Aisthesis Vol. XI

AISTHESIS

Undergraduate Journal of Classical Studies Stanford University Volume XI | Spring 2023 The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek: Translation, Language, & Environment

ZOE BENNETT Williams College

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body in the Mouths of Catholic Theologists

MADELINE NIELSEN

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Aisthesis Volume XI Editorial Board EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michaela Phan

EXECUTIVE TEAM Lucy Chae Fiona Clunan Sadie Sarkisian

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Michaela Phan

EDITORS Thane Brueschke Lena Cavicchia Lucy Chae Fiona Clunan Kevin Khadavi Robert Muniz Michaela Phan Sadie Sarkisian Vincent Thai Sophia Wu © 2023, Aisthesis, Stanford Undergraduate Classics Journal. Please direct questions about topics not limited to distribution, subscriptions, and advertising to aisthesis.stanford@gmail.com or Aisthesis, Stanford Department of Classics, 450 Serra Mall, Building 110, Stanford CA 94305-2145

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief It is with great pleasure and enthusiasm that we present the eleventh edition of Aisthesis, an academic journal dedicated to the vibrant field of Classics.

Within these pages, you will find a exploration of the Classical canon and an invitation to view ancient works through fresh lenses.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Stanford Department of Classics. The department’s commitment to the field and dedication to academic excellence continue to inspire our endeavors at Aisthesis. I would also like to extend my sincere appreciation to our diligent and talented student staff. Their unwavering commitment and tireless efforts have brought this edition to fruition. Furthermore, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the authors from across the globe who submitted their papers for consideration. Your willingness to share your findings and engage in meaningful discourse enriches the academic community and inspires future generations of Classicists.

Thank you for your continued support and readership. We hope that the eleventh edition of Aisthesis will be a source of intellectual inspiration and scholarly enjoyment.

Michaela Phan Editor-in-Chief, Aisthesis

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Aisthesis is now accepting submissions for Volume XII. We publish academic papers related to the ancient Mediterranean as well as new translations of Greek and Latin texts. Our submission deadline for the spring 2024 volume is 11:59 PM EST on December 31, 2023. Each author can submit up to two submissions of a maximum of 10,000 words (roughly 30 double-spaced pages) each. Further journal information and submission guidelines can be requested by emailing aisthesis.stanford@gmail.com.

TABLE OF CONTENTS The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek: Translation, Language, & Environment ZOE BENNET T Williams College

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Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body in the Mouths of Catholic Theologists 26 MADELINE NIELSEN University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek: Translation, Language, & Environment ZOE BENNET T Williams College ABSTRACT Sappho’s poetry is famous not only because she is one of the only Greek female poets of her time, but also because of her complete mastery and genius which shines through even in her barest fragments.

My love for the Ancient Greek language is only heightened by Sappho’s effortless rhythm and elegance, but more than that, by her poetry, like Homer’s, which gives us a glimpse into a world before their time where mortals and gods mingle. Although Ancient Greek is a “dead” language, one cannot help but sense that the fault lies not with the language but with us, and that this “death” has deeper consequences than mere words. Since language shapes and creates our environment, the only way to truly find that lost world where gods were not metaphors but one and the same as Nature, we must “think” in that language, not merely as a translator but as a speaker, or really, a singer. In an attempt to immerse myself in this world, I have aimed to “think” in Greek by composing an original poem in the Aeolic dialect and Sapphic meter.

My paper consists of three separate but related parts, namely a translation of Sappho’s Fragment 1 “To Aphrodite” into English, a translation of Louise Glück’s “The Evening Star” into Aeolic Greek and Sapphic stanza, and lastly, an original composition also in Aeolic Greek and Sapphic stanza. My original composition, “Ἀοίδη”, draws thematically upon both Sappho’s “To Aphrodite” and Glück’s “The Evening Star”, as well as my own personal understanding of the sounds, rhythms, and meanings of Ancient Greek. Ultimately, through translation and composition, not only does the Greek language come to life—its internal rhythms and sounds always at the brink of song—but a world where language reflects our unity with Nature also comes to life, and we quickly learn that what may seem abstract and silly becomes vital and deadly. Thinking in Greek reveals that Sappho’s Aphrodite can still be called down to Earth, and that we can still be in harmony with Nature, but only if we listen to the songs which are inherent in language and ourselves. While our world may seem to be descending into chaos, with temperatures and oceans rising, it is not too late to change how we treat Nature, and that begins with changing how we think and speak about

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ZOE BENNETT the environment. Thus thinking in Sapphic Greek shows how danger ous it is to believe languages “dead” and how crucial those “dead” languages just might be to our survival of Nature’s drastic changes.

PART I Ψάπφω

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ποικιλόθρον’ ἀθανάτ’ Ἀφρόδιτα, παῖ Δίος δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε, μή μ’ ἄσαισι μηδ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα, πότνια, θῦμον,

ἀλλὰ τυίδ’ ἔλθ’, αἴ ποτα κἀτέρωτα τὰς ἔμας αὔδας ἀίοισα πήλοι ἔκλυες, πάτρος δὲ δόμον λίποισα 8 χρύσιον ἦλθες ἄρμ’ ὐπασδεύξαισα· κάλοι δέ σ’ ἆγον ὤκεες στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶς μελαίνας πύκνα δίννεντες πτέρ’ ἀπ’ ὠράνωἴθε12 ρος διὰ μέσσω· αἶψα δ’ ἐξίκοντο· σὺ δ’, ὦ μάκαιρα, μειδιαίσαισ’ ἀθανάτῳ προσώπῳ ἤρε’ ὄττι δηὖτε πέπονθα κὤττι 16 δηὖτε κάλημμι κὤττι μοι μάλιστα θέλω γένεσθαι μαινόλᾳ θύμῳ· τίνα δηὖτε πείθω ἄψ σ’ ἄγην ἐς ϝὰν φιλότατα; τίς σ’, ὦ 20 Ψάπφ’, ἀδικήει; καὶ γὰρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέως διώξει, αἰ δὲ δῶρα μὴ δέκετ’, ἀλλὰ δώσει, αἰ δὲ μὴ φίλει, ταχέως φιλήσει 24 κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα. ἔλθε μοι καὶ νῦν, χαλέπαν δὲ λῦσον ἐκ μερίμναν, ὄσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι θῦμος ἰμέρρει, τέλεσον, σὺ δ’ αὔτα 28 σύμμαχος ἔσσο.

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek Translation: Fragment 1 To Aphrodita

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Prism-throned immortal Aphrodita, Deceit-dealing daughter of Zeus, I beg you, Master me not with desire nor distress, Mistress, nor my heart,

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But come here—if ever—as once Hearing my songs from afar You listened, and leaving your father’s house You came yoking a golden

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Chariot. Lovely sparrows led you Swiftly over the dark earth Whirling fast-flitting wings from heaven In mid-air.

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Quickly they came: and you, O blessed, A smile on your deathless face Asked what again I suffered and why Again I called

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And what I most wanted to happen In my maddened heart: “Whom again do I persuade To lead you back into their love? Who, O Sappho, wounds you?

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For if she flees, soon she will follow, And if she does not allow gifts, still she will give, And if she does not love, soon she will love, Even unwilling.”

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So come to me now, loosen me from cruel Pursuit, and whatever my heart longs To be told, tell it, and you yourself Be my ally.

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ZOE BENNETT PART II Louise Glück The Evening Star

Tonight, for the first time in many years, there appeared to me again a vision of the earth’s splendor:

in the evening sky the first star seemed to increase in brilliance as the earth darkened

until at last it could grow no darker.

And the light, which was the light of death, Seemed to restore to earth

its power to console. There were no other stars. Only the one whose name I knew

as in my other life I did her injury: Venus,

star of the early evening,

to you I dedicate

my vision, since on this blank surface

you have cast enough light

to make my thought visible again.

Translation: Ὀ Ἔσπερος Ἄστηρ τῆσδε νύκτος, πρῶτον ἔτη ἐφάνθη ἔνθα εἶτα πόλλα ἔμοι ὔπαρ γᾶς

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek 4

δῆυτε λάμπρω · εἰν ὀράνῳ ὀ ἄστηρ πρῶτος ἐν αὔγῃ

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ἐσπέρῳ ὠς γῆ σκίασέν δ’ ὀφέλλην εἴσατο πρὶν λοίσθιον οὐ δυνήθη ἀ μελαντέρη γεγόνην. φάος δ’ ὀ ἦν θανάτω φά-

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ος, τὸ αὔτας εἴσατ’ ἄπυ κρέτος γῆ πραΰην δούην. μόνον ἦσαν ἄλλοι εἶς μὲν οὐ δὲ ἄστερες ὤνυμ’ οἶδ’ ὦ ὠς ατέρῳ τῷ

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ἤδικησ’ ἔμῳ ζοΐῃ ἔγω σέ · Ἀφρόδιτα, σοὶ τὸ ἔμον τίθημι τῶ ἐωθίνω ὔπαρ ἐσπέρω ἄστηρ ὄτι τῷδε ἐρρίφας φαίνην ἴκανον προσώπῳ τὸν φάος κέννῳ τὸν ἔμον πάλιν νῶν…

Meter: Sapphic Stanzas –ᴗ–×|–ᴗᴗ–|ᴗ–× –ᴗ–×|–ᴗᴗ–|ᴗ–× –ᴗ–×|–ᴗᴗ–|ᴗ–× –ᴗᴗ–× 2 3 5 6 7 8 9

