[In the following essay, Griffiths sets forth the argument that Hadrian may have been influenced by the Egyptian concept of the ba, a bird with a human head, when he describes the soul in his most celebrated poem.]

In Maia 23 (1971) pp., 297-302 Carlo Gallavotti presents an able defence of Hadrian's famous lyric as found in a text of the Historia Augusta:

Animula vagula blandula,
hospes comesque corporis,
quo nunc abibis? In loca
pallidula rigida nudula,
nec ut soles dabis iocos.

Gallavotti aptly quotes the phrase of Ennius, pallida leti / nubila tenebris loca, in support of the third line's deviation from the accepted text (quae nunc abibis in loca?). Yet he prefers to take pallidula and nudula with the animula of the opening, with the result that only rigida in the fourth line is allowed to qualify loca. Certainly one is invited to group the diminutives in—ula together¹, and if rigidula were present in the fourth line, there would be an exact formal correspondence between the first and fourth lines. But rigidula would break the metric pattern of the five iambic dimeters, which in alternate lines are reduced to four.

The rigida of the fourth line in this interpretation, as well as the loca which precedes, will evidently refer to the regions of death, and the same reference is possible even in the accepted text, as the translation by A. O'Brien-Moore, which is quoted by David Magie in his Loeb edition (London 1922), p. 79, shows:

Whither now goest thou, to what place
Bare and ghastly and without grace?

In spite of this Gallavotti (p. 299) attaches no weight to the anecdote retailed by the Vita Hadriani that the emperor composed it on his deathbed (moriens). The nunc in nunc abibis might seem to confirm the anecdote but it may equally have a prospective or universal sense. In the latter case Hadrian may not even be addressing his own soul at all, although the last line does suggest a very personal touch.

How far does this little poem reflect the Graeco-Roman concept of the soul? The lapidary line hospes comesque corporis aptly expresses the relationship between body and soul as envisaged by Plato and others, even if the traditional view often regards the soul, less serenely, as the body's prisoner. A slight difficulty, from this point of view, arises in the adjective vagula. It may of course mean “wandering” in the sense of “wayward”, “fickle”, again as a universal attribute. But another possibility is that it refers to the action of the soul in leaving the body at death and thus wandering away from it, just as nudula alludes to the soul's being stripped of the body (Gallavotti, p. 299). It is at this point that one is first tempted to wonder whether Hadrian is following the Egyptian concept of the ba, the human headed bird which leaves the body at death and wanders to celestial regions, while maintaining its contact with the body by returning to the tomb. Several English translators have indeed conveyed a picture of a bird in their versions, as when Byron writes:

Wilt thou, now, wing thy distant flight?

or Merivale:

Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one

or Prior:

Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing(2).

The Latin does not specifically convey the idea even if a line by Septimius Serenus (Fr. 17 perit abit avipedis animula leporis) pointedly suggests it. While the idea of the soul as a bird is fairly widespread³, it is not consistently prominent in Greek tradition. Indeed, we find also the idea that “a dead man's ψυχή assumes snake form”⁴. But the early belief was that the soul, when separated from the body at death, went in the form of a wraith-like shade to the cheerless realm of Hades. By the fifth century the Greeks were entertaining happier thoughts. The soul could ascend to the aither to join the gods in heaven, and this brighter prospect developed into the belief that the soul of the virtuous dead became a star in heaven. Stoicism furthered this belief, which became popular among philosophically-inclined Romans. What is significant about Hadrian's in loca … rigida is that he is envisaging the old Greek doctrine of Hades. We know that his Hellenism was fervent. It was also, in this matter, archaistic, although the idea of Hades or Orcus had likewise been dominant in Roman literature.

It is the last line, however, that startles the observer of traditional beliefs. Here the poet recalls the time when he had been talking to his soul in light-hearted dialogue: nec ut soles dabis iocos. With the advent of death all this will cease. What is problematic in the idea of converse with the soul is that the Graeco-Roman tradition does not countenance it. It is not the psyche, but the daimon, a man's alter ego, that communicates with him, as in the Platonic account of Socrates. In the Egyptian tradition, on the other hand, the ba is preeminently a being that converses with a man. A famous text from the Middle Kingdom concerns' “A Man's Dialogue with his Ba”; and although it is a highly serious conversation, it is the ba that takes the more cheerful standpoint, for the man is contemplating suicide whereas his ba advises him against it. The possibility therefore emerges that Hadrian's poem has in this respect been coloured by Egyptian thought.

To argue in favour of a consistently Graeco-Roman approach, one might, of course, question the distinction between psyche and daimon. Sometimes the ideas converge⁵. But extended converse is assigned to neither. The vital background question is whether Hadrian's femiliarity with Egyptian religion was thorough enough to make my suggestion feasible. It was after his journey to Egypt in a.d. 130 that such an influence became potent, and the journey included a stay at Alexandria and Thebes⁶. Various literary pursuits occupied the stay at Alexandria, but Egyptian monuments attracted the main attention at Thebes, as the visit to the Colossus of Memnon shows. The Emperor had shown an interest in the Alexandrian cults before his visit to Egypt⁷, and during the visit itself he inspected several temples “avec un esprit religieux comme le prouvent deux papyrus”, one of which refers to his induction into sacral magic⁸. The accidental⁹ drowning in the Nile of his favourite Antinoüs brought to Hadrian a still more intense personal involvement in Egyptian funerary ideas, including the Osirian apotheosis of those drowned in the Nile. In Italy the Emperor gave official support to the Egyptian cults, albeit discreetly, and in his private villa at Tibur there were numerous statues of Egyptian gods even if inscriptions of religious import are lacking in the “Canopus” of Tibur¹⁰.

