Fairytale in the Ancient World

Graham Anderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134560455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

In this, the first modern study of the ancient fairytale, Graham Anderson asks whether the familiar children's fairytale of today existed in the ancient world. He examines texts from the classical period and finds many stories which resemble those we know today, including:
* a Jewish Egyptian Cinderella
* a Snow White whose enemy is the goddess Artemis
* a Pied Piper at Troy.
He puts forward many previously unsuspected candidates as classical variants of the modern fairytale and argues that the degree of violence and cruelty in the ancient tales means they must have been meant for adults.

1
INTRODUCTION

In the course of a vulgar dinner party in a Roman novel, the nouveau riche host looks back on his career and announces that ‘the man who was once a frog is now king’ (qui fuit rana nunc est rex). A little earlier in the same dinner party one of his freedmen guests had explained the career of another nouveau riche: ‘after he had stolen the goblin’s cap, he found the (goblin’s) treasure’ (incuboni pilleum rapuisset, thesaurum invenit).¹ Here then, in the ordinary course of conversation of the less well educated, we have the spontaneous mention of a frog prince and a goblin’s treasure, two familiar ingredients of what we might think of as fairytale. In both cases we have brief allusion to material with which the reader is assumed to be familiar. Two questions might naturally arise: were there fairytales in the Ancient World, and if so, were they much different in form, content and function from the stories we should ourselves recognise as fairytales? And if such tales did exist in antiquity, why do we seem to encounter them so seldom?

Fairytales, as we have come to recognise them, are perhaps easier to illustrate than to define: we tend to use the term loosely to mean ‘tales like Cinderella or Snow White’, and leave it at that. The term itself is as old as the late seventeenth century, appearing as the title of Mme d’Aulnoy’s Contes de fées in 1698,² whereas the broader term folktale does not arrive till the early nineteenth century. A reasonable definition might however ask for ‘short, imaginative, traditional tales with a high moral and magical content’, essentially the qualities offered by the German term Maerchen, with its association with the world of Grimms’ fairytales.³ Such definitions are all too often doomed to admit exceptions: almost the first thing the first acknowledged modern European Cinderella does is murder her stepmother!⁴ But they are useful, nonetheless, and this one may be allowed to stand. The same vagueness as we might have about the definition of fairytales also tends to provide us with the assumption that they are somehow ‘timeless’ without actually being ‘old’. The assumption, too, that fairytales are somehow the province of children seems somehow to disqualify them from existing in antiquity, precisely because we tend to take it for granted that there were no children in antiquity—of the kind we somehow take for granted as the audience, readers or viewers of fairytale.⁵

It has been generally appreciated that some evidence exists for some fairytales in the Ancient World,⁶ but all too often we are left with the feeling that the trail quickly runs out for material of this kind. There are two contradictory assumptions that frustrate efforts to explore any possibility of any ancient genre of the kind. The first is that because popular orally transmitted stories are always changing, ancient fairytales would somehow have to look different from their modern counterparts; and, second, if they were indeed to be so different, it would be very difficult to identify them with their modern counterparts at all.⁷ Part of the reason why fairytales seem so elusive is that at least in the Graeco-Roman world wonder tales told for entertainment, and especially those directed at children, were felt to be either beneath notice or, indeed, to be quite seriously discouraged: the sort of things that nurses might tell children could have expected little encouragement outside the nursery (or indeed inside, for that matter). At the same time, there is a hint that whatever the frowns of the educated, such storytelling is still obviously going on, though at a sub-literary level for the most part; this is clearly the situation reflected in Petronius’ account with which we began, one of very few contexts in ancient literature where the lower orders seem to have a voice.

Name and repertoire

The general name used to describe folktale, fairytale or myth, as we should understand them, is the considerably flexible term in Greek mythos (‘tale’). Already this term tends to carry a degree of doubt about the truthfulness of what is being recounted, a nuance paralleled in such English expressions as ‘telling stories’. An additional tone of contempt is present in such expressions as graon or titthon mythoi, ‘old women’s tales’ or ‘nurses’ tales’ respectively;⁸ in Latin some variant of aniles fabulae, again ‘old women’s tales’⁹ —our ‘old wives’ tales’ —is the regular term. The association of old women with tales can be accounted for by a sideswipe in the Christian polemist Lactantius:¹⁰ ‘as old women with time on their hands are accustomed [to tell]’ (sicut otiosae aniculae solent). Fairytales are not to be encouraged as a serious pursuit of the working population.

