SOURCE: Rudd, Niall. “Titus Andronicus: The Classical Presence.” Shakespeare Survey 55 (2002): 199-208.

[In the following essay, Rudd traces the pervasiveness of classical Roman themes, contexts, and allusions—drawn from the writings of Virgil, Ovid, Plutarch, Livy, Horace, Seneca, and others—in Titus Andronicus.]

This paper has to do with the play's Romanitas. By that I mean, not its tenuous relation to historical fact, but rather the characters' awareness of Rome's cultural traditions.¹ The plural is needed, because there were two such traditions. When, as Horace said, ‘Captive Greece made her rough conqueror captive’ (Epistles 2.1.156), she brought to Latium her poetry and mythology (along with much else). The point is so familiar that one tends to forget its exceptional nature. In the annals of imperialism how many victors have learned the language of the vanquished and set about acquiring their culture? From Homer and his successors the Romans learned about Priam, Hecuba, and the rest; and when, with their growing sense of power, they looked for a pedigree that would rival the Greeks' in age and prestige, they found it in Troy. The link was supplied by the story of Aeneas, that was eventually given its classic form by Virgil. But first the contribution of Aeneas had to be reconciled with the other, native, tradition that Rome was founded by her eponymous ancestor Romulus.² This was achieved by making Aeneas' descendant Ilia (‘Trojan woman’) Romulus' mother. Rome's subsequent fortunes, as they passed gradually from legend to history, were recounted by Livy, and the two traditions together were presented by Ovid and Plutarch.

As a result, when Titus makes his entry in the play, he can salute Jupiter Capitolinus—the central symbol of Rome's power (1.1.80), and then, without any sense of incongruity, go on to speak of his own ‘five and twenty valiant sons, / Half of the number that King Priam had’ (82-3). We have already heard something of the moral context in which he is expected to operate. The senatorial order is seen as the noble defender of justice (1.1.2), and its members are addressed as the guardians of virtue, justice, continence, and nobility to which Jupiter's temple is consecrated (1.1.14-15). The speeches of Saturninus and Bassianus are, of course, pieces of undisguised flattery. But they do reflect the standards which the senate was supposed to uphold³—standards that form an ironic background to what is about to happen.

We have also been told something about Titus. His surname is Pius, and he has been chosen Emperor ‘For many good and great deserts to Rome’ (1.1.23-4). In view of the numerous Virgilian analogies that follow it is fair to see ‘Pius’ as a reminiscence of pius Aeneas, but the use of Pius as an emperor's surname is made easier by the fact that from ad 138-61 Rome was ruled by Antoninus Pius. The origins of ‘Andronicus’ are less clear, but perhaps the important thing to remember is that ‘Conqueror of men’ was a suitable name for a victorious general.⁴

Before taking any political action, however, Titus must discharge a religious duty: he must bury his dead sons. As he has just compared himself to Priam, one recalls that Priam's last achievement in the Iliad was to recover the body of Hector for decent burial. Likewise in Virgil's epic, before entering the underworld Aeneas must bury his comrade Misenus (6.149-235). Later the Sibyl explains that, unless they have been buried, the souls of the dead cannot be transported across the Styx: centum errant annos volitantque haec litora circum (329)—‘They wander for a hundred years and hover about these shores’. That is what Titus has in mind when he says ‘Why suffer'st thou thy sons unburied yet / To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?’ The theme of burial points forward to the altercation about the dead Mutius (352-95), and ultimately to the fate of Tamora at the end of the play.

Respect for the dead takes a more sinister form when Lucius demands that Tamora's son, Alarbus, be hacked to pieces and sacrificed Ad manes fratrum (101)—‘to the spirits of our brothers … / That so the shadows be not unappeas'd’ (103). George Hunter⁵ refers us to an early precedent, related in Livy 1.25.12, where the last of the Horatii kills the last of the Curiatii, saying ‘Duos fratrum manibus dedi: tertium causae belli huiusce, ut Romanus Albano imperet, dabo’ (‘I have offered two to the spirits of my brothers, I shall offer the third to the purpose of this war, that Roman should rule over Alban’). Ovid (Met.13.443ff.) tells how earlier still Achilles' ghost demanded that Polyxena, Hecuba's daughter, be sacrificed to his spirit (manes); the Greeks duly obeyed the pitiless shadow (umbrae). The words ‘spirit’ and ‘shadow’ are not in Golding's version (529-39). As Lucius indicated, there might be harmful consequences if the shadows were not appeased;⁶ but his demand is made in excessively bloodthirsty terms. When Titus consents, Tamora makes a passionate and reasoned protest in words that foreshadow Portia's speech in The Merchant of Venice. Titus is somewhat uneasy, and with half an apology (‘pardon me’) he insists that Lucius and his brothers are asking ‘religiously’ for a sacrifice ‘T'appease the groaning shadows that are gone’ (129). This and Lucius' impatient pressure justify Tamora's bitter response ‘O cruel, irreligious piety!’ Andronicus has disgraced his name. Chiron adds ‘Was never Scythia half so barbarous!’ In Seneca's Troades Andromache, hearing of Astyanax's death, cries ‘What Colchian, what Scythian with his shifting home has committed such a crime?’ (1104-5). This is the verdict of one of ‘the barbarous Goths’ (28), whose hands so far are clean. Demetrius, however, now makes a step on the downward path, reminding his mother of Hecuba who took a ‘sharp revenge / Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent’ (140f.). ‘Sharp revenge’ is a pregnant phrase, for Golding, describing Hecuba's revenge on Polymestor for murdering her son, says she ‘Did in the traitor's face bestowe her nayles, and scratched out / His eyes’ (Met. 13.673-4).⁷ ‘The Thracian tyrant’ also comes from Golding, who at v. 678 translates Ovid (565) quite literally: ‘The Thracians at theyr Tyrannes harme for anger waxing wood’. Like Shakespeare's Goths, the Thracian race is also pronum … in Venerem (Ovid, Met.6.459-60).

