Resemblance and Camouflage in Graeco-Roman Antiquity 169

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Institutional Research Information System University of Turin Sign Systems Studies 38(1/4), 2010 1 2 3 4 5 6 Resemblance and camouflage 7 in Graeco-Roman antiquity 8 Massimo Leone 9 Department of Philosophy, University of Turin 10 Via S. Ottavio 20, 10124, Torino, Italy 11 e-mail: [email protected] 12 13 Abstract. In the twenty-eighth book of the Naturalis Historia Pliny the Elder 14 claims that, if a chameleon’s left leg is roasted together with a herb bearing the 15 same name, and everything is mixed with ointment, cut in lozenges, and stored in 16 a wooden little box, this will bestow on those who own it a perfect camouflage. 17 The ring of Gyges (Plato, etc.), that of Midas (Pliny), the heliotropium (Pliny), the 18 dracontitis (Philostratus): ancient cultures abound with references to objects, 19 recipes, and techniques able to bestow different kinds of invisibility, meant as a 20 perfect resemblance with the environment. At the same time, these same cultures 21 also teem with references to how to avert the perfect camouflage: for instance, by 22 being endowed with a pupula duplex, a double pupil (Ovid). 23 The paper explores such vast corpus of texts from the point of view of a 24 semiotics of cultures, in order to track the roots of a conception of camouflage 25 that, from these ancient cultures on, develops through intricate paths into the 26 contemporary imaginaires (and practices) of invisibility. 27 The paper’s more general goal is to understand the way in which cultures 28 elaborate conceptions of invisibility meant as the perfect resemblance between 29 humans and their environments, often on the basis of the observation of the 30 same resemblance between other living beings and their habitat. Ancient texts are 31 therefore focused on in order to decipher the passage from camouflage as an 32 adaptive natural behaviour to camouflage as an effective combat strategy. 33 34 168 Massimo Leone 1 1. Introduction: 2 resemblance and invisibility 3 4 The present article stems from a wider research project, tentatively 5 entitled “cultures of invisibility”. The hypothesis underlying this 6 project is the following: because of a cultural influence that — through 7 complex and not yet completely explored paths — originated in the link 8 between the genesis of the epistemology of ‘Western’ art history and the 9 Christian visual culture, visual studies thus far have neglected the fact 10 that, in order to understand a visual culture, meaning must be attributed 11 not only to the way in which it imagines, represents, and visualizes the 12 being, but also to the way in which it veils it, hides it, and prohibits its 13 representation (Leone 2007, 2009, in press a). 14 In the frame of this project, dwelling on the term “camouflage”, on 15 the concept that it expresses, and on the texts and practices in which such 16 concept is embodied, is useful in order to describe and analyze the 17 semantic field of invisibility and the way in which it changes depending 18 on the different historical and socio-cultural contexts. The background 19 hypothesis of the present paper is that the phenomenon of camouflage 20 cannot be understood exclusively as a technical fact or as a historical 21 phenomenon, but as one of the semiotic modalities of the invisible, that 22 is, as one of the somewhat paradoxical dynamics through which the 23 invisible manifests itself as sign, as project of invisibility. 24 Corroborating such hypothesis through a semiotic analysis of texts 25 and practices characterizing the ancient civilizations, and in particular 26 the Greek and the Latin ones, might be effective in showing that 27 camouflage is not only the result of the introduction of aircrafts in 28 warfare, essentially from the First World War on, and of the consequent 29 need to contrast the extraordinary power of observation from above of 30 air fleets through more sophisticated strategies of invisibility (Leone in 31 press b). The semiotically oriented study of a corpus of Greek and Latin 32 texts will rather suggest that the advent of the aerial warfare did nothing 33 but emphasizing a modality of the invisible that had been already rooted 34 for centuries in the imaginaire, in the texts, and in the practices of 35 ‘Western’ visual cultures. Greek and Latin texts analysed in the present 36 paper have been selected not only for their cultural centrality in their 37 respective civilisations, but also because they epitomise some of the Resemblance and camouflage in Graeco-Roman antiquity 169 1 most fundamental trends concerning invisibility and camouflage in the 2 Graeco-Roman semiosphere. 