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‘I Enter the Future with the Memory of the Past’: José Rizal, the Philippines and Classical Antiquity

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Abstract

This article surveys the presence of classical antiquity in the writing of José Rizal (1861–1896), the national hero of the Philippines. It first discusses Rizal’s Jesuit education and considers an example of his early fiction, The Council of the Gods (El consejo de los dioses, 1880), before outlining the employment of Latin and classical references in his two major novels, Noli me tángere and El filibusterismo. I argue that allusion to classical antiquity plays a range of roles in Rizal’s work: it allows him to adopt a refined persona, deflate the prestige of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, satirize the pretensions of the educated classes and advance the cause of reason and enlightenment in the Philippines. While Latin is at times portrayed as a cudgel wielded by priests and cultural conservatives, it is also revealed to be a tool essential for radical critique of inherited religious dogma. In El filibusterismo, the stories of Antaeus and the Trojan War are put to incisive anticolonial use. As such, Rizal’s writing represents an important moment in the globalized classical tradition at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Notes

  1. Rizal was awarded prizes in Latin at school and undertook a final public defence in Latin on ‘the most intricate and complicated [philosophical] propositions’; José Rizal, The Young Rizal, ed. L. M. Guerrero, Manila, 1949–1950, pp. 53, 166. His Greek was good enough (‘excellent’) for him to take a licentiate in philosophy and letters in Madrid in 1885; see L. M. Guerrero, The First Filipino: A Biography of José Rizal, Manila, 1963, p. 123.

  2. For the bibliographical details, see E. A. de Ocampo, Rizal as a Bibliophile, Manila, 1960, with the comments of B. Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, London, 2005, pp. 28-31, 36. Rizal’s knowledge of the classical canon clearly went beyond the texts listed by Ocampo. It is worth noting that while assembling his library in Madrid, Rizal skimped on food and housing to subsidize his library.

  3. See Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), p. 354, referring to Rizal’s correspondence with the German naturalist Adolf B. Meyer (20 November 1893).

  4. I cite from José Rizal, Noli me tángere, 3rd ed., Manila, 1908, and id., El filibusterismo, 3rd ed., Manila, 1908, which are in the public domain. The translations are my own.

  5. Rizal’s context within the Spanish-speaking world at the end of the 19th century and the comparison of his classicism to that of his contemporaries are topics that cannot be broached at length here. Scholars have, for instance, underscored the commonalities between Rizal and the Cuban nationalist José Martí (1853–1899); see e.g. Anderson, Flags (n. 2 above); K. Hagimoto, Between Empires: Martí, Rizal, and the Intercolonial Alliance, New York, 2013. Notably, Martí was also accomplished in Latin and Greek; on the Hellenism of Martí and other Cuban contemporaries of Rizal, see E. Miranda Cancela, La tradición helénica en Cuba, Havana, 2003. Rizal’s classicism was moreover in keeping with that of other Filipino writers and artists with whom he associated in Spain, as is clear from a cursory reading of the expatriate journal La Solidaridad (Spanish text and English translation in La Solidaridad, transl. and ed. G. Fores-Ganzon and L. A. Mañeru, 7 vols, Manila, 1996), as well as from the subjects of painters such as Juan Luna (1857–1899) and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo (1855–1913).

  6. Rizal, Rizal (n. 1 above), pp. 21, 141. The Memorias are brief reminiscences composed when he was still a teenager, but they convey vital information about Rizal’s school experience.

  7. On Rizal’s demanding Jesuit education at the Ateneo, see Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), pp. 37–53, e.g. 52: ‘literature – and in the Ateneo collegiate course this meant poetry and rhetoric studied and practised on the model of the Greek and Roman classics – was by far José’s favourite subject’. The official list of Rizal’s classes is provided by Guerrero in Rizal, Rizal (n. 1 above), p. 100. Jesuit education remained influenced by the Ratio Studiorum, on which see A. P. Farrell, S.J., The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599, Washington DC, 1970. On the early Jesuit presence in the Philippines, see H. de la Costa, S.J., The Jesuits in the Philippines: 1581–1768, Cambridge MA, 1961. On the long history of the teaching of Latin in the Philippines, see I. Donoso, ‘La tradición Latina en Filipinas: historia cultural y corpus textual’, Moenia, 27, 2021, pp. 1–42. S. M. McManus and D. Leibsohn, ‘Eloquence and Ethnohistory: Indigenous Loyalty and the Making of a Tagalog letrado’, Colonial Latin American Review, 27, 2018, pp. 522–74, offer a portrait of Bartolomé Saguinsín, an 18th century Tagalog intellectual who composed Latin poetry.

