te quoque, Luna, traho: Medea, Dido, and the Metapoetics of Cosmic Disruption

Abstract

This thesis examines the representation of Dido and Medea across Roman literature in passages where the two heroines are seen by the light of the moon. Cosmic disruption was a major concern in the ancient world, and this is reflected in both historical and literary texts. In Latin epic and elegy, instances of cosmic disruption tend to accrete around female characters, and this thesis analyses these moments for their metapoetic potential. The passages analysed in this thesis are drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Heroides and Metamorphoses, Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, and Seneca’s Medea. Chapter 1 surveys the scholarship on Dido and Medea and provides an overview of the types of cosmic disruption regularly mentioned in Latin literature, with a particular focus on the practice of drawing down the moon. Chapters 2 and 3 analyse the relationship between Dido and the moon in the Aeneid, and the ways that her interaction with the celestial sphere make her intertextual with Medea. Chapter 4 examines the cosmos-disrupting power of Ovid’s Medea, and connects her desire to achieve greater things with her ambition to usurp the authority of the poet. Medea is also the focus of Chapter 5, which analyses passages from Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica in which Medea uses moments of cosmic disruption to show off her erudition and intertextuality. The themes of cosmic disruption, metapoetics, and intertextuality are drawn together in Chapter 6, which shows how these themes are used to great effect by the mature Medea of Senecan tragedy. By looking closely at female interactions with the moon, this thesis offers a new way of reading cosmic disruption in Roman poetry, one that gives poetic authority to the women who disrupt the boundaries between earthly and cosmic planes, and between poet and character.