In Hellenistic erotic epigrammatic poetry the lamp, (lychnos) is

almost an objective correlative (a set of objects, a situation, a chain

of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion such
that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory
experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked; Eliot
1951:144-5) of lovemaking (for the lamp as both witness and god of
lovemaking, the most comprehensive collection of refrences and
bibliography is still Kost 1971:126-32; see also Cameron 1981:283 and
n. 36 and Marcovich 1988:1-8; Cairns 1998: 171-8; Gutzwiller
2007:319-20; for lamps in general in the Palatine Anthology, see
Mariotti 1966:93-112, 121-134). This topos is remarkable inter alia for
its antiquity and longevity, from Asclepiades to Byzantine times. In
Hellenistic amatory epigram, the lamp is conventionally called a
witness/confidant to lovers amatory trysts and also serves as a
witness to oaths by one or the other lover. Lamps, though inanimate
(cf Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1090, ) are
conventionally (empnous; pronounced embnous) with the
breath in one, alive. Lamps are confidants [ (synistr),
know together, to be conscious of a thing; privy to a crime or
other secret] of things that may not be spoken of, things
unutterable, unspeakable, ineffable, secret,
(alalts): (synistora tn alaletn
lychnon) Philodemus, AP 5.4. Sider (1997:196-7) mentions that The
word is relatively uncommon in early literature: once each in
Aischylos, Euripides, and Thucydides, and twice in Sophocles. Martial
in Epigrammata 14.39 uses conscia, from conscius, knowing in
common; conscious with; privy; participant; accessory;
witnessing. The mamnof the synistor lychnos, the witness lamp
is a time (and multi-culturally) honoured kavisamay. Since the lamp is
a witness, (cf. martys with the nirvnadpa), it can be Janus
faced-it can be both a silent accomplice as well as a babbling witness.
On one hand, the lamp is an accomplice and can be counted upon not
to give evidence/testimony / (martyre/martyria)
and never reveal or betray to the world the unspeakable things its
learnt: Ekklesiazousai (Women in Parliament) 16: kai tata syndrn ou
lales tos plsion-you never blab our secrets to the neighbors (Halliwell
2009:156), and on the other hand, it can be a judicial, testifying
witness-in Lucian of Samosatas Journey Down to Hades, Or The
Tyrant (Cataplus, sive Tyrannus) 27, a lamp () and a bed ()
klin are summoned to Hades to give evidence as main witnesses
before Rhadamanthys, the judge of the underworld, against their
owner, the wealthy tyrant Megapenthes. The bed, embarrassed,
refuses to divulge details, but the oil-lamp testifies in some detail.
Heres the lamps testimony (martyrei):
I didnt see what happened during the day. I wasnt there. And I
hesitate to tell you what he did and had done to him at night. But I saw
many unspeakable things which exceeded every imaginable type of
unwarranted abuse. There were many times when I voluntarily stopped
drawing up oil because I wanted to go out. But he always brought me
up close to the action and totally defiled the light I gave.
(Sidwell 2004:108)
In Musaeus Hero and Leander (5th century CE), a lamp (besides being
the theme of the poets invocation of the Muse) is the only confidant of
the secret love of the pair:
Queen of the plaintive voice, the Torch resound
Witness of secret Loves, the Lover sing
On midnight billows borne to raptrous joys,
veild from Auroras eye; the realms relate,
By ocean Severd; joind by love
(Musaeus, Hero and Leander, invocation)

Plutarch (Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus c. 46 120 CE) in Moralia: De

garrulitate 513 mentions as a commonplace lovers address to the
blessed lamp divine (eudaimon lychne). On the lamp in erotic
literature, see Kost 1971:126; for the lamp as the deity of lovemaking,
see Kost 1971:126-132; Cameron 1981:282 and note 36; Miroslav
1989:1-8. On lovemaking as metaphorically contaminating the purity
of the hearth-fire, see Parker 1983:77 (cf. Anagaraga on fire [vahni]

being one of the tyjyasthnni for lovemaking and Hesiod [750-650
BCE], Works and Days 732 Do not lie down beside the fire when you
have just made love, and show your naked parts) and on lamps and
lovemaking, see Parisinou 2000a: 7-11. Parisinou (2000a: 27) mentions
As will be seen in the epigrams cited below, mainly from Hellenistic
times, the females that are primarily associated with lamps in
literature do not seem to be of the respectable kind. On as the
schutzgott (patron-god) of Hetaerae, see Marcovich1987: 4-6. On the
basis of Musaeus, Statylicus Flaccus Ap 5.5.6, Paulus Silentiarius AP
5.279, Meleager AP 12.82 and 12.83, Giangrande (1968:50-58) holds
lamps to be metaphors for the lovers burning heart (cf. Paulus
Silentiarius AP 5.279, Paton 1916:1:275). The eye for the Greeks was
conventionally the seat of love and a symbol of the penis (see
Devereux 1973:42-5 and Deonna 1965:68-70; Aristophanes, Lysistrata
1003 (haiper lychnophoriontes epikekyphames [hypokekyphames])
where lamp=penis; lamp=lovers eye=penis, active looking=erection,
see Devereux 17:407; Fenichel 1945:347 links voyeurism to the
castration complex; Mulvey 1989:14 says that the representation of
the female formin the last resortspeaks castration and nothing
else; my italics). On lamp as penis see Vorberg 1932 plates 176, 177,
178, 499 and 500). Many lamps depicted erotic scenes or were shaped
like phalloi and often the lamp represents the rejected lover as a
voyeur (exclusus amator? cf. the majiribhva) of his mistresss new
(or different) amours (Maxwell-Stuart 1981:33-4). Clay/bronze lamps
from the late Hellenistic period carry erotic motifs, either as a part of
the lamp (handle as phallus or vagina) or, more commonly in relief on
the central disc. Erotic lamp imagery includes phalloi, the vagina
(rare), reclining couples, kissing couples and Erotes/amorini. Sexual
images include lovemaking (a tergo, equestrian, facing),
fellatio/cunnilingus and rarely masturbation or orgies. Bestiality is a
frequent motif. Aside from Leda and the Swan, several feature Negro
pygmies and crocodiles and horses (or mules) having intercourse with
women (Clarke 2001). Clarke 2001:225, figure 93, from the Cyprus
Museum shows a male-female couple in soixante-neuf. Clarke
2001:221, figure 92, a terracotta lamp from the Naples Archaeological
Museum shows a scene of fellatio from Pompeii. On lamps with erotic
scenes, see Vorberg 1932 plates 100, 104-6, 108, 113, 147, 149, 177,
184-6, 330, 335, 410, 412, 426, 455, 459, 498, 570, 572, 594, 597-8,
600-1, 766-7. Also see Marcad 1962 plates 58-63. For an insightful
interpretation of the apotropaic and religious function of sexual
imagery in the art of the classical cultures of Greece and Rome, see
Johns 1999. In a brief episode in Lucians satirical science fiction
novel Vera Historiae (True Histories), Lucian visits Lychnopolis, the City
of the Lamps (1.29). The city is located in the skies, lower (tapeinotera)
than the Zodiac between the Pleiades and the Hyades. Personified,
speaking lamps populate the city, travelling from their homes on earth
and maintaining the social institutions and hierarchies thereof. Lamps
are the spectators, silent observers of human lives by night. At the
close of this episode, Lucian finds his own lamp and enquires about
news from home. It has been argued that lamps are metaphors for
domestic slaves, who are constant, silent witnesses to the private lives
of their masters; moreover, the fear experienced by Lucian in this
low city represents a real anxiety that slaves would not only speak
but congregate and betray the secrets of their households.

In all of these texts, the parallels between personified lamps and slaves
are clear: it is precisely their intimate knowledge of the household that
compels them to testify in court.
Haile wedded Love, mysterious Law, true source
Of human ofspring, sole proprietie,
In Paradise of all things common else.
By thee adulterous lust was drivn from men
Among the bestial herds to raunge, by thee
Founded in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure,
Relations dear, and all the Charities
Of Father, Son, and Brother first were known.
Farr be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual Fountain of Domestic sweets,
Whose bed is undefild and chaste pronounct,
Present, or past, as Saints and Patriarchs usd.
Here Love his golden shafts imploies, here lights
His constant Lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard,
Casual fruition, nor in Court Amours
Mixt Dance, or wanton Mask, or Midnight Bal,
Or Serenate, which the starvd Lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
These lulld by Nightingales imbraceing slept,
And on thir naked limbs the flourie roof
Showrd Roses, which the Morn repaird. Sleep on
Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
(Milton, Paradise Lost 4.750-75, Lewalski 2007:128-9; my emphasis)

Paradise Lost 4.750-75 is an embedded epithalamium (wedding song

originally sung outside the bridal chamber). Milton joins as a celebrant
singing outside Adam and Eves bower as they prepare for love-making
and sleep, though their actual wedding night has taken place earlier
on. 4.761: Whose bed is undefild. Hebrews 13:4 (
,
/Timios ho gamos en psin kai h koit amiantos, pornous gar kai
moichous krine ho theos- honorabile conubium in omnibus et torus
inmaculatus fornicatores enim et adulteros iudicabit Deus-all are to
honour marriage, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for God will
judge whore-mongers and adulterers). The Greek for
undefiled/unsoiled/pure is amiantos, from miaino, a word also used in
Hebrews 7:26, James 1:27, and 1 Peter 1:4. Pornous is from porn,
prostitute, in stark contrast to gamos, marriage. 4.763: Cupids
golden shafts produce true love, his lead-tipped arrows, hatred.
4.769-70: Milton satirizes the typical Petrarchan paraclausithyric topos
(cf. Ovid, Amores 1.6; 1.9 and 3.11a) of the exclusus amator where a
serenading lover, locked-out by his proud lady perishes from the
cold (one of the meanings of starved, attested from the 14th century
is perished with cold).

Ramanujan 1997:1 illustrates the topos of the gossipping synistor

lychnoi in the Kannada folktale (Kannada original in Linganna 1972), A
Story and a Song: All the lamp flames of the town, once they were
put out, used to come to the Monkey Gods temple and spend the night
there, gossiping. Ramanujan passed on this tale to the playwright
Girish Karnad who used it (as the topos of the ratipradpa) in the
prologue to his play Nga-Mandala (1990, preface; flame fours nyik
is a mugdh, flame fives nyik is a madhy or a praudh):

Flame 4: My master had an old, ailing mother. Her stomach was

bloated, her back covered with bed sores. The house stank of cough
and phlegm, pus and urine. No one got a wink of sleep at night.
Naturally, I stayed back too. The old lady died this morning, leaving
behind my master and his young wife, young and juicy as a tender
cucumber. I was chased out fast.
(Giggles)
Flame 3: You are lucky. My masters eyes have to feast on his wife limb
by limb if the rest of him is to react. So we lamps have to bear witness
to what is better left to the dark.
(Karnad 1990:3, my italics)
illius ex oculis, cum uult exurere diuos,
accendit geminas lampadas acer Amor

Cruel love lights his twin torches from her eyes

When he would set fire to the gods themselves
(Tibullus [ca 54-19 BC] Elegies 3.8.5-6; addressed to Sulpicia)
The lamp is also the traditional companion both of lovers and of those
who are still waiting for the beloved to arrive (Philodemus A.P. 5.4;
Asclepiades A.P.5.7, 150; Meleager A.P.5.165, 166; Paulus Silentiarius
A.P. 5.279; Marcus Argentarius A.P. 6.333)

.
(Revelation 11.4)
hotoi eisin hai duo elaai kai hai duo lychniai hai enpion to Kyriou
ts gs hestsai
(Revelation 11.4)
Hii sunt duo olivae et duo candelabra inconspectu Domini terrae
stantes
(Revelation, Vulgata 11.4)
These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before
the Lord of the earth
The olive trees (olive oil fuelled lamps-Exodus 25.6;27.20, Matthew
25.3) and the lampstands are the two witnesses (martysin, testibus;
Revelation 11.3) appointed by God, in an example of a secular, erotic
topos being used as a religious topos, in the mode of oppositio in
imitando (cf. Ramanujan 1981 [1993]: 160).