  8. Rizal, Rizal (n. 1 above), pp. 33, 148–9. On such play as a feature of Jesuit education, including the splitting of students into magistracies and decuriae, see Y. Haskell, ‘Latinitatis Iesu: Neo-Latin Writing and the Literary-Emotional Communities of the Old Society of Jesus’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits, ed. I. G. Zupanov, Oxford, 2015, pp. 553–74; the technique is already prescribed in the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: see Farrell, Ratio (n. 7 above), pp. 55 and 68–9. For the application of the Ratio Studiorum in New Spain in the 18th century, see S. M. McManus, Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World, Cambridge, 2021, pp. 198–204 (‘The Making of a Late Humanist Orator’).

  9. Rizal, Rizal (n. 1 above), pp. 38, 153.

  10. Ibid., pp. 40, 154–5: ‘Cultivando la Poesía y la Retórica había elevado más mis sentimientos, y Virgilio, Horacio, Cicerón, y otros autores me mostraban una nueva senda por donde pudiera caminar para conseguir una de mis aspiraciones’. This, however, should be read alongside an unpublished manuscript, Tears and Laughter (Llanto y risas, often erroneously believed to have been published in La Solidaridad, 30 November 1889), which paints a far gloomier picture; see José Rizal, Escritos politicos e históricos, Manila, 1961, pp. 173–5, translated in id., Jose Rizal: Political and Historical Writings, Manila, 2011, pp. 171–4.

  11. Rizal, Rizal (n. 1 above), pp. 53, 166.

  12. Text and translation in ibid., pp. 81–90, 199–208.

  13. Lucian’s The Gods in Council deals with a debate between Zeus, Hermes and Momus on the question of new immigrants on Olympus such as Dionysus, Asclepius and Heracles (as well as Attis, Mithras and Zalmoxis).

  14. For some reason, Rizal imports the non-classical Undine (a water-sylph from a fairy romance by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué of 1811) into his story-world; see Guerrero’s note at Rizal, Rizal (n. 1 above), p. 114.

  15. See Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), pp. 260–3.

  16. See Anderson, Flags (n. 2 above), pp. 27–52.

  17. For an illuminating discussion of the influence and character of the friars, see Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), pp. xiii–xviii, 136–41.

  18. Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), p. 68. Guerrero is paraphrasing the philosopher Tasio from Noli me tángere, Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 296: ‘apenas empezamos á salir de la Edad Media’.

  19. Cf. Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), p. 9.

  20. Rizal provides the text in both German and Spanish; the couplets form a dialogue between Shakespeare and the playwright. ‘“Was? Es dürfte kein Cäsar auf euren Bühnen sich zeigen, | Kein Achill kein Orest, keine Andromacha mehr?” | Nichts! Man sieht bei uns nur Pfarrer, Commerzienräthe, | Fähndriche, Secretärs oder Husarenmajors. | “Aber, ich bitte dich, Freund, was kann denn diese Misere | Großes begegnen, was kann Großes denn durch sie gescheh’n?”’: Friedrich Schiller, Shakespeares Schatten: Eine Parodie (1804), lines 27–32.

  21. While Rizal’s anti-colonialism in Noli me tángere is primarily anticlerical, there is also criticism of Spanish imperialism in general: e.g. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 278 (Elías speaking): ‘prescindamos de la Historia, no preguntemos qué ha hecho España del pueblo judío que ha dado á toda Europa un libro, una religión y un Dios; qué ha hecho del pueblo árabe que le ha dado cultura, ha sido tolerante con su religión y ha despertado su amor propio nacional, aletargado, destruído casi durante la dominación romana y goda’. J. Torres-Pou, ‘La narrativa anticolonial hispano-filipina: el caso de Noli me tangere y El filibusterismo de José Rizal’, Iberoamericana, 1, 2001, pp. 7–14, sees in Rizal a precursor to Frantz Fanon in his discussions of language, assimilation and the role of the colonized bourgeoisie in perpetuating the status quo.

  22. The Latin is from the Vulgate Gospel of John, 20:17; Jesus, risen from the dead, tells Mary Magdalene that she may not yet touch him: ‘dicit ei Iesus noli me tangere nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem meum’. Vision is a recurrent theme throughout the novel – fittingly, given its author’s profession; it is often said that Rizal gave his countrymen clarity when it came to their colonial situation.

  23. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 275.

  24. Ibid., p. 342.

  25. Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), pp. 429–30, on Ibarra-Simoun in the later El filibusterismo: ‘Rizal is still far from approving the “revolution from below” or indeed the rash and reckless use of force’. Rizal’s journalism, especially in the third instalment of his The Philippines a Hundred Years Hence (Filipinas dentro de cien años), serialized in La Solidaridad (n. 5 above), 1889–1890), is enlightening: Rizal calls for representation in the Spanish Cortes and freedom of the press in the Philippines but is against violent insurrection.

  26. Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), p. 132.

  27. Captain Tiago is later fulsomely described by a Manila newspaper as the ‘Filipino Croesus’ (‘Creso filipino’): Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 163.

  28. Ibid., p. 12: ‘sus anchas quijadas y hercúleas formas le daban el aspecto de un patricio romano disfrazado’. Rizal thereupon suggests that Dámaso resembles one of the three divinities (Pan, Silenus and Bacchus) disguised as monks in Heinrich Heine's story The Gods in Exile (1853).

