Grice ed Ovidio:
l’implicatura conversazionale – Roma – filosofia italiana – Luigi Speranza (Sulmona).
Filosofo italiano. Publio Ovidio Nasone. Muore a Tomi, rivela influssi
filosofici assai svariati. A Posidonio, mediato da Varrone, si fa risalire la
rappresentazione dell'età dell'oro e dello sviluppo della cultura (“Met.”; “Fasti”). Dalla
setta di Crotona deriva in larga misura il libro XV delle Metamorfosi, in cui
Pitagora -- di cui si dice che si innalza sino al divino colla filosofia e scorge
con l’animo ciò che la natura nega agli sguardi umani -- espone ai discepoli un
ampio insegnamento sulla natura, il divino, numerosi problemi naturali oscuri e
condanna l’uso delle carni animali, giustificando questa proibizione con la
teoria della metempsicosi. Nella tesi che nulla è stabile nella natura e
nell’uomo, che anche gli elementi si trasformano gli uni negli altri, si notano
invece influssi eraclitei e di Girgenti. La formazione del mondo dal caos (Met.),
in complesso, riecheggia il portico, ma include anche elementi che fanno
pensare a Girgenti, ad Anassagora e a Lucrezio. For a contemporary Roman reader
of Ovid's Metamorphoses – usually just the emperor -- who has made his way
through the labyrinth of mythological tales that comprise, one segment becomes
in some ways a fresh start. It begins the third and last pentad. As he marks
this formal boundary, Ovid introduces what he calls a *historical* emphasis.
Troy is founded, and from Troy's story that of Rome arises. Roman matter,
settings, and themes occupy ever more of our attention as the thing approaches
its end. Ovid includes some of the same tales that he had used in his less
successful (less read, not even the emperor read it!) in the Fasti, his “most Roman work” in terms
of its proclaimed matter: the very Roman calendar – “tempora cum causis Latium
digesta per annum.” – And the Romans always found a cause to celebrate! As we
read of Hippolytus deified as Virbius, or encounter the list of Alban kings,
the last pentad of the Metamorphoses, too, begins to resursigate for a more
imperial readership the “Fasti.” And yet the latter ‘Roma historical’ part of
of the Metamorphoses is fully continuous with the first part, simultaneously a
fresh start and a seamless continuation. Ovid’s *Roman* historical emphasis is
a development of long-established patterns. First Trojan, then Roman subjects
signal the work's conclusion, wherein the large-scale historical progression
promised in the work's opening lines will be fulfilled: having set out
"from the first beginnings of the world," primaque ab origine mundi
Ovid's narrative will now reach "my own times," mea tempora the
present for both author and readers. Thus, if we, after reading of so many
nymphs and maidens transformed into trees or waterfowl, are surprised to find
Romulus and Julius Caesar turning up, Ovid's development and fulfillment of
narrative patterns also remind us that from the start we had reason to expect
such figures to appear. His vast work of transformative myth embraces even
them. Whereas Rome contribute something new to the last pentad of the
Metamorphoses, she also functions in a fashion that Ovid has made throughly
familiar. Already at the start, the council of the gods, called by Jupiter to discuss
Lycaon's crime, offers a striking Romanisation of heaven's architecture and
social distinctions, with mention of “atria nobelium,” “plebs,” and the
like." When Ovid represents Jupiter summoning the gods to the “palatia Caeli,”
Jupiter becomes not only Romanized but a reflection of Ottaviano, whose casino stood
on the earthly Palatine Hill. Shortly thereafter, Ovid explicitly addresses
Ottaviano in a context that links Lycaon's assassination attempt on Jupiter to
contemporary attempts on Ottaviano’s life. Both crises cause astonishment
throughout the world. “Nec tibi grata minus pretas, Auguste, tuorum est, quam
fuit illa loui.” Thus, in returning to current events Ovid recalls to our minds
their heralded arrival near the beginning. Also familiar is the narrative use
Ovid makes of the Roman matter. Rome functions largely as a frame for other
tales, which are often only tenuously related to the newly-prominent national
theme – or rather the theme of the history of the nation. We are well aware,
when we arrive at this point, that traditionally important and familiar cycles
of myth, such as those concerning Theseus and Hercules function mainly as
framing devices that connect tales. Many of these are only tangentially related
to the framing narrative, or are even altogether remote from it. No sooner does
Ovid introduce Troy than he begins to employ it in this now-familiar narrative
mode. The traditional story appears to establish a structural pattern for the
progress of the narrative, but it is soon displaced, as tales succeed tales.
Troy may be familiar ground, but its familiarity does not enable us to predict
our convoluted path through Ovid's work with any confidence. Who could guess,
when Laomedon founds Troy, that Ceyx and Alcyone would occupy much of our
attention? As we read their tragic tale, we may observe thematic links to other
tales in the Metamorphoses, as in the personification of Somnus, which formally
recalls those of Inuidia and of Fames. Yet the topic of Troy has disappeared,
at least for now, from view. So has the new historical emphasis. For the tale
of Ceyx and Aleyone is as mythical, as fabulous, as anything in the preceding material.
Indirection and unpredictability remain characteristic of the narrative even as
Ovid draws Roman historical material within his scope. One might expect Roman historical
themes to alter the Metamorphoses. Instead, the Metamorphosis-motif alters
them. An especially powerful symbol of Ovid's transformative language is his
last and most ambitious personification, the House of Fame. After Ceyx and
Aleyone, Ovid abruptly returns to Trojan subjects with Aesacus, then recounts
the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the arrival of the Greek fleet at Troy. But
before proceeding with the Trojan War, he introduces a remarkable descriptive
passage on Fama, beginning with these lines: “orbe locus medio est inter
terrasque fretumque caelestesque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi; unde, quod
est usquam, quamuis regionibus absit, inspicitur, penetratque cauas uox omnis
ad aures. Fama tenet summaque domum sibi legit in arce.” There is a place at
the middle of the world, between land, sea, and the heavenly region, at the
boundary of the threefold universe. From here one can see anything anywhere,
however distant its place; and every voice comes to one's hollow ears. Rumor
holds it, and selected its topmost summit for her house. This is the last and
the most ambitious, though not the longest, of the large-scale personifications
in the Metamorphoses ambitious because, whereas with Inuidia and Fames Ovid
achieves a rich and grimly detailed impression of corporality through his
descriptive language, here indistinctness is paradoxically the goal of precise
description. The lines just quoted appear to establish theplace of Fama's
house, but in a way that defeats definition; for the house occupies a liminal
site, hovering at the boundaries between earth, sea, and sky. The structure
itself if it can be called a struc-scarcely separates inside from outside, for
its porous nature defeats such distinctions: “innumerosque aditus ac mille
foramina tectis addidit et nullis inclusit limina portis: nocte dieque patet;
tota est ex aere sonanti, tota fremit uocesque refert iteratque, quod audit.