,
.
(John 5.35)
ekenos n ho lychnos ho kaiomenos kai phainn, hymes de ethelsate
agalliathnai pros hran en ti phti auto
ille erat lucerna ardens et lucens vos autem voluistis exultare ad
horam in luce eius
(John 5.35,Vulgata)
He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice in
his light for a while

John was a lamp because he bore witness to the coming Messiah.

Ive quenchd my lamp, I struck it in that start

Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall-
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream.
(Charlotte Bronte, Pilates Wifes Dream)

Stith Thompson (1955-8) arranged material into twenty-three

alphabetical index categories from A to Z (except I, O and Y) in six
volumes. Category A:Mythological Motifs; category B: Animal Motifs;
category C: Motifs of Tabu; D: Magic; E: the Dead; F: Marvels; G: Ogres;
H: Tests; J:the Wise and the Foolish; K: Deceptions; L: Reversals of
Fortune; M: Ordaining the Future; N: Chance and Fate; P: Society; Q:
Rewards and Punishments; R: Captives and Fugitives; S: Unnatural
Cruelty; T: Sex; U: the Nature of Life; V: Religion; W: Traits of Character;
X: Humor; and Z: Miscellaneous Groups of Motifs. Each index category
is subdivided, some much more so than others. For a detailed list of
the categories and their divisions, see the beginning of volume one:
General Synopsis of the Index, (ibid.:1.2935). Ive been unable to
locate a motif that exactly corresponds to the synistor
lychnos/ratipradpa from over 46,600 motifs in the Thompson Motif-
Index. I expected a category under the entry Lamp; something like
Lamp ogles couple making love. No such motif. I then looked under
categories T (Sex) and X (Humor, including sexual humour), but no
luck, which, given the ubiquity of this topos, was surprising. I cant help
recalling Doniger (2000) who saucily remarks:

Stith Thompsons lists are, like the old pregnancy tests, useful only for
positive, not negative, information: if he says the story exists in a
particular culture, it usually does; but the motifs, and examples of
motifs, that he does not mention may also very well exist (ibid.: 493).

Theres no single synistor lychnos/ratipradpa-mugdh motif, but there

are some motifs that, if combined, would yield this topos. Category C
(Tabu); C300C399 is the tale type Looking tabu and motif C312.1 is
Man looking at nude woman.Irish myth: cross; Icelandic: Boberg;
Gaster Thespis 328, oldest stories 142 (Thompson 1955-8:1:511).
Category F (Marvels); under tale type F1010 Other extraordinary
events, motif F1041.1.13.1, Girl dies of shame at being seen naked.
Irish myth:*cross (Thompson 1955-8:3:265).Category N (Chance and
Fate); this motif is similar to motif N454.2 (and hence Ill designate it
cN454.2), motif descriptor King overhears conversation of lamps, India:
Thompson-Balys 1958. This motif is a submotif of motif N454,
Conversation of objects overheard; under the tale type Valuable
secrets learned (N440-N499, Thompson 1955-8:5:107). Category W
(Traits of Character); W111.2.9, Servant tells master to cover his face:
no need to put out lamp: India: *Thompson-Balys (Thompson 1955-
8:5:486). There are also motifs (under the tale type Deception into
humiliating position, miscellaneous; Category K (Deceptions) K1240)
involving a couple and an observer: K1271.1.4.Man hidden in roof sees
girl and lover and falls:they flee and leave him in possession;
K1271.1.4.1.Man having seen lover from roof threatens to tell about it:
is paid to stop; K1271.1.4.2.Man hidden in roof (or elsewhere) sees girl
and lover:blows horn; K1271.1.4.3.Observer of intrigue insists on
sharing it (Thompson 1955-8:4:380). A multicultural Topos-Index of
poetic topoi remains a desideratum.

At the top of the tower was (what else but) a single window, out of
which there gazed (who else but) a captive princess. What Haroun was
experiencing, though he didnt know it, was Princess Rescue Story
Number S/1001/ZHT/420/41(r)xi; and because the princess in this
particular story had recently had a haircut and therefore had no long
tresses to let down (unlike the heroine of Princess Rescue Story
G/l001/RIM/777/M(w)i, better known as Rapunzel), Haroun as the
hero was required to climb up the outside of the tower by clinging to
the cracks between the stones with his bare hands and feet. (Rushdie
1991:73)

Rushdies serio-comic satirical mode of oppositio in imitando in his

delightful novella (Rushdie 1991) uses the formulaic conventions of
fairy tales by frustrating those very conventions. Rushdies parodic
Periodic-table notation S/1001/ZHT/420/41(r) xi suggests the One
Thousand Nights and One Night and the letters ZHT suggest
Scheherazade. The second notation, G/1001/RIM/777/M (w)i also
initially suggests the Arabian Nights (1001) but then alludes to the
Brothers Grimm, the majuscule letters clearly spelling GRIMM, with the
miniscule w (perhaps) standing for Wilhelm (one half of the Brothers
Grimm, the other being Jacob; since I was also known as J (Rushdie
1991:33, 4), the miniscule i might suggest Jacob). This paronomastic
notation cues the reader that the Rapunzel narrative isnt exclusive
to the Grimms collection, and that retellings such as the S/1001 also
flow in the Ocean of the Streams of Story. The Rapunzel (tale type
ATU 310; Motif F848.1) retelling that instantly springs to mind is
definitely that of the Grimms in 1812, but this is neither the only
version, nor the first. The Grimms got this tale from a story by Friedrich
Schultz (1790), whod borrowed it from a French tale, Persinette, by
Mlle Charlotte-Rose de Caumont la Force, published anonymously in
Les Contes des Contes (The Tale of Tales, 1697) (Zipes 1972:729). de
la Force probably got this motif from an Italian variant (2.1,
Petrosinella) in Giambattista Basiles Il Pentamerone (1634) (The
collection of Italian folk-tales now known as Il Pentamerone was
originally published at Naples in a Neapolitan dialect that kept it out of
northern European tradition for two centuries, by Giambattista Basile,
Conte di Torrone, who is believed to have collected them chiefly in
Crete and Venice, and to have died in the 1630s. Originally called Lo
cunto de li cunti [The Story of Stories, 1634], it was published
posthumously and became known as the Pentamerone by 1674 and
eventually influenced the form of fairytales in Europe. The frame-story
is of a group of people passing time by sharing stories, as in the
Decameron and other European collections of tales. The Pentamerone
tells fifty tales over five nights, and its probable that Basiles version is
related to early Indian versions of the tale (Thompson mentions an
early Indian variation on the motif of the captive princess held in a
tower, Motif R41.2) found in Somadevas Kathsaritsgara. The
moralis that narratives of different cultures arent seperated by
rigid walls of force, but are interconnected through porous semi-
permeable membranes. Cultural narratives grow through a process
of cultural appropriation and miscegenation, and arent (as the
Brothers Grimm and later the Nazis were eager to suggest) indices of
racial/national purity. Haroun examines only one page of the story
sea before he imbibes the princess rescue stories:

[T]he magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He

looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand
thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different
colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of
breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams
of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single
tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories,
and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still
in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the
Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And
because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the
ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up
with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a
library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more
than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead but alive.
(Rushdie 1991:72)
Straight answers were beyond the powers of Rashid Khalifa, who would
never take a short cut if there was a longer, twistier road available.
(Rushdie 1991:19)

Everything comes from somewhereso these stories cant simply

come out of thin air?
(Rushdie 1991:17)

Apart from Egyptians and Greeks, says Herodotus, almost the whole
of the rest of mankind copulate in sacred places and go into shrines
without washing after sleeping with a woman. In Greek ideology,
therefore, sexual activity is in some sense incompatible with the
sacred. Such activity is, of course, indisputably natural; for man and
woman intercourse is themis, that which is natural and right. It thus
joins birth and death to form a trio of inescapable human processes
from which the gods require insulation. As Herodotus indicates, this
takes two forms, physical separation (no intercourse in sacred
precincts) and lustration (washing after intercourse before entering a
shrine). Both are well attested independently. Cautionary tales describe
the dramatic retribution that strikes those who copulate in shrines,
while a long series of sacred laws regulates access to temples from a
woman or the like.
(Parker 1996:74)
[1] Furthermore, it was the Egyptians who first made it a matter of
religious observance not to have intercourse with women in temples or
to enter a temple after such intercourse without washing. Nearly all
other peoples are less careful in this matter than are the Egyptians and
Greeks, and consider a man to be like any other animal; [2] for beasts
and birds (they say) are seen to mate both in the temples and in the
sacred precincts; now were this displeasing to the god, the beasts
would not do so. This is the reason given by others for practices which
I, for my part, dislike; but the Egyptians in this and in all other matters
are exceedingly strict against desecration of their temples.
(Herodotus, Histories 2.64.1-2; 2.65.1)
Ancient literature has the pedagogical function of promoting and
licencing violence directed towards women in the patriarchal societies
of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Narrative reinscribes culturally
sanctioned violence against women even as it denies and conceals it.

soi gar moni dloumen eikots, epei

kan toisi dmatioisin Aphrodits tropn
peirmenaisi plsion parastateis,
lordoumenn te smatn epistatn
ophthalmon oudeis ton son exeirgei domon
(Aristophanes, Ekklesiazousai 5-10; Henderson 2002:246)

Ophthalmon, from ophthalmos, eye; exeirgei, from exerg, shut

out, debar, drive away, prevent, preclude, to be constrained
(to do a thing). The personification (utprek!) of the lamp as a topos
is found earliest in Praxagoras (woman effective in public)
monologue in Aristophanes (448-380 BCE), Ekklesiazousai (Assembly
women) 5-10, her hymn to Lychnos (Marcovich 1988:6):
Well reveal all, rightly, to you alone,
who stand near us in our bedroom
when our bodies tangle and twist
in Aphrodites love-knots;
none ever shut out your watching eye.

