Sicily, the Classical Tradition and Interpretative Possibilities in John Barclay’s Argenis

Abstract

This article explores reasons for the choice of Sicily as the main backdrop for John Barclay’s 1621 Neo-Latin novel Argenis. It suggests that the selection of Sicily is driven in part by the interpretative possibilities raised by this location, in particular, those fuelled by controversies regarding the rational and mythic which were attached to the island. It focusses on the rationalizing and mythic approaches associated with Sicily in the classical and post-classical tradition in the areas of volcanic activity and the discovery of gigantic bones. By means of a close reading of the episode in which King Meleander entertains Radirobanes in camp, followed by a wider discussion of the flaws of Meleander and Radirobanes and the theme of interpretation in the novel, it explores how Barclay exploits such approaches to showcase the failures of these leaders. It also dismisses the idea that the Argenis has a controlling divine framework which would run counter to the novel’s interest in the potentiality of interpretation.

John Barclay was born in France to a Catholic French mother and a Catholic Scottish father, William Barclay. He moved to the Protestant court of King James I in 1605, possibly passing as conforming or actually converting to Protestantism.¹ He left in 1615, however, after a decade of poetic and diplomatic activity there and appeared in Rome in 1616. He was in the employment of the papal Borghese and Barberini families in 1621 when he wrote his Neo-Latin novel Argenis, the subject of this article. He dedicated the novel, however, to the French king Louis XIII (who was then thirteen years old), presumably with a view to other future sources of patronage. The Argenis has often attracted notice for its engagement with a variety of contemporary European debates, frequently in a dialogic way.² It has also gained attention for the complexities of its plot, which is propelled by the struggles of four suitors (Poliarchus, Lycogenes, Radirobanes and Archombrotus) to marry the titular heroine, daughter of the Sicilian king Meleander. The novel closes with the marriage alliance of Argenis and Poliarchus (whose friendship had started when Poliarchus was disguised as a female, Theocrine). This union ends the rise of Poliarchus, whom the start of the novel had shown on the run from Lycogenes’s men, sent at the behest of Meleander, and seeking refuge in a vault.

The focus of this article is the novel’s Sicilian locale. Although the narrative, which unfolds in a vaguely classical and pre-Roman time, includes other places (notably Mauritania), Sicily serves as the main setting.³ Indeed, this location is signalled in the opening scene in which the Mauritanian-born Archombrotus lands at the mouth of the river Gela and is immediately called on to aid Poliarchus. As Elizabeth Bearden has shown, the inclusion of Mauritania is readily explainable through the novel’s interest in Afro-European relations and the aim of showing, against the backdrop of a ‘faltering Holy Roman Empire’, how affinities can surpass cultural divides.⁴ The inclusion also conveniently facilitates the exploitation of the parts of Virgil’s Aeneid set in North Africa: for Barclay’s aspiring ‘epic in prose’ holds the Aeneid as one of its key poetic intertexts, alongside Ovid’s Metamorphoses.⁵ By contrast, Sicily, which is the dominant topographical setting, has not yet received the attention it deserves. One can see the attraction of an island location for its potential to incorporate the kind of content, like dramatic descriptions of sea journeys and pirate threats, which was favoured by the ancient novel tradition to which the Argenis is heir.⁶ Furthermore, an island backdrop also lends itself to inclusion of storms, which appear not only on the physical level but also on the metaphorical plane.⁷ Before facing strife from Radirobanes, Meleander’s realm of Sicily is assailed by the tempest of civil war stirred up by Lycogenes, who is after ‘both the sceptre of Meleander and the marriage of Argenis’ (‘et sceptrum Meleandri et Argenidis nuptias’).⁸ Yet, this does not explain the choice of Sicily as the main location, as opposed to other islands such as Sardinia, which appears as the territory ruled by Radirobanes and which similarly provides a geographical location, between Italy and Africa, convenient for Barclay’s plotting.⁹

