Tricksters, Scape-Goats, Champions, Saviors Author(s): Cristiano Grottanelli Source: History of Religions, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Nov.

, 1983), pp. 117-139 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062655 . Accessed: 14/04/2011 08:43
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Cristiano Grottanelli

T R I C K S T E R S, S C A P EGOATS, CHAMPIONS, SAVIORS

I. THE TRICKSTER TODAY

The trickster is under attack. A recent book' shows that this mythical "type" was "discovered" by nineteenth-century ethnographers in the native cultures of North America and then artificially "found" in the mythologies of other ancient and modern societies. In this process, we are told, a series of very different and extremely complex figures of various mythologies have been unduly thrown together to form a hybrid, a monstrous abstraction that has no real depth and no scientific value, and that only blurs the real issue, that is, the understanding of each specific mythology within its specific cultural context. Though its author does not state it explicitly, this attack is both the answer to a specific problem and the symptom of a more general
This article is a modified version of a paper I had the pleasure of reading to the History of Religions Club at the University of Chicago in December 1982. The paper was written in Minneapolis, in close contact with Professor Bruce Lincoln of the University of Minnesota, who generously helped with suggestions, criticism, and advice. I profited greatly from a lively discussion with students and faculty of the Divinity School immediately after the presentation. I am particularlygrateful to Professors O'Flaherty, Reynolds, and Ahlstrom. A short talk with Jane Swanberg, who had studied some American Indian tricksters, was useful-to me, if not to her. ' Dario Sabbatucci, Sui protagonisti dei miti, Quaderni di etnologia religiosa 2 (Roma: La Goliardica Editrice, 1981).
? 1983 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/84/ 2302-0004$01.00

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situation. To deal with the general situation first: the crisis of the trickster, a creature of the traditional, comparative, and phenomenological study of religions, is part of the crisis of that approach. It has been written that "[in North America] phenomenology of religion, in any rigorous sense, has been quietly abandoned in practice, though there is some occasional talk about it in certain journals";2 and a few lines further on the same article mentions the "disappearance of comparative studies." This was true in North America eight years ago, and it is still partly true in the field of the history of religions, both in Europe and in North America. But, though the reaction against the errors and excesses of comparatism is still strong in our specific field, comparatism is far from being dead. As a matter of fact, it is now being rediscovered and defended by historians: to a public of astonished Roman anthropologists and folklorists, Jacques Le Goff,3 in presenting his work for the forthcoming re-edition of Marc Bloch's Les Rois thaumaturges, explained that he did not understand the present disrepute of comparatism in general, and of Frazer (!) in particular, among anthropologists and historians of religions-and his cautious yet open attitude toward comparatism is clear in much of his masterly work.4 In the meantime, in Europe and elsewhere, the influence of Dumezil on historians is growing steadily,5 and Dumezil, however one may judge his specific contributions, is a beautiful example of the resurrectionof comparatism after the follies of the Comparative Mythology School and the subsequent reaction. More generally, historians are opening up to anthropology,6 and thus, implicitly, to
Benjamin Ray, "History of Religions in North America: The State of the Art," Religion: A Journal of Religion and Religions (Special Issue on the Occasion of the Thirteenth Congress of the IAHR) (August 1975), p. 82. 3 This was in March 1981. Some of the things said by Le Goff on that occasion have reappeared now in an interview: J. Le Goff, Intervista sulla storia, ed. Francesco Maiello (Bari: Laterza, 1982). 4 I think especially of Le Goff's "M1lusine maternelle et d6fricheuse,"Annales ESC 26 (1971): 587-662, but also of other studies collected under the title Tempo della chiesa e tempo del mercante e altri saggi sul lavoro e la cultura nel Medioevo, trans. Mariolina Romano (Turin: Einaudi, 1977). 5 In the interview I have quoted in n. 3 above, Le Goff quotes Dumezil's comparatism as the correct type of comparatism (p. 24). Apart from Pierre Smith's and Dan Sperber's article, "Mythologiques de Georges Dum&zil," Annales ESC 26 (1971): 559-86, one should see Duby's work on medieval history (esp. Georges Duby, Les Trois Ordres ou l'imagination du Feodalisme [Paris, 1978]), and more recent work on more recent history, such as Ottavia Niccoli, I sacerdoti, iguerrieri, i contadini, Storia di un'immagine della societa (Turin: Einaudi, 1979). 6 The phenomenon is discussed in Le Goff, Intervista sulla storia, and is present in all the work I have quoted so far. Of course, it is not only a French phenomenon and is clearly visible in the work of historians such as George P. Thompson, Natalie Zemon Davies, Sally C. Humphreys, and Moses I. Finley, to name only a few. It is now possible
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the comparatism of those anthropologists, such as Levi-Strauss, whose scope is broad enough to reach the historians. Moreover, and paradoxically, a timid comparatism has begun to reappear even in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of social anthropology.7 So a new type of comparatism and a new historical approach are on decent terms today; and even phenomenology and historicism, those two old extremes, both under attack but not dead yet, I think, may eventually learn to coexist in order to survive, if survive they can.8 As a product of comparatism and phenomenology, the trickster need not be obsolete. But there are other problems, for already in the late sixties, and more clearly in the seventies, it seemed that the structural study of myth had swept away such vague notions as "narrative motif," "narrative theme," "mythical figure":9and this seemed to make the trickster, a "type" of mythical figure, "ontologically" obsolete. Yet this tendency, too, seems to be less general today, for not only do Vernant and his school stick to the notion of "personnage"10 while producing some of the best analysis of myth and of ritual that is to be found after Levi-Strauss, but even the inventor of the actant and of the echange d'objets-valeurs, Greimas," concluded his contribution to a Levi-Strauss festschrift by identifying the protagonist of a folktale as the Slavic mythical figure Perun. In spite of the efforts of the most extreme formalists and structuralists, "pure"structure does not exist, for structure cannot be separated from contents and context, and until new ways of mediating between form and contents, between
to see the influence of anthropologists and of the study of "primitive"societies on Soviet historians; an interesting example is Aaron Ja. Gurevic, Problemy genezisafeodalizma v zapadnoi Evrope (Moscow: Izdat, Vysshaja shkola, 1970), who quotes Marcell Mauss almost as often as he quotes Karl Marx. 7 On comparatism in anthropology, see the bibliography quoted by Jonathan Z. Smith, "Adde Parvum Parvo Magnus Acervus Erit," History of Religions 11 (1972): 68. 8 On the relationship between historicism and phenomenology in the field of history of religions, one should see Raffaele Pettazzoni's last notes, published in Raffaele Pettazzoni, Religione e societa (Bologna: Ponte Nuovo, 1966), pp. 117-37. This, however, is not the "historicism" attacked by Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). 9 The clearest discussion of this is Claude Calame's beautiful article "L'Analyse semiotique en mythologie," Revue de theologie et de philosophie 109 (1976): 81-97; the author considers it necessary to "depasser le decoupage tres vague opere par les notions de motif, theme, personnage, etc." (p. 93). 'i As noted by Calame, pp. 86-87. 1 For Greimas's contribution to the structural study of narrative, see A. J. Greimas, Du sens: Essais semiotiques (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), and Semantique structurale (Paris: Larousse, 1966); more specifically, A. J. Greimas, "Un Probleme de semiotique narrative: Les Objets de valeur," Languages 31 (1973): 13-35. Greimas's contribution to the Levi-Strauss volume is "La Quete de la peur," in LEchanges et communications. Melanges offerts a Claude Levi-Strauss b Ioccasion de son 60e anniversaire, ed. Jacques Pouillon and Pierre Maranda (La Haye-Paris: Mouton, 1970), pp. 1207-22.

