Charles Segal (1969) Myth and Philosophy in the Metamorphoses Ovid's Augustanism and the Augustan...

Myth and Philosophy in the Metamorphoses: Ovid's Augustanism and the Augustan Conclusionof Book XVAuthor(s): Charles SegalReviewed work(s):Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Jul., 1969), pp. 257-292Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/293179 .Accessed: 29/11/2012 15:21

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AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

VOL. XC, 3 WHOLE No. 359

MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE METAMORPHOSES: OVID'S AUGUSTANISM AND THE AUGUSTAN

CONCLUSION OF BOOK XV.

I The Augustanism or anti-Augustanism of the Metamorphoses

resolves itself into two related questions. First, how seriously are we to take the philosophical frame which surrounds the purely "mythical" episodes? And, second, how are we to regard the quasi-historical material of XI, 194 to the end, the movement from Troy to Rome,' and what relation does this material have to the poem as a whole ?

Brooks Otis' important Ovid as an Epic Poet has reopened the issue and brought to bear upon it many new and valuable obser- vations on the style and structure of the work. Abandoning his earlier view that the Metamorphoses "may be a deliberate attempt on the part of the poet to improve his standing with Augustus," 2 Otis has now come to stress the tensions within

1 Brooks Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge, 1966) (henceforth to be cited as Otis, Ovid), pp. 278 ff. regards XII-XV as the " historical" section of the poem. But it is probably more logical to begin that section at XI, 194, Laomedon's founding of Troy: so Walther Ludwig, Struktur und Einheit der Metamorphosen Ovids (Berlin, 1965), pp. 12 ff. and 60 ff.; L. P. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled (Cambridge 1955), p. 148 with his first note. This founding plays a large part in other Augustan writers, notably Virgil, Georg., I, 501 f.

2 Brooks Otis, "Ovid and the Augustans," T. A. P. A., LXIX (1938), p. 193 (to be cited henceforth as Otis, "Augustans"). See also Otis, Ovid, p. 280; and Max Pohlenz, "Die Abfassungszeit von Ovids Meta- morphosen," Hermes, XLVIII (1913), p. 12.

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CHARLES SEGAL.

Ovid himself: Ovid is willing, on the one hand, to use the structural devices, vocabulary, and even the moral notions of his Augustan contemporaries; but, on the other hand, the bent of his own poetic talent is anti-Augustan. On this view, Ovid wanted to create an Augustan epic, but was incapable of doing so. What results, therefore, is an incongruity of style and subject-matter which reveals itself with greater force in the concluding books of the poem.

There is little disagreement about the tone of the early books of the poem after the proem, and Otis is surely right to stress the amoral and anti-Augustan quality of the "true" Ovid.3 The question is how to reconcile these early books with the Augustan conclusion. I propose a solution which would give the poem a more unified sensibility than Otis seems to allow. The closing sections of the poem, and especially the Aesculapius and Pythagoras sections, in other words, are not to be taken as seriously as Otis reads them. Rather than seeming to "atone " for the rest of the poem,4 they may in fact be far closer to the light and irreverent spirit of the "true" Ovid than Otis and others have indicated.5

The last books of the poem, suggests Otis, effect a "reduction of the Aeneas story ... to what is in large part a mere frame for lighter, erotic episodes that break and lighten the intensity of the long epic, tragic, oratorical and philosophical pieces that really carry the main burden of his argument." 6 But to speak of a "reduction" here is to understate the case. Is there not rather a veritable destruction of the Aeneas story? It is so inter- larded with tales of a totally non-historical, non-" epic" character, as Otis own tabular analysis of the material shows,7 that any serious unity or continuity-to say nothing of " intensity"

3 See the "Conclusion," of Otis, Ovid, especially pp. 323 ff.; also p. 339: ". . . In sensibility and general cast of mind, in the way he felt and thought about the world, Ovid was fundamentally anti-Augustan."

4 Otis, Ovid, p. 336. E. g. Pohlenz (above, note 2), p. 12.

6 Otis, Ovid, p. 279. Later, however, Otis qualifies this position more strongly (p. 304): ". . . Despite the evident Augustanism of the concluding section (Books XII-XV) .... its plan is really a quite external one which develops a motif that was peripheral rather than central to the preceding section." 7 Otis, Ovid, p. 278.

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MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE "ME`TAMORPHOSES." 259

-evaporates.8 One may question, then, the whole idea that in these books "the long epic, tragic, oratorical and philosophical pieces . .. really carry the main burden of his argument."

One may demur, therefore, at Otis' further inference that the "Augustan portion" of the poem gives us "the impression of a writer at war with his subject " and that in this finale " the poet and the Augustan were involved in an irreconcilable con- tradiction." 9 The question is really whether one regards Ovid as wanting to be an "Augustan " at all. There is still much to be said for the older and simpler view that a unifying Augustan symbolism and structure were never strong or essential elements in Ovid's conception of the poem.10 What Augustanism there is may be either irrelevant to the heart of the poem or may even be incorporated into its cynical and un-Augustan levity.

s See also the remark of R. Coleman in his review of Otis, Ovid in C.R., n. s. XVII (1967), p. 50: "Deification too is a metamorphosis, and the deified Aeneas, Romulus, and Caesar, by being included in the same poem with Lycaon, Daphne, and the rest are reduced to the same level. The whole grandiose Augustan mystique is turned into a fanciful divertissement." See the similar criticism now in William S. Ander- son's review, A. J.P., LXXXIX (1968), pp. 93-104, especially pp. 96 ff. Elsewhere in his book, however, Otis notes how Ovid's disposition of his Trojan-Roman material "deflates its sobriety" (p. 305; see also pp. 281 f., 289). Otis in places (see especially pp. 304 f.) seems to want to have his case both ways: on the one hand an Augustan Ovid eager to placate the Emperor and endorse the "official views," and on the other hand a self-conscious, far from naive poet using intentional parody and neither expecting nor intending to be taken seriously.

Otis, Ovid, pp. 337 and 314 respectively. On the limitations of this aspect of Otis' approach see Coleman's review (above, note 8), pp. 49-50.

10 For a survey of the literature on this problem see V. Buchheit, "Mythos und Geschichte in Ovids Metamorphosen, I," Hermes, XCIV (1966) pp. 80 ff. Also G. Steiner, "Ovid's Carmen Perpetuum," T. A. P. A., LXXXIX (1958), pp. 218 ff. The recent tendency, as represented by Otis, Buchheit, and Ludwig, is in favor of an Augustan over- all structure, though Steiner takes a more moderate and sceptical position. For the conventional older view see J. W. Duff, A Literary History of Rome . . . to the Close of the Golden Age (ed. 2, London, 1932), pp. 599 f.; A. Rostagni, Storia della letteratura latina, II (ed. 3, Torino, 1964), pp. 258-60. Otis, Ovid, seems to capitulate somewhat to the older view in his " Conclusion," especially pp. 334-42.


CHARLES SEGAL.

II What Ovid himself thought of his poem's impact on Augustus

obviously bears on this question, though it has more often than not confused the issue. But the point must be briefly examined before we come to the text itself.

Ovid, writing to the Emperor of his poem (Tristia, II, 555- 62) seems to have thought parts of it capable of appeasing Augustus: 1

555 dictaque sunt nobis, quamvis manus ultima coeptis defuit, in facies corpora versa novas.

atque utinam revoces animum paulisper ab ira, et vacuo iubeas hinc tibi pauca legi,

pauca, quibus prima surgens ab origine mundi 560 in tua deduxi tempora, Caesar, opus!

aspicies, quantum dederis mihi pectoris ipse, 562 quoque favore animi teque tuosque canam.12

It is significant that in these lines Ovid lays little stress on the main content of the work as a whole. Instead, he goes from a bare statement of the subject-matter in line 556 immediately to a plea for clemency in 557. Lines 561-2 are a piece of rather vague court-flattery; and the claim that he has sung of the Emperor and his family (teque tuosque canam) can, in any event, refer only to the poem's last 125 lines (XV, 745-870). Perhaps Ovid expected Augustus, like a harried reviewer, to glance quickly at the beginning and the end and not to notice that the eleven thousand or so verses in between seldom rise to a moral level far above the Ars Amatoria.3 (Augustus is, of course, asked to read pauca, and Ovid repeats the word; but he can hardly have expected Augustus to be oblivious of the great bulk of the work.)

What Ovid can genuinely claim for his work, Metamorphoses

11 Otis, " Augustans," p. 193. 12 The text of the Tristia is cited from the Artemis edition of G. Luck

(Zurich, 1963). The Metamorphoses are cited from the editio maior of R. Ehwald in the Teubner series (Leipzig, 1915), with a few minor changes in punctuation.

13 Otis, Ovid, p. 336, remarks that elements in XV like Pythagoras' speech and the apotheoses "hardly do more than mark Ovid's rather flaccid determination to atone in his conclusion for what he had left undone in the great body of the poem."

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MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE "METAMORPHOSES." 261

and other poems alike, is negative: he has done harm to no one except himself (Tristia, II, 563-8):

non ego mordaci destrinxi carmine quemquam, nec meus ullius crimina versus habet.

candidus a salibus suffusis felle refugi: nulla venenato littera mixta ioco est.

inter tot populi, tot scriptis, milia nostri, quem mea Calliope laeserit, unus ero.

