Intervisual allusions in Lucian, Dialogues of the Sea Gods 15

This chapter analyses Lucian’s Dialogues of the Sea Gods 15, Zephyr and Notus, centred on the myth of Europa’s abduction by Zeus disguised as a bull, in order to clarify its relationship to both previous literary treatments of the subject and the visual arts. It is noted that Lucian not only shares several narrative details with Moschus’ Europa – the most complete extant account of the Europa myth – but also adopts the same literary strategy. Both authors narrate the story through a series of pictorial vignettes, drawing upon the visual arts, so that the story is presented as a series of ekphrastic tableaux, although neither Moschus nor Lucian present them as actual descriptions of works of art. However, Moschus’ descriptions are long and detailed, while Lucian’s are shorter and impressionistic. It is argued that this difference is mostly due to an aesthetic choice. Lucian combines enargeia (‘vividness’) with allusiveness, fully exploiting the potential of his audience’s visual memory and leaving them free to visualise the rhetor’s verbal depiction as they prefer. The readers/listeners are thus afforded the pleasure of integrating the author’s words with their own knowledge. The readers are actively involved in shaping their own mental images, drawing upon their personal literary knowledge, visual memory, and expertise in the visual arts.