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A COMPANION TO OVID
A COMPANION TO OVID
Edited by Peter E. Knox
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication This edition fi rst published 2009 © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientifi c, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
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ISBN 978-1-4051-4183-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 or 18 A.D.–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Epistolary poetry, Latin–History
and criticism. 3. Didactic poetry, Latin–History and criticism. 4. Elegiac poetry, Latin–History and
criticism. 5. Mythology, Classical, in literature. 6. Rome–In literature. 7. Love in literature.PA6537.C57 2009 871′.01–dc22 2008041557 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10/12.5 pt Galliard by SNP Bestset Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Singapore by Fabulous Printers Pte Ltd 01 2009
Contents
List of Figures viii
4. Ovid and Religion
Roy K. Gibson
7. The Ars Amatoria 90
78 Laurel Fulkerson
6. The Heroides: Female Elegy?
61 Joan Booth
5. The Amores: Ovid Making Love
59
45 Julia Dyson Hejduk
26 Elaine Fantham
Notes on Contributors ix
3. Rhetoric and Ovid’s Poetry
8 Mario Citroni
2. Poetry in Augustan Rome
3 Peter E. Knox
1. A Poet’s Life
1
Part I Contexts
Chronological Table xvii
Preface xiv List of Abbreviations xv
Part II Texts
vi Contents
Jo-Marie Claassen
Peter E. Knox
15. Lost and Spurious Works 207
Luigi Galasso
14. Epistulae ex Ponto 194
Martin Helzle
13. Ibis 184
12. Tristia 170
8. Remedia Amoris 104
Gareth D. Williams
11. The Metamorphoses: Politics and Narrative 154
10. The Metamorphoses: A Poet’s Poem 140
Geraldine Herbert-Brown
9. Fasti: The Poet, The Prince, and the Plebs 120
Barbara Weiden Boyd
217
Part III Intertexts
Jane L. Lightfoot
21. Ovid’s Reception of Virgil 294
Peter E. Knox
23. Commenting on Ovid 327
Mark Possanza
22. Editing Ovid: Immortal Works and Material Texts 311
Part IV Critical and Scholarly Approaches 309
Richard F. Thomas
Robert Maltby
17. Ovid and Callimachus: Rewriting the Master 236
20. Tibullus and Ovid 279
S. J. Heyworth
19. Propertius and Ovid 265
David Wray
18. Ovid’s Catullus and the Neoteric Moment in Roman Poetry 252
Benjamin Acosta-Hughes
16. Ovid and Hellenistic Poetry 219
Contents vii
29. The Medieval Ovid 411
Christopher Martin
33. Translating Ovid 469
Theodore Ziolkowski
32. Ovid in the Twentieth Century 455
Gordon Braden
31. Ovid and Shakespeare 442
Heather James
30. Ovid in Renaissance English Literature 423
John M. Fyler
Charles McNelis
24. Ovidian Intertextuality 341
28. Ovidian Strategies in Early Imperial Literature 397
Part V Literary Receptions 395
Efrossini Spentzou
27. Theorizing Ovid 381
Joseph Farrell
26. Ovid’s Generic Transformations 370
Alison Keith
25. Sexuality and Gender 355
Sergio Casali
Bibliography 485 Index 516
Figures
1 The Fasti Amiternini 125 2 ‘St. Dunstan’s Classbook’ 315
3 A fragment of the Metamorphoses 316
4 A medieval commentary 329
5 Regius’ commentary 336
6 John Lyly’s Euphues 426
7 Phaedra in a Renaissance translation 435
8 The ‘Flores of Ovide’ 472
9 Golding’s Metamorphoses 475 Sandys’ Metamorphoses 476
10
Notes on Contributors
Benjamin Acosta-Hughes is Associate Professor of Greek and Latin and Compara-
tive Literature at the University of Michigan. He works primarily on Hellenistic poetry, its reception of Archaic lyric, and its recall in Roman literature. He is currently editing a Loeb Library edition of Hellenistic epigrams.
