Blackwell Oxford, English ENLR 0013-8312 O 2 35 2005 Literary English UK Article Publishing, Literary Renaissance Renaissance Ltd.

. Renaissance Inc. L.riginal E. Semler

l. e. semle r

Marlovian Therapy: The Chastisement of Ovid in Hero and Leander

hristopher Marlowes Hero and Leander is arguably the most fascinating of the English Renaissance epyllia because it foregrounds with unique urgency problems of aesthetic form, human agency, and seriocomic timbre. The demonstration of the poems philosophical stance, or the assertion that it has none, is a critical agenda which directly impacts upon formulations of its governing dichotomiesfragmentary:complete, predestinate:free, philosophical:trivial, and pagan:Christian. 1 Along with these conundrums comes a far more complicated bundle of considerations centered on a devilishly inexplicable trinity: Marlowe himself, the narrator he sent, and the poetry proceeding from both.2

I thank the Australian Research Council for funding my research on this essay. 1. See, for example: Judith Haber, True-loves blood: Narrative and Desire in Hero and Leander, English Literary Renaissance 28 (1998), 37286; Georgia E. Brown, Breaking the Canon: Marlowes Challenge to the Literary Status Quo in Hero and Leander, in Marlowe, History, and Sexuality: New Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Paul Whitfield White (New York, 1998), pp. 5975; Fred B. Tromly, Playing with Desire: Christopher Marlowe and the Art of Tantalization (Toronto, 1998), pp. 15373; Bruce R. Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeares England: A Cultural Poetics (Chicago, 1991), pp. 13236; Robert A. Logan, Perspective in Marlowes Hero and Leander: Engaging our Detachment, in A Poet and a Filthy Playmaker: New Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Kenneth Friedenreich, Roma Gill and Constance B. Kuriyama (New York, 1988), pp. 279 91; W. L. Godshalk, Hero and Leander: The Sense of an Ending, in A Poet and a Filthy Playmaker, pp. 293314; Clark Hulse, Metamorphic Verse: The Elizabethan Minor Epic (Princeton, 1981), pp. 93 140; A. R. Braunmuller, Marlowes Amorous Fates in Hero and Leander, Review of English Studies 29 (1978), 56 61; Myron Turner, Pastoral and Hermaphrodite: A Study in the Naturalism of Marlowes Hero and Leander, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17 (1975), 397 414; Hero and Leander, ed. Louis L. Martz (Washington, D. C., 1972), pp. 114; and C. S. Lewis, Hero and Leander, Proceedings of the British Academy 28 (1952), 2337. 2. See Patrick Cheney, Marlowes Counterfeit Profession: Ovid, Spenser, Counter-nationhood (Toronto, 1997); David Riggs, Marlowes Quarrel with God, in Critical Essays on Christopher Marlowe, ed. Emily C.

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Many modern readings of Hero and Leander appeal to one or more of three philosophical moments in the poem to crystallize their interpretations: ll. 16776 (It lies not in our power to love, or hate), ll. 539 44 (But know you not that creaturess wanting sence), and ll. 77177 (Love is not full of pittie).3 Rarely are all three passages touched on together and often their philosophical origin or baggage is not fully investigated. These passages have sources in Plutarch, Cicero, Aristotle, and Lucretius, and reach out through these authors to views expressed by other thinkers such as Chrysippus, Empedocles, and Epicurus. Marlowes Ovidian reformulation of Musaeus tale is thereby troubled with a rich seam of ancient philosophy that cries out for sustained engagement and coherent explanation. This essay proposes, therefore, that Hero and Leander partakes of a complex philosophical substructure which determines the form of the narrative, explains the peculiar power of the narrator, and seeks to guide the readers response. The two protagonists inhabit a CiceronianAristotelean cosmos in which Empedoclean theory persists, they are entangled in a Stoic view of fate, and their actions exemplify an Epicurean critique of Ovidian love which is left for the reader to consider at the end (the narrator having already resolved the issue for himself in his own way). ii The poem opens with dazzling pendant blazons of its eponymous lead characters (ll. 5 50, 51 90), moves to description of Heros visual
Bartels (New York, 1997), pp. 3958; Roy Kendall, Richard Baines and Christopher Marlowes Milieu, English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994), 50752; Richard Neuse, Atheism and Some Functions of Myth in Marlowes Hero and Leander, Modern Language Quarterly 31 (1970), 42439; Paul H. Kocher, Christopher Marlowe: A Study of his Thought, Learning and Character (Chapel Hill, 1946); and Frederick Boas, Christopher Marlowe: A Biographical and Critical Study (Oxford, 1940). 3. Three creditable examples, relating respectively to these philosophical passages, are Claude J. Summers, Hero and Leander: The Arbitrariness of Desire, in Constructing Christopher Marlowe, ed. J. A. Downie and J. T. Parnell (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), pp. 13347; Jane Adamson, Marlowe, Hero and Leander, and the Art of Leaping, The Critical Review (Melbourne) 17 (1974), 5981; and Fred L. Milne, Love-Strife and Night Motifs in Christopher Marlowes Hero and Leander, Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 15.12 (1996), 21929. I cite Hero and Leander from The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, vol. 1, ed. Roma Gill (Oxford, 1987). My third philosophical passage (ll. 77177) is affected by a textual crux. The early quartos of Hero and Leander place ll. 76374 oddly between the current ll. 784 and 785: I follow Gill and most modern editors. All other references to Marlowes verse derive from Marlowes Poems, ed. L. C. Martin (1931; rpt. New York, 1966).
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centrality at the Adonis Festival in Sestos (ll. 91130), and on to an ekphrasis of the interior decoration of Venus Temple (ll. 13156) wherein Hero, ministering at the altar, is first seen by (ll. 15864), and subsequently sees (ll. 16566), Leander. It is important to note that while Cupids arrow strikes only Leander at this stage (ll. 16162), both Leander and Hero are mutually impressed by one another. He is enamoured (l. 162) and her heart was strooke (l. 165). It is a point of difference between the lovers that Hero (despite later being struck by the golden arrow, ll. 369 74), offers varieties of internal resistance to love which are not found in Leander. Leanders assent to the impulse is a given, Heros is not: she renews her vows of chastity to Venus (ll. 36568) and resists Leander with physical and verbal agility. When Leander says I cannot force love, as you doe ( l. 206) and then turns to rhetorical arts of persuasion (ll. 207 94, 31330), he is claiming that he lacks the capacity to choose freely between the options of assenting to loving her and not assenting to loving her, while also indicating that her power of assent remains entirely free and therefore, in his opinion, requiring rational (indeed, oratorical) persuasion to push it toward a decision favorable to himself. In this regard Leander is apparently no different from all that viewd her (l. 118): she over-rules their hearts (ll. 11112) with a totality that annihilates any possibility of her spectators exercising free rational determination in the choice between A (to love) and not-A (not to love). Much of the wit and humor of the protagonists courtship derives from the fact that as both parties play out this familiar paradigm of unequal freedom of assent, the narrator, the reader, and most probably Hero (ll. 179, 357 60, 495 96) are all aware that she is fundamentally as unfree as Leander. She strives and fails to resist the motions of her hart (l. 364) because her socially and rationally constructed platform of modesty is not strong enough to withstand simultaneous assaults from without (the image of Leander) and within (her own desire). While the narrator parades his own knowledge of this, Leander perceives only some moments of Heros desire (ll. 31114) and misses others (ll. 495 98). Nevertheless, Leander is more than recompensed for his efforts by the heroic frisson of laborious attainment of desire which is his to experience. Hero, of course, socially speaking, has everything to lose by finally buckling to the inevitable, and the narrators misogynistic turn of phrase and cynicism at her supposed false modesty (ll. 428, 52122, 754) add insult to the obvious (although complex) injury she has incurred by poems end.
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The love of Hero and Leander illustrates, therefore, how societal rituals of courtshipin which male and female humans perform distinct, complementary, and socially predetermined rolesare subtended by an absolute equivalence of (hetero)sexual attraction. Elaborate oratory and the mechanisms of resistance it calls forth are merely the gender-distinguished clothes of convention that dress in civilized fashion a fundamental mutuality of desire between the sexes which is natural and irrepressible. Part of the thrill arising from the reading of Marlowes poem depends on this assertion that beneath the projected persona of the coy maid is a real human animal whose sexual desire at rock bottom mirrors that of her male suitor. iii Marlowes narrator takes the opportunity arising from the moment of narrative stillness accompanying mutual attraction (ll. 163 66) to step in and explain in philosophical terms the underlying principle of what is occurring.
It lies not in our power to love, or hate, For will in us is over-ruld by fate. When two are stript, long ere the course begin, We wish that one should loose, the other win. And one especiallie doe we affect, Of two gold Ingots like in each respect, The reason no man knowes, let it suffise, What we behold is censurd by our eies. Where both deliberat, the love is slight, Who ever lovd, that lovd not at first sight? (ll. 167 76)

