From Spielberg’s Jaws (1974): in the quest to kill the great white shark that has been wreaking havoc, Brody – on board a medium-sized fishing vessel – finally spots the predator, and it is enormous. Stunned, he steps backwards into the cabin, uttering the immortal line to the captain “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”. It is a typical ‘plot point’ in conventional dramatic structure; the danger has now physically increased, with an attendant increase in the audience’s tension since this boat may not be strong enough to conquer the shark.
2000 years ago we can see a similar ‘Hollywood’ narrative
technique in Pliny the Younger’s letters describing the events surrounding the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Pliny the Younger refers to his uncle (Pliny the Elder) who,
out of academic interest, prepares a boat in order to sail across to the
location of the volcano:
Iubet liburnicam aptārī
- He orders a “Liburnian” to be prepared
liburna, -ae [1/f]: a Liburnian was a type of
light and fast ship, two banks of oars (biremes) on each side.
That he opts for a fast boat would reflect his eagerness to
satisfy his intellectual curiosity.
However, Pliny the Elder receives a letter from Rectina, an
inhabitant unable to escape by land. Personally, I find this incident highly
questionable from the points of view of timing and logistics. Nevertheless,
this event serves as an escalating moment since Pliny the Elder decides to
“upgrade” to a bigger boat, his role in the narrative “evolving” from mere
academic interest to that of a rescuer i.e. the bigger the problem, the bigger
the boat, and the “bigger” the man.
In one short and carefully crafted passage, Pliny
significantly enhances his uncle’s involvement, portraying him as a decisive
and heroic leader:
Vertit ille cōnsilium et quod studiōsō animō incohāverat
obit maximō. Dēdūcit quadrirēmēs, ascendit ipse
nōn Rectīnae modō sed multīs (erat enim frequēns
amoenitās ōrae) lātūrus auxilium.
amoenitās, -ātis [3/f]: pleasantness; beauty
dēdūcō, -ere, dēdūxī, dēductus [3]: to draw out, launch
(ships)
frequēns -ntis: crowded, densely populated
incohō, -āre [1]: to begin, start
obeō, obīre, obiī, obitus [irr.]: go towards; go to meet;
undertake
[i] Vertit ille cōnsilium et
[i] He changes his plan, and
- In dramatic theory, this is – as in ‘Jaws’ – the moment the protagonist realises his initial assumptions are inadequate for the magnitude of the task.
[ii] quod studiōsō animō incohāverat obit maximō.
[ii] Literally: What he had begun with a studious mind, he
executes with the greatest.
that which he had begun with an attitude of study he
takes on with a spirit of courage.
- The enormity of the task demands far more than the purely academic, but the greatest Roman characteristic.
- That shift in priorities is conveyed in a shift of tense from the pluperfect incohāverat to the historical present obit.
- The verb obeō, obīre [irr.] can have the meaning of go to meet or go to face, and neatly conveys the idea of a hero willingly about to encounter an ‘enemy’; to face danger or death is often expressed as perīculum obīre (to go to meet danger) or mortem obīre (to go to meet death).
[A] studiōsō animō [B] incohāverat ¦ [B] obit [A] (animō) maximō.
- In this specific line, Pliny uses ellipsis, the omission of a second animō, to create a deliberate contrast between an ‘academic’ state of mind and a courageous one: studiōsō ¦ animō ¦ … maximō.
- Note also the repetition of the grammatical ending -ō which binds the contrasting ideas.
- We also have here an example of chiasmus: this is a rhetorical
device where words or grammatical structures are repeated in reverse order to
create an A-B-B-A pattern. Here it emphasises the dramatic and decisive change.
[iii] Dēdūcit quadrirēmēs,
[iii] He draws out quadriremes;
- Designed for heavy transport and troop movement, these massive four-banked warships were part of the imperial fleet based at Misenum, and Pliny the Elder was the fleet commander. By using the plural (dēdūcit quadrirēmēs), Pliny the Younger reveals that his uncle launched a full-scale naval evacuation.
[iv] ascendit ipse,
[iv] he himself boards,
- The emphatic pronoun ipse presents him not as a rear-guard commander, but one who will lead the evacuation irrespective of the consequences that he may personally face.
- Note also, between [iii] and [iv] the omission of the conjunction et:
Dēdūcit quadrirēmēs, ascendit ipse
- This is known as asyndeton and conveys here actions that are taking place rapidly and almost simultaneously.
- The use of the historical present (dēdūcit / ascendit) gives a greater sense of immediacy.
[v] nōn Rectīnae modō sed multīs (erat
enim frequēns amoenitās ōrae) lātūrus auxilium.
[v] intending to bring assistance not only
to Rectina, but to many (for the pleasantness of that shore was
crowded).
- He is not just saving a single ‘damsel in distress’; he is saving the masses (multīs). The future active participle lātūrus (intending to / about to bring) frames him as a man with an active, noble destiny.
Ultimately there may be a sad irony in the decision to employ
larger but slower ships. While the veracity of at least some of Pliny’s
narrative is debatable, there were about 300 people on the shore at Herculaneum
waiting for boats to rescue them. They took shelter in the boatsheds, but tragically,
the pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius reached them before any boats did. That
irony is compounded by the fact that, however much of a ‘saviour’ Pliny the
Elder wanted to be, he never managed to save himself.
In one short passage we have a rapid sequence of escalating
events conveyed succinctly and, in places, poetically. It captures the
metamorphosis of a man from intellectual Roman official to a selfless and
decisive hero, ready to face the deadliest of enemies as a saviour of the
people. It is the stuff of which gripping narratives are made, and was designed
to appeal directly to the man who had asked Pliny the Younger to write about
it: the eminent historian, Tacitus.
