6. To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Just as the Cnossian maid lay languid on the barren shore when Theseus’s ship departed, or as Cepheus’s Andromeda reclined in her first slumber now freed from the harsh rocks, no less so the bacchante weary from endless dances collapses on the grass beside the Apidanus, just so, it seemed to me, did Cynthia breathe a gentle rest, her head resting on unsettled hands, when.…I ventured to approach her, lightly pressing against her bed.

Propertius here evokes a well-established and recognizable formula—the very same employed for the depiction of Selene’s arrival for her nightly rendezvous with the sleeping Endymion.^[1] This motif was used in ancient art and literature for many such erotic scenes, which range from mere voyeurism to the violence of rape.^[2] Propertius’s exempla represent mortals desired by deities or heroes who pursue them undisguised, thanks to the protection offered by the defenseless slumber of their prey. In its visual form, the Ariadne exemplum is known from the many images that depict her approached by Dionysus (Fig. 56), and on numerous other works of art a maenad is accosted by a satyr.^[3] Only Andromeda, slumbering after her rescue, is unfamiliar amid the visual repertory the ancients devised for the representation of these myths. Indeed, the often-remarked allusion of these lines to works of visual art disguises the crucial aspect of the poetic style at work here. For Propertius’s account of Andromeda can only be his own felicitous invention, by which he has transformed the conventional imagery associated with the myth so that it not only conforms to the recognizable formula but evokes the basic motif that unites these images by its triple repetition.^[4] In each instance the essential character of the scene may be deduced from this motif that pairs an active, upright figure, the seducer, with the passively recumbent object of his or her desire.^[5] This schematic pairing, common to these various tales, constitutes another example of the artists’ ability to devise a composition based on the general outlines of the plot rather than the specific details of a single story. Like Propertius—but to an even greater degree—the sarcophagus designers were able to communicate, by the signal force of the composition alone, the dynamic interrelations that structured their narratives.

A motif such as this one was subject not only to adaptation to different mythological scenes of discovery and seduction, and parodies of them, but also to translation into scenes in which its typical sense undergoes inversion. One of the effects of the standardization brought about by the use of types is the possibility of their displacement from their proper, typical context. In such cases, despite the exigencies of the particular narrative role the motif plays in its new context, the type retains the traces of its original sense. The recognition of such allusions has a profound effect on our understanding of images, and allows us to gauge, in a more penetrating fashion, the full force of their compositions and conceptions. It is precisely such an allusion that joins together the representations of these two groups of sarcophagi with their scenes of Selene’s arrival before the sleeping Endymion and Aphrodite’s arrival before the dying Adonis. The Aphrodite and Adonis sarcophagus imagery reforges the formula of an erotic scene into one of tragic pathos; the original significance of the motif, while not out of place in a myth that tells the tale of two lovers, is merely out of context in this episode. Latent in the adapted visual formula is a reassertion of that eroticism, so essential to the Adonis tale and yet, as discussion of the monuments has shown, subordinated on the sarcophagus reliefs to the themes of heroic virtus and the omnipotence of Fate.

“In a vision of sleep…”

The Mars and Rhea Silvia story illustrates another form of inversion, one directly pertinent to the tale of Selene and Endymion because the two myths were represented side by side on the same sarcophagus (Fig. 57).^[6] Here a Roman myth was adapted to the Greek formula. In the Fasti, Ovid tells how the rape of Rhea Silvia by the god of war engendered the twin births of Romulus and Remus. Ovid dispatches the violation itself in elliptical fashion, noting that the god “by his divine power…hid his stolen pleasures.” The focus of the tale is the dream the rape incites and how this dream envisions and interprets the consequences of the seduction:

May it be beneficial and fortunate, I pray, that vision I saw amid slumber. Or was it too clear for sleep? I was approaching the Ilian fires when the woolen fillet, having slid from my hair, fell before the sacred pyre. Whence sprang together—a marvelous sight—two palm trees. Of these one was greater, and by its weighty branches spread to cover all the world, and with its foliage touched the highest stars. Behold, my uncle raised an axe to them; I was alarmed by the warning, and my heart trembled with fear. Mars’s bird—the woodpecker—and a she-wolf battled on behalf of the twin trunks: thanks to them, both palms were saved.^[7]