Notes

γᾶς = γῆς (gen. sg.) δηὖτε = δὴ αὖτε λάμπρω = λαμπροῦ (masc. gen. sg.) ‘splendor’ ὀρανῳ = οὐρανῷ σκίασεν = ἐσκίασεν < σκιάζω ‘to darken’ ὀφέλλην = ὀφέλλειν < ὀφέλλω ‘to increase’ δυνήθη = ἐδυνήθη < δύναμαι ἀ=ἠ γεγόνην = γεγονέναι < γίγνομαι ‘to grow’ (perf. act. inf., -ναι → ην, έ and η contract) θανάτω = θανάτου (mas. gen. sg.) αὔτας = αὐτῆς (fem. gen. sg.) ἀπὺ = ἀπό, (tmesis, take with δούην)

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κρέτος = κράτος πραΰην = πραῧναι < πραΰνω ‘to console’ (aor. act. inf., -ναι → ην) δούην= ἀποδούναι < ἀποδίδωμι ‘to restore’ (see note 9 for ἀπὺ; aor. act. inf., -ναι → ην) ὤνυμ’ = ὄνομα ὦ = οὗ ‘whose’ (masc. gen. sg. rel. pron.) ατέρῳ = ἑτέρῳ ζοΐῃ = ζωῇ Ἀφρόδιτα = Ἀφροδίτη (nom/voc.) τῶ ἐωθίνω … ἐσπέρω = τοῦ ἐωθίνοῦ … ἐσπέροῦ ‘in the early evening’ (masc. gen. sg.) φαίνην = φαίνειν ‘to make visible’ (pres. act. inf., -ειν → ην) κέννῳ = κενῷ ‘blank’ νῶν = νόον ‘thought’ PART IIΙ Original Composition Ἀοίδη

νῦν ἄκουσον, εἶπε, βίω ἀοίδην · ὠράνῳ δε ἄστερες αἶψα εὒρει ἀγλάοι κύκλοισι λέγων τελεύτων 4 τὸν λόγον ἄρχαν.

γῆ μέλαιν’ ἔτος κὰτ ἔκαστον ὔμνει νόστον ὤρᾳ Περσέφονας σὺν ἄλλοις χρώμασιν καὶ τῶ θανάτω τὸ ψῦχος 8 ὠς πάλιν ἔλθοι. αἰ βρότων φώναι ἐφέροντο θείοις πνεύμασι κλώστηρα μόρω κρεκοίσαι ὠς χρόνω χόρδας ἔπος αἶι ψάλλει 12 μάτερος ἦδυ. εἶεν, ἠρώτησέ με Ἀφρόδιτα, νῦν ἄκουεις; ναὶ, ἐλέγην, ἄκουω. μειδίαμά δ’ ἀθανάτῳ προσώπῳ 16 ἄκρον ἴδοιμι.

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek Meter: Sapphic Stanzas –ᴗ–×|–ᴗᴗ–|ᴗ–× –ᴗ–×|–ᴗᴗ–|ᴗ–× –ᴗ–×|–ᴗᴗ–|ᴗ–× –ᴗᴗ–× 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13

Notes

βίω = βίου (masc. gen. sg.) ὠράνῳ = ουράνῳ κύκλοισι = κύκλουσι (3pl. pres. ind. act. – ουσι(ν) → -οισι(ν)) ἄρχαν = ἄρχων (fem. gen. pl.) κὰτ = κατά Περσέφονας = Περσεφόνης (fem. gen. sg.) τῶ θανάτω = τοῦ θανάτου (masc. gen. sg.) μόρω = μόρου (masc. gen. sg.) κρεκοίσαι = κρεκούσαι (fem. pres. act. part. – ουσα → -οισα) χρόνω = χρόνου (masc. gen. sg.) αἶι = ἀεί μάτερος = μήτερος Ἀφρόδιτα = Ἀφροδίτη (nom/voc.)

Translation: Song

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Now listen, she said, to the song of life: Bright stars in the broad sky wheel Telling the story of endings and beginnings.

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The black earth each year sings Persephone’s homecoming in spring with Different colors and the coldness of death When she leaves again.

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The voices of mortals are carried by divine Breaths weaving the thread of fate Just as the sweet voice of a mother always Plucks the chords of time.

Well then, Aphrodite asked me, now Are you listening? Yes, I said, I am listening.

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ZOE BENNETT 16

And I might have seen the corner of a smile On her deathless face.

PART IV Dead Languages, Living Words

Introduction “Why do you study dead languages?”

That seems to be an essential question as a Classicist, and a question I am often asked by more practical people than me. After all, a dead language does not serve the same purpose as learning Italian before traveling to Italy; there are no native speakers still alive who speak it. Even our pronunciation of Ancient Greek is more or less conjecture.

My Greek classes consist of translating texts over two-thousand years old only to discover that it is impossible to fully understand them today.

So why do I study “dead” languages? This paper can be considered an attempt at answering that question more in depth.

My paper consists of three separate but related parts. The first, a translation of Sappho’s Fragment 1 “To Aphrodite” into English. The second, a translation of Louise Glück’s “The Evening Star” into Ancient Greek, specifically the Aeolic dialect, as well as Sapphic stanza.

The third, an original composition in Ancient Greek, also in the Aeolic dialect and Sapphic stanza. I chose Sappho as a focal point of this project partly because she was my introduction into Classics as a field of interest, but also because her mastery of Greek sound and rhythm in lyric poetry above all others best illustrates my creative and scholastic philosophies which have led me to pursue Classics and immerse myself in “dead” languages. I chose Louise Glück as a modern counterpoint who nicely complements Sappho’s female gaze and her linguistic interplay between intimate and public relationships. Her poem “The Evening Star” addresses Venus much in the same way Sappho addresses Aphrodite in Fragment 1, revealing an interesting comparison which I will discuss more in depth.

My original composition which I have called “Ἀοίδη” draws thematically upon both Sappho’s “To Aphrodite” and Glück’s “The Evening Star,” as well as my own personal understanding of the sounds, rhythms, and meanings of Ancient Greek. Since my initial aim with this project was to think in Greek, my translation of Sappho and Glück were intended to help me first familiarize myself with the sound

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek and rhythm of Sapphic Greek and meter. Then, once I had worked closely with the language from different angles, I ventured to compose a poem of my own. Translating Sappho forced me to focus not only on meaning but sound and rhythm as well, and deciding how to convey all aspects of the Greek in English illuminated the inner-workings of each Greek word and their relationship to each other. Naturally, I encountered more constraints translating Glück since I was limited not only by meter but also by the given English language in her poem. This gave me a better appreciation for the flexibility of Greek and the natural rhythm of the language, while working intimately with the Sapphic stanza prepared me to face it in my original composition.

Ultimately, though this project answers the question of why I study dead languages, it also discovers deeper—and older—questions which I may not be able to answer fully. Because if I have learned anything from “thinking” in Greek, it is that dead languages are more alive than dead and many modern languages are more dead than we realize. In tracing the patterns of sound and meaning through time it is clear that what has changed is not only the language, but us. We are the ones who have deadened languages, and we are the only ones who can breathe life into them again, lest we face much deadlier consequences.

Part I: Aphrodite & Aeolic Greek Translation is essentially a failure, and one does not feel that more poignantly than when translating Sappho. She effortlessly glides through the meter with words “sweeping along one on top of another … like the onflow of a never-resting stream.”1 Vowels and consonants are more like music notes in harmony than mere syllables. Not only that, the “Aeolic is the softest and most voluptuous of the Greek dialects, the long α predominating and initial aspirates eschewed.”2 None of Sappho’s known works illustrate her delicate artistry better than Fragment 1, “To Aphrodite.” The first line alone melts into one breath: ποικιλόθρον’ ἀθανάτ’ Ἀφρόδιτα. Already, translation is impossible, and we have not even attempted a translation of the word ποικιλόθρονα.

This problem appears in every line, every word that follows, so that by the end of the poem a translator feels at a loss. Not to mention the fragmentary nature of Sappho’s work, where a line fades into oblivion at the most crucial moment and leaves the translator grasping at a long

1 Castle, Language and Myth, 68.

2 Ibid.

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ZOE BENNETT a long lost meaning.3 How does one translate the untranslatable?

For my purposes, instead of mourning the aspects of the Greek which cannot be rendered in English and forcing my translation into a meter it does not belong in, I chose instead to reflect the subtle sounds, rhythms, and meanings of Sappho’s language in such a way as to try and make the English enjoyable in its own right. Since English does not fit a meter according to long and short syllables like Greek, I wrote my translation with an internal rhythm in mind which was produced more subconsciously than consciously, fashioning the English into a string of words pleasing to the ear when spoken aloud. Two lines exemplify this internal rhythm best because they demonstrate that English flows along stressed and unstressed syllables, a cadence much like rolling hills rather than a gentle brook: line 2, “Deceit dealing daughter of Zeus, I beg you,” and line 13, “Quickly they came: and you, O blessed,” follow this rhythm by alternating between stressed and unstressed syllables.

Line 2, for example, reads: deceit dealing daughter of Zeus, I beg you.

Similarly, line 13 reads: Quickly they came: and you, O blessed. So while I could not preserve the Sapphic stanza and the musicality of the long and short syllables, I did find an internal rhythm natural to English, which perhaps reflects the Greek more accurately as it mimics the way Greek meters arose from the language’s own internal rhythm.