Tristia, 1I, 555-68, then, reads more as Ovid's desperate, perhaps even half-hearted, attempt to put a bad case in a favorable light than as a real declaration that what he has written is in fact a genuine "Augustan" epic. If Ovid thought that concluding with Divus Iulius and Augustus converted the Meta- morphoses into an acceptable "Augustan" offering to the Em- peror, we need not be taken in by such a statement. Augustus himself, it would seem, was not taken in. Perhaps he read the poem more perceptively than Ovid expected. In any case, Augus- tus seems to have shown himself a keener judge of human and literary character in banishing Ovid than did Ovid himself in offering the Metamorphoses to excuse the Ars.14 Ovid, like Seneca, is a case where we perhaps know enough about the man as an individual to interfere with our appreciation of his work purely as literature. And for Ovid as individual, one may cite Otis' dour, but justified judgment:

When we compare him with either his great Augustan predecessors or his great imperial followers (Lucan, Tacitus, Petronius, Juvenal) he seems singularly flaccid and un- committed. He observed to the end a devious and tawdry compromise between conformity and rebellion.15

But even if one were to grant that Ovid did deceive himself into thinking that he was writing a serious Augustan poem (a possibility not inherently probable), such self-deception would be irrelevant to our reading of the poem per se, however interest-

"4 See, for example, E. K. Rand, Ovid and His Influence (Boston, 1925), p. 92: "Could Augustus have read the Metamorphoses through, he might have thought that performance still more fatal than the Art of Love to his programme of religious reform. The tender poet of Jupiter's amours might have been banished even for the Metamorphoses alone."

15 Otis, Ovid, p. 339.


CHARLES SEGAL.

ing it might be as a reflection of Ovid's character or his mood in the years of exile. Poets have been notoriously inept and in- accurate critics of their own work. "For the poets say many beautiful things," comments Socrates, "but they understand nothing of what they say." 16

III The closing books are the ones most involved in the question

of Ovid's Augustanism since they contain most of the historical material of the poem. They are also important, obviously, in the consideration of whether the poem shows a genuine upward movement out of chaos into order.17 It is the contention of this essay that such a movement is only superficial and that in fact the explicitly anti-Augustan themes of passion and violence are no less strong at the end of the poem than in the bulk of the earlier sections. The discourse of Pythagoras in XV will also require special attention, for this section constitutes the major piece of philosophical material at the end and thus balances the philosophical proem in Book I. It has often been read, therefore, as part of a deliberately Augustan framing of the work or even used as an excuse to hunt for "Pythagorean" numerical symbolism. But both the " historical" and " philosophical " sections of the closing books, I shall argue, do not contrast so markedly with the rest of the poem as some have maintained.

The philosophically colored introduction to the poem presents an essentially Stoic view of man as a sanctius animal formed in the image of the all-ruling gods, standing erect and beholding the heavens and the stars (I, 76-88).'1 Yet the ensuing narrative of the Four Ages dwells not on man's kinship with the divine, but rather on his capacity for violence and evil. The third age is saevior ingeniis et ad horrida promptior arma, / non scelerata tamen (I, 126-7), while the fourth and last is totally corrupt (I, 128-31):

18 Plato, Apology, 22C. 17 Otis, Ovid, pp. 88-9 sees this upward movement as combining with

the purely aesthetic "symmetrical progression" of the tales. For the upward movement from chaos to cosmos see also Buchheit (above, note 10), especially p. 85, with the references there cited.

18 See Luigi Alfonsi, " Linquadramento filosofico delle Metamorfosi Ovidiane," in N. I. Herescu, ed., Ovidiana (Paris, 1958), pp. 265-72, especially p. 268; also Otis, " Augustans," p. 225.

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MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE " METAMORPHOSES." 263

protinus inrupit venae peioris in aevum omne nefas, fugitque pudor verumque fidesque; in quorum subiere locum fraudesque dolusque insidiaeque et vis et amor sceleratus habendi.

It may be more than an accident of chronology, then, that the first genuine metamorphosis of the poem is a tale of unregener- ate human evil: Lycaon, for his wickedness, is transformed into a wolf. In the subsequent story, that of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the idea of man's divine origin (cf. divino semine, I, 78) is abandoned in favor of a "second creation" out of earth and stone (I, 400-15). This " second creation " in fact is found to have a special appropriateness for human nature (I, 414-15):

inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.

Despite the idea of a divine origin at the beginning, then, man begins to appear in a rather less favorable light as Ovid enters his narrative material. In fact, man soon becomes the diseased and evil spot in the created world, a blight which Jupiter must destroy in order to preserve the rest (I, 190-3):

cuncta prius temptata, sed inmedicabile corpus ense recidendum, ne pars sincera trahatur. sunt mihi semidei, sunt rustica numina, Nymphae Faunique Satyrique et monticolae Silvani . . .

What gives an even more pessimistic and ironic point to the image of man here depicted is the fact that elsewhere in the poem these rustica numina, and especially the Fauns, Satyrs, and Silvani, are represented as the elemental, riotously lustful side of nature (e. g. IV, 25 ff., VI, 110 f., XIV, 635 if.). There is, Jupiter implicitly suggests, an innocence even in these lecher- ous creatures which the corrupted human race lacks.

This introduction, then, need not be regarded as providing some " higher " philosophical vision that will be resumed in the conclusion. It is quite comprehensible as a preparation for, not a palliative against, the coming tales of love, passion, and violence. Though it seems to begin with a language and an attitude to human nature which are far from the playful sensuousness and amorality of the tales soon to follow, it soon comes to a position not inconsistent with the attitude of the larger part of the poem: human nature is inclined to baneful passions, and


CHARLES SEGAL.

there exists beside man a more privileged class of semidivine powers (I, 192 ff.) who belong to a mythical rather than philosophical conception of the world.

As Book I continues, the loftier and more philosophical implications of the introduction become increasingly tenuous. The stories of Lycaon, the flood, and Python are " Augustan " enough in their emphasis on the rule of order and the moral character of the gods (one may compare the Gigantomachy in Horace, C., III, 4). But the tales which soon set the real tone for the poem rudely dispel this positive impression. In the immediately ensuing stories of Daphne and Io the protagonists are no less than the favorite Augustan divinities, Apollo and Jupiter. The latter has in fact just upset the balance of the elements in order to purify the earth of the corrupting influence of man. But they now appear, as is obvious to everyone, in postures that are far from edifying.19 The contrast negates the picture of the "all- ruling gods" (cf. I, 83) built up in the first part of the book. A familiar passage will suffice to show how fully the responsible and just divinity of the Lycaon and Deucalion episodes yields to a less noble vision. Jupiter (I, 595-7) invites Io to share with him the privacy of a shady bower, assuring her that he is

"nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna sceptra manu teneo, sed qui vaga fulmina mitto. ne fuge me!" fugiebat enim.

This is the effect of which Ovid is a consummate master, reduc- ing the sublime to the ridiculous.20 The enjambed relative clauses, with their anaphoric repetition and ornate language, are followed by the far from eloquent or regal cry of the desperate lover, ne fuge me. The ironic simplicity of the echo, fugiebat enim, underlines the amorous plight and helplessness of the king of the gods when the object of his affections prefers to run. This is the spirit which, by and large, dominates the poem: a firm, witty, mocking, yet compassionate grasp of the realities of human passions and follies, even when they appear in divine dress. Ovid follows up his success in the Io episode with the

19 Buchheit (above, note 10), pp. 106 f. stresses the Augustan seriousness of the beginning of I, but pays insufficient attention to the abrupt- ness of the contrast with the amatory tales which soon follow.

20 See the excellent remarks on this passage in Otis, Ovid, pp. 327 ff.

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similar contrasts in the Callisto and Europa stories of the next book.21

Ovid's ridicule of the gods needs no documentation, even though some critics have argued for a more serious view.22 But what is perhaps not stressed enough is that there is no consistent image of man or god. The picture which does appear is inconsistent and at best amoral. There is also a lack of a clear definition about the order of nature (a lack partly inherent in the very theme of metamorphosis); and there is corresponding lack of definition about man and about the gods.

It might be possible to argue that these inconsistencies are intended merely to suggest the range of possibilities open to man and the diversity of human nature. Book I, for example, presents the impious Lycaon at one pole and the reverent Deucalion at the other; and this juxtaposition is repeated in Book VIII between Philemon and Baucis who are rewarded for their simple piety and the proud, violent Erysichthon who is horribly punished for his impiety. But such schemes do not form part of any consistent pattern, nor do they really touch the essence of the poem.

One can see the lack of such moral consistency in so central a theme as metamorphosis into animals. Gods transform themselves into beasts to satisfy their lust, while men, though sometimes justly punished by such a transformation (as in the case of Lycaon or Tereus) are nevertheless often so transformed either unjustly or with questionable justice (for example Io, Callisto, Actaeon, Picus).23 There is a similar vacillation in the use of animals as a metaphor for the more bestial, lower in- stincts in man. In X, 325 ff. Myrrha can use animals as models

1 See Met., II, 401 ff., 833 ff. 22 Buchheit (above, note 10), passim. The seriousness of the gods

had been stressed, for different reasons, by R. Heinze, "Ovids elegische Erzthlung" (1919)= Vom Geist des R6mertums (ed. 3, Darmstadt, 1960), pp. 315ff. See contra Wilkinson (above, note 1), pp. 190ff. and especially pp. 196 ff.; William S. Anderson, "Multiple Change in the Metamorphoses," T.A.P.A., XCIV (1963), p. 24; E. Doblhofer, "Ovidius Urbanus," Philologus, CIV (1960), pp. 77 ff.; W. Marg, Gnomon, XXI (1949), p. 54.