As his sons are buried Titus delivers a short but noble speech of committal (151-9). Soon after, he is greeted by Marcus, who speaks of ‘this funeral pomp [presumably in the sense of the Latin pompa ‘procession’] / That hath aspired to Solon's happiness’ (179-80). In Herodotus 1.32 Solon tells Croesus that a fortunate man should not be called ‘blessed’ until his life is finished. Shakespeare could have found this in Plutarch's Life of Solon (North's translation) ‘When the goddes have continued a man's good fortune to his end, then we think that man happy and blessed, and never before’ (Nonesuch ed. 1929, vol. 1, p. 270). Marcus' elliptical reference shows his erudition and his wish to console Titus, but it rather misrepresents Solon; for it suggests that the sons have achieved happiness simply in virtue of being killed. Solon's dictum applies only to those who have been fortunate throughout life and in their death.⁸

When Saturninus declares he will marry Titus' daughter, Lavinia (244-7), he bids Tamora, who is obviously glowering, to brighten up: ‘Thou com'st not to be made a scorn in Rome’ (269). Bearing in mind that Tamora has already said ‘We are brought to Rome / To beautify thy triumphs’ (112-13), one suspects that Shakespeare is thinking of Cleopatra, who was determined not to be displayed in a triumph (Livy, fr.54 non triumphabor, reflected in Plutarch's Life of Antony 84.4; cf. Horace, Odes 1.37.30-2 with Porphyrion's Greek note); one thinks of her defiant speech in Antony and Cleopatra 5.2.55ff. ‘Shall they hoist me up, / And show me to the shouting varletry / Of censuring Rome?’ (cf. ibid. 209-13). Saturninus then makes a noble gesture ‘Ransomeless here we set our prisoners free’ (278). A similar gesture was made by Scipio as recorded in Plutarch, Life of Scipio Africanus: ‘Scipio gave them [all the Spanish prisoners] libertie to depart without paying of ransome’ (North, 1603, p. 1088).

In consenting to the marriage of Lavinia to Saturninus, Titus has taken no account of Bassianus, who breaks in ‘Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine’ (280). Marcus supports him, appealing to one of the fundamental principles of Roman law, viz. suum cuique ‘to each his own’⁹—a phrase that, like several other references to law and justice, sounds an ironical note in a play where the only law is the lex talionis. This interchange recalls a much earlier dispute in which another Lavinia had been betrothed to Turnus (Aen.7.366) but was then assigned by her father to Aeneas (Aen.7.268-73; cf. coniuge praerepta in 9.138)—an action which precipitated a full-scale war: ‘pactaque furit pro coniuge Turnus' as Ovid says in Met.14.451 (‘And Turnus fights furiously for his promised bride’). Doubtless the Virgilian precedent was responsible for the name of Titus' daughter, who was ‘betroth'd’ to Bassianus (290). As Lavinia is dragged away, Mutius tries to prevent pursuit and is killed by Titus for dishonouring his father. The episode may be set beside a famous case at the beginning of the republic. Brutus, the first consul, superintended the execution of his two sons, who had plotted to restore the Tarquins. Livy (2.5.8) mentions the anguish on the father's face, but does not suggest for a moment that he had any choice.¹⁰ Titus' action, however, was committed in a fit of rage arising from wounded amour-propre.

After this fracas Saturninus decides that he doesn't want Lavinia after all, and turns to ‘lovely Tamora, queen of the Goths / That like the stately Phoebe 'mongst her nymphs / Dost overshine the gallant'st dames of Rome’ (320-2). It has been noticed that in Aen.1.498ff. (in Phaer's translation, first published in 1573) the lovely Dido is ‘most like vnto Diana bright when she to hunt goth out … / Whom thousands of the lady Nimphes await to do her will, / She on her armes her quiuer beares, and all them overshines’.¹¹ But Virgil in turn is indebted to Homer, who says that Nausicaa, like Artemis, outshone her attendants (Odyssey 6.109).

Lucius now begs that Mutius be buried with his brothers in the family tomb (352-3). Titus angrily refuses—the tomb is for ‘none basely slain in brawls’ (358). He seems unaware that it takes two to make a brawl. As the wrangle continues, Marcus appeals to Titus as ‘more than half my soul’ (378). The phrase comes, directly or otherwise, from Horace, who in Odes 1.3.8 addresses Virgil as animae dimidium meae. As so often, the imitator goes one step further than his source: ‘more than half my soul’; similarly Lavinia loses hands as well as tongue. Marcus then pleads ‘Thou art a Roman, be not barbarous’ (383), and finally he cites the action of the Greeks who on Ulysses' advice buried Ajax (384-6). This information could have come from Lambinus' note on Horace, Satires 2.3.187: ‘Ulysses … Agamemnonem … exoravit ut Aiacem sineret sepeliri’—‘Ulysses prevailed on Agamemnon to allow Ajax to be buried’. Given the focus of this paper, it is fair to point out that the appeals to Titus' Graeco-Roman heritage are placed at the climax of the speech and succeed in tipping the scales. Saturninus, cast in the role of Agamemnon, agrees with ill grace.