The narrator is proposing that our passions of love and hate are not ours to command: fate overrules us so that our affection is firmly allocated to objects according to reasons that remain obscure to us. On receiving the image of the object, our eyes instantly have determined according to their own logic our response to its content, so that our resultant action is not the product of a fully-conscious act of reasoned assent. In 1900 Walter Raleigh suspected that here Marlowe had a passage from Sir Thomas Hobys translation of The Book of the Courtier (1561) lurking in his remembrance.4 The passage in question arises in a debate
4. The Book of The Courtier from the Italian of Count Baldassare Castiglione done into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, Anno 1561, ed. Walter Raleigh (London, 1900), p. lxxx. The source passage is on p. 48.
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between Gaspare Pallavicino and Lodovico Canossa over whether it is necessary for the ideal courtier to be nobly born. The young Signore Gaspare argues that nobility so defined is not a sine qua non of the courtier and urges the inclusion of the basely born in the discussion. The nobly born Count Lodovico agrees that the quality of virtue is not dependent upon ones birth, but argues that since they are discussing the ideal courtier, they should restrict themselves to gentlemen because the idea of a gentleman being virtuous is so deeply imprinted in the popular mind that the nobly born will always have the advantage over the base in being perceived to be virtuous. He concludes:
And forsomuch as our mindes are very apte to loue and to hate: as in the sightes of combates and games and in all other kinde of contencion one with an other, it is seene that the lookers on many times beare affection without any manifest cause why, unto one of the two parties, with a gredy desire to haue him get the victorie, and the other to haue the ouerthrow. Also as touching the opinion of mens qualities, the good or yll reporte at the first brunt moueth oure mynde to one of these two passions: therefore it commeth to passe, that for the moste part we judge with loue or els with hatred. You see then of what importance this first imprinting is, and howe he ought to endeuoure himself to get it good in prin[?s]es, if he entende to be set by, and to purchase him the name of a good Courtyer.5

In short, the gentleman (possessive of automatic, birth-derived, good report) has a convincing head start over the ignobly born in becoming the good Courtyer because of the power of first impressions to move the popular mind toward distinct responses of love or hate. The idea of the imprinting of the mind derives from Platos Theaetetus (191 94) and is discussed by the Stoics in relation to the series: sense impression imprints upon the soul in cognizable form; faculty of judgment engages this data; assent to the veridicity of the content is given or withheld; assent (where appropriate) to a resultant impulse is given or withheld; action or non-action is effected.6 Raleighs much-cited suggestion that Marlowe relies on Hoby makes good sense. In addition to specific verbal parallels, both writers are
5. The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio diuided into foure bookes, tr. Sir Thomas Hoby (1561), sigs. ciiiiv. 6. See Julia Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley, 1992), pp. 71102; Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford, 1985); Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, tr. R. D. Hicks (1931; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1991), II, 7.4954; and The Discourses of Epictetus, ed. Christopher Gill and Robin Hard (London, 1995), pp. 6065, 11922.
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talking about an inherent human tendency to love or hate, and both offer the example of the thorough and inexplicable siding of the otherwise disinterested spectator with one or other party in a contest. However, Marlowes deeper source (and possibly Castigliones too) is Plutarchs essay De stoicorum repugnantiis (1045D-E) in the Moralia, although the relevance of Hobys Courtier cannot be dismissed. Plutarchs frequently opportunistic catalogue of Stoic self-contradictions draws largely on the writings of that most prolific and influential of middle Stoics, Chrysippus, the pupil of Cleanthes, who produced over 700 works and died, according to one account, during a fit of laughter at one of his own jokes. 7 Plutarch attacks Chrysippus by claiming the Stoic is self-contradictory on the Epicurean theory of the random swerve of atoms. This unpredictable swerve, Plutarch explains, is used by some philosophers to explain how the soul, when faced with the need to choose between two equivalent alternatives, takes a swerve of itself and resolves the perplexity in a fashion entirely free of predetermining cause (1045B). 8 Plutarch then reminds readers that Chrysippus attacks the theory of the swerve on the ground that it explicitly denies antecedent causality which the Stoics say predetermines all cause and effect in the universal web of fate. The uncaused causewhich, as Cicero argues (De fato, 10.20 11.24; De finibus, 1.6.1920), is what the random swerve amounts tocannot actually exist, and so the effects or impulses the Epicureans use the swerve to explain (such as mental freedom from predetermination) must of necessity possess antecedent causes which remain obscure to us (1045C). However, Plutarch would have us know that in works not similarly accessible to everyone (1045D), Chrysippus contradicts his own view and adopts one almost indistinguishable from the Epicureans.
So, for one, in his work concerning Decision he supposes that two racers have run a dead heat and raises the question, what the umpire ought to do. Is it permissible, he says, that the umpire award the palm to whichever he pleases depending upon their comparative intimacy with him considering it in this case to be one of his own possessions which he would be giving
7. Diogenes Laertius, 7.180, 185. 8. The edition of De stoicorum repugnantiis to which I refer is On Stoic Self-Contradictions, in Plutarchs Moralia, 17 vols. tr. Harold Cherniss (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), XIII, 2.368 603 (1033A1057C). On the atomic swerve see Cherniss, 508a; Epicurus: The Extant Remains, ed. Cyril Bailey (1926; rpt. Hildesheim, 1970), p. 25 (I.43); Lucretius, De rerum natura, 2.251 93; and Susanne Bobzien, Did Epicurus Discover the Free Will Problem? Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 19 (2000), 287337.
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away <or> that in a way rather considering the palm to have become the common property of both he give it, as if by casting a lot, according to his chance inclination? By chance inclination I mean the kind that occurs when two drachmas that are for the rest alike have been set before us and we incline to one of them and take it. Again, in the sixth book concerning Duty he says that some matters are not worth much trouble or attention at all, and he holds that in these we should make a random cast and leave the choice to the chance inclination of the mind: for example, he says, if of those assaying two given drachmas some should say that one is a sound drachma and some that the other is and if we should have to take one of them, we would at that point give over further investigation and choosing from them at random according to some other principle would take whichever we chanced to, even at the risk of taking the bad one. With these notions, then, random choice and the chance inclination of the mind, he introduces acceptance entirely without cause of the things that are indifferent. (1045D-F)9