The critical attention paid to the contribution of the Sicilian setting has focussed on myths attached to Sicily.¹⁰ In particular, the myth of Persephone’s abduction is exploited, as it had been by the one extant ancient novel, Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, which, through its inclusion of Syracuse, provides a precedent for a Sicilian setting.¹¹ Contemporary readers would have been familiar with classical myth in many spheres, as seen in the classical mythologizing of landscape gardens, often through the lens of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,¹² or the live application of myths to rulers in political propaganda (so, for example, the way Henry IV is figured as Perseus in a print circulated after his entry into Paris in 1594).¹³ That Sicily could have readily been viewed through the prism of classical myth by contemporaneous readers of Barclay is suggested by its inclusion as one of the topics of Meleander’s discourse to Radirobanes at dinner, alongside natural history and Sicilian history.¹⁴ Visitors to the island could have knowledge of the well-preserved ancient ruins, such as the temple of Venus Eryx or Castor and Pollux, as could armchair travellers by means of contemporary guides like Fazello’s influential De rebus Siculis decades duae, published in 1558. Such familiarity with material culture, in addition to literary accounts of Sicily like those found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, helped build up the island’s association with classical myth. While this article will include consideration of myths, its main focus is to explore how the selection of Sicily is driven in part by the interpretative possibilities raised by this location, especially those fuelled by controversies regarding the rational and mythic which were attached to the island.¹⁵ The first part considers the novel’s portrayal of Sicily in light of material associated with the classical tradition, paying especial attention to the final chapter of Book II,¹⁶ in which Meleander debates gigantic bones, Cyclopes and volcanoes with Radirobanes. “The Interpretative Failures of Radirobanes and Meleander” section below discusses the interpretative failures of Meleander and Radirobanes in the novel. The third section argues for the centrality of the issue of interpretation in the Argenis. In the process, the article contributes to two recent critical debates. The first is whether we may, with Zhang but in opposition to Tang, perceive divine providence in the novel.¹⁷ The second debate concerns Meleander’s characterization. It is clear that the novel displays support for absolute rule, showing that monarchs should be free to exercise their sovereign will.¹⁸ At the same time, Barclay’s ideal absolute ruler is an enlightened one, and the novel is generally held to use the characterization of Meleander to warn against a king’s potential flaws, such as credulity or a lack of agency (it is telling that Meleander can only converse so much because he has offloaded care of the war and the camp to Eurymedes).¹⁹ Should we follow E. L. Christie’s argument that Meleander’s ‘perceived credulity’ is ‘mere dissimulation, adopted because he recognises the value of shows of trust as political manoeuvres’ and ‘question ... the critical assertion that Meleander is a weak king who must learn prudence over the course of the romance’?²⁰

Sicily in the Novel and the Classical Tradition

Writings from Greco-Roman antiquity would have been key in readers’ access to Sicily’s myths and natural history, two out of the three areas marked out as of audience interest through Meleander’s adoption of them as dinner conversation topics.²¹ For his ideal reader, Barclay conjures a text dotted with verbal allusions to the Metamorphoses.²² Note, for example, the poem portraying the king’s grove,²³ which looks to Ovid’s depiction of Orpheus’s grove at Metamorphoses, X.86–105,²⁴ or Nicopompus’s verses on the disguised Olympians’ escape from Typhoeus,²⁵ cited by Arsidas to encourage Poliarchus to adopt a disguise which will aid his flight.²⁶ Furthermore, the text often displays an Ovidian-style interest in the metamorphic process using myths drawn from that epic, as we can observe in the description of the Aeacus masque costume,²⁷ which recalls metamorphic details from Ovid’s depiction of the ants scattered from an oak tree at Metamorphoses, VII.639–42,²⁸ or the portrayal of the ring showing the petrification of Atlas.²⁹

Barclay naturally draws on the Sicilian material of the Metamorphoses. Meleander waits in a palace courtyard containing fountain statuary:³⁰ Galatea laments her dead lover Acis, who has been killed by Polyphemus and whose fluminal metamorphosis is captured by fonts pouring from his mouth and wound, and ‘at the border of the water, an unyielding statue of the Cyclops ... loomed over unconcerned Galatea with another rock’ (‘In confinio aquae, contumax Cyclopis imago ... alio saxo imminebat securae Galateae’).³¹ This story is brought up in a way that conjures up Ovid’s version in Metamorphoses XIII.³² That tale is then one of a number recounted to Radirobanes by Meleander alongside several other Sicilian myths, which, as Catherine Connors observes, ‘footnote’ Ovid’s Sicilian tales.³³ Thus, the novel follows the Metamorphoses which had included an account, within Book V’s ‘Musomachia’, of how the river-god Alpheus from Elis pursued his would-be lover Arethusa under the sea.³⁴ And so the Argenis also references in this section the abduction of Proserpina from Enna, which had also been narrated in Ovid’s song contest.³⁵ The attempts on Proserpina and Arethusa are of especial resonance to the plot, for both Lycogenes and Radirobanes, who is ‘another Lycogenes’, try, albeit unsuccessfully, to force Argenis into marriage.³⁶ Additionally, Barclay draws on the account in the Metamorphoses of Glaucus and Scylla, which is appended to the story of Acis. In his description of the costumed masqued performers, Barclay recalls Ovid’s description of Glaucus, the fisherman turned sea-god, who enters the Metamorphoses (XIII.904–XIV.69) as he travels past Sicily on his way from Greece to Italy: ‘Glaucus had let grow in length such a beard, in which the effective herb near Anthedon surprised him’ (‘Glaucusque talem barbam promiserat, in quali eum efficax gramen prope Anthedonem deprehendit’).³⁷