Yes, you alone are privy to our deeds,

When in our bedrooms all we women move
In Aphrodites twists, and you stand near.
As bodies writhe and bend, your eye is there
To look on all; you never get removed.
(Halliwell 2009:156)
You alone we make privy to our plot, and rightly,
for also in our bedrooms you stand close by as we essay
aphrodites maneuvers; and when our bodies are flexed,
no one banishes from the room your supervisory eye.
(Henderson 2002:247)
Its right that you should be the only one
To overhear our plans, for, after all,
You know so much about our private lives.
You watch while in the ecstasies of love
Our bodies twist and heave, and no one dreams
Of putting you outside;
(Barett 2003:222)
Anthologia Palatina, Book V, Epigrammata Ertica

4-PHILODEMUS OF GADARA (110-40 BCE)

philaenis, make drunk with oil the lamp, the silent confidant of things
we may not speak of, and then go out: for Love alone loves no living
witness; and, Philaenis, shut the door close. And then, dear Xantho,-
but thou, my bed, the lovers friend, learn now the rest of Aphrodites
secrets.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:131)
Ton signta, Philaini, synistora tn alaltn
lychnon elairs ekmethysasa drosou,
exithi. martyrin gar Ers monos ouk ephilsen
empnoun. kai pktn klee, Philaini, thyrn.
kai sy, phil Xanth, me.sy d philerastria koit,
d ts Paphis isthi ta leipomena
(Paton vol.1, 1916:130)
The lamp, Philaenis, the silent confidant of our secrets,-make it drink
deep of the dew of the oil, and then go away. Love alone hates a living
witness. And, Philaenis, shut the folding door. As for you and me,
beloved Xantho,-O lover-loving bed, now at once learn the rest of the
Paphians arts.
(Gow-Page 1968:1:351; The happy lover)

Philaenis, make drunk with liquid oil the lamp,

That silent witness of things unspoken of.
And then go; only Eros never wants a living
Witness; and, Philaenis, please shut the folding door.
As for you, darling Xantho, and me: o bed dear to lovers,
Learn now the rest of the Paphian Aphrodites secrets.
(Snyder 1973:348)
ton signta, Philaini, synistora tn alaltn
lychnon elairs ekmethysasa drosou
exithi. martyrin gar Ers monos ouk ephilsen
empnoun. kai pyknn klee, Philaini, thyrn.
kai sy, phil Xanth, me-sy d philerastri akoitis,
d ts Paphis isthi ta leipomena
(Sider 1997:85)
Philainis, soak with oily dew the lamp, the silent confidant of acts which
are not to be spoken of,
and then leave. For love alone does not desire living witness. And shut
the door tight, Philainis.
And you, dear Xantho, (to) me-but now, O lover-loving wife, learn what
Aphrodite has left for us.
(Sider 1997:85)
Philaenis, flood with oily dew the lamp,
silent witness of acts which musnt be spoken of,
and then leave.
For Love alone loves no living witness;
and, Philaenis, close the door tightly.
And you, dear Xantho,-
But now, o bed, lovers friend,
learn what Aphrodites left behind.
(mine)
Outside witnesses are held to be undesirable:
Parcite luminibus, seu vir seu femina fiat
obvia: celari vult sua furta Venus.
(Tibullus, Elegies 1.2.35)
Avert your eyes, men and women who see me,
for Venus prefers to hide her thefts
celari-to be hidden from sight/light; luminibus in line 35 is from
lumen, from the root luc, which here means eyes, but which also
means torches as in line 38 (neu prope fulgenti lumina ferte face-
dont bring a blazing torch near me). These lines also allude to the
topos of the furtivus amor, a situation far more common in the
conventions of Latin elegy rather than Greek epigram.

Sider 1997:88 sees in the fifth line ..another Hellenistic example of

aposiopesis designed to avoid the specific details of love-making:
Meleager 72 (AP 5.184.5), Antipater 52 GP (AP 9.241.5), Theokr. 1.105,
5.149, Herodas 1.84; also Aristophanes, Vespae 1178 (Vespae,
Wasps).

Praecisio est cum dictis quibus reliquum quod coeptum est dici
relinquitur inchoatum, sic:Mihi tecum par certatio non est, ideo quod
populus Romanus me-nolo dicere, ne cui forte adrogans videar; te
autem saepe ignominia dignum putavit.Item:Tu istuc audes dicere,
qui nuper alienae domi-non ausim dicere, ne, cum te digna dicerem,
me indignum quippiam dixisse videar. Hie atrocior tacita suspicio
quam diserta explanatio facta est.
(Ad Herennium 4.30.41; Caplan 1954:330)

Aposiopesis occurs when something is said and then the rest of what
the speaker had begun to say is left unfinished, as follows: The
contest between you and me is unequal because, so far as concerns
me. The Roman people-I am unwilling to say it, lest by chance some
one think me proud. But you the Roman people has often considered
worthy of disgrace. Again: You dare to say that, who recently at
anothers home-I shouldnt dare tell, lest in saying things becoming to
you, I should seem to say something unbecoming to me. Here a
suspicion, unexpressed, becomes more telling than a detailed
explanation would have been.
(Ad Herennium 4.30.41; Caplan 1954:331)

Aposiopesis, quam idem Cicero reticentiam, Celsus obticentiam,

nonnulli interruptionem appellant, et ipsa ostendit adfectus, vel irae, ut
quos ego-sed motos praestat componere fluctus, vel sollicitudinis et
quasi religionis: An huius ille legis, quam Clodius a se inventam
gloriatur, mentionem facere ausus esset vivo Milone, non dicam
consule? De nostrum omnium-non audeo totum dicere. cui simile est
in prohoemio pro Ctesiphonte Demosthenis; vel alio transeundi gratia:
Cominius autem-tametsi ignoscite mihi, iudices.
(Quintillian IO 9.2.54-5)
Aposiopesis, which Cicero calls reticentia, Celsus obticentia, and some
interruptio, is used to indicate passion or anger, as in the line:
Whom I-
But better first these billows to assuage.
Or it may serve to give an impression of anxiety or scruple, as in the
following: Would he have dared to mention this law of which Clodius
boasts he was the author, while Milo was alive, I will not say was
consul? For as regards all of us- I do not dare to complete the
sentence. There is a similar instance in the exordium of Demosthenes
speech in defence of Ctesiphon. Again it may be employed as a means
of transition, as, for example, Cominus, however-nay, pardon me,
gentlemen.
(Quintillian IO 9.2.54-5; Butler 1920:3:408-9)

Oily dew- ; elairs drosou; elairs from ;

elaion oil; , drosou, from , dew. Heres Gow-Pages
succinct paraphrase of this epigram in their commentary:

The poet tells the maid-servant, Philaenis, to feed the lamp, lock the
door, and leave the room. He then turns to his mistress Xantho.
This vivid epigram is conventional in motifs, distinctive in style.
(Gow-Page 1968:2:374, my emphasis)

Gow-Page, commenting on echmethysasa (ibid.) mention: the

compound elsewhere only in Theophr. CP 5.15.3. There is no point in
making the lamp drunk, so we understand simply soak as in Homer
Il. 17.390. In Babrius 114.1, , the verb has its full
meaning [CP-De causis plantarum]. At Il. 17.390, Homer uses
methyousan aloiphi -A. to be drunken with wine, neustazn kephali,
methyonti eoiks Od.18.240; methyn, opp. nphn, Thgn.478,627, cf.
Alc.Supp.4.12, Pi.Fr. 128, Ar.Pl.1048, PHal.1.193 (iii B. C.), etc.; m. hypo
tou oinou X. Smp.2.26; to methuein drunkenness, Antiph.187.2,
Alex.43; to m. pmons lytrion S.Fr.758. II. metaph., 1. of things, to be
drenched, steeped in any liquid, c. dat., e.g. boeinmethyousan
aloiphi Il.17.390 [noted by Sider 1997:87); methyn elaii lychnos
Babr.114.1 ; [cheimarros] ombroisi m. AP 9.277 (Antiphil.). 2. of
persons, to be intoxicated with passion, pride, etc., hypo ts Aphrodits
X.Smp.8.21 ; hypo tryphs Pl.Criti. 121a; erti Anacr.19; ti megethei
tn pepragmenn D.4.49; peri tas hdonas Philostr.VS1.22.1; ou m. tn
phronsin Alex.301; m. to philma AP5.304. b. to be stupefied,
stunned, plgais methyn Theoc.22.98 ; ex odynan Opp.H.5.228 , cf.
Nonn.l.c.
Bottom of Form

Sider (1987:323) speculates that The lamp, although a witness, has

been rendered drunkenly insensate (my italic). Hes reiterated this
view: but to translate it here as make it drink deep (Gow-Page) vel
sim. is to lose the point; if the lamp is to be present and, by the
conventions of erotic poetry, to be a witnessat least let its powers of
observation be impaired. Hence, make it thoroughly drunk (1997:87;
my ellipse and emphasis). Sider probably conjectures this stoned
reading from the meaning to be stupefied, stunned. Cracks on
drunken lamps are common comic kavisamay, Aristophanes, Nybes
(Clouds) 57: oimoi: ti gar moi ton potn hptes lychnon: Ah me! Why
did you light the tippling lamp? (pots lychnos, metaphorically a
tippling lamp, i.e., one that consumes much oil [Liddel-Scott
1968:1260]; see also Gow-Page [1968:1:303]: meager shining
lamps flame that drinks with half-tipsy mouth from a miserly oil-
flask). Sider (ibid.) mentions that Phil. seems to have been imitated
in turn by Babrios 114 init. (so Mariotti 133 n.2).
Sider hasnt mentioned Aesop (Chambry 232; Gibbs 211; Temple and
Temple 232) . Ill therefore submit contra Sider
that its perhaps more likely that Philodemus imitated Aesop in the
tulyadeitulyarthaharana mode; the point of lychnon elairs
ekmethysasa drosou is possibly that since martyrin gar Ers monos
ouk ephilsen empnoun, an inanimate witness (that is, the lamp; cf.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1090, ) who is also a
confidant, namely the synistora tn alaletn lychnon, is to be
rendered hyper-sensate (as opposed to insensate) by drenching it with
oil to make it flare up (intoxicated) in its drunkenness so as to
enable it to observe and illuminate all the better and brighter. Sider
paraphrases this epigram and mentions that the maid Philainis is told
to fill (a presumably already lit) lamp and leave, locking the door
behind her, before the lovemaking begins (Sider 1997:86, my
emphasis). Siders presumption that Philainis is filling a presumably
already lit lamp is strange. An oil-lamps wick is normally
soaked/drenched with oil before lighting it, or if already lit, when its
about to run out. Ill submit that Philaini is instructed to light a lamp
before she leaves and fill it with oil, to ensure its continued burning,
since shes commanded to thereafter leave and shut the door behind
her tightly. Marcovich (1988) while discussing Asclepiades AP 5.7 says:

Of course, the patroness-goddess of the hetaera is Aphrodite, by whom

they swear: (Aristoph. Plut. 1069; Eccl.999).
, says a scholiast ad locum. But in the
Aphrodisia, Lychnos appears in the role of manifestation of
(Erscheinungstorm) or a substitute for (stellvertreter) Aphrodite, and
that is why our hetaera could swear by Lychnos, who is her patron-god
(Schuzgott).

A burning lamp must be present in the boudoir of every hetaera. If the

lamp is extinguished the hetaera will remain without the necessary
protection of her Schuzgott. Then she may not have success with her
clients (page 5), and eventually go bankrupt.
Lamps are the most common votive offering of the hetaera to their
goddess.

If the lamp of Aphrodite is entinguished in her boudoir the hetaera

Heracleia may have no success in bed. The same is true of Meleagers
rival, being overwhelmed by deep sleep in the bed of Heliodora
(Meleagers Epigram LI Gow-Page=A.P. V.165.3-6)
(Marcovich 1988:4-5; my elipsis)
Augustine (De. civ. dei 21.6) speaks of (and argues against) a
miraculous (pagan) lamp in a shrine dedicated to Venus (Aphrodite)
that no storm or rain could extinguish and which was therefore
christened lychnos asbestos or inextinguishable lamp (
, lucerna inextinguibilis). There was an ancient custom
(attested to by several authors: Theocritus 21.36; Athenaeus 700D;
Pausanius 1.26.7) of keeping a lamp burning day and night in the
Prytaneum (the public hall of an ancient city in Greece/Rome) or in the
chief temple of a Greek city.

