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Theodore Harry Mcmillan Gellar SACRIFICE AND RITUAL IMAGERY IN MENANDER, PLAUTUS, AND TERENCE Theodore Harry McMillan Gellar A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Classics. Chapel Hill 2008 APPROVED BY: Sharon L. James, advisor James B. Rives, reader Peter M. Smith, reader © 2008 Theodore Harry McMillan Gellar ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Theodore Harry McMillan Gellar SACRIFICE AND RITUAL IMAGERY IN MENANDER, PLAUTUS, AND TERENCE (Under the direction of Sharon L. James) This thesis offers a systematic analysis of sacrifice and ritual in New Comedy. Sacri- fice normally signifies a healthy community, often celebrating a family reunification. Men- ander, Plautus, and Terence treat sacrifice remarkably, each in a different way. In Menander, sacrifice seals the formation of healthy citizen marriages; in Plautus, it operates to negotiate theatrical power between characters. When characters use sacrificial imagery, they are es- sentially asserting authority over other characters or agency over the play. Both playwrights mark habitual sacrificers, particularly citizen females, as morally upright. Terence, by con- trast, stunningly withholds sacrifice altogether, to underscore the emotional dysfunction among the citizen classes in hisplays. Chapter 1 sets sacrifice in its historical and theatrical context. Chapter 2 considers how sacrifice might have been presented onstage; chapter 3 examines its theatrical functions. Chapter 4 focuses on gender and status issues, and chapter 5 moves out from sacrifice to rit- ual and religion overall. iii τῷ φίλῳ καί µοι ἐγγυηκότι optimis parentibus iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have endless gratitude first of all for Sharon James, my advisor, mentor, and role model, without whom my thesis simply could not be. Peter Smith and James Rives both were careful, insightful, helpful, and considerate readers, and each suggested to me points that strengthened my argument. (Additional thanks are due to Professor Rives, in whose seminar on Graeco-Roman sacrifice I first conceived and worked on the core of this project.) For additional points, I am indebted to Niall Slater, Cameron Paterson, Patrick Dombrowski, and particularly Lora Holland. Professor Holland also graciously shared with me a confer- ence paper she is currently developing for publication, as did James Redfield; I am deeply grateful, for without either paper, my own work would be much weaker. My parents, Richard and Sandy Gellar, gave me the endless support, love, and en- couragement that enabled me to reach the point of writing a thesis, and my beloved fiancé Jake Goad kept my spirits (and motivation!) up while I was writing it. My first two Latin teachers, Jeff Beneker and Zola Packman, were the ones who instilled in me a love for the Classics, and without Arum Park and Jim O’Hara, I would not have made it to the University of North Carolina in the first place. Many thanks, mille gratias, to all of you! v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 Introduction: sacrifice, comedy, and society....................................1 Greek and Roman sacrifice..................................................2 The archetypal Greek sacrifice............................................9 The archetypal Roman sacrifice.........................................11 Selected additional Roman sacrificial ritual practices...................................................................14 Sacrificial and non-sacrificial terminology in Roman comedy...............................................................15 Greek New Comedy and Roman comoedia palliata................................................................................19 New Comedy and lived reality...........................................24 The meaning of sacrifice to the audience...........................26 Methodology.......................................................................30 Outline of the study............................................................35 CHAPTER 2 Staging sacrifice.............................................................................37 Stagecraft...........................................................................38 The content of sacrifices in New Comedy..........................59 vi CHAPTER 3 Theatrical functions of sacrifice.....................................................67 The dramatic functions of sacrifice in Menander...........................................................................69 The dramatic functions of sacrifice in Plautus...............................................................................87 CHAPTER 4 Gender and status.........................................................................114 Gender..............................................................................115 Status.................................................................................132 Conclusions.......................................................................139 CHAPTER 5 Beyond sacrifice: ritual, divinity, and community........................141 Non-sacrificial ritual imagery...........................................143 Divinity..............................................................................150 Sacrifice and the community in Menander, Plautus, and Terence.........................................................166 Conclusions.......................................................................174 CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................176 WORKS CITED.......................................................................................................182 vii CHAPTER 1 Introduction: sacrifice, comedy, and society Religious ritual and sacrifice were everyday concerns for Greeks and Romans of all levels of society. Modern scholarship on Graeco-Roman sacrifice has been hindered by the very ubiquity of sacrifice in classical civilization: since it was an everyday reality, most au- thors simply do not discuss it, or at least not in full enough detail for scholarly purposes. When Graeco-Roman literature does discuss sacrifice, it often depicts sacrifice in stock scenes (as with the repeated set pieces in Homer, where offerings are generally an extrava- gant display by the elite) and in highly stylized and multivalent episodes (such as in Aeschy- lus’ tales of the deaths of Iphigenia, Agamemnon, and Aegisthus), where sacrifice is used metaphorically or even problematized (as in Horace Odes 3.13). New Comedy, however, can help make the role of sacrifice more visible. This genre is concerned not with mythical heroes or legendary kings and generals, but with the everyday lives1 of average, somewhat well-to-do citizens and their households—children, slaves, non- citizen hirelings—and so the genre depicts (often with exaggeration) the daily activities of this class. Sacrifice, too, is present in New Comedy: it is conducted, it is planned and dis- 1 As Jonathan Smith notes, “ritual activities are an exaggeration of everyday activities” (1987: 194), and so a substantive connection between ritual activity and New Comedy can already be seen to be in operation. Smith also writes that “[r]itual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are” (1982: 63; italics preserved), an assertion that again fits with comedy, although perhaps more so with utopic Aristophanic comedy than with realistic Menandrian and farcical Plautine theater. cussed, and (perhaps most remarkably) it is mocked. Sacrifice and ritual imagery form a body of theatrical material in the plays of Menander, Plautus, and Terence that should not be ignored, and yet this material has not yet been the subject of systematic analysis.2 I will therefore undertake a comprehensive study of the presence and theatrical use of sacrifice and ritual imagery in the plays of Menander, Plautus, and Terence, in order to reveal how the playwrights’ manipulation of sacrifice affects the dramatic force and literary significance of their work, and to uncover information about the experience and importance of sacrifice to the playwrights’ contemporary audiences. Several necessary preliminaries will be considered in this chapter. First, Greek and Roman sacrifice and ritual must be given basic definition, and this definition should include a reconstruction of standard Greek and Roman sacrificial procedure. Distinction must be made between Greek and Roman practices, and between Greek and Roman comedy. To contextu- alize my consideration of the audiences’ experience of theatrical sacrifice, I will explicate my argument that New Comedy can provide insight into the lived realities of everyday Greeks and Romans, and explore the meaning of sacrifice in general to the audience. Finally, I will include a brief discussion of methodology. Greek and Roman sacrifice Sacrifice, especially animal sacrifice, was the cornerstone of Greek and Roman reli- gious ritual. Festivals staged by the entire community, private offerings for blessing or puri- fication, and pacts sealed between individuals or families (whether oaths or marriage agree- 2 For a systematic, if rather catalogue-like, analysis of religion in Attic Middle Comedy, see Werner (1962), who evinces an analytic goal similar to mine: “we expect to find many indications in comedy, both in incidental mention and in intentional attack, of the contemporary religious situation” (1962: 5). 2 ments) shared the common ritual
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