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is not, however, the only Greco-Roman text of relevance, for portrayals of Sicily stretch far back in the classical tradition. Some accounts privilege an interest in Sicily’s natural phenomena, others the mythological stories, but what is striking is the awareness of the incompatibility of the mythological and rationalizing perspectives in the context of Etna. There was a long tradition of polemic whereby scientific accounts were pitted against mythological aetiologies for Etna’s volcanic action (the idea that Etna covered one of the giants who took part in the rebellion against the gods or served as a forge for Cyclopes).³⁸ Lucretius presents a scientific view, arguing that the flames are due to the heating and friction effects of the air in Etna’s subterranean caverns,³⁹ but he brings up supernatural explanations to put their dismissal in greater relief. Thus, as Monica Gale has noted, the inclusion of anthropomorphic language in the description of Etna at De rerum natura, I.722–5, nods to the tradition that the volcano trapped a giant.⁴⁰ And, at VI.639–702, Lucretius accounts for Etna’s eruptions through wind and sea activity but, by including the word ‘fornacibus’, evokes the myth that this was due to Cyclopes using Etna as a forge.⁴¹ Virgil’s anthropomorphized description of Etna, with its reference to the tale that the volcano lay on Enceladus (Aeneid, III.571–82), pointedly remythologizes Lucretius.⁴² At Metamorphoses, V.346–58, Ovid also counters Lucretius by connecting Etna’s volcanic and seismic activity to Typhoeus.⁴³ Friction with this viewpoint is then created by the insertion at Metamorphoses, XV.340–55, of a series of scientific causes through the mouthpiece of Pythagoras.⁴⁴ The anonymous first-century AD poet of the Aetna provides rebuttals to mythological explanations. At Aetna, 29, he labels the idea that Aetna’s fires are due to the presence of the god Vulcan as a ‘fallacy of poets’ (‘fallacia vatum’), before going on to dismiss the belief that the volcano houses the forges of the Cyclopes and the ‘impious tale (‘impia fabula’, Aetna, 42) that ascribes movement and fire to Enceladus (ibid., 36–40, 41–76). A deliberate tension is then created by the comment that an eruption prompts Jupiter to fear lest the giants are readying for a second gigantomachy (ibid., 203–7): following the reading of Gareth Williams, we may see this as a staging of the threat which the wondrous volcano poses to the rationalizing process.⁴⁵

The tension between mythological and scientific also appears in accounts from the post-classical period. As Williams has explored, the doubleness of perspective in the treatment of Etna continues in Pietro Bembo’s De Aetna, which was printed in 1496.⁴⁶ This dialogue between Pietro and his father Bernardo, recounting Pietro’s ascension of the volcano, includes a discussion of the subterranean and volcanic activity of Mount Etna (De Aetna, 30–8), with a classically informed rationalization by Bernardo (ibid., 33–8) in response to questions.⁴⁷ Bernardo’s comment regarding wind activity within Etna dismisses mythological explanations: ‘Yes indeed – unless there’s more truth in the fabulous inventions that poets concoct about Typhoeus and Enceladus’.⁴⁸ Pietro’s wondrous and imaginative stance, whilst similarly committed to a naturalistic account of the volcanic fire, is more sympathetic towards the mythological, as we can see in his allusion to Hesiod describing the earth ‘being set on fire after Typhoeus was blasted by a lightning bolt’ (ibid., 39, ‘post fulminatum Typhoeum igne correptam … isto’).⁴⁹

An appreciation of the dual perspectives associated with Etna can shed light on Barclay’s Argenis, for it is clear that he draws on this tradition even though evidence of engagement with these specific passages is lacking. The text features two categories of explanation behind volcanic activity. One account is scientific, seen when Meleander responds to Radirobanes asking ‘from where was that help from Aetna against Anaximander’ (‘unde illud ab Aetna in Anaximandrum auxilium’).⁵⁰ The king relates that the mountain ‘seething with native sulphur and wind received in its interior, lifts a flame, impatient of its confinement, through the ruins of its gaping top’ (‘qui nativo sulphure receptoque in visceribus vento exaestuans impatientem custodiae flammam per hiantis ruinas cacuminis attollit’).⁵¹ The other kind of explanation is supernatural, based on the idea that deities have control over volcanic activity. So, Nicopompus attributes volcanic activity to the imprisonment of the god-fighting giant Enceladus under ‘Etna, that can contain a monster’ (‘Aetna capax monstri’).⁵² Thus, the existence of stones raining from the sky, which the Sicilian context encourages us to see as a volcanic phenomenon, is considered portentous by the people, and a poet, who describes the ‘state of the wretched people’ (‘miserorum statum’)⁵³ worried by these portents, classes volcanic smoke as one of the divine signs: ‘do you see how Aetna raises black coils from its exhaling ridge?’ (‘Cernis anhelanti quam nigra volumina tollat / Aetna iugo?’)⁵⁴ So, too, popular opinion holds that the gods break the siege of Catana through using a volcano. A messenger from the governor brings news that an eruption from Etna into the camp of Anaximander has saved the town: ‘Aetna suddenly seething in fury, aside from the huge quantity of stones and heaps of ash, vomited three streams from the very liquid fire which flowed into the camp of Anaximander as though by a hired service’ (‘Sed cum extrema imminerent, Aetna subito furore exaestuans praeter ingentem vim lapidum et cinerum moles tres ex liquidissima flamma rivos evomuit, qui tanquam conducta opera in Anaximandri castra fluxerunt’).⁵⁵ The narrative depicts joy among Meleander’s soldiers at this news as they believed: ‘There was now no need of the sword, no need for forces; the gods themselves, the elements themselves were fighting for rulers’ (‘Non iam ferro, non viribus opus; ipsos deos, ipsa pro regibus elementa pugnare’).⁵⁶ This reasoning goes on to be adopted by Meleander, who tells Radirobanes ‘as you hear being announced, the gods made these fires from Etna, which were before our punishments, now their benefaction’ (‘ut audis nuntiari, dii hos ignes ex Aetna, supplicia antea nostra, nunc beneficium suum fecềre’).⁵⁷