I followed a similar process when trying to convey the Greek sounds, especially Sappho’s melting vowels and spellbinding consonants, keeping time like beating drums. Generally in Greek, the letters λ, μ, and ν, as well as ρ, are considered very beautiful sounds, while σ is usually considered an ugly hissing sound.4 Vowels, however, are always more beautiful than consonants, an inclination which rings true with Sappho.5 When translating, therefore, I paid close attention to the dominant letters of a line and how they affected the sound of the poem, attempting to use the consonants l, m, and n whenever I could. For example, the beginning of line 2 in Greek reads, “παῖ Δίος δολόπλοκε,” with a predominance of the consonants δ and λ mostly connected with omicrons. In an attempt to mirror this alliteration, I translated this, 3 In part, my motivation for choosing Fragment 1 is its generally intact lines—at least of the lines we have—since it is extremely difficult to translate a poem where half a line is missing or only a word remains here and there. While Fragment 1 is, of course, a fragment, I believe Sappho’s brilliance shines through even in the sparse lines that remain and is enough to demonstrate the importance of “dead” languages and their connection to the environment.

4 Messing, “Sound Symbolism in Greek,” 5.

5 Messing, “Sound Symbolism in Greek,” 6.

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek “Deceit-dealing daughter of Zeus.” While nowhere near the beautiful simplicity of Sappho’s words, the alliteration of d’s in a manner that rolls smoothly off the tongue in English stays true to the sound of the Greek. Similarly in lines 3-4, which in Greek read, “μή μ’ ἄσαισι μηδ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα, / πότνια, θῦμον,” marked by the consonants μ and δ as well as the repeated alpha ending of δάμνα and πότνια, I was able to render quite closely with “Master me not with desire nor distress, / Mistress, nor my heart.” In this way my translation reflects Sappho’s attention to sound, since ultimately her poems would have been sung. In fact, I would argue that while translating meaning is important, rhythm and sound are even more important, as they dictate the mood of the poem more than meaning.

That leads me to translating the meaning of the Greek, which, however tertiary to sound and rhythm, still holds a place in my translation. When attempting to translate a Greek word in any text, a translator will often realize that a word which in Greek has a holistic meaning must be described with multiple words in English. For example, as I mentioned above, the very first word of the poem, ποικιλόθρονα, is a difficult word to translate because it is a compound of an adjective and a noun with a fluidity that English does not have. This word has traditionally been translated as ‘dapple-throned’ or ‘richly-worked throne.’6 In this case, I chose ‘prism-throned,’ mainly because of the shared p and π consonant at the beginning and the pleasant sound—at least to my ear—of the word ‘prism,’ with the consonants r and m, instead of ‘dapple.’ Moreover, a prism brings to mind not only light and a richlyworked object, but also the rainbow that shines forth from it. However, I would have considered ‘dapple-throned’ if I had chosen ‘deathless’ for ἀθανάτα in order to have some alliteration, albeit clunky. Ultimately, I prized the beginning vowel of ‘immortal’ to complement the vowels in ‘Aphrodita’ instead, illustrating precisely why sound and rhythm take precedent over meaning. A similar situation occurred in line 3 with “μή μ’ ἄσαισι μηδ’ ὀνίαισι,” which I translated as “not with desire nor distress,” which although not reflecting the prominence of vowels in the Greek, does retain the assonance in the Greek of ἄσαισι and ὀνίαισι with the more common alliteration in English of ‘desire’ and ‘distress’.

In fact, the sense of the meaning is found in the assonance, namely that the similarity of the sounds are meant to play on the theme that there is a thin line between love and suffering, or in this case, desire and distress.

6 Barnard, Sappho: A New Translation, “38”; “ποικιλόθρονος” in LSJ.

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ZOE BENNETT The last example I will give where meaning held at least equal footing with sound and rhythm is in line 26 with the word μερίμναν.

Essentially it means ‘care’ or ‘thought,’ however I wanted to depict the aspect of the word that implies ‘ambition,’ or in this case, ‘pursuit,’ since I have taken the poem to be describing Sappho’s unrequited love.

In this way, the word ‘pursuit’ not only embodies a sense of caring, but also reflects the thematic sense of the poem: the cruelty of unrequited love. Although sometimes it is best to translate dynamic words such as θῦμον in line 4 with ‘heart’ rather than ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ which have long been dissected from the seat of petty human emotion, in cases such as μερίμναν, there is perhaps more room for inspired interpretation, which I hope to have shown in my translation.

Part II: A Vision of Venus I chose Louise Glück, a renowned American poet, as a modern counterpoint to Sappho because of their shared interest in womanhood, myth, suffering, and love. Glück has won several awards for her work, including the Pulitzer Prize and 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Her parents introduced her to Greek mythology, which Glück weaves beautifully into her poetry. Glück’s careful attention to the relationship between words and personal experience resonated with me as a lover of Sappho’s intimate and musical poetry. Since I had already chosen Sappho’s Fragment 1 to translate, Louise Glück’s “The Evening Star,” which appears in her book Averno and also centers around Venus/ Aphrodite and the poet’s relationship to her, seemed to be in communication with Sappho and revealed a simultaneous continuity and break between ancient and modern poetry that underscored my paper’s interest in language as a living—and dying—phenomenon.

However, while translating Sappho was liberating in many ways, translating Louise Glück’s “The Evening Star” felt like completing an elaborate puzzle that could at times be as frustrating as it was enjoyable. The main lesson I learned was that meter dictates poetry more than meaning, and although Sappho naturally knew which kinds of words would fit where in the meter much better than I, it is still important to note that meter had the last say when it came to which words were used. To put it another way, depending on the meter, certain kinds of words simply will never fit anywhere in the poem, thereby limiting the meaning of the poem. But that is the translator speaking, for as we shall see in the next section, this fact did not hinder the poet in me from any self-expression or creativity.

Generally speaking, I did not stray from the English meaning,

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek and I was quite surprised at how easily the Greek fell into the meter at times. Other times, the meter resisted, no matter how desperately I wished to use a specific word to translate the English, so that I was forced to search for an equivalent translation that fit the meter. This firmly placed the importance of rhythm above meaning, but sound was much more flexible. I prioritized vowel-starting words as best I could, but again, oftentimes I was restricted when the meter called for a long syllable when I had a short syllable, leading me down a translation that I did not necessarily intend. However, Greek is more flexible than English, and there were some fortunate elisions, such as line 9 with “τὸ αὔτας εἴσατ’ ἄπυ κρέτος γῆ” and line 13 with “ἤδικησ’ ἔμῳ ζοΐῃ ἔγω σέ.” I was also able to use tmesis and the dropping of the initial augment as Homer did to my advantage, as well as the flexibility of word order in Greek, so that if the words I chose did not work with the meter, I had only to switch them around until they did, which would have been an impossible feat in English. The Aeolic dialect was a variable that would sometimes hinder or sometimes help depending on the situation, but ultimately I felt its preference of long vowels and pleasant-sounding consonants gave my translation an air of intimacy which Glück’s poetry certainly possesses. This process eventually led me to finishing the puzzle, and I assure you I have never been more satisfied.

Part III: Sappho, Song, & Silence Despite not being a native speaker, I found that Greek truly does lend itself to meter, or more accurately, to song. My experience writing “Ἀοίδη” was not exactly easy, but Greek effortlessly falls into place and then it is something close to music. I did not decide what to write about beforehand, hoping a blank page would give rise to Greek instead of English. The first thought I had was the verb ἀκούω. It is an unquestionably beautiful word, so beautiful one could say that Aphrodite herself stepped down from the heavens and commanded me to listen. Since I wanted an imperative, the first syllable would be short, and when thinking of a one-syllable word that scanned long, νῦν came to mind, and the rest of the line flowed smoothly from there. However, it did not run so smoothly the entire way.

The first line felt like a stroke of genius since I had completed it quickly and without searching for a word that I did not already know in Greek. Along the way I would run into rough patches where the words I wanted to say did not fit into the meter, and I had to change direction and express it in a different way. The second stanza is a prime example of this. Although I had intended from the start to reference

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ZOE BENNETT the myth of Persephone, I had tried to frame it first from Demeter’s perspective as a mother grieving for her child. When none of my options for vocabulary seemed to fit the meter, I started fresh and chose to focus on Persephone’s movement as the focal point of the earth’s song. The translator in me, who I tried to shut out in order to follow my inclinations in Greek rather than English, was frustrated that I had to give up on an idea, but the poet in me felt the internal pull of the Greek language leading me to the words that would best complete the sound and rhythm of the song.

In contrast with my translation of Glück’s “The Evening Star,” the composition of “Ἀοίδη” was more equally guided by meter and meaning, though, naturally, meter always took precedent. I decided to play on the theme of an interaction with Aphrodite/Venus which appears in both Sappho and Glück’s poems, but while Sappho had an explicit encounter with her and Glück had a vision produced by her, my poem describes a more abstract conversation symbolized by the last metaphor in lines 15-16, “μειδίαμά δ’ ἀθανάτῳ προσώπῳ / ἄκρον ἴδοιμι,” where ‘I might have seen the corner of a smile on her deathless face.’ This, of course, contrasts line 14 in Sappho’s poem where Aphrodite is led down from the heavens on a chariot and Sappho sees her full smile. The gradual loss of Aphrodite from a goddess in Sappho’s poem, to a star in Glück’s, to a metaphor in mine, symbolizes the loss of meaning in our language as time goes on. But more than that, it symbolizes the loss of lyric poetry as song, and the musicality of language becoming a forgotten art. While Sappho’s voice, her song, calls down Aphrodite from the heavens, Glück needs the star Venus to light the blank canvas of her mind and give her inspiration. In my poem, Aphrodite is commanding us to listen to the song of life, a song which embodies the lost sounds and meanings of Ancient Greek, the lost voices of gods and goddesses who answer when called upon, and ultimately, the possibility of still hearing that long lost song if we simply listen.

