‘And, by opposing, end them’: The Rhetoric of Translators’ Polemics

Abstract

The story of Marsyas, the great satyr-musician, who lost his musical contest with Apollo and was flayed alive for his audacity in challenging the god, bears much moral ambiguity. The first part of the contest failed to produce a winner, but then Apollo turned his lyre upside down and played again, a trick the satyr could not emulate with his double flute. If challenging the Olympian deity may indeed seem blasphemous, the unusual torment to which Marsyas was subjected suggests the equally profane thought that Apollo was a green-eyed rascal. This anxious suspicion must already have haunted ancient interpreters who tried to make sense of the story by elucidating Marsyas’s guilt. A fourth-century Roman mosaic (see Figure 18.1) shows the triumphant god and the satyr, the latter seized and led to his dreadful torture. Their dramatically tense relationship is overshadowed by the presence of an odd figure, relaxed and contented, cheerfully waving good-bye to the ill-fated Marsyas. The Greek inscription, ‘PLANE’, denotes a unique personification of the delusion or deceitful frenzy which drove the bestial satyr to seek comparison with Apollo. And yet even the interference of the allegory hardly obscures the psychological backbone of the story: masters of art often claim their superiority by displacing rivals, and the savage cruelty of Apollo’s judgement reflects in fact the gravity of the threat posed by Marsyas.