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Abstract: Pickled Tritons: The Bodily Display of (Divine) Cryptids in the Roman Empire

 Dr Ryan Denson - University of Exeter

Pickled Tritons: The Bodily Display of (Divine) Cryptids in the Roman Empire

 

Tritons, the mermen of the antiquity, could be imagined as inhabiting the natural world and as creatures one may even encounter, similar to modern notions of cryptid sightings. Pliny the Elder, for instance, reports that a Triton was seen playing a shell-trumpet in a cave during the reign of Tiberius (Natural History, 9.4). As with ordinary marine life, their bodies were occasionally found and preserved as physical proof of their supposed existence. Thus, Aelian, in his History of Animals, discusses a Triton corpse on display at Tanagra (13.21), describing how a local man once suffered divine vengeance for profaning its body by cutting off some of the scales. Pausanias, viewing the same corpse a century earlier, presents two starkly different versions of how it came to reside in Tanagra (Description of Greece, 9.20). He further tells of another Triton that he personally saw exhibited in Rome (9.21), describing a grotesque form remarkably different from the mermen figures seen in Roman art.

This paper explores how the narratives and associations that Aelian and Pausanias attached to Triton corpses reflect on differing attitudes towards the bodily display of such creatures in Roman culture. As I argue, Tritons in such contexts enable us to discern two divergent patterns of thought. The first occurs where the Triton body is interpreted as that of a divinely-associated supernatural creature, retaining, even in death, a sacral aura. The second is precisely the inverse, a desacralized perspective wherein the displayed corpse is regarded as a mere natural curiosity of nature’s generative capabilities. These patterns of thought can, then, also be found with regard to other instances of Roman bodily display of mythological figures, such as a phoenix and a satyr.

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