  29. Ibid., p. 16.

  30. E.g. ibid., p. 90: ‘in articulo mortis’; p. 164: ‘entonó el celebrante que era el M. R. P. Fr. Hernando de la Sibyla el Surge Domine’; p. 171: ‘y rezaban con fervor Credos y Salves’; p. 174: ‘[Salví] decía el Dominus vobiscum con unción’; pp. 179, 180, 298, 311: avemaría; p 182: ‘cantando ... incarnatus est’; p. 220: ‘¿para qué trasladar aquí lo que dijo en latín, tagalo y castellano, todo versificado ... ?’; p. 233: ‘tía Isabel rezaba las letanías en latín’; p. 304: ‘¡ora pro nobis!’, ‘¡miserere!’; p. 308: ‘¡sanctus deus!’; p. 324: ‘¡Un Te Deum, un Te Deum!’, ‘¡Gaudeamus por tres días!’. The only Greek that appears are the instances of ‘kyrie eleyson’ and ‘Christe eleyson’ in Chapter 45, ‘La Catástrofe’, pp. 303–7.

  31. Ibid., p. 54. On the Latin expression’s murky origins, see F. W. Householder, ‘Quem Deus Vult Perdere Dementat Prius’, The Classical Weekly, 29, 1936, pp. 165–7.

  32. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 325: ‘“si las mitras fuesen objetos de la Naturaleza”, añadía otro con voz nasal, “Natura abhorret vacuum”’.

  33. Ibid., pp. 175–83. Dámaso’s speech is a parody of the tradition of classicizing epideictic oratory that was prominent across the Iberian world; on the background, see McManus, Empire (n. 8 above), pp. 51–111. On the colonial dynamics of this episode, see V. L. Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule, Durham NC, 1993, pp. 1–3, 213–19.

  34. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 175: ‘Palabras que dijo el Señor por boca de Esdras, libro II, cap. IX, vers. 20’.

  35. Ibid., p. 179.

  36. The narrator notes that it was customary to give the first part of the sermon in Spanish, the second in Tagalog, ironically adding ‘loquebantur omnes linguas’: ibid., p. 175.

  37. Rafael, Colonialism (n. 33 above), p. 214.

  38. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 180; cf. p. 202.

  39. Ibid., p. 181. Dámaso is mocking the Filipino pronunciation of ‘ph-’.

  40. Ibid. Further up the page, the narrator states that such use of belittling diminutives is a sign of intellectual feebleness.

  41. Rafael, Colonialism (n. 33 above), p. 217: ‘whereas the measured delivery of Latin and Castilian in the first half of the sermon enabled the priest to command his listeners’ attention, however sporadically, the unrelieved opacity of the second part resulted in the momentary collapse of linguistic and social hierarchy’.

  42. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 202.

  43. This is apparently modelled on a real event; see the note of C. Derbyshire, The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tángere from the Spanish of José Rizal, Manila, 1912, p. 115.

  44. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 78. Medusa reappears elsewhere; cf. p. 220 (on Doña Consolación): ‘dónde estaban ... la cara masculina y la camisa de franela de la Medusa ó la Musa de la Guardia Civil? ... ¡Ay! Para ella los impulsos generosos vivieron en la Edad de oro!’; Doña Consolación is again likened to a muse later in this chapter (p. 222), and to Medusa further on (pp. 268, 269, cf. p. 352). Since she is unable to pronounce the word ‘Filipinas’ (‘Pilipinas’), her husband, ‘si era mal filólogo’ (p. 224), tells her: ‘Dí Felipe, y añádele nas que en latín significa islas de indios, y tienes el nombre de tu rep – país!’ (p. 223). We learn in Chapter 39 that Doña Consolación has been so denatured by her desire to dissimilate herself from her background that, even though she cannot speak Spanish, she has ceased to speak Tagalog (or any language for that matter). On the characterization of Doña Consolación and Doña Victorina, see Hagimoto, Alliance (n. 5 above), pp. 30–40.

  45. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 80. Through Sisa’s thoughts, Rizal registers his cynicism about the practice of purchasing from the priests the salvation of loved ones’ souls – according to the church, only the rich receive salvation: ‘la Iglesia no te salva gratuitamente las almas queridas: no reparte bulas gratis. La debes comprar ... ’ (p. 81).

  46. Ibid., p. 81.

  47. In a different context, a former seminary student, Albino, ironically quotes Cicero’s ‘O tempora, o mores’ (‘o the times, o the customs’); Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 126.

  48. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 104.

  49. Ibid., p. 105: ‘como lo hacía Sila, contemporáneo de Cicerón de quien acaba de hablar Capitán Basilio’. Captain Basilio responds (seated): ‘Eso es, como Sila!’ Given that Don Filipo has obviously invented the story of how Sulla threw two hundred fried chickens, one hundred capons and forty roast pigs into the lake, the joke is on Captain Basilio. His gullibility is picked up in El filibusterismo.