nulla quies intus nullaque silentia parte.” She added innumerable approaches to
the building, and a thousand openings. With no doors did she shut its
threshold: it lies open night and day. The whole house is of resounding brass,
produces a roar, echoes and repeats what it hears. There is no quiet within,
silence in no quarter. In and out of the house issue personified rumors: atria
turba tenet: ueniunt, leue uulgus, cuntque mixtaque cum ueris passim commenta
uagantur milia rumorum confusaque uerba uolutant. A throng occupies its halls;
they come and go, a light crowd; lies mixed with truth wander here and there by
the thousands; and the confused words of rumor roll about. Only when this
expansive description is finished do we learn its relevance to its
surroundings: rumors of the Greek expedition have reached Troy. This house of
Fama and her attendant rumors, "lies mixed with truth," creates a
remarkable preface to the beginning of the Trojan War, inviting us readers to
consider it as an interpretive comment on all that follows. Feeney connects the
passage to themes of poetic authority in the Metamorphoses; indeed, the
authority of Ovid's epic predecessors, especially Homer's lad and Odyssey and
Virgil's Aeneid, is at issue in the later books of the Metamorphoses, where
extensively adapted sometimes severely distorted-versions of their tales are
woven into a new fabric. For much of the rest of Book 12, for instance, Nestor
narrates the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, as he did in Book 1 of the liad:
but Homer's version is a brief summary, meant to illus-trate a point in its
context, Ovid's a vast expansion that engulfs its context, displacing the
Trojan War in our attention for hundreds of lines. Fama dominates the rest of
Ovid's poem, from Book 12 to the end, not only because of the formal
introductory description of the house of Fama, but also because of the
increasing role of internal narration in the later books: as the poem proceeds,
the epic narrator recedes, and more and more tales are reported by an internal
narrator to an internal audience. Fama also forms a boundary for Books 12-15,
prominently recurring at the very end of the Metamor-phoses, where fama
provides the means of the poet's continued sur-vival: perque omnia saecula
fama,/ siquid habent veri uatum praesagia, winam (15.878-79). The recurring
presence of Fama serves as a reminder of the fundamental lack of definition and
stability characteristic of narrative style throughout the work. Flux remains
Ovid's theme to the end, and Fama provides both a symbol and an embodiment of
flux within the narrative. Fama resists the tendency toward interpretive
simplicity and transparency that the introduction of historical and political
topics might lead us to expect. As we proceed through the last pen-tad,
historical and historico-political modes of understanding events, however
pervasive their presence, ultimately never reduce Ovidian flux to order. Fate,
for instance, a cosmic principle beloved of some Greek and Roman historians,
whose workings they trace in the unfolding of events, duly turns up from time
to time in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and does so as a theme of historicized myth
that is likely to remind us of Virgil's Aeneid. Yet, whereas the Aeneid is
deeply imbued with a sense of fate, guiding the reader to a teleological
understanding of myth and history, fate is an historical prop in the
Metamorphoses part of the furniture of historicized myth. Far from dominating
its context, the context dominates it, as in the summaries of the Eneide that Ovid
employs as framing devices -- non tamen euersam Troide cum moenibus esse/spem
quoque fata sinunt.” These lines introduce Enea’'s departure from Troy with
unmistakable reference to Virgil's plot and theme. WhereasVirgil integrates
fate (fatum, il fato) into the structure and architecture of the “Eneide”,
however, Ovid reduces fate and its impact on events to barest summary. Ovid
acknowledges Virgil's historical vision without permitting that vision to
structure his narrative or his readers' experience of it. Instead, Ovid
shamelessly *appropriates* Virgilian turns of phrase in the national epic for a
characteristic Ovidian witticism, playing simultaneously on the literal and
figurative senses of euersam. Troy's walls are physically overturned, but her
hopes, conceptually and metaphorically are not overturned. Sylleptic implicature
of this kind saturates the Metamorphoses and embodies its themes of
transformation on the narrative surface: the loss of human identity in
metamorphosis, the shifting of boundary between human and natural, indeed the
obscuring of any such boundary are events typical of the Metamorphoses;. Ovid
now sets the plot of Virgil's Aeneid among them, exploiting Virgilian language
for his own transformative wit. Although there is a shift to historical and this
national theme, and with them a more direct engagement with Ovid's epic
predecessors, the Metamorphoses remains the same poem it was. The porous,
echoing, boundary-less, and visually indistinct house of Fame incorporates all
within it. Ovid's epic predecessors are a conspicuous presence and readers
familiar with them may try to understand Ovid's material in similar terms. Yet
Ovidian slipperiness remains. Ovid refuses to be pinned down, to yield to
interpretive stability, although his readers may crave it. In fact, by
introducing interpretive frameworks familiar from his predecessors-Virgilian
fate, for instance, in the lines quoted above Ovid takes advantage of his
readers' desire for clarity: he invites us to reach conclusions, then fails to
sustain them. The concept of fate drawn from the philosophy of the Porch is one
interpretive possibility that turns up in the Metamorphoses, yet without the
structured development that Virgil gives it; Augustan historical vision is
another. By introducing historical and political subjects into his work, Ovid
invites readers to consider the relationship of the Metamorphoses to the world
outside it -- not only to the Aeneid and earlier Roman epic on historical
themes, but also to Augustan ideology and its expression outside poetry -- in
the architectural projects, for instance, by which Ottaviano “transforms’ the
Romans' physical environment. When he introduces the voyage of Aeneas alluding
to the plot and eventhe vocabulary of Virgil's epic, Ovid acknowledges his
contemporary readers' awareness that the Aeneid has overwhelmed other versions
of this story. Ovid could not retell this story with directing readers
awareness from his own text to Virgil's. When Ovid incorporates the apotheosis
of Romulus into the narrative of Book 14, readers are likely to find that their
thoughts turn unavoidably to Ottaviano’s identification of himself as Romolo –
Roma’s first king -- , and to accompanying images and slogans concerning the
foundation of Rome. Because Ottaviano eventually gains, like Romolo, a place
among the dia, Ovid's apotheosis of Romulus invites his readers at least
provisionally to define the relationship between this figure from the remote
past and his contemporary embodiment. Ovid presents a parade of heroes in the
later books of the Metamorphoses. Hercules leads the way; then Aeneas, Romulus,
Julius Caesar, and Ottaviano form a triad of apotheosised mortals. These three figures
are already iconic when they turn up in Ovid's poem iconic in the sense that
they resemble images that are powerfully identified with meanings, like the
statues of these very heroes that stood in Ottaviano's forum. Because Ovid's
parade of heroes arrives accompanied by preexisting interpretive baggage, it
will be worthwhile to contrast these two fundamentally different sites of
meaning, each with its own ways of associating ancient with contemporary heroes.
The Forum of Ottaviano an architectural space well designed and equipped to
promote a unified and coherent set of messages about the relationship of past
to present; and Ovid's Metamorphoses, a fluid narrative on the prevalence of
change, whose author enacts his theme by mischievous artistry, establishing
patterns of meaning, then disrupting and fracturing them. Historical patterns
are among those that Ovid deliberately reduces to incoherence. Each of these
sites of meaning is powerfully manipulative, and each achieves its impact by
means well suited to the message. Meeting a Roman hero in the “Forum Augusti,”
the observer's upward gaze would encounter not only an impressive image, but
also a titulus, identifying him, and an elogium, recording his achievements. Furthermore,
this experience takes place within an architectural complex, the Forum Augusti,
erected by Ottaviano in payment of a vow made while fighting his adoptive
father's assassins at Philippi.Within so structured an experience, the observer
of its visual images and inscriptional texts is unlikely to go far astray in
interpreting them. Although the battle occurred some time ago, the Forum
itself, dedicated, is a recent reminder of that event for the readers of Ovid's
Metamorphoses. In the parallel exedras along its longer sides stood statues of Enea
on one side and Romolo on the other. For Ovid to set the parallel apotheoses of
these same heroes near each other is to make inevitable the reader's
recognition of Ottaviano’s meanings attached to these deified heroes. At the
same time, in the Metamorphoses these figures are iconic in a far less tightly
regulated context of meanings than they are in the forum. Though now purely
verbal, they resemble ideological statements less than do the forum's statues.
Ovid presents his portraits, so to speak, without titulus and elogim to
regulate their interpretation. Thus exposed, the portraits lose their
interpretive transparency and become vulnerable to incorporation into Ovidian
flux. Consistent with the organization and coherence of the Forum Augusti is
the fact that its symbolism is easy to interpret. Within the temple of “Mars
Ultor,” for instance, stood cult statues of Mars – MARTE LUDIVISI – Romolo’s
father, parent and protector of the Romans, and Venus, the ancestress of the
Julian gens. Everything about these images directs the viewer's attention away
from the adultery of Marte and Venere so prominent in their mythological
tradition. Only the irreverent and satirical perspective that Ovid offers in
Tristia 2 resists the ennobling abstraction of such figures and drags adultery
back into view. There, Ovid describes the cult statues of Marte and Venere, who
stood next to each other in the temple's cella, as Venus Vitori ncta (Ir.