In the short scene that follows Saturninus accuses his brother of ‘rape’ in the sense of ‘abduction’ (409), as in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae. This somewhat absurd overstatement prefaces the theme of ‘rape’ in the full sense, acted out in the rape of Lavinia. The ensuing altercation is stilled by ‘the subtle Queen of Goths’, who excuses Titus for not dissembling his fury and then urges Saturninus to dissemble his, whispering ‘I'll find a day to massacre them all’ (455). As a result, the hunt scheduled for the morrow arouses feelings of foreboding, whether or not one remembers Aeneid 4.

In 1.1.500 Aaron speaks for the first time. He proves to be quite at ease in Graeco-Roman culture, declaring in Marlovian hyperbole that his mistress is climbing Olympus' top, and that she is bound to him as tightly as Prometheus is to Caucasus (516)—a rather odd simile, foreshadowing the brutal instances of bondage that are to follow. Tamora is likened to a goddess, Semiramis, a nymph, and a siren—all alluring females, and the last, at least, potentially murderous.¹² Aaron then separates Chiron and Demetrius who are quarrelling over Lavinia. He does so by diverting them from adulterous seduction (for Lavinia is as chaste as Lucrece) to joint rape, Lavinia being seen as ‘a dainty doe’ (617; cf.593 and 2.1.26). Secrecy must be observed, but as ‘The Emperor's court is like the house of Fame’ (626)—Ovid, Met.12.39ff. via Chaucer¹³—the youths are to take Lavinia quietly into a wood, where they will be ‘shadow'd from heaven's eye’ (630). This, of course, is quite intelligible in itself, but it also represents the remnant of an earlier allusion in which Bassianus is visualized as wearing ‘Vulcan's badge’ (589), i.e. horns. The adultery of Mars and Venus was reported to Vulcan (Venus' husband) by the sun who, as the original spy in the sky, sees everything—a famous story from the Odyssey 8.266ff. recounted by Ovid in Met.4.171ff. Ovid does not refer to an eye, but Golding (206-8) does: ‘It is reported how this god [i.e. the Sunne] did first of all espie, / (For everie thing in Heaven and Earth is open to his eie) / How Venus with the warlike Mars advoutrie did commit’.

Demetrius claims that until (right or wrong) he satisfies his lust he is going through hell. ‘Be it right or wrong’ seems to be the intended meaning of Sit fas aut nefas (633). The normal Latin for this would be sive fas sit sive nefas, and a trawl through cd Rom phi has produced no example of the phrase given in the text; so the writer may be improvising. In the words per Stygia, per manes vehor (635) Stygia seems intelligible enough, though I have not noticed this neuter plural adjective being used as a noun = ‘the Stygian regions’. The reading of f4 (Per Styga) ‘through the Styx’ deserves consideration. The words will then be scanned quite regularly as the beginning of an English iambic pentameter, like the shorter phrase Sit fas aut nefas in 633. The source is acknowledged to be Seneca's iambic trimeter per Styga, per amnes igneos, amens sequar (‘Through the Styx, through the river of fire, I will follow in my madness’) from Phaedra 1180, spoken by the heroine in an agony of guilt. A copyist unfamiliar with the Greek accusative singular might have altered Styga into a Latin neuter plural (cf. the misprint in Hughes's note), whereas the opposite process would have been most unlikely. It seems more probable, however, that the change was made deliberately by Shakespeare; for the general Stygia would have combined with the general manes (‘spirits’), which he substituted for the other river (i.e. Phlegethon).

In 2.2 Tamora, who is now the emperor's wife, conveniently forgets her pledge of devotion in 1.1.334-7, and tries to seduce Aaron: ‘let us sit, / And whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds …’ (16-17). Echo was called a vocalis nymphe in Ovid, Met.3.357; Golding (443) rendered this as ‘a babling nymph’. (One recalls that for such babbling Echo had been deprived of speech.) Tamora proposes that they follow the example of Aeneas and Dido in the cave (Aen.4.165ff.); Aaron, however, declines, for ‘Blood and revenge are hammering in my head’ (39). He looks forward to Bassianus' death and the violation of Lavinia: ‘His Philomel must lose her tongue today, / Thy sons make pillage of her chastity’ (43-4). This is the first sign that Ovid's story is about to be woven into the action of the play.

There follows an exchange of discourtesies. Bassianus opens: ‘Who have we here? Rome's royal empress … Or is it Dian, habited like her … ?’ (55ff.). In the Greek romances it was common for a young man, on meeting a young woman, to ask in admiration whether she was a goddess. The earliest example comes in the source of all romances, where Odysseus addresses Nausicaa (Odyssey 6.151-2). More to the point, in Aeneid 1 Aeneas encounters a female figure dressed in hunting garb and wonders if it is Diana (329); actually it is Venus in disguise. To Bassianus' sarcastic question Tamora retorts ‘Had I the pow'r that some say Dian had, / Thy temples should be planted presently / With horns, as was Actaeon's’. At this Lavinia reveals an unexpectedly coarse side of her character: ‘'Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning’, i.e. making men cuckolds; Saturninus will surely have horns now; let's hope his hounds don't catch sight of him. The horrifying story of Actaeon was to be found in Ovid, Met.3.138ff. As A. B. Taylor remarks, ‘The invocation of Actaeon is ominous in a play where men and women are about to turn predators’.¹⁴ Bassianus then refers insultingly to Aaron's colour, despising as ‘a barbarous Moor’ (78) the man whom Tamora had called her ‘sweet Moor’ (51). As Shakespeare has been thinking of the Aeneid, it is possible that he has in mind Virgil's Iarbas, another member of ‘the Moorish race’ (Aen.4.206-7), who is motivated by malevolence towards another leader, viz. Aeneas. Virgil never mentions his colour, but the phrase Gaetulus Iarbas (4.326) has connotations of wildness and savagery.