Part IV: Why I Study Dead Languages i There is an allure of Ancient Greek that is hard to explain. It is not necessarily the time of Homer that we long for when reading the Iliad, but the world before Homer that we glimpse in his language, be-

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek cause by the time of Homer that world where gods and mortals mingle is gone. British philosopher Owen Barfield, who was preoccupied with the loss of meaning in language, once described this world of Homer which we glimpse: Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth…And these august beings, speaking now from the mouths of characters, and again passing and repassing invisible among them, dissolve into a sort of largior aether, which the Homeric heroes breathe all day; so that we, too, breathe it in the language they speak–...in the sinewy strength of those thundering epithets which, for all their conventionality, never fail to impart life and warmth to the lines.7 But why do we long for such a world? In many practical ways, such a time would be undesirable to us modern humans with our life-saving and convenient science and technology. Even I would not so quickly trade a long and comfortable life in today’s time for one in a world where I would have married at fourteen. I might mention now that I am not advocating for any return to the societies of days past. However, I do believe that there is an element of language that has been lost which not only can be recovered, but must be recovered for the survival of the human race, as bold a statement as that may sound. Some may call it climate change, others the wrath of the gods, but regardless, while we have been busy dissecting and mastering Nature, we have forgotten that we are a part of Nature too, and we see this lost knowledge reflected in the inextricable relationship between dead languages and the decaying environment around us.

As beings of Nature, we are now sensing the dire situation of Earth. It is not a question of us or Her, and it never has been. Earth has long lived without us and She will live without us again. The question is whether we will continue to live with Her or if our actions will force the Earth to show us just exactly what Homer meant when he spoke of the gods’ wrath. It is from this perspective that I wish to approach dead languages and language in general, as an organic phenomenon that can thrive and decay like any other being, and which has real life consequences. For too long now we have considered language an abstraction useful for logic and science, when language was born for something else entirely: myth. Of course, when language had the power 7 Barfield, Poetic Diction, 83.

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ZOE BENNETT to call upon gods and enchant men from the decks of their ships, when language was the magical belt or kestos of Aphrodite, when language was not only ritual, dance, and story but more than those three things combined, in other words, when language was more like magic, they did not call it myth—they called it song. ii As one follows the thread of language back in time, the knots of meaning become more and more difficult to untangle, until a word which now means breath used to mean breath and wind and spirit combined, which before then used to mean something even more untranslatable to us and whose meaning has simply become lost. But despite this loss, it is clear when following the thread far back enough that language and environment have always been knotted together and inseparable in what today we would call mythology. Philologist and taleteller J.R.R. Tolkien wrote on the origin of mythology in his essay On Fairy Stories: Which came first, nature allegories about personalized thunder in the mountains, splitting rocks and trees; or stories about an irascible, not very clever, redbeard farmer, of a strength beyond common measure, a person (in all but mere stature) very like the Northern farmers, the bœndr by whom Thórr was chiefly beloved? To a picture of such a man Thórr may be held to have “dwindled,” or from it the god may be held to have been enlarged. But I doubt whether either view is right—not by itself, not if you insist that one of these things must precede the other. It is more reasonable to suppose that the farmer popped up in the very moment when Thunder got a voice and face; that there was a distant growl of thunder in the hills every time a storyteller heard a farmer in a rage.8 Language is as tied to the environment as humans, and the emergence of language and mythology at the same time exemplifies this. When one studies Homer, it is as if Ancient Greek was invented for mythology, not in order to reflect or explain Nature, but rather to participate in Nature as a voice in the chorus of life. In fact, the Ancient Greeks believed “that the psyche itself had properties of rhythm and melody in its 8 Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 8-9.

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek nature.”9 When the Greeks wished to participate in Nature, then, they simply tapped into that internal rhythm and melody which was natural not only to them, but the environment that they were living in. In this way we see song as the natural use of language, and that when we describe each letter of the Greek alphabet as “a musical notation” meant to indicate “what sounds a reader should make,” we are not far off.10 When we trace the etymology of Ancient Greek and find comparative similarities with Sanskrit, what we also find are the similarities of their songs.11 When we theorize that Indo-European languages descended from a single, much older language, what we are really searching for is the song we all used to sing in unison with Nature, because we realize that as “Nature herself is perpetually rhythmic,” it is only natural that “the earliest verse-rhythms were ‘given’ by Nature in the same way as the earliest ‘meanings.’”12 And it is this song that we have forgotten, the song of life, the song Aphrodite commands us to listen to. iii As we go back in time, not only does our language change, but our environment does as well. In the world of Sappho, language, or song, appears to have been the nexus between us and our environment, the realm of mythology, or meaning, if you wish, where gods and mortals mingled. That is to say, language used to have the power to enchant, to cast a spell or call upon a god and witness magic. Of course, these words today sound silly, having been dissected and drained of their potency. And perhaps they would mean nothing at a time when magic was merely a part of life. So let me put it this way: when our language, especially our song, believed that all was alive, that it was not the star in the sky that was Aphrodite but that they were one and the same name, “that there stands behind the phenomena, and on the other side of them from me, a represented which is of the same nature as me,”13 that was, in turn, the environment we lived in and experienced.

That was simply Nature, but it is an experience that has been lost as our language has changed and decayed. But is it truly lost?

If we have truly lost that enchantment which our language 9 Stanford, “Sound, Sense, and Music in Greek Poetry,” 134.

10 Ibid.,127.

11 Nagy, Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter.

12 Barfield, Poetic Diction, 156.

13 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 42.

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ZOE BENNETT used to hold, an enchantment that bound us and our environment in one Nature, then I would not be studying dead languages at all. I believe that enchantment can be recovered, but it can only be recovered through song and participating in Nature. But first, to understand how we can recover that enchantment which has been lost, we must understand what enchantment means. In other words, what was the environment, or even the world, like before our language tried to master and dissect it?

It is, perhaps, impossible to feel that enchantment with the language of today, so I will give a few examples we find in language that give us a glimpse of that realm about which Homer and Sappho sing so beautifully. Take the word grammar, which had been “polarized, since the scientific revolution, into the study of ‘mere’ words, on the one hand, and, on the other, into the half-magical gramarye, which altered its form to glamour.”14 Or take the word spell, which used to mean an incantation but could also mean a story told or the spelling of a word.

Or take this example in Greek: The word phenomena comes from the Greek phainesthai, “to appear.” The word fantasy is from the Greek phantazein, “to make visible.” Obviously, that which is made visible is the appearance of something. Both phainesthai and phantazein are derived from the Greek phainein, “to show.” Much the same concept is expressed in all three words. Moreover, all three come from the Proto-IndoEuropean root bha, “to shine.” Historically, then, there must have been a time when the phenomena of the primary world—appearances as perceived by man—and the fantasy appearances of a secondary world—appearances shaped by his imagination—were less clearly distinguishable than we feel them to be today.15 Not only was there a time when phenomena and fantasy were the same word, or when grammar and glamour were not yet polarized, but there was a time when we did not need to distinguish between them. There was no between, because the relationship between us and our environment was a holistic realm of Nature.

In fact, this unified relationship was necessary, because our survival depended upon our belonging with Nature, not our mastery over Her, if mastery has ever truly been possible. To put it in 14 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 86.

15 Flieger, “Review of Barfield’s ‘Poetic Diction,’” 52.

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek terms of mythology, and rightly so, we find that “in the myth of Demeter the ideas of waking and sleeping, of summer and winter, of life and death, of mortality and immortality are all lost in one pervasive meaning.”16 Thus, the enchanted world we have lost is an intense, unified relationship with Nature: …the world was more like a garment men wore about them than a stage on which they moved…It was as if the observers were themselves in the picture. Compared with us, they felt themselves and the objects around them and the words that expressed those objects, immersed together in something like a clear lake of–what shall we say?--of ‘meaning’, if you choose.”17 But if this is the enchanted world, a clear lake of meaning, as Barfield so eloquently put it, then how do we access it? As I said above, it can only be recovered through song and participating in Nature. But what does that mean?

Sappho as a lyric poet is a prime example of the connection between song and participation in Nature. After all, “poetry’s earliest name in Greek, ἀοιδή, primarily meant ‘song’; and the poet was called a singer (ἀοιδός) long before he was called a maker (ποιητής).”18 In song we find most vibrant the realm of enchantment because that is where human and environment become one in rhythm and sound. The connection between rhythm and ritual reflects this, when songs were used to invoke the names of the gods, who were essentially the powers of the environment. It is no coincidence that “when myth became ceremonial, told in chant and verse, epic was born.”19 To participate in poetry, or really, in song, involved more than art; it implied an element of ritual and incantation because they recognized the power of song as enchantment. Not only that, but “for Sappho and her audience poetry is public communication. It is not fully separated from gesture, for it retains close associations with dance and with music. It is, in some sense, magic.”20 The performative and publicly shared aspect of poetry that has become lost in most cultures made it possible to live in an enchanted, shared realm that today we can only glimpse. But it is not 16 Barfield, Poetic Diction, 79.