Plutarch is arguing that Chrysippus takes for granted a certain random swerve of his own. In the book On Decision, Chrysippus allows the possibility of a mental casting of lots to resolve the problem of who shall walk away with the prize when two runners have absolutely equal right to it. This non-rational solution to a rational deadlock is the same type of event as the chance inclination which causes us to select one of two drachmae when they are set before us: strictly speaking, it is an impulse without a predetermining cause, and Plutarch would have us consider it an impulse without any cause. Plutarch adds the quotation from On Duty to strengthen the impression of Chrysippus attachment to this idea. In On Duty, the choice between drachmae stands for a choice between things of little value, and even supposing that one coin may be genuine and the other debased, there is no point in endless rational deliberation: a random choice (based on some irrelevant or unknown principle) will end the matter with little damage or gain either way. The random choice, we are to understand, could have gone either way equally. Chrysippus is presupposing some sort of causeless cause, an equivalent to the Epicurean causeless swerve of atoms that the Stoic elsewhere ridicules because it denies the universal web of antecedent causality (that is, fate). If this is Castigliones source, he has dramatically condensed and generalized Chrysippus formulation so as to drag it in as a supporting
9. The relevant fragments are recorded in Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 4 vols. ed. J. von Arnim (19031924; rpt. Stuttgart, 1964), III, num. 699 (re: On Decision) and III, num. 174 (re: On Duty).
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analogy for Lodovicos argument that men are apt to love and hate even where cause remains obscure. The match is so imperfect that one wonders if the usage reflects Castigliones direct creative reinvention of Plutarch or an unknown line of textual transmission of this piece of Chrysippean wisdom. Marlowes rendition is more faithful to the text as preserved in Plutarch, and his close association of the serial analogies of two runners (ll. 16970) and two ingots (ll. 17172) in a discussion of causality reveals that his ultimate source (whether through Plutarch or some other means of transmission) must be Chrysippus lost work On Decision. However, Marlowe and Castiglione are united on grounds distinct from Plutarch in their specific emphasis on loving and hating, and their construction of the physical contest analogy in terms of desiring a future outcome. Chrysippus does not emphasize loving and hating in this way, and his runners have already completed their race in a tie, so it is not a question of willing one to win and the other to lose. He is not discussing inexplicable affections in spectators so much as a non-rational resolution of an intellectual stalemate. Marlowe could not have relied on Castiglione alone, for his two gold Ingots like in each respect (l. 172) clearly derives from Chrysippus two drachmas that are for the rest alike (1045E) and finds no parallel in The Courtier. Philemon Hollands translation of Moraliawith its two curriers and two groates . . . every way semblable one to the otherpostdates Marlowe and seems verbally distant in any case.10 It seems likely that we are yet to uncover a pared-down proverbial text or a textual tradition (which introduces the ideas of love-hate and the desire for one party to win) functioning as a missing link between Plutarch and Castiglione and exercising some influence on Marlowe. It is oddly apt that the analogic set of two runners and two coins should be the aesthetic point of contact between the ancient Stoic and the earlymodern poet, because when they were not writing, Chrysippus had a reputation as a long-distance runner and Marlowe as a counterfeiter of coin.11 At least three features distinguish Marlowes usage of Chrysippean analogy. First, his discussion is a dramatically involved account of
10. The philosophie, commonlie called, the morals written by the learned philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea, tr. Philemon Holland (1603), p. 1070. The chance impulse of the judge appears in Montaignes Apology for Raymond Sebond, although without reference to lovers, runners, or drachmae. See The Essays af Michel de Montaigne, tr. M. A. Screech (London, 1991), p. 637. 11. For Chrysippus, see Diogenes Laertius, 7.179. For Marlowe, see Kendall, p. 513; and Marlowe: The Critical Heritage 15881896, ed. Millar Maclure (London, 1979), p. 37.
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assent in relation to the passion of heterosexual love as opposed to a purely theoretical account of the species of judgment required in determining right response to equivalent alternatives. Second, Marlowes narrator is concerned with a matter of plot significance, not indifference, and hence petty drachmae rarefy into gold Ingots. Third, he takes an apparently deterministic line in affirming the power of fate to overrule our response to impressions and thereby predetermine our actions. Castiglione explores our aptness to be swayed by the power of first imprinting, but he does not say that such an impression may not be resisted or overthrown by subsequent reasoning. Lodovico allows that the external cause of the impulse to love or hate must be affirmed or consolidated by internal rational assent which is, admittedly, initially biased by reporte but not absolutely predetermined. In Marlowes casewhere the topic is faithfull love (l. 128), [l]ove deepely grounded (l. 184), or in sum, [t]rue love (l. 186)first sight, as an external cause experienced simultaneously by both parties, may not be successfully resisted [f ]or will in us is over-ruld by fate (l. 168) and faithfull love will never turne to hate (l. 128). A simple fatalism may get the story going within the appropriate generic boundary of tragedy; however, it is inadequate to the complexity of the developing tale. Two caveats, to preempt the ensuing argument, are worth bearing in mind. First, the sense of inescapable predetermination given in these lines may be read as a viewpoint appropriate to the perspective of the two lovers as they are in love. Second, the lines subtly imply there is a reason (l. 173) for such love and that the lovers character may be relevant in the instantaneous act of judgment by his or her eyes (l. 174). The poem begins with fate (l. 168) as it is commonly understood by lovers as an irresistible external force, but will proceed to complicate this view by highlighting the complexity of causality with reference to the predetermining power of human character. iv Although Marlowes Hero and Leander is enriched with a complex comic tone, references to antecedent causality and fate are hammered through the poem like pitons anchoring it (speciously or not) to a granite pretext of tragic destiny (ll. 131, 13334). It is predetermined by antecedent causes such as Musaeus original tragic text (l. 52) and the events in the Mercury flashback, that the Destinies shall refuse to sanction Cupids
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project of uniting the lovers in a life of blessedness (ll. 36584, 48384). However, Marlowe foregrounds the problem of necessity by presenting irreconcilable jurisdictional overlaps between Cupid and the angrie sisters (l. 473). He does this by making them into relatively accessible characters and by personalizing their dispute, so that at different times each has power over the other (ll. 37784, 44346, 48384). That the Adamantine Destinies are not destiny itself may be deduced from their pathetic love-longing for Mercury in which the history of heaven is reversed in a trice, and then unreversed, and the tools of human and cosmic order are offered to Mercury purely on the ground of irrational doting (ll. 443 62). Hero, Leander, Neptune, Mercury, Cupid, and the Destinies are all embedded as mobile agents in an existence entirely woven of antecedent causality and known by the Stoics as fate. Nothing is excluded; there is no uncaused cause. Consequently, if one were to affirm that people are morally responsible for their actions, as Chrysippus and the Stoics did, then one would have to explain how a thoroughgoing universal determinism allows this. Chrysippus, never reluctant to take up his pen, rose to the challenge. According to Ciceros De fato (18.41), Chrysippus responds to the problem by dividing causality into two categories: perfect and principal causes (perfectae et principales), and auxiliary and proximate causes (adiuvantes et proximae). The former completely necessitate their effects and are described in Plutarchs De stoicorum repugnantiis (1055F1056D) as self-sufficient causes, while the latter contribute to an effect, and may even initiate it, but do not necessitate it and are deemed procatarctic causes by Plutarch.12 The web of fate, Chrysippus argues, is woven of auxiliary and proximate causes, and thus human assent and impulse are not absolutely constrained. Generally speaking, this dichotomy may set some minds at ease by making perfect and principal causes very rare indeed and by allowing our daily experience of moral responsibility and decision-making to function within a reassuringly indeterminably various ecosystem of auxiliary and proximate causality. However, when pressed on the issue, Chrysippus produced a more provocative response
12. For a superb discussion of Chrysippean causality and the case for identifying Ciceros and Plutarchs terms, see Susanne Bobzien, Chrysippus Theory of Causes, in Topics in Stoic Philosophy, ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford, 1999), pp. 196242. For an alternative view, see David Sedley, Chrysippus on Psychophysical Causality, in Passions and Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind; Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum, ed. Jacques Brunschwig and Martha C. Nussbaum (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), pp. 31331.
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in his celebrated, perhaps notorious, analogies of the cylinder (an agricultural roller), and the dog and chariot. Cicero reconstructs the first hypothesis thus. A person perceiving something is like a roller being pushed: both require the initial external cause to set things going (sense impression imposed on the mind; physical shove applied to the roller), but immediately after that, the capacity to assent or to roll lies within their own power ( De fato, 18.4219.43). In this way, Chrysippus defends his compatibilism (the cooperation of fate and human agency).13 To take the example from The Courtier, the good or ill report of a mans character is a sense-presentation which impresses itself upon the hearers mind and sets it in motion. This imprinting is merely an auxiliary and proximate cause and thus it remains up to the respondents human mindwhich is subject to traits of character and (in Lodovicos phrase) is very apte to loue and to hateto effect or prevent the (non-necessary) assent and impulse. I have already hinted that perhaps this is also the case with Hero and Leander whose eies (l. 174) (in other words, a cause internal to themselves) determine their response to each other. It should be obvious from this that disputants might counter with the claim that human responsibility is still not guaranteed, for one could argue that ones character, including ones intellect and desire, is predetermined by antecedent causes and thus, consequently, ones exact assent and impulse in response to any stimuli are also necessitated. After all, a roller is made to rollit is only doing what it can do, perhaps what it has to do. Chrysippus does not make this point as clear as his critics would like and scholars continue to argue over whether the cylinders inherent rollability, without which no effect will occur, is or is not equivalent to a perfect and principal cause (a clarification Chrysippus nowhere provides) because if it is, then human responsibility is suffocated by predetermined character. One thing modern commentators agree on is that the initial push, the first imprinting (as it were) of a sense-impression, is, in terms of effecting assent and impulse, of less importance, because it is clearly a proximate cause, than the character of the object affected (its rollability). If you push a square roller, it will not roll. 14
13. I quote Cicero, De oratore Book III; De fato; Paradoxa stoicorum; De partitione oratoria, tr. H. Rackham (1942; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 2001). Cf. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, 7.2.115. 14. See esp. Bobzien, Chrysippus Theory of Causes. See also Josiah B. Gould, The Philosophy of Chrysippus (Leiden, 1970), pp. 13752, and The Stoic Conception of Fate, Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974), 1732; and Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, pp. 4850.
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If Chrysippus cylinder analogy is somewhat opaque in the end, his other analogy is stark. If fate is a chariot going in a particular direction and the individual agent is as a dog chained to it, then the dog is free to assent and trot along willingly or free to pick a different direction and be dragged.15 Before writing this off as extreme Stoic fatalism masquerading as compatibilism (and even before asking the not-ridiculous question of how long is the chain?) we need to credit the idea that the Stoic wise man accepts that he is enmeshed in fates causalities, patiently endures and learns from what he cannot change, and turns the things he can affect into tools wherewith to train himself in virtue, all to the end of walking in accord with reason and nature.16 The dog (or man) practicing such a philosophy faithfully trots along with fate, occasionally being pulled into line by its beneficial guidance, and is thereby living in accord with his own nature and nature itself, and can genuinely be happy and wise. The two analogies are saying similar things about fate: the former (the cylinder) locates fates hidden, predetermining strength in the human character (rollability); the latter (the dog and chariot) locates it in external events (chariot). Leander responds to his fated love with enthusiasm; Hero responds with indecision. He is the dog who complies; she must be dragged. The other analogy is more functional for our purposes. Love at first sight (l. 176) is the proximate push of the cylinder, after which one rolls easily (Leander) and the other rolls in fits and starts (Hero). The difference between the lovers lies not in the initial external push, nor in their internal crediting of the actuality of the impression, but somewhere else within them. Cupid and love at first sight constitute a potent yet proximate, external cause of the true love of Hero and Leander. A further, cooperating cause is required to produce, by assent and impulse, the effect of love that actually results, for proximate causes are by definition never fully adequate to their effects. Marlowe provides the required cause, but not so much at the level of character (to which we shall return) as, below this, at the fundamental level of biology. In so doing he brings us to the second philosophical passage requiring discussion in Hero and Leander, a passage of particularly complex intertextuality.
15. On the dog and chariot (or cart), see Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, pp. 11920; Gould, Philosophy of Chrysippus, p. 150; Gould, The Stoic Conception of Fate, p. 31; and Brunschwig and Nussbaum, pp. 31617. 16. Seneca, De constantia sapientis, in Epistulae morales; The Discourses of Epictetus, pp. 57, 170 75, 18587, 20517; The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, tr. A. S. L. Farquharson (1944; rpt. Oxford, 1989), pp. xiixiii, 1720, 56 61, 90 94.
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The lovers first meeting (l. 508) by stealth (l. 502) in Heros tower confirms that while both, though nave, are in essence greedie lovers (l. 508), they each strive to fulfill the appropriate gender-roles assigned to them by society. After initial amatory enthusiasm from both parties (ll. 50934) their amusing navet about love becalms proceedings to the innocence of sibling play (ll. 53538). Once again, at an opportune moment of diegetic stasis, Marlowes narrator steps in with a philosophical truth, this time to reignite proceedings:
But know you not that creaturess wanting sence, By nature have a mutuall appetence, And wanting organs to advance a step, Movd by Loves force, unto ech other lep? Much more in subjects having intellect, Some hidden influence breeds like effect. Albeit Leander rude in Love, and raw, Long dallying with Hero, nothing saw That might delight him more, yet he suspected Some amorous rites or other were neglected. Therefore unto his bodie, hirs he clung, She, fearing on the rushes to be flung, Strivd with redoubled strength, the more she strived, The more a gentle pleasing heat revived. (ll. 539 52)