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detail and generalization, are found, such ancient tools as the "mythical figure" are obviously still necessary, even to the structuralists. Significantly, Levi-Strauss himself discussed the trickster in one of his most revolutionary contributions.'2 Indeed, necessity, and the conventions that best enable us to cope with it, should be the only criteria. The trickster is, of course, an "invention" of modern anthropologists and historians of religions; but, as such, it is neither more nor less "artificial"than most concepts normally used in those and in other disciplines. Should we abandon the term "king" or the term "god" because they express realities that are so complex and internally differentiated? Unless we are prepared to give up most of our current terminology, we should not be afraid to treat the trickster as real. If we are aware that its reality is that of a conventional generalization based on a certain number of empirically gathered data, we may well use it with caution to further our understanding of specific, as well as of general, aspects and problems of human societies.
B. DEFINITION: A PARADOX

Let us now turn directly to the mythical "type"in question and attempt to define the trickster. What I propose here is a preliminary definition, necessary in order to start a discussion, a definition that will be tested and verified by the discussion itself. Tricksters are breakers of rules, but, though they are often tragic in their own specific way, their breaking of rules is always comical. This funny irregularity is the central quality of the trickster; and what makes the anomie comical is the trickster's lowliness. When he is an animal, the trickster is a crafty, rather than a powerful, beast (in this respect, it should be noted that the trickster is a wolf only where the animal kingdom is dominated by the kingly lion); when a human being, he never ranks high, and his power lies in his witty brain or in some strange gift of nature. So a working definition of the trickster could be: "a breaker of rules who is funny because he is lowly." But this definition leaves something out. The trickster is important, so important as to be sacred. Why should a lowly, comical breaker of rules be important and sacred? What is the meaning of this contradiction? How does one explain this baffling ambiguity? One answer could be, and has been, that the trickster is important because his anomic behavior is ridiculed by the myths and thus
Claude Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris, 1958), chap. 11 ("La Structure des mythes"), and Myth and Meaning (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), chap. 3 (on tricksters, twins and hare-lips in North and South America). Cf. also Mac Linscott Ricketts, "The North American Indian Trickster," History of Religions 5 (1965): 327-50.
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reinforces the norm. But this answer is not satisfactory, for we know that the trickster is often an antagonist of the Creator, and that in devious ways he cooperates in creating the world; or, just as often, he is a positive culture hero who founds institutions. So his importance is not just derived from a positive use of his negative aspects: on the contrary, he is described as a necessary element of the mythical (and actual) reality because of his creative (but irregular) achievements. Other answers to this question have been offered. Some are more satisfactory than the one I have just quoted; and we shall return to them later. But I think that, before one can start answering (or even asking) questions, one should try to enrich one's dossier, to enlarge the "number of empirically gathered data" upon which that "conventional generalization," the trickster, is based. From what I know of trickster studies today, for instance, it is easy for me to foresee that medieval and modern European tricksters such as Marcolphus, Bertoldo, Till Eulenspiegel, Margutte, Pantagruel, and Panurge, are bound to come into the picture and to improve the quality of our outlook.13 But this growth in the number of data employed would not be really useful if it did not involve profound changes in the general attitude to the study of tricksters. Up to now, the tricksters of "primitive,"especially of native American, societies have been used to shed light upon their analogues, "discovered," for instance, in the ancient world. In the future, one may be able to reverse the process, or, better still, to adopt a multifocal attitude. The present article does not present itself as a first move in such a direction; but, in striving toward generalizations that could be valid for the category as a whole, it does focus on some tricksters of antiquity, and particularly on a newly "discovered" trickster of Latin literature.
II. PHAEDRUS'S TRICKSTER A. POMPEYAND THE SOLDIER

The first-century A.D. Latin poet Phaedrus, a libertus Augusti, translated Aesop's Fables generally into succinct but elegant verse, but in a few cases he was entirely original. One such case is his (if it is his)
3 Marcolphus and Bertoldo belong to the medieval Latin and Italian tradition, and to the folklore of southern Europe: see G. C. Croce, Le sottilissime astuzie di Bertoldo: Le piacevoli e ridicolose simplicita di Bertoldino, in Dialogus Salomonis et Marcolphi, ed. Pietro Camporesi (Turin: Einaudi, 1978). Their relationship with Aesop has been recognized but not yet studied thoroughly. Till Eulenspiegel is the German trickster of the late Middle Ages and early modern times; Margutte is a figure of the Italian sixteenthcentury poet Pulci; and Panurge and Pantagruel are creatures of Rabelais (sixteenth century). The folkloric background of Rabelais has been studied revealingly by Michail Bachtin, Tvoriestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul'tura srednevekov'ja i Renessansa (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Chudozestevennaja literatura, 1965), which I have read in the Italian translation, L'opera di Rabelais e la cultura popolare (Turin: Einaudi, 1979).

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fable Pompey and the Soldier (Pompeius et miles), the 113th of Brenot's Belles Lettres edition and the eighth of Perotto's appendix. The little-known story that it contains is a real treat for the historian of religions: In the army of the Roman warlord Pompey the Great a tall, vast-bodied soldier had gained, by his halting speech and by his soft and over-graceful way of walking, the reputation of a notorious pervert [famam cinaedi ... certissimi]. Having spied upon the general's beasts of burden during the night, this man stole Pompey's mules along with a considerable amount of gold, silver and jewels. Rumor spread the news, and the soldier was accused of the theft and brought to the general's tent, in the center of the army camp. Pompey addressed him thus: "Was it you, o comrade in arms, who dared to rob me?" Immediately, the soldier spat into his left hand and then shook the spittle away. "May my eyes turn thus to water, o imperator," he said, "if I have touched or seen anything!" Then the honest-hearted hero Pompey [vir animi simplicis] ordered that such a dishonor of the encampment be driven out, for he felt it hardly acceptable that such temerity could dwell in the man. A short time after that a barbarian enemy of great strength provocatively invited any Roman to fight against him in a single combat; each soldier feared for himself and even the officers murmured in fear. Finally the soldier whose attitude was that of a pervert, being a true Mars in strength, came to Pompey, who was enthroned upon his platform, and in a soft voice asked: "May I ... ?"-but the disgusted Pompey ordered that he be chased out of the camp. An old [senior] friend of the general's, however, argued that it would be better to entrust to fate [fortunae committi] that man, whose death would have been no great loss [iactura levis], than a strong and virile man, whose defeat would attract upon Pompey the charge of temerity. So Pompey gave his assent and permitted the soldier to fight; and in front of the whole army the man cut off the enemy's head and returned as a victor-in no time [dicto celerius]. At this point, Pompey spoke to him thus: "O soldier, I gladly crown you with this crown [corona], for you have upheld the honor of Roman authority [quia vindicasti laudem romani imperi]; but may my eyes turn to water"-and he imitated the soldier's foul and filthy oath [turpe illud imitans ius iurandum militis]-"if you did not steal my luggage the other day."'4
14