2.296), "Venus joined to the Avenger" -- an expression that invites
reflection on the sexual significance of “iungere." Venus's husband stands
outside the door, wir ante fores."? A myth of political origin, its official
representation in art, and resistance to it are prominent also in the
Metamorphoses in the tale of Arachne. It is enough to emphasize here that the
tale offers rich reflections on official interpretation of art. When Minerva
chooses to depict her victory over Neptune in the two divinities' dispute over
the naming of Athens, her tapestry, decorously ordered and balanced, promotes
its didactic message with unavoidable clarity, while offering an aesthetic
correlate to the power of enforcement that lies behind that message. Readers
often side with the Arachne and her irreverent depiction of divine misbehavior;
yet Minerva does not ask for our approval, nor need she take much thought for
the judges of the con-test. Her views of the story are enforceable and will
determine the outcome of the plot. Her power allows her to impose her
perspective on events. Because the historical subjects of the later books of
the Metamorphoses so often bring official interpretations within view, it is
worth noting that, according to one political approach to literature currently
in favor, only official interpretations are possible. On this view, all
activity of writing and reading takes place within a fixed political system,
often unrecognized by the participants, that "advances the interests"
of "elites."' Proponents of this approach offer a powerfully
reductive historicism: nothing is important about literature except the
historically determined power-relationships that govern its production and
reception; all attention to literary qualities of a text is sentimental and
self-indulgent aestheticism. Whereas this view contracts all understanding of
literature to the narrowly political, some recent writers on history in Roman
literature expand the historical to a larger field that embraces Varro's
theologia tripertita and the universal history of Cornelius Nepos, Diodorus
Siculus, and others. In the shift, for instance, from mythological to
historical subjects in the Metamorphoses, we can see a broad similarity to
Varro's “De gente populi Romani.” Wheeler's work on elements of history in the
Metamorphoses shows that Ovid's awareness of historical principles is far
deeper and more intimate than has been recognized before. For instance, the
poem's "alternation between diachrony and synchrony is a narrative
technique characteristic of universal history. The poem's chronological
framework from first origins to the present also reflects the aims of universal
history; yet Wheeler, like most critics today, does not view the poem "as
a natural process of evolution from chaos to cosmos, culminating in the peace
and properity of the Augustan age."' Arguing for a subtler and less
overtly political patterning of events, Wheeler traces historical principles
behind the increasingly historical subject matter of the last pentad. The
movement from myth to history represents "a shift," in Wheeler's
view, "from a theologia fabulosa to a theologia civilis." The terms
are Varronian, and invite us to contemplate the Metamorphoses alongside Varro's
“Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum” -- a massive and comprehensive
work, among whose aims was to organize conceptions of divinity into mythical,
natural, and civic (Aug., Ci. Dei). Ovid is known to have used the “Antiquitates”
as a source in the later books of the Metamorphoses as well as in the Fasti,
and it is surely right to call attention to the presence of Varronian
principles in Ovid's work. Yet, Varro's conceptual organization does not
structure Ovid's work, and Varro's religio-historical vision only partly
informs Ovid's. Ovid brings Varro into the mix just as he does Ottaviano’s
mythologizing and the historical mythologizing undertaken by his epic
predecessors, especially Homer, Ennio, and Virgil. P. Hardie has recently
argued for the presence of Livy in the Metamorphoses, arguing that Ovid's
vision is fundamentally historical. Ovid writes the long historical epic that
Virgil self-consciously had abjured. Recent emphasis on history in Ovid has
much to teach us about his intellectual depth and awareness of contemporary affairs;
yet it also runs the risk of presupposing a conceptual tidiness and order that
Ovid's work in fact thwarts and defies. The historical vision of the Metamorphoses
remains deeply fractured, stubbornly resistant to schematizing, and
intentionally incoherent. Ovid acknowledges historical conceptions, but his
work escapes their power to shape his material and to govern our responses to
his text. Ovid's"historical" books are as strange, perverse,
unpredictable, and provocative as the "fabulous" books that precede
them.In Book 11, the Metamorphoses suddenly becomes historical: "the
'historical' section actually begins at with Laomedon's founding of Troy. To be
sure, the poem has pursued the course of history from the opening lines of Book
1, while Romanization on both a large and small scale has kept contemporary
reference, analogies, and allegorical interpretive options before our eyes
throughout the progress of the work. Yet the foundation of Troy, which turns up
as a narrative topic just after King Midas has received ass's ears, abruptly
brings the poem's subject-matter within the boundaries of history. For the Romans,
in so far as a distinction was made between history and myth, the Trojan War
tended to mark the dividing line. This, with its aftermath, occupies the next
three books. Because, however, Rome's origins are in Troy, this also begins a
narrative sequence that continues to the end of the poem, and indeed to the
moment of reading for Ovid's Roman audience. In the last pentad,
"mythical" tales continue unabated, but now jostle with tales from
Roman history and even "current events," all brought within the
narrative sweep. Among "current events" we may locate the
transformation of Julius Caesar's soul into a star. Yet this transformation is
thoroughly mythologized, for it occurs among the activities of the goddess
Venus. With Troy's foundation, history arrives well integrated into the poem's
patterns of mythological narrative. We might expect that lin-carity and clarity
of narrative progress would arrive along with historical subjects, and indeed
the last pentad is sometimes described as if this were the case. When we reach
Laomedon's Troy the principle of chronological sequence takes charge again: it
is 'after that' rather than 'meanwhile' that sustains the illusion of reality. But
Wilkinson's impression is in fact illusory. The amount of material recounted by
internal narrators steadily increases in the later books, so that chronological
movement is constantly interrupted and postponed by tales of the past, recent
or remote. Even more remarkable is the fact that history arrives together with
manifest anachronism. It is often noted that the participation of Hercules in
the foundation of Troy -- his rescue of Hesione and his capture of the city
after Laomedon refuses him the promised horses -- occurs lines after the hero's
death and apotheosis. Ovid makes no attempt to reconcile the chronology. Wheeler
has explored Ovid's anachronisms in revealing detail, showing that at Hercules'
death. Troy is assumed to exist already in the world of the poem, and that
"Ovid could have avoided the anachronism by placing stories about the dead
and deified Hercules in the mouths of characters who report retrospective
events in inset narratives that temporarily suspend the main chronological
thread. Instead, Ovid flaunts his disruption of chronology, first recounting
Hercules' death and apotheosis, then introducing a narrator, Alemene, mother of
Hercules, to recount his birth. Chronology appears to reverse direction, but
chronological dislocation turns out to be more complex than simple reversal.
