Achilles Tatius and the Destruction of Bodies

Abstract

Chapter 6 argues that Achilles is attracted to the gallery of bodily carnage on offer in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucan’s Bellum Civile, and Seneca’s Phaedra, as part of his apparent obsession with the vulnerability of human bodies and their susceptibility to wounding. It makes four distinct arguments. Section 6.2 makes the case that the episode of Charicles’ death in Achilles manifests strong indications of interaction with the accounts of the gruesome death of Hippolytus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Phaedra. Section 6.3 demonstrates that Achilles (or rather Clitophon) exhibits a recurrent interest in bodily dismemberment and reconstitution analogous to that in Ovid and Neronian poetry (especially Lucan). Section 6.4 argues that the decapitation of ‘Leucippe’ in Book 5 not only is modelled on the similar fate of the historical Pompeius Magnus but also combines the accounts of this event found in Lucan and Plutarch. These sections suggest that Achilles is alive to developments in Neronian literature that privilege the aesthetics of gore and bodily destruction, and which reflect the Roman imperial taste for violence more generally (perhaps energized by the institution of the amphitheatre). Section 6.5 elaborates a number of ways in which Achilles is attracted to the arresting style and verbal wit of Ovid, especially in connection with his flood narrative.