Clearly the idea of a degree of Egyptian influence would suit the latter part of Hadrian's life. Yet it would not necessarily validate the force of moriens¹¹. The wandering and talking soul of the Egyptian tradition could easily have become familiar to him in funerary pictorial representations, whether in Theban tombs or in the papyri prepared for tombs. Many papyri of this type display vignettes showing the ba-bird in contact with the tomb, as in Spell 89 of the Book of the Dead¹². The use of the Book of the Dead persisted into the Roman era¹³, and when an august visitor like Hadrian was initiated into Egyptian magic by Pachrates, a prophet of the Heliopolitan priest-hood¹⁴, we can be sure that he was shown contemporary works and also older and more splendid documents. His visit to Hermopolis, the city of Thoth-Hermes, has also been firmly attested¹⁵.

The Egyptian idea of a human-headed bird capable of dialogue, if it has partly coloured Hadrian's thought, does not of course entail any formal literary influence. It has been argued¹⁶, with some appeal, that an incantation behind a nursery rhyme has influenced the form, in view of a charm against ailing tonsils preserved by Marcellus of Bordeaux in the fifth century:

Albula glandula,
Nec doleas, nec noceas …

(Little white tonsil, do not bring pain or harm.) Such jingles show a fondness for diminutives, but so also, of course, do several phases of earlier Latin literature, including the works of Plautus and Catullus.

I have written at some length, like many others, about a very brief poem. A wider issue may well arise if we follow a suggestion by a German scholar¹⁷ who has propounded the view that the Egyptian idea of the soul bird eventually influenced in a general sense the Greek concept of the psyche¹⁸, so that even today, when we say that the soul “flies to heaven”, the origin of the idea can be traced to ancient Egypt. A charming survival of the idea is also recognized by Emma Brunner-Traut in modern Moslem Egypt, when the believer in a cemetery on a Friday will address the soul of the departed dead with words which she renders

Komm, komm, komm, mein Vögelchen.

Notes

1. Cf. O. Immisch in «Neue Jahrbücher» 35 (1915), pp. 201 ff. All three adjectives of the fourth line are attached to loca (explained as the underworld) by H. Hollstein in «Rhein. Mus.» 71 (1916), p. 409.

2. See B. W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian (London 1923), p. 246 and 253.

3. See “Seelenvogel” in A. Bertholet, Wb. der Religionen (3rd E. rev. K. Goldammer, Stuttgart 1976), p. 536. Cf. Otto Waser in Roscher, Lex. Myth. s.v. Psyche (1907), coll. 3212-14, including representations from Crete. A few select heroes were sometimes regarded as incarnate in birds, enjoying an unbroken unity of body and soul. See E. Rohde, Psyche (10th Ed., Tübingen 1925), pp. 372-3 with notes.

4. R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought (Cambridge 1951), pp. 206-7.

5. Ibid. 405 n. 8 with allusion to their equation in the Timaeus.

6. B. W. Henderson, op. cit., pp. 128-134.

7. Michel Malaise, Les Conditions de pénétration et de diffusion des cultes égyptiens en Italie (EPRO 22, Leiden 1972), pp. 419-427.

8. Ibid. 421.

9. The most likely hypothesis: see Malaise, op. cit., p. 422.

10. Ibid., p. 426. R. E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (London 1971), p. 236, refers to Hadrian's “religious eclecticism”, but also describes him as “temperamentally an Isiac” who in his official capacity actively encouraged the expansion of Alexandrian religion.

11. Barry Baldwin in «Class. Quarterly» 20 (1970), p. 372, rightly urges that this word need not imply that Hadrian was “extemporizing with his dying breath”. His case for Hadrian as the author is well argued against T. D. Barnes in «Class. Quarterly» 18 (1968), pp. 384 ff.

12. Cf. Bonnet, Reallexikon der ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin 1952), p. 76; L. V. Zabkar, A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts (Chicago 1968), p. 145; Erik Hornung, Das Totenbuch der Ägypter (Zürich 1979), p. 180, Abb. 48 and 184, Abb. 49 (vignettes).

13. Cf. L. Kákosy, Selected Papers (Budapest 1981), p. 20.

14. Karl Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae (2nd Ed. rev. A. Henrichs, Stuttgart 1973), p. 148, 2445 ff. (= Great Paris Mag. P., early iv A.D.).

15. M. Malaise, Les Conditions etc., p. 421 f. with refs.

16. A. A. Barb in «Folklore» 61 (1950), pp. 15 ff. On p. 21 he avers, however, that glandula makes no sense and “may easily have been misunderstood from an original blandula”. It makes very apt sense: “Little white tonsil”. Cf. Oxford Latin Dict. s. v. glandula.

17. Emma Brunner-Traut in «Universitas» 21 (1966), pp. 973-981.

18. In early depictions the psyche is shown in normal human form. Cf. Ugo Bianchi, The Greek Mysteries (Leiden 1976), p. 34, No. 73 and Fig. 73 (“The Apulian Vases: Two damned souls bound by a winged fury”). Cf. also “Anime nell'Hades” on a lekythos (vi b.c.) which I inspected in October 1983 in the Museo Nazionale, Palermo (Inv. No. 2141). A different tradition appears in depictions of Psyche relating to the legend of Amor and Psyche. From the third century b.c. they both occur at first in art as winged youths; later Psyche is shown with butterfly's wings. See M. Napoli in Bandinelli, Encicl. dell'Arte Antica I (1958), pp. 322-3.