Tamora now tells her sons that Bassianus and Lavinia have enticed her to ‘A barren detested vale’ (93). As her account develops it becomes harder to remember that this is the locus amoenus described in such idyllic terms to Aaron (12-18). She alleges that they intended to tie her to a tree (the bondage theme again) and leave her to die. Her sons therefore murder Bassianus and make to drag Lavinia away, telling Tamora to ignore her pleas. Lavinia then cries ‘When did the tiger's young ones teach the dam?’—a clever adaptation of Ovid's straightforward comparison of Procne to a tigress (Met.6.637). Bassianus' body is then flung into a pit, as Aaron had instructed. In describing the pit Shakespeare's imagination runs riot.¹⁵ Just a few points are relevant here. First, the place is ‘As hateful as Cocytus' misty mouth’ (236). The mist may owe something to the sulphurous vapour (halitus) that issued from the cave at the entrance to the underworld in Aeneid 6.240. Again, Shakespeare is thinking of hell in terms of its rivers; for not only does he use ‘Cocytus’ but also, with the adjective ‘hateful’, he alludes to ‘abhorred Styx’. Later the pit is a ‘gaping hollow of the earth’ (249); likewise Virgil's cave yawns ‘with a vast gape’ (vasto hiatu in v.237). Finally, with ‘a swallowing womb’ we have a grotesque inversion of Terra Mater. Housman had something similar in mind when he wrote ‘Now to her lap the incestuous earth / The son she bore has ta'en’ (Additional Poems VIII). Inside the pit the dim light given out by the carbuncle ring on Bassianus' corpse reminds Martius of Pyramus ‘When he by night lay bathed in maiden blood’ (232). This is the view that Thisbe had of the dead Pyramus by moonlight. It comes, not directly from Ovid, but from Golding: ‘And there beweltred in his maiden bloud hir lover she espide’ (4.162).

As Shakespeare could not represent the rape and mutilation on stage, the atrocities are described in 2.3, first brutally by Demetrius and Chiron, and then sympathetically by Marcus, but the sympathy rings false as Marcus dwells in loving detail on the girl's injuries (especially in 23-5). Equally false in this situation are his Ovidian allusions. He infers that ‘some Tereus hath deflowered thee’ (26) and then describes her blood coming ‘As from a conduit with three issuing spouts’ (30). This goes beyond what Ovid had said about the bleeding Pyramus: ‘As when a Conduite pipe is crackt, the water bursting out / Doth shote it selfe a great way off and pierce the Ayre about’ (Golding 4.148-9). As the story was supposed to explain how the berries of the mulberry tree became red; the blood had to spurt into the air. Yet the image of the cracked pipe has been much criticized as a lapse of taste. Gower left it out (Confessio Amantis, 3.4.2); Chaucer took it in his stride: ‘The blod out of the wounde as brode sterte / As water, whan the condit broken is’ (The Legend of Good Women, 851-2); but Shakespeare multiplied it by three.

Marcus also notices that the loss of Lavinia's hands prevented her from revealing the crime in the manner employed by Philomel, who ‘in a tedious sampler sewed her mind’ (39). Had Lavinia's tongue not been cut out, she could have charmed her attacker, who would have fallen asleep ‘As Cerberus at the Thracian poet's feet’ (51). As often, Shakespeare is blending two passages. In the story of Orpheus (‘the Thracian poet’) and Eurydice, Cerberus, on hearing Orpheus' song, ceases to bark (Virgil, Georgics 4.483), but does not fall asleep. In Aeneid 6, however, he does fall asleep after devouring the drugged cake thrown to him by another vates—not a poet, but a prophetess (419-23). When Marcus leads in the wounded Lavinia he compares her to a wounded deer (3.1.90-1)—a simile taken up by Titus in one of those puns that make the modern reader uncomfortable.¹⁶ The figure itself picks up the ‘dainty doe’ mentioned by Aaron (1.1.617) and Demetrius (2.1.26). Dido, too, had been likened to a stricken doe (Aen.4.68-73), and the immediate cause of the war in Italy was the wounding of a pet stag (Aen.7.483ff.).

In 3.1 Titus tries to save his sons' life by allowing Aaron to chop off his hand, but the hand is returned to him along with the young men's heads. Here, as the editors point out, Shakespeare is indebted to Bandello, Novelle 3.21. The severed heads, however, come from Seneca's Thyestes, in which Atreus removes the cover of a dish, revealing the heads of the sons whom Thyestes has just eaten (1004-5). In both plays the moment is a terrific coup de théâtre; but by using the severed heads here at this halfway point Shakespeare forfeited the chance of using them later on, and had to fall back on a less plausible alternative.

