Transforming epic: Ovid’s Metamorphoses Politics and Poetics 5 Transforming epic: Ovid’s Metamorphoses

The politics of Ovid’s Met: think about… The pressure it puts on teleological authority Structure: Ovid writes epic as an intricate tapestry of interwoven tales, the connections between which are often oblique; transitions between tales often span books – the shape of the epic book has loosened. Where has the epic hero gone? Where has militaristic epic gone? How are Ovid’s gods and divinities characterised? How much of the Met is ‘elegiac’, or ‘Alexandrian’? How weird is this?

Recall Ovid’s career trajectory… Amores Ars Amatoria Remedia Amoris Medicamina Heroides Plus (alongside/after the Met): Fasti, Tristia, Epistulae Ex Ponto

Counter-cultural elegy? Amores 1.15.1-8:   ‘Why, biting Envy, do you charge me with slothful years, and call my song the work of an idle wit, complaining that, while vigorous age gives strength, I neither, after the fashion of our fathers, pursue the dusty prizes of a soldier’s life, not learn garrulous legal lore, nor prostitute my voice in the ungrateful forum?...But my quest is glory, through all posterity, and to be known forever in song throughout the earth.’

Subversive or/+ imperialist? ‘Ovid engages profoundly with the regime’s own programme, insistently probing the underpinnings of its authority’ (Gareth Williams).

Metamorphoses: the proem In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas) adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen! My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms. O gods, for you yourselves have wrought the changes, breathe on these my undertakings, and bring down my unbroken song from the world’s very beginning to the present times.

Ovid, poet of time tempora = times, temples of head Compare Tristia 2.557-60 ‘If only you would recall your mood from anger for a moment, and order a few lines of this be read to you when you are at leisure, the few lines in which after beginning with the earliest origin of the world I have brought down the work to your times, Caesar (in tua deduxi tempora, Caesar, opus).’

Earlier transforming bodies: the Amores Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam edere, materia conveniente modis. par erat inferior versus—risisse Cupido dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem. Amores 1.1.1-4 Arms and the violent deeds of war I was preparing to sound forth – in weighty rhythm, with matter suiting measure.The second verse was equal to the first, but Cupid laughed,They say, and stole away one foot.

Metamorphosis: endless change, or terminal states?   How do the theme and narratives of metamorphosis fit (or not) with the Augustan idea(l)s of aeterna Roma, or imperium sine fine? Can there be permanence in changeability? What about expansionism, or the need to endlessly reiterate foundation?

Met.15.431-40 ‘And now fame has it that Dardanian Rome is rising, and laying deep and strong foundations by the stream of Tiber sprung from the Apennines. She therefore is changing her form by growth, and some say shall be the capital of the boundless world! So, they tell us, seers and fate-revealing oracles are declaring. And, as I myself remember, when Troy was tottering to her fall, Helenus the son of Priam said to Aeneas, who was weeping and doubtful of his fate, “O son of Venus, if you keep well in mind my soul’s prophetic visions, while you live Troy shall not wholly perish!...”

Virgil’s metamorphoses Aeneid 3.19ff: Aeneas encounters the young Trojan Polidorus in the form of a bleeding bush. Aeneid 7. 10-24: the Trojans skirt around Caieta, Circe’s realm, and hear distant growls of lions, boars, bears and wolves – humans in beast shape. Aeneid 9.107-122: the goddess Cybele asks her son Jupiter to save the burning Trojan ships. Jupiter transforms them into dolphin- like ‘goddesses of the sea’.

Transformative similes? E.g. Aeneid 12.746-55 Aeneas, slowed though his knees were by the arrow wound That hampered him at times, cutting his speed, pressed on hotly, matching stride for stride, Behind his shaken foe. As when a stag-hound Corners a stag, blocked by a stream, or by Alarm at a barrier of crimson feathers Strung by beaters, then the dog assails him With darting, barking runs; the stag in fear of nets and the high river bank attempts To flee and flee again a thousand ways, But, packed with power, the Umbrian hound hangs on, Muzzle agape; now, now he has him, now As though he had him, snaps eluded jaws And bites on empty air.

Ovid Met.3: introduction Exceptionally, a book about a city, unified by this location Thebes not Rome Not successful foundation, but failed, tragic foundation Civilization undone by civil war Epic becoming tragedy/infected by elegy? Met.3 a key book in terms of exploring Ovid’s response to the Aeneid

Political readings of Met.3 ….as an index of the Metamorphoses’s provocative ‘reversal’ of the Aeneid’s civilization-building teleology. …as a book that, in indirect and subtle ways, does important ideological work by elaborating a negative mirror-image of Rome and its evolution. ….as a complex meditation on civil war and its role in Roman history …as a suggestive portrayal and examination of the theme of artistic failure, and of the punishment of artists by tyrannical powers (cf. especially Tristia 2.105-8, where Ovid compares himself to ‘innocent’ Actaeon). …as paradigmatic of an ideologically loaded reflection on modes of representation (visual, written, oral) in Ovidian poetry.