Wheeler's conclusions refute the common notion that Ovid's shift to historical
topics results in a more linear narrative explication and greater chronological
regularity. The reintroduction of Hercules is therefore part and parcel of a
larger web of anachronism involving the foundation of Troy and the marriage of
Peleus and Thetis, both of which should have occurred already in the poem's
historical continuum. It should be clear, furthermore, that Ovid's
transpositions of the foundation of Troy and the marriage of Peleus and Thetis
are a deliberate structural strategy to furnish new points of origin for the
narrative of the final books of the poem. That is, Ovid deliberately violates
his earlier chronological scheme to provide new beginning points for the final
pentad i.e., from the foundation of Troy and the birth of Achilles to the
present) As a result, the formality and regularity of the pentadic structure
produces a paradoxical result: on the one hand, it divides the work
symmetrically into thirds and hence to some extent structures the experience of
the reader: we may compare the division of Virgil's Aeneid into halves, in
allusive reference to the Odyssey and Iliad." On the other hand, in
effecting a new beginning for thelast pentad, Ovid reinforces the narrative
indirection and unpredictability that have characterized the Metamorphoses from
its beginning. The tales that follow the foundation of Troy both illuminate and
obscure the newly initiated narrative patterns of the last pentad. At this
point, Ovid's readers may expect him to expand upon the origins of the Trojan
conflict. He does so in his account of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of
Achilles, but hastily summarizes the elements of the story that are
traditionally the most important: Thetis receives a prophecy that she will bear
a son who will surpass his father; Jupiter, despite his passion, avoids mating
with Thetis "lest the universe contain anything greater than Jupiter"
(ne quacquam mundus loue maius haberet). Ovid alters the authority for the
prophecy, substituting the shape-shifting divinity Proteus for Themis as its
source. He then develops the story in his own way, dwelling upon a description
of the bay frequented by Thetis, Peleus's attempt to, assault her (which she
thwarts by shape-shifting), Proteus's advice to Peleus that he tie her up as
she sleeps, and the successful results. Some of this account will remind us of
epic predecessors, for Proteus is familiar from the Odyssey as well as from a
brief appearance carlier in the Metamorphoses and from Virgil's Georgics. Yet
in emphasizing shape-shifting and sexual assault, Ovid flaunts the unedifying
nature of his account and its lack of relevance to any of the large-scale
themes, providential, historical, and originary, that one might expect at the
threshhold of events that lead to the foundation of Rome. An account of origins
this may be, with reference to historical subjects, and formally analogous to
Virgil's reworking of Homeric material in the Aeneid. Yet Ovid offers it
manifestly without the interpretive guidance that would associate it with
Virgilian themes. As an account of origins, it explores causes of the Trojan
War still more remote than those developed by Ovid's pre-decessors, suggesting
a line of interpretation that traces events back to lust, violence, and
deception at least as much as to beneficent destiny. Ovid on the one hand
traces Trojan subject matter from its origins, and on the other
characteristically takes his narrative into unforeseen directions. The tales of
Daedalion and his daughter Chione and of Geyx and Aleyone are intricately
linked to the matter of Troy; yet in them Ovid pursues free-wheeling
digressivevariety that is entirely consistent with the earlier books of the
Meta-morphoses, in no way more linear, predictable, or goal-directed than
formerly. At the end of Book 11, Troy, chronology, and fate turn up in another
tale of amorous pursuit. Ovid attaches his tale of Aesacus, a son of Priam
first known from Ovid's version, to that of Geyx and Alcyone, whose unhappy
tale of fidelity and loss has long occupied our attention. Observing the royal
couple, now transformed to kingfishers, near the shore, an old man and his
neighbor shift their conversation to another sea-bird, the diver, who likewise
turns out to have a human history and even royal lineage. In a send-up of
learned claims to poetic authority," Ovid's narrator cannot tell us which
of the two interlocutors is the source for the story: proximus, aut idem, si
fors tulit... dixit. The irony of this crisis of authority is especially marked
by the genealogical king-list that follows, which approaches annalistic, even
inscriptional style: et si descendere ad ipsum ordine perpetuo quaeris, sunt
huius origo Ilus et Assaracus raptusque loui Ganymedes Laomedonue senex
Priamusque nouissima Troiae tempora sortitus. frater fuit Hectoris iste: qui
nisi sensisset prima noua fata iuuenta forsitan inferius non Hectore nomen
haberet. And if you wish to follow his lineage down to him in continuous
sequence, his ancestors were llus, Assaracus, Ganymede, seized by Jupiter, and
Priam, allotted Troy's last days, That bird there was Hector's brother. If he
had not experienced a strange fate in early youth, perhaps he would have no
less a name than Hector's. Ovid appears simultaneously to claim and to obscure
authority for the tale. To complete the paradox, he refers to the king-list as
ordo perpetuus, "a continuous list": thus the pretensions of his
carmen perpetum to be a universal history, conducted in unbroken sequence from
first beginnings to the present, serve to introduce a tale of admittedly
indeterminate origin. The tale that follows is primarily a natural actiology,
incorporating both historical and epic subjects into an account of how Hector's
brother became the origin of a species of sea-bird. Aesacus chasesHesperie, who
in her hasty flight steps on a snake, Eurydice-like, and dies of its bite. Her
pursuer is introduced as hating cities and devoted to rural life, yet unrustic
in his susceptibility to love: non agreste tamen nec inexpugnabile amori/
pectus habens. Amor agrestis is not uncommon in the Metamorphoses and will soon
be fully developed in the tale of Polyphemus. What is unusual in Aesacus are
his guilt and remorse at Hesperie's death: uulnus ab angue a me causa data est.
ego sum sceleration illo, qui tibi morte mea mortis solacia mittam. The wound
was given by the snake, the cause by me. I committed a greater crime than the
snake, and will send you consolation for your death by my ow. When he throws
himself from a cliff, the sea-goddess Tethys pities him and transforms him into
the diver; the verb mergitur at the end of the story echoes the noun mergus at
its beginning. Thus, the whole story is framed as an aetiology of the bird's
name, and so establishes a link between the history of Troy and the origins of
the natural world. Trojan history, along with all notions of historical
progress to the glorious present, becomes naturalized and incorporated into
aetiological explication; natural phenomena, meanwhile, receive a history, and
suggest that an historicized understanding of nature is possible. Natural
actiologies are prominent in Ovid's integration of Trojan subjects into the
Metamorphoses. As he introduces more Roman subjects and Roman heroes into his
narrative, his atiological focus turns from the earth to the heavens. The
poem's first apotheosis is that of Hercules. A sequence of apotheoses and
catasterisms follows. After Jupiter promises Venus to make the soul of her
descendant, Julius Caesar, into a star, she, although unable to prevent
Caesar's murder, snatches the soul from his limbs and carries it to the
heavens. There, having become a star, it rejoices to see its own deeds outdone
by those of Ottaviano. When Ottaviano forbids his own deeds to be preferred to
his father's, personified Fama reappears to thwart him: hic sua pracferri
quamquam uetat acta paternis, libera fama tamen nullisque obnoxia iussis
inuitum prefert unaque in parte repugnat. Although he forbids his own deeds to
be preferred to his father's, nevertheless Fame, free and not yielding to any
commands, prefers him against his will, defying him in this matter only. To
attribute modestia to a ruler is standard in panegyric, and equally standard
are the exempla that follow;'' but because these lines appear in the
Metamorphoses, they invite multiple perspectives on the events described.
Readers are already familiar with Fara as the source of "lies mixed with
truth," which issue from her echoing house, and have met her also as
"the herald of truth," offering an accurate prophecy about the royal
succession among Rome's early kings: destinat imperio clarum praenuntia
ueri/fama Numam. Later, Pythagoras claims Fama as his authority for predicting
the rise of Rome: nunc quoque Dardaniam fama est consurgere Romam. To be sure,
any claims of truth for Fama are problematic in the Metamorphoses. The
identification of Fama as praenuntia weri occurs in a context of manifest
anachronism, the irony of which would have been obvious to Ovid's Roman
readers. The succession of Numa, the second king of Rome, was an accepted part
of the historical record. But Ovid's readers knew well that the tradition of
his visit to Crotone as a student of Pythagoras is chronologically impossible.