23 Note too the question raised about the justice of Actaeon's fatal metamorphosis, Met., III, 141 f., 253 ff. See also Otis, "Augustans," pp. 221 ff., with note 109 on p. 222.


CHARLES SEGAL.

to justify her incestuous passion. But in the similar tale of Byblis in the preceding book, it is the gods, not animals, who provide the proper exempla for incest and passion (IX, 497 ff.). Both passages explore the mentality of a woman hopelessly con- quered by a criminal passion, and we cannot take the speaker's words as reflecting Ovid's moral outlook. Yet the juxtaposition of gods and animals in similar, immoral arguments in consecu- tive books is not without significance. In a world of constant change between the "higher" and " lower" order of beings, the difference between the divine and the bestial can sometimes appear as very slight indeed; and the Europa story is a dramatic enactment of the negligibility of this difference.

As men become animals or plants, as gods become animals or men, any unitary moral perspective dissolves. The result is what one scholar has termed " un doute universel sur les essences des etres et des choses." 24 To be sure, metamorphosis to a different (but generally lower) state may at times restore a certain balance or order in nature, especially when it comes as a condign punishment. Yet metamorphosis may also eliminate a true solution to the moral issues raised by the myths, for it often destroys the inner integrity and unity of the person faced with the moral dilemma.25 In Ovid's world passion and lust are seldom actually defeated or resisted, seldom faced head-on in a true moral con- flict that can only be solved in moral terms. Instead the passions work upon the personality of the character involved until he is changed into the bestial or elemental equivalent of that passion: the cruel Lycaon into a wolf, the lustful Jupiter into a bull, the mechanically and mindlessly efficient Arachne into a spider, Tereus into a long-beaked hoopoe, the impetuous Hippomenes and Atalanta into lions, and so on.

24 R. Crahay, " La vision poetique d'Ovide et l'esthetique baroque," in Atti del convegno internazionale ovidiano (Rome, 1959), I, p. 103.

25 Crahay, loc. cit., who goes on to speak (pp. 103-4) of a "mouve- ment da va-et-vient entre la these et l'antithese, sans que l'une des deux paraisse pouvoir eliminer l'autre. Aucun principe de discrimination ne nous achemine vers un choix." See also the remarks of V. P6schl, 'L'arte narrativa di Ovidio nelle Metamorfosi," Atti (above, note 24), II, p. 305 on the Byblis episode; and in general Otis, "Augustans," pp. 222 f.

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IV With these general considerations in mind, then, we may turn

in greater detail to the closing books of the poem. Apotheosis and the theme of the theios aner have been taken

as indications of the Augustan ideology in the conclusion.26 These themes are, of course, strongly present in the divinization of Aeneas (XIV, 600), Romulus (XIV, 805 ff.), and Julius and Augustus at the very end (XV, 745 f.). Yet against these serious and certainly Augustan apotheoses in the realm of history, one must set the less serious apotheosis of Glaucus at the end of XIII, a figure who stands entirely in the realm of myth. His metamorphosis too is described as a purgation of baser human qualities (XIII, 949-53):

di maris exceptum socio dignantur honore, utque mihi quaecumque feram mortalia, demant, Oceanum Tethynque rogant; ego lustror ab illis et purgante nefas noviens mihi carmine dicto pectora fiuminibus iubeor supponere centum.

Even purged of his mortalia, however, Glaucus, lustful mythical creature that he is, contributes nothing to the Augustan side of the poem.

These same books, moreover, have as much "downward" as "upward" metamorphosis. Early in XIV the Pithecusae are changed into a deforme animal because of fraus and periuria (XIV, 90-100). This transformation, to be sure, is a just punishment; but it also gives support to the negative, animal- istic picture of man. Circe, the antithesis of Augustan restraint, order, and patriotic devotion, is a major focus in this book for "downward" metamorphosis. She points up a strong contrast with the official apotheoses, much to the disadvantage of the latter. Ironically, it is the episodes surrounding Circe, from the Scylla-Galatea story in XIII, 730 to the Picus-Canens story which ends at XIV, 434, that redeem the ending of the poem from dullness and failure.27

26 Otis, Ovid, pp. 166 f. See also Simone Viarre, L'image et la pens4e dans les "Metamorphoses" d'Ovide (Paris, 1964), pp. 282 ff.

27 On the weakness of XII-XV by comparison to I-XI see H. Frankel, Ovid, A Poet Between Two Worlds, " Sather Classical Lectures," XVIII (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1945), pp. 107 ff. But see the important

reservations of Marg, above, note 22), pp. 55-6.


CHARLES SEGAL.

Conversely, tales of apotheosis occur earlier in the poem too, and in some of the least "moral" and least Augustan portions. Examples are Callisto (II, 505 ff.) and Ino and Melicertes in IV. Both of these not very edifying tales describe the apotheosis in solemn tones. Such is that of Callisto (II, 505-7):

arcuit omnipotens pariterque ipsosque nefasque sustulit et pariter raptos per inania vento inposuit caelo vicinaque sidera fecit;

and similarly that of Ino and Melicertes (IV, 539-42): adnuit oranti Neptunus et abstulit illis quod mortale fuit, maiestatemque verendam inposuit nomenque simul faciemque novavit Leucotheique deum cum matre Palaemona dixit.

The language and the apotheoses in themselves give us no justifi- cation for seeking a deeper moral or religious meaning in these purely mythical tales of passion, madness, and divine cruelty. The divinization of Hercules, on which Otis lays much stress as a foreshadowing of the apotheoses of the end, is, it should be remembered, related also to the un-Augustan apotheoses of Callisto, Ino, and Glaucus, with which it shares a common terminology (IX, 262-4):

interea, quodcumque fuit populabile flammae, Mulciber abstulerat, nec cognoscenda remansit Herculis effigies ...

Any Augustan impact is also lessened by the fact that the apotheosis is almost at once followed by the episode of Dryope (IX, 326 if.), a tale of pathetic, unjust, cruelly arbitrary "downward" change from the human to the plant world, with strong erotic motifs in the background.28

The flurry of Augustan apotheoses at the end, therefore, does not seem to be part of a systematically developed scheme, nor can they eradicate the generally un-Augustan character of the

28 For Hercules' apotheosis and the theios aner see Otis, Ovid, pp. 166 f.; also Anderson's criticism (above, note 8), pp. 101 f. For the negative implications of the Dryope story see the analysis in my forth- coming monograph, Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Study in the Transformations of a Literary Symbol (Hermes Einzelschriften, XXIII [1969], chap. II, C).

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world Ovid creates in the course of the poem, a world in which gods are more commonly reduced to human or animal stature than men raised to the level of gods.29

There is no question that Ovid takes over in these last books the Virgilian and Augustan scheme of a movement from Greece to Rome which in turn is the geographical expression of a movement from myth to history and from chaos (cf. rudis indi- gestaque moles, I, 7) to order. The geographical movement from Troy to Rome has its most serious side in the travels of Aeneas (though even these are heavily infiltrated by elements of parody).30 This movement, however, is countered by the totally mythical tales, especially throughout XIII and XIV, which carry the poem back into the realm of passion, magic, violence from which it is supposedly emerging. Thus Glaucus' journey from Euboea to Italy in XIII is roughly parallel to that of Aeneas; 31 but it is inspired by furor (see XIII, 967) and leads to even greater and more destructive furor or ira (XIV, 41), namely the cruel transformation of Scylla into a monster by Circe.

Later Canens, wife of Picus, after a long and difficult journey (she is luctuque viaque fessa, XIV, 426-7), comes eventually to the mouth of the Tiber. Her story is again parallel in its geographical movement to that of Aeneas. But it too belongs not to the historical progression towards Rome and order so much as to the Circean realm of violence and magic. Indeed the entire tale of Picus, though it begins in a Virgilian spirit of praise of the natural beauty and Saturnian peace of Latium (see XIV, 320-2), does not serve to illustrate the ideals of Saturnian innocence and simplicity, ideals which it seems super- ficially to share with the Georgics and the realms of Latinus and Evander in Aeneid VII and VIII. Nor does it suggest any victory for the side of order and reason as "the immediate pre-

29 On this point see W. H. Friedrich, " Der Kosmos Ovids," in Fest- schrift Franz Dornseiff (Leipzig, 1953), pp. 107-10.

80 E. g. Otis, Ovid, pp. 281 f. and 289. 31 See Ludwig's remarks (above, note 1), p. 67 on the geography of the Glaucus and Galatea stories: "Die Sagen passen ihrer Lokalitat nach in den Zusammenhang der Fahrt des Aeneas, unterbrechen diesen jedoch sowohl durch die in ihnen auftretenden Figuren als auch durch das in ihnen dominierende Liebesthema, das in den Aeneas-Abschnitten nur eine ganz untergeordnete Rolle spielt."


CHARLES SEGAL.

cursor of Aeneas' Italian war and deification." 32 Picus' story is in fact one of the "downward" Circean metamorphoses of these books. It shows that the power of passion and the fragility of innocence exist in this new Hesperian world just as much as in the Greek and Eastern past which has been left behind.