Athenaeus of Naucratis (fl. around the end of the 2nd and beginning of
the 3rd century C.E.) in Book 13, 583e of Deipnosophists (Banquet of
the Learned, collected entirely from Attic comedy and Attic orators
[Cameron 1981:276]) has many fascinating things to say about
courtesans, the least being naming them:

Another group of names function either as terms of endearment or

emphasize the amorous activity of hetaeras: Glycera, Glycerion, Phila,
Philinna, and Potheine. The names formed from the stem lamp*,
Lampas, Lampito, Lampyris, or related in meaning, like Lychnos (the
nickname of Synoris) and Thryallis (Wick), also allude to the sexual
activities of hetaeras, as lamps are frequently invoked in Greek and
Latin love poetry as the witnesses of love-making.
(McClure 2003:73-4)
Synoris was so named, apparently, due to her eternal thirst, which
sucked up all sorts of wine as a lamp-wick sucks up the oil (Licht
1932:363)

Paton (1916:1:130) reads the fifth line of this epigram as

(philerastria koit), as does Marcovich 1988:7 (so does
Philodemus in his Epigram I (=A.P.V.4.5: , ).
Sider (1997:34-6; 86; 88-90) prefers to address Xanthippe, Philodemus
wife as opposed to bed and reads (philerastri
akoitis; for an exposition of the wifely address, see Sider 1987:310-
324 and 1997:34-36, 89-90).
Open expression of erotic feeling such as is found here of a husband
for his wife is extremely rare in Greek literature; erotic poetry deals
largely with pursuit and rejection. It was noteworthy that Kandaules fell
in love () with his own wife (Hdt. 1.8.1). The Dios Apate alone,
however provides a sufficient literary model for Philthe aposiopesis of
his poem substituting for Homers concealing cloud. The situation in
Latin literature is far more complex, where mistresses are often spoken
of as wives or at least with language more appropriate to wives than
lovers; cf., e.g., Cat.109.6, Tib. 1.5, Hor. O. 2.12, Prop. 2.6.41 f.;
(Sider 1997:90)
Sider 1987:312, footnote 7 mentions that It should be pointed out that
always signifies wife and never merely bedmate as its
masculine equivalent often does. For an excellent discussion
of the whole epigram see Sider 1997:85-90. Marcovich (1988:7) reads
(philerastria choit) with (Chi) instead of
(Kappa). Paton and Marcovich prefer the address to the bed reading
/ , bed instead of , wife. Giangrande (1973:319-
22) upholds the assignation theory, opposing Marcovichs (1987:4-6)
suggested reading of as . Hera (the goddess of
marriage) swears by her nuptial-bed (lechos) in Iliad 15.39: ...and
your own sacred head and our bed, the bed of our nuptial love-s th
hier kephal kai niteron lechos autn; Asclepiades AP 5.181.12 uses
bed-witness ( , klin martys epigrapheto);
Lucian, Cataplus, sive Tyrannus 27 has a lamp and a bed give
evidence. Martial, Epigrammata 10.38.7 and 14.39.1 mentions a
witnessing lamp and bed as does Ovid in Ars Amatoria 2.703:so the
bed, as though consciously, has received its two lovers. And the door is
shut. Muse, wait outside-conscius ecce duos accepit lectus amantes:
ad thalami clausas, Musa, resiste foras; Propertius 2.15.2: And O you
bed made blessed by delights!-et O tu lectule deliciis facte beate
meis!; Juvenal Satires 9.77 has an address to a witness-bed:testis mihi
lectulus et tu, ad quem peruenit lecti sonus et dominae uox-as
witness the bed and you yourself who heard its creaks, and your ladys
sudden climax (Green 2004:73); the subhsitaratnakosa 20.614,
samptanidhuvanacinhavrajy; has a lovely poem on the klin martys
bearing witness to the amorous sports of women as does Bhravi,
Kirtrjunyam 5.23; see also Bihr (Ratnkara 587, bilakhi lakhai
khar khar); subhsitaratnakosa no. 573 has a grating bed. Heres
Sulpicia on this topos:
Si me cadurci restitutes fasciis
nudam Caleno concubantem proferat

If, when the straps for the mattress have been restored, it might reveal
me naked sleeping with Calenus
Catullus 6.10.7-11 describes a similar scene:
ne quiquam tacitum cubile clamat
sertis ac Syrio fragrans oliuo
puluinusque peraeque et hic ille
tremulique quassa lecti
argutatio inambulatioque

your divan, reeking of Syrian unguents,

draped with bouquets & blossoms etc.
proclaims it,
the pillows & bedclothes indented in several places,
a ceaseless jolting & straining of the framework
the shaky accompaniment to your sex parade.
(Whigham 1996:56)
Ovid, Amores 3.14.33: cur pressus prior est interiorque torus?-Why has
the couch of your bedchamber been pressed down upon just before my
arrival? Propertius Elegies 2.29.35-36 (apparent non ulla toro vestigial
presso, Signa volutantis nec iacuisse duos-There are no signs of
impress on the couch, the marks of lovers taking their delight, no signs
that two have lain therein [Butler 1912:150-151]) and Tibullus Elegies
1.9.57 (Semper sint externa tuo vestigia lecto-let there be signs of
strangers around your bed) also have the klin martys.

O me felicem! o nox mihi candida! et o tu

lectule deliciis facte beate meis!
quam multa apposita narramus verba lucerna,
quantaque sublato lumine rixa fuit!
(Propertius Elegies 2.15.1-4; Butler 1912:102)

How happy is my lot! O night that was not dark for me! And thou
beloved couch blessed by my delight! How many sweet words were
interchanged while I was by, and how we strove together when the
light was gone!
(Propertius Elegies 2.15.1-4; Butler 1912:103)

O my happiness! O dazzling night! and O the bed of love my joys

have sanctified!
How many words we murmured with the lamp drawn near; how often
we tussled together when it was doused!

O happy me! O night that shines for me! And O you bed made blessed
by delights! How many words thrashed out when the light was near us,
what striving together when light was taken away!

What happiness for me! What a rapturous night I had!

And you, o little bed, become my paradise of pleasures!
How much we talked by lamp-light,
What a set-to, when the light was gone!
hout kai ts ertikos h pleist diatrib peri logous mnmn tina tn
ermenn anadidontas. hoi ge kan m pros anthrpous, pros apsycha
peri autn dialegontai.
philtat klin
kai,
Bachchis theon s enomisen, eudaimon lychne.
kai tn then megistos, ei tauti dokes
(Plutarch, De garrulitate, fr. 513; Babbitt 1927:6:458-460)

So also with lovers, who chiefly occupy themselves with conversation

that recalls some memory of the objects of their love; and if they
cannot talk to human beings, they will speak of their passion to
inanimate things:

O dearest bed!
and
O blessd lamp, Bacchis thought you a god,
And greatest god you are if she thinks so.
(Babbitt 1927:6:459-461)
Sider 1997:85; 90 reads pyknn in the fourth line instead of pktn
after Stadtmllers tentative suggestion in his apparatus criticus by
comparison with the Dios Apate, Zeus seduction, Iliad 14.263-348
(Sider 1987:311 [see note 47, ibid. 323]gives ptyktn following Gow-
Page who follow Planudes), the locus classicus for unobserved sex
between husband and wife:
Dread son of Cronus, what are you suggesting now! Suppose we do as
you wish and make love on the heights of Ida, everyone will see
everything. What will happen if one of the eternal gods saw us sleeping
together and ran off to tell the rest? I certainly wouldnt relish the idea
of rising straight from such a bed and going back to your palace. Think
of the scandal! No, if it really is your pleasure to do this, you have a
bedroom that your own son Hephaestus built for you, and the doors he
made for it are solid [pykinas de thyras stathmosin eprsen]. Let us go
and lie down there, since bed takes your fancy.
Zeus who marshals the clouds replied and said:
Hera, dont be afraid any god or man will see us. Ill hide you in a
golden cloud. Even the sun, whose rays provide him with the keenest
sight in all the world, will not be able to see through it.

The son of Cronus spoke and took his wife in his arms; and the divine
earth sent up spring flowers beneath them, dewy clover and crocuses
and a soft and crowded bed of hyacinths, to lift them off the ground. In
this they lay, covered by a beautiful golden cloud, from which a rain of
glistening dewdrops fell.
(Iliad 14.330-350; Jones-Rieu 2003:248)
(Cf. Plato Republic 3.389d9; 390a4; In Republic 3.390b-c, Socrates
objects to Homers portrayal of Zeus randy behaviour in Iliad 14.
Proclus in his commentary on the Republic interprets this episode
allegorically; Plutarch Aud. Poet. 19f-20b rejects Proclus allegorical
reading and finds the point to be a lesson against female
seductiveness in the negative upshot of Heras seduction of Zeus).
Siders reading (1997:90) of the Dios Apate episode as by itself being
sufficient for providing a literary model for love between husband and
wife is prima facie difficult to accept. In the Dios Apate, Hera decides to
stop Zeus from aiding the Trojans by distracting (seducing) him with
sex long enough for her agents to work behind his back. For help, she
approaches Hypnos (sleep) and Aphrodite, who lends Hera her
decorated magic charm, which makes the wearer irresistibly attractive,
wears it and thereafter seduces Zeus, whos lulled off to sleep after
lovemaking.

houtos d n ho Kandauls rasth ts heutou gynaikos, erastheis de

enomize hoi einai gynaika pollon pasen kallistn. hste de tauta
nomizn, n gar hoi tn aichmophorn Gygs ho Daskylou
areskomenos malista, touti ti Gygi kai ta spoudaiestera tn
prgmatn hyperetitheto ho Kandauls kai d kai to eidos ts gynaikos
hyperepainen (Herodotus, Histories 1.8.1) Now Candaules conceived
a passion for his own wife, and thought she was the most beautiful
woman on earth. So, having in his bodyguard a fellow he particularly
liked whose name was Gyges, son of Dascylus, Candaules not only
discussed his most important business with him, but even used to
make him listen to eulogies of his wifes beauty
(Herodotus, Histories 1.8.1; Slincort/Marincola 2003:6; cf. Thompson-
Motif T295 under T280 other aspects of married life , Thompson
1955-8:5:375)

hama de kithni ekduomeni synekdyetai kai tn aid gyn. when she

takes off her clothing, she does away with her shame-you know what
they say of women.
(Herodotus, Histories 1.8.3; Slincort/Marincola 2003:6).

Herodotus was not right in saying that a woman lays aside her
modesty along with her undergarment. On the contrary, a virtuous
woman puts on modesty in its stead, and husband and wife bring into
their mutual relations the greatest modesty as a token of the greatest
love.
(Plutarch, Moralia, Conjugalia Praecepta 139c, Babbitt 1927:2:305)

Plato in Book 2 of the Republic (2.359a2.360d) mentions about the

ring of Gyges. It granted its owner the power to become invisible at
will. According to the legend, the ancestor (in Book 10 Socrates refers
to the ring as belonging to Gyges himself, not his ancestor as Glaucon
states in Book 2) of Gyges of Lydia was a shepherd in the service of
King Candaules of Lydia. An earthquake throws open a cave in a
mountainside where Gyges was tending his flock. Gyges enters the
cave and discoveres that it is a tomb with a bronze horse containing a
corpse, larger than that of a man wearing a golden ring, which Gyges
pocketes and discovers that it confers invisibility on the wearer. Gyges
then arranged to be chosen as one of the messengers who reported to
the king as to the status of the flocks. Arriving at the palace, Gyges
used his new power of invisibility to seduce the queen, and with her
help he murdered the king, and became king of Lydia himself.
5-STATYLLIUS FLACCUS (1st Century CE )
To faithless Nape Flaccus gave myself, this silver lamp, the faithful
confidant of the loves of the night; and now I droop at her bedside,
looking on the lewdness of the forsworn girl. But thou, Flaccus, liest
awake, tormented by cruel care, and both of us are burning far away
from each other.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:131)
Argyreon nychin me synistora piston ertn
ou pisti lychnon Phlakkos edke Napi,
hs para nyn lecheessi mrainomai, eis epiorkou
pantopath kours aischea derkomenos.
Phlakke, se d agrypnon chalepai teirousi merimnai,
amph d allln andicha kaiometha
(Paton vol.1, 1916:130)

A silver lamp, faithful accomplice of the nights amours, to faithless

Nap Flaccus gave me. Now beside her bed I waste away, looking on
the all-suffering shamelessness of that perjured girl. And you, Flaccus,
unsleeping, are oppressed by cruel cares; far from each other, we are
both aflame
(Gow-Page 1968:1:423)
Flaccus gave to faithless Nap,
me, a silver lamp,
faithful witness of nocturnal amours.
Now I die out slowly by her bedside,
looking on that lying girls shamelessness,
while you, Flaccus,
lie sleepless, oppressed by cruel grief
and we both burn,
though far away
from each other.