3 4 5 2. Resemblance and the Greek camouflage 6 7 In the vast corpus of texts that compose the Greek civilization, 8 invisibility is frequent. Gods often appear and disappear at their will, 9 and at their will they make human beings, animals, and things appear 10 and disappear (Smith 1902, 1920; Pease 1942). However, among these 11 disappearances, some seem to share, in particular, the semantic features 12 of the contemporary camouflage. 13 In the Iliad, it is often a god, or a goddess, who — often during a 14 battle — dissimulates the presence of a human, frequently when this 15 human is at the mercy of an aggressor. The means of such dissimulation 16 may vary, but one of them is predominant: mist, a sort of natural 17 camouflet that, all of a sudden, changes the transparency of the air into 18 opacity, allows the divine intervention to take place in human affairs, 19 and subtracts a mortal body from an otherwise ineluctable end. 20 In commenting on the way in which Plutarch describes the ca- 21 mouflage of cuttlefish, Vernant writes:1 22 23 Plutarque écrit qu’elle [la seiche] fait en sorte, technomenè, de rendre l’eau 24 trouble et opaque, l’obscurité, skotos, se répandant autour d’elle pour lui 25 permettre de fuir en secret et d’échapper à la vue du pêcheur. Il ajoute que la 26 seiche imite ainsi les dieux d’Homère qui souvent entourent d’une nuée sombre, 27 kuaneè nephelè, ceux qu’ils veulent sauver en les dissimulant. (Vernant, 28 Detienne 2007[1974]: 1076) 29 30 In order to escape the aggressor, Plutarch contends, cuttlefish spreads 31 its ink in the water and makes it opaque, in the same way in which the 32 Homeric gods would turn the visibility of the air into the invisibility of 33 mist in order to save some humans from their enemies in the battlefield. 34 According to Plutarch, then, the animal’s camouflage imitates that of the 35 Homeric gods. However, the opposite direction of imitation is more 36 likely to have taken place: it was by observing and imitating the way in 1 Mainly with reference to Plutarch, De sollertia animalium, Moralia 978B. 170 Massimo Leone 1 which animals escape their aggressors through camouflage that the 2 ancient Greeks ‘invented’ the camouflage adopted by the Homeric gods. 3 Some animals’ capacity to create a perfect dissimulation of their body in 4 the environment (that is, a perfect resemblance between their body and 5 the environment) has been imitated by the semiotic strategies the 6 ancient Greeks devised in order to obtain the same communicative 7 (negative) effect. 8 Thus, in the third book of the Iliad, at the peak of the battle between 9 Paris and Menelaus, one reads that: 10 11 He turned and made again for his man, determined to kill him 12 with the bronze spear. But Aphrodite caught up Paris 13 easily, since she was divine, and wrapped him in a thick mist 14 and set him down again in his own perfumed bedchamber. 15 (Homer, Iliad III, 379–382) 16 17 In the eleventh book one comes across an analogous episode, but evoked 18 from the point of view of the aggressor. Nestor says: 19 20 And now I would have killed the young Moliones, scions 21 of Aktor, had not their father who shakes the earth in his wide strength 22 caught them out of the battle, shrouding them in a thick mist. 23 (Iliad XI, 750–752) 24 25 In both cases the divine intervention — through mist — creates a 26 spatial-temporal breach in the chaotic scene of the battle, delays the 27 pleasure of killing, and, with it, that of narration. Hence, the camouflage 28 of the body of the victim enables the eroticism of narration. The erotic 29 connotation springs from the fact that the body of the victim is 30 subtracted from its aggressor when violence is about to reach its apex, 31 like when an object of erotic desire is offered and then absconded in a 32 striptease. 33 Again, in the twentieth book, during the fight between Aeneas and 34 Achilles, mist2 is literally poured in the eyes of the aggressor who was 35 defeating the aggressed: 2 The Greek word used in these passages for mist (achlys) is different from Iliad 3.381, 11.752, 20.444, 446 and 21.597 (ēēr = aēr, which in Homer and Hesiod means ‘mist’, but in later periods simply ‘air’). On the other hand, the same word is Resemblance and camouflage in Graeco-Roman antiquity 171 1 2 When he had heard this, the shaker of the earth Poseidon 3 went on his way through the confusion of spears and the fighting, 4 and came to where Aineias was, and renowned Achilleus.

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