Content Warning: sexual violence
The past week saw the unfolding of the terrible murder of Sarah Everard. Our hearts go out to her friends and family at this time. Further to this appalling crime, we have heard many women recounting their own stories of fear, harassment, pursuit, assault, and rape. For so many women, they have been reminded that Sarah’s story could have been their own. For those of us teaching children of any gender, and thus closely involved in their formation, we must question ourselves. What might they learn in our lessons about violence, especially sexual violence.
Many have also been disturbed and saddened by police handling of the subsequent vigil. This too has been interpreted as a closing down of women’s voices in response to Sarah’s death and women’s experiences. We are dealing with women’s suffering and silence. We are also faced with the message that never seems to be heard: it is men, not women, who need to change if such suffering is to end. We must look at what forms boys and girls into the behaviours that lie behind violence and fear. All these facts have made me reflect upon my own teaching. After all, teachers are part of the picture for instilling values in children of all genders.
The violent world of Classics
Very often, Classics deals with a world of violence and misogyny. It also teaches about cultures that have too often been placed on a pedestal. Any teacher approaching the delivery of Classics lessons must make decisions about how to present this material in the classroom. They must also consider the potential harm it may cause. When teaching it to children and young adults, this becomes particularly relevant.
I would like to focus on a single story from the mythological canon: Apollo and Daphne. Most commonly I have taught this with reference to its telling in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but it has come up in other teaching, too, including as an unseen passage in school textbooks for learning Latin. Looking back through past lecture notes, I see that I taught this text in my very first year of teaching.
More than a decade later, I would approach things differently. It is not simply that awareness has increased concerning the damage done by the language Classicists and translators have used about the rapes in the Metamorphoses (though recent debates on social media, for example around Medusa, show there is still a long way to go). I believe I have always been conscious of this issue and raised it. Rather it is about how we handle rape and violence sensitively yet with clarity in the classroom.
The story of Apollo attacking Daphne
In this story, Apollo boasts disparagingly to Cupid that he has slain the Python with his arrows. As a consequence, Cupid strikes Apollo with an arrow of love, and Daphne with an arrow of the opposite variety. Daphne is a virgin nymph who wishes to remain such. Apollo pursues her, and, when she cannot outrun him, she prays to the gods to save her. She is immediately transformed into a tree, the laurel. Although this saves her from rape by Apollo, it does not save her from him: Ovid depicts him caressing her bark and turning her leaves into his symbol, the laurel wreath.
Ovid’s use of a violent story
When teaching the Metamorphoses, a teacher can use this passage as evidence of Ovid’s manipulation of genre. He transforms epic into erotic poetry within the space of one literary bow shot. The fact that Daphne is turned into bark in the face of the god of slender poetry is significant to Ovid’s subtle metapoetics. Farrell’s article ‘The Ovidian corpus: Poetic Body and Poetic Text’ demonstrates how Daphne, wrapped in the bark of a tree, becomes a scroll, demonstrating the slipperiness of poetry. The passage is furthermore written in a comedic style, with Apollo promising to slow down if only Daphne slows too; he also comes across as preposterously boastful when he makes his claims to be an ideal suitor. Even the use of the metre to convey the pace adds to the vivid frivolity of the scene.
These arguments were a key part of my early teaching of this passage. I did not neglect the difficulty of the dominant inclusion of rape and attempted rape narratives in Ovid. However, it was not my primary point in approaching the story of Daphne. I still think that genre is a key theme here, but I would now make this secondary. To neglect discussing the core of the story first is to perpetuate a common assertion that needs to be challenged: “men attack women, women should learn this, and such is the way of the (ancient) world”.
Ovid undoubtedly set out to demonstrate his cleverness through the story and its telling in poetry. He used the generic subterfuge, the rhythm of his words, and the characterization of Apollo to demonstrate wit and skill. But he utilized the depiction of female trauma, in the face of a male attacker, to achieve these ends.
