“Rapists in Ovid: The Penis Mightier than the Sword”
Submitted for program consideration
CAMWS 2003 Lexington, Kentucky
Janice Siegel: Abstract for CAMWS 2003 (successful)
Ovid’s tale of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus is all about empowerment and disempowerment. More specifically, all the scenes in Ovid’s play – including Tereus’ infatuation with the maiden, his abduction and rape of her, her recrimination speech against him, the detonguing, Procne’s liberation of her imprisoned sister, the women’s response of child-murder and -cooking, the cannibal feast, the revelation of the truth, and even the metamorphoses at the end – are best seen in the light of the metaphor of sexual dis/empowerment.
For this paper, I will focus on the details of the detonguing scene. Thirteen lines long, it far surpasses the description of the rape, which takes all of two words (vi superat, Met. 6.525). Tereus’ violent attack is an act of aggression launched against an enemy who has the power to do him tremendous harm. The particularly graphic simile likening Philomela’s severed tongue to “the tail of a mutilated snake” equates Philomela’s post-rape detonguing to a sexual mutilation through an intricately designed, multi-layered extended metaphor:
penis = weapon = tongue = snake = penis
penis = weapon: Philomela’s speech recriminating Tereus for his act of rape inspires the rapist to take further action: vagina liberat ensem (Met. 6.551) both heralds the detonguing and reflects on the violent attack of rape. Ovid uses this phrase only three times in his complete works and it always describes the violent action of a man after an illicit act of sex (cf. Met. 10.475 and Fasti 2.793; Livy presents a similar double entendre in his presentation of the rape of Lucretia, 1.58). These weapons are thus made metaphorically equivalent: penis (weapon in rape) = sword (weapon in mutilation). Discussions by Walter Burkert (Homo Necans 59 n.5) and J. N. Adams (Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 19-20) support such a phallic interpretation. Ovid also self-parodies as he unfavorably contrasts this violent rapist with the image of “lover as soldier” (militat omnis amans, Am. 1.9.1) since the wounds of love “lack the power to draw mortal blood.”
weapon = tongue: Since Philomela threatened to use her tongue as a weapon against her attacker (tua facta loquor, 6.545), the military-minded Tereus responds by disarming his enemy: he cuts out her tongue: linguam | abstulit ense fero, Met. 6.556-57.
tongue = snake: Ovid then introduces a most memorable animal simile, in which the severed tongue is likened to the tail of a mutilated snake: ipsa iacet terraeque tremens inmurmurat atrae, | utque salire solet mutilatae cauda colubrae, | palpitat et moriens dominae vestigia quaerit. (Met. 6.558-60)
snake = penis: The simile itself must be dissected, for it is composed of a richly layered series of phallic suggestions. First, the vocabulary: Roman readers would have associated both cauda and colubra with a penis (cf. Cicero, Fam. 9.22.2, Horace Serm 1.2.44-46 and 2.7.49). Given this equivalence, the jumping, throbbing and quivering of the tongue can also be read in a sexual context, since salire, palpito, and tremens all have alternate sexual meanings specifically related to the penis (see OLD, s.v.). Moreover, penises and tongues have lots in common (I’ll elaborate in the paper) and have been connected in a similar context by Ovid and others (e.g., John Irving, The World According to Garp). Philomela’s severed tongue flops, after losing its power (moriens), and “seeks its master’s feet” (dominae vestigia quaerit). This is exactly the behavior one might expect of a waning erection as it redirects itself – away from its intended “target” as it moves towards its master’s own feet. Of course, the image intended here is not of a spent penis, but of a permanently disempowered – i.e., severed – penis. And it is this final description that categorizes Tereus’ act of violence as an act of sexual disempowerment-via-mutilation so equally horrifying to contemplate by both men and women.