  50. Ibid., p. 106.

  51. Ibid., p. 107: ‘no ha estudiado á Cicerón y aun es muy joven’. Captain Basilio’s affection for ancient culture is repeated later, to little effect; p. 158: ‘pero no llegaba á convencer á nadie, á pesar de citar á los romanos’.

  52. Ibid., p. 163: ‘yo hubiera preferido descansar en los brazos de Morfeo y dar grato reposo á mis doloridos miembros’.

  53. Ibid., p. 166: ‘rindióse pues culto á Terpsícore en muchas casas, pero principalmente en la del ilustrado millonario filipino, á donde fuimos todos invitados á comer’.

  54. Ibid., p. 166: ‘recupero fuerzas en los brazos de Morfeo ó sea en el catre del convento’. Before his fall, a Manila newspaper describes Ibarra as ‘the student of Minerva’ (‘el alumno de Minerva’, p. 156) for his efforts to build the schoolhouse.

  55. Ibid., p. 196.

  56. Ibid., pp. 326–9, 332.

  57. The Latin here is incorrect. Tinchang has heard agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi in the Catholic Mass and understood agnus dei Catolis. For other instances of pointedly incorrect Latin, see ibid., p. 198: ‘déminos pabiscum’ (i.e, dominus vobiscum); p. 206: ‘santusdeus con requimiternam’.

  58. Ibid., p. 327. On this passage, see Donoso, ‘Tradición’ (n. 7 above), pp. 31–32. As it happens, Captain Tinong is indeed imprisoned (and apparently tortured) in Fort Santiago at the end of the chapter; Rizal himself would be held there prior to his execution.

  59. On this ugly use of Latin, see F. Waquet, Latin or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, transl. J. Howe, New York, 2001, pp. 231–43.

  60. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 327: ‘Cual si las frases latinas hubiesen poseído una virtud tranquilizadora, cesaron de llorar ambos cónyuges y se le acercaron esperando de sus labios el consejo, como un tiempo los griegos ante la frase salvadora del oráculo que los iba á librar de los persas invasores’.

  61. Rizal quotes from the Vulgate version of Luke 8:17 (‘quidquid latet, adparebit, nil inultum remanebit’), used in the Dies Irae, at the head of Chapter 54 (Quidquid Latet). Chapter 57 is entitled ‘¡Vae Victis!’.

  62. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 22.

  63. Ibid.

  64. Ibid.: ‘el Benedícite al que casi nadie supo contestar’.

  65. Ibid., pp. 36–7: ‘como los romanos que consultaban á sus augures antes de una batalla dando de comer á los pollos sagrados’.

  66. Ibid., p. 38.

  67. Ibid., p. 63: ‘en esto se parecía á Nerón que no dejaba salir á nadie mientras cantaba en el teatro’. Rizal was fond of the idea – see the link between Fr Dámaso and Nero above.

  68. Ibid., p. 65: ‘Ya se oía un run-run de orápreo, orápreiss y requiemaeternams’.

  69. Ibid., p. 174: ‘al verle [Salví] recibir el humo del incienso, se habría dicho que Galeno tenía razón admitiendo el paso del humo de las fosas nasales al cráneo por la criba del etmoides’.

  70. Ibid., p. 333.

  71. Ibid., p. 239 (on Tiburcio Espadaña, the Spanish husband of Doña Victorina): ‘que después de vagar por el mundo seis ó siete años, Ulises moderno, encontró al fin en la Isla de Luzón hospitalidad, dinero y una Calipso trasnochada, su media naranja’.

  72. Ibid., p. 303.

  73. Ibid., p. 322 (on a mother of two sons accused of rebellion): ‘contemplando su inmovilidad y su dolor mudo, Niobe dejaba de ser fabulosa’.

  74. Ibid., p. 357.

  75. Ibid., p. 51: ‘no llama su atención la Hermita, Fénix de nipa que se levanta de sus cenizos’.

  76. Ibid., p. 195: ‘Mejor no podía haber dicho Leónidas en las Termópilas: “¡Esta noche cenaremos con Plutón!”’; cf. Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans, 225d.

  77. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 313: ‘más orgulloso no habría aparecido Temístocles en los Juegos Olímpicos después de la batalla de Salamina’.

  78. E.g. ibid., p. 37: ‘modus vivendi’; p. 151: ‘agnus dei’; p. 241: ‘¡Tarde venientibus ossa, habría exclamado él si hubiese sabido latín!’; p. 260 (on a dead fighting cock): ‘sic transit gloria mundi!’.

  79. E.g. ibid., p. 145: ‘Cave ne cadas! El oro es muy poderoso’.

  80. His source is the French scholar Jacques Gaffarel (1601–1681), who surveyed the texts of Plato, Xanthus of Lydia, Pliny the Elder, Hermippus and Eudoxus; ibid., p. 73.