( [epiorkou] from [epiorke]; forswear [also

exomnumi/enepiorke/parorke); Gow-Page (1968:2:451) mention that
a silver lamp is a raritya rich mans gift; my ellipsis).
7-ASCLEPIADES OF SAMOS (300-270 BCE)
DEAR lamp, thrice Heraclea here present swore by thee to come and
cometh not. Lamp, if thou art a god, take vengeance on the deceitful
girl. When she has a friend at home and is sporting with him, go out,
and give them no more light.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:131)
Lychne, se gar pareosa tris mosen Herakleia
hxein, kouch hkei. Lychne, sy d ei theos e,
tn dolin apamynon. hotan philon endon echousa
paizi, aposbestheis mketi phs pareche.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:130-2)
Lamp, three times Heracleia swore in your presence
to come, and comes not. Lamp, if you are a god,
assist her trickery. When she has a friend at home
and is sporting with him, go out and provide no more light.
(Cameron 1981:282)
Asclepiades AP 5.7 has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, on
which see Cairns1998:171-8. For a discussion of this most notorious of
epigrams, whose interpretation has challenged the ingenuity of critics
and generated more debate than its modest number of lines would
seem to deserve (Clack 1999:37), see Gow-Page 1968:2:123,
Giangrande 1973:319-22, Galli 1976:192-205, Marcovich1987:1-7,
Maxwell-Stuart 1981:2:33-4, Cameron 1981:282-4, Clack 1999:37-8
Gutzwiller 2009:138-9 and Kanellou (2010). Cameron observes:

Lovers keep the lamp alight, comments Page, on a rather different

poem by Meleager [AP 5.165; Gow-Page 1968:2:635]. It is true that
Greeks and Roman poets frequently refer to lamps as witnesses of
lovemaking, but that is because people normally make love in private
at night. So the bedroom lamp witnesses what others do not. The lamp
may be called the guardian of the poets beloved; sometimes the
poet will guess from the light in her window that his girl is with another
man; and, like everybody else, lovers extinguish the lamp when they
are ready for sleep. But none of these variations on the motif is quite
the same as saying that lovers prefer actually to make love with the
light on. This was surely a matter of taste. As one poet admitted, while
he liked Ludere teste lucerna, his modest wife preferred the light off
(Martial, xi.104.5-6). After all, the lamp will usually have witnessed
quite enough to compromise the lovers even if they extinguish it
before actually getting to bed.
(Cameron 1981: 283)
Lamp, Heracleia swore three times in your presence that she
would come, and she hasnt come. Lamp, if you are a god,
punish her deceit. Whenever shes playing, having a lover
within, extinguish yourself and give them no more light
(Gutzwiller 2009:138; discussion 138-9)

Lamp, here in your presence swore Heracleia three times that she
would come to me. And she did not. Now, lamp, if you are a god punish
the perjurer: When she next time has a friend at her home to entertain
him, put yourself out and deny her your light.

Lamp,
Heracleia awore thrice before you that shed come to me.
But she didnt.
Now, lamp, if youre a god, punish that liar:
The next time that she entertains a friend at her house,
Quench yourself
and deny them your light.

8-MELEAGER OF GADARA (First decade of the 1st Century BCE,

flourished 110-90 BCE )
O holy Night, and Lamp, we both chose no confidants but you of our
oaths: and he swore to love me and I never to leave him; and ye were
joint witnesses. But now he says those oaths were written in running
water, and thou, O Lamp, seest him in the bosom of others.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:133)
Nyx hier kai lychne, synistoras outinas allous
horkois, all hymeas, heilometh amphoteroi.
ch men eme sterxein, kenon d eg ou pote leipsein
mosamen, koinn d eichete martyrin.
nyn d ho men horkia phsin en hydati kena pheresthai,
lychne, sy d en kolpois auton horis hetern.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:132)
Sacred night and oil-lamp, we two together chose no other witnesses
for our oaths than you.
We swore: he that he would love me, I that I would never leave him.
You were witnesses to testimony sworn jointly.
But now he says that those oaths are carried on water,
And you, lamp, see him in the bosom of others.
(Sider 1997:196)

Sacred night and lamp,

we both chose no other witnesses for our oaths than you.
We swore:
He that hed love me,
I that Id never leave him.
You were witnesses to our joint testimony.
But now he says that those oaths are carried on water,
And you, lamp, see him in the bosom of others.
Planudes acscribes this epigram to Philodemus. The lamp image is
almost always heterosexual; the poems speaker is therefore female.
This epigram blends and extends images from Callimachus AP 5.6 and
Asclepiades 5.7. Sider (1997:196) feels this poem to be unworthy of
both Meleager and Phil(odemus). Gutzwiller (2007:119) opines
differently.
128-MARCUS ARGENTARIUS (60 BCE)
breast to breast supporting my bosom on hers, and pressing her sweet
lips to mine I clasped Antigone close with naught between us. Touching
the rest, of which the lamp was entered as witness, I am silent.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:189)
sterna peri sternois, masti d epi maston ereisas,
cheilea te glykeros cheilesi sympiesas
Antigons, kai chrta labn pros chrta, ta loipa
sig, martys eph os lychnos epegrapheto
(Paton vol.1, 1916:188)
Breast to breast with Antigone, bosom on bosom pressing,
lips on sweet lips fastening, flesh to flesh clasping,-the rest is silence;
the lamp is registered witness of it all
(Gow-Page 1968:1:155)
breast pressed to breast and nipple rubbing against nipple; pressing
my lips firmly on the sweet lips of Antigon, I lay my body on
hers, of the rest I say nothing, only the lamp was witness.

Leaning chest to chest, breast to breast, pressing lips on sweet

lips, and taking Antigons skin to my skin, I keep silent about
the other things, to which the lamp is registered as witness.

Her breast against my breast,

Her skin on mine,
Her lips against my lips,
With nothing in between Antigon and me, we lay.
I say no more.
The rest the lamp can say.

Her perfect naked breast

upon my breast,
her lips between my lips,

I lay in perfect bliss

with lovely Antigone,
nothing caught between us.

I will not tell the rest.

Only the lamp bore witness.
(Hamill 1999:24)
Antigon and me:
chest to chest
breast to breast
lips to lips
skin to skin.
Im silent about other things,
for which the lamps a witness.

Pressing Antigons chest against my chest,

breast against my breast,
sweet lips to my lips,
and skin to my skin,
Im silent about the other things,
for which the lamp is entered as witness.
A teasing poem, in the form of a praeteritio (, ),
particularly the variety called as ennoia or invitio. We wonder just how
far he will go in the naming of parts. Is there also a puzzle about whats
next. If he continues with specific names, he can hardly keep up the
polyptoton, since the male and female parts have different names.
Does he stop talking because his grammatical scheme no longer
works? Or are we to imagine that the omitted climax (no pun intended)
would have been something along the lines of ? In
that case, the omission is tasteful. Marcus Argentarius is particularly
fond of innovative paronomasia.

Occultatio est cum dicimus nos praeterire aut non scire aut nolle dicere
id quod nunc maxime dicimus, hoc modo:Nam de pueritia quidem tua,
quam tu omnium intemperantiae addixisti, dicerem, si hoc tempus
idoneum putarem; nunc consulto relinquo. Et illud praetereo, quod te
tribuni rei militaris infrequentem tradiderunt. Deinde quod iniuriarum
satis fecisti L. Labeoni nihil ad hanc rem pertinere puto. Horum nihil
dico; revertor ad illud de quo iudicium est. Item: Non dico te ab sociis
pecunias cepisse; non sum in eo occupatus quod civitates, regna,
domos omnium depeculatus es; furta, rapinas omnes tuas omitto.
Haec utilis est exornatio si aut ad rem quam non pertineat aliis
ostendere, quod occulte admonuisse prodest, aut longum est aut
ignobile, aut planum non potest fieri, aut facile potest reprehendi; ut
utilius sit occulte fecisse suspicionem quam eiusmodi intendisse
orationem quae redarguatur.
(Ad Herennium 4.27.37; Caplan 1954:320)
Paralipsis occurs when we say that we are passing by, or do not know,
or refuse to say that which precisely now we are saying, as follows:
Your boyhood, indeed, which you dedicated to intemperance of all
kinds, I would discuss, if I thought this the right time. But at present
I advisedly leave that aside. This too I pass by, that the tribunes have
reported you as irregular in military service. Also that you have given
satisfaction to Lucius Labeo for injuries done him I regard as irrelevant
to the present matter. Of these things I say nothing, but return to the
issue in this trial. Again: I do not mention that you have taken
monies from our allies; I do not concern myself with your having
despoiled the cities, kingdoms, and homes of them all. I pass by your
thieveries and robberies, all of them. This figure is useful if employed
in a matter which is not pertinent to call specifically to the attention of
others, because there is advantage in making only an indirect
reference to it, or because the direct reference would be tedious or
undignified, or cannot be made clear, or can easily be refuted. As a
result, it is of greater advantage to create a suspicion by Paralipsis
than to insist directly on a statement that is refutable.
(Ad Herennium 4.27.37; Caplan 1954:321)
Quintillian IO 9.3.99 excludes praeteritio (which he terms
; parasipsis) from the figures of thought.

162-MELEAGER
Meleager dedicates to thee, dear Cypris, the lamp his play-fellow, that
is initiated into the secrets of thy night-festival

165-MELEAGER.
mother of all the gods, dear Night, one thing I beg, yea I pray to thee,
holy Night, companion of my revels. If some one lies cozy beneath
Heliodras mantle, warmed by her bodys touch that cheateth sleep,
let the lamp close its eyes and let him, cradled on her bosom, lie there
a second Endymin.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:207)
Hen tode, pammteira then, litomai se, phil Nyx,
nai litomai, kmn symplane, potnia Nyx,
ei tis hypo chlaini beblmenos Heliodras
thalpetai, hypnapati chrti chliainomenos
koimasth men lychnos. ho d en kolpoisin ekeins
rhiptastheis keisth deuteros Endymin.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:206)
This paraclausithyric epigram combines images from two poems by
Asclepiades-AP 5.7 (address to the lamp) and AP 5.164 (address to
Night and the Endymion theme). The myth goes that Selene, the Moon,
enamoured of Endymion spent her nights in his company, neglecting
her duties. In the mornings, she would appear paler and more fatigued
than uual due to her nocturnal amours. Zeus, discovering her liaison
with Endymion, offered Endymion the choice of death in any manner of
his choosing or eternal sleep and beauty. Endymion, unsurprisingly,
chose the latter. Apollonius of Rhodes in Argonautica 4.57 (compare
Phaedo 72c) tells how Selene, the Titan Goddess of the moon, loved
Endymion who was so beautiful that she asked Zeus, Endymions
father to grant him eternal youth so he would never leave her.
Alternatively, Selene loved the sleeping visage of Endymion in the cave
on Mount Latmos, near Miletus in Caria so much that she beseeched
Zeus that he might remain that way. Either way, Zeus blessed him by
putting him into an eternal sleep. Every night, Selene visited him
where he slept. Selene and Endymion had fifty daughters called the
Menae. According to a passage in Deipnosophistae, the sophist and
dithyrambic poet Licymnius of Chios tells how Hypnos, the god of
sleep, in awe of Endymions beauty, causes him to sleep with his eyes
open, so he can fully admire his face. The Bibliotheke 1.7.5 claims that
Calyce and Aethlius had a son Endymion who led Aeolians from
Thessaly and founded Elis. But some say that he was a son of Zeus. As
he was of surpassing beauty, the Moon fell in love with him, and Zeus
allowed him to choose what he would, and he chose to sleep for ever,
remaining deathless and ageless. The Eelder Pliny in Naturalis Historia,
2.4.43 mentions Endymion as the first human to observe the
movements of the moon, which (according to Pliny) accounts for
Endymions love. Propertius in Elegies 2.25, Cicero in Book 1 of
Tusculanae Quaestiones and Theocritus discuss the Endymion myth to
some length, but reiterate the above to varying degrees.