Here is a physiological explanation for why Leander is unable to remain becalmed in the presence of Hero. An inner force, [s]ome hidden influence working powerfully in his members (ll. 54344), drives him to unite his body with hers (l. 549). This is his essential rollability, and Hero shares it, despite their likeness being obscured by a gender-distinguished superstructure of social character formation. Thus he clings to her, she strives, and the resulting heat (l. 552) teaches him the truth about love and he cravd it (l. 555). The argument (relying on the Aristotelean hierarchy of plant, animal, human) is that even creaturess wanting sence are driven together by an innate desire to procreate, and the effect is magnified in subjects having intellect. Marlowes source for lines 53944 is Cicero. The broad context is outlined in De finibus bonorum et malorum which addresses the problem of determining mans chief good and primary purpose or end, through presentation and critique of various ethical systems including those of the
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Epicureans and Stoics.17 In Book 5 M. Pupius Piso Calpurnianus presents Antiochus ethical view (a blend of older Academic, Peripatetic, and Stoic wisdom) and offers the following summation:
[O]ur nature at the beginning is curiously hidden from us, and we cannot fully realize or understand it; yet as we grow older we gradually or I should say tardily come, as it were, to know ourselves. Accordingly, the earliest feeling of attraction which nature has created in us towards ourselves is vague and obscure, and the earliest instinct of appetition only strives to secure our safety and freedom from injury. When, however, discernment dawns and we begin to perceive what we are and how we differ from the rest of living creatures, we then commence to pursue the objects for which we are intended by nature. Some resemblance to this process we observe in the lower animals. At first they do not move from the place where they were born. Then they begin to move, under the influence of their several instincts of appetition; we see little snakes gliding, ducklings swimming . . . ; each in fact has its own nature as its guide to life. A similar process is clearly seen in the human race. Infants just born lie as if absolutely inanimate; when they have acquired some small degree of strength, they exercise their mind and their senses. (5.15.4142; cf. Cicero, Tusculanarum disputationum 5.13.3739.)