  81. E.g. ibid., pp. 80–1. See also above.

  82. Rizal was apparently fascinated by Aeneid VI and the Sibyl; a parlour game that he designed based on the Sibyl (together with a drawing of the figure) is on display in the Rizal Museum in Manila; the rules are listed in José Rizal, Escritos varios, VIII.2, Manila, 1961, pp. 318–40. A similar game is referred to at Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 137.

  83. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), p. 74.

  84. Ibid., pp. 75–6.

  85. Ibid., p. 73: ‘una fe pura y sencilla se distingue del fanatismo como la llama, del humo, como una música, de una algarabía: los imbéciles como los sordos los confunden’. Tasio’s views are complicated, just like Rizal’s: we later hear from Sisa’s son (Basilio) that Tasio frequented the church when nobody was there; ibid., p. 87.

  86. Ibid., p. 69.

  87. Ibid., p. 77.

  88. Ibid., p. 142: ‘esta generación … quemaria mis libros, el trabajo de toda mi vida’. In fact, Tasio claims that hieroglyphs are better suited to the Tagalog language than the Roman alphabet: ibid., pp. 141–2. On Tasio and the question of language, see J. E. de Castro, ‘“En qué idioma escribe Ud.?”: Spanish, Tagalog, and Identity in José Rizal’s Noli me tangere’, MLN, 126, 2011, pp. 303–21.

  89. Rizal, Noli (n. 4 above), pp. 184–5.

  90. Ibid., p. 295.

  91. Ibid., p. 351 (Captain Basilio speaking): ‘nada pude salvar, ni los libros de Cicerón’.

  92. Ibid., p. 99.

  93. Ibid., p. 35.

  94. Ibid.

  95. Ibid., p. 49.

  96. Ibid., p. 59; cf. 51: ‘no llama su atención la Hermita, Fénix de nipa’.

  97. Ibid., p. 5.

  98. Ibid., p. 131. On the use of Latin in Augustinian botanical studies in the Philippines in the 19th century, see Donoso, ‘Tradición’ (n. 7 above), p. 27.

  99. Ibid., p. 46: ‘En las orillas crecían muchas flores y plantas cuyos extraños nombres me decías en latín y en castellano, pues entonces ya estudiabas en el Ateneo’. Compare the description of dense tropical undergrowth grappling with itself, ‘como si Flora no estuviese aún contenta’ (p. 57).

  100. Ibid., p. 46: ‘y dijiste que ella no entendía de mitologia’.

  101. Ibid., p. 118; cf. p. 196: ‘para mí, las jóvenes son como las arpas eólicas en medio de la noche’.

  102. Ibid., p. 31, likens her appearance at Captain Tiago’s party to a scene in drama where ‘coros de diablos, ninfas, sátiros, genios, zagalas, ángeles y pastores bailan’ at the entrance of a goddess.

  103. Ibid., p. 120: ‘divinidades de la noche huyendo del dia’. Elsewhere, a group of young women is described as ‘a golden Pleiad’ (‘la dorada pléyade de las jóvenes’, p. 186).

  104. Ibid., p. 132: ‘El Acteón religioso contemplaba pálido é inmóvil á aquella púdica Diana’.

  105. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), preface: ‘sirvan estas páginas como tardía corona de hojas secas sobre vuestras ignoradas tumbas’.

  106. Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), p. 5. The French account of the execution, including this exchange, is translated into Spanish by La Solidaridad (n. 5 above), vol 4, pp. 72–5. Rizal’s own last words before being shot by firing squad were (supposedly) ‘consummatum est’, the last words of Christ on the cross.

  107. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 66.

  108. Ibid., pp. 43–9.

  109. Ibid., p. 45.

  110. Rizal does not present Basilio’s experience of Latin itself as entirely negative, as suggested by C. Derbyshire, The Reign of Greed: A Complete English Version of El Filibusterismo from the Spanish of José Rizal, Manila, 1912, p. 51. Skill in Latin continues to be empowering; compare the description of the student Placido Penitente, one of the best Latinists and disputants in his hometown and therefore marked as a danger by the local curate; Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 88.

  111. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 86.

  112. See Torres-Pou, ‘Narrativa’ (n. 21 above) for Rizal as anticipating Frantz Fanon.

  113. For instance, Doña Victorina turns her nose up at her countrymen at the beginning of the novel, even though she is ‘an india herself’ (‘india ella misma’): Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 8. Compare Rizal’s description of an indio merchant: ‘quiere á toda costa ser mestizo español y hace heroicos esfuerzos por olvidarse de su idioma’ (p. 171) and n. 44 above on Doña Consolación in Noli me tángere.

  114. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4), p. 53.