The representation of the Mars and Rhea Silvia tale demonstrates that some of these sleeping figures may also be perceived as “dreamers.” But no dream is depicted on the Mars and Rhea Silvia sarcophagus, merely another version of the same arrival scene. The exigencies of the story, however, force one to reconsider the active and passive roles of the motif’s protagonists, and to invert them. Thus the object of the depicted event becomes the active agent of the essential, albeit implied, one.^[8] The significance becomes clear with the isolation of the sleeper type from the pair that make up the motif (Fig. 58).^[9] It is, therefore, not the image that we see but the one she sees that constitutes the truly significant image of the story and bears the fundamental content of the myth. For it is the dream, with its images, that announces in the form of a riddle nothing less than the glorious future of Rome.^[10]

In the Fasti, Ovid has Rhea Silvia herself, when she awakens, describe the dream she has had, and thus the poet allows his audience to share the substance of her interior vision. In the rhetoric of the description, particularly in the schematic description of the trees, Ovid engages in a form of enargeia, as he attempts with his language to suggest the quality of visual experience, to render the scene as if it were a picture.^[11] For dreams are, essentially, things seen, as Aristotle had shown; they are experienced as a form of mental imagery.^[12] With the adoption of this rhetorical mode, Ovid attempts both to provoke a response in his reader commensurate with the profundity of a dream-vision, and to evoke a palpable image whose powerful immediacy resembles that of the dream itself.^[13]

The visual representation of dreams posed problems, and to solve them artists employed a series of pictorial devices.^[14] In narrative cycles, dreamer and dream content could be depicted by the contiguity of scenes;^[15] in a single scene, dreamer and dream could be juxtaposed, and the dream content understood as such from the context;^[16] this juxtaposition could be elucidated by the differentiation of levels of reality within the image,^[17] or the visual subordination of the dream content as an appended motif, spatially sequestered from the dreamer’s space. Yet the Mars and Rhea Silvia sarcophagus adopts none of these techniques, for in it the dream is represented by implication alone. The single scene of Mars’s approach to the sleeping Vestal Virgin stands for the story as a whole, and serves as a catalyst to call forth the remainder of the tale from the beholder’s memory.

Such a strategy depends, of course, on knowledge of the myth and the viewer’s ability to recognize the story from the depiction of a single salient episode. The familiarity of the tale is due to a series of factors: the myth’s fundamental role in the mythology of Rome itself; the wide dissemination of the Ovidian version; the standardized significance of the motif that is the vehicle for the story’s depiction; and, the unmistakable iconography of the god of war. All of these facilitate the success of the pictorial invention. The proleptic nature of the image itself leaves little doubt as to the sequel and plays upon the beholder’s willingness to continue the narration. By recalling the myth, by rehearsing the actions, not merely of the depicted scene but of the tale as a whole, the viewer forms a series of mental images that continue the representation of the subsequent scene of the action and, most importantly, of the crucial dream. The truly profound aspect of the sculpted invention is its ability to allow beholders to experience that dream, just as Rhea Silvia does, in the manner appropriate to dreams—as a mental image.^[18]

The juxtaposition of these two tales—Mars and Rhea Silvia, Selene and Endymion—establishes an analogy, something similar to the conflation of the stories of Adonis and Aeneas on the Casino Rospigliosi sarcophagus (Fig. 6). Here too the analogy seizes on the similarity of the two stories, their plots, and their shared visual motif;^[19] more importantly, it calls for the Endymion image to be considered in a new way. The contrast guides interpretation and effectively transforms the Endymion myth, for the emphasis on the Roman tale may be construed from the comparison. That Rhea Silvia’s sleep is equated with death was already clear from the image's funerary context; Endymion's endless slumber, however, is now reconceived according to the implications of a sleep filled with dreams. Thus the visual pairing of the two myths suggests that just as Rhea Silvia dreams in the course of her slumber, so too Endymion. Since awareness of her dreaming generates those mental images essential to the significance of the story—images fundamental to the comprehension of that myth within the sarcophagus repertory—does not the pairing of the two scenes suggest Endymion's dreaming, as well?^[20]

Somniorum coniectio

On the sarcophagi, particularly where Endymion and Selene bear the features of both the casket’s patron and his wife, the personalization of the myth intimates precisely such an active role for the slumbering youth. For choosing to represent this myth constitutes, in itself, a form of dream or wish on the part of the patrons: a dream to be identified with the protagonists into whose mythic drama they are inserted by means of portraiture. On the sarcophagus reliefs these patrons appropriate the myths and thus act out symbolically a dream of how the future will remember them. The very permanence of the sculpted identification, of the image that marks the tomb by which these patrons are to be remembered, guarantees that this wish will be fulfilled, that this dream will come true.