Piso continues by detailing how the maturing human, guided by reason and nature, utterly outstrips the lower creatures and proceeds to achieve every kind of virtue, thereby bringing itself to natures goal (5.15.43). Pisos overall argument is that nature has embedded in plants, animals, and humans, an instinctive appetition for self-preservation that evolves in accordance with the creatures maturity and limitations of kind (nutritive, sensitive, intellective) toward a final end and chief good that is appropriate to each kind (5.9.245.17.46). In De amicitia Cicero inserts his theory of human friendship into this broader context thus:
Now, if it is evident in animals, whether of the air, the water, or the land, and whether tame or wild, first, that they love themselvesfor this feeling is born alike in every living creatureand, secondly, that they require and eagerly search for (appetant) other animals of their own kind to which they may attach themselvesand this they do with a longing in some degree resembling human love (amoris humani)then how much more, by the law of his nature, is this the case with man who both loves himself and uses
17. I refer to Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, tr. H. Rackham (1914; 2nd edition, London, 1931).
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his reason to seek out another whose soul he may so mingle with his own as almost to make one out of two! (21.81)18

Marlowe relies directly on this passage for ll. 539 44 in which we see the following Ciceronian ideas reproduced: nature grants appetition to all creatures (l. 540); this love moves them eagerly to seek out and attach themselves to others of their kind (l. 542); and the effect is magnified in humans who possess reason (ll. 54344). Marlowe takes his word appetence (l. 540) from Ciceros usage, and the Oxford Latin Dictionary glosses it under appetitio (2a): (spec.; also w. naturalis or animi) a natural or instinctive desire, appetite (for), impulse (towards).19 However, rather than using it to lead up to a Ciceronian ideal of virtuous male-male friendship, he subverts it by blending it with his idea of Loves force (l. 542). Consequently, rather than seeing Leander pursue, in Stoic fashion, his natural end of virtue, we see him, in a parody of Epicureanism, throwing in his lot with Love (l. 545), delight (l. 547), and the bodie (l. 549), as he first suspects the existence of, and then pursues, not higher virtues but greater pleasures (ll. 54748). Here is a proleptic hint of the specific moral decline charted by Leander. He utterly contradicts Pisos anti-Epicurean conclusion that the chief good and final end of man, that fullest realization of nature and virtue known as self-knowledge, is to be desired intrinsically and in and for itself (5.16.44) regardless of any pleasures that may or may not be attendant upon its attainment. Marlowe has transformed Ciceros (generally Peripatetic and Stoic) account of the natural evolution of creatures toward their respective perfections, including virtuous male friendship, into a wholesale assertion of a generative Loves force. The origin of this aspect of his formulation is difficult to pinpoint, but the innate procreative impulse in everything from plants to anatomically challenged serpents is covered in the opening book of De generatione animalium written by the first of the Peripatetics, Aristotle.20 Aristotle does not, there, ascribe this procreative impulse to
18. I quote William Armistead Falconers tr. in Cicero, De senectute, De amicitia, De divinatione (1923; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1959). On love, appetition, and nature, see also Stephen Hawes, The Comforte of Lovers, in The Minor Poems, ed. Florence W. Gluck and Alice B. Morgan (London, 1974), ll. 26773. 19. Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare (crtd. edn. 1996; rpt. Oxford, 2003), s. v., appetitio. 20. Aristotle, Generation of Animals, tr. A. L. Peck (1942; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 731a1 10, 718a1530. See also Aristotle, Politica 1252a2530.
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love, but in the same work he does provide an account of Empedoclean generation (722b1530). Marlowes first four lines (ll. 539 42) are suggestive of the widely known Empedoclean genesis in which roaming, segmented animal parts combine under Loves force into complete compound creatures which populate our world (64/57 68/64; 74/71; 26/21).21 In Metaphysica, Aristotle ascribes to Hesiod the view that there must be in things some cause which will move them and bring them together and that this cause or principle in things is Love or Desire (984b25).22 He goes on to present the Empedoclean forces of Love and Strife as a development of this, noting that Love preserves the separateness of parts in aggregations of sameness, while Strife liberates all parts so they may recombine in complex unities (985a2025). He is aware of the resulting paradoxical fact that Empedoclean Strife not only causes destruction, but also generation (1000a25). It is possibly from Metaphysica that Marlowe adopts his terminology of Love and Strife in this passage (ll. 53952) and in the third philosophical moment to be discussed shortly: She trembling strove, this strife of hers (like that / Which made the world) another world begat / Of unknowne joy (ll. 77577). 23 The sense we get of Strife (strived, l. 551; strife, l. 775) and Love (pleasing, l. 552; joy, l. 777) cooperating in procreation is re-affirmed when Leander and Hero are likened to Mars and Venus united (ll. 789 90). vi According to Brad Inwoods recent reconstruction of Empedocles theory, our present world exists within the growing reign of Strife. This does not mean that Love is not present in the creative process here, but does mean that the primary cosmic trajectory at the moment is away
21. I refer to Brad Inwoods edition of The Poem of Empedocles (Toronto, 1992), by fragment piece (n/n), context piece (CTXT-n), and testimonia piece (An). Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.42237. 22. I refer to Aristotles Metaphysics, tr. Hippocrates G. Apostle (1966; rpt. Bloomington, 1975). 23. There is some consensus that Marlowes main source for Empedoclean ideas is Metaphysica. See Martin, p. 64; and John Leonard, Marlowes Doric Music: Lust and Aggression in Hero and Leander, English Literary Renaissance 30 (2000), 68. Other critics who link Hero and Leander to Empedocles include: Hulse, Metamorphic Verse, p. 122 (also noting Simplicius); Milne, LoveStrife, and Boas, Christopher Marlowe, p. 234. Further derivations from Metaphysica in Hero and Leander might include: One is no number (l. 255; 999a5); placelessness and incapability of form proves somethings non-being (ll. 26975; 1003a11003b10, 1048ab; cf. Physica 209a2025); immortality of the gods linked to ambrosia (ll. 42732; 1000a1015).
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from absolute unity in the One (known also as the Sphere or god) and toward compound creatures and increasing differentiation (the Many) until a pure chaos of raw elements is achieved after which Love will again begin to rise. We live in the reign of Strife, exiled from perfect assimilation into Loves unity and experiencing a delimited mortal existence as individualized compound creatures. Mortality is Strife-born and Strife-torn, but in the course of things, as the cycle of dominance turns, mortality will be re-assimilated into the undifferentiated unity of the One by the gradually increasing dominance of Love. At its peak of power Love will have excluded Strife altogether from the Sphere and then Strife will again begin to tear pieces from the One so as to recreate the cosmos of differentiation.24 While Marlowes plays reveal his fondness for the Empedoclean elements, Hero and Leander emphasizes the two motive principles, Love and Strife, and particularly Strifes creative virt.25 Marlowe is acute in not only perceiving the cooperative interaction of Love and Strife in the Empedoclean procreative cycle of existence, but also poetically adept in grounding Hero and Leanders complementary relationship in this theory. In asserting that all creatures possess a natural appetence for physiological love and in melding his protagonists with Empedocles two motive forceswhich Aristotle took as Empedocles efficient causes 26Marlowe consolidates, by powerful internal causality, the idea of Hero and Leanders love (and strife) as necessitated. Having made reference to the three selected philosophical moments in the poem, and before returning to the latter two, the present argument requires summation. Cupids arrow of love at first sight is the initiating, proximate cause of Hero and Leanders [t]rue love. Another, internal, cause is necessary to complete the effect. This cause is their mutual physiological attraction which is predetermined by their CiceronianAristotelean biology and sympathy with an Empedoclean cosmic cycle. Having established these strong exterior and interior motivations to love one another, we may ask a final question. If they must love, must they love in the way they do? An account of the manner in which these
24. Inwood, Empedocles, pp. 1972. The theory is not without obscurities. 25. See 1 Tamburlaine 1.2.236, 2.6.26, 2.7.1829; 2 Tamburlaine 4.1.124, 5.3.8299; Doctor Faustus 1.77, 1.124. Marlowe may have noted Strifes creativity in Simplicius (CTXT-19a, b, d; CTXT-45b, c; CTXT-49a) and Hippolytus (CTXT-9; CTXT-10g). See also Sacvan Bercovitch, Empedocles in the English Renaissance, Studies in Philology 65 (1968), 6780. 26. See Inwoods discussion, Empedocles, pp. 6572; and A37 (=Metaphysica 985a21-b3).
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lovers love will address the question of character and enable some conclusion to be drawn on the issues of necessity and responsibility. This transition from cosmic philosophy to human ethics is not out of place. Eternal principles of cosmogony and zoogony are no excuse for personal laxity. This may be seen in Empedocles call for self-control in regard to sexual intercourse with women because such an act equals collaboration with the works produced by [S]trife (CTXT-10g). Strife may be present, and creative in its way, but the undifferentiated oneness of Love remains the ultimate good for Empedocles. 27 In a philosophical chain-reaction, Hero and Leanders Love-Strife moves from amoral biological motivation to immoderate psychological desire: strife leads to heat (ll. 55153, 73942), love resisted growes passionate (l. 623), and soon Leander as a hote prowd horse . . . breakes the raines (ll. 62526). It is possible that Marlowe has in mind De officiis 1.29.102, where Cicero re-presents Platos unruly horse of passion in the soul (Phaedrus, 246 48, 25354) in a Stoic framework. Cicero demands that the appetites obey the reins of reason rather than lagging behind or, worse, overleap[ing] all bound and measure and galloping away. 28 In such cases, and Leander is such a case, appetite breaks the law of nature and disorder dominates the mind and body of the subject. The horse needs breaking, the soul a cure, and for this we turn to Lucretius masterpiece of poetic therapy, De rerum natura. vii While we may attribute the skeleton of the love story to Musaeus, whom Marlowe read in Greek, 29 and some of its basic philosophical postulates and turns of phrase to Aristotle, Empedocles, Chrysippus, and Cicero, the flesh of the poem, even the heart of it, is an unstable blend of Lucretius and Ovid. In Hero and Leander , Marlowe subtly conducts a philosophical dispute between De rerum natura and Amores over the nature of true lovea dispute brought to raw clarity in the third philosophical passage and its surrounds (ll. 771 90).

