Arachne's Attitude: Metamorphoses 6.25

764 Miscellanea / J.D. Hejduk / Mnemosyne 65 (2012) 764-768 Arachne’s Attitude: Metamorphoses 6.25

‘certet’ ait ‘mecum; nihil est quod uicta recusem.’ (Ov. Met. 6.25)

Arachne’s retort to the goddess whose mastery she refuses to acknowledge initi- ates a well-known series of events: Arachne ignores the warning of Minerva in dis- guise, wins the weaving contest, and is punished for her victory. All modern English translators understand the sentence to mean something like ‘Let her compete with me; if defeated, there is no penalty I would refuse to pay’ (‘O’).1) I propose quite a diffferent translation of the second clause: ‘there is no reason for me to refuse, defeated’—that is, ‘to admit defeat by refusing to compete’ (‘M’). M aligns better than O with allusions to Virgil’s Turnus, with Arachne’s situation and character, and with the irony of her story’s conclusion.2) In his memorable opening speech in Aeneid 12, Turnus, like Arachne, auda- ciously challenges an adversary whom divine backing makes invincible:

1) Raeburn 2004, 211: ‘ “Let us hold a contest,” she said. “If I’m beaten, I’ll pay any forfeit.” ’ Ambrose 2004, 126: ‘ “Let her compete with me. If defeated, there is nothing I’d refuse!” ’ Martin 2004, 190: ‘ “Let her compete with me, and if she wins I’ll pay whatever penalty she sets!” ’ Slavitt 1994, 105: ‘ “I invite the goddess—I dare her—to compete with me,” she said, / in jest perhaps, but these jokes are a way of disguising the truth. / “I’d bet whatever I have— my life itself,” she said.’ Hill 1992, 39: ‘ “Let her compete”, she said, “with me; there is nothing I would refuse if defeated.” ’ Melville 1986, 121: ‘ “Let her contend with me. Should I / Lose, there’s no forfeit that I would not pay.” ’ Miller and Goold 1977, 291: ‘ “Let her but strive with me; and if I lose there is nothing which I would not forfeit.” ’ Innes 1955, 134-5: ‘ “Let Pallas come and compete with me!” she cried. “If I am defeated, she can do what she likes with me!” ’ Humphries 1954, 130: ‘ “I challenge her, and if I lose, there’s nothing I would refuse to pay!” ’ 2) Though O may not be impossible, it does present a grammatical anomaly that has not been sufffĳiciently acknowledged. If the clause refers to a prediction of the contest’s outcome (as translators assume), then uicta must be equivalent to the protasis of a future less vivid, ‘If I should lose’, with nihil est quod recusem standing for the apodosis nihil recusem, ‘I would refuse nothing’. But the verb in a present characteristic clause normally refers to potential occurrences in the present, and there are no examples of a perfect participle casting such a clause into the future—nor, for that matter, of nihil est quod + subjunctive pointing to a specifĳic future outcome at all. The parallel cited by Bömer (1976, 17, 133), nihil est quod non efffreno captus amore/ ausit (‘captured by unbridled lust, there is nothing he would not dare’, 6.465-6), would be nonsense if the participle were so interpreted (‘if he should be captured by unbridled lust’): Tereus has been captured by lust in fact (in the present), not hypotheti- cally (in the future).—Ovid’s use of recusare elsewhere also supports M. If quod is taken as the object of Arachne’s ‘refuse’ (as in O), we must supply some additional infĳinitive not obvious from the context, like ‘to pay’ or ‘to give up’. This would be unique in Ovid’s work: every other instance of recusare either has a clearly stated object (infĳinitive, noun, or clause) or means more generally ‘resist’/‘say No’.

nulla mora in Turno; nihil est quod dicta retractent ignaui Aeneadae, nec quae pepigere recusent: congredior. (A. 12.11-3) No delay in Turnus; there’s no reason for the Trojans, spineless, to take back their words, or refuse the terms they’ve negotiated: I’m fĳighting.

This instance of nihil est quod + subjunctive clearly can mean only ‘there is no reason why’.3) The echo of nihil est quod dicta retractent in Ovid’s nihil est quod uicta recusem, with recusent appearing in Virgil’s next line, makes it plausible to suppose that Ovid had the Virgilian passage in mind, especially if there are other links between Turnus and Arachne. In fact, such links, at both the verbal and the the- matic level, are so pervasive as to suggest that Virgil’s doomed warrior is a primary model for Ovid’s doomed artist. Minerva’s visitation of Arachne in Metamorphoses 6 closely parallels Allecto’s of Turnus in Aeneid 7.4) In both scenes, a divinity disguised as an old woman warns an arrogant youth who mocks the old age of the admonisher (A. 7.440, Met. 6.37-8). The goddess reveals her true form when her warning is ridiculed, then echoes the taunts of her detractor (A. 7.440-4, 452-5). Most obviously, Minerva mimics the fĳirst half of Arachne’s closing line, cur non ipsa uenit? (‘Why does she herself not come?’, 42), with a curt uenit! (‘She has come!’, 43). But a somewhat less obvious mimicry by the narrator offfers another argument for understanding Arachne’srecusem to mean ‘refuse to compete’ rather than ‘refuse to pay’. Immediately before the weaving contest, three clauses describe Minerva’s determination:

neque enim Ioue nata recusat nec monet ulterius nec iam certamina difffert. (6.51-2) for the daughter of Jupiter does not refuse nor warn any further nor postpone the competition anymore. nec iam certamina difffert recalls Arachne’s closing words, cur haec certamina uitat? (‘Why does she avoid this competition?’, 42), and monet echoes Arachne’s monendo

3) OLD s.v. nihil 5a. See also Kühner and Stegmann 1914, 2.278; Hofmann and Szantyr 1965, 2.572. The one other appearance of nihil est quod + subjunctive in Virgil has the same mean- ing: si ad uitulam spectas, nihil est quod pocula laudes, ‘if you take a look at the calf, there is no reason for you to praise the cup’ (Ecl. 3.48). 4) The Aeneid scene seems to me a closer parallel than those cited by Anderson (1972, 155), Callimachus’ Erysichthon (Hymn 6.40 fff.) and Ovid’s Vertumnus (14.654 fff.), neither of which includes the recipient’s mockery of the divinity’s age.