Ovid seems, in fact, to take a certain pleasure in undercutting the Augustan seriousness of the sea-journey from Troy to Rome. He achieves an effect of destructive levity by inserting into Aeneas' story seven hundred lines of racier and frothier stuff: the frivolous marine tales of Galatea, Glaucus, Scylla, and Circe (XIII, 730-XIV, 434). Thus the profound and suggestive fusion of myth and history which Virgil has created throughout his Aeneid, but especially in VI and VII,33 becomes in Ovid's hands the graceful, humorous irony of a master raconteur. The mythical and historical narratives do not blend into a larger and more meaningful unity, as they do in Virgil, but rather clash and cancel one another out.

Ovid is well aware of the light tone of his un-Augustan inter- ruption, for he stresses self-consciously the imaginary and fic- tional quality of the tales: si non omnia vates / ficta reliquerunt (XIII, 733-4); res similis fictae: sed quid mihi fingere prodest? (XIII, 935). He stresses too the relaxed, sensuous, unreal coloring of the setting (XIII, 735-9):

hanc [sc. Scyllam] multi petiere proci; quibus illa repulsis ad pelagi nymphas pelagi gratissima nymphis ibat et elusos iuvenum narrabat amores. cui dum pectendos praebet Galatea capillos, talibus adloquitur referens suspiria dictis.

The atmosphere of delicate, magical unreality is set by the graceful "bucolic" repetition of line 736, by the reference to casual amours in 737, by the vignette of Galatea combing her hair in 738, and by the abundant sprinkling of marine deities in the lines which follow (Nereus, caerula Doris, 742; Nereids also recur at the end of Galatea's story, XIII, 899, thus serving as an enframing motif).

The theme of love, rather than serious history, is in fact

32 So Otis, Ovid, p. 291. 83 See my essay, " Aeternum per Saecula Nomen: The Golden Bough

and the Tragedy of History," Part II, Arion, V (1966), pp. 58 ff.

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what links together much of the narrative of XIII and XIV. Being " caught by desire " (cupidine captus) is a recurrent idea (XIII, 762, 906; XIV, 29; cf. also XIV, 353, 634, 770 f.). In- deed Scylla's phrase, elusos iuvenum amores (XIII, 737) could almost serve as a subtitle for this section of the poem. Scylla, pursued by her suitors, talks with Galatea (XIII, 737), who in her turn tells of her pursuit by the Cyclops and the sad conse- quences (XIII, 738-899). Scylla's adventures then continue with Glaucus' pursuit of her (XIII, 900 ff.), in the course of which Glaucus tells his own tale of fabulous metamorphosis (XIII, 922 if.). It is then Glaucus who brings Circe into the narrative, seeking to enlist her magic on his behalf. Circe then dominates the first half of XIV. Her role here is of central importance to our theme and must be considered more fully.34

From Homer onward, Circe has embodied lust, passion, the dangers of surrender to sensual pleasure. She is especially rele- vant to Ovid here because she is also an instrument of metamorphosis, of the " downward " metamorphosis from the human to the bestial. It is not by accident that Virgil has Neptune carefully steer pius Aeneas and his men past her dira litora and its monstra at the point when wandering in the open reaches of the sea and the unknown are over.35

Even more than in Homer or Virgil, however, Circe in Ovid is a symbol of dangerous, corrosive passion. Ovid introduces her carefully. She is the daughter of the elemental, Titanic sun (XIII, 968).36 She dwells in halls full of strange beasts, atria ... vanarum plena ferarum (XIV, 9-10),37 the victims of her

"4 The importance of Circe seems to be recognized by Otis, Ovid, pp. 288 and 291; but the implications of her role are not considered. She is barely mentioned by Ludwig (above, note 1), p. 67. For Circe see also my Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses (above, note 28), chap. III, C.

b3 See Aen., VII, 5-24; also Segal (above, note 33), loc. cit. Also F. J. Worstbrock, Elemente einer Poetik der Aeneis (Orbis Antiquus, XXI; Miinster, 1963), pp. 36 if., especially p. 39. 8 The sun appears often in the Metamorphoses in connection with violence and sexual passion: see Hugh Parry, "Ovid's Metamorphoses: Violence in a Pastoral Landscape," T. A. P. A., XCV (1964), p. 277.

37 Some manuscripts have variarum . .. ferarum, which is read by Merkel, following Heinsius. But vanarum is kept by most recent editors: Ehwald (above, note 12); G. Lafaye in the Bude series (Paris, 1930); H. Breitenbach in the Artemis series (ed. 2, Zurich, 1964). Vanarum seems preferable, as emphasizing the sinister side of Circe as


CHARLES SEGAL.

magic. She is the mistress of potent carmina and herbae through which she infects Scylla with the subhuman, destructive qualities implicit in her own nature (see XIV, 51-67). She thus provides the focal point for the carmina and herbae which recur as important themes throughout XIV.38

Ovid builds up the picture of her sinister influence through the suggestive adjectives which bring her upon the scene. She appears by name first in the very last line of XIII and again in two early lines in XIV. At the end of XIII it is furor which introduces her (XIII, 967-8):

furit ille [sc. Glaucus] inritatusque repulsa prodigiosa petit Titanidos atria Circes.

XIV then opens with the suggestion of elemental violence in the landscape of Aetna and the fields of the Cyclops which are untilled because the inhabitants are too uncivilized to plow (XIV, 1-4):

iamque Giganteis iniectam faucibus Aetnen arvaque Cyclopum, quid rastra, quid usus aratri, nescia nee quicquam iunctis debentia bubus liquerat.. ..39

We are, then, fully prepared to meet Circe, "daughter of the sun" (XIV, 10) among her magical plants (XIV, 9) and her "halls full of false beasts" (XIV, 10). We are ready too for the mention of herbarum potentia (XIV, 14) and a further reference to furor (XIV, 16).

Ovid's modification of the traditional figure of Circe reveals

mysterious enchantress. Note the echo of this ferae-theme later in the book: XIV, 45 and 414.

38 For this juxtaposition of the two kinds of Circean magic, carmina and herbae, see XIV, 20-2:

At tu, sive aliquid regni est in carmine, carmen ore move sacro; sive expugnacior herba est, utere temptatis operosae viribus herbae!

Also note Circe's reply, XIV, 34: gramine cum tantum, tantum quoque carmine possim . . . Cf. also Virg., Ecl., 8, 94 ff., where Circe appears in line 70.

S9 Compare the similar function of the Sicilian setting of the Giants and Typhoeus in leading up to the rape of Proserpina, V, 346 ff. For a different view of this passage, however, see Anderson's review of Otis, Ovid (above, note 8), pp. 97 f.

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the spirit of this part of the poem. Like Virgil, he departs from Homer (Odyssey, X-XI) in removing Circe's gentler and more benevolent qualities. He also gives her an active role which is unusual in the tradition. Both in Homer and Virgil Circe must be sought out: she acts only when approached from the outside. Her field of operations is restricted to her immediate surroundings: her palace with its adjoining woods. In Ovid, however, her power has a far larger scope. She moves beyond her enchanted island where Odysseus' men find her (XIV, 248 if.) to invade the grata quies of Scylla's sheltered cove (XIV, 51 ff.) and Picus' Saturnian woods (XIV, 346 if.). Here Circe's power-which is the power of passion and magic-seems limitless and irresistible. Ovid obviously enjoys the imagina- tive possibilities which such a character offers. Hence his narrative plunges willingly into the sense-saturated atmosphere from which Virgil's Neptune had protected Aeneas. What Virgil's Augustanism eschews Ovid develops con gusto ed amore.

The tales involving Circe, then, stand at the opposite pole from the quieter Italian scenes at the end of XIV. They create an atmosphere far from the Augustan and Roman order which are supposedly Ovid's main themes here. Occurring in the very middle of Aeneas' journey, they raise doubts about how seriously we are to take the upward movement from chaos to order, from Greek myth to Roman imperium.

In the middle section of XIV too, even after Circe has dis- appeared, the Augustan material is weak. There is a rather pallid retelling of the Virgilian burial of Caieta, with its pietas- motif (XIV, 443); but it is overshadowed by the Circe-Picus- Canens story immediately before, by the violence of the Dio- medes legend immediately after (XIV, 464 fE.), and by the delicate mythology of Pan and the Nymphs shortly after that (XIV, 512 ff.). Similarly the Augustan material relating to Aeneas in the last third of the book does not compare favorably with the spicier and more successful narratives of love: the tales of Pomona and Vertumnus and Iphis and Anaxarete (XIV, 623- 771). The violence and passion of the earlier books thus continue side by side with the Augustan themes of the end.

This erotic and violent coloring of the narrative holds not only in the case of a mythical character like Circe. It also applies to as solemn and historically important a figure as the Sibyl.


CHARLES SEGAL.

This sombre Virgilian prophetess tells a story of divine lust no more worthy of Augustan divinities (in this case Apollo) than the love-stories of the early books. The erotic elements are even more explicit than in the case of Aeschylus' Cassandra, whom Ovid perhaps has in the back of his mind (XIV, 132-5, 140-1):

lux aeterna mihi carituraque fine dabatur, si mea virginitas Phoebo patuisset amanti. dum tamen hanc sperat, dum praecorrumpere donis me cupit, " elige," ait " virgo Cumaea, quid optes ...." hos tamen ille mihi dabat aeternamque iuventam, si Venerem paterer...