  115. Ibid., p. 54. Cf. Torres-Pou, ‘Narrativa’ (n. 21 above).

  116. The letter is cited by Guerrero, Filipino (n. 1 above), p. 305. On the unfinished novel, see A. R. Ocampo, Makamisa: The Search for Rizal’s Third Novel, Manila, 1992; A. R. Ocampo, Rizal without the Overcoat: In Commemoration of Jose Rizal’s 150th Birth Anniversary, Manila, 2012, pp. 113–16. Rizal’s principal reason for writing the novel in Tagalog was to communicate directly with his countrymen; A. Lifshey, ‘The Literary Alterities of Philippine Nationalism in José Rizal’s El filibusterismo’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 123, 2008, pp. 1434–47 (1437), makes the point that few Filipinos knew enough Spanish to read Noli me tángere even in Rizal’s day (the number has, of course, declined further since then).

  117. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 7 (chapter epigraph): ‘sic itur ad astra’; pp. 9, 26: ‘sine quibus non’; p. 40: ‘requiem aeternam’; p. 70: ‘sancta sanctorum’; p. 84: ‘casus belli’; p. 94: ‘rezaban ya el O Thoma’; p. 95: ‘¡adsum¡ ¡adsum¡’; p. 97: ‘transeat’; p. 99: ‘requiescat in pace’; pp. 85, 99: ‘dominus vobiscum’; p. 105: ‘¡de nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur!’; p. 107: ‘¡cogito, ergo sum!’; p. 115, cf. p. 118: ‘allí está el quid’; p. 162; ‘eureka’; p. 169: ‘sui generis… similia similibus’; p. 184: ‘super flumina Babylonis sedimus’ (Psalm 137); p. 205: ‘si tripa plena laudat Deum, tripa famelica laudabit fratres’; p. 213 (chapter epigraph): ‘vox populi, vox Dei’; p. 219: ‘qui multum probat, nihil probat’; p. 227: ‘pax Christi! Mutis!’; p. 231 (chapter epigraph): ‘talis vita, finis ita’; p. 266: ‘alea jacta est’; p. 278: ‘credo quia absurdum’.

  118. Ibid., p. 34: ‘Requimiternam!’; p. 64: ‘no sabe el oremus gratiam y dice mentíbus por méntibus!’.

  119. Ibid., p. 14 (Fr Sibyla): ‘“se sublevaron antes”, observó el dominico; “¡y ab actu ad posse valet illatio!”’; p. 40 (the narrator): ‘los latines del Padre’; p. 140: ‘“¡memento, homo, quia pulvis es!” murmuró el P. Irine sonriendo’; p. 231: ‘…nos olvidaríamos del De profundis!’.

  120. This is clearest in the long description of the physics class, ibid., pp. 99–106, where the pedantic professor, Fr Millon, defines a mirror with the jargon of dialectic: ‘á la superficie per se, in quantum est superficies …’, ‘sed patet experientiâ y contra experientiam negantem, fusilibus est argüendum, entiendes?’, etc., etc. This is precisely the sort of Latin that Rizal detested. On the episode, see Donoso, ‘Tradición’ (n. 7 above), pp. 29–30.

  121. Ibid., p. 18: ‘“El opio es una de las plagas de los tiempos modernos”, repuso el Capitán con un desprecio é indignación de senador romano; “los antiguos lo conocieron, mas nunca abusaron de él. Mientras duró la afición á los estudios clásicos (obsérvenlo bien, jóvenes) el opio sólo fué medicina, y sino, díganme quiénes lo fuman más. Los chinos, los chinos que no saben una palabra de latín! ¡Ah, si Capitán Tiago [now addicted to opium] se hubiese dedicado á Cicerón!...”. Y el disgusto más clásico se pintó en su cara de epicúreo bien afeitado. Isagani le contemplaba con atención: aquel señor padecía la nostalgia de la antigüedad’.

  122. Ibid., p. 19.

  123. Ibid., p. 66. When Ibarra-Simoun proffers what he claims to be the necklace of Cleopatra, Captain Basilio is taken in: ‘con ése habrá cautivado Cleopatra á César, á Marco Antonio …’ (p. 70). A ring supposedly belonging to Sulla also attracts his attention.

  124. Ibid., p. 232: ‘an gallus talisainus, acuto tari armatus, an gallus beati Petri bulikus sasabungus sit …’; this does not impress his collocutor, so Don Primitivo resorts to fire and brimstone: ‘cave ne cadas! ... peccatum mortale! ... Quicumque non crederit, anathema sit!’.

  125. Besides the excerpts quoted elsewhere, see ibid., p. 141: ‘y como abyssus abyssum invocat’; p. 233 (Captain Tiago’s funeral): ‘se quemó mucho incienso, se cantó mucho en latín, se gastó mucha agua bendita – el P. Irene en obsequio de su amigo cantó con voz de falsete el Dies irae …’; p. 252: ‘era Basilio, pero quantum mutatus!’.

  126. Ibid., p. 58: ‘es natural en el hombre odiar á aquellos á quienes ha agraviado, decía Tácito confirmando el quos laeserunt et oderunt de Séneca… Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris [Tacitus, Agricola, 42]’. Nevertheless, priests could use Tacitus, too – see p. 219: ‘corruptissima in republica plurimae leges’ (Tacitus, Annals, III.27).