Such supernatural explanations are presented as inferior to the rationalistic account. The idea of Enceladus causing the fires of Etna comes in the context of Nicopompus’s musing as to whether Lycogenes shall suffer Enceladus’s fate of entombment under the volcano:⁵⁸ rather than being taken at face value, the verses need to be regarded as working to criticize Lycogenes by paralleling him with a giant. We realize that the commonfolk consider the stone-falls ominous because they are being manipulated for political gain.⁵⁹ As we later learn from Meleander, Etna does emit stones along with flames and a thundering noise: ‘huge rocks are sent up into the fields from the interior of the mountain with this engine for hurling stones’ (‘saxa ingentia ex montis visceribus hoc tormento in campos mittuntur’).⁶⁰ The phenomenon is believed to be portentous because of the existence of other signs and omens predicting disaster. These signs, however, have been faked by priests, who have been bribed by Lycogenes in order to prompt action against Meleander, and the commonfolk are said to fear and believe everything ‘rashly’ (‘temere’).⁶¹ The validity of the idea that volcanic cloud is a portent is undermined by its attribution to a poet who is ‘not free from the common madness’ (‘publicae insaniae non expers’).⁶² The words of Meleander show that, in fact, such clouds ‘very often’ (‘saepissime’) darken the sky around Etna.⁶³ The ensuing explanation of subterranean winds and sulphur proffered by Meleander raises questions about the soldiers’ belief that gods were involved in the siege.⁶⁴ Admittedly, Meleander then goes on to ignore his scientific account and adhere to the troops’ supernatural beliefs. This can be taken, however, as evidence of Barclay’s characterization of him as someone liable to misinterpret, freely swayed and too prone to accept an easy and palatable explanation. Damningly, his acceptance of the supernatural explanation leads him to a perilous state of reassurance, heedless of the danger still posed by Lycogenes (who that very night raises an attack against the camp)⁶⁵ or the threat that Radirobanes represents.

Of course, Barclay’s undercutting of the supernatural explanations does not mean they cannot contain a poetic truth of sorts. The idea that Etna’s volcanic activity is due to an imprisoned giant equates Lycogenes’s rebellion with war against deities.⁶⁶ The motif is picked up in Nicopompus’s parallelism of the revolt with the attack of Typhoeus (a model for Lycogenes) against the gods,⁶⁷ and then again where Mars’s distaste for the fighting between Lycogenes and Meleander is likened to his distaste at the time when gods hid during a gigantomachy.⁶⁸ In line with Barclay’s belief in absolute rule, a monarch is god’s lieutenant on earth.⁶⁹ And those who rise against a king are figured through gigantomachic myth as rebels against the divine.⁷⁰ Through the figuration of Lycogenes as a second Enceladus, the noble’s impious stance against the divinely ordained ruler is adumbrated, and his defeat is prefigured. Nicopompus, who can act as an authorial figure, deploys myth to adumbrate a kind of truth consonant with Barclay’s approach.⁷¹ Furthermore, on one level we may view volcanic activity as foreshadowing the trouble caused by Lycogenes and the threat posed by the rebels against the king. Just as Lycogenes poses a threat to political stability, so Etna’s activity is a threat to the island’s physical stability.⁷²