Joan Booth is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Leiden University in
the Netherlands. She is the author of a commentary on Ovid, Amores II (1991), and of Catullus to Ovid: Reading Latin Love Elegy (1999). She is also co-editor (with Robert Maltby) of What’s in a Name? The Signifi cance of Proper Names in Classical
Latin Literature (2006) and editor of Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion
in the Orations and Beyond (2007).is Henry Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek at Bowdoin
Barbara Weiden Boyd
College. She is the author of Ovid’s Literary Loves: Infl uence and Innovation in the (1997), and editor of Brill’s Companion to Ovid (2002). She is currently
Amores writing a commentary on the Remedia Amoris.
Gordon Braden is Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English at the University
of Virginia. He is the author of The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry (1978),
Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition (1985), The Idea of the Renais-
sance (with William Kerrigan, 1989), Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renais-
sance (1999), editor of Sixteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (2004),
and co-editor of Vol. 2 of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English (forthcoming). is Associate Professor of Latin at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’.
Sergio Casali
He has published a commentary on Ovid, Her. 9 (1995), and articles, notes, and reviews on Roman poetry. He is currently working on a commentary on Virgil,
Aeneid
IV, for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. A commentary in Italian on Aeneid II is also forthcoming. x Notes on Contributors teaches at the University of Florence. His numerous publications on
Mario Citroni
Latin poetry include a commentary on Book 1 of Martial (1975), Poesia e Lettori in
Roma Antica (1995), and the edited volume Memoria e identità: la cultura romana
costruisce la sua immagine (2003).has retired from teaching Classics at the University of Stellen-
Jo-Marie Claassen
bosch. She has published on Ovid and Cicero, exile in the ancient world and today, women and children in antiquity, the Classical tradition in South African architecture, academic development, and the use of the computer in the teaching of Latin. She recently completed an English translation of the verse drama Germanicus by the Afrikaans poet N. P. Van Wyk Louw.
Elaine Fantham taught for eighteen years at the University of Toronto before
moving to Princeton in 1986 as Giger Professor of Latin. She is author of a com- mentary on Ovid’s Fasti, Book 4 (1998) and a number of articles on the Fasti. Since her retirement in 2000 she has continued teaching and publishing, most recently The
Roman World of Cicero’s De Oratore (2004), An Introduction to Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(2004), and a biography of Julia, daughter of Augustus, Julia Augusti (2006).
Joseph Farrell , Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is the
author of Virgil’s Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic (1991) and has pub- lished widely on Augustan poetry and other aspects of Latin literature and culture.
Laurel Fulkerson is Associate Professor of Classics at the Florida State University.
She has written various articles on Ovid, particularly on the Heroides, and is the author of The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the
Heroides (2005). Her current work is on the portrayal of emotions in ancient
literature.is Professor of English at Tufts University, Massachusetts, and is also
John M. Fyler
on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English. He is the author of Language (2007) and Chaucer
and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun
and Ovid (1979), as well as of a number of essays on Ovid, Chaucer, and medieval
literature. He also edited the House of Fame for the Riverside Chaucer. teaches Latin language and literature in the Faculty of Musicology at
Luigi Galasso
the University of Pavia. He has edited the second book of Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto with a commentary (1995) and is the author of a commentary on the whole of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses (2000).
is Professor of Latin at the University of Manchester, and the author of
Roy K. Gibson
Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3 (2003), Excess and Restraint: Propertius, Horace and Ovid’s Ars
(2007), and the co-editor (with Steven Green and Alison Sharrock) of The
Amatoria Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris (2006).
Julia Dyson Hejduk is Associate Professor of Classics at Baylor University. Her
research interests include Latin poetry, Roman religion, and women of ancient Rome.She has written one monograph, King of the Wood: The Sacrifi cial Victor in Virgil’s
Aeneid (2001), a sourcebook in translation with commentary, Clodia: A Sourcebook
Notes on Contributors xi
(2008), and several articles on Virgil and Ovid. She is currently at work on a monograph involving religion and intertextuality in Ovid, Ovid and His Gods: The
Epic Struggles of an Elegiac Hero .