The tone of regretful bleakness with which the Sibyl speaks also makes her seem not so much the revered prophetess as a character of amatory lyric or elegy, the aging woman who has scorned her lovers in the past and lives long enough to be sorry (XIV, 141-3, 147-51) :40

contempto munere Phoebi innuba permaneo; sed iam felicior aetas terga dedit, tremuloque gradu venit aegra senectus .... tempus erit cum de tanto me corpore parvam longa dies faciet, consumptaque membra senecta ad minimum redigentur onus, nec amata videbor nec placuisse deo; Phoebus quoque forsitan ipse vel non cognoscet, vel dilexisse negabit....

Within XV the tale of Hippolytus-Virbius is another reflection of the geographical movement from the violence of the mythical East to Roman and Apolline peace. It also combines this theme with an apotheosis, albeit, of an humble sort (XV, 545 f., hoc nemus inde colo de disque minoribus unus / . . . lateo). Yet here too the grim details of his violent death and mangled body receive a prominent place (XV, 507-29). Simi- larly the story of Cipus, the last actual metamorphosis before the grand finale of the journey of Aesculapius, clearly celebrates Roman patriotism and devotion. Yet it involves a sudden, arbitrary metamorphosis and an unexplained, ominous divine intervention which recall the atmosphere of human helplessness and irratonal suffering in episodes like that of Dryope in IX.

40 Cf. for example Horace, C., I, 25 and IV, 13; Ovid, Ars Amat., III, 69-76; Propert., III, 25, 11 ff.

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V The Augustan tone of XV has seemed to many overwhelm-

ingly clear and strong. Yet a closer examination of the background material in the preceding book has revealed a heavily un-Augustan tone. I shall now attempt to show that there is a similarly un-Augustan tone within XV in the material just before the apotheoses which end the poem. The most important of these supposedly Augustan supporting narratives are the episodes of Pythagoras and Aesculapius. Since the Pythagoras episode is longer and more complex, I shall reserve it for a later place in the discussion and begin with Aesculapius.

The journey of Aesculapius from Epidaurus to Rome is a kind of summation of the geographical movement from the East to Italy so important in these last books (note especially the topo- graphical details of XV, 700-12). Augustan Apollo presides over the journey and remains in the background throughout. The Augustan solemnity of the episode has been stressed by Heinze:

... In diesem letzten Stuck hat der Dichter die schwierige Aufgabe, die Schlange als Inkarnation des Gottes emp- finden zu lassen und im Leser etwas wie einen horror sacer zu erwecken, meisterlich gelost.41

Yet the exaggerated rhetoric of the journey not infrequently assumes a comic tone. One begins to have suspicions of the seriousness of Ovid's intentions at the description of the huge snake making his way through the middle of the city's flower- covered streets (XV, 685-90):

tum gradibus nitidis delabitur oraque retro flectit et antiquas abiturus respicit aras adsuetasque domos habitataque templa salutat. inde per iniectis adopertam floribus ingens serpit humum flectitque sinus mediamque per urbem tendit ad incurvo munitos aggere portus.

The momentary nostalgia of this divine serpent momentarily looking back to his familiar home (685-7), the overelaborate word-order and the hyperbaton of per iniectis adopertam floribus ingens . .. humum, the repetition of serpit . . . flectitque sinus are all exaggerations which do nothing to lessen the potential grotesqueness of the scene.

e Heinze (above, note 22), p. 317.


CHARLES SEGAL.

Suspicion deepens in the description of the sailing a few lines later. The snake rests his head on the stern and gazes, like a content and wistful tourist, into the blue waters (XV, 697-9):

inpulerat levis aura ratem: deus eminet alte inpositaque premens puppim cervice recurvam caeruleas despectat aquas ....

The mock-heroic tone is enhanced by the three-fold alliteration of

-p- in the first half of line 698 and the -cerv-/ -curv- juxta- position in the second half.

As the ship approaches Rome, the effect becomes even more bizarre. The language of 719-28 recalls one of the most awesome passages of the Aeneid, the fearful serpents emerging from the sea to destroy Laocoon and his innocent sons (Aen., II, 203 ff.). Lines 720-2, with their full open vowels and resonants are especially reminiscent of Virgil (cf. Aen., II, 203-8) :42

deus explicat orbes perque sinus crebros et magna volumina labens templa parentis init flavum tangentia litus.

But these lofty, epic lines are made to stand in sharp and bathetic contrast to the trivial and exotic detail of lines 726-7 which describe the snake steering the ship by leaning his head on the rudder:

innixus moderamine navis in alta puppe caput posuit....

The repeated -p- and -pu- sounds of 727 hardly suggest a serious and genuinely elevated style.

Shortly before this passage we learn that this mysterious and symbolical journey passes in review over some of the preceding adventures. Yet also included are the more fashionable resorts of Ovid's own day: Capri, Sorrento, Stabiae, Naples, Baiae

42 Haupt-Korn-Ehwald, Die Metamorphosen des P. Ovidius Naso, I8 (Berlin, 1903), II3 (Berlin, 1898) on XV, 718 suggest a metrical imi- tation of Virgil in the synaeresis of the -i- of Antium and the caesura at an elision in the third foot. For Ovid's more obvious echoes of Virgil in this and other passages see Anton Zingerle, Ovidius und sein Ver- haltnis zu den Vorgdinger . . . (Innsbruck, 1869; reprint, Hildesheim, 1967), especially the tables at the end of vol. III.

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(709-12). These are places well known to the smart set to which Ovid belonged. The phrase in otia natam Parthenopen (711 f.) underlines the frivolous contemporary associations and is immediately juxtaposed with the solemn Cumaeae templa Sibyllae (712). The next lines return to the lighter vein with warm thermal springs, humble mastic,43 and the elaborate, ponderous compound lentisciferus (713-14):

hinc callidi fontes lentisciferumque tenetur Liternum ....

Lentisciferumque .. . Liternum is probably a deliberate echo of Catullus' lasarpiciferis . . . Cyrenis (VII, 4), where the compound is a humorous touch of half-playful pomposity.44 But Ovid even improves on Catullus by using his compound for a common, not a rare substance and to describe not distant and exotic Africa, but a place close to Rome.

Near the end of the episode the snake has sailed up the Tiber and has entered Rome: iamque caput rerum, Romanam intra- verat urbem (736). But this patriotic and grandiose line is followed by another bizarre pose of the oversized serpent: it surveys the terrain as a preliminary to choosing a home, and once more rests its head on the mast, in fact on the very top of the mast (737-8):

erigitur serpens, summoque adclinia malo colla movet sedesque sibi circumspicit aptas.

In such passages Ovid is tongue-in-cheek, at least part of the time. Everything in the passage is inflated to such a degree that the effect is more often grotesque than serious, especially in the occasional glimpses of the snake pushing the rudder with his head or climbing the mast. The entire section verges on parody. If one then returns to the introduction to the episode, one finds that Ovid has prepared for this overblown tone from the first (622-5):

pandite nunc, Musae, praesentia numina vatum, (scitis enim, nec vos fallit spatiosa vetustas)

43 For the common occurrence of the lentiscus (mastic-tree) and the humble use of the gum derived therefrom see 8s.. "Mastix," (R.-E., XIV (1930), cols. 2168 and 2170.

44 See J. P. Elder, H. S. C.P., LX (1951), p. 109.


CHARLES SEGAL.

unde Coroniden circumflua Thybridis alti insula Romuleae sacris adiecerit urbis!

The high epic ring of the first two lines, with their Homeric and Virgilian echoes, the periphrases in the last two are flou- rishes soon to be undercut by the subsequent grotesquerie. One wonders if Ovid is seeking " epic dignity," as Otis thinks,45 or rather epic parody.

VI The long speech of Pythagoras (XV, 75-478) is the critical

passage for those who maintain that there is an underlying philosophical seriousness in the Metamorphoses. Hermann Frankel argued (rightly, in my opinion) that Ovid achieved no full integration of philosophy into the substance of his poem.46 But for many scholars the lure of a philosophical scheme has proven irresistible.47 Otis follows Frinkel to some extent; yet with all his stress on the contradictions between Ovid's anti- Augustan personality and Augustan style, he treats the Pytha- goras section as completing the "Augustan" ending. "The Pythagoras speech," he writes, "is, in fact, the real climax of the poem; the actual apotheosis of Caesar is only its formal pendant and ratification." 48 Buchheit too considers Pythagoras' speech "ein weiteres wichtiges Bindeglied" in the poem's upward movement from chaos to cosmos.49 W. Anderson, who

46 Otis, Ovid, p. 296: "The introduction of Aesculapius (XV, 622-5) . . .achieves at once the epic dignity that Ovid wants here."

48 See Frinkel (above, note 27), p. 110. 47 See for instance Otis, "Augustans," pp. 225 ff.; Viarre (above,

note 26), pp. 211-88, passim. W. C. Stephens, "Two Stoic Heroes in the Metamorphoses: Hercules and Ulysses," in Ovidiana (above, note 18), pp. 273-82; D. F. Bauer, "The Function of Pygmalion in the Metamorphoses of Ovid," T. A. P. A., XCIII (1962), pp. 1-21, especially pp. 18 ff. A similar tendency seems to be at work in an unpublished dissertation, of which I have seen only the title: Gerda Hermann, " Die Pythagorasrede im XV. Buch als Schliissel zum Gesamtwerk der Meta-

morphosen" (Saarbriicken, 1955). 48 Otis, Ovid, p. 295; and also pp. 301 f. See also Ludwig (above,

note 1), pp. 71 f., who, however, emphasizes the question of literary genres rather than that of Ovid's Augustanism. For the general problem of the seriousness of the speech and the earlier discussions see W. Kraus, "Ovidius Naso," R.-E., XVIII, 2 (1942), cols. 1941-2.