We may again see the clash of views regarding myth and scientific approaches to natural history in the case of giant bones. In Barclay’s own day, there were investigations into the question of the origins of enormous bones which were being discovered. Were they evidence of superhuman creatures like giants or, as Fazello and others like him thought, Cyclopes?⁷³ Or were they the remnants of animals? Barclay’s friend and correspondent Peiresc identified remains as being from non-mythological creatures such as elephants.⁷⁴ In awareness of this current interpretative controversy, Barclay incorporates such material in his text.⁷⁵ When Meleander returns to camp with Radirobanes, the priests present him with an ‘augury’ (‘omen’) which had greatly pleased them, the discovery of giant bones.⁷⁶ These are apparently of a human body (the text inserts a note of scepticism: ‘as it seemed’ [‘ut videbatur’]) ‘but far surpassing the customary measurement of men of that age’ (‘ceterum longe assuetam hominum illius saeculi mensuram vincentia’).⁷⁷ Again, the scientific explanation is presented as superior. The soothsayers make no doubt that these are the remains of one of the Cyclopes.⁷⁸ The text makes clear both the adulatory agenda of the priests, ‘the fawning of the congratulating priests showed them the pieces of huge bodies’ (‘haec illis immensorum corporum frustra gratantium vatum adulatio ostendit’),⁷⁹ and the way such flattery can instil a misleading sense of confidence. We are told, ‘Without delay the augurs interpreted: that all the strength of Sicily was being subjected to Meleander since nothing in that country was named as stronger than the Cyclopes who, placed under the tent of the king, were indeed surrendering themselves’ (‘Continuo augures interpretati sunt: omnes Siciliae vires subici Meleandro, cum nihil in ea fuisse validius Cyclopibus memoretur, qui tabernaculo regis subiecti se ipsos denique tradebant’).⁸⁰ Such prediction of success fails to predict the troubles that will beset Sicily before their apparent resolution at the end of the novel. Meleander’s gullibility is highlighted by his readiness to believe.⁸¹

The king continues to show poor interpretative skills as he discusses the Cyclopes with his interested listener Radirobanes. Meleander announces that ‘Some think that the whole race of Cyclops were wild and lived in woods, others think that they were not only worshippers of the gods but also their descendants; they think they were the first to have possessed these habitations and to have been engaged among themselves with simple laws’ (‘Cyclopum omne genus quidam ferum fuisse et silvestre, alii non deorum modo cultores sed et sanguinem putant; primos tenuisse has sedes; simplicibus legibus inter se agitavisse’).⁸² It is clear that Meleander thinks well of the race, for he explains his belief that negative opinions of the Cyclopes have been due to their huge size: ‘And on this account perhaps came the strangers’ mistake, that when they landed here, they believed impious minds lay in the huge bodies or, not daring conversation in their terror at the sight, they left the shore using all their rowers’ (‘Et hinc exteris forte error, ut cum isthuc appellerent, in immanibus corporibus impias mentes latere crederent, aut nec colloquium ausi in ipso terrore spectaculi toto remigio abirent a litore’).⁸³ Now there was a tradition whereby certain elements of the Cyclopes’s life could be seen positively. The Homeric Cyclopes, lawless and arrogant as they are, live in Hypereia, later identified with Sicily, which, we are told at Odyssey IX.108–11, is a quasi-Golden Age land of abundance requiring no labour. In Homer’s Odyssey, IX.108–11, the Cyclopes, lawless and arrogant as they are, live in Hypereia, later identified with Sicily, which is a quasi-Golden Age land of abundance requiring no labour. In Ovid, Metamorphoses, XIV.2–3, the uncultivated lands of the Cyclops who do not know about agriculture form one of the markers of Sicily which is swum past by Glaucus. Furthermore, Polyphemus could be taken as an atypical example of a Cyclops: Homer, after all, shows him living apart from the other Cyclopes (Iliad, IX.187–9). Nevertheless, it is striking that Meleander makes no mental connection here with the example of a Cyclops which should have been familiar to him from the statue in his palace courtyard: the monstrous, violent Polyphemus. The reader is nudged towards perceiving his inconsistency and credulity. Meleander goes on to tell Radirobanes, who had previously held report of Cyclopes as fables,⁸⁴ about similar discoveries.⁸⁵ Meleander manages to convince his fellow ruler, whose credulity is thus likewise underlined. The ideal educated reader whom Barclay would have had in mind would surely have been as sceptical as Peiresc that these were the remains of gigantic creatures.

The Interpretative Failures of Radirobanes and Meleander

The interpretative incompetence of Meleander and Radirobanes, as revealed by the camp episode, is displayed elsewhere in the novel. The novel, indeed, regularly shows characters failing to interpret, often with detrimental effect. These characters can be common people, as demonstrated by the way Poliarchus’s arrival in Mauritania sparks harmful misguided speculation and rumour.⁸⁶ Notably, the abuse of portents and omens can lead to misunderstanding among these folk: see, for instance, Cleobulus’s advice to buy off the astrologer in awareness that, if angered, he could feign that the stars were baleful, and then ‘the soldiers would, not reluctantly, be distressed by his superstitions’ (‘non aegre superstitionibus militem laboraturum’),⁸⁷ evidence of Barclay’s use of ‘belief in the supernatural to demarcate the credulous from the rightly sceptical’.⁸⁸ Yet, in line with the novel’s interest in the workings of absolute monarchy, deficient interpretation is especially explored in relation to those in power, where consequences can be serious. Hieroleander relates the final verses of an anonymous poet which draw a parallel between Radirobanes and Castor: ‘if you mount the back of your steed, Cyllarus, spurning his constellation, will desire your commands and to go to and fro more proudly in the fields of Sardinia’ (‘Si terga subibis / Quadrupedis, cupiet spreto tua Cyllarus astro / Imperia et Sardis volitare superbior agris’).⁸⁹ Radirobanes is understandably pleased with the analogy: we learn that ‘he praised’ (‘laudabat’) the verses ‘among his own men’ (‘apud suos’).⁹⁰ And, in light of his successful ride on horseback through a lake,⁹¹ this mythic figure could be seen as a good match for him, since Castor was famed for his horse Cyllarus and riding-skills.⁹² However, Radirobanes, who is characterized by Dunalbius as having ‘proud credulity’ (‘superba credulitate’),⁹³ is unable to see that the poet is fawning upon him. Hieroleander comments that Radirobanes was ‘puffed up with flattery’ (‘adulatione elatus’),⁹⁴ alerting the reader to the discrepancy with reality. He is not a true Castor figure, lacking that character’s immortality, for, although Meleander had counted Radirobanes ‘among the divine guardians of Sicily’ (‘inter caelestes Siciliae tutelas’),⁹⁵ after he had helped him against Lycogenes in the storm of civil war, he dies after being defeated by Poliarchus. Nicopompus envisages Radirobanes in the underworld recognizing the folly of his lack of self-awareness: ‘I was a very god to myself’ (‘Deus ipse mihi’) and his poor choice of followers: ‘nor were my attendants trustworthy and approval for each thing was worthless’ (‘Nec fidi comites, vilisque ad singula plausus’).⁹⁶