To understand these funerary “dreams” requires that we determine who lay entombed in the marble coffins on which such hopes are given visible form. The most obvious interpretation of the reliefs identifies Endymion with the deceased, whose portrait features he wears on several extant examples, and who therefore must have lain buried in the casket.^[21] In lieu of a portrait, an inscription may reveal for whom a sarcophagus proved the final resting place, as on the casket of Aurelius Licanus now in Copenhagen.^[22] The choice of the Endymion myth for such sarcophagi seizes upon the seduction that takes place during the young shepherd’s “deathlike sleep” as a positive image of the afterlife.

From the dream literature of antiquity one learns, according to Artemidorus, that in a dream, “to have sexual intercourse with a god or goddess or to be possessed by a god signifies death for a sick man. For the soul predicts meetings and intercourse with the gods when it is about to abandon the body in which it dwells.”^[23] But the dreams Artemidorus speaks of are open to other interpretations, as he readily admits:

Some are called theorematic, others allegorical. Theorematic dreams are those which come true just as they are seen. Allegorical dreams are those which disclose their meaning through riddles. But since there is, in this group, some margin for error in a person’s deciding whether he should accept the dreams exactly as they have been seen or if they will come true in some other way, the possibility of interpretation is still open.^[24]

According to Xenophon,

There is nothing in the world more nearly akin to death than sleep; and the soul of man at just such times is revealed in its most divine aspect and at such times, too, it looks forward to the future; for then, it seems, it is most untrammeled by the bonds of the flesh.^[25]

Plutarch makes an even more explicit claim for the value of dreams: “Since [the soul’s] arrival in the world, it is by means of dreams that it joyfully greets and gazes upon that which is most beautiful and most divine.”^[26]

Cicero held the view that the gods converse with men, by means of visions, in their sleep; the same could be said for converse with the dead.^[27] The literary evocation of this belief was nothing new. Euripides provided the classic example: “visiting me in dreams, you might still bring me some cheer: for sweet it is, by night, to look on loved ones, for as long as they may stay.”^[28] And Vergil echoed the theme when relating Dido’s dream: “She seemed to hear sounds and speech, of her husband calling, whenever the night held the earth in darkness.”^[29] Thus, when a young Roman woman buried her husband—stolen from her by “an evil hand”—she might declare to the manes her desire for such a reunion as she speaks to him beyond the grave. His epitaph reads:

Husband most dear to me: I knew that as boy and girl we were bound together by love. I lived with you for so short a time, and during that time we were destined to live, we were separated by an evil hand. Thus I entreat you, most sacred souls of the dead, that you might consider my dear man acceptable, and that you might wish to be most indulgent to this woman, so that I might see him during the nocturnal hours; and he also wishes that I compel Fate, so that I am able, sweetly and quickly, to come to him.^[30]

Or, in Statius’s birthday poem composed for Polla Argentaria in remembrance of her dead husband, Lucan, the deceased is implored to reappear from beyond the grave: “obtain one day, I beseech you, from the gods of silence: the door is open to husbands returning to their brides.”^[31] Yet wives might also be granted such a reprieve, if only in the guise of myth. Indeed, some surviving Endymion and Selene sarcophagi bear antique, if not original, inscriptions that record their use as the caskets of women. Their employment for the bodies of women gives special significance to one of the formal features of the reliefs that is seldom remarked upon: the prominence of the upright, striding figure of Selene at the center of the panel. The inscription on the Capitoline sarcophagus (Fig. 29) demonstrates that it was used—in antiquity—as the coffin of a young woman named Gerontia.^[32] Thus this monument’s imagery exploits the motif of Endymion’s sleep, and a wife seemingly claims a chance to be reunited with the husband who survives her by a visit “in horis nocturnis”—as it were, in his dreams.^[33]

Such an interpretation of these sarcophagi and this funerary inscription is found in a parallel allusion, again in the poems of Propertius. For there the same imagery is evoked when yet another female figure—the image of the deceased—arrives at the side of her sleeping paramour as the poet dreams of his lover’s return from the realm of the dead:

The shades are no fable: death is not the end of all, and the pale ghost escapes the vanquished pyre. For Cynthia seemed to bend over my couch, Cynthia so lately buried beside the roaring road, as fresh from love’s entombment I slept a broken sleep.…^[34]

These testimonials pertain to the funerary use of the Endymion myth because they offer a context for the myth’s interpretation. They express very human fears of death and an equally human desire to transcend it. The myth provides tangible, recognizable—and above all, evocative—imagery in which these fundamental emotions are condensed and focused; and what is more, the myth testifies to a belief that in death one will enjoy—quite literally—the love of the gods.