After 3.1 Lucius departs to persuade the Goths to attack Rome ‘And make proud Saturnine and his empress / Beg at the gates like Tarquin and his queen’ (298-9). According to Livy 1.59.1, following the death of Lucretia, Brutus swears ‘to hunt down L. Tarquinius Superbus along with his wicked wife’; in 1.60.2 he adds that ‘the gates were closed against Tarquinius’; and in 2.6.2 Tarquin pleads to the Etruscans that he is an exile and ‘in poverty’ (egentem). Shakespeare has combined these elements to form a picture of the royal pair begging at the gate.¹⁷

In 3.2.52ff. comes the scene where Marcus kills a fly with his knife. Titus exclaims ‘Out on thee, murderer! thou kill'st my heart; / Mine eyes are cloy'd with view of tyranny.’ The combination of sharp instrument, fly, and tyranny raises the possibility that Shakespeare may have half remembered how the tyrant Domitian ‘at the beginning of his reign … used to do nothing more than catch flies and run them through with a sharp pen’ (Suetonius, Life of Domitian 3.1). Shakespeare's scene, of course, may be entirely original—one thinks of ‘As willingly as one would kill a fly’ (5.1.142) and ‘As flies to wanton boys’. But although Philemon Holland's translation of Suetonius (1606) was probably too late, Domitian's behaviour was so odd that Shakespeare might have heard of it through another channel—perhaps even his schoolmaster. However that may be, he builds this trivial scene into a vicious attack on the Moor (67-79). As the act closes, Titus leads Lavinia and the boy Lucius away to read ‘Sad stories chanced in the times of old’ (84).

This is immediately taken up in 4.1, where young Lucius is told that ‘Cornelia never with more care / Read to her sons than she hath read to thee / Sweet poetry and Tully's Orator’ (12-14). Cornelia's care in educating the Gracchi is recorded at the beginning of Plutarch's Life of Tiberius Gracchus; North uses the phrase ‘so carefully’. The commentaries may be right in referring to Cicero's Orator and De Oratore, but it is worth mentioning that in another rhetorical work, the Brutus, Cicero twice reports Cornelia's activities as a mother (104 and 211). Of these passages the former is the more interesting in that it too refers to her care (diligentia).

Lavinia is now in a highly agitated condition—so much so that Lucius recalls reading how ‘Hecuba of Troy / Ran mad for sorrow’ (20-1)—perhaps a rather distant echo of Golding, who speaks of Hecuba being ‘dumb for sorrow’ (13.645), but Nφrgaard (see note 24) may be right in pointing to Cooper's Thesaurus, where ‘[Hecuba] finally waxed madde, and did bite and strike all men she met’. Lavinia now seizes a copy of the ‘Metamorphosis’ (so entitled by Golding), and manages, with some help, to find ‘the tragic tale of Philomel’ (47). From this we infer that the ‘sweet poetry’ which she used to read to Lucius included Ovid's masterpiece. Titus, beginning to understand what has happened, suspects she was ‘Forc'd in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods’. Ovid had written in stabula alta trahit, silvis obscura vetustis (Met.6.521)—‘drags her into deep stabula, darkly hidden by ancient woods’; there he was using stabula in the sense of ‘dens’, as Virgil did in Aen.6.179, where Aeneas made his way in antiquam silvam, stabula alta ferarum (‘into an ancient forest, the deep dens of wild beasts’). In view of this it is perhaps significant that Marcus asks ‘O why should nature build so foul a den?’ (59). Golding (6.663) mistranslates alta stabula as ‘a pelting graunge’—a small barn. Yet he has some excuse, for unlike Shakespeare Ovid later says that Philomela was locked up in a building: structa rigent solido stabulorum moenia saxo (573, cf. 596)—‘the walls of the building (stabulorum) were firmly constructed out of solid stone’. Titus now urges Lavinia to indicate in some way who did the deed. Could it have been Saturnine, ‘as Tarquin erst / That left the camp to sin in Lucrece' bed?’ (63-4). This, of course, was not Tarquinius Superbus, but his son Sextus, whose crime was recounted in Livy 1.57.6-58.12 and described in The Rape of Lucrece (512ff.). Marcus traces his own name in a sandy plot.¹⁸ And now comes the moment of recognition (Aristotle's anagnorisis). Fulfilling Chiron's taunt ‘And if thy stumps will let thee, play the scribe’ (2.3.4), Lavinia writes (in Latin, one notes) ‘Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius’ (78). The dramatic impact of this can be assessed when we contrast it with the chapbook, in which Lavinia succeeds in composing a rhyming couplet: ‘The lustful Sons of the proud Emperess / Are doers of this hateful wickedness’.

At the sight of the names Titus, according to the transmitted text, exclaims: Magni dominator poli, / Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides?—‘Ruler of great heaven, are you so insensitive when you hear of crimes? So insensitive when you witness them?’ Magni, however, is a misquotation, as Theobald saw; for Seneca does not admit a long syllable at that point in the line. The second verse undoubtedly comes from Seneca, Phaedra 672, and line 671 ends Magne (sic) regnator deum; similarly in Thyestes 1077 Jupiter is addressed as summe caeli rector (‘Highest ruler of heaven’, not ‘Ruler of highest heaven’), and in the very next line we find dominator. Again one wonders whether it is Shakespeare's change or that of a copyist.¹⁹

Marcus kneels down with Titus, Lavinia, and young Lucius who is now ‘the Roman Hector's hope’ (88), his father, who has gone to enlist the help of the Goths in saving the city, being now ‘the Roman Hector’. They swear an oath of vengeance which Titus wishes to engrave on ‘a leaf of brass’ (102). This phrase has nothing to do with the myth of the ages. It refers to the durability of brass (cf. Horace, Odes.3.30.1 monumentum aere perennius). Titus mentions this material, because the sands on which Marcus and Lavinia have just written will be blown by the wind ‘like Sibyl's leaves abroad’ (105); in Aen.6.74-5 Aeneas begs the Sibyl not to entrust her prophecies to leaves that will be scattered by the winds.