'9 Buchheit (above, note 10), p. 84.

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otherwise recognizes the negative and un-Augustan features of the poem, still allows a positive Augustan purpose to the Pythagoras section. Pythagoras, he argues, provides a positive counterweight to the foregoing tales of endless change and violent lust. He symbolizes, according to Anderson, the possibilities of self-control, reason, and philosophy over against passion and selfishness; and he "teaches Numa to look for the permanent in things." 50 And Alfonsi sees in the speech (as in the ending of the poem as a whole) an attempt to make the theme of metamorphosis more than a matter of "erudite folkloristic curiosity" and to find a "norm to explain the universal history of men and things from initial 'chaos' to the organized order of Rome." 5

It is true that the tone of the Pythagoras section is lofty and solemn to a degree that has surprised critics52 and may well have surprised Ovid's original audience. It is also true that there are elements in this section which seem to contrast with and correct some of the preceding violence. Ovid, for instance, rejects bloodshed (XV, 82 f.), emphasizes peace (XV, 103), and here and there allows a higher conception of the gods (XV, 127 ff.). The extraordinary length of the speech also marks its thematic importance for the poem as a whole. This very length, on the other hand, weakens its effect since it tends to become repetitious and in places rather emptily rhetorical. This weakness is the more striking because of the contrast with the racy love-stories of the preceding book. From an artistic point of view the un-Augustan and unphilosophical magic of Circe far outstrips Pythagoras' long-winded vegetarianism.53

Before leaping to conclusions about the profound significance of Pythagoras' speech, then, one will be on safer ground in recognizing the importance of wit and playfulness in all of

50Anderson (above, note 22), p. 24. "Alfonsi (above, note 18), pp. 271-2. 62 R. Crahay and J. Hubaux, " Sous le masque de Pythagore," Ovidi-

ana (above, note 18), p. 287, note the "ton solennel et devot" of Pythagoras' speech, which is " un peu inattendu chez notre poete." They remark (p. 288) of XV, 143-54 that it "non seulement surprend dans son contexte, mais paralt peu en rapport avec le style qu'adopte gene- ralement Ovide."

s8 For Ovid's greater poetical involvement and success in "his strictly human tales of lust and love," see Otis, Ovid, p. 311.


CHARLES SEGAL.

Ovid's work. Here, as in the Aesculapius episode, one must be waiy of surface appearances. The very exaggeratedness of such seriousness may be a clue to the humor and the irony. Hans Herter, in an important essay, has warned against taking Ovid's "hohen Stil " at its face value:

Man spurt, dass dem Ovid sein Thema zuerst und vor allem ein Spiel seines Esprits ist, wenn er es auch besonders durch die Pythagorasrede des XV. Buches in naturphilosophi- scher Sicht sehr vertieft hat.54

This is not to say that the Pythagoras section is entirely lacking in seriousness. My point is, rather, that its lighter undertones must not be neglected, nor its supposed philosophical import inflated. But even granting that the speech contains some serious import for the poem as a whole, one must be a bit surprised at the vehicle which Ovid has chosen to convey it.

It is, in the first place, questionable how dignified and serious a figure Pythagoras is for the cultured Roman of Ovid's day. The metemlpsychoses of Pythagoras (Euphorbus, Homer, Pytha- goras, a peacock) could be a matter for ridicule, notably in Persius, VI, 10-11.1. Ovid's Pythagoras does nothing to avoid this potential ridicule. In fact Ovid emphasizes with a delicate, but very likely ironical parenthesis, his speaker's transmigra- tional recollections (XV, 160-2):

ipse ego (nam memini) Troiani tempore belli Panthoides Euphorbus eram, cui pectore quondam haesit in adverso gravis hasta minoris Atridae.

For the Romans in general, despite the revival of interest associated with the learned Nigidius Figulus (see Cicero, Timaeus, 1), Pythagoras and Pythagoreans were a dubious and suspicious lot. They provided Cicero with an opportunity for invective against Vatinius (see In Vat., VI, 14). In the second century B. C. too they seem to have been regarded with dis-

54 H. Herter, " Ovids Kunstprinzip in den Metamorphosen," A. J. P., LXIX (1948), p. 147. On the general importance of wit and playfulness in the work see also Kraus (above, note 48), cols. 1942 and 1946 and Karl Biichner, "Ovids Metamorphosen," Humanitas Romana (Heidel- berg, 1957), p. 204.

'5 See also Horace, C., I, 28, 10; Epist., II, 1, 52; Epodes, XV, 21 with the notes of Kiessling-Heinze, Horaz (ed. 10, Berlin, 1960), ad locc.

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trust, as one may probably infer from the much discussed story of the Senate's burning of allegedly Pythagorean books.56 Their peculiarities seem to have made them a frequent butt of the mimographers. It is worth quoting from Leonardo Ferrero's very full study of Roman Pythagoreanism for a modern view of their status in the late Republic:

Alla loro determinazione e delimitazione contribuiva effi- cacemente la intuizione dell' animo popolare. Circolavano voci sinistre sulle pratiche della setta nigidiana, si fan- tasticava di sacrilegi e di misfatti che i pitagorici avrebbero perpetrato nel chiuso delle loro conventicole; ma accanto al tragico circolava anche il ridicolo, ed il teatro popolare in Roma riprendeva gli spunti e gli argomenti che gia un tempo ad Atene avevano contribuito a screditare gli ultimi rappresentanti della setta crotoniate: tipici supratutto, e che piui si prestavano allo spirito comico, i temi della me- tempsicosi e del vegetarianismo, beffati non soltanto da Lucrezio e da Orazio, ma anche nelle produzioni dei mimografi.57

It is interesting that just the themes which Ferrero emphasizes as the ones most open to ridicule, namely metempsychosis and vegetarianism, are those which Ovid's Pythagoras chooses to expound at greatest length.

Pythagorean vegetarianism, in fact, seems to have been a point of special ridicule in Roman literature. The dietary laws could, of course, be admired as conducing to good and simple living; but they were more often satirized as mildly inane: see Horace, Serm., II, 6, 63 and Juvenal, III, 229. These dietary restrictions, moreover, have a long history of literary ridicule. They were a common joke, for example, among the comic poets of fourth-century Athens.58 When Ovid, therefore, makes vege-

56 Livy, XL, 29, recently discussed again by K. R. Prowse, " Numa

and the Pythagoreans," G. & R., XI (1964), pp. 40 f. and Leonardo Ferrero, Storia del Pitagorismo nel mondo romano, dalle origini alla fine della Reppublica (Torino, 1955), pp. 231-5. On the position of the Pythagoreans in Rome and the Roman current of suspicion towards them see in general Ferrero, pp. 371 and 386 f.; Franz Cumont, Lux Perpetua (Paris, 1949), pp. 151 f. On the other hand, Pythagoreanism could still have some philosophical vitality in the first century B. C.: see A. D. Nock, A.J.A., L (1946), pp. 152 ff. and Ferrero, passim.

67 Ferrero, pp. 386-7. 68 Most of the quotations on this subject in Middle Comedy are given

in Athenaeus, IV, 161 A ff. and Diogenes Laert., VIII, 37-8. They are


CHARLES SEGAL.

tarianism the main point of Pythagoras' speech, the seriousness of the entire episode is, at the very least, open to question.59

Ovid's placing of vegetarianism in the forefront of the argument has another effect: it subordinates the wide-ranging, lofty concepts of metempsychosis and the immortality of the soul to something potentially ridiculous and trivial. Matters of diet become the focal point for the poetically framed lore of this great sage who knows about the magni primordia mundi / et rcrum causas (XV, 67-8) and has solved all the riddles of the natural world (XV, 69 if.). The discrepancy has its comic side. Even if it does not completely trivialize the import of Pytha- goras' discourse, it still casts it in a tone below absolute seriousness and deep meaning.

Several places in the speech sharpen this discrepancy between noble ideals and practical dietary matters. In XV, 153 ff., for example, Pythagoras inveighs in a rather Lucretian spirit against the fear of death, though his argument rests on the very un-Lucretian point of the immortality of the soul. Even so, the high-toned poeticized philosophy of lines like XV, 158-9,

morte carent animae semperque priore relicta sede novis domibus vivunt habitantque receptae,

soon leads to a pompous pronouncement on the lowly theme of gluttony (XV, 173-5):

ergo, ne piet(ls sit victa cupidine ventris, parcite, vaticinor, cognatas caede nefanda exturbare animas ....

Similarly the long section on the endless change in nature and in history (XV, 176-455) culminates in a warning against conveniently collected in E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, III, 2'

(Leipzig, 1923), pp. 93-4. See also Ferrero (above, note 56), p. 78 with note 309.

I6 Otis seems aware of the ridiculous implications of Pythagoras' vegetarian theme, but tries to minimize them, wrongly in my view, by asserting arbitrarily that they are "no part of the message with which Ovid is really concerned" (Ovid, p. 298, my italics) and that they are "only part of the speech's framework or narrative content" (Ovid, p. 300). But one cannot eliminate or overlook so important and elaborate a motif, and especially one placed so explicitly in the foreground, on the basis of an a priori decision about what Ovid " really" means.