27. Inwood, Empedocles, p. 54. 28. I quote Cicero, De officiis, tr. Walter Miller (1913; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 1.29.102. 29. See T. W. Baldwin, Marlowes Musaeus, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 54 (1955), 47885; and Gordon Braden, The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry: Three Case Studies (New Haven, 1978), pp. 55153.
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This is not the place to give a full account of Leanders Ovidianism. 30 However, two observations are of direct relevance to the present argument: consciously or unconsciously, Leander relies on courtship strategies codified in Ars amatoria; and Elegy 1.5 of Amores informs two erotic encounters involving Leander. To begin with Ars, Ovid likens the enterprise of courtship to the hunting of prey, including the snaring and catching of birds (1.45, 26570, 390), for which specific hunting skills are required.31 This goes some way to explaining Marlowes arresting image (to which we shall return) of love preying upon its object as one would wring a bird in ones hands (ll. 77174) and Leanders fowling technique: His hands he cast upon her like a snare (l. 743). Ovids suggestion that the lover frequent religious festivals and temples, including those of Adonis and Venus (1.7585), confirms Leanders strategy of visiting the Sestian Adonia where many youths find their lovers (ll. 91 96). Ovid declares that girls are not truly reluctant, for they too lust (1.27580, 34050), and with the application of a little violence one will discover a happy yes lies beneath their outraged no (1.48085, 66580). The last point entertains Musaeus, is assumed by Marlowes narrator, and is suspected and found to be true by Leander (ll. 33536) who is energized by rebuffs (ll. 31114) and notoriously forceful in the final section of the poem (ll. 77184). Leander employs lies, entreaties, and promises (as detailed in Ars Book 1), and he follows Ovids advice to play the lover (1.61015) as if trying to live up to the Leander praised in Book 2 (2.24950). Turning to Amores, we can say that Elegy 1.5, Ovids daydream of Corinna, lies like a spectral shadow over Leanders desired and desiring body. Having removed Corinnas light gown, Ovids speaker concludes his reverie thus (in Marlowes translation, All Ovids Elegies):
What arms and shoulders did I touch and see, How apt her breasts were to be pressd by me! How smooth a belly under her waist saw I! How large a leg, and what a lusty thigh!
30. See Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (1932; rev. New York, 1963), pp. 12136; J. B. Steane, Marlowe: A Critical Study (Cambridge, Eng., 1964), pp. 280 333; William Keach, Elizabethan Erotic Narrative: Irony and Pathos in the Ovidian Poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe and their Contemporaries (New Brunswick, 1977), pp. 85116; Martins edition; and Gills edition. 31. I cite Ars amatoria from the Loeb edition: Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems, tr. J. H. Mozley (1979; rpt. Cambridge, Mass., 1999).
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To leave the rest, all likd me passing well; I clingd her naked body, down she fell; Judge you the rest: being tird she bade me kiss; Jove send me more such afternoons as this. (1.5.19 26)

The specific character of the eroticism here is recuperated brilliantly in Marlowes narrators fond and vivid memory of an encounter with the nude Leander.
Even as delicious meat is to the tast, So was his necke in touching, and surpast The white of Pelops shoulder, I could tell ye, How smooth his brest was, & how white his bellie, And whose immortall fingars did imprint, That heavenly path, with many a curious dint, That runs along his backe, but my rude pen, Can hardly blazon foorth. . . . (ll. 63 70)