In 4.2.20 young Lucius delivers to Chiron and Demetrius weapons sent by Titus ostensibly for their protection (15-16). The accompanying scroll reads Integer vitae scelerisque purus / Non eget Mauri iaculis nec arcu (‘The man who is unblemished in his life and free from crime has no need of a Moor's javelins or bow’). Spelt out, the message means, I take it, ‘An honest man needs no weapons, least of all those of a Moor’. Chiron recalls reading Horace's verse (Odes 1.22.1-2) ‘in the grammar’, but fails to see its significance. Aaron, however, does see the point and comments, in an aside, on Chiron's stupidity (‘Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!’).

Tamora's black baby is now brought in, and Aaron in high style refuses to allow Demetrius to kill it, casting himself as Jupiter against the giant Enceladus and ‘Typhon's brood’²⁰—even, if need be, against Hercules and Mars (97). He sets about ensuring the baby's safety by murdering its nurse, and then carries it away for protection to the Goths, remarking good-humouredly: ‘I'll make you … suck the goat, / And cabin in a cave’ (179-81). This only makes sense if we remember that in Greek mythology the infant Zeus was hidden in a Cretan cave to prevent Cronus (the original child-eater) from devouring him; there he was suckled by the goat Amalthea.²¹ (One thinks of Poussin's beautiful picture in the Dulwich Gallery.²²) The parallel gains relevance from the fact that the Italian counterpart of Cronus was Saturn, and this baby is being smuggled away to escape the wrath of Saturninus.

In the myth of the metals Astraea (Justice) eventually tired of men's wickedness and rose to the skies, where she became the constellation Virgo. In Aratus' account (Phaenomena 129-36) this happened with the arrival of the bronze age; Ovid (Met.1.141-50) says it was in the age of iron that terras Astraea reliquit. When in 4.3.4 Titus quoted the phrase, no doubt the more learned would have remembered Ovid's context. Yet it is the consequences of Astraea's departure that are emphasized. In what follows, the main concern is absent Justice; between 4.3.9 and 4.4.23 the word itself occurs eleven times. So (at the risk of being ‘reductive’) it seems a mistake to give too much attention to the myth, which is not actually mentioned.²³

In 4.3.54ff. Titus distributes arrows destined for half a dozen divinities. The conceits about hitting Virgo, Taurus, Aries and the rest (which were perhaps thought of as being represented on the wall of the court) are based, as Maxwell says, on Seneca, Thyestes 844ff., where the chorus predicts that the signs of the zodiac will fall down. Later (4.4.61ff.) news comes that Lucius is leading an army against Rome, as Coriolanus had done so long before. In 5.1 he makes a noble entry, but before long is clamouring that Aaron and his baby be hanged (47-8, 51-2). In return for the safety of the child Aaron proceeds to tell all that has happened. He treats the rape and mutilation of Lavinia as acts of entertainment (91-6), whereupon Lucius cries out that her two attackers were ‘barbarous beastly villains like thyself’ (97). (Golding in 6.655 calls the intention of Tereus ‘barbrous and beastly’.) Finally Lucius orders Aaron to be gagged (151).

Taking a hint from Ovid's Procne who disguises herself as a Bacchanal (Met.6.589ff.), Tamora now dresses herself as Revenge (5.2.3); Chiron and Demetrius are Rape and Murder. Titus is not deceived, but Tamora thinks he is mad and plans to use him ‘to scatter and disperse the giddy Goths’ (78). In due course Titus orders Chiron and Demetrius to be tied up and gagged (160-1). After rehearsing their crimes, he proceeds to tell them his grisly plans: ‘For worse than Philomel you used my daughter, / And worse than Progne I will be revenged’ (194-5); the banquet will prove ‘More stern and bloody than the Centaurs' feast’ (203)—an ambitious claim, for at that feast, recounted by Ovid in the most gruesome detail (Met.12.210-535), well over fifty lives were lost.

In the preparation and description of the meal Shakespeare diverged from his sources, as noted above. Unlike Ovid and Seneca, he included the sons' heads in the dish (189 and 200) (we are to imagine the skulls being ground into dust and then made into a paste.) In Ovid, when Tereus sends for his son, Procne says ‘You have within the one whom you want’ (Met.6.655). When he asks again, Philomela bursts in and hurls the child's head at his father, who immediately pursues the women; before he can catch them they are transformed into birds. In Seneca, when Thyestes calls for his sons, Atreus with a flourish uncovers the dish, revealing their heads (1005). In Shakespeare, Titus serves the meal dressed as a chef (5.3.30). Before it begins he asks Saturninus if Virginius was right to kill his daughter. Livy (3.44) tells how Appius Claudius was seized with a desire to debauch Virginius' daughter (virginis … stuprandae libido). By employing a legalistic device he was about to succeed in doing so when her father, Verginius, intervened and killed the girl. Shakespeare draws on a later version which says she was actually ‘enforced, stained, and deflowered’ (38).²⁴ Saturninus says Virginius' action was justified, whereupon Titus kills Lavinia (45-6), explaining that she had been raped by Chiron and Demetrius. Saturninus: ‘Go fetch them hither to us presently’. Titus: ‘Why, there they are, both baked in this pie; / Whereof their mother daintily hath fed, / Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred’ (60-1). The rhyme seems to come from Golding: ‘King Tereus … fed / And swallowed downe the selfsame flesh that of his bowels bred’ (6.824-5). Yet the picture of a mother eating her own children is doubly revolting, because she seems to be taking them back into her body. The point is made by Shakespeare himself when he makes Titus say ‘and bid that strumpet …, / Like to the earth, swallow her own increase’ (5.2.190-91). Instead of gloating over Tamora's horror, Titus kills her. In Seneca the victim reacts with a typical flight of rhetoric: addressing Jupiter as tu, summe caeli rector, aetheriae potens / dominator aulae (‘Thou, highest ruler of heaven, powerful master of the celestial court’), Thyestes urges the god to bring cosmic chaos.

