Uses for a Dead Child in Chaucer, Livy, and Ancient Israel

 

     Like most of his fellow-pilgrims’ narratives, the Physician’s contribution to the Canterbury Tales is a retelling based on a written source.  Far from simply repeating an earlier version, though, Chaucer’s revisions express meaning absent from his source.  The anecdote from Livy [1] the Physician relates has quite a different meaning on the road between London and Canterbury than it did in ancient Rome.  Much significance arises from context and explicit cues apart from the implications of the plot.  The incident is sensational enough to guarantee readers’ attention in any era: in mythic, elemental terms it tells of a loving father who kills his daughter to save her from sexual exploitation.  Yet the significance is altogether different in the two versions and these meanings are also at variance with an earlier story of a sacrificed daughter and with the contemporary reader’s likely reaction.

     The plot elements of the story follow closely the spirited account in Livy, seizing the reader’s attention with lurid sex and violence.  A father finds his lovely and virtuous fourteen-year-old daughter fraudulently claimed as a slave by a lecherous judge.  Rather than let his Virginia (with her sprechende Name) fall to Appius’ lust, the father kills her.  She is a virgin sacrifice, offered up for the ideal of female sexual purity and dependence.

     Yet the first reaction of the modern reader must be shock at Virginius’ filicide, an issue that does not exist in Livy but which by the Middle Ages had become sufficiently important that in Chaucer’s telling, unlike in the Latin, Virginia consents willingly to her own murder.  Thus her end approaches the hagiographic pattern set by the many female saints who are said to have died willingly rather than accept a pagan or otherwise unacceptable lover.  While embracing her own death, she asks only for a brief delay, referring to the respite given Jephthah’s daughter in the Hebrew scriptures. 

     What follows Virginia’s death in Chaucer’s account has no hint of criticism of her father’s brutal deed.  After she dies at his hands, an aroused mob exacts revenge, imprisoning Appius who then commits suicide, hanging his partisans, yet Virginius requests that Claudius, whose false testimony was the excuse for Virginia’s abduction, be only exiled.  The reader hears another Christian grace-note there, surely, in a glimpse of a divine glow of the about such compassionate mercy.

     The reaction to this story in Chaucer is dramatic and has nothing to do with either praising or blaming the father.  The host is overcome with pathos, with such strong feelings of indignation at the malefactor and sympathy for the poor daughter that he acts as though he were crazy (287).  So distressed by the “pitous” (302) narrative is he that he insists he must have a remedy, either medicine or “corny ale” or a “myrie tale.” (316)  The Pardoner, who is to go next, insists on the second of these alternatives, and they stop into a tavern for a drink.  The excuse is presumably welcomed by others among the travelers. 

     The father’s act is not questioned, but rather presented as an extreme example of paternal love, forced on Virginius, like Oedipus the victim of a terrible fate.  Appius is an obvious villain, by pagan or by Christian standards, and his wickedness makes Virginia and her father shine forth the more brightly with their virtue. In a brief coda (277-286) the physician glosses his own story, providing an unlikely version of the story’s instructive value.  Rather than, like the Host, considering Appius a model of extreme sin and Virgina exemplifying the polar opposite, an all-but-impossible saintliness, the Physician identifies with Appius as a fellow sinner and takes the tale as a warning to forsake sin while one still may, bearing in mind that none can tell when God might bring hidden deeds to light.  There is no mention of the evil-doer’s victims, only the pain of the “worm of conscience” and his constant fear, knowing that in the end there must inevitably be an accounting for sin. 

     Presented in the context of the pilgrimage the Physician’s Tale seems, in spite of its shocking content, a diverting tale, a potent emotional experience suited for passing an idle hour, the medieval version of a late show horror movie.  The motif of a lovely and innocent heroine in danger is universally popular, and here its sensationalism is heightened by the horrific act of the father.  In spite of this potent, highly-colored material, though, the stated theme is generic, the most commonplace of medieval Christian formulae, encouragement toward salvation, to avoid sin and embrace Jesus. 

     The primary source for the Physician’s Tale is Livy (III, 44ff.) who tells the story in a leisurely and lively manner, clearly exploiting the sex and violence that make the story of Appius and Verginia (Livy’s spelling) attractive to readers.  The context and the stated significance of the account in Livy, however, is quite distinct from those of Chaucer’s story.   The Roman historian’s goal was to trace the founding of his city and the tale of Verginius marks a transition from the second decemvirate to the second plebeian succession.  Even apart from the intrusion of legends like that of Verginius, Livy’s presentation of such change is often based as much on tradition and literary models as on historical fact.  For him Appius’ attempt to rape Verginia is representative of his generally vicious rule.  Thus Livy includes a lengthy explanation of the strengthening of plebian power in the aftermath of Appius’ crime.  For him the political issue was leading the people’s reaction.  “The people were excited partly by the atrocity of the deed, partly by the opportunity now offered of recovering their liberties.”  The ordinary Romans “talked of nothing but the abolition of the tribunitian power and the right of appeal and loudly expressed their indignation at the condition of public affairs.” 

