.& Riddle,J.E., 1872. op.cit. 126. Plato, Euthydemus, (trans.) Lamb,W.R.M., Loeb Classical Library Heinemann, London, 1962. 127. Lucian, Hermontius (trans.) Kilburn,K., Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1959, pp.347-351. 128. Wilkins,E., 1969, op.cit. p.84. The "cycles of conflagration may be compared with the doctrine of metempsychosis of the soul espoused by Anchises and problematically evident in the Medieval Eneas. 234 Eneas asks if the souls he has seen below take on new bodies, or corporeal sensate form, to return to life; Anchises responds: all who die will come to hell to receive just deserts, in accordance with one’s life in this world. A good man will come to the Elysian Fields, by passing suffering, but evil-doers are tormented by fire and excruciating pain. Once expiated, the latter are allowed into the Elysian Fields, to live in sweet repose, without pain. This far, the medieval poem has reordered and rendered the Vigilian notion of purgation in rather orthodox Christian terms. Purgatory functions for the same expiatory reasons mentioned by Anchises; and the realm of the blessed is analogous to Heaven in popular Christian doctrine. But Anchises goes on and seems to return to the sense of the model when he refers to transmigration. These souls, after purification and once within Elysium, he continues, ... "When they have lived there awhile and, by their wills, wish to return on high, there is a body of water down in hell, and a god who makes them drink; once he separates them from the water, they say nothing on high what they have found below. Henceforth none will remember what was down here. The gods put them outside again and they go in their turn on high to take a human body" ". Cornier,R.J., One Heart One Mind* the rebirth of Virgil's hero in medieval French romance, Romance Monographs no.3, 1973, pp. 182-183. 129. Mathews,W.H., 1970, op.cit., p.84. 130. Bord,J., 1977, op.cit., p.97. 131. Fara1,E.Ced.], Les arts poetiyue de xiie et da xiiie siecle, Paris, 1924, p.334. 132. Ibid. p.335. 133. Ibid, p.336. 134. Auxerre cathedral had undergone renovations which specifically sought to increase the stractarem clariorem of the church. Simson,0., 1956, op.cit., p. 5 1. 235 135. In Backmann, E. L. , Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1952, p.71 & Hathews,W.M., 1970, op.c i t., p.68. 136. See Frazer,G.J., 1912-1915, op.cit. Vol.l, Part VII, pp.120-146, for his discussion of the Easter fires. 137. It has been noted that the gospel of St. John emphasises dualities, for example, "light - darkness", "truth - lies", in a way similar to the later Gnostic literature. Although it is strange that it is the only gospel not to give a direct account of the Transfiguration (Mathew 17:1-8, Hark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36) which is an evocative statement of many of John’s ideas. See the introduction to the Gospel of St. John, Jerusalem Bible, Standard edition, ppl39-145. 138. This parallels the Old Testament description of Wisdom and defines the difference between the vision of the opus conditiones and the opus restaurantiones: [Wisdom] is indeed more splendid than the sun, she outshines all the constellations; compared with light, she takes first place, for light must yield to night but over Wisdom evil can never triumph )Wisdom, 7:29-30). The light of Wisdom is not the "true light"; Wisdom is a semblance, "a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God’s active power, image of goodness". (Wisdom, 7:26). 139. It is interesting to note that John, unlike the synoptic gospels, makes no mention of the "darkness or eclipse from the sixth to the ninth hour" that marks the death of Christ. This is, perhaps due to the Johanine emphasis on revelation and theophany. John has been more explicit regarding the incidents of Christ’s life as "signs" by which the hidden glory of God is revealed by the Word, both in the here and now of Christ’s life and in the Old Testament prophecies. 140. This appears to be a paraphrase of John’s account of Lazarus’ resurrection. 141. Christians bring forth their songs of praise to the Easter offerings. The lamb has delivered the sheep: Christ the irreproachable has reconciled the sinners to the Father. 