were not contained in the previous editions is unknown. The manuscripts we possess are Perotto's own Codex Neapolitanus 4.F.58 and the Vaticanus Urbinas 368, which was surely written before 1517. However, the fables are usually accepted as Phaedrian. The Latin text of the Fabula is the following: "Magni Pompeii miles vasti corporis / fracte loquendo et ambulando molliter / famam cinaedi traxerat certissimi. / Hic insidiatus nocte iumentis ducis / cum veste et auro et magno argenti pondere / avertit mules. Factum rumor dissipat; / arguitur miles, rapitur in praetorium. / Tum Magnus: 'quid ais? tune me, commilito, / spoliare est ausus?' Ille continuo excreat / sibi in sinistram et sputum digitis dissicit. / 'Sic, imperator, oculi extillescant mei, / si vidi aut tetigi.' Tum vir animi simplicis / id dedecus castrorum propelli iubet, / nec cadere in illum credit tantam audaciam. / Breve tempus intercessit, et fidens manu / unum de Romanis

fables that The source of Niccolo Perotto'scollectionof thirty-two"phaedrian"

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We do not really need to remember that the very name of this short story, a fabula in Latin, is the normal term for myths in Roman and then in medieval tradition, to know that it can and should be studied as a myth; and its protagonist stands out no less vividly than many mythical figures. Like other Roman myths, however, this myth is firmly placed in history-even in recent history, since Pompey died not long before Phaedrus wrote.'5 As a "historical" myth, our fabula can be compared to some stories written by Livy, a contemporary of Augustus and thus chronologically intermediate between Phaedrus and Pompey. Livy wrote about Pompey, for seven books of his Ab urbe condita are devoted to the civil war between Pompey and Caesar; but the two Livian stories which are nearest to Phaedrus's Pompeius et miles are placed further away in history. They are about heroic single combats between valiant Roman soldiers and arrogant, gigantic barbarians, long before his time.
B. OF ROMAN CHAMPIONS

During the wars against the Gauls that occupied a large part of the fourth century B.C., the Romans were often faced with great danger. Twice, the solution was provided by noble champions who defeated a Celtic antagonist and won a victory for Rome. Livy describes both occurrences in detail and takes special care to underline how one gave rise to a famous Roman cognomen, to a surname borne by noble members of a great aristocratic family. From this point of view, it should be noted, the stories of Torquatus (and Corvus) are in no way different from the Livian tales of Scaevola and Codes that we have long been used to treat as myths.'6
provocabat barbarus. / Sibi quisque metuit; primi mussant duces. / Tandem cinaedus habitu, sed Mars viribus / adit sedentem pro tribunali ducem, / et voce molli: 'licet ... ?' Enimvero eiici / ut in re atroci Magnus stomachans imperat. / Tur quidam senior ex amicis principis: / 'hunc ego committi satius fortunae arbitror, / in quo iactura levis est, quam fortem virum, / qui casu victus temeritatis te arguat.' / Assessit Magnus et permisit militi / prodire contra; qui mirante exercitu / dicto celerius hosti decidit caput / victorque rediit. His tum Pompeius super: / 'corona, miles, equidem te dono libens, / quia vindicasti laudem Romani imperii; / sed extillescant oculi sic', inquit, 'mei,' / turpe illud imitans ius iurandum militis, / 'nisi tu abstulisti sarcinas nuper meas.'" The term "warlord"that appears in my translation is taken over from the terminology of Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952). 15On Pompey, see Matthias Gelzer's old Pompeius, 2d ed. (Munich, 1949), as well as J. Van Ooteghem, Pompee le Grand, batisseur d'empire (Brussels, 1954). But the book that is most revealing of the historical background of the phaedrian fabula is W. E. Anderson, Pompey, His Friends and the Literature of the First Century B.C.(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963). I have not read Peter Greenhalgh, Pompey: The Republican Prince (London: Weinfeld & Nicholson, 1981). 16See R. Grant, Roman Myths (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 191206. I think in particular of Dum6zil's contributions on the traditions about the two

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If we consider these two stories about prototypical Roman champions together,'7 we shall be able to construct a paradigmatic picture, that we can then compare to our Phaedrian fabula. Two things strike us immediately. First, that the duel is always begun by the initiative of the enemy champion. Second, that this is not merely a convenient narrative device (as it is, for instance, in the biblical story of David and Goliath), but that it is consistent with a more general Roman attitude: Romans do not normally fight in single combat; their army and camp are a cosmos, within which each man has his place (ordo, statio); in order to fight in an irregular way (extra ordinem pugnare) one has to ask the supreme commander's explicit permission.'8 Other important aspects of the stories are the obvious corollaries of this collective and orderly military organization, style, and spirit-and this is especially true of the contrast between the barbaric and the Roman champion: the first is noticeable because of his specific personal qualities, such as his dimensions, or the colors and richness of his arms, while the second is nothing but a "typical" Roman miles and as such both unobtrusive and invincible. The sequence of events in the stories is as clear and as constant as the opposition we have just described. First, the barbarian's provocation; then, fear in the Roman camp (even the officers are afraid), and the young champion's brave decision. He goes up to the general, asks permission, obtains it, is armed, goes up to the area between the two armies (inter duas acies), a "middle" zone (medium), and, in spite of his apparent inferiority, that is really only his "medium"aspect (media militaris statura), wins. He then despoils his enemy and is rescued by his comrades who exult over his deed; later, in a public assembly (contio), he is eulogized by the general who gives him a golden crown (corona aurea) or a golden crown and ten oxen. In one case at least, he is given a new name, explicitely derived from his deed. But this short analysis would not be complete if we left out one important structural trait of the opposition between the Roman and the enemy champion. We have already seen that while the barbarian is big, noisy (he "makes his voice as loud as he can," he "smites his spear against his shield," he strikes with his sword, "making a mighty
heroes; see, most recently, G. Dumezil, "'Le Borgne' and 'Le Manchot': The State of the Problem," in Myth in Indo-European Antiquity, ed. G. J. Larson (Berkeley and Los Anfeles: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 16-28. Livy Ab urbe condita 7.9-10, 26. 18 On this, one should see the old but still valid observations of Georges Dumezil, Horace et les curiaces (Paris: Gallimard, 1942), pp. 11-33, who contrasts the Roman ius armorum and the heroic fury of the Germanic and Celtic warriors and quotes the observations in Vegetius's De re militari 1.1 and 2.2.

