On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears by Stephen T. Asma Page A
Authors: Stephen T. Asma
Ads: Link
we will have many more opportunities to reflect on it later in this book. But for now it is important to articulate what these fantastical races and creatures meant to the ancients themselves. Before importing too much theory about the
latent
meaning of extraordinary creatures, we need to give great weight to their
manifest
meaning. 30
Pliny himself shows us the way when he asks the natural question, Why do these monsters and wonders exist at all? He concludes that amazing creatures exist as Nature’s “playthings.” If they have any purpose at all, it is to create the experiences of wonder, marvel, and astonishment in us. Referring to disappearing “ghost-men” in Africa, Pliny grows philosophical and says, “These and similar kinds of human beings ingenious Nature has made to be playthings for herself and for us, creations at which to marvel. Indeed, who could list the things she does day by day and almost every hour? Let it be sufficient for the revelation of her power to have included races of men among her marvels.” 31
3
Hermaphrodites and Man-headed Oxen
The glutted earth swarms even now with savage beasts
.
LUCRETIUS
P PRODIGIES AND PORTENTS were perceived to be everywhere in the ancient world. All of nature was sending signals foretelling the future. If one could read the signs properly, which was the job of augurs in Rome and oracles in Greece, then one could predict the fate of military campaigns, the health of marriages, or the prosperity of business ventures. The Romans practiced an art of prophesy that came down from the Etruscans and involved reading the liver of a sacrificed animal. The liver, thought to be the source of blood and life itself, was charted into subdivisions that corresponded to deities. Cults of fortune-tellers evolved an elaborate and secret science of viscera interpretation.
The Roman historian Livy (59 BCE –17 CE ) tells a typical story about the bad omen of a sacrifice in 90 BCE . The Roman consul Rutilius Lupus sacrificed an animal and “failed to find the lobe of the liver among the organs; ignoring the omen he lost his army and was killed in battle.” 1 In contrast, in 43 BCE Caesar Augustus sacrificed an animal on the eve of his military campaign against Marc Antony. Livy reports that “the animal he sacrificed had twin sets of internal organs. Success followed him.”
IN-BETWEEN BEINGS
Like a missing liver lobe, the discovery of a hermaphrodite human was considered by most Romans to be very bad for the health of the state. 2 Apparently the founder of Rome himself, Romulus, felt threatened by hermaphrodites and ordered them to be drowned upon discovery. The logic of this custom, as with many customs, is unclear. The classicist Carlin Barton suggests that hermaphrodites, with their ambiguous, unclassifiable sexuality, may have been simultaneously threatening to the increasingly rigid official Roman culture but also alluring and exciting to those Romans who felt repressed by the bureaucratic, authoritarian, and hierarchic mores of an expanding empire. 3 The ambiguously gendered person did not conform to traditional male or female parameters. 4 Hermaphrodites, on this account, represented a dangerous freedom, in the same way that “noble savages” must have done for Enlightenment-era urbanites. A more prosaic, and probably accurate, explanation is that monstrous offspring represented a terrible economic and energy burden on the family, and if they should make it to adulthood they would be a burden on the state as well. It’s reasonable to expect laws and taboos to emerge in a society that reinforces the specific ecological survival needs of its families. This practice of drowning hermaphrodites was extended to all seriously disabled children in the Roman Laws of the Twelve Tables: “A father shall immediately put to death a son recently born, who is a monster, or has a form different from that of members of the human race.” 5
The hermaphrodite is a
latent
meaning of extraordinary creatures, we need to give great weight to their
manifest
meaning. 30
Pliny himself shows us the way when he asks the natural question, Why do these monsters and wonders exist at all? He concludes that amazing creatures exist as Nature’s “playthings.” If they have any purpose at all, it is to create the experiences of wonder, marvel, and astonishment in us. Referring to disappearing “ghost-men” in Africa, Pliny grows philosophical and says, “These and similar kinds of human beings ingenious Nature has made to be playthings for herself and for us, creations at which to marvel. Indeed, who could list the things she does day by day and almost every hour? Let it be sufficient for the revelation of her power to have included races of men among her marvels.” 31
3
Hermaphrodites and Man-headed Oxen
The glutted earth swarms even now with savage beasts
.
LUCRETIUS
P PRODIGIES AND PORTENTS were perceived to be everywhere in the ancient world. All of nature was sending signals foretelling the future. If one could read the signs properly, which was the job of augurs in Rome and oracles in Greece, then one could predict the fate of military campaigns, the health of marriages, or the prosperity of business ventures. The Romans practiced an art of prophesy that came down from the Etruscans and involved reading the liver of a sacrificed animal. The liver, thought to be the source of blood and life itself, was charted into subdivisions that corresponded to deities. Cults of fortune-tellers evolved an elaborate and secret science of viscera interpretation.
The Roman historian Livy (59 BCE –17 CE ) tells a typical story about the bad omen of a sacrifice in 90 BCE . The Roman consul Rutilius Lupus sacrificed an animal and “failed to find the lobe of the liver among the organs; ignoring the omen he lost his army and was killed in battle.” 1 In contrast, in 43 BCE Caesar Augustus sacrificed an animal on the eve of his military campaign against Marc Antony. Livy reports that “the animal he sacrificed had twin sets of internal organs. Success followed him.”
IN-BETWEEN BEINGS
Like a missing liver lobe, the discovery of a hermaphrodite human was considered by most Romans to be very bad for the health of the state. 2 Apparently the founder of Rome himself, Romulus, felt threatened by hermaphrodites and ordered them to be drowned upon discovery. The logic of this custom, as with many customs, is unclear. The classicist Carlin Barton suggests that hermaphrodites, with their ambiguous, unclassifiable sexuality, may have been simultaneously threatening to the increasingly rigid official Roman culture but also alluring and exciting to those Romans who felt repressed by the bureaucratic, authoritarian, and hierarchic mores of an expanding empire. 3 The ambiguously gendered person did not conform to traditional male or female parameters. 4 Hermaphrodites, on this account, represented a dangerous freedom, in the same way that “noble savages” must have done for Enlightenment-era urbanites. A more prosaic, and probably accurate, explanation is that monstrous offspring represented a terrible economic and energy burden on the family, and if they should make it to adulthood they would be a burden on the state as well. It’s reasonable to expect laws and taboos to emerge in a society that reinforces the specific ecological survival needs of its families. This practice of drowning hermaphrodites was extended to all seriously disabled children in the Roman Laws of the Twelve Tables: “A father shall immediately put to death a son recently born, who is a monster, or has a form different from that of members of the human race.” 5
The hermaphrodite is a
Similar Books