Some of these sarcophagi must also have been intended, regardless of whether husband or wife died first, to hold the remains of both. This intention, suggested by the presence of double portraits on the reliefs and the large scale of some of the monuments,^[35] is confirmed by an inscription along the lid of one of the known examples. Renaissance drawings record the kline-type lid of a Selene and Endymion sarcophagus (Fig. 59) that carried, along with a portrait of the reclining wife, the following inscription:

	D·Andiae·Melisae·L·valerius·victor·feci·l·sibi·et·
	coniugi·carissimae·bene·merentisebibus·comparavit·m·[36]

This myth was chosen because, unlike the Mars and Rhea Silvia story, it focuses solely on the couple. The lovers here cast in mythological roles apparently bore no progeny; otherwise their children would no doubt have been included in the inscription according to custom: to the future this pair bequeaths only their memory.^[37] It is a memory of a couple who remain, even in death, as constant in their mutual love as the moon goddess in her endless visits to her young sleeping shepherd.

Constancy in love, as in all other aspects of life, could be for the Romans, like heroism, a challenge and a virtue. Roman funerary monuments and their inscriptions declare their praise for such constancy in love.^[38] Valerius Maximus tells how Antonia, the wife of Drusus Germanicus, after the death of her husband moved to the home of her mother-in-law so that she would pass her aged widowhood in the same bed in which he had spent his vigorous youth.^[39] And Statius, in his poem of consolation to Abascantus on the death of his wife, Priscilla, speaks of his castissimus ardor, and how concordia had bound the one to the other by an unbroken chain, collato pectore. But the poet's highest praise of his friend is reserved for his constancy: “Your greatest honor was that you knew but one marriage bed, that but one fire smoldered within the secrets of your bones.” ^[40]

Identifications with the Endymion myth, with its endless nights of passion, imply that to be so chosen by the gods is to be granted the gift of a love equally everlasting, a love that survives death. The monument depicting a couple as goddess and youth elevates their love to the plane of myth and realizes the dream of such an eternal union. Indeed, this is an image of heroic love. The sepulchral image declares theirs to be that “great love that passes beyond the shores of Fate.”^[41]

Dreams of Adonis

These variations worked upon the Endymion myth provide a parallel to the transformations found among the Adonis sarcophagi. On the two unique Adonis reliefs identified in preceding chapters (Figs. 6 and 7), the standard images used to represent the myth were altered, its story reformulated, and its protagonists similarly reidentified by the imposition of portraits. It was recognized that the myth no longer focused on the virtus of Adonis but had been effectively remade to tell another tale, one of hope for revival rather than acceptance of the inevitable finality of death. There, as with the Endymion myth, the resulting images may be accounted the expression of dreams.

These myths recounted on the Aphrodite and Adonis as well as the Selene and Endymion sarcophagi are like many others in which the gods intervene in mortal life, not merely to take their transient pleasure but to challenge the power and ubiquity of Fate to rule over the lives of their mortal loves. Herakles’ retrieval of Alkestis from Hades, among the most renowned of the myths that tell of such a challenge, also found expression on sarcophagi.^[42] The voluminous writings of Aelius Aristides offer further examples of what must have been a widespread belief in the ability and willingness of the gods to intervene in the lives of mortals. These writings describe the near-fanatical belief in the powers of Aesculapius to protect and intercede on behalf of his disciples—a belief vouchsafed by personal assurances from the divinity himself that were communicated in dreams.^[43] As the Adonis sarcophagi have demonstrated, the exemplary virtus of the youth could be supplanted by a faith in the power of Aphrodite to heal, to triumph over the “will of Fate,” and to rescue her beloved Adonis—just as she had rescued Aeneas—from the clutches of mortality.^[44]

The same conception of the goddess and her healing powers appears in a grave inscription from the Flavian period. A certain “Nepos,” having died young, speaks in the inscription of how Venus herself has delivered him from oblivion: “For Divine Venus decreed that I not know the abode of silence and led me to her shining temple of the heavens.”^[45] Some verses of Tibullus tell of his dream to be similarly delivered by the goddess from the pain of death to the Elysian fields:

But since I have always been amenable to tender Love,
Venus herself will lead me to the Elysian fields.^[46]

In both instances, Venus plays the psychopomp, the conductor of souls, a role usually reserved for Hermes. Here she assumes responsibility for delivering each of these men to the Elysian paradise. In these imaginings, her actions assert a belief in the permanence of her devotion to her disciples; for them she truly serves as comes. And in the case of Aphrodite and Adonis—and, by extension, of the couple whose portraits grace their figures on the sarcophagi—her role as psychopomp makes the claim that this union is unsunderable, even by death: Amor vincit omnia.

Notes