Martin Helzle , Professor of Classics and Chair at Case Western Reserve University,
has published extensively on Ovid. Most recently he published a commentary on Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto 1–2 (2003).
Geraldine Herbert-Brown is an independent scholar. She is author of Ovid and the
Fasti (1994), editor of Ovid’s Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium (2002),
and has published articles on other Roman authors, including Lucilius, Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus.
Stephen Heyworth is Bowra Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Wadham College,
Oxford. He edited Classical Quarterly from 1993 to 1998; and in 2007 issued a new Oxford Classical Text of Propertius, as well as a companion volume, Cynthia, and edited a volume of papers, Classical Constructions, published in memory of Don Fowler. He has also published articles on Callimachus, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid. is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the
Heather James
University of Southern California. She is the author of Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama,
Politics, and the Translation of Empire (1997) as well as numerous articles on classical
reception in the Renaissance, and is editor of the Norton Anthology of Western Literature .
Alison Keith is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University
of Toronto. She has written extensively on the intersection of gender and genre in Latin literature, including Engendering Rome (2000), and is currently fi nishing a book on Propertius, Poet of Love and Leisure. is Kennedy Professor Emeritus of Latin at the University of Cambridge.
His publications include a critical edition of Ovid’s amatory works (2nd edn, 1995); editions with commentary of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura III (1971), Anon.
Moretum (1984), Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche (1990), and Ovid’s Her. 16–21 (1996);
a translation with introduction and notes of Apuleius’ Golden Ass (1998); The Clas-
sical Text (1974; Italian translation by A. Lunelli 1995); and numerous articles and
reviews. He is at present completing a commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 7–9. is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado. He is the author
Peter E. Knox
of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry (1986), as well as a commentary on selected Heroides (1995). Most recently he edited Oxford Readings
in Ovid and has written articles on a wide range of topics in Hellenistic poetry and
Latin literature.has been Fellow and Tutor in Classics at New College, Oxford,
Jane L. Lightfoot
since 2003. All her books have been published with Oxford University Press: Parthe-
nius of Nicaea (1999), Lucian: On the Syrian Goddess (2003) and The Sibylline xii Notes on Contributors
Oracles: With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on the First and Second
Books (2008). She is working on a volume of Hellenistic poetry for the Loeb Classical
Library.
Robert Maltby is Professor of Latin Philology at the University of Leeds. His
research interests are in Roman comedy and elegy and the Latin language in general, especially ancient etymology. His main publications include A Lexicon of Ancient (1991) and Tibullus: Elegies (2002).
Latin Etymologies
is a member of the English department at Boston University,
Christopher Martin
where he serves as NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor. He has published Policy
in Love: Lyric and Public in Ovid, Petrarch and Shakespeare (1994) and the anthology
Ovid in English (1998), as well as journal articles on literature of the Renaissance and
other topics. He is currently completing a book on conceptions of old age in late- Elizabethan literature. is Associate Professor of Classics at Georgetown University. In
Charles McNelis
addition to articles on ancient poetry and intellectual life, he has written Statius’ (2007) and is currently working on a commen-
Thebaid and the Poetics of Civil War tary on Statius’ Achilleid for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series.
Mark Possanza is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Pittsburgh. He
is the author of Translating the Heavens: Aratus, Germanicus and the Poetics of Latin Translation (2004) and of articles on textual problems in Latin authors. is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at Royal Holloway, University
Efrossini Spentzou
of London. She is the author of Readers and Writers in Ovid’s Heroides: Transgres- (2003). She co-edited with the late Don Fowler Cultivat-
sions of Gender and Genre
ing the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature (2002). She
has just fi nished Refl ections of Romanitas: Discourses of Subjectivity in an Imperial Age (co-authored with Richard Alston).