Cicero (Rep.; Tusc.) and Livy point out that Pythagoras did not come to Italy
until the fourth year of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, years after Numa's
death. The Ovidian narrator, however, exploits the audience's awareness of the
anachronism to launch one of the greatest non-events of the poem. After Fama's
appearance in the tale of Numa, her recurrence as an agent in the tale of Julius
Caesar's soul exemplifies the ambiguous natureof the politically charged
episodes at the end of the Metamorphoses. Few passages in the work provoke such
widely divergent views as the apotheosis of Caesar's soul, and all of them, I
would maintain, can find support in Ovid's text and are in fact generated by
it: that Ovid introduces the apotheosis and Augustan panegyric "in all
seri-ousness," and "employs the official terminology in an entirely
loyal fashion", that this material is ridiculous, satirical, even
subversive. This is intentionally incoherent, presenting the reader with
irreconcilable interpretive options. Certainly there is a striking dichotomy in
modern critical positions taken on whether the apotheosis is integral to the
larger work or loosely added as extraneous matter. The eulogy of Ottaviano and the
account of Giulius Caesar's apotheosis are not the organic end of a persistent
thematic development. It should be evident from the numerous examples of apotheosis
in the Metamorphoses that Julius Caesar's catasterism is the repetition of a
common tale-type, which is associated with the end of narrative sequences,
books, and pentads, and the poem as a whole, however. As for the apotheoses of
Aeneas and Romulus, we find that they prepare for and introduce not only the
apotheosis itself of Caesar's soul, but also the interpretive questions it
raises. Ovid resumes the engagement with Virgil's Aeneid that he had begun, and
intermittently pursued. Ovid takes over from Virgil the burial of Aeneas's
nurse Caieta as an initiatory gesture: in the Aeneid it begins Book 7, and
Ovid's version of Aeneid 7-12 begins here, too. Ovid adds an epitaph for
Caieta: hic me Catam notae pietatis alumnus/ ereptam Argolico quo debuit igne
cremauit. By emphasizing Caieta's rescue from one fire and cremation by
another, Ovid calls attention to an etymological explanation of her name from
kaiew, glossed by cremare. Thereby Ovid alludes to the derivation that Virgil
omitted. Ovid is in a sense commenting on Virgil's text, noting an etymology
that would later find a place also in Servius's commentary on the Aeneid. Another
effect of Ovid's revision is to fill out the earlier account, suggesting that
there is more to the story than what Virgil provides. There follows a severely
abridged summary of the Aeneid. After Aeneas's arrival, the subsequent war in
Latium up to Venulus's embassy to Diomedes requires only nine lines. Ovid here
resumes his earlier procedure in retelling the Aeneid. Most of Virgil's work he
reduces to brief, sometimes comically abbreviated, summary. Ovid also adds many
tales not in Virgil. In parallel fashion, Ovid had earlier refashioned the
lliad, expanding the inset tale of the Lapiths and Centaurs to great length,
and adding two tales not in Homer's account: a nearly inconclusive struggle
between Achilles and the invulnerable Cygnus, and a verbal battle, the debate
over the arms of Achilles. In both of them, Homeric heroism becomes attenuated
until it is barely noticeable. Ovid now reworks two tales from the Aeneid that
had offered accounts of transformation: the companions of Diomedes, transformed
to seabirds (Aen.; Met.), and Aeneas's ships, transformed to nymphs (Aen.; Met.).
In Ovid's account, the first of these becomes a tale of unequal justice typical
of the Metamorphoses, though thematically remote from the Aeneid: Acmon,
recounting the miseries that Diomedes' crew has endured at the hands of Venus,
impiously provokes her (Met.). Dicta placent paucis (Met.), "his words
picase few" of his com-rades; but Venus punishes both Acmon and those who
opposed him with arbitrary transformation. Her power is amply demonstrated; yet
the lesson of the tale remains at best ambiguous, and its conclusion seems to
transfer its uncertainties into the visual sphere. These are uolucres dubiae,
and any attempt to identify them must remain frus-trated: 'si, uolucrum quae
sit dubiarum forma, requiris,/ ut non cygnorum, sic albis proxima cygnis (Met.
14.508-9). The alternating pattern of severe abbreviation and vast expansion of
Virgilian material provides a context for the apotheosis of Aeneas, an event
foretold but not narrated in the Aneid. Jupiter begins his consolatory prophecy
to Venus in Aeneid 1 by mentioning the foundation of Lavinium and Aeneas's
apotheosis. Both are assurances that fate and Jupiter's established plans have
not changed: parce metu, Cytherea, manent immota tuorum fata tibi; cernes urbem
et promissa Lauini moenia, sublimemque feres ad sidera Caeli magnanimum Aenean;
neque me sententia uertit. Cease from fear, Cytherea: your fates remain for you
unmoved. You will see the city and promised walls of Lavinium, and you will
carry aloft great-souled Aeneas to the constellations of heaven; my decision
has not changed. Jupiter's prophecy, which at this point already has passed
well beyond the plot of the Aeneid, embraces all Rome's fortunes within a
reassuring teleological vision. Among the events prophesied is the
reconciliation of Juno with the Romans, which is to prove important both for
the Aeneid and for Ovid's recontextualization of Virgilian topics: quin aspera
luno, quae mare nune terrasque metu caelumque fatigat, consilia in melius
referet, mecumque fouebit Romanos, rerum dominos gentemque togatam. Furthermore,
harsh Juno, who now wears out sea, earth, and heaven with fear, will turn her
plans to a better course; along with me she will cherish the Romans, lords of
all, the people of the toga. We ought better to call this not the but a
reconciliation, for, introduced after Jupiter's mention of Romulus and the
foundation of Rome, it appears not to refer to the reconciliation that actually
occurs in Aeneid 12. There, shortly before the final encounter of Aeneas and
Turnus, Jupiter appeals to Juno to give up her wrath. Juno does so, stipulating
that the Latins not be required to give up their language and dress, and that
Troy remain fallen (Aen.). In Aeneid 1, however, Virgil follows Ennius's “Anales”
in dating Juno's reconciliation to the time of the second Punic War, Ennius's
own subject, as Servius notes on the words “consilia in melius referet: quia
bello Punico secundo, ut ait Ennius, placata luno coepit fauere Romanis.” Virgil
mentions the chronologically later reconciliation long before describing the
former. In Book 1 Jupiter takes a longer view of destiny, showing that a
conflict introduced but unresolved in the Aeneid, the future hostility of
Carthage, will eventually be resolved happily. Whether we take Juno's
reconciliation in Aeneid 12 to be incomplete, impermanent, or, limited to only
some of Juno's grudges, it contributes only a partial sense of closure to the
end of Virgil's poem. Ovid's transformation of Aeneas into the divine Indiges
more specifically recalls Aeneid 12 than Aeneid 1, especially the beginning of
Jupiter's address to Juno at Am.: 'indigetem Aenean seis ipsa et scire fateris/
deberi caelo fatisque ad sidera tolli' Ovid does not closely follow the
chronology of Juno's reconciliation in Aeneid 12, however, shifting it instead
to a time beyond Vergil's plot, and just preceding the apotheosis of Aeneas,
which indeed it serves to introduce: iamque deos omnes ipsamque Aencia uirtus lunonem
ucteres finire coegerat iras, cum bene fundatis opibus crescentis Iuli
tempestius erat caelo Cythereius heros. And now Aeneas's virtue had compelled all
the gods, even Juno herself, to put an end to old anger, when the resources of
rising lulus were well established, and the hero, Venus's son, was ripe for
heaven. The thoughts and language strongly recall the Aeneid, but Ovid
introduces these lines into bizarre, surreal surroundings of his own making.