17 Barfield, Saving the Appearances, 94-95.

18 Stanford, The Sound of Greek, 27.

19 Segal, Eros and Incantation, 142.

20 Segal, Eros and Incantation, 139.

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ZOE BENNETT only the musicality and sociality of song which sparks enchantment, for not all song is voiced in the way humans conceive of it, as I tried to express in my poem. Song also embodies the movements of the stars, the seasonality of Earth, that natural rhythm which expresses itself in humans as song. In this way, the essential nature of song is a shared unity, or if you will, harmony, and it is this harmony with Nature that we must now seek. iv This leads me back to my original question. Why do I study dead languages? For me it is not so much an interest as a necessity.

As we have seen, language is “rooted in, and inseparable from, the environment in which it develops,” so that removing all ties language has with the environment is like pulling a plant out of the soil by its roots and hoping it still grows.21 We have lost that natural and rhythmic unity with our environment and that is because our language and song no longer unify us with Nature. The consequence is decay and death, which is a reality we have already begun experiencing with climate change, as if the Earth Herself is fed up with our hubris. The only way we will survive the future is by recovering that holistic relationship with the environment and reaching a state of harmony with the Earth.

While I believe science is important in this endeavor, in many ways it was the evolution of science into “the only reliable knowledge available to us” which has led us down this path. But what is knowledge?

That is another old question. If knowledge is the mastery of humanity over its environment, then we will never reach a state of harmony with Nature. For today we scoff at past societies who worshiped the god of the sea and the god of the sun, knowing so much about them as we do now, but then we wonder why the seas and temperatures are rising.

There was a time when we knew without knowledge, when we walked hand and hand with Nature and picked fruit from her fields without planting. While this relationship is still retained by some cultures today, most would rather fence those fields in to the detriment of both Nature and ourselves.

Ultimately, I am not offering solutions to the problem at hand, only naming it. But if our language does not reflect our relationship with Nature, if our language does not make us responsible for maintaining the harmony of life, why would anybody care about the 21 Smith, Inside Language, 71.

The Art of Thinking in Sapphic Greek environment? We must remember that the enchantment we seek places us within Nature, not separate from Her, but more than that it reminds us that all have voices, life is a chorus, and we have forgotten how to listen. Enchantment is more than belief—it is a shared reality where the Sun and the Earth, the Sea and the Stars, the Trees, the Mountains, the Fields, and everything in between, are alive like us, and that we are master of Nature no more than any other. Perhaps we will no longer call the return of spring Persephone, or the rising sea levels the wrath of Poseidon, but we must recognize and respect the powers of the universe with the same reverence and terror. For if we fail, the consequences will be much worse than “dead” languages, and we will find the true death of language reflected in the death of Nature, along with everyone in it—including ourselves.

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ZOE BENNETT Bibliography Barfield, Owen. 1984. Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning.

Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.

Barfield, Owen. 1988. Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.

Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.

Barnard, Mary, and Dudley Fitts. 2012. Sappho: A New Translation.

Berkeley: University Of California Press.

Carl Darling Buck. 2021. The Greek Dialects, Third Revised Edition.

Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Cassirer, Ernst. 1946. Language and Myth. Courier Corporation.

Castle, Warren. 1958. “Observations on Sappho’s to Aphrodite.”

Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 89: 66. https://doi.org/10.2307/283665.

Finkelberg, Margalit. 1994. “The Dialect Continuum of Ancient Greek.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 96: 1–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/311313.

Flieger, Verlyn. 1981. “Review of Barfield’s “Poetic Diction” and Splintered Light.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 14 (2): 47–66.

García-Ramón, José L. 1975. Les Origines postmycéniennes Du Groupe Dialectal Éolien: Étude Linguistique. Universidad De Salamanca.

Glück, Louise. 2006. Averno. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,.

Golston, Chris, and Tomas Riad. 2005. “The Phonology of Greek Lyric Meter.” Journal of Linguistics 41 (1): 77–115. https:// doi.org/10.1017/s0022226704003068.

“Introduction: Sappho’s Dialect | the Digital Sappho.” n.d.

Digitalsappho.org. Accessed June 8, 2023. https://digitalsap pho.org/sapphos-dialect/.

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Kopff, E. Christian. “Inventing Lost Worlds.” Chronicles of Culture 9, no. 4 (April 1985): 6-8. Quoted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 38. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1986. Gale Literature Criticism (accessed June 7, 2023). https:// link.gale.com/apps/doc/TUVVDS208655396/ LCO?u=mlin_w_willcoll&sid=bookmark- LCO&xid=fd652fc5.

Messing, Gordon M. “Sound Symbolism in Greek and Some Modern Reverberations.” Arethusa 4, no. 1 (1971): 5–23. http://www. jstor.org/stable/26306981.

Nagy, Gregory. 1974. Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Pappas, Alexandra. “ARTS IN LETTERS: The Aesthetics of Ancient Greek Writing.” In Visible Writings: Cultures, Forms, Readings, edited by Marija Dalbello and Mary Shaw, 37–54. Rutgers University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/j.ctt5hj75h.8.

Prins, Yopie. “SAPPHO’S BROKEN TONGUE.” In Victorian Sappho, 23–73. Princeton University Press, 1999. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctv173f0k3.6.

Raven, David S. 1998. Greek Metre. Bristol Classical Press.

Saffo. 2014. Liriche e Frammenti. Translated by Salvatore Quasimodo and Ezio Savino, SE. Sastri, Reena. “Louise Glück’s Twenty-First-Century Lyric.” PMLA 129, no. 2 (2014): 188–203. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/24769447.

Segal, Charles. “EROS AND INCANTATION: SAPPHO AND ORAL POETRY.” Arethusa 7, no. 2 (1974): 139–60. http://www.jstor. org/stable/26307420.

Smith, Ross. 2007. Inside Language: Linguistic and Aesthetic Theory

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ZOE BENNETT in Tolkien. Walking Tree Publishers.

Stanford, W. B. “Sound, Sense, and Music in Greek Poetry.” Greece & Rome 28, no. 2 (1981): 127–40. http://www.jstor.org/sta ble/642860.

Stanford, William Bedell. 1967. The Sound of Greek: Studies in the Greek Theory and Practice of Euphony. University of California Press.

Tolkien, J.R.R and Andrew Higgins. 2020. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages. Harper Collins UK. Tolkien, J.R.R. 1947. “On Fairy Stories.” https://coolcalvary.files.word press.com/2018/10/on-fairy-stories1.pdf.

Vivona, Jeanine M. 2014. “Speech as the Confluence of Words, Body, and Relationship” 62 (6): 1081–86. https://doi. org/10.1177/0003065114558922.

West, Martin L. 1982. Greek Metre. Clarendon Press.

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Madeline Nielsen Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body in the Mouths of Catholic Theologists MADELINE NIELSEN University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Where was she? What was it she was seeing, that stopped her seeing these things? What was it she was enjoying, that stopped her feeling these pains? By what love was she taken out of herself, called away by what marvelous spectacle, drunk on what cup? And she was still stuck in the meshes of the flesh, still encumbered with her dying limbs, still weighed down by the perishable body.

–– Augustine’s Sermon 280 Perpetua, a young Christian woman with an infant son, chose imprisonment rather than renouncing her faith in 3rd century Carthage, North Africa. Choosing not to make the Pagan sacrifices that would have ensured her freedom, she, along with her enslaved servant Felicity, was sentenced to die in the amphitheater by decree of the Roman emperor during the persecutions of Early Christianity. Though her companion Saturus describes this part of her narrative, she wrote the largest portion of the Passio Perpetuae,1 chronicling the days of her arrest and her several vision-like dreams that fill her with a sense of peace about what she is about to do. Her text quickly achieved significant authority in North Africa and, two centuries later, Augustine directly addresses her text and influence in three sermons given for her feast day and in the book On the Soul and its Origin. A ‘church father’ and prolific author, Augustine’s thinking went on to shape conversations in Christianity that continue to this day, where his influence remains. This paper will compare and contrast Augustine and Perpetua’s conceptions 1 Many scholars believe that Perpetua herself wrote the sections of the text that are from her perspective, often citing the writing style, a belief I am accepting for the purposes of this argument. Of course, such ancient authorship is hard to verify, and there is not complete certainty on the matter. There is certainly, at least, a separate editor of the text, whom scholars believe to be male and theorize to possibly be Tertullian. Some think this person wrote Saturus’ portion of the text. While it is probable that Perpetua’s words are her own, making this a unique and valuable sample of early Christian women’s writing, it certainly is presented by male intermediaries.

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body of the role of women in Christianity and spiritual life, as well as the question of how to have a relationship with God. It will also reference the writings of Ambrose, Augustine’s mentor, on the subject of women and sexuality in Catholicism, and how these agree or disagree with Perpetua’s own conceptions of her body and spirit. Augustine and Ambrose emphasize the body, and especially the sexuality of women as being dangerous, degrading, and anti-spiritual—they argue that a male divinity is needed to save women from themselves.

This contrasts sharply to Perpetua, who seldom discusses gender or her physical form in this way. However, the three seem to agree on ideas about sight and transcendence to see and reach God. Perpetua, through acts of radical surrender and openness, conceives of a relationship with the divine that empowers rather than debases her body and soul, which she does not see as such opposing forces as her male counterparts do. This comparison, framing with his mentor Ambrose’s work on women for context, uses word-level analysis of Augustine’s writings about Perpetua2 to reveal and explore his views on gender and sexuality, how these shaped Christianity up to the modern day, and how this perspective was not monolithic but rather one part of a diverse constellation of ideas in Early Christianity.