236 Death and life struggle in wondrous strife, and the prince of life rules, living though dead, Tell us, Mary, what have you seen on the way? I have seen the grace of the Living Christ, the glory of the Resurrection! To this I testify the angels, his napkin and c 1 othes. Christ, my hope, has risen, he goes before to Galilee. Believe rather in the true Mary than in the deceitful Jewish Host! We know that Christ hath truly risen from the dead, but Thou Conqueror and King, have mercy upon us. From Backmann,E.L., 1952, op.cit., p.78. 142. Ibid., p.67. 143. See Ibid., p.73 & Free1and,G.A., 1981, op.cit, p.25, note 18. 144. Backmann,E.L., 1952, op.cit. p.71. 145. See Genesis,3: 15. 146. See above, p. 125. 147. Simson,0., 1956, op.cit., p.164. 148. Ibid., p.166. 149. Free1 and,G.A., 1981, op.cit., p.20. 150. See above p.48, for Kerenyi’s suggestion of association of spinning with Ariadne. Simson also reports that Chartres was the stronghold of the spinners and weavers guild which was tied to the cathedral although a solidarity, 1956,op.c i t., p. 166. 151. Wilkins, E. , 1969, op.cit. p.79. 152. James, J. 1977, op.cit. p.107. For further discussion of the rosa. mystic a see Free1 and,G.A., 1981, op.cit., p.22 & p.27, note 43. Mercury was Wisdom or Sophia, which brings us back to the beginning - Holy Wisdom and the snake, Mary as the "Throne of the Almighty" and patron of learning, the Gnostic idea that through her (or 237 through knowledge, if you prefer) you can be saved or reborn. James,J., 1977, op.cit., p.102. ... those later alchemists who called the centre of Cthe mandalal the i/as, which also corresponds to the Queen of the alchemical Work, were alluding to the titles of Mary, the Queen "of the Universe", as i/as sp ir i tua.le, i/as honora.bile, vas insigne devot t on is, and hence to the mystical formula that each individual must "become Mary and bear God from within". Wilkins,E., 1969, op.cit., p.93. 153. Simson,0., 1956, op.cit., p.52. 154. Wetherbee,W., 1973, op.clt., p.60. 155. Ibid., pp.1-2. 156. Ibid., p.56. 157. Dronke,P., 1969, op.cit., pp.123-128. 158. Coplestone,F.A., A History of Philosophy Medieva.1 Philosophy Pt.l Augustine to Bona.venture, Image Books, New York, 1962, p. 193. 238 IV: THE CONCEPT OF THE LABYRINTHS IN DANTE’S COMMEDIA 1. Gurevich,A.J., 1985, op.cit., p.289. 2. Durant,W. , The Story of Civi1isation- The Age of Faith II, Edito-Service S.A., Geneva, from the edition of 1950, p.1067. 3. Thompson,D., Xante's Epic Journeys, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1974, p.2. 4. Ho 1 lander,R. , ’Dante’s use of Aeneid I & 11 in the Inferno,’ Comparat / i/e Literature, 20, 1968, pp.145-146. 5. From, "Epistle to Can Grande", in Durant,W., op.c i t. , p. 1067. 6. Ho 11ander,R. , 1968, op.cit. , p. 145. See also above p. , note 66. 7. See above pp.70-71. 8. Singleton,G.S., "In Exitu Israel de Aegypto", in Dante-' a collection of critical essays, Ced. 3 Freccero,J., Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1965. 9. Aeneas* specialty lies in having "learned things that were the causes of his victory, and of the Papal Mantle". 10. Paul: the Chosen Vessel went thither, to bring confirmation of that Faith which is the entrance of the way of salvation. See Thompson,D., 1974, op.cit., pp.75-83 for the consummation of these figures. 11. Dante and Virgil are in a sense synonymous as Dante describes Virgil as "he from whom I took the good style that hath done me honour". Inferno-'I. 12. Singleton, C.S., 1965, op.cit., p.44. 13. Ralphs,S., Dante's Journey to the Centre- Some patterns in his allegory, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1972, pp.4-5. See also above, p.88f, pp.132-133. 14. Ibid. p.9. 239 15. See Plato, Gorgi&s, (trans.) Lamb, W.B.M., Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, London, 1939, 524-526; also Virgil, Aeneid-'Vl, 430-433. 16. Carro11,J.S., Exiles of Eternity: An Exposition of Dante's Inferno, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1904, p. 86. 17. Ralphs,S. , 1972, op.cit., pp. 10-11. See pp. for a comparison between the "reflection" of sins by Minos and the labyrinth. 