Robert Santucci (University of Michigan)
The bizarre figure of Hostius Quadra, for whom mirrors that distort the size of the things they reflect are an object of sexual obsession, has fascinated modern readers of Seneca’s Natural Questions. The viewing experience is crucial to Hostius’ sexual enjoyment; indeed, Seneca devotes a long passage in NQ 1.16 to Hostius’ love of gazing upon the distorted body parts of his sexual partners.
One aspect of Hostius that has been largely overlooked by modern scholars, however, is Seneca’s purposeful conflation of his viewing with eating. He focuses on Hostius’ ocular consumption of the mirror images of his sexual partners as if he were eating them. For example, his sexual practice is called an insatiabile malum (16.3), an “insatiable evil” similar to a bottomless appetite, and oral sex delights not just his mouth but his eyes: “he heaped [secret sexual acts] not only into his mouth but into his eyes” (non in os tantum sed in oculos suos ingereret, 16.4). At the end of this passage Seneca’s Hostius gives a speech defending his behavior, which he memorably ends “if it were permitted to me, I would make those [sc. mirror images] real; since it is not, I will feed on the lie. Let my obscenity see more than it takes in and let it itself marvel at its own submission” (si liceret mihi, ad verum ista perducerem; quia non licet, mendacio pascar. Obscenitas mea plus quam capit videat et patientiam suam ipsa miretur, 1.16.9). The verb capio, which can mean “consume,” heightens the comparison.
In this alimentary analysis of Hostius Quadra, I argue that Hostius’ eyes subsume the place of the mouth; they both watch the sexual acts of his mouth and act as a mouth themselves. Hostius is, then, both eater and eaten. Extended attention to this comparison is important in understanding Hostius’ place within the Senecan corpus, which is filled with positive and negative exempla that have to do with eating. Hostius Quadra is not only a negative exemplum because of his unnatural sexual and ocular behavior, but because of the bizarre way he endeavors to consume his own sexual consumption. This paper builds on the work of, among others, Berno, who reads Hostius’ unnatural viewing behavior as more transgressive than his sexual behavior; Le Blay, who considers Hostius’ place in the world of Senecan exempla; and Williams, who suggests a connection with another well-known passage in the NQ, the fish-obsessed gourmands whom Seneca calls appetitive even with their eyes (oculis quoque gulosi sunt, 3.18.7). Hostius Quadra is an important novum exemplum, the sort which Seneca discourages throughout his corpus, and has much to teach the reader of the NQ about not just degenerate use of mirror technology but the proper way to consume in accordance with natura, a constant concern for Seneca.