It is the characterization of Meleander which best shows Barclay’s interest in exploring the perils of an undiscerning ruler. Meleander’s assertion that Theocrine – who came with a letter of recommendation and elaborate backstory⁹⁷ – is the goddess Pallas highlights his poor interpretative skills.⁹⁸ Failing to get the etymological clue in the name (‘to judge a god’), he does not delve into the mystery and thereby remains ignorant of his daughter’s relationship with Poliarchus, which poses a potential threat to Sicily’s stability.⁹⁹ We are also shown Meleander’s failures of discernment in his credulity. This credulity leaves him susceptible to flattery which has potentially dangerous effects as we may see in the victory procession following Lycogenes’s defeat. When Meleander comes to the city gate, there is an image of Peace,¹⁰⁰ accompanied by verses lauding the arrival of concord in Sicily.¹⁰¹ As the narratorial comment suggests, this is done in ‘premature flattery’ (‘adulatione immatura’),¹⁰² ‘as if matters were pacified in the whole of Sicily’ (‘quasi pacatae res Sicilia tota essent’).¹⁰³ This encourages a dangerous state of over-confidence in light of the threat posed by Radirobanes.

Credulity is a character flaw which is a vice for a king. A ruler must not place trust where it is not warranted: indeed, he must be careful to evaluate others. The naïve Meleander’s failure to gauge character goes hand in hand with his excessive trustworthiness. We initially encounter the king through the background explanations of Poliarchus which include comments on his interpretative failings, such as: ‘he chose friendships with no plan and cultivated them with passion’ (‘non consilio amicitias sortiri impetuque eas colere’).¹⁰⁴ Poliarchus notes Meleander has been deceived by the nobleman Lycogenes, whom he believed was his friend,¹⁰⁵ with the consequence that civil unrest has come to Sicily.¹⁰⁶ Poliarchus later goes on to claim that the king is: ‘exposed to plots, both by the corrupted characters of his own men and by the greatness of his own spirit, shunning just fears’ (‘patere … insidiis, tum corruptis suorum ingeniis, tum sui animi magnitudine iustos metus aversante’).¹⁰⁷ We should not unthinkingly take Poliarchus’s observations at face value but make our own assessment as we proceed through the text. Poliarchus’s comments arguably underplay the severity of the problem given the threats to Sicily which are revealed by the narrative, and we may well wonder whether the later musing on the difficulty of critiquing rulers should prompt us to retrospectively suspect excessive leniency here.¹⁰⁸ It is surely not the case, however, that Poliarchus’s words are necessarily invalidated by any later instances in which his judgement might itself be in question, as Christie avers.¹⁰⁹ The situation is not black and white. The narrative does show the king displaying credulous behaviour, as we can see from his assumption about Theocrine. Yet, it also reveals his shrewdness: for example, Meleander fakes guidance from the gods, such as through stars and oracles, to conceal his true reason for hiding Argenis away in a castle.¹¹⁰ He can both be misled in the area of the divine and manipulate supernatural events. The reader is sucked into the interpretative challenge of judging his character and deeds.