With Tamora, Titus, and Saturninus all dead, a speaker urges Marcus to re-enact the role of Aeneas recounting the fall of Priam's Troy to Dido; he is to tell what new Sinon has bewitched the citizens (for Sinon see Aen.2.57-198, especially the reference to his tricks and craftiness in 195-6), and who has brought ‘the fatal engine in [fatalis machina describes the horse in Aen.2.237] / That gives our Troy, our Rome, the fatal wound’ (5.3.79-86). ‘Our Troy, our Rome’—the presence of the past could not be more concisely explicit. Marcus at first sight complies: like Aeneas, he cannot utter all the bitter grief (5.3.88)—Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem in Aen.2.3 (Unutterable, o queen, is the grief that you bid me recall); but unlike Aeneas he really is unable to face the task and passes it on to Lucius, who summarizes the events, speaking of his own part once again in terms that recall Coriolanus.²⁵

After being hailed as emperor, he promises to bring reconciliation; but first he passes a cruel sentence on the defiant Aaron: ‘Set him breast-deep in earth and famish him; / There let him stand and rave and cry for food’ (178-9). Many listeners, no doubt, would have recalled the fate of Tantalus. In Homer (Odyssey 11.582ff.) he stands in a pool and is plagued by thirst; he is also ‘tantalized’ by fruit, figs, and olives. In Horace (Epodes 17.66) he is tortured by the sight of an ample meal; and in a similar passage a young boy is to be buried up to his neck and starved within the sight of food (Epodes 5.31ff.). But how is Tantalus connected with the play? In Seneca's Thyestes Tantalus' ghost appears in the opening scene, complaining about the tortures of both hunger and thirst (1-6; cf.152ff.). He is, we are reminded, the grandfather of Atreus and Thyestes. And his crime? He carved up his son Pelops and served him as food to the gods. So there seems ample reason why he should have occurred to Shakespeare at this point in the play. Moreover, one of Thyestes' murdered sons was also called Tantalus.

As for Tamora, she is to be denied burial; instead she will be thrown ‘to beasts and birds to prey’ (197). Such a fate is mentioned several times in ancient literature, but since we know that Shakespeare had been reading the Thyestes, it is reasonable to cite vv.1032-3 of that play. There, realizing that his sons are dead, but not that he has eaten them, Thyestes asks Atreus: Utrumne saevis pabulum alitibus iacent, / an beluis servantur, an pascunt feris? (‘Do they lie there as prey for cruel birds, or are they reserved for seamonsters? Or are they food for beasts?’). Such, then, is the fate in store for Tamora. The last word of the play is ‘pity’, but it is the kind of pity associated with vultures.

Although there have been various attempts to moralize the Metamorphoses, it is now generally accepted that the various effects—comic, pathetic, horrific, bizarre—are all parts of an ever-moving narrative, all facets of the poet's iridescent imagination. Occasionally we find his brutality sensational or even absurd, and his sentimental descriptions of cruelty repellent; but Ovid himself is not deeply involved, and does not invite us to pause and ponder. Unlike Virgil, he has little to offer the earnest. This cast of mind is surely what appealed to Shakespeare at this stage of his career. Opinion about Seneca's tragedies is still divided. Can they be seen, not just as an orgy of horrors, but as a Stoic's attempt to show what happens when reason is overthrown by lawless passions? And are their emotional passages noble rhetoric or overblown bombast? The various controversies surrounding Titus Andronicus also seem set to continue. But as we watch the writer's memory at work—taking now from Virgil, Ovid, or Plutarch, now from Livy, Horace, or Seneca, and combining or altering what is taken to suit his dramatic purpose—we can hardly deny that, in addition to much else, the play is a brilliant display of creative reminiscence.

Notes

1. In the Introduction to his commentary (Cambridge 1994), p. 37 Alan Hughes speaks of ‘a modern audience's resentment of classical allusions’. Perhaps he's right; but here we are concerned with the young Shakespeare, who was still in his twenties and was doubtless showing off. Greene called him ‘an upstart crow’; but the taunt was something of a boomerang, because it was filched from Horace, who had warned Celsus about the danger of stolen plumage (Epist.1.3.15-20). Horace himself had raided the capacious wardrobe of Aesop (Phaedrus 1.3; Babrius 72). I am not qualified to judge how far the allusions, especially in Act 1, indicate the influence of Peele.

   For the unhistorical history see T. J. B. Spencer, ‘Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans’, Shakespeare Survey 10, 1957, 27-38.

2. The English pronunciation of ‘Romulus’ tends to disguise the meaning of his name, i.e. ‘Roman’; English also reverses the quantity of the e in ‘Remus’, which was short.