We have ancient testimonia to describe in fairytale terms a number of examples: the chorus in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata claim as children’s stories that of Meilanion as a hater of women, and lover of the hunt, and Timon, hater of men.¹¹ We can certainly recognise both as performing deeds worthy of fairytale, as when Meilanion expends heroic toil in wooing a wayward huntswoman Atalanta, or Timon is favoured by the gods with magical wealth.¹² There is an obvious overlap between fairytale and fable, as when the tale is told of the moon and his mother,¹³ or when Aesop’s fables are said to consist of ‘frogs and donkeys and such nonsense as is swallowed by old women and children’.¹⁴ In his discussion on education in early childhood Quintilian has fables succeeding the fabulae nutricularum, ‘nursery tales’.¹⁵ Bogeymen and women loom large in the nursery repertoire: Akko, Alphito,¹⁶ Ephialtes, Gorgo, Lamia and Mormo or Mormolyke form a small but recurrent canon of child threateners.¹⁷ Miracles and impossible events are standard fare: Tertullian offers apples growing in the sea and fish in trees (in mari poma nasci et in arbore pisces);¹⁸ Minucius Felix offers as an illustration the phenomenon of metamorphosis— men changing into birds and beasts, trees and flowers (de hominibus aves et feras et de hominibus arbores atque flores).¹⁹ Other materials we should perhaps loosely classify with myth include: ‘That Theseus did wrong and left Ariadne asleep on Naxos you have no doubt heard from your nurse’, Philostratus assures a ten-year-old boy;²⁰ while Ovid presents one of the Getae as telling the story of Orestes and Pylades as a popular tale (fabula vulgaris narrata),²¹ and one which he attributes to oral tradition in a country close to the Scythians themselves. Or we find the satirist Persius offering fairytale situations as examples of idle prayers: ‘let the king and queen wish for this man as their son-in-law; let girls snatch this other fellow away; whatever this fellow tramples, let it turn into a rose’ (Hunc optet generum rex et regina; puellae/hunc rapiant; quidquid calcaverit hic, rosa fiat).²² The second of these we might identify as the story of Hylas,²³ while the others might hope to find a place in a variety of fantastic tales.

Tertullian comes perhaps closest to the content of a specific modern tale with an allusion to ‘towers of the Lamia [a cannibal ogress] and combs of the sun’ (Lamiae turres et solis pectines), heard by a child as a cure for sleeplessness (inter somni difficulties).²⁴ In their annotations to the Grimms’ fairytales, Bolte and Polivka tentatively suggest an allusion here to the story of Rapunzel: this is certainly a very plausible purpose and context for the ogress’s tower, to be scaled by the lover; as Rapunzel often shades into an obstacle-flight story where objects are thrown in the ogress’s path by the lovers, the two allusions could indeed belong to the one tale, with the sun’s comb as one of the objects.²⁵

The circumstances of storytelling

We seem to be given little enough information about what was told by way of fairytale. And our information is equally sparse on when tales might expect to be told. When introducing an unlikely story, the chorus in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata give their source as ‘I want to tell you a story (mythos) that I once heard while I was still a child’;²⁶ this is not material to admit to giving credence to as an adult. With similar disapproval Plato mentions tales which children have heard since being nursed by their nurses’ or their mothers’ milk.²⁷ The purposes of telling stories to children, in particular, vary within a predictable range of familiar situations. They can be told simply for delight: the emperor Julian highlights the function of the mythos of providing delight for children (psychagogian), as opposed to the ainos, which provides parainesis (instruction) as well.²⁸

The fairytale could also be used for instruction,²⁹ and Strabo credits the wisest Persian teachers with making up fanciful material for their advantage.³⁰ One could also scare children with bogeymen such as Lamia, Mormolyke and the rest:³¹ Plutarch notes that Akko and Alphito are used by women (age unspecified) to stop children from getting up to mischief (kakoscholein).³² Encouragement is also marked out as a motive: it emerges from Plutarch’s explanation of the telling of stories at the Athenian Oschophoria that this practice commemorates the telling of stories by mothers of children to be sent to Crete to the Minotaur to keep up their spirits³³ — a rare testimony to fairytale within fairytale. This is also the purpose of the famous occasion in which an old woman (anus) tells the tale we know as Cupid and Psyche to a young girl (not a child) at Apuleius 4.27: ‘But I will distract you immediately with soothing old wives’ tales’ (Sed ego te narrationibus lepidis anilibusque fabulis protinus avocabo).³⁴ With some insight Dio of Prusa offers a variation—the role of tales as peace-offerings: ‘as nurses tell children, when they hit them, then to console and win back their favour later on tell them mythous’.³⁵ A natural diversionary role is to be seen in bedtime stories.³⁶ Overall, Maximus of Tyre neatly sums up the aspect of social control inherent in telling children stories when he speaks of nurses who mind or shepherd children (boukolousin) by means of storytelling.³⁷ A further purpose is whiling away the time in repetitive female tasks: Ovid has the daughters of Minyas tell Maerchen as they go about their daily spinning chores.³⁸ Through the eyes of most ancient writers who deign to mention such tales at all, this section of the population would not have been far removed in intellectual status from children or their nurses.