Interpretation in the Argenis

We have seen how interpretation comes up as an issue of characterization. We have also seen that readers become involved in interpretative challenges in their assessment of protagonists. The Argenis, in fact, brings to the fore the interpretative process and the inherent need for interpretation, even though there are instances of narrative ambiguity and moments when interpretative certainty is withheld.¹¹¹ This pertains at the level of structure and plot, for, from the moment he is plunged into the novel in medias res, the reader is forced to piece together and to track the twists and turns of the plot.¹¹² What, we ask, was the help provided by Pallas, which Poliarchus notes Meleander linked to the foiling of Lycogenes’s attack against himself and his daughter?¹¹³ What does it mean when Poliarchus addresses Argenis by referring to himself as ‘your Pallas’ (‘Palladem tuam’)?¹¹⁴ When Selenissa relates Poliarchus’s confession to Radirobanes,¹¹⁵ we hear how Poliarchus disguised himself as a maiden of royal descent, Theocrine,¹¹⁶ which informs us that she was understood by Meleander to be a manifest deity, Pallas.¹¹⁷

Interpretation is also at the fore in respect of content and themes. Disguise is prevalent in the Argenis at the internal and external level: characters can hide their emotional state and intent – thus Argenis conceals her hope to marry Poliarchus – disguise their names, social class and country (Poliarchus is actually Astioristes, the king of France, who had in the past borne the alias Scordanes), and adopt physical concealment – for example, in his flight Poliarchus uses ‘rustic dress’ (‘rustico habitu’) and the fake beards, ‘disguises’ (‘larvas’),¹¹⁸ which had belonged to a notorious thief. This content feeds into the novel’s concern with interpretation. Internal characters are often misled or mistaken about identities: note, for example, the man captured in the belief that he was Poliarchus who is revealed to be the madman Heraleon.¹¹⁹ For the reader, the issue of identity can be bound up with the interpretative process. The reader is privy early on to Poliarchus’s adoption of rustic clothing but does not unstrip the layers of his true identity and adopted aliases until further on in the story.¹²⁰

Concurrently, readers become drawn into interpreting at the ethical level: they are encouraged to see parallels with their own behaviour and draw general morals. Barclay uses his novel to point out vices and virtues for the purposes of self-awareness and instructive self-criticism, in the manner which his mouthpiece Nicopompus proposes for his ‘grand fiction in manner of a history’ (‘Grandem fabulam historiae instar’):¹²¹ ‘I shall portray vices and virtues and the rewards shall be suited to each’ (‘Vitia effingam virtutesque et praemia utrisque convenient’).¹²² Readers also get caught up into perceiving parallels with matters of politics and contemporary affairs.¹²³ Barclay’s engagement with current situations was such that ‘keys’ to the work swiftly followed the novel’s publication: the 1627 Latin edition was accompanied by a ‘clavis’ which set out political parallels, such as a parallelism between Poliarchus and ‘those against whom the frenzy of the Guise and sacred League vented its rage; such as Henry IV, king of Navarre, and the Duke of Epernon’.¹²⁴ The political correspondences may not be simple and the process of ethical evaluation is not necessarily straightforward.¹²⁵ Nevertheless, there is demonstrable interest in the issue of interpretation.

The mythical allusions which run through the novel also bring up the issue of interpretation as readers and internal characters can assess how protagonists are like, or unlike, mythic figures. Note, for example, the verses underneath the tablet dedicated by Timoclea in the temple of Venus Eryx after Poliarchus’s escape, which we may assume are at least authorized, if not composed, by Timoclea. They include a comparison between Castor and Pollux and Poliarchus and Archombrotus: ‘Nor ever with such a great star have the Oebalian gods shone, whom the sailor invokes when his ship has broken up and the waves are now, now overcoming him’ (‘Non umquam sidere tanto / Oebalii micuêre dei, quos nauta solutis / Puppibus et iam iam vincentibus invocat undis’).¹²⁶ In part, this comparison affirms an affinity in appearance between the youthful-looking Disocuri twins and the young men, Poliarchus and Archombrotus, whose physical similarity has been observed by the narrative.¹²⁷

The interpretative process involved in mythic assessment is flagged up through an internal character in the novel’s first ecphrasis which concerns fountain statuary.¹²⁸ Attention is paid to Argenis’s focalization of the scene: her identification of herself as Galatea and Poliarchus as a ‘better Acis’ (‘meliorem Acim’)¹²⁹ and her resulting uncertainty over whom to cast in the Cyclops’s role: ‘But who should be that Polyphemus? Although she meant Lycogenes by it, yet she also, unwillingly, remembered her father’s fault’ (‘Sed quis ille Polyphemus? Quamquam eo destinabat Lycogenem, tamen et culpae paternae invita meminerat’).¹³⁰ Here Argenis’s parallelism is flawed. As reinforced by the echo here of Aeneas’s reaction at Aeneid, 1.464, when he over-optimistically reads the scenes adorning Juno’s temple which show Trojan defeat, Argenis is actually mistaken: Poliarchus has not, in fact, been killed but faked his death.¹³¹ Engagement with Apuleius’s statue scene of Diana and Actaeon, which is internally focalized through Lucius, also suggests erroneous perception, for Argenis takes the role of the flawed interpreter Lucius.¹³² The reader uses his interpretative skills to detect the error.