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clatter but doing no harm"), and visible (colored dress, golden weapons, fierce dancing, gestures of derision), the Roman fighter is of medium height, silent (ira ... tacita), and nothing to look at. We shall now add that the Roman soldier wins either because he is clever and agile, and slides in unobtrusively (the verb is insinuare) under his enemy's shield, or else because his enemy is dumbfounded by divine intervention. So the enemy is stronger in his body but weaker in his mind; being easily seen, he does not see, and in one case he is actually blinded-in other words, the barbarian is a large object of the act of seeing, a body to be looked at; the Roman is the subject of that act, both literally and metaphorically: he is a mind that looks and quickly acts.
C. POMPEY'S SOLDIER, HERMES, AND THE CASTRATED PRIESTS

It is immediately clear that the part of Phaedrus's fabula that describes the duel is a further version of this ancient topos, that we have seen as it appears in Livy's Ab urbe condita. I will show later that the fabula is at the same time a reversal of that topos. But before I proceed to do so, I wish to look briefly at the other part of the fabula and to examine it in a similar way. And it is not difficult to do so, for it is self-evident that the other part-the part that recounts the soldier's theft and awful perjury-is nothing but a further version of a myth that we find for the first time in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.19 In that hymn, which is usually dated to the seventh or sixth century the god Hermes is born to the nymph Maia and to Zeus, and, B.C., already as a newborn babe, shows his true character by stealing his brother Apollo's cattle and cunningly hiding them in a secluded cave. Then he goes back to his cradle-but Apollo returns to find that his cattle are missing, searches for them, and is told by an old man, who has seen Hermes taking them away, that a babe has stolen them. He then goes to his younger brother's home, finds Hermes craftily swathed in his wrappings, pretending to sleep in his cradle, and orders him to make haste and to tell him of his cattle, or he will kill him. But Hermes answers him

1 have followed the text and the translation offered by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, Loeb Classical Library (1914; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 363-405. But I have also used Filippo Cassola, Inni Omerici (Verona: Mondadori & Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975), pp. 153-225. I have dealt with the Homeric Hymn to Hermes in a forthcoming article: Cristiano Grottanelli, "L'Inno a Hermes e il Cantico di Deborah: Due facce di un tema mitico," published in Rivista degli studi orientali, vol. 56 (1982); in the article I comment on the trickster-like behavior of the babe Hermes.

19

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"Son of Leto, what harshwords with craftywords [pOot0oov KcepaClAotat]: are these, that you have spoken?And is it cattle of the field you have come hereto seek?I have not seen them;I have not heardof them;no one has told
me of them....

This is no task for me: rather,I care for other things:I care for sleep, and milk of my mother'sbreast,and wrappingsround my shoulders,and warm baths.... I was bornyesterday, and my feet are soft, and the groundbeneath them is rough;however,if you will have it so, I will sweara greatoath by my father'shead and vow that neitheram I guiltymyself,neitherhave I seen any other who stole your cows-whatever they may be; for I know them only by name." [Vv. 261-77] Exactly like Phaedrus's cinaedus, the god Hermes is a thief, and a thief who swears that he is innocent of the theft, thus committing perjury: a terrible perjury, for he swears the "great oath," by his father Zeus (naTpO6S K?(paXiv [IEyav OpKov 6ptopat). The correspondence could not be more precise. As for the stolen objects, the cattle stolen by Hermes are the perfect equivalent, in an archaic society, of the mules, textiles, and precious metals stolen from Pompey; moreover, Hermes in the Hymn (vv. 176-81) promises that, if Apollo shall seek him out, he, Hermes, will break into his brother's great house, to plunder tripods, textiles, gold, and iron. Hermes, the god of roads and of boundaries, the thief par excellence, has been studied as a trickster and explicitly compared to such tricksters of primitive mythologies as the Winnebago Hare figure by scholars like Norman O. Brown20and Karl Kerenyi.2' The traditions about this god, and specifically the story told by the Homeric Hymn, were still alive at the time of Phaedrus and applied to the Roman god Mercurius;22it seems probable that the resemblances we have shown are the result not of coincidence, or of the use of a widely diffused narrative motif, but of a specific imitation of the Mercurian myth. The fabula told by Phaedrus is thus in part a peculiar version of a famous topos, that of the Roman champion, and in part the repetition of the most famous myth of the Greek and Roman trickster god. The trickster quality of Pompey's soldier is not only suggested but also connected to an archaic and noble tradition. Our cinaedus is, in a way, the avatar of an important Olympic god. If this was the mythical and religious background and implication of our tale, other figures of narrative, and of popular taxonomy, were, in
20 Norman O. Brown, Hermes the Thief: The Evolution of a Myth (1947; reprint, New York: Random House, 1969). 21 Carl G. Jung and Karl Ker6nyi, Einfuhrung in das Wesen der Mythologie (Berlin, 1941-42). 22 E.g., in Ovid's Metamorphoseon libri 2.675-707.

Am I like a cattle-lifter [poov

a stalwart person? maTflpi],

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the Roman world around the beginning of the Christian era, the obvious analogues of Pompey's miles. To quote one example, the castrated leader of the group of priests of the Phrygian Mother goddess in Juvenal's sixth satire resembles Pompey's cinaedus: he is huge (ingens), effeminate (semivir), his genitalia are "soft" (mollia) as was the demeanor of Phaedrus's soldier; and he craftily despoils the credulous peasants. This comparison, however, is especially important because it introduces the more significant one that can be drawn between Pompey's soldier and the castrated priests of the Syrian Mother goddess, that we find in Apuleius's Metamorphoseon libri, a novel dated to the second century A.D. and, in its Greek parallel, the novel AoUKtog ri ovog. In the eighth and ninth books (in chaps. 25-31, 1-10, respectively), Apuleius describes them as lowly, ridiculous, effeminate cinaedi, given to homosexual debauchery and to selling false prophecies to all they can trick along the way in their itinerant mode of life. In book 9, chapters 9-10, we are told that these effeminate tricksters had stolen the golden cup belonging to the Phrygian mother of the gods: but a group of horsemen from the town where the theft had taken place overtook them as they were fleeing with their donkey, found the cup hidden among the robes of the statue of the Syrian goddess that the donkey was carrying, and, accusing them of being sacrilegious and impure (sacrilegos impurosque), led them in chains to the town's jail (Tullianum) where they awaited a death sentence. The theft, as in the case of Pompey's cinaedus, was followed by a blasphemous lie, for the priests justified their action by saying that the cup had been offered to the Syrian goddess by her sister, the mother of the gods, as a hospitable gift (hospitale munus). Effeminate, sacrilegious, impure, these Oriental sexual perverts, thieves, and foul tricksters are the very embodiment of every un-Roman quality; their resemblance to Pompey's soldier who like them is called a cinaedus is striking and sheds light on the implications of that figure and tale. The negative part of Phaedrus's account of Pompey's miles can thus be read on two different (but not contradictory) levels: on the one hand, it is the repetition of the mythical adventures of an important Olympic god; on the other hand, it is similar to tales that were told about Oriental quacks and such disgusting rabble (turba obscoena). Though it is even possible to think of a precise relationship between the Mercurian myth and Apuleius's story about the Syrian priests (in both cases, for instance, the theft is presented as a problem arising between two divine siblings), it is obvious that the two levels, and the implications behind the two comparisons, are entirely different. But, within each narrative universe, there is an internal hierarchy, and thus a strong difference in level between the tricksters and their adversaries:

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Apollo, the aristocratic god-indeed, the god of the Greek aristocracy, a dignified young fighter, diviner, and musician-is confronted with his brother, a poor, clever, crafty babe, the god of thieves, of roads, of chance findings; though they rarely come into contact with the higher classes, Apuleius's Syrian priests are nevertheless opposed to sedentary farmers, with their armed horsemen, small town, and jail, and presented as greedy, poor nomads who own only one donkey and one slave. On the two very different levels, that of the Olympic pantheon and that of a rural, provincial society of the early Roman Empire, the tricksters are lowly while their antagonists rank higher, if not high: a situation that compares well to that of Phaedrus's fabula, opposing a miles and his imperator.
D. POMPEY'S CHAMPION AS A TRICKSTER

I have thus divided the fabula Pompeius et miles into two parts and identified each part as a specific version of a mythical motif. Of each motif I have then found and briefly examined some possible prototypes. The fabula has thus been shown to be an aspect of a complex and long-lived narrativetradition, or, better still, the product of the combination of two traditional topoi within one complex narrative tradition. But, as I have anticipated, the relationship between each of these two parts of Phaedrus's fabula and its motif and prototype is not the same. The first part of the fabula, with the soldier's theft and perjury, is nothing but a further version of the topos that we have seen represented by the myth of Apollo and Hermes. But, precisely because the first part is a version of such a motif, the second part of the fabula, which presents the soldier as a champion, is a further version of the motif of the Roman champion only in the sense that it is a reversal of that motif. In a way, the fabula does continue the topos: for the protagonist is just as improbable a winner as the two champions of old, described by Livy, seemed to be. But in this very similarity the profound difference is obvious, for the "ordinary"aspect of the two champions was the sign of their peculiar aristocratic style and, of course, of their virtue as disciplined Roman citizens and soldiers, notable for their pietas; and what could be taken as a sign of their inferiority was in reality the proof of their superior power. On the other hand, the negative quality of Pompey's soldier-who is dishonest, impure, and a perjurer, and big, effeminate, but strong, while the ancient champions, virtuous and pious, were of medium build but virile and strong-is beyond doubt. We have seen that Phaedrus's cinaedus resembles the effeminate priests of the Oriental goddesses; now we must add that the difference between Pompey's champion and the Livian heroes is so strong that one could even compare that tall, vast-bodied soldier to the huge, noisy Gallic

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champions who oppose those heroes: eximia corporis magnitudine here, miles vasti corporis there. The victory of the ancient champions is thus no real surprise, because the contradiction it represents (i.e., the fact that a smaller and less prepossessing champion can defeat a bigger and more noisy and impressive one) is a merely fictitious contradiction, just as the modest value of the young aristocrats was merely apparent. But the victory of Pompey's strange champion is a real surprise, for the un-Roman Roman soldier of Phaedrus's tale is the very opposite of the Livian champions. The Livian stories confirm an important rule, the vaguely paradoxical but very proper, rule that a small but "right" (= Roman) champion is better than a big but wrong (= barbarian) one, while the Phaedrian tale reverses that rule and shows that a bad (though big) man can indeed be a good champion; that he was the champion, at least on one important occasion; and that he won. So, far from being merely the opposite of the Livian heroes, Pompey's soldier, the bad man who wins, is an ambiguous figure, a contradiction in himself, as will be clear if we examine him closely. He is a soldier, who should openly raid the enemy and despoil the corpses of his slain foes, as the champions in Livy's stories do-but he secretly robs his own leader; he should be damned by his very oath and damned to lose his sight, that function upon which we have seen the victories of Livy's heroes to be based-but he is victorius over the gigantic enemy; he is the dishonor (dedecus) of the Roman encampment-yet it is he who upholds the honor of the Roman authority (laudem Romani imperi); after his victory, he is crowned by the imperator during a public contio-but during that ceremony he is not praised, but blamed for a foul deed, by the general who crowns him. So, the contradictory and paradoxical quality of Phaedrus's fabula implies the ambiguity of its protagonist; and that ambiguity is the real ambiguity, told by Livy. This duplicity, this ambiguity of Pompey's soldier is the general background against which the soldier's most negative actions, the theft and the perjury, should be envisaged, thus becoming the ultimate expressions of his disconcerting character. And the importance of this ambiguity is, I think, indirectly stressed by the very term used to describe the protagonist's superior and moral antagonist, the hero Pompey, who is called vir animi simplicis, "the simplehearted hero," as he chases the perjurerfrom the camp, but still finds it difficult to believe that such temerity is possible. Simplex (devoid of duplicity) faces duplex in this passage; and each is, in a way, defined by his very opposition to the other. We have seen that the story of Pompey's soldier and his general's mules is a further version of a myth whose possible prototype is the

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story of Hermes and of Apollo's cattle; and we have seen that Hermes the thief has been studied as a trickster. It is immediately clear that Phaedrus's miles has many qualities and attitudes that are typical of that mythical figure: often called cinaedus, he is not only effeminate but a sexual pervert (this is the technical meaning of the term cinaedus); he is a thief who also sins against the sacred authority of the supreme commander in spying upon, and then in stealing, his property; he swears an oath that is both turpe, foul, in form, and a perjury in its contents. "Voleur, trompeur," as in Laura Levi Makarius's definition of the trickster; but, also, metaphorically, "parricide," and, in an abnormal way, "phallique"; "degoutant," without doubt, so as to be dishonor (dedecus) itself. Phaedrus's Roman soldier is, technically, a trickster; and we have seen that his pedigree as a trickster, that goes back to an Olympic god, is at least as important as his background as a champion. If the soldier of Phaedrus's fabula is a trickster, then his paradoxical quality as a bad man who is a successful champion, his duplicity and ambiguity, can and should be envisaged in connection with the intrinsic ambiguity of the tricksters of anthropologists and historians of religions. Like those tricksters, the cinaedus in Phaedrus's tale is negative but sacred, lowly, impure, accursed, but "important." We are faced here with the paradox that we started with: the trickster as a savior. I shall presently turn to this paradox, to study this specific case in a way similar to the way in which I would study the paradoxical quality of a figure of primitive mythology. If I can reach some understanding of the paradox of Phaedrus's trickster, this may help us to understand the paradox of the trickster in general, to answer the questions we asked at the beginning of this article. But, in order to do so, I must look at Pompey's soldier once more, concentrating, this time, on the section of the fabula that links the first to the second of the two parts I have examined so far. For it is this central section that defines our soldier and cinaedus most clearly.
E. PHAEDRUS'S TRICKSTER AS A SCAPEGOAT

When he is found guilty of the theft, Pompey's soldier is, according to the fabula, driven out of the camp (propelli) as a dedecus castrorum, a personified shame of the military camp. It is not clear whether this means a dishonorable dismissal of the soldier from the military service (dimissio ignominiosa), or a more severe punishment, such as the stoning and beating with rods (fustuarium) which, according to Polybius,23 was the punishment for all who left their place during the
23 Polybius 6.36-39 (punishments and rewards of Roman soldiers: the fustuarium is described in chap. 37). On the misunderstanding of things Roman by Polybius, see