The formulae of tales

The scholiast on Aristophanes’ Wasps 1179 says that the formula houto pote en [mys kai gale] (‘so there was once [a mouse and a weasel]’) is used to preface stories, and illustrates with en houto geron kai graus ‘now there was this old man and woman’. Other less specific openings occur in our very randomly preserved materials: Sotades introduced his tale of Adonis with Tina ton palaion thelet’ akousai (‘do you want to hear one of the olden tales?’); compare Choricius’ akoue de pros touto mala kalou logou (‘hear then besides this a nice story)’ (of a mime subject).³⁹ There are certain mannerisms of delivery, as there still are: (‘[nurses?] are good at telling those sorts of stories and weep over them at will’).⁴⁰ Pliny offers a ‘roll up, roll up’ call, presumably as of an itinerant storyteller (Ep. 2.20.1): assem para et accipe auream fabulam (‘get your money ready and listen to a really glittering tale’) for a suite of three trickster episodes offered as true tales of the disreputable barrister-cum-fortune-teller Regulus.⁴¹ (The auream may refer not only to the story’s quality, but to the fact that Regulus himself is a gold-digger.)

We are poorly served by such limited references, in comparison with what has been rescued from modern oral cultures. I am aware of no such formulae as occur, for example, in Afanas’ev’s Russian collection when a tale ends in a wedding: ‘I was there, and some of the beer dripped down my face, but none went into my mouth’ (i.e. I cannot vouch for the whole truth of the foregoing account).

As far as actual telling of tales is concerned, we have very limited testimony indeed, though what we have is scarcely open to argument. The following is the start of what is generally acknowledged as our only ‘action replay’ of a fairytale being told in its natural context:

Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina. Hi tres numero filias forma onspicuas habuere.

In a certain country there were a king and queen. They had three beautiful daughters….

(Apuleius 4.28.1)

Even in this case arguments continue over whether the following tale, the first recognised telling of Cupid and Psyche, is a real fairytale as we understand it, or some synthetic product which it has been convenient for the author of The Golden Ass to present as a fairytale.⁴² But in fact there is a little more evidence, of a slightly different kind, on the subject of telling stories to children. The elder of two Philostrati who describe a series of pictures in the later Empire offers us an imaginary trip around a picture gallery where a ten-year-old child is being asked to look at fairytale, or quasi-fairytale, subjects from art and literature. We find subjects such as: Heracles and Antaeus, an obvious ‘giantkilling’ theme (1.21); Heracles among the pygmies, an obvious counterpart to the dwarfs of fairytale (1.22); Heracles and Atlas (a ‘stupid ogre’ story); Palaemon (perhaps a Tom Thumb-type story, 1.16); Perseus (1.29), often regarded in its details as the ultimate fairytale; or the birth of Hermes (Tom Thumb again, 1.26). But such tales are mixed up with a good many other obvious children’s or, more specifically, boys’ interests—pets, animals, exciting chariot-races and the like, as well as some scenes from Epic and Tragedy, from which ‘our’ instinct would be to keep children well away, such as the madness of Heracles. Besides the accommodation to children in his subject matter, Philostratus’ tales are often quite resourcefully told, with little asides to encourage audience participation:

As for Antaeus, my boy, I think you are afraid of him; for he looks like some wild beast, nearly as broad as he is tall…No doubt you see (the giant) panting and looking at the ground which is unable to help him…And here is Hermes arriving to put a crown on Heracles.

(2.21.4 ff.)

We also have a still less well-known item from a Christian father in the context of advising parents on how to tell Bible stories. This is John Chrysostom’s homily de inani gloria et de liberis educandis. Although Chrysostom’s object is ironically to discourage what we should regard as fairytale, he affords valuable confirmation of the way we should expect children to be introduced to a repertoire of stories:⁴³

(38) Therefore let (children) not hear frivolous stories and old wives tales: ‘This youth kissed that maiden. The king’s son and the younger daughter have done this’. Do not let them hear these stories, but let them hear others simply told with no elaboration. They can hear such from slaves, but not from all…Let those of the servants who are well fitted take part. If there be none, then hire someone who is free, a virtuous man, and entrust the task especially to him, so that he may have a full share in the undertaking.

(39) …But when the boy takes relaxation from his studies—for the soul delights to dwell on stories of old—speak to him, drawing him away from childish folly…Speak to him and tell him this story: ‘Once upon a time there were two sons of one father, even two brothers.’ Then after a pause continue: ‘And they were the children of the same mother, one being the elder, the other the younger son...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Cinderella Story in Antiquity
• 3 Snow White and Related Tales
• 4 Cupid and Psyche (AT 425A) and Beauty and the Beast (AT 425C)
• 5 The Obstacle Flight (AT 313)
• 6 The ‘Innocent Slandered Maid’
• 7 Butchering Girls
• 8 Magicians and Their Allies
• 9 Between Living and Dead
• 10 Two Homeric Tales
• 11 Some Moral Parables
• 12 Fairytale Into Romance
• 13 Folktales and Society
• 14 Conclusions
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Appendix 4
• Notes
• Bibliography