Mythic parallelism also opens up proleptic connections which become part of the reader’s interpretative journey as they progress through the text. Picking up on the mythological tradition that Castor and Pollux took turns to populate the underworld and the heavens, Bearden suggests that one purpose of the comparison at I.1.6 is to anticipate immediately ‘Poliarchus’s concealment in a tomb-like underground vault in the very next chapter ... (while Poliarchus is down, Archombrotus is up)’¹³³ and that another function is to foreshadow the future plot in which the two will – after a rivalry hinted at in the text – become brothers-in-law.¹³⁴ We might add further ways in which the analogy provides connections to future plot lines. The mythic parallelism surely also looks forward to Poliarchus’ restoration to health from being seemingly on his death bed which is akin to the way Castor regularly moves from the underworld, as Nicopompus’s celebratory verses relate.¹³⁵ Indeed, Castor is surely included in Nicopompus’s poem to evoke this parallel (the ghosts mistake him for Poliarchus after Radirobanes’s story that Poliarchus was dying).¹³⁶ Furthermore, Castor and Pollux were the deities invoked by distressed sailors, as they were thought to be able to provide calm waters.¹³⁷ They were associated with the electrical discharge, known as St Elmo’s fire, which could be found on masts and riggings in storms and which was believed to indicate the Dioscuri’s protection.¹³⁸ Since the Dioscuri are recalled in a storm context,¹³⁹ ‘sidere’ must not merely evoke the gods’ ‘star’, but also look to the light of St Elmo’s fire.¹⁴⁰ The reference foreshadows the help that Archombrotus will later provide to the realm of King Meleander which is beset by metaphorical storms, as well as reflecting the help that Poliarchus has provided by this point in the struggle with Lycogenes.¹⁴¹

The novel also shows an interest in interpretation in terms of the politicking of its characters. Those close to the centre of power display eagerness to find out what is going on, for they must gauge how to best play along. These figures must, for example, interpret people and power dynamics so that they can work out how to best please: for example, Anixamander puts forward an anti-monarchic stance in an effort to please his powerful uncle Lycogenes,¹⁴² although he – in a dialogic move characteristic of the novel – is presented as arguing for the benefits of an elected monarchy.¹⁴³ As well as showing characters trying to read others for political gain, the novel features powerful protagonists attempting to hide their real self or their reaction from external perception. Thus, for instance, Meleander hides his response to the news of Poliarchus’s death.¹⁴⁴ And so, rebels are said to be won over by Lycogenes’s ‘dissimulation’ (‘dissimulatione’),¹⁴⁵ for, ‘in the manner of tyrants’ (‘de more tyrannorum’), Lycogenes presents himself as ‘checking vices’ (‘prementis vitia’) in order to gain support.¹⁴⁶ Such concerns feed into the novel’s function as a site for discourse about areas such as behaviour and practical ethics at court, areas pertinent to a practising diplomat, courtier, and political writer like Barclay himself. As someone who frequented court circles, who had engaged in diplomacy, and who had experience of seeking patronage, Barclay would have been familiar with dissimulation, double-speak, and the possibility of subtext under a veneer of flattery, nor would he have necessarily viewed these negatively. With his experience of moving between religious, political, and cultural systems, Barclay would have seen the benefits of guarded or ambiguous speech both for rulers and subjects – and in this latter group, we may include writers (as we have seen, the Argenis comments on the need for care and ambiguity in the discussion of Nicopompus’s ‘grand fiction’ and notes the difficulty of critiquing and correcting rulers).¹⁴⁷ It is of no surprise that the Argenis depicts the dissimulation, for good or for ill, involved in the efforts of those who hope to attain or retain power or those who engage with powerful men.

To conclude, the camp scene showcases the Argenis’ interest in the interpretative process as the characters ask questions, provide answers, and give changing views. This is part of a drive in the novel to pose interpretative challenges to its readers, to force them to judge, assess and reassess. Just as the Argenis exploits the dialogue form in its debates on topics like politics and religion, so it exploits Sicily’s potential for oppositional approaches. The choice of this island as a location allows Barclay to bring together competing scientific and mythological debates on the origins of volcanic activity and palaeontological remains. The reader is forced to interpret, to gauge the presentation of different traditions and the consequent contribution to character portrayal. In the camp scene, as elsewhere, Barclay uses the actions and words of Meleander in order to help examine the qualities of the ideal absolute ruler. The episode provides evidence of Meleander’s credulity, against the view of Christie. It reveals that he is capable of being manipulated by the priests and easily swayed away from a scientific point of view. Since he is entertaining someone who poses a threat to his kingdom, having entrusted the business of the camp elsewhere, he is also shown to be insufficiently alert for one of his position. In terms of the debate about divine providence, we have seen that Barclay’s presentation of volcanic activity in Sicily does not support this idea. Neither in this episode nor in the novel as a whole do we find evidence of divine intervention in human affairs: claims of divine involvement from characters do not prove that it exists.¹⁴⁸ Nor do we find the gods overseeing a future which could thus be subject to religious predictions, whatever may be asserted by characters.¹⁴⁹ Such a controlled framework would, indeed, go against the novel’s interest in the potentiality of interpretation.¹⁵⁰