This retelling of a personal erotic moment is, at the same time, a depiction of the physically placeless erotogenesis of Leander as a character. Touching is making, and desire creation: the mythic flesh of Leander is matter as potential, made actual by the imposition of creative eros. Ovids dreamlike tone, buffed body parts, and first-person sensuality are all preserved, though reoriented, in Marlowes formulation which melds homoeroticism, memory, and aesthetic creation in a tableau of richer tactility and complexity than Ovids prototype. The other sublimation of Elegy 1.5 in Hero and Leander is quite different. After Leanders Herculean (ll. 78184) and Empedoclean (ll. 77576) conquest of Hero, with much wringing (l. 773), pulling and shaking (l. 784), and strife (l. 775), we find he clingd her so about that she slides to the floor (ll. 798 99). She does not remain there long, for neere the bed she blushing stood upright (l. 801) and all naked to his sight displayd (l. 808). Elegy 1.5 offers the mirror image, identical yet reversed, as Ovid disrobes Corinna and she is presented [s]tark naked as she stood before mine eye (l. 17), until, inevitably, I clingd her naked body, down she fell (l. 24). Hero strives energetically, and with a greater will to lose (ll. 77580) than her earlier striving consciously involved (ll. 54951), and ends up, metaphorically and in some sense literally, self-betrayd (l. 807). Corinna exhibits similar duplicity in her struggle and, like Hero, [b]etrayd herself, and yielded at the last (ll. 1416).
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The courtship of Hero and Leander is a real-time enactment of Ovids principles of wooing and fantasy of conquest. Marlowe has bisected Elegy 1.5 in such a way that the core Ovidian elements are reallocated thus: a non-violent, aesthetically creative sensuality informs the narrators homoerotic response to Leander (ll. 6372), and a misogynistic, physically procreative lust governs Leanders response to Hero (ll. 771 810). Regardless of how one views Heros complicity in her own betrayal (ll. 777, 807), Leanders Ovidian behavior, particularly from line 771 (Love is not full of pittie) to the end of the poem, is characterized by an egocentrism and aggression that give serious cause for alarm. The final bedroom image of Leander visually drinking up Heros uncomfortable nakedness like Dis, the god of Riches and Hades, glutting himself on his gold, is surely an indictment of Leanders lust. The subtly deepening shadow of negativity that accompanies Leanders Ovidian pursuit and conquest of Hero may be clarified by reappraisal of the key passages in the light of Lucretius. 32 [M]utuall appetence (l. 540) and Cupids arrow (love at first sight), may irresistibly draw Hero and Leander together, but one might propose, by way of De rerum natura, that the exact manner of their coming together (its Ovidianism) is not necessitated. Marlowe may have found the precise idea of the mutuality of desire in Lucretius account of primitive human relationsan account which also hints that the inherent heterosexual impulse to procreate, without reasoned governance, quickly tends toward selfish exploitation of the other (5.96265).33 Marlowes idea of a mutuall appetence that animates creatures with Loves force calls to mind the opening proem of De rerum natura.34
32. In arguments quite distinct from mine, critics have argued for the presence of Epicurean / Lucretian materialism and naturalism in Hero and Leander. See Cheney, Marlowes Counterfeit Profession, pp. 9, 83, 90, 204 05; Joanne Altieri, Hero and Leander: Sensible Myth and Lyric Sensibility, John Donne Journal 8 (1989), 15166; Turner, Pastoral and Hermaphrodite, pp. 397, 403; and Neuse, Atheism, pp. 242ff. 33. I refer to Lucretius, De rerum natura, tr. W. H. D. Rouse, rev. Martin Ferguson Smith (Cambridge, Mass., 1975). In 5.962 65, libido and cupido are used rather than appetentia (which appears elsewhere, 5.1279). Cf. Dante, Purgatorio, 18.46 75, on the primary appetite and its relation to necessity and ethics. 34. In 1596, Edmund Spenser put a section of this proem into verse in The Faerie Queene IV.x.4447. He also has a long Lucretian passage in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), ll. 799894, which bears comparison with Marlowes lines under discussion (ll. 16176, 53944). Sir Kenelm Digby refers to the mutuall appetence between the Male and the Female, betweene matter and forme in Observations on the 22. stanza in the 9th canto of the 2nd book of Spencers Faery Queen (1643), p. 15.
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Lucretius begins by exalting Venus as the first and ongoing animator of all creation: striking alluring love into the breasts of all creatures, you cause them greedily to beget their generations after their kind (1.19 20). When Lucretius says to Venus that all creatures are held captive by your charm (lepore) (1.15), a submerged presence is revealed in Marlowes line: Movd by Loves force, unto ech other lep? (l. 542). The word lep, taken until now at face value as a variant spelling of leap, 35 might be a clever Marlovian pun which merges Lucretius trademark use of lepos for captivating beauty, brightness and color including sexual attractiveness,36 with the English verb leap. Marlowes lep therefore cements cause and effect together, collapsing sense impression (physical beauty) and resultant impulse (eager motion toward) in a fatalistic cosmos pervaded by Loves active force. This is the closest we come to demonstrating that Hero and Leanders inherent propensity to love is a principal and perfect cause. Lucretius first proem (1.149) establishes Venus as a beneficent divinity whose all-pervading force brings peace and procreative delight to the natural world. He urges Venus to tame her Empedoclean counterpart, savage Mars who currently embroils the Republic in bitter civil wars (1.2943), and also to endow Lucretius poetry with the same charm (l. 28, leporem) that animates creation. Ideally, the poem De rerum natura should possess Venusian attractiveness so as to draw readers into accord with its reasoning and thereby heal their souls via a right understanding of nature and its governing divinity. Marlowes presentation of Venus may be read against this Lucretian prototype. Marlowes Venus is uniquely privileged among the mythographic characters of Hero and Leander in that her influence thoroughly pervades the cosmos as a primal appetence of physiological loving, even to the degree that she herself, in some more limited incarnation, is subject to this force, as references to her liaisons with Mars (ll. 15152, 789 90) and Adonis (ll. 1214) show. Marlowes Venus is very much the active force of the cosmos as distinct from the Destinies and Cupid who
35. Martin (p. 54) emends lep to leap on this ground. 36. Robert D. Brown describes lepos thus in Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura IV, 10301287 with Prolegomena, Text and Translation (Leiden, 1987), p. 265. Various occurrences of the wordas beauty (1.28, 934; 2.502; 3.1036; 4.9; 5.1259, 1376); as pleasure (1.15; 3.1006; 4.1133)are listed in Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex, 3 vols., ed. Cyril Bailey (1947; rev. Oxford, 1963), 3.1772. Martha Nussbaum addresses Lucretian lepos in Beyond Obsession and Disgust: Lucretius Genealogy of Love, Apeiron 22 (1989), 26.
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function within this cosmos. Yet when one considers Marlowes ekphrasis of Venus glasse (ll. 14256) as the truest image of this animating spirit, the picture is not a delightful Lucretian Venus. Rather than quelling Mars as in Lucretius proem (1.2949), Marlowes version of this force melds with martiality (troped via Empedoclean Love-Strife) and thereby effects ongoing ryots, incest, rapes among the gods (l. 144). Divine sexual aggression and greed are then replicated on earth at the expense of procreational necessity (Aristotle, Lucretius), the drive to natural harmony (Lucretius), and the ethical hierarchy of Love over Strife (Empedocles). Marlowes poem reveals a force of love that is, in actual effect, aggressive, obsessive, egocentric, and limited to physical self-gratification, and it results in various forms of fear, pain, discontent, and disappointment for those involved. The Stoics condemn such lust (libido) and longing (appetentia) as unreasonable, disorderly, violent, and contrary to the equable law of nature.37 This inherently imperfect force of desire animating the world of Marlowes love-story is predicated upon CiceronianAristotelean biology and Empedoclean cosmogony, but formulated according to Ovidian principles of love. Lucretius is not unaware of the disastrous potential of Venusian love to spiral into a debased erotics of exploitation. He acknowledges that the true Venus (1.149), who maintains the natural world in procreative harmony, is parodied by a delusional amor (4.10371208), the violent effects of which, if not subdued, make an agony of mortal life. The true Venus endows humans with a natural sexual desire which is particularly activated by the visual perception of an attractive objectan object possessing lepos, as Hero and Leander appear to each other (ll. 5176). The wise man remains in control of his physiological reactions and is able moderately to satiate his natural sexual requirement which he knows to be non-necessary, as opposed to the necessary requirement of, for example, food. This is in accord with the teachings of Epicurus, a philosophy Lucretius is at pains to poetize throughout De rerum natura.38 According to Lucretius, the problem arises when the witness becomes obsessed with the image of beauty as it works upon his physiology. He becomes a deviant lover when he falsely credits the object of desire with
37. See Cicero, Tusculanarum disputationum, 4.6.117.15 and 4.21.4748. 38. See David Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge, Eng., 1998); Diskin Clay, Lucretius and Epicurus (Ithaca, 1983); David Furley, Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), pp. 161222; and the account of Epicureanism in Annas, pp. 12399.
