They were admired by Ovid's contemporaries
and have delighted many of the chief poets in later times.
and have delighted many of the chief poets in later times.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v1
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
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? OVID'S LIFE: APPROXIMATE DATES
B. C. 43 Ovid's birth at Sulmo, March twentieth
Ovid educated at Sulmo, Rome, and Athens
The Battle of Gods and Giants (Gigantomachia)
Ovid for a while a Minor Official at Rome
B. C. 18 The Amores (First Edition)
Medea
The Heroides (Fifteen Epistles)
B. C. 11 The Amores (Second Edition)
The Heroides (Six more Epistles)
Travel in Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily
A Poem on Cosmetics (De Medicamina Formes')
B. C. 1 The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria)
Remedies for Love (Rimedia Amoris)
A. D. 8 Ovid banished. The Metamorphoses published
At least six books of the Fasti complete
The Tristia
The Fasti revised
A Treatise on Fishes (Halieutica)
Epistles from Pontus
The Ibis
A. D. 18 Ovid's Death
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In the Metamorphoses Ovid composed his masterpiece. When he
began this work, a long and brilliant poetical career had given him
unconscious preparation, his ability was at its height, and he was
acclaimed as the greatest and most popular author of his time. Under
these happy auspices, Ovid wrote the last great poem of the Augustan
era and one of the most important for the subsequent culture of
Europe.
Until Ovid finished the Metamorphoses, his life was unusually happy
and successful. Sulmo, his native town, escaped the chief evils of the
Roman Civil Wars. The poet himself was born in B. C. 43, the year of
Cicero's death, and was therefore too young to share the dread and
uncertainty preceding the reign of Augustus. Ovid's family was of
fairly high rank and well to do. His father seems to have been anxious
that his sons should have the best possible education. His early
training Ovid received at Sulmo. The town occupied part of a beau-
tiful, well watered valley and was sheltered by the highest peaks of
the Apennines. In later years, the great author often remembered
pleasantly his native valley and profited by his early acquaintance with
simple people, beautiful groves, and clear streams.
For more advanced training, the father took Ovid and his brother
to Rome. There they were taught by the two leading rhetoricians of
the day, Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro. They studied myth-
ology and poetry as preparation for oratorical training, and learned
how to plead the cause of a character in mythology with originality
and skill. For young Romans in general such training was too far
removed from the needs of actual life and in the following century it
led to excessive artificiality and the decline of literature. Even for
Ovid such training was not wholly fortunate; but it bore rich fruit
and made possible the justly famous debate between Ajax and Ulysses
(Book 13). The most advanced part of his education Ovid received
at Athens, which had become once more the chief center of Greek cul-
ture. Here he gained an acquaintance with Greek painting and sculp-
ture, which influenced him more than it influenced any other Roman
poet and appears continually in his masterpiece.
Although in ancient times books were somewhat rare and difficult
to obtain, Ovid read eagerly and not only enjoyed the best formal
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? METAMORPHOSES IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
education but had access to comparatively good public and private
libraries. He read for pleasure rather than for scholarship and he
enjoyed the obvious merits of an author without weighing his impli-
cations or looking for any deeper significance. But he was catholic in
taste, and many of the authors whom he read were among the very
best.
Among the older poets of Greece, Ovid was familiar with the Iliad
and the Odyssey. He was acquainted with Hesiod's great didactic
poem, The Works and Days. In all probability he had read at least
some lyric poetry of Sappho and Anacreon. And he surely knew two
tragedies of Sophocles (the Ajax and the Trachinian Women) and
several tragedies of Euripides.
Among the later Greek poets, Ovid appears to have had a quite
extensive acquaintance. To us these poets are often little more than
names; but to him they were early favorites, from each of whom he
profited even in his masterpiece. He had enjoyed the love poetry of
Antimachus and all the then celebrated comedies of Menander. He
knew something of the minor Alexandrian poets Phanocles, Herme-
sianax, and Philetas. He was familiar with the chief works of such im-
portant Alexandrians as Callimachus and Theocritus. He had some
knowledge of the mimes of Herondas and the pastorals of Bion.
Apollonius's great poem on the voyage of the Argo, Ovid seems to
have known only from a rather crude Roman adaptation. Probably
he knew in the original Aratus' poem describing the constellations,
which was long a favorite among educated Romans. And he was
familiar with another poet, even more admired at Rome, the late
Alexandrian, Nicander.
In Roman poetry Ovid became exceedingly well read. He was among
the few who still enjoyed Ennius and he appears to have known some
tragedies by Pacuvius and Accius. He admired the early masters
Lucretius and Catullus and could quote from a few comedies of
Terence. Very congenial to him was the amatory poetry of Gallus
and his successors, and he read with enthusiasm the work of Vergil and
Horace. He showed appreciation also of a great number of minor
poets, who wrote either before or during his own lifetime.