Their immediate context is one of the strangest transformations in the poem-the
tale of Turnus's hometown, Ardea, changed into the heron. Turnus and the town
Ardea may be Virgilian in their associations, but Ovid's treatment is remote
from Virgil, and takes his own aetiological procedure to new extremes. It is
typical of Ovid's natural aetiologies that they account for the first animal of
a species, tum primum cognita praspes, and that they stress the continuity of
traits and features in the change from the old to the new shape. This case goes
beyond the typical in the sheer imaginative effort required to make the shift
from a ruined city, with all its attributes, to a heron. Cities, as human
social organizations, are characteristically distinct from the natural. This is
not just any city, but one embedded in the human history of Rome and Rome's
enemies, and familiar in Rome's national epic. Yet Ardea retains even its name
in its migration into the avian realm as the first heron -- et sonus et macies
et pallor et omnia, captam quae deceant urbem, nomen quoque mansit in illa
urbis et ipsa suis deplangitur Ardea pennis. It had the sound, the wasted
condition, the pallor everything that befits a conquered city. Even the city's
name remained in the bird, and Ardea beats her breast, in mourning for herself,
with her own wings. These remarkable lines, which immediately precede the
apotheosis of Aeneas, provide no contextual introduction to the apotheosis, no
invitation to form a close approximation of Ovid's and Virgil's Aeneas. Aeneas
and his virtus abruptly arrive. Yet no sooner do the gods and Juno give up
their wrath, introducing a new and impressive array of literary, historical,
and political associations, than the tone of Ovid's version of the apotheosis
becomes intrusively comic. Venus canvasses the gods like a Roman politician:
ambieratque Venus superos. She appeals to Jupiter's grandfatherly pride, and
seems to treat numen as a rare and valuable commodity in begging some of it for
her son, 'quamus parvum des, optime, numen,/ dunmodo des aliquod. All these
details are at least potentially comic, as is the argument wholly successful in
the event- with which Venus concludes her speech. One trip to hell is enough:
'satis est inamabile regnum/adspexisse semel, Stygios semel isse per amnes'. These
lines are a comic correction of Virgil. Later readers were to be distressed
that Virgil's Sibyl, otherwise a knowledgeable prophetess, was unaware of
Aeneas's apotheosis, which Jupiter had explicitly prophesied in Book 1 and was
to prophesy again later. Otherwise she would not have assumed a second trip for
Aeneas to the infernal regions after his death: quod si tantus amor menti, si
tanta cupido bis Stygios innare lacus, bis nigra uidere Tartara, et insano
iuuat indulgere labori, accipe quac peragenda prius. (Aen.). But if your mind
has so great a longing, so great a desire to swim the Stygian pools twice,
twice to look upon dark Tartarus, and it pleases you to indulge in an insane
effort, learn what must be accomplished first. Servius tries to reconcile the
death of Aeneas, implied here, with Ovid's apotheosis of him, though he could
have mentioned Jupiter's two prophecies in the Aeneid itself. Servius proposes
that simulacra of apotheosized heroes, no less than of ordinary folk, are to be
found in the underworld. We do not know whether readers and critics in Ovid's
time were already vexed about the Sibyl's evident lack of knowledge, but Ovid's
Venus, correcting bis with semel, sets the record straight. Once Venus has
asked the help of the river Numicius in washing away all that is mortal in
Aeneas, she completes the process of making him into a divinity whom Quirinus's
crowd calls Indiges, and has received with altars and a temple (quem turba
Quirini/nun-cupat Indigetem temploque arisque recepit). This information is profoundly
historical, for how Romans understand the altars and temples of their gods, how
they connect the remote to the recent past, depends on the symbolic narrative
or narratives that their minds associate with monuments in their city. Ovid's
revision of Vergil is the revision of a well known and compelling historical
vision. Ovid's concluding lines on Aeneas also, as editors note, offer a
parallel to the language of an inscription for a statue of Aeneas found at
Pompeii: appel/latus/g.est Indigens (pa)ter et in deo/rum n/umero relatus (CIL =
Dessau). Mention of the turba Quirini looks forward to the apotheosis of
Romulus later in Book 14, but first there intervenes a king-list an annalistic
structuring of the past remarkable in finding a place in the Metamorphoses.
Like the renaming of Aeneas, the list of Latin kings also recalls to Roman
readers their reading of inscriptions. This king-list also recalls earlier
lists in the Metamorphoses, such as the genealogy of Aesacus. His
transformation is a natural aetiology, and likewise Aeneas's shift to divine
status as “indiges” can be viewed as just another transformation, an addition
to the tale of Ardea transformed into a heron. We might almost think of it as
an undifferentiated item in a vast accumulation of transformation-tales that
could be arbitrarily lengthened by further addition. The reason, however, that
we cannot quite do so is the fact that it is not isolated, but participates in
a pattern of apotheoses. The apotheosis of Hercules establishes a pattern that
is reinforced strongly by the apotheoses of Romulus and of Julius Caesar's
soul. Their greater number toward the end of the poem appears to signal both
their own importance and their closural impact. Ovid's list of Latin kings does
not lead directly to the apotheosis of Romulus, but to the tale of Pomona and
Vertumnus, which he dates to the reign of Proca. The tale is rich in closural
features, cut from the same cloth as the apotheoses that frame it. Viewed as an
incident of deceptive seduction and barely-suppressed violence, the tale of
Vertumnus can also appear a distraction, leading the reader's attention away
from the transformation of historically important heroes into gods. The tale is
a "romantic comedy," yet regards it as compromising its context. It
is no secret that it disrupts what might be called the Aeneadisation of what is
otherwise far from being a Roman epic just when it begins to show promise (or
make fraudulent promises) of turning a new leaf and beginning to be such an
epic, and one in the Augustan mode to boot. Coming as it does between Aeneas
and Romulus, the tale of Vertumnus defeats closure and deflates any last hope
of the poem's imagining Rome’sHistorical Destiny (or imagining the World's
destiny as Rome's) because an ample and effective representation of the myth of
Romulus would be crucial to a celebration of Rome's place at the end of history
as the end of history. When Ovid abruptly returns to his long-interrupted
king-list, he remarkably FAILS to mention Romulus. Rome's walls are founded in
the passive voice, and only Romulus's enemy, the Sabine king Tatius, receives
mention by name -- proximus Ausonias iniusti miles Amuli rexit opes, Numitorque
senex amissa nepotis munere regna capit, festisque Palilibus urbis moenia
conduntur. Tatiusque patresque Sabini bella gerunt -- Next the military might
of unjust Amulius ruled rich Ausonia, old Numitor received, by his grandson's
gift, the kingdom that he had lost; on the festival of Pales the city's walls
are founded. Tatius and the Sabine fathers wage war. Scholars have attempted to
explain by various means Ovid's drastic compression of Rome's origins. Ovid
avoids repeating what he writes in the Fasti. The foundation of Rome offers no
opportunity for metamorphosis, although Helenus is to represent Rome's
foundation exactly in such terms later, in another context. And Ovid wishes to
avoid competing with Ennius's account in the Annales. These explanations
themselves are speculative, but the text seems to call for explanation because
Ovid has so strikingly omitted an obvious opportunity to serve up an account of
Rome's origins. Ovid's critics easily fall into the his hermeneutic trap. His
text demands interpretation without providing the resources to arrive at one.
Romulus and his apotheosis are an especially impressive instance of the
self-consciously missed opportunity, the Ovidian narrative tease. Because
Romulus was so well-known to Ovid's Roman readers as a mythico-historical
parallel to Ottaviano, few topics are richer in potential for allegorical
exploitation and panegyric symbolism; and this potential goes almost totally
unrealized here. Ovid's approach to Romulus is no approach at all. Ovid omits
the founder's exploits and shifts all attention to the divine sphere. The
apotheosis of Romulus and, as it turns out, that of his wife Hersilia result
from divine actions, whose description is the province of myth. Historians who
record their exploits give them standing as historical figures. Deprived of
exploits, they re-enter myth. By remythologizing history Ovid incorporates it
into the world of the Metamorphoses, in which divinities are active and humans
largely are acted upon. He also opposes euhemeristic modes of interpreting the
shift from mortal to divinity, in accordance with which a human's heroic
actions approach and approximate the divine, resulting in the hero's veneration
as divine by other humans, and his reception among the divinities as one of
them. Ennius's historical epic, the Annales, reports that, at Romulus's death,
Romolo now has a life among the gods -- Romulus in caelo cum dis genitalibus
aeum/ degit. Ennius probably took a euhemeristic interpretation of Romulus's
deification. Virtue and political merit open the gates of heaven. It is highly
likely that the deification of Romulus, who performed the mighty benefaction of
founding the city, was the innovation of Ennius. Ennius here will have been
placing Romulus in the tradition of the great monarchs who won immortality by
emulating Hercules. Although the details of Ennius's account are far from
clear, Ovid's non-euhemeristic approach is apparently the reverse of his
principal source, the original and canonical version of Romulus's deification. History
appears to be going backwards as the divine agents in the Romans' war with
Tatius take action. Juno unlocks the gate to the invading Sabines despite
having so recently given up her wrath against the Romans -- inde sati Curibus
tacitorum more luporum ore premunt uoces et corpora uicta sopore inuadunt
portasque petunt, quas obice firmo clauserat Iliades; unam tamen ipsa reclusit
nec strepitum uerso Saturnia cardine fecit. Then the Sabines, born at Cures,
keep their voices muffled like silent wolves; they assault the Romans, whose
bodies are sunk in slumber; they seek the gates, which lia's son [Romulus] had
barred; yet one of them Saturnian Juno unlocked. She made no noise as she
turned it on its hinge. After all the emphasis on Juno's reconciliation
earlier, in the apoth-cosis of Aeneas, her behavior here is glaringly
inconsistent. We may try to rationalize Juno's actions by appealing to Ennius's
historical framework, by which Juno gives up her wrath at the second Punic War.