166-MELEAGER.
O night, O longing for Heliodra that keepest me awake, O tormenting
visions of the dawn full of tears and joy, is there any relic left of her
love for me? Is the memory of my kiss still warm in the cold ashes of
fancy? Has she no bed-fellow but her tears and does she clasp to her
bosom and kiss the cheating dream of me? Or is there another new
love, new dalliance ? Mayst thou never look on this, dear lamp; but
guard her well whom I committed to thy care.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:207)
nyx, philagrypnos emoi pothos Heliodras,
kai skolin orthrn knismata dakrychar,
ra menei storgs ema leipsana, kai to philma
mymosynon psychpi thalpet en eikasia;
ra g echei sygkoita ta dakrya, kamon oneiron
psychapatn sternois amphibalosa phile;
e neos allos ers, nea paignia; Mpote, lychne,
tat esidis, eis d hs paredka phylax.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:206)
O night, O wakeful longing in me for Heliodra, and eyes that sting
with tears in the creeping grey of dawn, do some remnants of affection
yet remain mine, and is her memorial kiss warm upon my cold picture?
has she tears for bedfellows, and does she clasp to her bosom and kiss
a deluding dream of me? or has she some other new love, a new
plaything? Never, O lamp, look thou on that, but be guardian of her
whom I gave to thy keeping.
(Mackail 1911:124)
O night, O insomniac longing in me for Heliodora, O gloomy dawns
torments delighting in tears, are there any relics left of her affection for
me, does any kiss stay warm [as] a reminder [of me] in the cold bed?
Does she have tears for bed-partners, does she hug [lit. clasp round] to
her breasts and kiss the soul-cheating dream of me [almost=ghost of
me-Gow & Page]? Or is there some new love, new darling [or
plaything]? Never, lamp, may you look on this, but guard her whom I
entrusted to you.

191-MELEAGER
Astra kai he philersi kalon phainousa Seln
kai Nyx chai kmon symplanon organion
ra ge tn philaston et en koitaisin athrs
agrypnon lychnoi poll apoklaomenn
tin echei sygkoiton; epi prothyroisi maranas
dachrysin ekds tous hichetas stephanous
hen tod epigrapsas. Kypri, soi Meleagros ho
mysts
sn kmn storgs skyla tad echremasen
(Paton vol.1, 1916:222)
O stars, and moon, that lightest well Loves friends on their way, and
Night, and thou, my little mandoline, companion of my serenades, shall
I see her, the wanton one, yet lying awake and crying much to her
lamp; or has she some companion of the night ? Then will I hang at her
door my suppliant garlands, all wilted with my tears, and inscribe
thereon but these words, Cypris, to thee doth Meleager, he to whom
thou hast revealed the secrets of thy revels, suspend these spoils of his
love.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:222)
This poem combines the topos of the paraclausithyron/kmos (on
which see the excellent discussion in Cummmings 1996 :7-36) with the
dedicatory epigram (lines 9-10).
192-MELEAGER
Astra chai he philersi chalon phainousa Seln
chai Nyx chai chmon symplanon organion
ra ge tn philaston et en choitaisin athrs
agrypnon lychnoi poll apodaomenn
tin echei sygchoiton; epi prothyroisi maranas
dachrysin echds tous hichetas stephanous
hen tod epigrapsas. Kypri, soi Meleagros ho mysts
sn chmn storgs schyla tad echremase
(Tarn 1997:92)
O stars and moon, who shine beautifully for lovers,
and night and you, little lute, companion of my revels,
shall I still see the wanton one in bed, awake
very by her lamp?
or has she some bed fellow?
I shall hang at her portals the suppliant garlands,
withered by my tears, and write only this: Cypris,
for you Meleager, the initiate of your revels, hung up these spoils of
love.
(Tarn 1997:92-3)

O Stars and Moon, that light well loves friends on their way,
And Night, and you, my little mandoline,
Companion of my serenades, shall I see her, the wanton one,
Yet lying awake and crying much to her lamp
Or has she some companion of the night?
(Parisinou 2000a: 27-8)
197-MELEAGER
yea ! by Timos fair-curling love-loving ringlets, by Demos fragrant skin
that cheateth sleep, by the dear dalliance of Ilias, and my wakeful
lamp, that looked often on the mysteries of my love-revels, I swear to
thee, Love (Cupid), I have but a little breath left on my lips, and if thou
wouldst have this too, speak but the word and I will spit it forth.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:225-27)
Nai ma ton euplokamon Timos philerta kikinnon,
nai myropnoun Dmos chrta ton hypnapatn,
nai palin Iliados phila paignia, nai philagrypnon
lychnon, emn kmn poll epidonta tel,
baion ech to ge leiphthen Ers epi cheilesi
pnema.
ei d etheleis kai tot eipe, kai ekptysomai
(Paton vol.1, 1916:224-6)
I swear by Timos beautiful sportive curls, by Demos perfumed sleep-
beguiling skin, and by the love-play of Ilias, by the wakeful
(philagrypnon; from philagrypnos; wakeful) lamp that has witnessed
the mysteries of my many revels-I have little breath left, Cupid, on my
lips. But if you want that too, speak the word and I will give it out.

By Timos beautiful love-loving curls,

By Demos fragrant sleep-cheating skin,
By Ilias love-play,
By the wakeful lamp, witness to the mysteries of my many love-revels-
I swear that Ive but little breath left on my lips, Cupid,
But if you want that too,
Speak the word
and Ill spit it out.

MARCUS ARGENTARIUS (AP 6.333)

Thrice hast thou sneezed, dear lamp!
Is it, perchance, to tell me that
Delightful Antigone is coming to my chamber?
For if, my Lord, this be true, thou shalt stand by the tripod,
Like Apollo, and prophesy to men

h to kalon kai pasin epasmion anthesasa,

h moun charitn leiria drepsamen,
ouketi chrysochalinon hopi dromon nelioio
Lais, ekoimth d hypnon opheilpmenon,
kmous kai ta nen zelmata kai ta potheuntn
knismata kai mystn lychnon apeipamen
(Pompeius the younger Anthologia Palatina 7.219, Gow-Page
1968:1:440; Paton 1919:2:124)

She whose flowering was so beautiful and to all men desirable, she
who alone gathered the lilies of the Graces, Las no longer looks on the
suns gold-bridled course, but is laid to rest in her appointed sleep,
having said farewell to revels and young mens jealousies and lovers
chafings and the bedroom-lamp her confidant.
(Pompeius the younger, Anthologia Palatina 7.219, Gow-Page
1968:1:441)

Lais, whose bloom was so lovely and delightful in the eyes of all, she
who alone culled the lilies of the Graces, no longer looks on the course
of the Suns golden-bitted steeds, but sleeps the appointed sleep,
javing bid farewell to reveling and young mens rivalries and lovers
torments and the lamp her confidant.
(Pompeius the younger, Anthologia Palatina 7.219, Paton 1919:2:125)

Marcus Valerius Martialis (born between C.E. 38-41)

Uxor, vade foras aut moribus utere nostris:

non sum ego nec Curius nec Numa nec Tatius.
me jucunda juvant tractae per pocula noctes:
tu properas pota surgere tristis aqua.
tu tenebris gaudes: me ludere teste lucerna (5)
et iuvat admissa rumpere luce latus.
fascia te tunicaeque obscuraque pallia celant:
at mihi nulla satis nuda puella jacet.
basia me capiunt blandas imitata columbas:
tu mihi das aviae qualia mane soles.(10)
nec motu dignaris opus nec voce iuvare
nec digitis, tamquam tura merumque pares:
masturbabantur Phrygii post ostia servi,
Hectoreo quotiens sederat uxor equo,
et quamvis Ithaco stertente pudica solebat (15)
illic Penelope semper habere manum.
pedicare negas: dabat hoc Cornelia Graccho,
Julia Pompeio, Porcia, Brute, tibi;
dulcia Dardanio nondum miscente ministro
pocula Juno fuit pro Ganymede Iovi.(20)
si te delectat gravitas, Lucretia toto
sis licet usque die; Laida nocte volo.
(Martial, Epigrammata 11.104, Ker 1920:2:310)

Either conform to my habits, wife, or get lost! Im no fossil!

I like to pleasantly prolong the nights with wine; you quickly gulp water
and glumly retire;
you like the dark; I enjoy a lamp witnessing my pleasures, and to tire
my loins in dawns light.
Youre swathed and covered from top to toe; but for no girl can be
naked enough in bed.
I love girls who seize by the neck and kiss like doves; you kiss me like
you peck
your granny in the morning.
You dont participate in lovemaking by movements or voice or fingers;
you act as if youre observing a vow of chastity!
The Phrygian slaves masturbated outside the door whenever Hectors
wife came on top; and, however much Ulysses snored, the chaste
Penelope always had her hand on his pubes.
You dont let me bugger you-Cornelia gave this to Gracchus; Julia to
Pompey, Porcia to Brutus;
Juno was Jupiters Ganymede before the Dardan boy mixed the sweet
cup.
If you must insist on being so damn prim and proper,
be a pious wife to your hearts content all day-
but I want a slut at night.
(Martial Epigrams 11.104)
Sweet heart begon: Or use our wayes with us,
I am no Curius, Numa, Tatius.
Nights spent in pleasant Cups best please my sense,
Thou to drink water cannst rise and dispence.
Thou joyst in darkness, I by light to sport,
Or else by day to loose my Breeches fort.
Swathes or Coats cover thee, or obscure stuff,
No Wench to me can lye displayd enough.
Such kisses please like Doves that are a billing,
Thou smackst me like thy Grandam so unwilling,
Nor towards the work dost voyce or motion bring,
Nor hand: But makest it as some Offering.
The Phrygian Boyes in secret spent their Seed
As oft as Hector's wife rid on his Steed,
Whiles her Sire slept, Penelope though chast
Was wont to play her hand below her wast.
Thoult not be buggerd: Although Gracchus wife
Pompeys and others did it without strife.
And when the Boy not present was tis said
To fill Wine: Juno was Joves Ganimede,
If gravity by day doth thee delight,
Lucretia be: Ile have thee Lais by night.
(Fletcher1656:111-2]
Either get out of the house or conform to my tastes, woman.
Im no strait-laced old Roman.
I like prolonging the nights agreeably with wine: you, after one
glass of water,
Rise and retire with an air of hauteur.
You prefer darkness: I enjoy love-making
With a witness-a lamp shining or the dawn breaking.
You wear bed-jackets, tunics, thick woollen stuff,
Whereas I think no woman on her back can ever be naked enough.
I love girls who kiss like doves and hang round my neck:
You give me the sort of peck
Due to our grandmother as a morning salute.
In bed, youre motionless, mute-
Not a wriggle,
Not a giggle-
As solemn as a priestess at a shrine
Proferring incense and pure wine.
Yet every time Andromache went for a ride
In Hectors room, the household slaves used to masturbate outside,
Even modest Penolope, when Ulysses snored,
Kept her hand on the sceptre of her lord.
You refuse to be buggered; but its a known fact
That Gracchus, Pompeys and Brutus wives were willing partners
in the act,
And that before Ganymede mixed Jupiter his tasty bowl
Juno filled the dear boys role.
If you want to be uptight-all right,
By all means play Lucretia by day. But I need a Lais at night.
(Michie 2002:157)
Unlike the mistress, stock addressee of Augustan love elegy, this
epigram addresses Martials wife. There are other epigrams that
address a wife; all ribald and obscene (Epigrammata 2.92; 3.92;
4.24). Ive translated non sum ego nec Curius nec Numa nec Tatius
(literally, Im not Curius, Numa or Tatius) as Im no fossil. cf.
11.104.5 with Ovid, Ars amatoria 3.807-8: Nec lucem in thalamos totis
admitte fenestris:/Aptius in vestro corpore multa latent-Nor let light
into the bedroom, through the fully-opened bedroom shutters: its
better for many things on your body/much of your body to stay
hidden; cf also Plutarch, Moralia, Quaestiones Romanae, 279f. Also cf.
11.104.13 with Ovid, Ars amatoria 2.703-4: ad thalami clausa, Musa,
resiste fores: halt, Muse, at the closed doors of the bedroom. Martial, in
his intertextual jawb to the praeceptors erotodidaxis (seemingly)
employs the mode of oppositio in imitando/parapurapravea
tadvirodhini arthaharana, which Richlin 1992:158-60, commenting on
epigram 11.104.13-14 evocatively terms staining of the
[Ovidian]tradition. See also Hinds 1998:134-5 and 2007:113-154. cf.
11.104.13 with Dioscorides, Anthlogia Palatina 5.56.2 and also with the
paraclausithyric exclusus amator in Horace Epode 11.22; (see Clarke
2001:88 on voyeur figures in Roman erotic art). Adams 1982:123 cites
11.104.17 that the object of pedico is usually male, but sometimes
female (ibid).The conjugal affection of doves is a proverbial topos:
Ovid Amores 2.6.56; Propertius Elegies 2.15.27; Martial Epigrams
1.109.2; 12.65.8. Observing chastity on the previous night (sometimes
for ten days, Propertius Elegies 3.22.62) was essential for the rites of
Ceres (Ovid Amores 3.10.2) and Isis (Ovid Amores 1.8.74; Tibullus
Elegies 1.3.25). Theres a false etymology between pocula (11.104.20)
from poculus, a drinking-vessel, a cup, goblet, bowl, beaker and
clus, anus (cf. the Greek of a curving form) and hence,
11.104.20 is suggestive of anal sex. On Martials embodied poetics,
see Lavigne 2008:275-311. There have been various sanitized
translations of this epigram; Sullivan-Whigman give two such
englished versions: that of Sir John Davies (Sullivan-Whigman
1987:565-7) and Tom Brown (ibid.: 567-9). Ker (1920:2:310) translates
11.104.13-20 into Italian, whereas Bohn (1860:542-3) cites 11.104
entirely in Giuspanio Graglias (1782, 1791) Italian translation! The
oldest English rhymed translation is Fletcher 1656:111-2. Recent
translations in English are Michie 2002:157 (rhymed); theres a partial
prose translation of 11.104.13-22 at Richlin 1992:159.