18. Campbell,J., 1968, op.cit., p.21. 19. See Alighieri Dante, The Divine Comedy, [translated with a commentary] sing1eton,C.S., Inferno* Volume 2 Commentary, Routledge 8* Kegan Paul, London, 1971, pp. for discussion of the Minotaur represented with a bull’s body and human head. 20. Ralphs,S., 1972, op.cit., p. 11. 21. Carro11,J.S., 1904, op.cit., p.155. 22. Ibid. , p. 157. 23. See above, p.68 ff for further discussion. 24. See above p. 130 f. 25. See Thompson,D., 1974, op.cit. p.64 and p.58 for the explicit similarities between Aeneas and Ulysses. 26. Ralphs,S., 1972, op.cit. p.19-20. 27. Gurevich,A.J., 1985, op.cit. p.288. 28. Ralphs,S., 1972, op.cit. p.21. In comparison here is Durant’s conception of hell: "... the crowning indecency of medieval theology. Classic antiquity had thought of Hades or Avernus that received all the human dead into subterranean and indiscriminate darkness, but it had not pictured Tartarus as a place of torture. Centuries of barbarism, insecurity, and war had to intervene before man could defile his God with attributes of undying vengeance and inexhaustible cruelty". Durant,W., op.cit., p.1073. This fire and brimstone view of hell misrepresents Dante in many respects. Firstly, it takes no 240 consideration of the conception of sin which entails the free choice of turning away from God. The punishments of the Inferno are not loved by God but by man himself in his aspiration to be sicut del. The inhabitants of the Inferno, the unbaptised of the first circle notwithstanding, have refused to repent and be shriven, and so continue their prideful turning away from God. Secondly, it confuses the allegorical descriptions of the effects of sin with the punishments for the sin. 29. Augustine often uses the term "turn" in the sense of conversion - "whenever the soul of man turns, unless towards God, it cleves to sorrow" (4:X); "The word himself calls to you to return, and with Him is the place of peace that shall not be broken" (6:XI); "Why, 0 perverse soul of mine, will you go on following your flesh? Rather turn, and let it follow you". (4:XI); "He withdrew from our eyes, that we might return to our own heart and find Him" (4:XII). Confessions, op.cit. 30. Ibid., 4:XI I. 31. See above p. 115. 32. Confessions, op.cit., 13:IX. 33. Ibid., 4:XI I. 34. Ralphs,S., 1972, op.cit., p.50. 35. See above p.136 f. 36. Free 1 and,G.A. , 1982, op.cit., p.16. 37. Wilkins,E., 1969, op.cit., p.87. 38. Ibid., p.87. 39. Ralphs,S., 1972, op.cit. p.51. 40. Dante arrives at a point that is at once divine and the point at which he apprehends the divine. The final object of the poem is no longer an object around which one can turn and toward which one tends; it is an object one possesses, a point with which one coincides. Pould,G., "The metamorphoses of the circle", in Freccero,J. , fed.], Dante: A collection of critical essays, Prentice Hall, 1965, pp.159. 241 41. See below p.187 f (Chartres) and also pp. (Can te). 42. Foster,K. , ’The mind in love: Dante’s philosophy,’ in Freccero, J. , Ced.], Cante-‘ a collection of critical essays, Prentice Hall, 1965, p.56. 43. The movement to the right is a spiral ascending and directed inwards, and is, as it were, an unwinding of the sinister spiral movement performed in the descent into Hell. Perhaps it may not be too far fetched to suppose that this is really the way out of the labyrinth after the slaying of the Minotaur. Beatrice ... may perhaps be Dante’s Ariadne. Ralphs,S., 1972, op.cit. p.25. 44. Confessions, op.cit., 10:VI. 242 V: THE LABYRINTHS OF THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIPHILO 1. The Hypnerotomachta Poliphtlo was published in 1499 at the Aldine Press. It was translated into English by Robert Dallington in 1592. I have used a facsimile reproduction of the Dallington edition, Hynerotomachia : the Strife of Love in a Dreame (1592), Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, Delmar, New York, 1973. 2. Pa i nter , G. D. , The Hypnerotomac h i a Poliphili of 1499-' An introduction to the dream, the dreamer, the artist and the painter, Eugrammia Press, London, 1963. 