Richard Thomas is Professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University, where he
writes and teaches on Roman and Hellenistic Greek poetry, reception, and Bob Dylan. Recent books include Reading Virgil and his Texts (1999), Virgil and the
Augustan Reception (2001), co-edited with Charles Martindale, Classics and the Uses
of Reception (2006), co-edited with Catharine Mason, Bob Dylan’s Performance
Artistry (2007).
Gareth Williams , Professor of Classics at Columbia University, is the author of
several works on Ovid’s exile poetry, including Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s
Exile Poetry (1994) and The Curse of Exile: A Study of Ovid’s Ibis (1996). Recent
publications include a commentary on Seneca’s De Otio and De Brevitate Vitae (2004) and several studies on Seneca’s Natural Questions.
David Wray is Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the
University of Chicago. He is the author of Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (2001) and articles on Roman and Hellenistic poetry.
Notes on Contributors xiii
is Class of 1900 Professor Emeritus of German and Compara-
Theodore Ziolkowski
tive Literature at Princeton University. In addition to Virgil and the Moderns (1993),
Ovid and the Moderns (2005), and the forthcoming Minos and the Moderns: Cretan
Myth in Twentieth-century Literature and Art (2008), his recent works include Modes
of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief (2007), Clio the Romantic Muse
(2004), and The Sin of Knowledge (2000).Preface
Another companion for Ovid . . . Arriving on the bimillenary of his exile to the shores of the Black Sea, perhaps this Companion is timely. More than one of the contribu- tors to this volume has noted that we are living in another aetas Ovidiana, to borrow a famous, if somewhat problematic, phrase. Two excellent volumes of essays appeared in 2002, which offer readers of Ovid a wealth of information and provocation for future study. In preparing this volume I have had in mind the newcomers to Ovid’s works, be they students or scholars, and the emphasis of the chapters has been on utility. Vast as the sweep of subjects covered in this Companion is, there are inevitably omissions, many of them deeply to be regretted. In particular, it proved impossible to do justice to every aspect of the rapidly developing fi eld of reception studies, so the papers in the volume focus on literary receptions, with a heavy bias toward litera- ture in English. Ovid’s infl uence on the visual arts deserves a Companion of its own, which could not be included here.
I have allowed the contributors considerable leeway in approaching their topics, including some variation in matters of presentation, such as the use of BC or BCE to indicate dates. In the fi rst instance thanks must go to all the contributors for their diligence, their forbearance, and their talents. I hope that my labors as editor have obscured as little as possible of their learning. I am deeply grateful to Sophie Gibson for soliciting this volume, and to Ben Thatcher and Hannah Rolls for their hard work in seeing it to completion.
Peter E. Knox
University of Colorado, Boulder, November 2007
List of Abbreviations
Ovid’s works are referred to throughout the volume by the following standard abbre- viations: Amores (Am.), Heroides (Her.), Ars amatoria (Ars), Remedia amoris (Rem.),
Medicamina faciei (Med.), Metamorphoses (Met.), Fasti (Fast.), Tristia (Tr.), Ibis (Ib.),
Epistulae ex Ponto (Pont.). All translations are the authors’ own, unless otherwise
indicated. References to other authors follow standard conventions to be found in, for example, The Oxford Latin Dictionary or Liddell and Scott. The following abbre- viations for journals and reference works are used here:
A&A Antike und Abendland A&R Atene e Roma AC L’Antiquité classique AJP American Journal of Philology ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
ASNP Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Classe di Lettere e Filosofi a
AU Der Altsprachliche Unterricht BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review BNP Brill’s New Pauly CA Classical Antiquity CB The Classical Bulletin CFC(L) Cuadernos de fi lología clásica. Estudios latinos CJ The Classical Journal CL Corolla Londiniensis CML Classical and Modern Literature CPh Classical Philology CQ Classical Quarterly CR Classical Review CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity CW Classical World DBI Dizionario Biografi co degli Italiani FGrH Fragmente der griechischen HistorikerG&R Greece and Rome GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
ICS Illinois Classical Studies
IJCT International Journal of the Classical Tradition
IMU Italia Medioevale e Umanistica JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JPh Journal of Philology JRS Journal of Roman Studies JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly LEC Les Études Classiques MAAR Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome MD Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici MH Museum Helveticum MLatJb Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch MLQ Modern Language Quarterly N&Q Notes and Queries OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary , ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxford, 1982) PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PCPhS Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society PLLS Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar POxy Oxyrhynchus Papyri PQ Philological Quarterly R&L Religion and Literature RBPH Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire RE Real-Encylopädie der Altertumswisseschaft RhM Rheinisches Museum RHT Revue d’Histoire des Textes RSC Rivista di studi classici SB Studies in Bibliography SEEJ Slavic and East European Journal ShS Shakespeare Survey
SH Supplementum Hellenisticum, ed. H. Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons (Berlin,
1983)
SO Symbolae Osloenses
SSH Supplementum Supplementi Hellenistici, ed. H. Lloyd-Jones (Berlin,
2005).