3. Cicero, e.g. laid it down that ‘the order should be morally faultless and an example to the rest of the citizens’ (Laws 3.28). For Rome's moral vocabulary see the index of D. C. Earl, The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (London, 1967).

4. For other observations on the names see R. A. Law, ‘The Roman Background to Titus Andronicus’, Studies in Philology 40, 1943, 145-53, and J. Bate in his admirable commentary (London 1995) pp. 93-4. In what follows I adopt Bate's lineation. All line references are to Bate's edition.

5. G. K. Hunter in J. C. Gray (ed.), Mirror up to Shakespeare (Toronto, 1984), pp. 184-5.

6. See Ovid, Fasti 2.533ff. with J. G. Frazer's notes (vol. 2 of his great commentary, pp. 431ff.).

7. The episode is referred to in Euripides, Hecuba 37-41, 188-90; see also Seneca, Troades 191-96. E. Jones maintains that Shakespeare knew Euripides through Erasmus' Latin translation (The Origins of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1977), pp. 90-105).

8. The usual form of the dictum in modern times is ‘Call no man happy until he is dead’.

9. See, e.g., Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3.38 (Iustitia, quae suum cuique distribuit), Justinian, Digest (Ulpian) 1.1.10.

10. The gentle Virgil shows his unease: see Aen.6.819-23. A less famous case is that of Titus Manlius, who had his son executed for disobeying orders (Livy 8.7).

11. Diana (Phoebe) was also, of course, the Moon goddess.

12. Goddesses could be cruel; Semiramis was a half-legendary Assyrian queen who used to murder her lovers (Diodorus Siculus 2.13.4); nymphs could also be dangerous, as Hylas found (Apollonius, Argonautica 1.1207ff.); the Sirens need no comment.

13. Virgil, Aen.4.173ff., the original source, mentions no house.

14. A. B. Taylor, Shakespeare's Ovid (Cambridge, 2001), p. 66.

15. D. Willbern's paper in English Literary Renaissance 8, 1978, 159-82 (cited by Bate, p. 9 n.1) was not available to me; but see H. James, Themes in Drama 13 (1991), 128-9.

16. Other examples are the plays on ‘hand’ in 3.1; one is reminded of Dryden's complaint that Ovid was ‘frequently witty out of season’ (Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker, (Oxford, 1900), vol. 1.234; cf. vol. 2.256-7).

17. P. Legouis, Shakespeare Survey 28, 1975, 73 cites a Latin translation of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities 5.3.2, which had omnium rerum necessarium indigens (lacking all necessities). But the idea was already in Livy.

18. Maxwell points out that here Shakespeare is drawing on Ovid's description of the bovine Io, ‘who printed her name in the sande with her foote’ (Golding, 1.804-5; Ovid, 1.649 had in pulvere ‘in the dust’). A little earlier (1.635-6) Ovid's Io tried to stretch out her arms (bracchia) but had no arms to stretch out. Golding, significantly, has ‘handes’ (1.788-9); cf. TA 2.3.6-7.

19. In another work (Epistles 107.11) Seneca translates some lines of the Stoic Cleanthes beginning ‘Duc, o parens celsique dominator poli’ (Lead me o Father, ruler of high heaven). This was not part of a play, and both thought and context were quite different. Yet in view of dominator poli one ought not to rule out a possible influence on our passage.

20. The Giant Enceladus' part in the revolt against Jupiter is mentioned in Horace, Odes 3.4.56; he was struck down by a thunderbolt and imprisoned under Sicily (Apollodorus, 1.6.2 in Frazer's Loeb edition) or Etna (Virgil, Aen.3.578-80). Typhon, offspring of Tartarus and Earth, also took part in the attack (Apollodorus 1.6.3). He fathered various monsters, e.g. the Chimaera and the Sphinx (see Apollodorus, vol. 2, Index). He is said to have suffered the same fate as Enceladus.

21. Apollodorus 1.1.5-7 with Frazer's notes.

22. For other representations see J. D. Reid, The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1900 (Oxford, 1993), vol. 2, pp. 1068-70.

23. In 3.1.16-22 Titus is explicitly referring to the sequence of the seasons, not to the myth of metals; so ‘eternal springtime’ (21) can be no more than an ironical glance at Ovid's ver erat aeternum (Met.1.107).

    In 4.3.48 the sequence, I take it, is ‘We are not large like cedars or giants, but in our determination we are solid steel, though our sufferings are intolerable. And since there's no justice here, we will approach heaven.’ The phrase ‘metal, steel to the very back’ is a boast (see Lyly, Euphues, ed. R. W. Bond, Complete Works (Oxford, 1902), vol. 1, p. 207 and all the passages noted in Tilley s842, also OED steel 1a and 1f.). The reference to the power of shrubs vis-à-vis cedars is straightforward, as in Luc. 664-5 (even though Tilley's references at c 208 show that paradoxically the shrub was sometimes judged the stronger). The expression, then, is surely favourable; so it cannot refer to the iron age. Undue emphasis (I think) is given to the myth by R. S. Miola (Shakespeare's Rome, Cambridge 1983) in his otherwise perceptive third chapter.

24. This version, pace Maxwell, is not in Florus 1.17.24, which says only that Appius intended to debauch the girl (stupro destinaret); for further evidence see H. Nφrgaard, English Studies 45 (1964), 140.

25. So Bate 13-15, rightly; but ‘unkindly banished, / The gates shut on me, and turned weeping out / To beg relief among Rome's enemies’ (103-5) also reminds us disturbingly of an earlier exile (3.1.299).