     Livy emphasizes the role of sexual offenses against women as a sign of decadent leadership and the marker of institutional change by referring to the earlier rape and death of Lucretia which had preceded the overthrow of the monarchy and the original founding of the senate.   Clearly, violence to respectable women is the hallmark of misrule, allowing a political struggle to be accompanied (or, perhaps, masked) as moral outrage.  In Chaucer the sin is personal or spiritual whereas here it is socio-political.   

     In Chaucer’s version Virginia’s daughter refers to another story that in part resembles her own when she asks for some brief respite before her death like that afforded Jephthah’s daughter in the book of Judges.  Though she also is killed by a loving father, this ancient Hebrew episode includes no lascivious and unjust judge.  Jephthah, despite being the son of a “harlot” and practicing banditry, defeats the Ammonites as a Jewish general and becomes then a respected “judge,” ruling Israel for six years.  He finds himself sacrificing his own daughter as the result of a rash vow.  There is no question of his failing to carry out his contract with the divine.  His daughter was, like Agamemnon’s, the price of military victory.

     Once again female blood accompanies a regime change.  The putative theme is, as so often in the Hebrew scripture, the ups and downs of the Jews interpreted as the result of either cleaving to pious rules or flirting with non-Jewish practices.  Israel had been losing its battles because they “did evil again in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the Lord, and served not him.” (Judges 10)  Oddly, though, Israel’s champion Jephthah endears himself to God with a vow that echoes the human sacrifice of the Jews’ neighbors.  His prayer must have pleased Jehovah since victory in battle follows.  Far from deserving censure for killing his daughter, Jephthah was originally, like Abraham, whose case turned out somewhat differently, a type of the believer who demonstrates virtue by submitting his will to the divine.

     The archaic ritual character of this sacrifice is evident in the fact that Jephthah’s daughter’s death was remembered in an annual observance.  “And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year. (Judges 11, 39-40)  This custom suggests that the story is a descent into legend of what was once a divine myth about a female vegetation spirit similar to Ishtar or Persephone.  Here the context is wholly mythic.  Such actions occur on a cosmic stage.  Jephthah’s actions have no moral content any more than those of Oedipus, though later priestly commentators including the Jewish B'reshith Rabba and (much later) Rashi and the Christians Ambrose and John Chrysostom made him an example of error for the same actions that had been consdiered praiseworthy.

     The righteous killing of one’s child so outrages ordinary expectations that stories of such deeds will excite interest in any human society.  Yet the themes implied by the stories of Jephthah and Verginius (and Virginius) vary widely.  The Hebrew version has origins in the cycle of the natural year and the observation that life lives only on life and the hard insistence that the life of the community supersedes personal grief.  Later, Livy’s Latin anecdote about another father’s sacrifice continues the notion that the father’s individual loss is justified by a social gain, in Jephthah’s case the military victory over the Ammonites and in Verginius’ the assertion of the power of the commons, but the mythic and ritualistic associations are muted in favor of proto-democratic political values and individual ethical choice.  Finally, in Chaucer, the story is told for the fun of it, and the putative theme urging the reader to gain salvation by avoiding annoying God seems tossed into the text as an afterthought.      

     Using the violation of the strongest taboos, with the shedding of female blood marking historical change, stories of this type exercise a strong narrative appeal.  The Verginius anecdote appeared in The Romance of the Rose, was depicted by Botticelli, and was retold by later authors, including John Webster and Thomas Heywood in Appius and Virginia and Thomas Babington Macaulay in Lays of Ancient Rome.  In every instance the story’s meaning is a unique compound of plot and context, complicated by what the text says about itself and what the reader makes of it.

 

 

The Sweetness of First Fruits

 

    In April the crocuses appear early, wandering further into the lawn.  Before long they will be rivaled by multi-colored hyacinths and trumpeting daffodils, and I know that soon the pear and apple trees will be spreading petals around the neighborhood in their extravagant springtime display of reproductive energies.  Every year these early manifestations of growth and warmth bring a particular delight,  precious and irreplaceable by the later pleasures of languorous dog days and then fruition’s fulfilment.  We feel a remnant yet of those old regreenings of the world that were greeted with such joy by the medieval poets after suffering the discomfort and privations of winter.    