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae TRF Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta , ed. O. Ribbeck (Leipzig, 1871) WJA Würzburger Jahrbücher der Altertumswissenschaft WS Wiener Studien YCS Yale Classical Studies ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
xvi List of Abbreviations
Chronological Table of
Important Events in
Roman History and Literature
during the Life of Ovid
Most of the dates of Ovid’s works are entirely conjectural. Those given below refl ect a consensus view, but can only be considered approximate.
Ovid’s life Key literary events Key historical events
43 BCE Birth of Ovid Death of Cicero Battle of Mutina, deaths
of consuls Hirtius and Pansa. 42–40 Sallust, Bellum Defeat of Caesar’sIugurthinum assassins at Philippi; civil unrest in Italy
38 Virgil, Eclogues Renewal of the Second Triumvirate. Marriage of Octavian and Livia
36–35 Horace, Satires 1 (35). Octavian defeats Sextus
Death of Sallust Pompey; Antony’s failed Parthian offensive 32–30 Horace, Epodes; Tibullus 1 Civil War between Octavian and Antony; defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium
29–25 Ovid’s fi rst Horace, Satires 2; Octavian celebrates a recitations Tibullus 1–2, Virgil’s triple triumph; closing Georgics , Propertius 1. of the doors of the Suicide of Gallus. temple of Janus; Octavian takes the title of ‘Augustus’ xviii Chronological Table
Ovid’s life Key literary events Key historical events
23 Horace’s Odes 1–3. Augustus receives Vitruvius, De tribunicia potestas Architectura . for life; death of
Marcellus 19 Heroides 1–15 (?). Aeneid ; Horace, Epistles 1. Deaths of Virgil and
Tibullus. Death of
Tibullus 18–17 Horace, Carmen Augustus’ moral Saeculare legislation. Augustus adopts his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius16–15 First edition of the Propertius 4 Birth of Germanicus Amores (?) 12 (?) Horace, Epistles 2.1 Death of Agrippa. Medea
Augustus becomes Pontifex Maximus.
8–3 Second edition of Deaths of Maecenas and Tiberius retires to Rhodes
the Amores (?) Horace (8) (6).2 Ars Amatoria 1–2 Julia the Elder exiled.
Augustus takes the title of pater patriae.
2 CE Ars Amatoria 3, Return of Tiberius from
Rhodes. Death of Remedia Amoris Lucius Caesar.3–7 Composition of the Death of Asinius Pollio Death of Caius Caesar Fasti and the (4). (4). Augustus adopts
Tiberius, who adopts Metamorphoses
Germanicus. Tiberius granted tribunicia potestas for ten years.
8 Relegation to Exile of Cassius Severus. Julia the Younger exiled.
Tomi. Suicide of Labienus.
Metamorphoses 9–12 Tristia 1–5, Ibis (?) Pompeius Trogus, Defeat of Varus in the Historiae Philippicae Teutoburg Forest (9).
Tiberius’ Illyrian triumph (12).
13 Epistulae ex Ponto Tiberius granted 1–3 tribunicia potestas for ten more years.
14–16 Epistulae ex Ponto 4 Manilius begins Death of Augustus (14).