Elizabeth Clark, in her Sourcebook of Women in Christian Thought, states “The theme of Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus assumed further significance as Early Christian theologians such as Augustine asserted that there was a link between sexual intercourse and the transfer of original sin”.3 4 Augustine, a landmark promoter of the idea of original sin, explicitly links sexuality and even genitalia to the 2 In a landscape of many insightful works on Perpetua and Augustine, sometimes comparing them, an examination into his use of wording such as the one I perform here has, to my knowledge, not been completed before.

3 Women and Religion: the Original Sourcebook of Women in Christian Thought, ed.

Elizabeth A. Clark and Herbert Richardson Saint Augustine, (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciscio, 1996), 16.

4 “Against the Pelagians, Augustine developed a doctrine of Original Sin that was to remain long influential on Christian theology, even when later modified to provide stronger encouragement for moral effort. Augustine’s mature views on Original Sin went, in brief, as follows: although the first couple had been created with free will and had the ability to keep from sinning, once that first wrong choice was made by Adam, following Eve, humans lost their ability to choose the good. This disability applied not just to Adam and Eve: all their descendants were implicated in the sin.” Clark notes her sources for this statement to be Book 14 of City of God, and Against Julian, the specific excerpts of which can be found on pages 72-78, followed by 87-88 and 96 respectively in the same book. Saint Augustine, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality, ed. Elizabeth A. Clark (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 9.

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Madeline Nielsen idea (and it is not just sexuality in general that is to blame, but sexuality as it relates to women) that Eve, after all, is the agent of the original sin.5 These views are well attested throughout his corpus of writings, and most important to this discussion is his discussion of physicality, womanhood, sin, and sexuality as it relates explicitly to Perpetua.

Augustine treats Perpetua in two places, the first a trio of sermons (280, 281, 282, ed. PL 38) given to mark the feast days of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, the second a treatise on dreams and the soul, De Natura et Origine Animae.

In the sermons, which treat Perpetua and Felicity explicitly, Augustine emphasizes themes of ‘the flesh’ and physical gender. In praising their brave actions, he asserts in Sermon 280: “so that according to the inner self they are found to be neither male nor female; so that even as regards the femininity of the body, the sex of the flesh is concealed by the virtue of the mind, and one is reluctant to think about a condition in their members that never showed in their deeds.”6 Augustine is referencing biblical sources, drawing on the Galatians 3:28 emphasis of unity in Christ superseding differences of gender, status, or race. He is also referencing the slightly different Matthew 22:30, which states that people in heaven do not marry, because angels do not marry, implying a lack of sexuality but also a level of independence in heaven that transcends the cultural traditions and mores of earth.7 He draws the idea from both that Christian spiritual transcendence frees people from restricting human constraints, like gender divides, as well as the body itself. Augustine takes the biblical notion farther: the ‘femininity of the body’ that Perpetua and Felicity both possess is an inherent weakness.

It is not just the body and gender broadly that must be transcended through Christ, but the feminine body. Her deeds are accomplished etiam, “even” feminae corpore “with the body of a woman”—he presents her female body as an obstacle that makes her accomplishments surprising, making it more emphatic with etiam. Her virtus mentis, “virtue of mind” sexum carnis abscondat—“leaves behind the sex of her flesh”. He finds it almost embarrassing or shameful (pigeat) 5 See the above Clark text along with her St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality for a more in-depth reading of Augustine’s view of sexuality, marriage, and the role of women.

6 Saint Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine: v. 1. Sermons on the Old Testament, 2050, trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle (New York: New City Press, 1990), 72.

7 “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” Matthew 22:30 (NIV). For further reading on this line, see Ambrose quoting it in Concerning Virginity 1 (9.52) and discussion of Augustine’s analysis in Lapide’s Great Biblical Commentary.

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body to think about her membris-–her actual corporeal body, and a specific word choice that has sexual undertones-–which did not match up, as it were—they were not “apparent” (apparere) in her actions (in factis).8 In this short passage, on the granular word-level, her transcendence is not of gender broadly but specifically of her femininity, something that Augustine constantly juxtaposes with words denoting her spiritual achievement following (feminae corpore, virtus mentis) (sexum carnis abscondat). For him, that impressive spiritual victory is something she had to achieve by transcendence of her body and gender. This feminine weakness is not just physical here, but spiritual—he presents it as a potential block to achieving spiritual success. In Perpetua’s dream of the serpent, it is important to him that she stepped on the snake with a “chaste foot”.9 Eve is, apparently, never far from his mind as regards women—Eve, whose ‘feminine weakness’, as he might say, caused the introduction of sin to everybody. In Sermon 281 he repeats this sentiment: “That old and crafty enemy had once, of course, beguiled a man through a woman; so in order to let slip no opportunity of treachery, and because he sensed that this woman was reacting to him in a manly way, he very sensibly tried to overcome her through a man.”10 Augustine is asserting that Satan cunningly used a woman (Eve) to sabotage a man in the past, and now, when he sees that Perpetua is miraculously overcoming her womanly weakness by a manliness given to her by Christ, again tries to overcome her in a way predicated completely on gender. To Augustine, it seems that Perpetua is almost a liability—a challenge to his paradigm of gender, lust, and sin. She does not handle her femininity in the way he expects—and thus, in order to deal with this challenge, he fills his whole conversation about her with references to gender, trying to recall her to his paradigm and assert that any success she has is based on the explicitly masculine qualities of Christ.

‘Body’ and ‘flesh’ are terms that come up frequently in these sermons, whether to refer to the violence the martyrs have to experience to their own bodies, or in reference to their gender. Augustine casts Perpetua through a very physical lens. He states: “It should not seem a small matter to us, that we are members of the same person’s body as they are too”.11 Even this language concerning ideas of interconnectedness, 8 Augustinus Hipponensis, Sermones ad populum, Library of Latin Texts, para. 1.

9 Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine (Sermons v.1), trans. Edmund Hill, 72.

10 Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine (Sermons v.1), trans. Edmund Hill, 78.

11 From Sermon 280. Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine (Sermons v.1), trans.

Edmund Hill, 75.

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Madeline Nielsen communion and love is couched in very physical terms—his congregation is united to Perpetua and Felicity through Christ’s body: eius corporis membra sumus.12 Not only does Augustine use corporis here, but he doubles the body language with the very coporeal membra, placing the two words side by side and making the connotation overwhelming.

From his sermons, it seems that Perpetua’s gender, along with her body, are the most important things about her to Augustine.

In addition to the sermons, Augustine references Perpetua in scattered appearances in his treatise De anima et origine eius. In the De anima, Augustine argues with a man by the name of Victorinus who has made the shocking assumption that the soul is corporeal. Augustine cites Perpetua in his argument, a surprising choice given that he discounts her authority throughout his discussion. His use of her appears to be obligatory, because Victorinus cites her text heavily in his own argument. It seems Augustine is forced to treat her, albeit with annoyance, but treat her he does. Augustine examines “what kind of reality dream-bodies, dream-worlds, and dream-pains have. Did St. Perpetua really feel that she was struggling, or did she merely dream that she felt that way? Was she really struggling? Was she really wrestling? Was she really a male while wrestling with the Egyptian?”13 Augustine’s examination, as Sirridge describes, is lengthy, but it is the last part that is of interest to this discussion. While he treats the general concerns raised by Victorinus—of the reality and quality of dreams, imagination, afterlife, etc.—he also veers off into concerns that seem very much his own. That is, Perpetua’s genitalia.

Augustine emphasizes the issue of genitalia in Perpetua’s dream of becoming a man,14 arguing that it was not a true male body, but rather just a likeness of a body. The bodies are not real, he argues, for dreamers and the dead, but the feelings are.15 It should be noted that Perpetua never references her own genitalia, including in this dream.

Her reference to the gender change is actually surprisingly sparse—she writes exactly seven words about her genitalia at all in her whole account, and they are: et expoliata sum et facta sum masculus, “and I 12 Augustinus, Sermones, para. 6.

13 Mary Sirridge, “Dream Bodies and Dream Pains in Augustine’s ‘De Natura et Origine Animae,” Vivarium 43, iss. 2 (2005): 213-14.

14 The night before she is to be killed by wild beasts in the amphitheater, Perpetua dreams that it is already happening, but finds that instead she must wrestle an ‘Egyptian’ who represents the Devil. She realizes she has been changed into a male form, and, with an intense attack involving leaping on top of and trampling the Egyptian’s head, vanquishes him.