In prose Ovid probably read much less. But he was able to draw
on two of the chief sources of information used by educated men
of his day. The first of these was an Alexandrian manual of Greek
mythology very similar to the one which now survives under the name
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of Apollodorus. The other was a series of great treatises dealing with
science and history prepared by the Roman scholar Varro.
Inspired by his reading, Ovid desired very early to become a poet.
Like Horace, and perhaps by his example, Ovid had a supreme belief
that through poetry he was to obtain greatness and immortality.
With reference to this belief, he more or less consciously arranged his
life. The polytheistic religion of the time, which Augustus was reviving,
he regarded with rather incredulous amusement, although he did not
openly break with it. But the ceremonial and mythology of this re-
ligion offered infinite material for poetry. The various philosophies
which were attracting educated Romans he cared for still less; but he
appreciated the picturesqueness of their teaching about natural science
and in the Metamorphoses his phrasing sometimes gave them lasting
fame. To ethical principle as such he was comparatively indifferent.
His subjects were chosen solely for their interest and their possibilities
of brilliant treatment. He welcomed the applause of the gay and cor-
rupt society of Rome. Yet he wished also to speak for the more
thoughtful men of his time; to become the national poet of his age;
and even to emulate Vergil and other supreme poets of the past.
Intent on such ideals, he devoted himself to poetry. Compared
with this, all else appeared to him unimportant. He read and prac-
tised writing sedulously and took little interest in any other career.
Though not ascetic, he avoided whatever might lessen his chance of *
success. He seems to have engaged little, if at all, in the dissipation
of which he often wrote. He rarely tasted wine and looked on cards
and dice as waste of valuable time. Even less harmful pleasure could
not lure him from his work. He took no part in athletic sports and
probably yielded but rarely to his fondness for gardening.
In his chosen field Ovid soon attracted attention. While a mere
boy, he read his verses in public. He seems to have planned his work
quickly and written with ease. He was anxious, however, to protect
himself from a fatal facility. He was a severe critic of his work and
was glad to profit by the advice of friends. He must have labored to
remove whatever was not clear and pleasing in the style or smooth and
musical in the verse. And often he burned a poem which he felt unable
to make sufficiently good.
Ovid's father had destined him for a career of law and public office.
After returning from Athens, Ovid pursued this vocation for a time
and held a few minor offices. But he found neither official nor military
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service congenial and soon gave them up. Ovid married three times.
The first marriage, which occurred when he was very young, was un-
happy. Both the first and the second were of brief duration. A third
marriage seems to have been happy. The third wife was associated
with the prominent house of the Fabii and was a personal friend of
the Empress Livia Augusta. Ovid had also a daughter and a step
daughter.
It was with many advantages that Ovid began his literary career. He
was of good family, well educated, a good conversationalist, a good re-
citer of poetry, and a brilliant wit. By nature he was kindly and social,
and, though severe in judging his own work, he was generous in ad-
miring the poetry of others. He soon became one of a literary group
which used to gather at the house of Messala; was an intimate friend
of the distinguished Propertius; and enjoyed cordial relations with
others working in many departments of poetry. Vergil he only saw,
and Tibullus died before Ovid could enjoy his friendship; but Ovid
listened with delight when Horace gave readings of his Odes. And an
older poet, Aemilius Macer, did Ovid the honor of asking his advice
about a poem dealing with the transformation of human beings into
birds.
Ovid first attempted an epic, the Battle of the Gods and Giants
(Gigantomachia). The work proved unsuccessful and he destroyed it
unfinished. He had not the gifts required for a great epic poet, and
he wisely turned to a more congenial field.
His next work was the Amores, a collection of comparatively short
poems. They treated chiefly imaginary episodes of a love affair with
a married woman named Corinna and many of them were written in
a vein of ironical humor. Ovid enjoyed both the cleverness with which
the lover pursued his courtship and the undignified embarrassment in
which he became involved. Ovid's work probably did not exceed in
grossness the usual standard of love poetry in ancient times and it
possessed unusual merit. It was whimsical and light-hearted, original,
varied, and beautiful. So well portrayed was Corinna that Ovid's
contemporaries believed her an actual person and many years later
they were still trying to discover her identity. Although the love
story was in part a good-natured parody of Tibullus, one of the other
poems commemorated his death with genuine sorrow and appreciation.
