Supplemental Thoughts #1: Echo and Narcissus

In framing the theme for this summer’s readings as an inquiry into narcissism as it develops in ancient texts, from Homer to Vergil, I found myself focusing on the character of Narcissus without fully appreciating the context in which Ovid places him (Metamorphosis Bk 3.402ff). What I failed to take into account is the importance of the myth of Echo, with which the story of Narcissus is coupled. Echo is politically silenced by Juno: by virtue of her distracting Juno from discovering the infidelities of Zeus, she is made more of a “lackey” than she was in her original form (“Echo still had a body then and was not merely a voice. But though she was garrulous, she had no other trick of speech than she has now: she can repeat the last words out of many. Juno made her like that, because often when she might have caught the nymphs lying beneath her Jupiter, on the mountain slopes, Echo knowingly held her in long conversations, while the nymphs fled. When Juno realized this she said ‘I shall give you less power over that tongue by which I have been deluded, and the briefest ability to speak’ and what she threatened, she did. Echo only repeats the last of what is spoken and returns the words she hears.” 3.359ff). It now strikes me as perfectly appropriate that the narcissist has, as a counterpart, someone who merely parrots his words. As much as he is deluded by love of self, his self-love is continually reinforced by the “echo” of his lover (in political terms, this might be a political underling, with or without an erotic component). What would Augustus have thought, on a close reading of Ovid’s tale? Did the poet point out to the emperor that his entourage were potentially nothing more than echos? That he lived in an echo-chamber of his own making? As with all of Ovid’s tales, they can be read as allusions to the political or social issues which caused tension in first-century Rome.