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Parenthetical remarks in the Silvae 297
to his book (1.3.3): 13 nescis, heu, nescis dominae fastidia Romae, ‘Ah, little,
little do you know the haughty ways of Lady Rome.’ In one instance in
the Silvae, heu is combined with another distressed exclamation, pudet, to
underline the disgrace of an (hypothetical) heir wishing for the testator’s
demise (4.7.35–6): optimo poscens (pudet heu) propinquum | funus amico
‘demanding for his admirable friend – shame on him! – that death will
come soon’. This combination, in either order, is attested exclusively in
poetry, in its higher registers, 14 with three exceptions: Mart. 2.18.1, another
instance lamenting the practice of captatio (although this time the parasite,
who is the speaker himself, is cadging not an inheritance but a meal), Mart.
14.101.2, where the ‘speaker’ is a boletar, a serving-dish for mushrooms, and
Petr. 119.19, where the effect is bombastic; clearly it is the grand style that
Martial and Petronius are mocking.
Parenthetical pudet, withoutheu, conveys the embarrassment of the
rivergod representing the Volturnus, who delivers a speech of gratitude to
Domitian for having tamed the river’s former torrent by bridging it with
the Via Domitiana (Silv. 4.3.79–80):
qui terras rapere et rotare silvas
assueram (pudet!), amnis esse coepi.
I who (shame on me!) used to snatch up the lands and whirl away forests have
begun to be a river.
The same gesture of the admission – or accusation – of guilt is conveyed by
the absolute use of pudet in a parenthesis three times in the Thebaid, each
in a speech delivered at a moment of high dramatic tension. Hippomedon,
drowning in the river Ismenus, shouts at Mars (9.506–7): fluvione (pudet!),
Mars inclite, mergis | hanc animam?, ‘Shame, great Mars! Will you | Drown
my soul in a river?’; Apollo expostulates to Diana at the death of Teiresias
(9.653–5): en ipse mei (pudet!) inritus arma | cultoris frondesque sacras ad
inania vidi | Tartara et in memet versos descendere vultus, ‘I too – for shame! –
saw powerless | My prophet with his arms and wreath of bay, | Turning
his eyes to me, go down to Hell’; Creon rages at Eteocles’ cowardice
(11.283–4): at tu (pudet!), hostia regni, | hostia, nate, iaces, ‘Butyou,my
son, lie scapegoat – yes, for shame! – | The scapegoat of the realm.’ The
material in the archive of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae yields only four
precedents, all of them contributing a markedly subjective gloss on the
narrative: Ov. Met. 14.278–9 (Macareus, describing Circe’s transformation
13 TLL vi/2.2673.37–8 (Rubenbauer); Citroni 1975: 25.
14 TLL vi/2.2673. 45–8 (Rubenbauer); Hofmann 1951: 14.