For the verse Ovid used the elegiac couplet, which in Greek had been
perfected by the famous Alexandrian poet Callimachus, and which
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Gallus had made the medium of amatory poetry in Latin. But in this
and succeeding works, Ovid gave the couplet a grace and flexibility
never attained by any other Roman poet. He even made it suitable
for animated narrative. He became the model for all who would write
good Latin elegiac verse and has remained so to this day. The
Amores were a great success with the pleasure-loving leaders of society
and even with those of more serious aims. Ovid became the chief poet
of the younger generation, and Horace did him the honor of quoting
him prominently in his final books of Odes. 1
For his third attempt, Ovid turned again to mythology and wrote
a tragedy called Medea. It is probable that he treated Medea's de-
struction of her children and her rival Creusa, for later he dismissed
that part of the story very briefly in the Metamorphoses. Ovid could
hardly have become a great dramatist: he lacked the singleness of
aim and the power of sustained narrative. But he was fond of drama
and in such tales as that of Myrrha he could portray tragic passion.
He seems to have been well pleased with his tragedy. A century later
his countrymen still read it with interest, and Quintilian pronounced
it the only work in which Ovid showed due regard for brevity and
restraint. But the Roman stage no longer welcomed good drama. It
was given over to mimes, recitation, and spectacle. Ovid found no
opportunity for success in tragedy and did not repeat the attempt.
His play is now lost but may have contributed to the Medea of Seneca.
Ovid then used mythology once more for his Heroides. These were
fifteen epistles supposed to have been written by distressed ladies to
their lovers. The epistle in verse had been made famous already by
Horace; and Propertius had written an epistle from a contemporary
Roman lady to her warrior husband. But Ovid imagined that his
letters were penned by heroines of ancient myth. This was something
quite new. The Heroides were an artificial form of poetry. All Ovid's
heroines wrote with similar elegance and all wrote like educated women
of Augustan Rome. Some of the letters were supposed to have been
written under incredible circumstances and some degenerate into
wearisome scolding. But on the whole theirs was a pleasing artificiality.
They showed unusual understanding of women and treated romantic
stories in beautiful verse.
They were admired by Ovid's contemporaries
and have delighted many of the chief poets in later times. 2
1 Among later admirers of the Amores were Ronsard, Marlowe, and Goethe.
* Among these were Chaucer, Pope, and Wordsworth.
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Before undertaking a new work, Ovid revised his Amores, rearrang-
ing their order and apparently destroying many which he did not
like. He added some new poems also, in one of which he graciously
returned the compliment of Horace. The revised edition of the
Amores we have today. A friend of Ovid's named Sabinus had com-
posed replies to Ovid's Heroides. Struck by the idea, Ovid seems to
have continued the work by adding six more letters, three from heroes
of mythology and three in reply from their ladies. These new letters
gave Ovid a somewhat larger field and proved even more brilliant and
attractive than the old. The Roman stage had failed to encourage
Ovid's tragedy; but it was glad to profit by his amatory poems.
Actors recited them in the theater accompanied by music and dancing.
The audience sometimes included Augustus himself.
After these early successes, Ovid and a friend named Pompeius
Macer left Rome for an extensive tour. They visited Athens and the
site of Troy; travelled through many famous cities of Asia Minor;
and spent a year enjoying the charms of Sicily. The experiences of
this tour benefited Ovid later in the tales of Proserpina and Scylla
(Book 13) and probably in the story of Ceyx and many tales of Asia
Minor.
Returning to Rome, he again attempted parody and the rather
realistic treatment of love. This time Ovid adopted the medium of a
treatise in verse. Neither the poetical form nor the subject was
entirely new. Among the Alexandrians it had often been the practice
to give lengthy instruction in hexameter. At Rome Lucretius, Vergil,
and Horace had each written such a poetical essay with unparalleled
success, and Tibullus had imitated some of their methods for an ama-
tory poem in elegiac verse, where the god Priapus gave counsel to a
lover. Ovid attempted an elaborate parody of the poetical form in
general, but he was nearest in subject and meter to Tibullus.
After a preliminary work dealing with the use of cosmetics (De
Medicamina Forma), Ovid wrote his Art of Love. In the first two
books, he purported to reveal the most effective methods by which a
young libertine might prosecute an intrigue with a courtesan. In the
third he offered to show the courtesan what methods she might employ
most effectively in return. Following the example of Vergil's Georgics,
Ovid enlivened instruction by appropriate tales from mythology--
some of which he was to tell even better in his masterpiece. The Art
of Love was extraordinarily daring and brilliant. Yet the subject was
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not a happy one. It appealed to lawless classes and lent itself easily
to abuse. The treatment was cynical: Ovid seemed to know little of
the better examples of feminine character and to imply that even
Penelope might have been won.
The poem was an extraordinary success. It was welcomed by the
Emperor's daughter Julia and immediately made Ovid the spokesman
of the gay and reckless society which was defying the Emperor's social
reform. And it appeared almost immediately before the conduct of
Julia reached a climax and she was banished in disgrace. The Em-
peror, though usually tolerant of licentious literature, was chagrined
by his ill success and exasperated by the great and lasting popularity
of the Art of Love. He regarded Ovid as the enemy of civic discipline.