But Ovid makes no attempt to clarify and so rescue historical consistency;
indeed, he appears to mock the tradition of multiplereconciliations of Juno,
exploiting it for its comic absurdity. There are serious consequences as well:
the equation of history with destiny breaks down. Soon Juno will be favorable
to the Romans once again at the apotheosis of Hersilia, but meanwhile two other
divinities intervene: first Venus, unable to undo Juno's hostile act in
unbarring the gate, entreats the Naiads living next to Janus's shrine in the
Forum Romanum to come to her assistance. Their spring, normally cold, they
bring to a hasty boil, thus blocking the way to the Sabines and allowing the
Romans time to arm themselves. Next, Mars addresses Jupiter, requesting
deification for Romulus as the fulfillment, now: due, of a long-standing
promise. Mars cites Jupiter's original words, representing them as an exact
quotation: tu mihi concilio quondam praesente deorum (nam memoro memorique
animo pia uerba notaui) "unus crit, quem tu tolles in cacrula caeli"
dixisti: rata sit uerborum summa tuorum. Once, at an assembled council of the
gods, you told me (for I remem-ber, and marked the pious words in my retentive
mind),there will be one whom you will carry to the blue of heaven.' Let the
content of your words be fulfilled. The words Marte quotes appear to gain even
more authority by referential confirmation from outside the text of the
Metamorphoses doubly cited, as it were: for while Mars cites Jupiter, Ovid
cites Ennius's Annales. Readers of Ovid's contemporary Fasti will remember the
recurrence of Ennius's line in a third context, for Mars cites it there as part
of a parallel appeal for Romulus's deification. Although Marte describes his
son to Jupiter as the latter's "worthy grandson" (Met.), Romulus's
exploits have no part in the appeal. Deification results directly from
Jupiter's promise, so strongly emphasized, and at the beginning of the speech
Mars needs only to establish that now is the time for its fulfillment: tempus
adest, genitor, quoniam fundamine magno res Romana ualet nec praeside pendet ab
uno, praemia (sunt promissa mihi dignoque nepoti) soluere et ablatum terris
inponere caelo. Since, father, Roman affairs are well established on great
foundations, and do not depend on a single protector, it is time to pay the
reward it was promised to me and to my worthy grandson to remove him from the
earth and to place him in heaven. In all this there is no mention of Romulus's
great benefactions, such as might sustain a euhemeristic interpretation of the
hero's advancement to divine status. Far from avoiding comparison to Ennius,
Ovid ostentatiously quotes his predecessor's work, as if to flaunt the fact
that in stripping the hero of exploits he has eliminated Ennius's interpretation
of them. Ennius's words, transferred to so un-Ennian a context, may appear well
suited to a familiar allegorical parallel, reminding Roman readers once again
of their second Romulus, likewise destined for the skies. Yet Ovid's apotheosis
of Romulus functions but feebly as an Ottavian icon precisely because of its
lack of historical specificity. Lacking res gestae, Ovid's Romulus offers
readers little to go on in drawing conceptual parallels to the achievements of
Ottaviano. There are many similarities between the apotheosis of Romulus in the
Metamorphoses and that in the Fasti. In both works Ovid makes an emphatic
identification of deified Romulus with QVIRINVS, reinforcing relatively recent
developments in the story. In both Ovid quotes the line from Ennius and repeats
the apostrophe Romule, tra dabas (Met., F.) at the moment when the apotheosis
occurs. Yet in their larger contexts the two passages are remarkably dissimilar.
While in the Metamorphoses Romulus's apotheosis is his whole story -simply one
in a series of apotheoses extending from Hercules to the end of the work, in
the Fasti his apotheosis has a context in the life and exploits of the hero.
Romulus appears so often in the “Fasti” that the episodes concerning him are
numerous enough to trace out a biography of him, even if by installments. Ovid's
version of the Roman year gives Romulus an unprecedented amount of space, far
beyond the natural occasions offered by tradition (such as, for example,
Romulus's involvement in the foundation myths or in the actual rituals of the
Parilia or the Lupercalia). The identification of Augustus with Romulus even to
the point of his apotheosis demandd a 'positive' picture of Romulus. If the
violence and ruthlessness of Romulus's exploits in the “Fasti” make him a
problematic parallel to Augustus, we may suppose that Ovid gives himself an
easier task in the Metamorphoses by keeping Romulus's deeds out of his
narrative. In the “Fasti”, for instance, Marte mentions Romulus's dead brother
Remus always a difficulty in positive portrayals of the founder whereas in the
Metamorphoses Marte prudently omits *any* mention of Remus. Yet even the
attenuated Romulus of the Metamorphoses presents difficulties to allegorical
interpretation. As we saw earlier, Marte explains that it is now time for
apotheosis because Rome's condition, now well-established, "does not
depend on a single protector" (nec praeside pendet ab uno, Met.). Hence,
Romulus can be safely removed from the earth. Applied to Ottaviano, this remark
makes a poor allegorical fit. It calls attention to problems of succession that
afflicted the princes, on whom alone the res Romana manifestly did depend. The
apotheosis of Hersilia is even more remarkable, and Ovid's de-euhemerizing
revision of Roman history enters upon fresh territory with her. With Hersilia
there was probably no euhemeristic tradition for Ovid to work against. Ovid can
invent an apotheosis for her, representing it as a purely divine initiative. Tradition
granted her notable exploits without apotheosis; Ovid grants her apotheosis
without notable exploits. Romolo’s wife was well known to Roman readers for
being the Sabine wife of Romulus and for her active role in reconciling her own
people to the Romans. In several accounts, after the abduction of the Sabine
women and subsequent conflict between Romulus's men and the angry parents,
Hersilia sues for peace with Tatius and the Sabine fathers (Gellius; Dio Cass.).
Her other signal achievement takes place shortly thereafter. According to Livy,
Romulus blames the Sabine parents for the conflict, which resulted from their
pride in not allowing inter-marriage in the first place. Ersilia, importuned by
the entreaties of her sister Sabines, intervenes with Romulus to argue that
their parents ought to be pardoned and allowed to live in Rome: ita rem
coalescere con-cordia posse. Harmonious union of Romans and Sabines is,
according to Livy's patriotic interpretation, the whole point of the rape of
the Sabine women; and this view was widespread. It was not in wanton violence
or injustice that they resorted to rape, but with the intention of bringing the
two peoples together and uniting them with the strongest ties. So writes
Plutarch in introducing Ersilia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus also accepts this
pro-Roman motive for the rape. Ersilia's achievements, like those of her
husband, disappear entirely from Ovid's account of her apotheosis, as does the
whole story of the rape of the Sabines, in which she traditionally plays so
important a part. After Romulus's transformation into the deified Quirinus,
Juno sends Iris to bring instructions to the grieving widow, addressing Ersilia
as "chief glory of both the Latin and Sabine peoples": "o et de
Latia, o et de gente Sabina/praecipuum, matrona, decus.’ Has Juno become
reconciled to the Romans this time because of their union with the Sabines, a
people known for exemplary piety? We might suppose so, especially now that
Romulus is identified with the Sabine divinity Quirinus. For whatever reason,
Juno offers Ersilia a chance to see her husband again if she will go, under
Iris's guidance, to the Quirinale, Quirinus's hill, a place associated with the
Sabines' presence in Rome:53 siste tuos fletus et, si tibi cura uidendi
coniugis est, duce me lucum pete, colle Quirini qui uiret et templum Romani
regis obumbrat:Stop your tears and, if you care to see your husband, under my guidance
seek the grove that grows green on Quirinus's hill, and shades the temple of
Rome's king. Ersilia follows Iris's instructions and proceeds to Romulus's hill.
