Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733. Latin Text with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary of Terms, Vocabulary Aid and Study Questions (original) (raw)

A Poet between Two Worlds: Ovid in Late Antiquity

In C.E. Newlands and J.F. Miller, eds., A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell) 100-13., 2014

This chapter examines the reception of Ovid’s erotic and exilic elegies in the Latin literature of late antiquity (fourth to sixth centuries CE). Revising Hermann Fränkel’s thesis of Ovid as a “poet between two worlds,” it draws particular attention to a number of examples in which late antique authors allude to Ovid as a means of reflecting on the transitions taking place in their own time, with the emergence of Christianity and the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Texts discussed include Rutilius Namatianus, De Reditu; Dracontius, Satisfactio; Orientius, Commonitorium; and the elegiac collection of Maximianus.

Transformations of Ovid in Late Antiquity

Ovid could be considered the original poet of late antiquity. In his exile poetry, he depicts a world in which Rome has become a distant memory, a community accessible only through his imagination. This, Ovid claimed, was a transformation as remarkable as any he had recounted in his Metamorphoses. Ian Fielding's book shows how late antique Latin poets referred to Ovid's experiences of isolation and estrangement as they reflected on the profound social and cultural transformations taking place in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries AD. There are detailed new readings of texts by major figures such as Ausonius, Paulinus of Nola, Boethius and Venantius Fortunatus. For these authors, Fielding emphasizes, Ovid was not simply a stylistic model, but an important intellectual presence. Ovid's fortunes in late antiquity reveal that poetry, far from declining into irrelevance, remained a powerful mode of expression in this fascinating period. CONTENTS Introduction: a poet between two worlds 1. Ovid Recalled in the Poetic Correspondence of Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola 2. Ovid and the Transformation of the Late Roman World of Rutilius Namatianus 3. The Poet and the Vandal Prince: Ovidian Rhetoric in Dracontius' Satisfactio 4. The Remedies of Elegy in Ovid, Boethius and Maximianus 5. The Ovidian Heroine of Venantius Fortunatus, Appendix 1 Conclusion: Ovid's Late Antiquity.

Introduction to Ovid

P. Ovidius Naso (Ovid) 43 BC-AD 17 List of Works Amores-First edition ca. 20 BC; second edition shortly before the publication of Ars Amatoria Heroides-Between the first and second edition of Amores Ars Amatoria [The Art of Love]-Books 1-2: not before 1 BC; the third book is later in date Medicamina faciei femineae-Before the third book of Ars Amatoria Medea-Date unknown Remedia Amoris [Cures for Love]-AD 1 Metamorphoses-From AD 2 onwards Fasti-From AD 2 onwards Tristia-AD 9 Epistulae ex Ponto [Letters from Pontus]-Books 1-3: AD 13; Book 4 posthumously Life and Works Ovid was born in Sulmo, in central Italy. His family was of equestrian rank and therefore fairly well off (cf. Catullus' family background). Ovid was given the standard education for a young man of his rank and was groomed for a career in law (the ancient equivalent of the civil service). He held a couple of minor posts, but then turned to poetry, for which (he tells us) he had displayed a natural talent since youth. He soon won the patronage of M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus (64 BC-AD 8), a patrician who had won fame as an orator, soldier, and linguist and was a well-known patron of the arts. [Messalla fought on the Republican side at Philippi but later became a supporter of Antony. He transferred his allegiance to Octavian in disgust at Antony's liaison with Cleopatra and fought against Antony at Actium. He was the man who proposed the title of pater patriae ("father of the fatherland") for Augustus in 2 BC] Ovid was not a part, therefore, of the "inner circle" of Augustan poets associated with Maecenas. He did become part of the younger, "fast" crowd at Rome, howeverthe most prominent member of which was the emperor's daughter, Julia (see below). Ovid's poetic output is quite varied. In addition to the Metamorphoses, he composed collections of sophisticated love elegies (the Amores), a collection of fictitious letters (in verse) written by famous women from ancient myth (Heroides), a poetic handbook on the use of cosmetics (Medicamina faciei femineae; cf. Amores 1.14), a tragedy (Medea, now lost, but much praised in antiquity: cf. Metam. 7), the Ars Amatoria (usually called The Art of Love among English authors, but in reality a technical handbook [in verse] on how to engage in illicit erotic liaisons [amor]: cf. Amores 1.4), and a poetic account of the Roman religious calendar (Fasti), describing the various annual rites, their origins, and the myths with which they were associated. Despite the variety of topics and genres evident in Ovid's works, there are certain elements that characterize his oeuvre as a whole (note, e.g., his interest in love

Empire of the Imagination: The Power of Public Fictions in Ovid's 'Reader Response' to Augustan Rome

2011

The idea of an 'Augustan discourse' represents a valuable step forward from the twentieth-century belief that Augustus ruled through patronage and propaganda, insofar as it better accommodates the polyvocality of the literature of his age as well as the delicacy of the princeps' political position between republic and empire. I seek to expand on this approach by drawing literary works into more thoroughgoing dialogue with contemporary 'texts' in other media, including coins and architecture, and by treating all these as examples of reader responses to Augustus that both construct and reflect public interpretations of the emperor. This work focuses in particular on Ovid's readings of the visual iconography of the principate, arguing that these influenced both ancient and modern historians' conception of Augustus as the master architect of his own public image. My project is inspired by poets' creation of a sense of professional rivalry between themselves and the princeps, particularly Ovid's portrayal of Augustus as a fellow manipulator of fictions. However, individual chapters deconstruct this idea by examining how specific 'pro-Augustan' icons cannot be regarded as a tool of propaganda, but rather, exist only within individual representations that often embed critical, evolving, and dialogic perspectives on the emperor. The first chapter analyzes historical evidence for the appearance and interpretation of a comet over Caesar's funeral games in 44 BCE, as well as representations of this sidus Iulium in Roman coins and the poems of Vergil, Horace, Propertius, and Ovid. I argue that the imagistic metamorphosis of the sidus from a star into a comet over the course of Augustus' reign reflects the growth of an ahistorical sense that the young Octavian took a proactive role in deifying Caesar, and a larger tendency to retroject Augustus' mature power onto his early career. My second chapter interweaves an analysis of the archaeological remains of Augustus' temple complex on the Palatine with close readings of Horace, Propertius, and Ovid's literary responses to its architectonics; I argue that these poets' reappropriations of public space for private purposes, particularly Ovid's critique of the Palatine iconography and urban topography, have encouraged modern scholars to overread triumphalist intentions into the Augustan building program. In my last chapter, I compare visual and verbal representations of the triumph ceremony, culminating with Ovid's use of the subject to explore how ritual may be extended 2 through time and space, how writing may be employed to serve empire, and how readers may intervene in a text's creation of meaning. Building on this latter idea, a brief conclusion explores how Ovid's exile poems treat Augustus himself as a text-that is, as a publicly circulating representation of power that was potentially unrepresentative of reality, subject to audience interpretation in defiance of authorial intention, and beholden to the imaginative participation of reader-subjects throughout the empire. Ovid also gives Augustan readers the tools by which to take interpretive control over texts and to examine their own complicity in constructing Augustan power. This parallels my broader theme that modern scholarly interpretations of the period cannot be disentangled from these subjective reader responses to Augustan Rome, and thus become part of a succession of imaginative rereadings and reinterpretations of the figure of Augustus.