15 Sirridge, “Dream Bodies and Dream Pains,” 228-9.

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body was stripped and became masculine”.16 Describing her attendants stripping her in the amphitheater in her dream to prepare her for combat, the implication is that, upon seeing her body, she realizes it is not her own, but that of a man. Augustine, however, seems slightly obsessed with this brief moment. He describes her body as: in suo femineo sexu manens, “[it] remained in her own sex as a woman”.17 18 He goes on to say: Si corpus erat, cur non servabat vaginae suae formam, “If it was a body, why did it not maintain its sexual integrity?”19 His treatment continues: Neque enim in illius feminae carne virilia repererat genitalia, unde ita posset sese coartando et, ut tu loqueris, ‘gelando’ formari, “For in that woman’s flesh were found no virile functions of generation, whence by any such process as that which you call congelation could be moulded this similitude of a man’s body.”20 And finally: In sua vagina erat utique omnibus membris viventis inclusa et in eius corpore suam formam, de quo fuerat formata, servabat, “she remained in her own natural sex, enclosed, of course, in all her proper limbs which belong to her in her living state, and was still in possession of that bodily shape and the lineaments of which she had been originally formed.”21 Using the words femineo sexu, vagina, and genitalia to refer to a sacred saint and martyr is somewhat shocking, and, notably, diverges from Perpetua’s own treatment of her body. The only times Perpetua talks about her physical body are to talk about the challenges of breastfeeding. She references genitalia once, and she does not even describe herself as ‘a woman’, a reference to gender that might be reasonably expected. Augustine’s treatment of herself, her spirituality, and her body seems to veer pointedly away from her own treatment of these things.

His vocabulary choice—particularly of vagina—can be initially surprising, and a full survey of Augustine’s treatment of the word—one with many various meanings, overwhelmingly denoting lit 16 “Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed.

H. Musurillo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 10.7.

17 Saint Augustine, De peccatorvm…De natura et origine animae (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1962), 405.

18 Saint Augustine, On the Soul and its Origin (Book IV), trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), cap. 26.

19 Augustine, De natura et origine animae, 405; trans. Holmes, On the Soul and its Origin, cap. 26.

20 Augustine, De natura et origine animae, 405-06; trans. Holmes, On the Soul and its Origin, cap. 26.

21 Augustine, De natura et origine animae, 406; trans. Holmes, On the Soul and its Origin, cap. 26.

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Madeline Nielsen eral scabbards or plant-husks—is in order. The survey is brief, returning five uses in his corpus aside from this work. Sermon 313, his treatise on John, Letter 93, his writings on the Psalms (Psalm 7), and Contra Faustum all return the same context—he uses the word vagina to refer to sheathing or unsheathing the sword of Peter. This refers to the scene from John 18:10 where Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest’s slave.

“Jesus commanded Peter, ‘Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?’”22 These usages form part of Augustine’s lengthy—and complicated—writings on nonviolence, ‘just’ violence, etc., and are beyond the scope of this discussion. However, it is worth noting that in each of these cases the sword—gladius—is paired with the vagina—sheath—and that he sets the two in opposition to each other. The gladius is heavenly, the vagina earthly; the gladius equates with the soul, while the vagina with the flesh. All five passages stay to this theme, but Sermon 313 states it most explicitly. Augustine, after linking Christ with the sword in paragraph 4, in paragraph 5 states: “It is the holy flesh of this victorious soul, the scabbard [vagina23], so to say, of that claymore, that we honor in this place with the supreme mark of respect, an altar for God; the flesh which is to be restored to that same triumphant soul in the resurrection, and thereafter, there being no more death, never to be laid aside again.” 24 The soul in particular he is referring to is Cyprian’s, which he describes as “a grand claymore of God’s”, “sharp with truth”, “used and brandished by the power of God in full warcry,” “what bands of gainsayers it overcame with its arguments!”25 The gladius is seen as spiritually powerful and masculine, in fact redefining values of masculinity that align with Christ.

The gladius, often linked explicitly with Christ, is a symbol of a potent spiritual force that transcends the physical in a way that is inherently masculine. The vagina, with its feminine connotations, encloses and limits it in the same way the body does the spirit, and is something Augustine is careful to explicitly associate Perpetua with.

Ambrose, Augustine’s mentor, wrote several treatises directly to and about women, many of them ‘concerning virgins’. In these texts, he ties moral and spiritual worth directly to sexual worth.26 Like Au 22 John 18:11 (NIV).

23 Bracketed note added by myself.

24 Saint Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Part III – Sermons) (Volume 9: Sermons 306-340A), trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle (New York: New City Press, 1994), 88.

25 Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine (Sermons v.9), trans. Edmund Hill, 88.

26 Ambrose of Milan, “On Virginity [de virginitate] 2nd. ed,” trans. Daniel Callam,

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body gustine, he equates weak faith with womanhood, and strong faith with manhood.27 However, he takes it farther, setting up a gender dichotomy that mirrors the classic Christian God/Satan, good/evil, light/dark dichotomy—where femaleness aligns with Satan and sin, and maleness with Christ and all virtue. Given that he was Augustine’s converter, his thinking seems important context for understanding Augustine’s own conceptions of gender and sexuality in Christianity.

Si Evae clausa fuisset ianua, nec Adam deceptus fuisset, nec respondisset interrogate serpenti. Introivit mors per fenestram, hoc est per Evae ostium, “If Eve’s door had been closed, Adam would not have been deceived and she, under question, would not have responded to the serpent. Death entered through the window, i.e., through the door of Eve.” Ingreditur mors per ostium tuum si falsum loquaris, si turpiter, si procaciter, postremo si ubi non oportet loquaris, “And death will come in through your door if you speak falsely, lasciviously, or impudently especially when there is no call upon you to speak.”

Clausae sint igitur labiorum fores tuorum et obseratum maneat vocis vestibulum: tunc fortasse reserandum cum audieris dei vocem, cum audieris dei verbum, “Therefore, let the gates of your lips be closed and the vestibule of your voice remain bolted; then, perhaps they will be unbolted when you hear the voice of God, when you hear the Word of God”.28 29 Here Ambrose assigns the responsibility for the introduction of sin into the human experience to women as a group, making the responsibility explicitly gendered—it is something, he seems to insist, about femaleness that invites sin and darkness—that is dangerous and volatile, as if women have a more intimate connection to and affinity with Lucifer himself than their male counterparts. This dangerous quality must be properly directed, he insists—and the way to do this is shown by the Canticles of the Song of Solomon.

Peregrina Translation Series 7, http://monasticmatrix.osu.edu/cartularium/virginity, 1.52.

27 Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.17.

28 Ambrosius Mediolanensis, De virginitate, Library of Latin Texts, http://clt.brepolis. net.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/LLTA/pages/TextSearch.aspx?key=PAMBR0147_, para. 81.

29 Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.81.

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The window/door imagery continues, along with explicit reference to the Canticles as they describe a sensual, loving relationship between an unspecified man and woman. The receptive ‘door’ Ambrose describes can interact not just with the dark forces of Satan—something it is apparently particularly prone to—but also with Christ. Ambrose has already established that sensuality and sexuality are important forces with which to think about women’s spirituality in terms of how it relates to sin, but, more surprisingly, he keeps the sexual metaphor going in positive depictions of female spirituality. Talem te Christus desideravit, “This is how Christ has desired you”—a word-choice containing potential sexual undertones, desideravit at the very least indicates “wanting” or “longing for”, applying to Christ’s relationship with the virgin language one might expect to see describing the behavior of human lovers.30 Aperto itaque ingreditur ostio, “The door being open, he enters”.31 The innuendo is obvious, and, surprisingly, continues: Complectere igitur quem quaesisti. Accede ad ipsum et illuminaberis. Tene illum, roga ne cito abeat, obsecra ne recedat, “So embrace whom you have sought; approach him to be filled with light; hold him and ask him not to depart quickly, pleading with him not to go away”.32 Ambrose portrays the virgin as having an intimate, personal, sexually-charged relationship with Christ that closely mirrors the Song of Solomon he quotes so frequently throughout these texts. He explains the spiritual, intangible relationship in very human terms—human terms of sensuality and physical love.

For Ambrose, an instrument in Christ’s relationship with women is Logos. He equates the ‘door’ (ianua) with the ‘mouth’ (os), and thus speaking and words, beginning the metaphor.33 He continues it: Sed si bonis ad angelos meritis pervenitur, cur qui pervenerit vulneratur, “If it is a matter of reaching angels [the virgin reaching them] by good merits, why does one arrive wounded?”

30 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 74; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.74.

31 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 74; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.74.

32 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 74; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.74.

33 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 80; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.80.

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Est et gladius bonus, cuius gladii bonum vulnus. Vulnerat dei verbum, sed non ulcerat; est vulnus boni amoris, sunt vulnera caritatis, ideo que dixit: Vulnerata caritatis ego sum, “oh! it is such a good sword and such a good wound from his sword! The Word of God inflicts a wound, but it does not produce a sore. There is a wound of righteous love, there are wounds of charity, as she has said, ‘I am wounded with love’ (Cant. 2.5).”

Quae perfecta est vulnerata est caritatis. Bona sunt igitur verbi vulnera, bona sunt amantis vulnera, “Who is perfect is wounded with love. Therefore the wounds of the Word are good, and good are the wounds of the lover.”34 Here he introduces the idea of ‘a good wound’. The idea of a sword, and a particular sword of Christ, echoes Augustine—but it differs in that this sword represents the Logos specifically, and that it belongs to Christ as lover who uses it to inflict a wound that is to be desired. For Augustine, the sword is a powerful masculine spiritual element that represents both the soul (as opposed to the body, or, as he calls it, the vagina) and the gentle power of Christ, which Christian men should attempt to emulate. It is interesting that Ambrose uses the same metaphor, which remains essentially masculine and associated with Christ, but in quite a different way—for him, Christ’s sword is a means of communication, relationship, and effects an experience of surrender—woundedness—that is loving even in its violence.