3. Antonio Augustin, area universae an t i 4. Symonds,J.A., Renaissance in Italy, (Vol.IV, 1881) Cerf & Klopfer, Modern Library, New York, 1935, p.968. 5. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit. , pp. 10-11. 6. Mitchell,C., op.cit., pp.467-468. 7. Erec’s quest takes place in an enchanted garden. The garden is described as a type of paradise where fruits and flowers flourished the year round; however, whomsoever should wish to remove the fruits of the garden of eternal life would never be able to find his way out until the fruits were restored (p.75). Erec’s task is to defeat, and so release, a knight who lives in this garden under a vow to his lady (p.79). Thus the hero of the tale must be a great knight who can overcome the power of immoderate or inordinate love. Erec’s lady’s love could be described as inordinato and unmaze. Maze in this sense denotes measure and order, as in a dance - hence to "tread a measure", perhaps. (See Willson,B., "The Grail King in Wolfram’s 243 Parzival", Modern ian^ua^e Reviev, LV, 1960, p.553 ff., and Amor Inordinate, in Hartmann, Gregorius, Speculum LXI, 1966, p.86 ff.). The quest is also ironic because Erec must battle and defeat the very person he is trying to rescue. This irony may be symbolic of se1f-transcendence, and is emphasised by the similarity between Habonagrain - Erec’s opponent - and Erec himself. ("In the episode of the Joie de la Cort Mabonagrain appears not only as a bloodthirsty tyrant cutting off heads of his opponents and impaling them on stakes, but also at the same time as a courtly knight conversant with the refinements of medieval chivalry". Lewis,C.B., Classical Mythology and Arthurian Romance, Oxford University Press (St, Andrews University Publications, no.XXXII), 1932, p.163. It is remarkable that this is identical to the descriptions of the Minotaur as Minos’ dark side, see above pp. ). Erec’s quest is called the "Joy of the Court" because its fulfillment will redeem the cupidiously captured knight and bring joy to the court. Erec’s reward for achieving the "joy" is to be crowned "Sun-king" (p.89), clothed with the mantel of the yuadrivium (pp.87-88) and given a sceptre symbolising his dominion over all creatures of the world (p.89). Chretien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (trans.) Comfort,W.W., Everyman’s Library, Dent, London, 1975. 8. "If one bears in mind on the one hand the imaginary nature of the classical labyrinth, and on the other the fact that changes were made in the material before it reached Chrestian [sic] and when it was still passing from hand to hand, it is not impossible to realise how Chrestian’s [sic] work with walls of air could have evolved out of some description of the ancient labyrinth." Lewis,G.B., 1932, op.citp.165. 9. The concept of the travail or "work" of a Renaissance garden must be understood in its correspondence to the "work" of creation by God. By the Creation of the microcosm man could participate in the macrocosm. E.Battisti has summarised the concept of the garden microcosm. "The garden is a place of pleasure, the locus amoenus, filled with joy, but it resounds in love laments of poets; it is a refuge for private meditation; it is a place for feasts, entertainment of friends, a place according to Boccaccio, of sexual and intellectual freedom, a setting for 244 philosophical discussions, and a restorative for both body and soul. It is a measured and well ordered model of the universe, an experiment in immortality, a never ending apparition of spring. It assumes the function of a sculpture gallery,a pinacothea, a horticultural encyclopedia in vivo, a centre of botanic and medical research, and a theater for fantastic imitation, competing with nature on nature’s own terms and conditions. Finally it is a perpetual source of moral instruction". Battisti,E., Natura Artificiosa to Nat nr a Artificial is, in Coffin,D.R., Ced. ] The Italian Garden, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., 1972, p.4-6. See also, Comito,T., op.cit. 10. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p. 153. 11. Ibid., p.35. 12. Ibid., p.41. This is a reiteration of St. Augustine’s conception of "natural place" discussed above, p.115. 13. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., pp.64. 14. Ibid., p.64. 15. Ibid., p.64. See also Friez-David,L., The Dream of Poliphilo, (trans.) Hottinger,M., Princeton University Press, New York, 1950, pp.43-44 and p. 63. 16. The nymphs represent Poliphilo’s senses: their names and attributes are Aphea - touch - the only one to touch Poliphilo, "give me thy hand" (p.86); Offressia - smell - carries boxes of unguents (see Painter,G.D., op.cit.); Orassia - sight - "the shining glass (our delights)" (p.86); Achol - hearing - "carries the sounding Harp" (p.86); Genshra - taste - "bears the casting bottle of precious licquor" (p.86). 17. Ibid., p.9 1. 18. See St. Augustine’s conception of "the lust of the eyes", above p.132. 19. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p.139. 20. Ibid., p. 12. 245 21. Colonna is obviously sympathetic to Ovid’s version of Theseus and Ariadne’s love in the Herodies rather than the Metamorphoses. This emphasis on betrayal is not without bearing on Theseus’ later adventures and their interpretation by Colonna, who appears to have modelled his hero Poliphilo as a contra-Theseus. ("Far from being heroic, [Theseus’] victory over Minos, over the Minotaur, is a perverse feat, a betrayal. He exploits Ariadne’s love in order to succeed in his own aims, and he betrays her. Ariadne’s thread should have lead him, not only out of Minos’ subconscious maze, but also out of the labyrinth of his own subcon scious. It is in this labyrinth, however, that Theseus loses his way and, by doing so, determines the whole of his future life ... . His weakness of soul sacrifices helpful love for perverse seduction and leads him towards his fate. Fhaedra [Theseus’ second wife and Ariadne’s sister] represents perverse and impure desire"). Diel,P., Symbolism in Greek Mythology, Shambala, London, 1980, p.163. 22. See above, p.64. 23. See above, p.129 f. 24. Huxley,A., The Devils of London, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1974. 25. Theseus’ journeyed outside himself, out of his familiar surroundings to a new physical location; Poliphilo’s journey is metaphysical. The journey is interior not exterior, its cause is personal not public. There is a comparable difference in the labyrinths that our heroes encounter. The labyrinth on Crete has an identifiable physical location and a temporal chronology. It is essentially a physical object, irrespective of what one believes it actually is. The labyrinths of the Strife have no location, they are overtly metaphorical and function to link Poliphilo with Theseus. This link recalls that which Virgil employed in the Aeneid when Aeneas contemplated the design on the Cumaean gates, which in turn is associated with the designs Hephaistos placed on Achilles’ shield in Homer’s Iliad. These are conceptual rather than artefactual labyrinths. 246 The garden labyrinth which separates the lover from the beloved is common in literature. Colonna’s example might easily be considered a variation of the lovers’ journey in the garden of the Roman de 1 a Rose. This tradition also surfaces in the fairy tale "Briar Rose": who sleeps within a maze of briars that none may penetrate until the hero and the time of spring are come. Lethaby,W.R., op.c i t. , p. 168. 26. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., pp.13-14. 27. Ibid. There is an inscription on the temple which reads, "Bacchus and Ceres have given of their own substance to pious Mother Venus and her son Amor". p.50, translated in Friez-David,L., 1950, op.cit., p. 60. 28. Ibid., p.6 1. 29. See above, p.64. 30. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.citpp.62-63. 31. Ibid., p.40. 32. See above, p.161 f. 33. Friez-David,L., 1950, op.cit.., 4. 34. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p.50. 35. Ibid., p.58. 36. Friez-David,L., 1950, op.cit., p.64. 37. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p.64. This short list of sun-gods or heroes and their greatest enemy, the giant Typhon, gives a little insight into Colonna’s programme for this labyrinth. The heroes add to the hyperbole of Poliphilo’s fear, but the name of Typhon is incongruous with this group. Why should Typhon, whose hundred scaly necks sprouted dragons’ heads, be afraid of only one dragon? Typhon’s inclusion is, I believe, a clue to the way the dragon will be overcome. When Poliphilo runs into the building and discovers himself entrapped in its dark labyrinthine vaults, he again indulges in a mythological catalogue: "a great terror and more heaviness of mind than Mercury, making himself Ibis 247 and Apollo, Threicia, Diana, into the little bird Choleme. And Pan into two shapes."(p.64) This is a reference to Typhon and the war between the giants and the gods in which "Typhoeus sprang from earth and shook the gods of heaven into fear" (Ovid, Metamorphoses, V). During the same battle Typhon held Zeus captive, guarded by one of his dragon heads. Zeus remained imprisoned until Hercules routed the giants. However, it was Mercury who killed the dragon and Pan who unshackled Zeus. Typhon was the father of many monsters, among them the Chimera, Cerberus and the dragon (Evshin,B., 1975, op.cit.). The name of Hercules and Mercury are combined in a trinity as aspects of Zeus. Seneca represented them as interchangeable in De beneficlis. He writes: "Our school regard him both as Father Liber, because he is the father of all things ... ; Hercules, because his power is invincible ... ; Mercury, because to him belong reason and number and order and knowledge." (Ha 11 owe 11,R.E. , "Ronsard and the Gallic Hercules Myth", Studies in the Renaissance, X, 1965, p.243) In the Typhon myth it is Mercury who slays the dragon guarding Zeus. This might be the correlation with the twelfth labour of Hercules - the capture of Cerberus, one of Typhon’s children. Cerberus has three heads, and the dragon of the Strife of Love "a tri-fluked and three parted tongue" (p.64). At last Colonna’s chain of mythological correspondences, with Typhon as the link, is starting to take shape. The dragon and Cerberus are both children of Typhon, who were defeated by Mercury and Hercules respectively. The importance of this correspondence lies in the signification of eloquence to Hercules: "The reason that the mythographers considered Hercules the revealer of philosophy is based in their interpretation of the god’s capture of Cerberus, whose three heads symbolised reason, nature, and morality." (Ha 11 owe 11,R.E. , op.cit., p.243, note7). However, there is another trope about the name of Mercury which entangles Mercury with the dragon: "All through the Middle Ages he was the object of much puzzled speculation on the part of the natural philosophers: sometimes he was a ministering and 248 helping spirit ... , and sometimes the servus or ceri/us fugitious (the fugitive slave or stag), an elusive deceptive teasing goblin, who drove the alchemists to despair and had many of his attributes in common with the devil. For instance, he is dragon, lion, eagle, raven, to mention only the most important of them." (Jung,C.G., Psychology and Alchemyj Princeton University Press, 1980, p66 1). Here again ue encounter the dual nature of the devouring beast. The wolf is lust and knowledge; the dragon is death and enlightenment. Perhaps the case of the dragon is somewhat mitigated by Mercury’s hermaphroditic nature. Thus, Mercury is the dragon and also Polia, the light which awaits Polophilo at the end of the quest. As far as this labyrinth is concerned the dragon is spiritual death, entrapping Poliphilo in darkness and ignorance. The correspondence with Cerberus bears this out. The dragon can only be overcome by wit and eloquence, that is Hercules/Mercury, and Hercules in turn can be identified with Theseus, the slayer of the beast within the labyrinth. 38. "There I having small delight to make any long stay, I intended to take an unknown way further in, which my undertaken course, I espied a light which so long I had wished for coming in a little wicket as small as I could see." Ibid., p.67. 39. "Now I settled myself more towards my lovely Polia and bound my affection more surely to her. Being pursuaded and firmly opinionated that this sight was a trance in love, for showing that I should die and lose my love, ... Oh how extremely did it vex me." Ibid., p.67. 