Hum 110 | Reed Classics | Reed Library | Reed | Perseus

Ovid's Metamorphoses: Erring by Design
Jay Dickson, Reed College
2/17/99

Outline of lecture:

I. Introduction: The mystery of Ovid's exile

II. Metamorphoses: error or order?

A. Narrative as endless metamorphosis

B. Narrative as establishing of order

III. Willed transformations in poetry and politics

A. Apollo and Daphne

B. The Apotheoses of the Caesars

C. Phaethon

D. The Apotheosis of Ovid

Timeline: 

44 BCE	Julius Caesar murdered
43	Ovid born in Sulmo; triumvirate of Octavian, Lepidus, and Mark Antony formed
42	Deification of Julius Caesar
31	Battle of Actium: Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra
27	Principate established; Octavian given title of Augustus
18	Marriage laws
2	Sometime after this year, Ovid composes Ars Amatoria [Art of Love]
c. 1-c. 8 CE	Ovid composes Metamorphoses
8	Augustus banishes Ovid to Tomis on the Black Sea; Julia the Younger (Julilla) also banished in same year
14	Death and deification of Augustus Caesar; Tiberius becomes emperor
17	Ovid dies at Tomis

Latin terms:

relegatio :	a special (and relatively mild) form of Roman exile where the exiled person and his or her family may keep property despite his or her banishment
carmen :	a poem
error :	a mistake or an indiscretion; literally, "losing one's way"
scelus :	a crime
aition :	a story explaining the cause or reason for something
Apocolocyntosis :	literally, "the transformation into a pumpkin"; the title of a satire by Seneca about the death of Emperor Claudius

 

A.
Although two crimes, a poem and a blunder [carmen et error],

Destroyed me, one unmentioned must remain.

For who am I to renew your wounds, great Caesar?

It's overmuch that I once caused you pain.

The other's left, that a foul poem proves me

A teacher of obscene adultery.

--Tristia II. 207-12  

B.

Today is truly the Golden

Age: gold buys honours, gold

Procures love.

-- Ars Amatoria II. 277-9  

C.
Of bodies changed to other forms I tell:
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song [carmen perpetuum] from nature's first
Remore beginnings to our modern times.

--Metamorphoses I. 1-5, trans. E. J. Kenney (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986)  

D.
The flattery here seems crude and excessive..... The apotheosis motif has little or no
organic connection with metamorphosis as otherwise conceived; the history is not
really assimilated to the myth. Augustus is no logical conclusion to either the
mythology or the philosophy of the carmen perpetuum. And no one, surely, can miss the
conventionality of the panegyric at the end.

--Otis, p. 304.  

E.
Had Phaethon lived, he'd shun the sky; the horses

His folly longed for he'd refuse to hold.

I too confess I fear--I've felt--Jove's weapon;

When thunder rolls, I think it's meant for me.

--Tristia I. i. 79-82  

F.
There are fifteen books of transformations,

The poem rescued from my funeral urn;

Among those figures changed I bid you tell them

They now can reckon my own fortune's turn,

That change, so sudden, from its former aspect,

So lamentable now, though once so gay.

--Tristia I. i. 117-22

Works cited:

*Galinsky, G. Karl. Ovid's Metamorphoses. Berkeley: U of California P, 1975.

*Mack, Sara. Ovid. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988.

*Otis, Brooks. Ovid as Epic Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1966.

*Ovid. The Erotic Poems. Trans. Peter Green. New York: Penguin, 1982.

*-----. Sorrows of an Exile: Tristia. Trans. A. D. Melville. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

*Price, S. R. F. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.

*Thibault, J. C. The Mystery of Ovid's Exile. Berkeley: U. of California P, 1964.