Tiberius becomes Astronomica
Princeps. Germanicus campaigns in Germany.
17 Death of Ovid Death of Livy Triumph of Germanicus
PART I Contexts A Companion to Ovid Edited by Peter E. Knox
A Poet’s Life
Peter E. Knox
Introduction
Late in his career, Ovid defi ned his place in recent literary history by drawing up a list of names (Tr. 4.10.41–54):
temporis illius colui fouique poetas, quotque aderant uates, rebar adesse deos. saepe suas uolucres legit mihi grandior aeuo, quaeque nocet serpens, quae iuuat herba, Macer. saepe suos solitus recitare Propertius ignes, iure sodalicii, quo mihi iunctus erat. Ponticus heroo, Bassus quoque clarus iambis dulcia conuictus membra fuere mei. et tenuit nostras numerosus Horatius aures, dum ferit Ausonia carmina culta lyra. Vergilium uidi tantum, nec auara Tibullo tempus amicitiae fata dedere meae. successor fuit hic tibi, Galle, Propertius illi; quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui.
The poets of that time I cultivated and cherished, and for me poets were so many gods.
Often Macer, already advanced in years, read to me of his birds, of poisonous snakes,
or healing plants. Often Propertius would recite his fl aming verse, by virtue of the
comradeship that joined him to me. Ponticus, noted for epic, and Bassus, noted for
iambics, were sweet members of my circle. And Horace, he of the many numbers, held
our ears in thrall, while he tuned his fi ne-crafted songs to the Ausonian lyre. Virgil I
only saw; greedy fate gave Tibullus no time for friendship with me. He was your
successor, Gallus, and Propertius his; after them I was fourth in order of time.The climate for poetry in Rome during Ovid’s lifetime was electric. Ovid places himself in distinguished company, including poets whose works, though lost to us now, were celebrated in their time: Aemilius Macer, the author of didactic verse A Companion to Ovid Edited by Peter E. Knox
4 Peter E. Knox (Courtney 1993: 292–9; Hollis 2007: 93–117), Ponticus, an epic poet (Hollis 2007: 426), Bassus, writer of iambs (Hollis 2007: 421), and Gallus, celebrated by Virgil in his Eclogues and widely recognized as the fi rst Roman elegist (Courtney 1993: 259– 70; Hollis 2007: 219–52). The selection cannot be random, and is not likely to have been limited only to poets whom he had met or heard. These are the names that mattered to Ovid among his contemporaries, whose works infl uenced his own forays into epic, didactic, invective, and the verse epistle. But when it comes to classifying himself in this company he is an elegist, following in the footsteps of Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius, the same company he cites in his apology to Augustus (Tr. 2.445–66) with the concluding remark (467), ‘to these I succeeded’ (his ego successi). In the process he defi ned the canon, for when Quintilian turns to the chief exponents of elegy in Latin, it is these same four whom he names and no others (Inst. 10.1.93): ‘we challenge the Greeks also in elegy, in which Tibullus seems to me particularly polished and elegant, though some prefer Propertius. Ovid is more extravagant than both of them, just as Gallus is harsher.’ It is telling that Ovid thus classifi es himself as an elegist, even after the achievement of his Metamorphoses, for the background of elegy informs even his hexameter epic: it is the wellspring from which he draws inspiration in all his manifold creative endeavors.