A star descends, causing Ersili's hair to catch fire a divine portentand she
passes into the air. Rome's founder receives her, changes her name and body,
calling her Hora, quae nunc dea tunca Quirino est (Met.). Of course, Ersilia's
apotheosis, like Romulus's, can be allegorized as panegyric. There’s a parallel
to LIVIA, so reinforcing the connection of Romulus to Augustus. Yet if Ovid's
goal in this double apotheosis is to promote panegyrical identifications, he
has lost an impressive opportunity. Especially after his irreverent, even
scandalous, version of the rape in Ars amatorial, Ovid could now have made
amends with Ottaviano and with history by serving up a traditionally patriotic
rape of the Sabines, including the achievements of Romulus and Ersilia, both
available for cuhemeristic treatment. Ovid's version is once again
conspicuously remote from Ennius's. It is unlikely that Ersilia's
transformation into the divine Hora occurred in the Annales, and Ovid probably
originated Ersilia's apotheosis. In doing so, Ovid remythologizes history,
reducing human agency and minimizing the potential of his Roman characters to
serve as flattering parallels. In evaluating the historical character of the
Metamorphoses, we can view apotheosis as part of historical progress in the
work. As we saw above Wheeler regards the movement from fable to history, from
the heavens to the city of Rome, as "a shift from a theologia fabulosa to
a theologia wilis"67 Another view is, however, possible, in accordance
with which the fabulous incorporates all else into its domain-including
history, politics, and current events. Terms like "fabulous" and
"mythological," of course, are not simply descriptive of the subject
matter that Ovid has taken up; he has entirely transformed the nature of the
fabulous, mythological, and the historical alike. He Ovidianizes them all,
Hersilia no less completely than the rest. When Iris reports Juno's words to
the bereaved Hersilia, she eagerly asks to see once again the face of her
husband, concluding her request with these words: 'quem si modo posse uidere/
fata semel dederint, caelum accepisse fatebor' (Met). Hersilia is using caclum
as a metaphorical equivalent for the summit of happiness, as Bömer aptly
notes, citing Cicero's letters to Atticus: in caelo sum (Att.); Bibulus in
caelo est (Att.). Hersilia supposes Romulus "lost" (amissum, Met.)
and evidently knows nothing yet of his apotheosis -certamly nothing about her
own. She simply uses a conventional, proverbial form of speech to express her
anticipated happiness. But events make her expression literally true, as the
star descends and Hersilia rises to the heavens. Ovid's transformative wordplay
often operates in just this way: words that initially appear figurative become
literal, the conceptual shifts to the physical, and a transformation described
in terms of plot is enacted first on the level of style." Hersilia's
apotheosis is a fine instance of Ovidian wit, yet is also a typical instance,
similar to many others that readers have enjoyed by this stage in the work's
progress. As they enjoy another of Ovid's transformative witticisms, they also
may reflect on the power of his transformative vision, which now incorporates
even their own history. As he exploits Hersilia's apotheosis for so fine a
joke, Ovid grants us an ironic perspective on Roman origins, compromising their
fated-ness and bringing out their contingent character. Throughout the last
pentad, historical events lose their connection to fata and pass under the sway
of Fama in its full range of ambiguity and contradiction: "lies mixed with
truth" (mixtaque cum ueris... commenta, 12.54) issue from the house of
Fama, while "Fame, the herald of truth" (praemuntia uri/ fama),
announces Numa's impossible visit to Pythagoras. Fama is a touchstone for the
fractured historical vision of the Metamorphoses. Fasti (Ovidio)Fasti
Ritratto immaginario di Ovidio (di Anton von Werner) AutorePublio Ovidio Nasone
1ª ed. Original edal 9 d.C. Editio princeps Bologna, Baldassarre Azzoguidi, Generepoema
epico Lingua originalelatino Manuale. I Fasti sono un poema che espone le
origini delle festività romane, quindi è un'opera di carattere calendariale ed
eziologico di Ovidio, scritto in distici elegiaci, ad imitazione degli Aitia
(Cause) di Callimaco, di cui riprende, oltre che il metro, anche alcune
soluzioni formali e narratologiche. L'opera, scritta molto probabilmente
per aderire alla moralizzante propaganda tipica dell'età augustea, fu
progettata in un totale di 12 libri, secondo l'andamento del calendario. Con
essa l'autore, che probabilmente attingeva a Varrone e a Verrio Flacco, si era
proposto di spiegare l'origine della differenza tra i giorni fasti (dalla
parola latina "fas", lecito) in cui i Romani potevano trattare
gl’affari pubblici e privati, e i giorni “INfasti,” nei quali era vietato. Al
tempo stesso, Ovidio, parlando con il dio di turno, indaga e rivisita, mese per
mese, tutti i molteplici riti, le festività e le consuetudini, tipiche del
costume e dell'uomo romano, che, al suo tempo, si praticavano senza ormai
conoscerne l'esatta origine o valenza. Tuttavia, dei Fasti si sono
conservati solamente 6 libri, da gennaio a giugno. Questo fatto si spiega con
la famosa relegatio (esilio che non comportava la perdita dei beni né tantomeno
dei diritti civili) che colpe Ovidio e che non gli permise di terminarla.
Indice 1Struttura 1.1Libro I: gennaio 1.2Libro II: febbraio 1.3Libro III:
marzo 1.4Libro IV: aprile 1.5Libro V: maggio 1.6Libro VI: giugno 2Note 3Voci
correlate 4Altri progetti 5 Collegamenti
esterni Struttura Libro I: gennaio Il primo libro doveva presentare una dedica
ad Ottaviano. Quest'ultima, ora spostata al secondo libro, è stata sostituita
(verosimilmente nell'esilio di Tomi, l'attuale Costanza, in Romania) con una al
nipote adottivo di Augusto stesso, Germanico. Dopo la dedica, Ovidio ri-evoca
brevemente la nascita del calendario romano e il significato dei giorni
fortunati o dies fasti, per poi passare al mito di Giano, esposto dal dio
stesso in colloquio con Ovidio, sul modello degli Aitia callimachei e, dopo un
distico sulle None di gennaio, modellato sulle sezioni astronomiche di Arato,
all'esposizione dell'origine dei riti agonali, dei riti in onore di Carmenta,
inframmezzato da una esposizione sulle Idi, che divide questo mini-epillio in
due sezioni, la prima delle quali è una lunga profezia sulle origini di Roma
recitata dalla stessa ninfa. Libro II: febbraio Dopo un'apostrofe al
distico elegiaco, che Ovidio afferma di aver piegato alla poesia eziologica,
dopo che in gioventù fu il suo verso d'amore e ad una dedica a Cesare (forse
Augusto), si passa a parlare dell'origine del nome februarius, per poi
discutere delle calende, con la rievocazione del mito di Arione, delle none,
con il mito dell'Orsa Callisto, di Fauno, dei Lupercali e di Roma arcaica.
Ovidio rievoca, poi, le feste Quirinalia, le cerimonie ferali e la festa del
dio Terminus e si sofferma a parlare del regifugium, con la leggenda di
Lucrezia. Infine, parla della festa degli Equirria. Libro III: marzo Sezione
vuota Questa sezione sull'argomento opere letterarie è ancora vuota. Aiutaci a
scriverla! Libro IV: aprile Festività
romane Fasti (antica Roma) I Fasti di P.
Ovidio Nasone; tradotti in terza rima dal testo Latino ripurgato ed illustrato
con note dal dottor Giambattista Bianchi da Siena, Venezia, Nella stamperia
Rosa, 1811 (on-line) Traduzione in inglese dei Fasti, su
tkline.freeserve.co.uk. V · D · M Publio Ovidio Nasone Portale Antica
Roma Portale Lingua latina Portale Religioni Categorie:
Opere letterarie in latinoOpere di OvidioOpere letterarie del I secolo. Ovidio.
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