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Thyestean banquets (456-62) and in a rhetorical expression of pity for the slaughtered animals (463-76). In this latter passage, the conclusion of the entire long episode, there are some lhumorous exaggerations, as for instance inpius . . . qui . . . inmotas praebet mugitibus aures (464-5), or horriferum contra Borcan ovis arma ministret (471), or nec celate cibis uncos fallacibus hamos (476). The very last line which Pythagoras speaks is a surprisingly feeble vegetarian injunction and a strange anticlimax to the philosophical and moral energy which precedes (XV, 478):

ora vacent epulis alimentaque mitia carpant! We are thus reduced at the end from the high style of Lucretian didacticism and philosophical religiosity to banquets and ali- menta.

One may also note, in passing, that even Pythagoras' vegetarianism is not far-reaching enough for the poem, since human beings are transformed into plants and trees as well as animals.60 But, in any case, a speech centered on vegetarian diet is hardly the way to suggest that the speaker's words conceal a profound meaning, a meaning which suddenly reinterprets everything in the preceding fourteen books and places the entire poem in a new light.

Such considerations demand that one be circumspect about lines such as these (XV, 143-52):

143 et quoniam deus ora movet, sequar ora moventem rite deum Delphosque meos ipsumque recludam

145 aethera et augustae reserabo oracula mentis. magna nec ingeniis investigata priorum, quaeque diu latuere, canam: iunat ire per alta astra, iuvat terris et inerti sede relicta nube vehi validique umeris insistere Atlantis,

150 palantesque homines passim et rationis egentes despectare procul trepidosque obitumque timentes

152 sic exhortari seriemque evolvere fati.

The echoes of Lucretius are a bit too heavy,6l the metaphors

60 On this illogicality see R. A. Swanson, "Ovid's Pythagorean Essay," C.J., LIV (1958), p. 22; also Viarre (above, note 26), p. 285. 61 With the whole passage cf. for example Lucret., I, 926 ff. and II, 7 ff.; Virg., Georg., III, 291-3; Aen., II, 712; XI, 315.


CHARLES SEGAL.

(Delphos meos, recludam, reserabo, investigare, ire per alta astra, nube vehi, umeris insistere, despectare, evolvere) are too sudden in their changes and too well-worn, the phraseology of a line like 149 too florid to carry serious conviction or dispel the hint of parody.62 It is an interesting commentary on the tone of these lines that they follow directly and rather abruptly upon a vegetarian plea which can scarcely be serious (XV, 139-42):

. . . quod, oro, ne facite et monitis animos advertite nostris, cumque boum dabitis caesorum membra palato, mandere vos vestros scite et sentite colonos!

A seriously speaking philosopher does not talk of "giving over the limbs of slain cattle to the palate " or "chewing up" one's coloni.

VII

Despite the lofty language of Pythagoras in lines like 143-52, he does not in fact present a view of human nature radically superior to what is elsewhere given in the mythical tales. Pytha- goras' speech has been compared to the philosophical discourse of Virgil's Anchises (Aen., VI, 730-51);63 but the comparison is completely misleading. Unlike Anchises, Pythagoras does not express a belief in man's affinity with the gods or the world-soul (see Aen., VI, 724-32). Pythagoras' emphasis falls, rather, upon the process of cyclical change which the human soul undergoes as it passes from body to body, from man to animal or vice versa. The soul is immortal, to be sure; but rather than being ultimately purged of its earthly impurities to reach the realm of the divine as in Virgil (Aen., VI, 730-51) or even in some of Ovid's own stories (those of Ino, Hercules, Glaucus, discussed above, section IV), it seems instead to go through an endless series of changes of habitation wherein no change for the better is necessarily present. Thus just before speaking of his own metempsychosis, Pythagoras generalizes as follows (XV, 158-9):

62 For similar light touches cf. XV, 141 f., 366 f., 382 f., 387 f., 399 f. Note too the strange adjective penatigerus (only here) applied to Aeneas (450) just after Helenus' solemn prophecy; it is made even more prominent by the hiatus and the fifth-foot spondee: penatigero Aeneae. It is hard to take so bizarre an effect as serious.

63 E. g. Otis " Augustans," p. 227 and Ovid, p. 298.

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morte carent animae semperque priore relicta sede novis domibus vivunt habitantque receptae.

And just after, he reiterates this principle of change, making no mention of an upward or purificatory change (XV, 165-72):

165 omnia mutantur, nihil interit: errat et illinc huc venit, hinc illuc et quoslibet occupat artus spiritus eque feris humana in corpora transit inque feras noster, nec tempore deperit ullo, utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris

170 nec manet ut fuerat, nec formas servat easdem, sed tamen ipsa eadem est, animam sic semper eandem

172 esse sed in varias doceo migrare figuras. The process which Pythagoras envisages, then, is cyclical rather than upward. The soul is not improved. Pythagoras is, in fact, quite emphatic about its remaining always the same (lines 171-2 cited above).

His doctrine, then, supports and maintains, rather than ele- vates, the amoral or immoral tone of the preceding, purely mythical transformations. Indeed the language of 165-6 (cited above)-especially the verb errat; the series illinc, huc, hinc, illuc; the phrase quoslibet occupat artus-even stresses random over directed and purposeful change. The idea put forth in these lines thus obliterates any distinction between "upward" or " downward " metamorphosis. Human and animal shapes are to be exchanged, according to Pythagoras (cf. 167-8, cited above), with the same fluid ease as in the preceding books. And this idea is emphasized again near the very end of the speech (XV, 456-61):

456 nos quoque, pars mundi, quoniam non corpora solum, verum etiam volucres animae sumus inque ferinas possumus ire domos pecudumque in corpora condi, corpora, quae possunt animas habuisse parentum

460 aut fratrum aut aliquo iunctorum foedere nobis 461 aut hominum certe, tuta esse et honesta sinamus ....

Iere at the end, then, Pythagoras supports the "downward" tendency of metamorphosis throughout the poem: men reduced to a bestial state either by their own deeds and passions or by the violent agency of some arbitrary power.

Though Pythagoras grants men their volucres animae (457), his argument offers little in the way of profounder morality.


CHARLES SEGAL.

He gives no moral explanation for the soul's migration from a human to an animal body. The immortal souls of men do not dwell in some largior aether where they are rewarded, nor in a Hades where they are punished, nor in some intermediary realm for purgation. They simply go from one body to the next, and the body may very well happen to be that of an animal.

This uninspiring view of man's future makes a superb argument for vegetarianism, but does little more. It also harmon- izes with the general level of human life presented by Pythagoras at other points in his discourse. That level is low. In presenting his notion of the ages of human life, Pythagoras stresses its feebleness. Even within a single lifetime the human body is subject to continual debilitating change (XV, 214-16):

nostra quoque ipsorum semper requieque sine ulla corpora vertuntur, nec quod fuimusve sumusve eras erimus...

The ensuing realistic description of birth (XV, 216-21, especially 218 f.) and the dwelling on life's swift, sorrowful passage into senile decline and death (225-36) once more stress the limitations and helplessness of man. The passage stands sharply at variance with the confident, exalted tone of the oracular 143 if.

One should not, of course, blame Ovid for not being Plato or Virgil; but one must be clear about what exactly Ovid is and what he is saying. Despite the philosophical terminology of Pythagoras' discourse and the rather misleading frequency of anima (which, of course, does not mean " soul" in a Christian sense), Pythagoras' philosophy (in so far as it is a systematic philosophy at all) is no loftier, no more mystical than the rest of the poem. It is, in fact, a rather amoral materialism and naturalism. The sole principle which Pythagoras asserts is also the sole principle pervading the poem: change, endless change without clearly defined purpose or meaning.

In Book I, it is true, Ovid does imply some notion of direc- tion and divine government in the universe, and he speaks there of God and a " better nature" putting an end to the primordial strife of the elements (I, 21):

hane deus et melior litem natura diremit.

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But one must beware of importing this idea of a melior natura into Pythagoras' discourse of XV.64 Pythagoras says not a word about such a melior natura, about directed, divinely ordered change such as occurs in I, 21 or again in I, 78 ff. (e. g. I, 78-9, natus homo est, sive hunc divino semime fecit / ille opifex rerum, mundi melioris origo....). When Pythagoras speaks of natura in XV, the adjective melior is absent. Nature is simply rerum novatrix, the principle of endless change (XV, 252-3):

nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix ex aliis alias reddit natura figuras .. .65

Far from presenting a confirmation of some upward movement and some scheme of historical or spiritual progress, then, Pythagoras' speech casts us back into the hopeless cyclical transformations which the myths in the earlier parts of the poem have dramatized. The world he sketches is no less cruel and no less full of lustful, arbitrary powers than the mythical world we have so far encountered in the poem, save that there is a touch- ing, if rather pathetic, gesture on the part of Ovid's humanity to try to mitigate at least a small part of the cruelty by eliminat- ing the slaughter of our fellow-creatures.

Having confronted the dubiousness of some lofty philosophical scheme in Pythagoras' speech, we may now face the question of Pythagoras' political or historical scheme. The rise of Rome seems to constitute a feature of such a scheme and to bear wit- ness to the Augustan idea of an upward movement in history culminating in Rome. Yet Rome too comes in the context of change, flux, and even downward change. The Golden Age yields finally to that of Iron (XV, 260-1). The physical features of the earth change (XV, 261-306), and changes of various sorts occur among both animals and men (307-417). Finally

64So, for instance, Otis, "Augustans," pp. 226-8, with note 131, p. 228. See especially p. 226: "Species, elements change; the rocks and lands and stars change. But the melior natura is always directing and informing the change." Otis is more circumspect in his book, where he at least qualifies the identification of the melior natura of I and the natura of XV by " seems ": see the next note.