40. Ibid., p.70. 41. Ibid., p.69. 42. Ibid. , p. 142. 43. Compare this with Aeneas at Tartarus iAeneid, VI). 44. The Strife of Love in a Z?reame, op.cit., p. 142. This is comparable to Dante’s inscription over the Gate of the Inferno, see above pp. 45. Ibid., p. 143. 249 46. I cautiously submit the coincidental identity of Colonna’s labyrinth and James’ astrological interpretation of the Chartres labyrinth. Ibid., p. 144 and above, pp. 47. Compare with Dante’s Infernal river and the bronze man of Crete. Inferno. There is also a portess at this moment, whom Friez-David contends is Fate, "distributing her lots blindly, but I am not convinced. The decorus metaphor for fate tends to point to Clotho, youngest of the fates, who spins the thread of life, quite a fitting metaphor really. The matron in the Strife of Love, however, distributes honey which has associations with knowledge, rather than lifespan. Friez-David,L., op.c it. , p.73. 48. The Strife of Love in a Dre&me, op.cit., p. 143. 49. Ibid., p.106. 50. Ibid., p. 107. 51. Ibid., p.107. 52. ibid., p.107. 53. Ibid., p.108. 54. Ibid., p. 1 14. 55. Jung,C.G., op.cit., p.371-372. 56. The Strife of Love in a Z?reame, op.cit. , p.144. 57. The nativity calendar of Leonhard Reymann (1515) Jung,C.G., 1980 op.cit., Figure 100. The order represented on the calendar is Mars, Sun, Venus, Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn; Earth is in the Centre. 58. The Strife of Love in a /Jreame, op.cit., p. 144. 59. 0’Donne 11,J.R., op.cit., p.238. 60. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p. 144. 61. Ibid., p.144. 62. Ibid., p.144. 250 63. Ibid., p.145. 64. Ibid., p.145. 65. This situation also occurs in Dante as he acknowledges Beatrice, whom he personifies as Dame Philosophy, above his wife and other lovers he had during his life. The Commedia is an autumnal work which is the encapsulation and recollection of Dante’s vision, and it is often compared to the youthful vision of the Vita. Nuova. See Durant,W., op.cit., pp. 1058-1065. We also know that Theseus was said to have married Phaedra - Ariadne’s sister - and consolidated the rule of Crete. Phaedra in said to "glitter brightly", and is possibly a representation of the embrace of enlightenment and life against the underworld connotations of Ariadne (85). Aeneas too, displaying the "wisdom" of age, "seeks to marry Lavinia, that is, the road of toil ilabor urn viam), for at this stage of life Everyman ( imnsqnias is) learns the value of toil in furthering his worldly possessions". (Fulgentius, op.c it. , p. 133 ) . 66. "They begin to remember what they have past and lost: for the more that the compass of the revolution draws near to the discovery of the Figure of the Centre, ... still shorter and shorter and more swift the course of the stream is into the devouring swallaw of the Centre." The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p.145. 67. Du Bartas, His Divine Veeks and Uorks, in Sy1vester,J., The Complete Vorks, A.H.S. Press, New York, 1967. 68. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p.145. 69. "They begin to remember what they have past and lost: for the more that the compass of the revolution draws near to the discovery of the Figure of the Centre, ... still shorter and shorter and more swift the course of the stream is into the devouring swallaw of the Centre." Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 251 72. Peck, R.A., "Number as a cosmic language", in Essays in Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, (ed.) Eckhardt,C.D., Bucknell University Press, London, 1980, p.33. 73. The Strife of Love in a Dreame, op.cit., p.58. 74. Ross, A., Mystagogus Poeticus or the Muses Interpreter, (London, 1948), Garland Publishing Inc. New York, 1976. 252 VI: CONCLUSION 1. Geurvich,A., 1985, op.cit., p.44. 2. Ormerod,D., "A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Monster in the Labyrinth", Shakespeare Studies, VII, pp.39-53. 3. Ibid., pp.48-49. 4. Rossi,P., Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1968, p.76. 5. Ibid., p.206. 6. 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