Teaching sexual violence
In teaching this passage now, I start with two important points. The first would be a content warning. It is easy enough to assume that students of the ancient world come to class accepting that there will be sexual violence somewhere in the course. It is, after all, uncomfortably commonplace within the material studied, albeit it may not always be presented in these terms. However, recent events and commentary by women throughout society have documented the way in which any story about violence against women has the potential to trigger traumatic memories of the treatment so many women have experienced in their own lives. The second would be to critique the story, both Apollo’s behaviour and Ovid’s decision to use the story of an attempted rape in the way that he does.
Apollo is an archetypal hero in many of his divine actions, such as slaying Python. He is also supposedly a very beautiful male. With the freedom of most ancient gods, he views women as his to be pursued. Violence against women features in the stories of all the male divinities. Even in its ‘comedic style’, the language Apollo uses to convince Daphne to submit to him underlines this. It is undoubtedly challenging to read any comedy in the text, for all the generic markers mentioned above. It is simultaneously just so horrific. Ovid depicts the pursuit as a hunter chasing his prey, and the violence is there in the comparison. We feel Daphne’s fear and her helplessness as Apollo outruns her.
There may be counterarguments as to whether an ancient reader would have shared my perspective. However, as a teacher I believe there is a responsibility to challenge the idea that any man has the right to make a hostile pursuit of any woman. We must refute the claim that anyone is permitted access to a woman’s body against her will. It is also necessary to deal compassionately with anyone in the class whose own fears have paralleled Daphne’s. For the benefit of all genders, we must not consign topics of consent and male violence merely to PSHE lessons.
“Saving” Daphne
The fact that Daphne supposedly escapes Apollo is no excuse for neglecting to explore his intentions. She is ‘saved’ through her metamorphosis, but at the cost of her own identity, her beauty, and her voice. Too many women lack voices in society, and struggle to be heard, especially when calling out violence against them. At the same time, their stories are too often told for them, transformed by hostile agendas.
Women are blamed for attracting sexual violence through their appearance. Indeed, Daphne reinforces this troubling narrative when she asks that her beauty, which “pleased too well”, be taken from her. Survivors’ bodies are still their own, but we are further challenged by Daphne’s new body, the tree. Although supposedly safe from rape, she is still both touched and claimed by Apollo, first by his caresses, and then by his adoption of her leaves as his symbol.
Ovid, too, is exploiting Daphne as she suffers this assault. He not only tells her story, he also manipulates it to serve his poetic purposes. If Daphne, transformed, now represents a book, so Ovid, the poet, is claiming her as his own.
Challenging violence in the narrative
Ovid is one of the cleverest Latin poets, and I have a great love for his work. He can write women’s voices powerfully, not least in the Heroides. He does not necessarily neglect to draw attention to their suffering, for example in his powerful retelling of the myth of Philomela. However, a teacher’s work goes beyond just an understanding of a text and the analysis of a wonderful poet’s work. I believe we must also consider our pastoral role, and the place that all study has in shaping a person beyond merely their academic development. We should challenge the ancients where we see how society must change.
The story of Apollo and Daphne is, on the surface, one in which a hostile man pursues a terrified woman. More disgustingly still, Ovid tells us that her terror in flight increases her attractiveness. This must be addressed, for, if it is not, it may perpetuate three messages: that men have a right to attack women; that women must simply flee; and that the only way women can be safe is to eliminate themselves from the world.
It says that to be safe, women must transform themselves into something unattractive through the way they look and dress. So it is that Daphne turns from beautiful girl into bark-covered tree. Women must never go out into the dangerous world where men may walk, for if they do they are valid prey, like beast to hunter. They should hide away, like Daphne within her tree-form. They must not speak, as the tree cannot, for speaking and telling their stories is the privilege of men. So Daphne may represent a text by her bark-as-scroll, but it is Ovid who tells her story, according to his own agenda.
We should use in our teaching the fantastic scholarship that has revealed the intricate ways in which Ovid uses this story, and others, metapoetically. From this, our students may encounter so many other levels of meaning. They will learn how to these apply to the Metamorphoses and ancient poetry as a whole. However, it cannot come at the cost of neglecting the surface level of the story, and the condemnation of a narrative that could be seen to legitimate violence against women. Before teaching anything else about these violent stories, we must consider the message they may send.
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