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night, for sexual misdemeanor, for stealing, and for perjury in the camp (one should note that the cinaedus of Phaedrus's fabula is guilty of the last three crimes) and which implied death or the ban. The guilty soldier is chased away from the Roman camp, from that camp whose shame he was; the military community or microcosm thus purifies itself; the perjurer,who has turned himself into a damned, impure man, is sent across the border. Moreover, the effeminate trickster is not actually accepted in again when he offers himself up as the champion for the single combat. When Pompey has been persuaded by his senior to let the man fight, it is to the no-man's-land between the two armies (to what Livy called medium) that the trickster then proceeds. Though he is thus not chased out (eiici), the soldier is, by the senior's intercession, merely "given up to fortune" (fortunae cor mitti), and really returns to the camp only later, as a victorious savior, to receive his corona. The marginal quality of the expelled thief and perjurer seems to be modified only after he has won and rescued the community; had he lost, he would have died an impure, discarded being, just as the guilty soldiers killed by the fustuarium died. But, even when he is accepted in the camp and given the crown, he is at the same time, as I have stressed before, reminded of his theft and perjury by Pompey's imitation of his foul oath-an imitation, however, that is not a perjury, but on the contrary the ultimate proof of the general's certitude of his soldier's guilt. And here I must repeat, in a different context and, I think, with a more profound meaning, that the end of the story marks the final ambiguity; for the trickster is a crowned savior as well as a foul thief and perjurer:"internal"to the camp now, even promoted, but nevertheless a criminal, an outlaw. The return is only partial, or rather, only apparent, and the crosser of moral boundaries who has fought and won on the boundaries between the two camps retains his duplicity and is never to be a real insider. The analysis of the central section of Phaedrus's fabula throws new light upon its protagonist, for in virtue of his status as an impure outcast, a status that is precisely indicated by that section, Pompey's soldier, who features so clearly as a trickster in the first part of the fabula and as a champion in the second, is shown to be a scapegoat. First of all, being driven away from the camp as a shameful and guilty criminal, as the dishonor of the camp, he is an outcast who takes pollution away with him, like the Greek pharmakos, the misfit upon whom the sins of the community are symbolically loaded and

Arnaldo Momigliano, "Polibio, Posidonio e l'imperialismo romano," Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 107 (1972-73): 693-707; but on this specific point Polybius seems to me to have been a good observer.

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who is then forever removed; and we should keep in mind that criminals are often selected for such a role.24 Since criminals had to be removed from their society in order to free it from the impurity they were felt to be, it is hardly surprising to see them thus entrusted with the role of scapegoat, and we can easily venture to compare the expulsion of the guilty miles to precisely such a rite; moreover, the pharmakos was often stoned to death, as were the soldiers condemned to the fustuarium, according to Polybius. It is, however, not sufficient to see the trickster of Phaedrus's fabula as an outcast in order to interpret him as a scapegoat. What is more important is the fact that he is also, in a way, a victim, when he offers himself up and is then offered by Pompey as the one who will risk his life to save the community that has banned him. That community, it should be noted, would be saved not by his death, but by his victory: in this sense the situation differs profoundly from the case of the Hebrew scapegoat sacrifice, or of the Roman devotio, the offering up of a fighter in arms to the gods of the netherworld in order to cause the destruction of the enemy army. But the victory that will save the community is attained at the risk of death. In exchange for salvation, and for the reputation of the authority of Rome, that risk is offered, as it had been offered by Livy's young noblemen. In the fabula, however, more than a risk is offered, and the offering is felt at least by some to be in truth a sacrifice. First of all, in Phaedrus's text the soldier is, by the senior's initiative and in the senior's words, entrusted to fortune (fortunae committi), and the Latin Fortuna is both an abstract concept and an ambiguous goddess, not devoid of mercurian traits, dear to the lower orders and to the slaves, a bringer of salvation who was never completely rationalized inside the structure of the Roman state polytheism.25Second, and this is most important, the soldier, in the eyes of Pompey's friend, and

24 One of the best recent treatments of the pharmakos is to be found in H. S. Versnel, "Polycrates and His Ring: Two Neglected Aspects," Studi storico -religiosi 1 (1977): 37-46. J.-P. Vernant, "Ambiguit6 et renversement: Sur la structure enigmatique d'Oedipe Roi," in Mythe et tragedie en Grece ancienne, ed. J.-P. Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Nacquet (Paris: Maspero, 1973); and Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 58-77, are also important. 25 On the Roman Fortuna, Georges Dumezil, La Religion romaine archaique, 2d ed. (Paris: Payot, 1974), pp. 424 and 429, also pp. 57 and 58-59, 460 (Fortuna invoked with other gods during the crisis after the defeat of the Trebia). On the goddess as a "foreign" deity, apart from Dum6zil's observations (p. 429), one should see Angelo Brelich, Tre variazioni romane sul tema delle origini (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1955), pp. 9-47 (on the goddess Fortuna Primigenia of Praeneste and its meaning in the Roman religious context).

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probably, at this point of the narrative, of Pompey himself and of the Roman army, is sent to a probable death, for, if the valiant men do not dare to fight against the gigantic champion, what hope is there for this effeminate thief and perjurer?The problem is thus only the choice of a victim, and the trickster, while being officially accepted as a champion, is obviously considered to be in truth a scapegoat. Finally, the soldier is explicitly offered as a substitute: a substitute, possibly, for the Roman army, in a single combat that may be seen as an ordeal by combat, and so as a way of sparing the lives of all the other Roman fighters, who just look on (mirante exercitu) in admiration; a substitute, without doubt, for that virile and strong hero (fortem virum) who (if only he existed) would be exposed to a possible defeat and death at the risk of a severe censure for Pompey (qui casu victus temeritatis te arguat). The trickster of Phaedrus's fabula is thus an outcast and a potential substitute victim, intended by the Roman leaders more as a scapegoat than as a champion, and thus given up to Fortune for Rome instead of a strong hero, who should not run the risk of being defeated by chance (casu victus). In the following section, we shall deal with the "explanation" offered by Pompey's senior friend for this choice; but here we are concerned merely with the scapegoat quality of our trickster. That quality is a direct consequence of his previous sins and of his outcast status as a criminal; it is the motivation for the acceptance of the trickster's offer. Moreover, that quality is indicated by the words of Pompey's friend: while the trickster sees himself as a champion, he is seen by those who accept his offer as a victim, and only accepted as a champion because he is felt to be the right victim.

III.