In His Own Words
Ovid is himself the source for most of what we think we know about his life; indeed, he provides more information about himself than most ancient poets. It is always hazardous to infer too much or too confi dently from such references in a poet’s own work: as Ovid himself avers (Am. 3.12.19), nec tamen ut testes mos est audire poetas (‘nor is it the custom to listen to poets as if they were courtroom witnesses’). It is nonetheless possible to glean some data about his background and career, not only from the long autobiographical poem composed toward the end of his life during his exile on the Black Sea (Tr. 4.10), but also from numerous revealing remarks scat- tered throughout his works. His hometown was Sulmo (Tr. 4.10.3 Sulmo mihi patria
est ), now called Sulmona, situated in a well-watered valley in the Abruzzi of central
Italy, and in Ovid’s time one of the chief towns of the tribe known as the Paeligni.He was born Publius Ovidius Naso on 20 March 43 BCE . The signifi cance of this date was not lost on Ovid later in life, for as he notes (Tr. 4.10.6) it was in this year that the two consuls Hirtius and Pansa both fell in the campaign against Mark Antony at the head of the last army of the Roman Republic. Most of the poets Ovid names in his autobiography began their careers in the confused circumstances of the civil wars that followed Julius Caesar’s assassination. Virgil, who released his Georgics in
29 BCE in the immediate aftermath of Octavian’s victory at Actium, had earlier com- posed his book of Eclogues, in which the tenor of the times is refracted through the lens of Theocritean bucolic. Horace’s book of Epodes, probably published near the end of the Triumviral period, also meditates on the fears and apprehensions of that era. At about the same time, Ovid’s two surviving predecessors in elegy, Tibullus and
A Poet’s Life
5 Propertius, were producing books in which the harsh realities of the time impinge on their idealized visions of the life of love. Ovid, so far as we can tell, was touched by none of this. His career belongs entirely to the early Empire, a time of peace at least on the domestic front, and the great matters treated in his works are affairs of the heart and of character, rather than of state.
His fi rst literary performances probably took place several years after the battle of Actium and the fall of Alexandria, perhaps around 25 BCE . The date can only be approximate, deriving as it does from information given by Ovid himself (Tr. 4.10.57–8):
carmina cum primum populo iuuenalia legi, barba resecta mihi bisue semelue fuit.
When I fi rst read my youthful songs to the public, my beard had been cut but once or
twice.We may suppose that Ovid was no more than about eighteen years old when this took place (Wheeler 1925: 11–17), but precision on this score is unimportant: the point that Ovid makes is about the precociousness of his venture into a life of poetry.
His family presumably preferred a different career path. As the second son of an old, equestrian family of considerable standing in the community, Ovid might have been expected to pursue a career in public life, where opportunities beckoned under the new regime in Rome. As recently as during the Social War of 91–89 BCE , Sulmo had aligned itself with the rest of the Paeligni against Rome, but there was a long tradition of alliance. In his move to consolidate power Augustus sought to draw on such communities throughout Italy to recruit new magistrates and senators. From Ovid we learn that he embarked on just such a course: he studied rhetoric in Rome and Athens, the traditional route to a political career (Wheeler 1925: 4–11). He held two positions on boards of magistrates, as one of the tresuiri capitales (Tr. 4.10.33–4; Kenney 1969b: 244), who exercised police functions in the city. And later he informs us (Fast. 4.383–4) that he held a seat among the decemuiri stlitibus iudicandis (‘Board of Ten for Judging Lawsuits’), an important judicial post that was commonly a precursor to seeking the quaestorship and a senatorial career. On Ovid’s testimony his earliest recitations of poetry took place at the very time when he was ostensibly embarking on a life in law and politics. He ironically remarks that his father had hoped for a more lucrative livelihood:
saepe pater dixit ‘studium quid inutile temptas? Maeonides nullas ipse relinquit opes.’
Often my father said, ‘Why do you attempt a useless pursuit? Homer himself left no
wealth.’Perhaps his father might have gotten the joke, but if Augustus ever noticed this poem, he would not have been amused. Ovid abandoned public offi ce for the life of letters, but his choices in that fi eld were not bound to win him favor.