     First fruits have always held an appeal.  Babies have a charm and a beauty of a sort quite different from that of later life, and, even among fair-minded parents, the first child may retain a special status unavailable to younger siblings.

     For that reason first children have often been considered the most effective offering to deity.  Cain brought “the firstlings of his flock” while Abel brought his grain, and, though the Lord seems to have preferred the younger brother in that primordial sacrifice, blood sacrifices were regularly conducted by the ancient Hebrew-speaking people.  Isaac was a first son with Sarah, and the story of his binding surely implies not only the use of animal offerings but also an earlier practice of human sacrifice.  In later times the “dedication to God” of first-born sons came to mean priesthood (until the establishment of the role of the Levites) though the first-born livestock continued to be ritually killed.  Jehovah did not entirely lose a taste for “first-born sons,” however.  As it happens, I write during Passover, a holiday that celebrates the magical slaughter of the elder sons of the Egyptians and the contrasting survival of the Israelite children.   

     Zeus-worshipping Greeks had similar customs.  In a striking parallel to the story of Abraham, Agamemnon’s first-born daughter Iphigenia was to be sacrificed until, in some versions of the myth, she is replaced by a deer.  The first reaping of wheat and barley made the customary sacrifice to Demeter and Persephone in ritual of the Eleusinian Mysteries.  Celebrants at the Thargelia in honor of Apollo and Artemis offered the first loaves after the threshing, though the festival had earlier involved human sacrifice,.  The Christian Greek-speaking authors of the New Testament used the same term as their pagan kin to denote a sacrifice of first fruits (ἀπαρχή) as well as using the word in a figurative sense, speaking for instance of early Greek converts as “Achaia’s first fruits.” 

     The medieval poems celebrating winter’s end often turn then to thoughts of love, and for many people a first love, though usually supplanted, is never replaced.  For them an initial erotic experience is sufficiently momentous that no subsequent love, however profound, can compare.  Quite commonly, an intense flame burns before the altar of that first love though it may be in an obscure side-chapel of the lover’s psyche, unknown perhaps to friends or spouse. 

     In fact, we become dulled to all experience over time.  A toddler will gape open-mouthed at scenes that have become all-but-invisible through familiarity to their elders.  The first bite of a radish, lick of a dog, the epic of an insect creeping along the ground, any sensation can inspire wonder and delight in a fresh and receptive consciousness.  Even during a single meal the first bite of any dish – roasted lamb, seafood risotto, or chocolate mousse – inevitably brings more pleasure than any subsequent taste. 

     Later, one must reach further afield to recapture similarly affecting experiences.  Travel can make one once again a child with no obligation beyond keeping eyes and ears open, relishing the moment.  If Europe comes to seem less exciting, the traveler may move on to North Africa, then Asia, then the wilds of the upper Amazon. 

     As with travel, so with literature.  To be sure, rereading a text has unique rewards as well, but a first encounter with, say, Midsummer Night’s Dream or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” can, even if only partially digested, be intoxicating.  The same principle seems operative for writers as well as readers.  The first exemplars of a fresh tradition often exhibit a power and energy that fades even as later writers develop more sophisticated and perfect variations.  The primordial power of Gilgamesh, set down not so long after the dawn of writing, the melodies of the archaic Greek poets, the songs of the first Troubadours and Minnesingers, the earliest sonneteers, the original Beats, all possess a special appeal which charms in a way that is lost to their followers.

     In the careers of individual poets, the early work sometimes has an extraordinarily internal impetus that may fail in later works.  How many writers have received prestigious awards for mediocre books decades after their really influential volumes in a kind of belated recognition?  While a relationship between youth and creativity is unproven, in part because of the difficulty of measuring the novelty of either a scientific idea or a poem, a number of studies have tended to confirm that major innovation, whether in science, art, or even in business, is likely to be the province of the young. 

     I confess I find myself rereading the early work more often than later of a sizable list of authors: Ginsberg, Snyder, Bly, Lowell, and Merrill among them.  Those who had once crafted solid striking and beautiful poems later fell (by my lights) into tendentiousness or self-indulgence.  Historically, Wordsworth is an emphatic example of literary decline with age.  Few there are who have read the work of the years of his laureateship without compulsion, while every student has encountered a few early lyrics.  

     This is not to say that everything slides toward devolution.  To be sure, gardens offer rewards in midsummer and fall, transformative love affairs may occur in later life, a gourmet may both refine and broaden tastes as time goes on, we understand poetry more with experience and in general continue to make imaginative discoveries even in later life, and yet none of these facts can steal the fresh bloom of the new, the sprout just pushed through the soil to the warmth of the sun, bedewed in early morning.