THE TRICKSTER'S

POWER

A. THE SENIOR'S "SOLUTION"

As we have seen, the acceptance of the trickster's offer is explained by the senior, who by explaining it convinces Pompey to let the criminal fight. Since this is the only "explanation" of the curious episode that the text itself provides, we shall deal with it carefully, hoping to find in it some trace of a solution to the paradoxes we are confronted with. The trickster's self-offering, says the senior to Pompey, is to be accepted precisely because he is the least valuable of the soldiers, one whose death would be no great loss. This interpretation is not an isolated instance in the logic of exchange and sacrifice. Nor is it unknown in the logic of single combat, as shown by an episode in

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which a slave volunteers for single combat on condition that he gain his freedom; he wins the combat and his liberty.26 But, paradoxically, the senior's "solution" to the problem of the guilty champion is a very bad rationalization of Pompey's final decision in the fabula. For the trickster accepted as champion is not a slave: he is a polluted criminal and an outcast. The whole first part of the fabula, presenting Pompey's soldier as a pervert, a thief, and a perjurer, may not be dismissed as a mere "explanation" of the champion's small value. We are confronted with something profoundly different. In the previous section, we have shown the cinaedus to be an outcast and a scapegoat, similar to the Greek pharmakos; in more specifically Roman terms, we should call him sacer, using a word that indicates sacred things as well as "any person who has been found guilty of some crime by the people: he should not be sacrificed, but if someone should kill him/her, the killer should not be considered guilty of murder (parricidi non damnatur); for the first law sanctioned by the tribunes warns: 'If someone has killed a person, who is notoriously sacer, the killer should not be accused of murder.' So any bad and dishonest person (homo malus atque inprobus) is usually called sacer.27 Similar to the "sacred" criminal whose life is not defended by the law because he is an outcast, Pompey's cinaedus is sent to fight against the gigantic enemy champion. This duel between a barbarian and a criminal may also be compared to a fight between gladiators or in the circus, for both barbariansand criminals were often condemned, already in Phaedrus's time, to fight in such "spectacular"games28 and we should not forget that Livy himself, in describing the duel between Titus Manlius and the Celtic champion, alluded to those games, stating that the two fought more like gladiators than like soldiers (spectaculi magis more quam lege belli) in the no-man's-land (in medio) between the two embattled armies (inter duas acies). Though the senior's words present the acceptance of the soldier's offer as a way of paying as cheap a price as possible for an unavoidable defeat, what Pompey is
In Paulus Diaconus's eighth-century Historia Langobardorum 1.12. Sexti Pompei Festi de verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome, ed. Wallace M. Lindsay (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913), p. 424, lines 5-13. 28 For the Roman circus and gladiator games, see the old work by A. Piganiol, Recherches sur les jeux romains (Strasbourg: Publications de la faculte des Lettres de l'Universite de Strasbourg, 1923), whose "magical" interpretation is justly criticized by Giulia Piccaluga, Elementi spettacolari nei ritualifestivi romani (Rome: Ateneo, 1966), pp. 11-14, with some further bibliography. On the (Etruscan) origins of gladiator games, see the short but useful paper by Mario Torelli, "Delitto religioso: Qualche indizio sulla situazione in Etruria," in Le Delit religieux dans la cite antique (Table Ronde, Rome, 6-7 Avril 1978) (Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome, 1981), pp. 1-7.
26 27

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really doing is much more just-and much more Roman. He is sending a foul criminal to a terrible death-though that death is not totally sure. So the solution proposed by Pompey's older friend is not a correct account of the motivations and meanings of Pompey's decision, that is, of the scapegoat aspect of the trickster's story. Of course, it does not even attempt to account for the fighter's quality as a champion and for the salvation he affords by winning. The soldier is seen only as a possible offer tofortuna; and no words are wasted on a possible victory. The problem of the guilty winner and savior is not even considered. So we must return to that problem renouncing any guidance from Pompey's adviser.
B. TRICKSTERS AS SAVIORS: A POSSIBLE SOLUTION

Far from being a mere valueless token, Pompey's cinaedus is thus a trickster, a criminal champion who saves the Roman army and the honor of Rome (laudem Romani imperi); as such, he should be envisaged in the light of other mythical tricksters and saviors of the ancient Mediterranean. I think, for instance, of Prometheus, the ambiguous figure whose deeds are both crimes (notably, a theft) from the viewpoint of the gods and heroic acts of salvation for men. This breaker of rules, who has been studied as a trickster,29is banned and punished, acting as a scapegoat who offers up his life for humanity, for he has sinned for the benefit of humans. Prometheus is the ultimate example of the duplicity of tricksters: criminal and savior, guilty and heroic, impure and sacred, antagonist and mediator, he compares well to Pompey's soldier, though he acts on a far larger scale. Oedipus, savior and pharmakos, is another instance of the same ambiguity for, being ignorant of his true identity, he is both subjectively innocent and objectively guilty of the terrible sins that pollute him and his community.30Phaedrus's trickster, who knows he is guilty, can nevertheless swear that he is innocent and get away with it: he is thus a reversed Oedipus and a good example of the complexities of the system of ambiguity centered on the trickster. Against this wider mythical background, Pompey's soldier reveals his

29 By Karl Ker6nyi in his commentary published in Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), pp. 180-82. 30 On Oedipus's duplicity, see J.-P. Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Nacquet, "Ambiguit6 et renversement dans la structure 6nigmatique d' 'Oedipe-Roi,'" in Echanges et communications: Melanges offerts t Claude Levi-Strauss a l'occasion de son 60e anniversaire (n. 11 above), pp. 1253-79, now republished in Vernant and Vidal-Nacquet, eds. (n. 24 above), pp. 99-131.

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qualities, and the fabula regains its proper value, the mythical value I had presented as a working hypothesis in Section IIA. A look at other ancient tricksters has told us something of the meaning of Phaedrus's cinaedus. But the solution of the specific paradox he presents us with can only be reached by working directly on the fabula-and not on the only "solution" explicitly offered by the text (for we have seen that the solution in question does not even deal with that paradox), but on the narrative itself. So we should turn to that narrative, and ask, Why is Phaedrus's trickster such a good champion and savior? And how does the saving cinaedus help us to clarify the paradox of the trickster, lowly but important, impure but sacred? To answer these questions we should now look at the fabula candidly and refrain from despising the obvious (Poe and Lacan31have shown how important it is for a researcherto be nearsighted). If we are candid enough, the answer, the right answer, will turn out to be: the bad man saves the Roman army because he alone offers himself up for the dangerous duel. He wins, of course, because, being envisaged as a good scapegoat, he is accepted as a champion; and he is accepted not because, as Pompey's older friend argues, he is of little value, nor because he is a polluted criminal (though these two elements are, respectively, the rationalization and the form of the acceptance), but for the very simple reason that there are no other volunteers: thefortis vir who should not be risked does not exist outside mere rhetorical hypothesis, and the officers themselves are afraid (sibi quisque metuit; primi mussant duces). Only the shameless pervert, the foul criminal who dared to steal his general's belongings and to defy the gods by swearing a false oath, has the courage to offer himself to the risk. This solution of our Phaedrian paradox sheds light on the paradox of the trickster as a general type of mythical figure. Indeed, it helps to surpass even the point reached by the most acute and sensitive approach to the trickster paradox-I mean, of course, the structuralistapproach. Levi-Strauss has gone further than anyone else in clarifying the liminal and "intermediate"quality of the trickster; the structuralist solution of the paradox of the trickster is the idea that the trickster, in his ambiguity and liminality, is the mediator par excellence and thus a savior-for salvation is the mediation of contradictions. But this seems to me tautological, and thus useless: a point of no return.32The blind alley
31 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966). I refer especially to the famous Seminaire on E. A. Poe's Stolen Letter, translated by Charles Baudelaire as La Lettre vole and studied by Lacan in the light of Borges, Freud, and Benveniste. 32 For the structuralist solution of the trickster paradox, see Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (n. 12 above), chap. 11, and Myth and Meaning (n. 12 above). For a total criticism of Levi-Strauss's structuralism, which I find useful but unnecessarily