6 Peter E. Knox During the fi rst twenty-fi ve years of his career, a period extending roughly from the mid-twenties BCE to 2 CE , Ovid was occupied exclusively with elegy, issuing a stunning series of works: Amores, Heroides, Ars amatoria, and Remedia amoris. To this period too belong most of the lost works (Chapter 15), among which the tragedy
Medea may be reckoned the greatest loss. The exact sequence of the release of these
works is unclear and much disputed. The matter is complicated in the fi rst instance by the fact that his earliest collection, the Amores, survives only in a three-book edition, which, Ovid asserts, has been reduced from an original fi ve-book collection. There is no consensus about the date of either edition, or about the nature of the revision effected upon the earlier work, but opinions generally divide between those who argue that Ovid’s fi nal edition collects the best poems from the fi rst edition without the addition of new poems or extensive revision (Cameron 1968) and those who contend that the three-book edition was essentially a new work (McKeown 1987: 86–9). Ovid himself seems to suggest the former, when he describes his earliest work in the autobiography from Tomi (Tr. 4.10.61–2):
multa quidem scripsi, sed, quae uitiosa putaui, emendaturis ignibus ipse dedi.
I wrote a great deal indeed, but what I considered defective I myself gave to the fl ames
for correction.Even if this inference is correct, it is not entirely clear where in the chronological sequence to date the release of the Heroides, a collection that itself raises intractable questions about composition and publication. The dates given above in the Chrono- logical Table are thus tentative at best.
By the time Ovid completed the Remedia amoris, the last of his amatory elegiacs, in roughly 2 CE he was probably already deeply involved in the composition of his two large-scale narrative poems, the Fasti and the Metamorphoses. It is clear that he had not completed the Fasti by the year 8 CE , when his life changed drastically with the issuance of a decree of relegation by the emperor. Ovid himself refers to twelve books (Tr. 2.549–50), but only six survive and there are clear signs of revision to the existing poem during the period of exile. There is no reason to believe that the remaining six ever left the poet’s hand, and the poet’s words here carry no more weight than his assertion that the Metamorphoses was unfi nished (Tr. 2.555–6):
dictaque sunt nobis, quamuis manus ultima coeptis defuit, in facies corpora uersa nouas.
And though this work lacked fi nal revision, I also told of bodies that changed into new
shapes.The composition of this masterpiece was surely the preoccupation of the years imme- diately preceding his exile.
We will never know what led Augustus to send Ovid into exile, or what sense of irony or private joke led him to choose the venue for Ovid’s relegation, remote and inhospitable Tomi on the shores of the Black Sea. The reason famously given by Ovid
A Poet’s Life
7 (Tr. 2.207), ‘a poem and a mistake’ (carmen et error), may invert the sequence, a
hysteron proteron of sorts, if, as many scholars believe, the poem, which Ovid identifi es
as the Ars amatoria, was brought into the indictment later to provide cover for some other offense, the error that Ovid never explains. Many scholars cannot escape the suspicion that Ovid’s relegation was somehow related to the disgrace of Augustus’ granddaughter Julia, exiled on a charge of adultery in the same year (e.g. Syme 1978: 215–29). Others incline to a scandal of a more personal nature (e.g. Goold 1983), or attempt to relate the exile to changes in the climate for literature during Augustus’ dotage (Knox 2004). The consequences for Ovid were tragic, but did not sap his creative powers. A stream of innovative new works fl owed from his stylus while he lamented life on the Roman frontier: the Tristia in fi ve books composed during the journey to Tomi and in his fi rst years there; that bizarre display of erudite invective known as the Ibis; and four books of epistles to friends and acquaintances, his Epistu-
lae ex Ponto , the last book of which probably contains his fi nal works. A common
thread uniting all the works of exile is Ovid’s return to the elegiac mode, the measure in which he began his career and by which he defi ned himself. Ovid began writing just a few years after Octavian assumed the title by which he is best known to history, and his death came only a few years after the emperor’s. Ovid, perhaps the most Augustan poet and certainly the last, died at Tomi sometime during the winter of 17–18 CE .
Still fundamental for basic information and collection of the evidence about Ovid’s career are
surveys such as Wheeler (1925), Martini (1933), or Kraus (1968). In the absence of new
evidence, there is always a place for re-evaluation and recontextualization. For instance, Kenney
(1969b) investigates Ovid’s use of legal language against the background of his public career,
while Syme (1978) attempts to review Ovid’s network of friends and associates within the