  127. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 10 (on Don Tibucio’s flight from Doña Victorina): ‘perseguido por las furias matrimoniales’; ‘y, Ulises filipino, vaga de pueblo en pueblo … perseguido por su Calipso con quevedos’; p. 13 (Ibarra-Simoun): ‘Así se llevaron á cabo las Pirámides, el lago Moeris y el Coliseo en Roma … vamos al Egipto y á Roma, ensalzamos á los Faraones, á la familia Antonina’; ‘se rebelaron los prisioneros judíos contra el piadoso Tito?’; p. 26 (Simoun speaking): ‘huele algo á ninfas y á driadas’; p. 45: ‘su viaje fué una odisea’; p. 81: (Sibyla speaking): ‘Sócrates enseñaba en las plazas públicas, Platón en los jardines de Academo …’; p. 125: ‘el anfitrión [i.e. host] que no comía platos europeos …’; p. 149 (a brothel): ‘templo de nipa dedicado á Citeres’; p. 152 (Simoun speaking): ‘serás el Fénix que renacerá de las candentes cenizas …!’; p. 168: ‘especialista en enfermedades de niños, por eso le llaman Herodes…’; p. 170: ‘¡Las tres Parcas!’, ‘¿Atropos?’; p. 172: ‘Los émulos de Marte’; p. 173: ‘como un senador romano’; p. 174: ‘con el tono de un Catón satisfecho de su conciencia’; p. 182: ‘esclavo de la rima y del metro, hijo de las Musas’, ‘como si saludarse en el horizonte á las nueve hermanas’; p. 192: ‘que si fuesen autógrafos de la misma Safo ó de la musa Polimnia’; p. 197: ‘por las tardes … aparecen las sirenas’; p. 223: the anonymous enemy of Ben Zayb is named ‘Horatius’, states that Ben Zayb does not know Latin and refers to the library of Alexandria; p. 237: ‘el escribiente del tribunal era el oráculo de Delfos para los antiguos griegos’; p. 257: ‘las torturas morales de muchos ilotas’; p. 260 (describing the guests at the wedding hosted by Timoteo Peláez): ‘las primeras divinidades de Olimpo manileño iban á ser sus huéspedes’ – the Olympian conceit (nymphs, amoretti, nectar, ambrosia, Jupiter, Juno) is repeated throughout, pp. 262–70: ‘ante tanto lujo y tanta flor se imagina uno que ninfas de ropaje ligero y amorcillos con alas irisadas iban á servir néctar y ambrosía á huéspedes aéreos, al son de liras y eolias arpas’, ‘¡Psiquis y Cupido presentándose en el Olimpo!’, ‘los grandes dioses, entre ellos el P. Irene y el P. Salví, habían llegado ya, es verdad, pero aún faltaba el trueno gordo’, ‘bajó á recibir al Magnum Jovem’, ‘llegó Júpiter en compañía de Juno’, ‘los dioses sorprendidos’, ‘si antes no se enteraba de sus ditirambos’, ‘que recibió S. E. sobre la olímpica frente’; p. 271: ‘al lado quienes los senadores romanos, sorprendidos por los galos invasores ... ’; p. 272: ‘¿dónde encajar ahora la soberbia catilinaria …?’; p. 272: ‘siete dioses mayores se dejaron robar’; p. 273: ‘pensando en Abraham, Guzmán el Bueno ó, cuando menos, en Brutus y otros antiguos héroes de la historia’, ‘el dios de los periodistas estaba satisfecho de Abraham-Ben Zayb … Abraham-Ben Zayb alabó a su dios! ... componiendo en el camino la descripción homérica del combate’; p. 285: ‘Y el pobre Ulises dejó la casa del sacerdote para esconderse en la cabaña de un leñador’; p. 286: ‘se le venía á la memoria la célebre oración de San Juan Crisóstomo defendiendo al eunoco Eutropio … “Vanidad de vanidades y todo vanidad” … ¿dónde encontrar los acentos conmovedores del obispo de Constantinopla?’; p. 293: ‘con el esfuerzo de sus hercúleos brazos’.

  128. Ibid., pp. 139–40. On the orientalism of this episode, see Lifshey, ‘Nationalism’ (n. 116 above), pp. 1442–4.

  129. Rizal probably adapted the name from ‘Imuthes’, the Greek term for the Egyptian god Imhotep.

  130. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 143. Salví recalls the incident at the end of the novel (p. 269): ‘la escena de la esfinge se le presentó en la memoria!’.

  131. The manuscript has been digitized in the collection of Rizaliana hosted by The National Library of the Philippines: https://nlpdl.nlp.gov.ph/RI01/home.htm (accessed 3 March, 2023).

  132. In comparing the colonial situation in the Philippines with that under the British he states: ‘el saludable influjo de los frailes es superior al látigo inglés’, Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 160.