6B Note Otis' implied assumption, Ovid, p. 302: "In any event, the natura who presides over creation in I. 21 seems identical with the natura of metamorphosis in XV. 253 " (my italics). For natura in the poem generally see Viarre (above, note 26), pp. 255 ff.


CHARLES SEGAL.

(420 ff.) nations and peoples wax and wane in power and great- ness (XV, 420-2):

sic tempora verti cernimus atque illas adsumere robora gentes, concidere has...

It is significantly this long speech on endless change which leads up to Rome. The immediate context in which Rome occurs stresses the collapse of old civilizations as much as the rise of the new (XV, 424-31):

nunc humilis veteres tantummodo Troia ruinas et pro divitiis tumulos ostendit avorum. clara fuit Sparte, magnae viguere Mycenae, nec non et Cecropis, nec non Amphionis arces: vile solum Sparte est, altae cecidere Mycenae; Oedipodioniae quid sunt, nisi nomina, Thebae? quid Pandioniae restant, nisi nomen, Athenae? nunc quoque Dardaniam fama est consurgere Romam....

Alfonsi errs when he remarks, " And thus the cycle of universal transformation concludes with the assertion of the eternity of Rome." 6(' But the eternity of Rome is just what Ovid does not assert. Ovid in fact surprises us by withholding what we expect: a reference to the fairly common Augustan idea of Roma aeterna.67 W. S. Anderson has read the passage more accurately than Alfonsi: " Ovid . . . knew (and showed it) that there was no such thing as Roma aeterna: his juxtaposition of rising Rome to the fallen cities of the past, nothing but names (15. 429 if.), indicates clearly what he foresaw for his city." 68

VIII After so negative an evaluation of the Pythagoras section, we

may attempt a more positive approach. In Pythagoras, East

I' Alfonsi (above, note 18), p. 271. 67 The idea of Rome as the urbs aeterna occurs in the Augustan period

and in Ovid (Fasti, III, 72). See also Tibullus, II, 5, 23 and the passages cited by Kirby Flower Smith, The Elegies of Albius Tibullus (1913; reprint, Darmstadt, 1964) ad loc. See also F. Bomer, P. Ovidius Naso, Die Fasten (Heidelberg, 1958) on Fasti, III, 72; and in general Carl Koch, "Roma Aeterna," Gymnasium, LIX (1952), pp. 128-43, 196-209, especially pp. 201 ff. For a different view of Ovid's omission of the theme of Roma aeterna see Otis, "Augustans," p. 229.

68 Anderson (above, note 22), p. 27; also Marg (ibid.), p. 56.

288



and West, Greek and Roman meet. The meeting is a themati- cally logical development of the movement of the entire poem as it culminates in its closing book. Like Aeneas, Pythagoras is a fugitive (exul, 61) from the East, and a fugitive also from a cruel and violent past (XV, 60-2):

vir fuit hic ortu Samius; sed fugerat una et Samon et dominos odioque tyrannidis exul sponte erat ....

Greek Pythagoras is the instructor of Roman Numa, who will carry back his teachings to the Latins (XV, 479 f.). Thus Greek theory and Roman practicality, philosophy and actual government (see XV, 483-4) also meet.

But at the deepest level this confrontation is between the Greek sense of cyclical movement and the Roman linear conception of history, between mythical patterns endlessly reenacted and progress toward a single destined point of history.69 This meeting of Greek and Roman is also embodied structurally throughout the poem in the juxtaposition of the mythical tales of I-XI, largely Greek in setting, and the historical themes of XII-XV. Yet the discourse of Pythagoras represents a victory, after all, for the Greek side, not the Roman-Augustan. Cyclical change, not a clear upward movement in fulfilment of an historical destiny is Pythagoras' theme. Augustan historicity is thus undercut by Greek circularity, at the same time as Augustan seriousness is undermined by a broad, theoretical defense of something as closely bordering on the trivial as vegetarianism. Correspondingly, what the "philosophical" content of Pytha- goras' speech vindicates is not really historical progress or history at all, but rather the endless flux which belongs to the mythical and morally chaotic parts of the Metamorphoses.

What remains and stands out as eternal amid this flux is ultimately not Rome, but poetry. It is in his fame as a poet

9 For these differences between Greek and Roman conceptions of history as they express themselves in literature see Otis' suggestive essay, "Virgil and Clio: A Consideration of Virgil's Relation to History," Phoenix, XX (1966), pp. 59-75, especially pp. 70 ff. But for a more qualified view of Greek "cyclicalism" see now Ludwig Edel- stein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore, 1967), pp. xxi f. and chap. 2, passim, especially pp. 46ff.


CHARLES SEGAL.

that Ovid believes, and it is with himself, not with Rome or Augustus, that he ends his poem (XV, 871-9):70

iamque opus exegi, quod nee Iovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas. cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi: parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum, quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam!

It is in this personal passage that Pythagoras' idea of the immortality of the soul takes on a warmth and range of significance. It is the poet's work, and not Rome, which is eternal; and the Romana potentia (877) is only the frame and the vehicle for the poet's fame.

It is important also to consider this passage in its immediate context. The preceding hundred and twenty-five lines (XV, 745-870) have been devoted to the apotheoses of Julius and Augustus Caesar. To turn away from the Emperor's deification to a first-person self-encomium is, from an Augustan point of view, a rude anticlimax. Since Ovid is writing a long narrative, a carmen perpetuum, modelled (at least in part) on impersonal epic, the effect is far more of shock than would be the case at the end of a more personal poem or at the end of a collection of separate personal lyrics, such as Horace's Odes, III, 30, which is Ovid's immediate model. That poem is often cited for comparison; 71 but there is a real difference, which lies in the difference of genres. This crucial difference is often neglected; and thus the striking, even shocking effect, of Ovid's epilogue is missed.

The first line of the epilogue, and especially the phrase, nec ira lovis contains another shock. Only a few lines before Ovid has compared Augustus to Jove (XV, 858-60). The comparison is common enough, but one wonders whether there may not be some irony lurking behind the poet's personal statement that the anger of Jove cannot destroy his opus.

7O Anderson (above, note 22), pp. 26-7 well points out the juxtaposition of Ovid's personal immortality, the fame which will remain unchanged forever, and the constant change which is the theme of the poem as a whole.

71 See, e. g., Bauer (above, note 47), pp. 17-18.

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A passage in the Tristia lends support to this view (III, 11, 61-2):

crede mihi, si sit nobis collatus Ulixes; Neptuni minor est quam lovis ira fuit.

And a few lines later Ovid spells out even more clearly the connection between the mythological parallel and his own case (Tr., III, 11, 71-2):

.. .fortuna miserrima tuta [nostra, G] est, omne trahit secum Caesaris ira malum.72

lovis ira and Caesaris ira are thus interchangeable, and Ovid uses the phrase Iovis ira in this sense also in Tristia I, 5, 78.73 Elsewhere in the Tristia Ovid speaks of his exile under the metaphor of being struck by Jove's lightning (Tr., III, 5, 7; IV, 3, 69). It is, of course, dangerous to import meaning from one work into another; but, given the comparison of Augustus to Jupiter in the preceding lines, the note of irony, perhaps even defiance, in lovis ira is at least a good possibility. Indeed the connection seemed strong enough to one commentator to make him date the entire epilogue to the early years of exile,74 that is after Ovid had had a concrete taste of his "Jupiter's" anger. Irony of this kind, even defiant irony, is not infrequent in the Tristia and the Epistulae ex ponto, as Marache has shown.75

72 For lovis ira and Caesaris ira in Tristia, III, 11 see Kenneth Scott, "Emperor Worship in Ovid," T. A. P. A., LXI (1930), p. 55 and also Haupt-Korn-Ehwald (above, note 42) on Met., XV, 871. Add now G. K. Galinsky, "The Cipus Episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses (15.565- 621)," T. A. P. A., XCVIII (1967), p. 182, n. 2. Galinsky's entire essay (pp. 181-91), which appeared while my article was in press, supports the interpretation of Book XV which I have advanced, for it points to subtly un-Augustan elements in the Cipus story.

78 Tr., I, 5, 77-8: cumque minor love sit tumidis qui regnat in undis, / illum Neptuni, me Iovis ira premit.

74 Haupt-Korn-Ehwald (above, note 42), ad loc. See also Kraus (above, note 48), col. 1949. Pohlenz (above, note 2), pp. 10-12 also calls attention to the parallel between the Actaeon story (Met., III, 138-43) and Ovid's description of his own case in the Tristia (cf. Tr., I, 3, 37 f.; II, 103 ff.; III, 5, 49 f.; IV, 10, 89 f.). But see contra Otis, "Augustans," p. 201, n. 48 and p. 222, n. 109. Still one may wonder if this "epilogue" to the Metamorphoses could have been written at a point when Ovid realized that there was little hope of clemency from Augustus.

75 R. Marache, "La revolte d'Ovide exile contre Auguste," Ovidiana (above, note 18), pp. 412-19. See also Frankel (above, note 27), p. 111.


CHARLES SEGAL.

Here, then, at the crucial point of the poem's ending, Ovid follows up conventional flattery of the Emperor with a subtle assertion of a poet's ultimate trium

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Charles Segal (1969) Myth and Philosophy in the Metamorphoses Ovid's Augustanism and the Augustan...

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