The ancient Greeks had ethnic terms for sexual acts and preferences,
like French (oral) and Greek (anal) in English. To act like a Phrygian
(phrygizein) was masturbation, like a Syrian (surizein) buggery, and
like a Lesbian (lesbizein) fellatio.
Lucerna Cubicularis
dulcis conscia lectuli lucerna
quidquid vis facias licet, tacebo

I, a lamp, witness to the sweet bed

Will keep silent even if you do whatever you want
(Epigrammata 14.39)

I am a night-lamp, privy to the pleasures of the couch; do whatever

you please, I shall be silent.
LIBER X.XXXVIII
O molles tibi quindecim, Calene,
Quos cum Sulpicia tua iugales
Indulsit deus et peregit annos!
O nox omnis et hora, quae notata est
Caris litoris Indici lapillis!
O quae proelia, quas utrimque pugnas
Felix lectulus et lucerna vidit
Nimbis ebria Nicerotianis!
Vixisti tribus, o Calene, lustris:
Aetas haec tibi tota conputatur
Et solos numeras dies mariti.
Ex illis tibi si diu rogatam
Lucem redderet Atropos vel unam,
Malles, quam Pyliam quater senectam.
(Epigrammata 10.38)
(Proelia, from proeliris, of or belonging to a battle, pugnas, from
pgna, a hand-to hand fight, fight at close quarters, combat.)

XXXVIII. TO CALENUS.
Oh how delicious have been the fifteen years of married bliss, Calenus,
which the deities have lavished, in full measure, on you and your
Sulpicia! Oh happy nights and hours, how joyfully has each been
marked with the precious pearls of the Indian shore! Oh what contests,
what voluptuous strife between you, has the happy couch, and the
lamp dripping with Nicerotian perfume, witnessed! You have lived,
Calenus, three lustra, and the whole term is placed to your account,
but you count only your days of married life. Were Atropos, at your
urgent request, to bring back to you just one of those days, you would
prefer it to the long life of Nestor quadrupled.
Sweet for you, Calenus, are the fifteen
wedded years which, with your Sulpicia,
the god bestowed and accomplished!
Every night and every hour were ones marked
with darling little pearls of the Indian shoreline!
What battles, what struggles for each of you
did the lucky little bed and the lamp gaze upon
drunk with Nicerotian outpourings!
You have lived, Calenus, through three lustrations:
this is the totality of life by your calculations
as you count only the days when you have been a husband.
were Atropos to restore to you a single one
of these days, just one much longed for,
you would opt for it rather than four spans of Pylian old age
(Marguerite and Ryan 2005:86)
263.-AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
never, my lamp, mayest thou wear a snuff or arouse the rain, lest thou
hold my bridegroom from coming. Ever dost thou grudge Cypris; for
when Hero was plighted to Leander-no more, my heart, no more! Thou
art Hephaestuss, and I believe that, by vexing Cypris, thou fawnest on
her suffering lord.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:265)
Mpote, lychne, mykga pherois, md ombron egeirois,
m ton emon pausis nymphion erchome non
aiei sy phthoneeis ti Kypridi, kai gar hoth Her
hrmose Leiandroithyme, to loipon ea.
Hephaistou teletheis. Kai peithomai, hotti chaleptn
Kyprida, thpeueis despotikn odynn
(Paton vol.1, 1916:264)
Never grow mould, O lamp, nor call up the rain, lest thou stop my
bridegroom in his coming; always thou art jealous of the Cyprian; yes
and when she betrothed Hero to Leander-O my heart, leave the rest
alone. Thou art the Fire-Gods, and I believe that by vexing the
Cyprian thou flatterest thy masters pangs.

279-PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
cleophantis delays, and for the third time the wick of the lamp begins
to droop and rapidly fade. Would that the flame in my heart would sink
with the lamp and did not this long while burn me with sleepless
desire. Ah! how often she swore to Cytherea to come in the evening,
but she scruples not to offend men and gods alike.
(Paton vol.1, 1916:275)
Dthynei kleophantis. ho de tritos archetai d
lychnos hypoklazein ka marainomenos.
aithe de kai kradis pyrsos synapesbeto lychni,
mde m hyp agrypnois dron ekaie pothois.
posa tn kythereian epmosen hesperos hxein
all out anthrpn pheidetai, oute then
(Paton vol.1, 1916:274)
That the absolute seclusion and chaperonage of the young women,
and their consequent ignorance and insipidity, were the reasons why
they could neither feel nor inspire Romantic Love, is shown by the fact
that there existed in Greece in the time of Perikles a mentally superior
class of women who appear to have aroused Love, or something very
like it, by means of the artistic and intellectual charms which they
united with their physical beauty. These women were called Hetairai (cf
the ganik and the tawif),
or companions, evidently to distinguish
them from the domestic women who were no companions after the
first charm of novelty had worn away: a state of affairs for which of
course the men themselves, who gave them no education and locked
them up, were to blame.
 ,
/ille erat lucerna ardens et
lucens vos autem voluistis exultare ad horam in luce eius/He was the
lamp that was burning and was shining and you were willing to rejoice
for a while in his light (John 5.35)

He began: Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed?

Instead, dont you put it on its stand? (Kai elegen autois hoti mti
erchetai hi lychnos hina hypo ton modion tethi hypo tn klinn)
(Mark 4:21). Psalm 118:105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light
for my path; nun lucerna pedibus meis verbum tuum et lumen semitis
meis). The lamp in Jewish tradition also stood for God (You are my
lamp, o Lord; the Lord turns my darkness into light, quia tu lucerna
mea Domine et Domine inluminabis tenebras meas, 2 Samuel 22:29)
and the coming of the Messiah (Zechariah 4:1-7). Jesus may have been
referring to his own word, for logos (word) and lychnos are similar in
the Greek. Or Jesus may have been referring to himself as the light of
the world; While I am in the world, I am the light of the wold hotan
en ti kosmi , phs eimi tou kosmou (John 9:5; cf. John 1:1-5)
.
, / lucerna corporis est oculus
si fuerit oculus tuus simplex totum corpus tuum lucidum erit/The lamp
of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body
will be full of light. (Matthew 6.22)
lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus si oculus tuus fuerit simplex totum
corpus tuum lucidum erit si autem nequam fuerit etiam corpus tuum
tenebrosum erit/ .
,
, /The eye is the lamp of your
body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but
when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness (Luke 11.34).
Tote homoithestai h basileia tn ouranon deka parthenois, haitines
labousai tas lampadas heautn exlthon eis hypantsin tou nymphiou
[2] pente de ex autn san mrai kai [3] pente phronimoi: hai gar
mrai labousai tas lampadas [4] (autn) ouk elabon meth heautn
elaion: hai de phronimoi elabon elaion en tois angeiois meta tn
lampadn heautn [5] chronizontos de tou nymphiou enustaxan pasai
kai ekatheudon [6] mess de nyktos kraug gegonen Idou ho
nymphios, exerchesthe eis apantsin. [7] tote gerthsan pasai hai
parthenoi ekeinai kai ekosmsan tas lampadas heautn. [8] hai de
mrai tais phronimois eipan Dote hmin ek tou elaiou humn, hoti hai
lampades hmn sbennuntai.
(Matthew 25.1-8)
tunc simile erit regnum caelorum decem virginibus quae accipientes
lampadas suas exierunt obviam sponso et sponsae [2] quinque autem
ex eis errant fatuae et quinque prudentes [3] sed quinque fatuae
acceptis lampadibus non sumpserunt oleum secum [4] prudentes vero
acceperunt oleum in vasis suis cum lampadibus [5] moram autem
faciente sponso dormitaverunt onmes et dormierunt [6] media autem
nocte clamor factus est ecce sponsus venit exite obviam ei [7] tunc
surrexerunt omnes virgins illae et ornaverunt lampades suas [8] fatuae
autem sapientibus dixerunt date nobis de oleo vestro quia lampades
nostrae extinguntur.
(Matthew 25.1-8)

Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins, who took their
lamps, and went out to meet the bridegroom. [2] Five of them were
foolish, and five were wise. [3] Those who were foolish, when they took
their lamps, took no oil with them, [4]
but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. [5] Now while the
bridegroom delayed, they all slumbered and slept. [6] But at midnight
there was a cry, Behold! The bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet
him! [7] Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. [8] The
foolish said to the wise, Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are
going out.
(Matthew 25.1-8)
praecipe filiis Israhel ut adferant tibi oleum de arboribus olivarum
purissimum piloque contusum ut ardeat lucerna semper/ You shall
command the children of Israel, that they bring to you pure olive oil
beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually (Exodus 27.20)
o lychnos tou smatos estin o ophthalmos ean oun o ophthalmos sou
aplous olon to sma sou phteinon estai/lucerna corporis est oculus
si fuerit oculus tuus simplex totum corpus tuum lucidum erit/ The lamp
of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body
will be full of light (Matthew 6.22)

o lychnos tou smatos estin o ophthalmos otan oun o ophthalmos sou

aplous kai olon to sma sou phteinon estin epan de ponros kai to
sma sou skoteinon/
lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus si oculus tuus fuerit simplex totum
corpus tuum lucidum erit si autem nequam fuerit etiam corpus tuum
tenebrosum erit/ The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore when your
eye is good, your whole body is also full of light; but when it is evil,
your body also is full of darkness (Luke 11.34)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God
The same was in the beginning with God
All things were made through Him. Without Him was not anything
made that has been made
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasnt overcome it.