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a perfection alien to mortal things and yearns intensely for absolute sexual union with this specific beloved as if this requirement were necessary. Such excessive attachment is delusional and not in accord with reason or nature; it is self-defeating and productive of trouble of mind and pain of body.39 This physiological condition, an illness of soul requiring cure, is the malady of the cosmos of Hero and Leander which finds particular, exemplary focus in the psychically depraved character of Leander. The intertextual investment of both Lucretius and Ovid in the same sections of Hero and Leander may be regarded as a poetically ingenious staging of a philosophical tussle between De rerum natura and Amores over the right way to love. The philosophical problems of causality and necessity extend, therefore, into the ethical domain of whether Leander is morally culpable for his actions and if so, whether he is capable of being redeemed. Lucretius describes debased Venusian lovers thus: They press closely the desired object, hurting the body, often they set their teeth in the lips and crush mouth on mouth, because the pleasure is not unmixed and there are secret stings which urge them to hurt that very thing, whatever it may be, from which those germs of frenzy grow (4.107883). Lucretian theory thus envelops and condemns the Ovidian manner of love. It offers a negative explanation of Venus glasse, explains Neptunes agonized longing, restless ogling and fondling, and frenzied hurting of himself and Leander ( ll. 639 710), and exposes the self-obsessed intensity of Leanders sexual conquest of Hero. Herein lies the condemnation of the manner, not the raw fact, of Hero and Leanders love. Epicurus, whose ultimate good is the pleasurable life, famously spurned marriage and love, 40 and while Lucretius has a place for moderate love governed by reason and unvarnished acceptance of reality, he is absolutely opposed to the deceptive cycle of intense sexual longing and satiation. This egocentric impulse to self-gratification is a form of madness driving the lover to unattainable ends: [S]o in love Venus mocks lovers with images [simulacris] . . . they cling greedily close together and join their watering mouths and draw deep breaths pressing teeth on lips;
39. My interpretation in this paragraph of Lucretius Epicurean agenda relies on Brown, pp. 6087, 102111; and Nussbaum, Beyond Obsession and Disgust. On the power of visual images of beauty to arouse desire see Plato, Phaedrus, 25053; Symposium, 210b12a; and Empedocles, frag. 68/64: upon him comes also, through sight, desire for intercourse. 40. Diogenes Laertius, 10.118; Epicurus, ed. Bailey, p. 115 (frag. LI), p. 123 (frag. 8).
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but all is vanity, for they can rub nothing off, nor can they penetrate and be absorbed body in body; for this they seem sometimes to wish and to strive for: so eagerly do they cling in the couplings of Venus, while their limbs slacken and melt under the power of delight. At length when the gathered desire has burst from their loins, there is a short pause for a while in the furious burning. Then the frenzy returns, and once more the madness comes, when they seek to attain what they desire, and can find no device to master the trouble (4.110120). Here is Hero and Leanders so-called [t]rue love (l. 186), the true love of Ovid, with all its terms of clinging (l. 798), greediness (ll. 508, 753), strife (l. 775), chains ( l. 790), and ultimate disappointment. Their first secret encounter was little different ( ll. 743 44). From Lucretius Epicurean viewpoint, Leander is wholly entangled in the strong knots of Venus (4.114850) and predictably overlooks Heros humanity because the besotted lover regards his beloved doubly falsely as both a divinity and as the only one who may quench his desire (4.1149 91). When the post-coital, physically united Leander and Hero are displayed like Mars and Venus chaind (ll. 789 90), we are reminded of Lucretius remark: Do you not see also, when mutual pleasure has enchained a pair, how they are often tormented in their common chains? (4.120103). They are like mating dogs, Lucretius concludes, who are so strongly coupled by Venus that all their painful pulling will not release them one from another (4.1203 08). It is in this context of the torment of love that we should interpret Heros final sexual strife when she is at Leanders mercie (l. 770), and Love . . . not full of pittie (as men say) / But deaffe and cruell, where he meanes to pray wrings her as we would wring a bird (ll. 771 74). viii A Chrysippean (that is, Stoic) analysis of Hero and Leanders respective paths to this endpoint might conclude that Leander is the running man, the man overwhelmed by an excess of passion to which he initially assented and thus for which he is responsible. He is now unable readily to command his running legs to stop or turn. 41 He can thank his cultural training in Ovidian love for molding his natural desires in such a
41. On excess passions and the running man, see Annas, pp. 104 07, 11516; and Inwood, Ethics and Human Action, pp. 15573.
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way as to predetermine in him a likelihood (not a necessity) that, on perceiving lepos, he would assent to the overthrow of his reason and rush into a disastrous tangle of ignorance, appetite, and unpleasure. 42 He has failed by Stoic and Epicurean standards. Hero, whose action is typified metaphorically as a planet, mooving severall waies, / At one selfe instant (ll. 361 62), exemplifies Stoic shifting assent in which the mind fluctuates unstably between alternatives.43 Leander seems the guiltier of the two because he is the primary focus of the poem. However, Hero is weak in character and reason, and although she and Leander are perhaps necessarily subject to mutuall appetence, each is to blame for their part in the debasement of this propensity to the level of debilitating lust according to Ovidian recipe. Marlowe may have translated Amores in his youth, but in Hero and Leander Ovid is called to account at the bar of Lucretian Epicureanism where the mutuall appetence of the lovers is admitted but the Ovidian form of their compliance with fate is condemned. When Marlowes detractors accused him of Epicureanism, and likely viewed Hero and Leander (where they knew of it) as a blatantly Epicurean poem, they were right in a way probably contrary to their intent.44 Epicurus repeatedly clarified his doctrine of pleasure and anyone who cared to give it a fair hearing would have discerned a certain ethical proximity to (but by no means identity with) the Stoics reason-guided selfcontrol.45 Lucretius De rerum natura presents itself as an Epicurean poetic remedy for the fear and suffering resulting from the minds infection with false impressions of reality. Marlowes poem is not so overtly partisan, philosophically comprehensive, or resolutely serious. It is far more fun than reading Lucretius and would not be so without the exploited and exploded voice of Ovid. However, there is every reason to suspect Hero and Leander of intelligent philosophical engagement and no reason to doubt its authors ability to subject the poems most obvious precursor (Ovid) to astringent critique within a complexly conceived ethico42. This is not far from the Aristotelean position detailed in Ethica Nicomachea, 1110a1114b. The self-indulgent man is to be held responsible for his actions proceeding from his appetites. His choice of pleasure is voluntary and cannot be said to be forced even if his personal character limits his range of responses. Personal predisposition does not diminish his responsibility because he is in part a cause of his own state of character. 43. Annas, pp. 101, 117. 44. Marlowe: The Critical Heritage, pp. 3238, 4142, 4546. 45. Epicurus, pp. 89 90 (III.13132); and Gisela Striker, Epicurean Hedonism, in Brunschwig and Nussbaum, pp. 317.
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philosophical framework. Hero and Leander may reasonably be considered an exercise in Epicurean therapy (therapeia) for the sick soul, with Leander as its primary negative exemplar in whom we see the collapse of reason in the face of desire. Marlowes narrator exhibits a wry detachment from the turmoil of his poem which indicates that he does not share the pain in body and turmoil in mind of his characters. He tells a gripping story, not about the naturalness of the Stoic pursuit of virtue, but about the difficulties of negotiating an Epicurean world of demystified gods and greater and lesser pleasures. He narrates with lively passion and much wit, while maintaining his own mental calm, poetic command, and reason. If his wonderful management of classical sources and his complaint about the social neglect of Learning, scholler[s], and vertuous deeds (ll. 46582) are anything to go by, we can conclude that he possesses the innate love of learning and of knowledge that Piso argues is a natural component of the human mind (De finibus, 5.18.48). Yet in light of the same evidence, it is much harder to determine whether he would pursue knowledge and virtue in and of themselves (a Stoic position) or because they are pleasurable (an Epicurean position): the question must be left until another time. His self-indulgent recollection of Leanders anatomy (ll. 63 90), with its hint of a Lucretian urge to eat, does not plunge him into a vicious cycle of unreasoned amor, but does remind us of the ongoing importance of sensory pleasure in the Epicurean conceptualization of nature and the good.46 Marlowes narrator is not unaffected by impressions of beauty, but keeps his feet firmly planted in reason, and demonstrates his Epicurean unperturbedness (ataraxia) by sublimating his reminiscence of sensory delight ( ll. 63 71) into the erotogenesis of the Leander character who will carry his philosophical agenda and the seduced reader through to a bitter end.47 The Marlovian therapy commences with the opening blazons, for it is in these delectable images of Hero and Leander that we see the possibility of two responses to amor arising from lepos. The reader and the unwitting
46. See the differing views on Epicurus dependence on sensory pleasures in Nussbaum, Beyond Obsession and Disgust, p. 12; and Plutarchs essay, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum. 47. The narrator may also be likened to Chrysippus walking man, the man whose legs do not unreasonably exceed impulse, but are commensurate with impulse and move fully within the orbit of rational control and reasoned assent. See Annas, pp. 11516; and Cicero, De officiis, 1.29.102.
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protagonists of the poem allow these seductive simulacra (to use Lucretius term)if they are not alerted by their excess and artificeto carry them along the path charted by Leander. The narrator shows another way. He exhibits the rational command of the wise man (an ideal figure in Stoic and Epicurean texts), but also of the poet, for he redirects his amor arising from the conception of beauty into poetically creative action. The erotic touching of Leanders naked beauty not only displays a radical appropriation of Ciceros ideal of malemale friendship, but is the creative imprinting of Leanders form (ll. 6467): recollection equals collection. The narrator is not at the mercy of beautiful images; he is a manipulator and maker of them. As Lucretius calls for the animating beauty of Venus to infuse his poem, so Marlowe turns eros into verse, demonstrating that one may work in accord with Love even during the reign of Strife. The incredible energy of desire which drives Leander into the Hadean form of another Dis also, alternatively, powers the narrators peculiarly detached involvement in a tale which is expressive of nothing less than Marlovian erotopoeisis. Lucretius De rerum natura has long been regarded an Epicurean therapy for a troubled humanity. Is it not possible, along similar lines, that Hero and Leander may be a chastisement of Ovid? Or are we too swayed by what we imagine Christopher Marlowes character to have been, to credit him with this possibility? unive r sity of sydney

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