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may be skirted, I think, by putting the emphasis not so much, as the structuralists seem to do, on the boundaries themselves and on the trickster's connection with them, that is, on his liminal quality, as on the dynamic aspect of that same phenomenon: on the crossing of the boundaries by the trickster. Just as in the case of Phaedrus's fabula, in dealing with the general paradox of the trickster we must realize that the trickster breaks hard barriers:the trickster dares.33Having crossed the boundary, the trickster is impure, but, having had access to, having taken, what is across the boundaries, he is a giver of riches, and having had the courage to cross them, he is powerful. Power and impurity, pollution and salvation, go together because they are all products of the same daring gestures. In this sense, Pompey's friend's statement, that the loss of the guilty trickster would be no great loss, can be reversed into the acknowledgment that nothing can be a great loss to the trickster: this makes the trickster the perfect champion and the perfect scapegoat-as well as the perfect gambler (and, most appropriately, Hermes the trickster is the god of gambling and of chance findings). The trickster has nothing to lose, for the impurity of boundaries is upon him already, and, having nothing to lose, he moves about freely and gets away with anything, using even death as a form of birth, redemption, and promotion. Indeed, this quality that we have found in Pompey's soldier seems to me the central quality of tricksters in general; and its discovery may be the decisive step toward the solution of the paradox of the trickster. This quality of tricksters is just as clear-and as central-in the case of tricksters as culture heroes as it is in the case of our champion, for acquiring elements of culture is in itself risky, as is shown not only by the case of Prometheus, who gave mankind fire and was punished by Zeus, but also by tricksters such as the Winnebago Hare, who inspected the world, opening it up for human culture, and suffered many pains and losses, that typify the risks of discovery.34
vehement, see Raoul Makarius and Laura Levi Makarius, Structuralisme ou anthropologie: Pour une critique radicale de I'anthropologie de Levi-Strauss (Paris: editions anthropos, 1973). The structuralist attitude to the trickster is discussed in that volume, notably on pp. 142-43 (jaguar in a Warrau myth and coyote the culture-hero) and pp. 235-76 (North American tricksters). 33 On the semantics of "daring" in the Indo-European languages (the root reconstructed is *Vdhers-), see Bruce Lincoln, "The Myth of the Bovine's Lament," Journal of Indo-European Studies 3 (1975): 345-48. Daring, when crowned by success, i.e., favorably aided and fulfilled by the deities, is positive; but it is mere folly otherwise and ends in total disaster. This is precisely our trickster's case: if successful, he shall be crowned, if unsuccessful, as I have suggested, he shall remain an impure outcast. The deity here isfortuna; the daring, audacia. 34 Radin (n. 29 above).

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Tricksters, Scapegoats, Champions, Saviors

And this quality of tricksters implies power through impurity, a type of power totally different from the established powers of aristocrats, generals, and chiefs. It is the "other" power, that often faces the power of those who make and uphold the rules, being the power of breaking rules and the liminal, as opposed to the central, power-similar in its liminality to what Victor Turner35calls "the Powers of the Weak": a power devious and often unrecognized, yet necessary in moments of crisis. This duality of powers is well expressed, in some of the tales we have discussed, by the internal hierarchy we have noted: Apollo the great god, or Pompey the Roman warlord, are powerful; yet they are ultimately defeated, or they need to be saved, by the superior power of their inferior, the trickster. In her book on power and guilt, Laura Levi Makarius36holds that all ("archaic") powers, including the power of sacred kingship, ultimately derive, in the ideology of the societies involved, from the violent breaking of rules and of the blood prohibition in particular. This I cannot discuss here; but it seems clear to me that, in all the cases we have considered, the power of the trickster is defined in opposition to the "central" powers of those who uphold the rules. Indeed, the trickster is defined by this very contrast and uses tricks because he lacks the force possessed by the central powers: whether he be the youngster who opposes the old, powerful shaman,37the orphan who ridicules the chief,38 the minor figure who clumsily imitates the Creator, thus giving rise to the irregularities of the cosmos,39 or the buffoon who outwits the king.40We have already seen that the meaning of the trickster lies not just in mediation, as the structuralists would

35 Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 80-118. 36 Laura Levi Makarius, Le Sacre et la violation des interdits (Paris: Payot, 1974). 37Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, chap. 12 (Levi-Strauss does not identify the protagonist as a trickster, but a comparison with the passages in Radin's volume quoted in n. 29 above points in this direction). 38 Radin, pp. 22-23, 49-50, 103; compare with Lucien Sebag, L'Invention du monde chez les Indies pueblos, II (Paris: Maspero, 1971), chap. 3, sequences 15-19 (Poshayanne and the cachique). 39 On this aspect of the trickster, see Angelo Brelich, "I1trickster," Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 29 (1958): 129-37; Ugo Bianchi, 1 dualismo religioso (Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1958), "Pour l'histoire du dualisme: Un Coyote Africain, le Renard PBle," in Liber Amicorum: Studies in Honour of Professor Dr. C. J. Bleeker (Leiden: Brill, 1969), pp. 27-43, and "Seth, Osiris et l'ethnographie," Revue de l'histoire des religions 179 (1971): 113-35. 40 I think especially of the Marcolphus I have quoted in Sec. IB and in n. 13 above, and of his predecessor Aesop (see B. E. Perry, Aesopica [Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1952]). But I must mention the African court jester studied by Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1965), pp. 100-105, and by Turner (n. 35 above), pp. 96-97.

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have it, nor just in showing the absurdity of reversal.41Levi Makarius, Ricketts, Pelton42 have shown that the problem is more complex. But the meaning of the trickster, as Phaedrus's pervert shows, lies not in bloodshed, though he does shed blood,43 not in his human weakness and strength, though he is a champion of humanity;44not in "love," though he does save the world:45it lies in that "other"power: the power of breaking boundaries, of getting away with it, and of achieving salvation through sin. University of Rome
41 A similar position (though he never mentions the trickster explicitly) is now defended for rituals of inversion, clowns, mock kings, etc., by Marc Auge, "Quand les signes s'inversent, a propos de quelques rites africains" (Italian translation by F. Maiello, "Quando i segni s'invertono: A proposito di alcuni riti africani"), in Antropologia e Potere, ed. F. Maiello (Cosenza, 1979), pp. 75-94. Of course, Aug6 quotes in this connection M. Gluckman's studies on African "rituals of rebellion." 42Levi Makarius (n. 36 above). Ricketts (n. 12 above). Robert D. Pelton, The Trickster in West Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980). See the criticism of this interesting work in Sabbatucci's vol. 1 (n. 1 above), but already in Mircea Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 175; and by Pelton, pp. 8-10. Sabbatucci tends to identify Ricketts's position in regard to the trickster simply as "Eliadian." 43 See Levi Makarius. 44 See Ricketts. 45 See Pelton, especially in the last page of the volume, where the power of the trickster is said to be "nothing less simple and less complex than love."