This recalls one strikingly—and perhaps surprisingly—to Perpetua. Ambrose, in these texts, ventures into territory resonant with her. He discusses sight: crede, et videbis. Adest Christus, nec umquam iis a quibus quaeritur deest, “Believe, and you will see. Christ is present; he is never absent from those by whom he is sought”.35 The emphasis on sight continues, and it calls to mind Perpetua’s relationship with God—which occurs largely through sight, via vision-like dreams.

Ambrose describes sight, a true seeing of God, as the spiritual goal for the virginal women36 he writes of, and emphasizes purity and simplicity 34 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 91; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.91.

35 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 17; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.17.

36 Virginal women are, for Ambrose, the ultimate ideal for Christian women—Perpetua, by her maternity, stands outside of his paradigm, though one imagines she would likely not have been too concerned about his ideals. Ambrose offers one version of how a

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Augustine, Ambrose’s pupil, touches on this idea (briefly) as well. In Sermon 280 he also treats the spirituality of the martyrs in terms of sight: “They [Perpetua’s spectators in the amphitheater] saw with the eyes of flesh sights with which to glut the monstrous inhumanity of their hearts; we behold with the eyes of the heart sights which they were not permitted to see. They rejoiced over the martyrs’ dead bodies, we grieve over their own dead minds. They, lacking the light of faith, thought the martyrs liquidated; we, with the clear sight of faith, perceive them crowned.”38 Augustine here implies that there are two kinds of sight—the eyes of the heart and the eyes of the flesh—and that one is profoundly spiritual, the other disappointingly carnal. Ambrose states the idea perhaps better, again calling Perpetua to mind: Noli cogitare mortalia et non plorabis: noli cogitare peritura et flendi causam habere non poteris. Cur inde ploras unde alii gratulantur, “Do not consider mortal things and you will not weep; think not on passing things and you will have no cause for tears. Hence the question, Why are you weeping when the others are rejoicing?”39 It would be fitting to close with Perpetua’s joy, and the ever-intriguing question of how she sees herself. Perpetua’s account describes her relationship with God as personal and immediate, and she displays no fear at the actions she is undertaking—rather, complete peace and joy. Her only concerns are for the feelings and welfare of her family members. Interestingly, even these concerns show how she conceives of the world—as operating on two levels simultaneously, with the spiritual, eternal level never losing its importance. In the first part woman should have a relationship with God, which is based a good deal on sexual status and mores; Perpetua offers her own conception of the same question.

37 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 92; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.92.

38 Augustine, The Works of Saint Augustine (Sermons v.1), trans. Edmund Hill, 73.

39 Ambrosius, De virginitate, para. 17; Ambrose, “On Virginity,” trans. Daniel Callam, 2.17.

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body of her account she has several painful encounters with her father, for whom she grieves because he does not understand her choice and thus her religious experience (he is the only one from her family not about to rejoice at her passion: solus de passione mea gauisurus non esset de toto genere meo40).41 She also references her living brother, with whom she is close, and to whom (along with her mother) she consigns her son—the act gives her peace.42 In the second half, there is no further mention of this brother or her son, who concern her more initially, but only of her deceased brother Dinocrates. She encounters him, not as some kind of wraith but very much as he always was, in a dream sequence of somewhere like purgatory, and is able—to her joy—to set him free from his afterlife suffering with prayer. Prayer, and God, for her, are always sources of joy.

When she talks of her body in the waking world, she never once mentions or alludes to the genitalia that Augustine seems to find so important. She describes her own physicality rarely, only so much as her lactating breasts are distressing for herself and her child. Her body, like Felicity’s, as Saturus graphically describes in the amphitheater (the audience is shocked by the woman’s open lactation), is in a maternal state.43 Perpetua’s concerns are to rise above physicality.44 This makes sense. The female body, as Ambrose and especially Augustine so frequently indicate, is a complicated place to be. Her extreme experience of violence in martyrdom is in many ways an exaggerated example of the excruciating vulnerability of being human, and the dangers and pains of having a body. Augustine and Ambrose conceive of the female body as dangerous for completely different reasons—as a vehicle of temptation, as something to be blamed for male actions, as a volatile tool of Satan to increase sin. Perpetua never describes her body in this way—rather, her relationship with God gives her, in her eyes, an immense and astounding power. Rather than grappling with her own 40 “Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” para. 5.

41 “Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” para. 5-6.

42 “Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis,” para. 3.

43 “The populace shuddered as they saw one young woman of delicate frame, and another with breasts still dripping from her recent childbirth”. Saturus, “Appendix: The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas” in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, trans. Rev. R. R. Wallis, Ph.D., cap. VI para. 3.

44 Perpetua’s decision brings about a rebellion on multiple levels, moving beyond not only the physical limitations of her gender (her miraculous cessation of lactation, for instance, when no longer appropriate) but also the limits her society imposes on her (seen not only in her refusal to sacrifice, but when she ignores her father’s commands).

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Madeline Nielsen vulnerability, her experiences of ‘sight’ and faith allow her to effectively transcend the physical world and its injustices and dangers. Despite her tale being one of tragedy and violence, she is joyful—recalling to mind, perhaps, Ambrose’s ‘good wound’ and the paradoxes implied in relationship with Christ. Her spiritual relationship—even inasmuch as the fact that it consists of dreams—has a quality of profound openness and vulnerability that, paradoxically, lends her power.

Though undoubtedly problematic—her choice reads at times as suicidal, tragic, disturbing, or unethical—her account is fascinating.

It reveals an alternative conception of what having a relationship with God means and a different perspective on the issue of the female body in Early Christian North African thought. While Augustine sees the female body as an all-important factor in women’s (and men’s) spiritual experience, and Ambrose also sees spiritual and moral worth as being directly tied to sexual worth, Perpetua emphasizes the ideas of openness, relationship and joy far more in her conception of what it means to see God. Augustine, with Ambrose’s influences on him, became a significant voice of religious thought that stands to this day. But these men, clearly, were not the only influential Christian thinkers in a time in which multiple sects and ideas battled for supremacy. Perpetua’s Passio is an unusual example of female speech for its time, in which a woman describes her religious experience and ideas about herself in her own words. Even more powerful is her status as a mystic, a person who experiences direct communication from a deity, which challenges all the Catholic power structures Ambrose and Augustine were building. Perpetua represents an earlier, more egalitarian and more radical era of Christianity, one that changed forever in the hands of the Church Fathers and the creation of the religion’s formal and political structure.

Studying her words and Augustine’s direct engagement with them challenges understandings of the status quo of Early Christian theology, particularly as it regards women and their gender and sexuality.

By investigating the original texts, one finds massive shifts in thought taking place in individual words, revealing choices about understanding women’s sexuality and roles in Christianity that influence our society today and which, clearly, were not representative of the experience of an influential Early Christian woman and saint. While the Church Fathers take a reductive view of gender as being everything in a woman’s Christian experience, Perpetua has a direct, unmediated religious encounter that is defined by her agency and joyful openness to divine communication.

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body Works Cited Ambrose of Milan. Concerning Virginity (Book I). Translated by H. De Romestin, E. de Romestin and H.T.F. Duckworth. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 10.

Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, Ny: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896.) https://www. newadvent.org/fathers/34071.html Ambrose of Milan. Callam, Daniel (translator). On Virginity [de vir ginitate] 2nd. ed in Peregrina Translations Series 7. http://mo nasticmatrix.osu.edu/cartularium/virginity Ambrosius Mediolanensis. De uirginitate. CPL 0147. Library of Latin Texts, http://clt.brepolis.net.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/LLTA/pages/ TextSearch.aspx?key=PAMBR0147_.

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Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102093.htm Augustine, Saint. St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality, edited by Elizabeth A. Clark, Catholic University of America Press, c1996.

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Expositions on the Psalms (Augustine). Translated by an anonymous scholar. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 8. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.) Revised and edited for New

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Holy Bible, New International Version. Zondervan Publishing House, 1984.

On the Soul and its Origin (Book IV). Translated by Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, and revised by Benjamin B. Warfield. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 5. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fa thers/15084.htm>.

“Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis” from The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. H. Musurillo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. p. 106-130. https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/perp.html Sancti Avreli Avgvstini De peccatorvm meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvvlorum ad Marcellinvm libri tres / De spiritv et littera liber vnvs, De natvra et gratia liber vnvs, De natvra et origine animae libri qvattvor, Contra dvas epistvlas Pelagianorvm libri qvattvor. Recensvervnt Carolvs F. Vrba et Iosephvs Zycha ; New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1962. Reprint of 1913 ed. published by F. Tempsky, Vindobonae. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo.

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Schaff, Philip. “Appendix: The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas” from Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian.

Translated by Rev. R. R. Wallis, Ph.D. https://documentacath olicaomnia.eu/03d/0160-0220,_Tertullianus,_Passio_Sanc tarum_Perpetuae_et_Felicitatis_%5bSpuria%5d_%5bSchaff% 5d,_EN.pdf Sirridge, Mary. “Dream Bodies and Dream Pains in Augustine’s ‘De Natura et Origine Animae.” Vivarium, vol. 43, iss. 2, pp. 213249, 2005.

The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Part III – Sermons) (Volume 9: Sermons 306-340A), edited by John

Sight, Wounds, and the Female Body E. Rotelle, O.S.A. Translated by Edmund Hill, O.P., New City Press, 1994.

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Women and Religion: The Original Sourcebook of Women in Christian Thought, edited by Elizabeth A. Clark and Herbert Richardson. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

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AISTHESIS

Undergraduate Journal of Classical Studies Stanford University Volume XI | Spring 2023

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