EN ARCH n ho logos, kai ho logos n pros ton theon, kai theos n ho

logos
Houtos n en archi pros ton theon
panta di autou egeneto, kai chris autou egeneto oude hen
ho gegonen en auti z n, kai h z
n to phs tn anthrpn: kai to phs en ti skotiai phainei, kai h
skotia auto ou katelaben
(John 1.1-5)
The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the innermost
parts of his being.
(Proverbs 20.27)

lucerna Domini spiraculum hominis quae investigat omnia secreta

ventris
(Proverbs 20.27)Dear Sir,

I am utterly bowled over by your Email and the no less valuable essay
you were kind enough to append. Yours is an extraordinary mind,
supported by a catholicity of erudition and a finely discriminating
sensibility, that guards the chastened eloquence and vigour of your
literary style from- what is, alas!, too common nowadays- conscription
under the banner of the sort of meretricious politically correct
cause or ephemeral Continental philosophy that has so vitiated
Indological discourse.

There are only two things you are lacking- both of which, all modesty
aside, I possess in such superfluity that, despite the purported
dakshina or deed of gift this missive represents, yet, nevertheless, I
fear, you can never possess - viz. Madness and Stupidity.
Consider for a moment; let your submerged sthulya or gramya side
speak- what has greater survival value than Stupidity? Every villager
knows that to appear intelligent is to invite disaster. Folk wisdom
knows no more fundamental axiom.

As for Madness- what is the point of Punditry, Power or Poetry- or

anything else performative under such rubric- unless it is backed up
by Madness? It is only the Madman who can speak the truth and
escape
the consequences. To the Madman alone is ascribed prophetic prowess
after the seal has been placed on Prophesy. Adi Sankara praises the
madman because he alone escapes the karmic consequences of the
subtle violence of sublation, in the unending struggle for Gnosis.

In everyday life, when ordinary people come to you- you, the

educated guy- they first sit around pretending to enjoy your poetry.
Then, after you have thoroughly disgraced yourself casting your pearls
before swine, they get down to business. Give me a couplet to recite
for my son who is retarded or my spouse who is unfaithful. You try
arguing with them. You actually frame a verse in their dialect which
is rich in psychological truth. It wont do. You havent helped.
Unless, that is, you foam a little at the mouth and go into a trance.
Then, it works. You are now in the business of curing people. You are
a Dr. Faustus for whom no Hades gapes.
There is no poetry in India- especially the Rg Veda- that isnt
modern, that isnt contemporary, that doesnt offer you a template to
produce on command, verses of this sort- provided, of course, that you
respect the two great principles of Madness and Stupidity cleaving to
which our people have survived and multiplied and remained human to
a
greater degree than, it may be, any other civilization untaught by our
own.
Academics dont get this. O.K, academics who were crazy, like Foucault
and, more to the point, Deleuze, sometimes seem to glimpse the
importance of the Madman as the pharmakos that doesnt get
sacrificed-
the scapegoat which escapes with its life- the opposite of Al Hallaj
who just wasnt crazy enough, or Sarmad who didnt dribble
sufficiently into his beard or roll back his eyes far enough into his
head- and who, for that reason alone, were considered blameworthy.
They revealed what shouldnt be revealed save behind the veil of
madness. Obviously, after the Great Confinement, Continental
theorists were precluded from understanding the very simple and
obvious role of the Madman, the prostitute, the stupid Babu and
other such picaresque characters in the Second Oikumene. But, in turn,
this means that- denizens of demesnes impoverished of poesis by the
cult of productivity - they can be of no use to us Indians whatsoever.

Ghalib, as stranger in the City, is speaking in tongues- his is a

mimesis of madness, but an ironic one. He actually does know the
meaning of the macaronic words he seemingly meaninglessly
combines.
But the imposture is a good one. This schizoid word-salad is artful
yet- since the God invoked is Madness- this is an art that blunts its
instruments by overuse so as to render itself a futility for all but
talismanic purposes. As has happened. Im a Ghalib and Soda sort of
guy and there are millions of people like me. We dont understand
Ghalib- he is simply a tilism, a taaviz for the good life.

I now turn to perhaps the most extraordinary passage Ive read on a

theme dear to my heart- dear, indeed, to the heart of all patriotic
Indians- the gravamen, glorious indeed, of your forthcoming book- a
book, perhaps only you can write, but which all can benefit from- viz.
the essential continuity and integrity of the Indian ethos and
sensibility despite all historic vicissitudes- something marvellously
brought out by your tracing of Ghalibs ainah-e-zanuu to
Vedantadesikas jaanumanidappanena.

This is simply marvellous. It so happens that, on my bookshelf, the

pristine wings of Vedantadesikas Hamsasandesa are pinioned on
either
side by (Im sorry to say) much thumbed, wine stained, editions of
Ghalib.

True, my own peculiar hermeneutics disallows your beautiful reading,

but, felix culpa!, even by my dim and smoky lights, it is a happy
fault and who is to say?- for even my Stupidity and Madness are but of
mortal measure- perhaps I will be redeemed by it.
Indeed, I urge and implore you, moving you perhaps to pity by the very
tatters in which I clothe my thought, to pursue this line of enquiry
and re-establish, as it were, a Buddhavatamasaka, a garland of
Buddhas, by adroitly juxtaposing just such gems recovered from
different geological strata and supposedly adversarial traditions.

In this context, I venture a suggestion- prompted by that overweening

hubris that is the soul of my Stupidity and Madness- which you may-
prompted by Boddhisatva like pity for a fellow-countryman so fallen-
chose to investigate and illumine in your forthcoming book. I refer
to the possibility that just as the Buddhavatamasaka sutra is thought
to have inspired Leibnizs monadology, so too might the Vimalakriti
sutra- by the agency of the Jesuits in China- have inspired Roger
Boscovichs anticipation of a field-theoretic physics. This is pure
speculation on my part. However, if we consider Boscovichs influence
on Nietzche, a path is created whereby Iqbal, too, can be brought back
into the fold.

Turning back to your extraordinary missive- you ask the question,

where did Mir get the topos of self-similarity in blazon from? You
assume it must be from a Persian translation of the Gahasattasai
(which I havent read). This is a fruitful line of enquiry and one
that is likely to be successful because great poets actually like
treading in the footsteps of their precursors. However, poor poetaster
that I am, another simpler way of arriving at the same conceit is by a
rigorous application of the two great mystic principles

1) Everything is a mirror
2) The part always contains the whole.
It is noteworthy that Lord Mahavira attained Nirvana gazing at his
knee-caps and Jain poet/philosophers have always been around. They
really are the nicest people to converse with- when in rural parts-
though, of course, things are changing. Now the joints- knees, elbows
and so on- are compared to bends in the river which are suitable for
tirtha as well as points of intercession for subtle nadis. Thus, quite
apart from the possibility of a direct literary influence on Mir, we
have the certainty that such conceits would have been available to him
from the peripatetic tradition of his own day.
Schizophrenics, quite independently of any spiritual or literary
tradition, verbalize their relationship with their own corporeality in
a characteristic way. If poets and mystics believed the madman really
was privileged then it makes sense that they would be careful to
imitate these aspects of crazy speech.

But to turn from my dross to the pure gold of your missive, you ask
the question-what's the relation between this "Erotic" vox femina and
other types of vox femina like the "maternal" voice intonated by the
Male poets who composed in the Tamil Pillaitamil genre? Is this vox
femina a
literary-cultural drag? Why does the Mirzas Urdu Poetic hold the
feminine Karunaas its Ur-Rasa? How can the Perso-Urdu Mashuq be
framed in the background of the Sanskrit Poetic? What is the nature of
the relation (if any) between the Perso-Urdu Mashuq and the
Domina/dura puella of the Roman elegists? What's the connexion
between the Dakani Rekhti and the standard Urdu Rekhta? Whats the
connection between the Urdu concepts of Maani and Mazmun and the
notions ofVyangya and vaacya? What relations obtain between the
notion of Kaifiyat/Khayal bandi and Bhava/Rasa? What, if any, is the
connection between the Urdu theory of Metaphor and the Sanskrit
Theories of Metaphor? What is the relation between the strong
Precursor tradition of Sanskrit Kaavya and the ephebe successor
tradition of Urdu poetry?

Strangely enough, these are the questions I set myself in my last

novel- Samlees daughter. To briefly summarise its purport- it is an
investigation of vatsalya bhava or pillaibhakti (which is not Tamil in
origin but canonically Rg Vedic) written in hasya rasa because,
uniquely, hasya rasa includes all other rasas by rasaabhasa- because,
on epistemological analysis, no object is capable of sustaining stable
aucitya.

I chose vatsalya bhakti because, of all forms of devotion, it best

illustrates the paradoxes of that reciprocity in devotion enjoined
upon us by Brahma Sutra. Furthermore, it alone clears up all the
enigmas of speculation- i.e. the mystic practice of meditation in
front of a mirror- and the whole vexed question of the
hairat-e-ainah which Borges childish terror in front of the three
big mirrors in his nursery has rendered to opaque to us who are his
reflections.

In any case, every other form of Bhakti looks bogus to me. I dont
want to sleep with God, nor fight with him. Why should I? As for
maryada bhakti- I include an analysis of Tulsi which, I hope, buries
once and for all the received wisdom that the guy was in favour of the
caste system as opposed to being its funniest satiriser.
In this book, I show that the radically different ontologies of
Jainism, Vedanta, Buddhism etc, become observationally equivalent,
as it were, by the efforts of Umasvati, Sankara and his thousand and
one precursors, Nagarjuna etc. However, what was happening side by
side was the development of an Adi Mimamsa hermeneutics which
had an anarchic, picaresque, sociological foundation that continued to
operate till modern times- indeed, if you ever lose all your money,
and are compelled to live in some village of Pakistan or Bangladesh
where you can not make your qualities known, you will by default, find
yourself part of the same milieu, that same generative matrix of
poesis, as the authors of the Rg Veda, Itihasas and so on.
I would be happy to send you a copy of this book- which I completed a
few years ago- but bear in mind it contains a lot of crude language
and- though the central message is entirely moral- is decidedly
non-veg.

Having (hopefully) whetted your appetite. I would like to make a

couple of remarks about your wonderful essay. Here, it may be, I might
actually be of some use to you. There have been some advances in
Maths
and Physics which you might usefully incorporate. For e.g. Kripkes
workaround for Godel, implications of Emmy Noether, Andre Weil and
Grothendieck (and their successors) for Gita rahasya- vitally
important for an Indian heremeneutics!- criticism of Witzels not
unintelligent mathematical model for layered texts and so forth.
I will sign off now. There is a great deal more that could be said in
condign praise and appreciation of the material you have sent me-
much, much, food for thought.

I wonder if you would consider giving me your phone number; Perhaps,

I
could ring you at a time you appoint and we could establish whether I
could be of any use to you in the great work you have undertaken.
By the way, how old are you? Im 46. You couldnt have accumulated so
much cultural capital without being fairly close to me in age.
However, your linguistic prowess suggests someone of an older
generation. Or perhaps you are just a bog standard Kannada genius of
the sort we Iyers are in awe of?

Poetry, for me, as for Ezra Pound is a chicanery in which only the
charlatan is genuine. But, in India we had Saints- one line from whom
is worth a thousand divans. In my book, I have recorded my
amazement
at the great Kashmiri Saint, Nund Reshi, as well as the Kannadiga
hymns to Allama Prabhu. I dont know either Kashmiri or (what I
presume to be) your native tongue. But, it seems to me, you are
following the path of the great ones in the task you have set
yourself.

Sir, without further ado, I bid you adieu.

Namastute.

Vivek Iyer.