  133. Ibid., p. 160: ‘el incorruptible don Custodio, cuya virtud inmediatamente Ben Zayb comparó con la de Epaminondas’.

  134. Ibid., p. 155.

  135. Ibid., p. 156.

  136. For the reception of Antaeus as a figure representing the colonized in Heaney and Yeats, see P. J. Keane, ‘“Second Thoughts” in Seamus Heaney’s North: From “Antaeus” to “Hercules and Antaeus” to “Exposure”’, Numéro Cinq, 5.4, 2014, pp. 1–6; N. Corcoran, ‘Antaeus on the Move’ in: Seamus Heaney and the Classics: Bann Valley Muses, ed. S. J. Harrison et al., Oxford, 2019, pp. 26–37.

  137. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), p. 158.

  138. See the note of Derbyshire, Greed (n. 110 above), p. 235.

  139. Rizal, Filibusterismo (n. 4 above), pp. 193–4.

  140. Ibid., p. 194.

  141. The most important are the series The Philippines a Hundred Years Hence (Filipinas dentro de cien años, 1889–1890) and On the Indolence of the Filipinos (Sobre la indolencia de los filipinos, 1890), both published in La Solidaridad (n. 5 above). Classical allusions also appear in Rizal’s correspondence; for instance, in a letter from 9 January 1893 outlining his religious views, quoted by Guerrero (n. 1 above), pp. 446–7, Rizal inadvertently reveals his familiarity with both Xenophanes and Anacreon by apparently conflating Xenophanes, fr. 15 (‘but if oxen and lions had hands …’) with Anacreontea, 24 (‘Nature gave bulls horns, horses hooves …’): ‘Someone has said that each man forms his God according to his image and likeness, and if my memory does not fail me, Anacreon said that if a bull could imagine a god, he would imagine a horned bull bellowing … ’.

  142. I.e. the echenais or remora, reported to have restrained Mark Antony’s ship at Actium (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXXII.2).

  143. As one of the journal’s readers stresses, much more could be said about this text, written in Tagalog to a group of young women who sought to establish a local school for the teaching of Spanish. Rizal’s examples of Spartan women are drawn from Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartan Women and the description of the mother of Pausanias, the victor at Plataea, in Diodorus Siculus (or Polyaenus).

  144. See the papers in B. Goff, Classics and Colonialism, London, 2005.

  145. Published 15 September and 15 November 1899 respectively; see Solidaridad (n. 5 above), vol 1, pp. 350–4, 456–8.

  146. Ibid., p. 350. Cf. ‘Con sublime desdén se ocupa de nuestra persona y deja á un lado todos nuestros argumentos y nuestras preguntas, para agarrarse á nuestra frase “partidarios del status quo” que ridiculiza diciendo que no sabemos latin “por la falta de concordancia del estatu quo”, como ella dice’ (ibid.).

  147. Ibid., p. 456.

  148. This is evident from his 1890 annotations to the Spanish official Antonio de Morga’s Events of the Philippine Islands (Sucesos de las islas Filipinas, 1609) and the first instalment of his The Philippines a Hundred Years Hence (n. 141 above); see Hagimoto, Alliance (n. 5 above), pp. 79–90.

  149. Cf. Lifshey, ‘Nationalism’ (n. 116 above), p. 1439.

  150. The Filipino classicism of Rizal’s day is an important component of ‘Global Classics’, on which see J. A. Bromberg, Global Classics, London, 2021. Rizal’s use of classical references represents, for example, an important point of comparison for the writing of the later Vietnamese author, Phạm Duy Khiêm, on whom see S. Ngugen, ‘Phạm Duy Khiêm, Classical Reception, and Colonial Subversion in Early 20th Century Vietnam and France’, Classical Receptions Journal, 12, 2020, pp. 340–56. His complex reception of Latin and the classical world in general would moreover seem to be valuable in addressing recent calls for the study of non-European perceptions of Greco-Roman and Near Eastern culture; see D. Padilla Peralta, ‘Anti-Race: Antiracism, Whiteness and the Classical Imagination’, in A Cultural History of Race in Antiquity (500 BCE–800 CE), ed. D. McCoskey, London, 2021, pp. 157–71 (167–9).

  151. This research was supported by a grant from the Amherst College Faculty Research Award Program, as funded by The H. Axel Schupf ’57 Fund for Intellectual Life. I would like to thank the journal’s readers and the members of Princeton University’s Department of Classics, who provided feedback on a shorter version of the paper. Yasmin Haskell fielded many questions and put me in touch with Akihiko Watanabe and David Irving. I am grateful to Ambeth Ocampo for his informal encouragement. Ruth and Graham Zanker commented on the manuscript. My greatest thanks are to Romina Fiel Marasigan Tan – without whom none of this would be possible.

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    Andreas T. Zanker

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Zanker, A.T. ‘I Enter the Future with the Memory of the Past’: José Rizal, the Philippines and Classical Antiquity. Int class trad 31, 59–89 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-023-00647-9

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