But fortunately he concealed his resentment and allowed the poet to
continue untroubled for many years.
From other directions, however, there was considerable protest.
Accordingly Ovid wrote his Remedies for Love. In this work he pre-
tended to correct the evil of his previous treatise by showing how
either a man or a woman might escape the consequences of imprudent
passion. He referred also to those who attacked him and replied
that his methods were justified by their success. 3 The Remedies was
his last venture in the field of realistic love. Probably Ovid could not
improve in this direction on what he had done already. Certainly he
desired to do greater work and win the approval of the wiser and more
serious among his countrymen. And he may have learned to appre-
ciate in some measure the reforms by which Augustus had saved a
great empire and given ancient civilization a new lease of glory.
In any case, Ovid planned two great serious poems, both tending
to show the grandeur of Rome and encourage the policy of Augustus.
He designed the two poems together and he may even have turned
from one to the other as inclination served. In each he had a distinct
purpose and was careful to avoid intrusion on the material of the
other. The Metamorphoses was to be a poetical history of the world
from the creation to the time of Augustus. It was to deal chiefly with
Greek myth and to be narrative in form. This poem Ovid pushed for-
ward much the more rapidly and was able to finish. Before making
* Both the Art of Love and the Remedies for Love were immensely popular dur-
ing the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Their effect appears to have been
deepest in the work of the Spanish and Portuguese novelists who wrote and were
internationally famous during the sixteenth century, In other countries, the Art
of Love was a favorite with Chretien de Troyes, Dryden, and Fielding.
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? METAMORPHOSES IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
final corrections, Ovid showed the work to a number of his friends.
They were enthusiastic in their admiration and some of them even
made copies of it from beginning to end.
Meanwhile Ovid continued with his other poem, the Fasti. This
work was to be a carefully written treatise in elegiac verse, following
as chief literary model the Origins (Aitia) of Callimachus. Ovid
wished to explain and make popular the new Roman calendar. For
his countrymen the subject was of great interest. Men still living
could remember a period when methods of calculating time had fallen
into hopeless confusion. So crude was the older Roman system that
the official year was regularly ten days too short. At least once in
four years it had been the duty of the high priest to insert a special
month, which might bring the calendar abreast of the advancing sea-
sons. But so ineffectual were his efforts that shortly before Ovid's
birth the calendar lagged three entire months behind the season! It
was recording the beginning of winter when it should have recorded
the beginning of spring. Julius Caesar had inserted the three months
needed to correct this error and also instituted a far better system for
reckoning in the future. Yet even Caesar's methods proved inaccu-
rate within a few years. And so the Emperor Augustus had established
a still better system, so accurate that it was to remain in force nearly
sixteen centuries.
This great reform Ovid wished to promote by his Fasti. Beginning
with the month of January, he would discuss in succession the twelve
months of the Augustan calendar. He would describe in order each
Roman festival, showing how the date was calculated from the stars
and what had been its origin in the fabulous past. He would deal
chiefly with Roman myth and explain how the events of sacred story
affected details of a contemporary ceremony. Since the calculation
of a festival would often require him to tell of some human being or
some animal that became a constellation, Ovid reserved material of
this kind for the Fasti and excluded it from the Metamorphoses.
Ovid completed the first half of the Fasti, six books ending with the
month of June. The first of these he later revised in the hope of con-
ciliating a prince called Germanicus. On the whole Ovid found the
subject very congenial. It allowed him to contrast interesting descrip-
tion of his own time with brief tales from the romantic past and to
adapt his material with infinite skill. And, although Ovid often mis-
stated the methods of calculating a festival from the stars, he gave
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the festival itself new interest for the Romans and even for men of
later times. The Fasti has continued to be read both for its own
merit and for the unusual information which it gives about' Roman
life. 4 It is valuable also for understanding many parts of the Meta-
morphoses.
But, while Ovid was pushing forward rapidly with the Fasti, he
made a disastrous blunder. He may have been implicated in the dis-
grace of the Emperor's granddaughter; he may have become involved
in a plot against the succession of Tiberius. The facts we can only
conjecture; but a second time Ovid offended Augustus. The Emperor
had often shown fondness for literature. He had taken continual
interest in Vergil and Horace, encouraging them to do their greatest
work; he rewarded Propertius and many other poets; and he found
time even under the tremendous pressure of administrative duties to
write some poetry of his own. We should like to think that he saw
merit in Ovid, the last great poet of his reign. In many ways he
showed Ovid forbearance. He allowed the poet to retain both citizen-
ship and property and to correspond at will with his friends. But he
expelled from the public libraries all copies of the Art of Love and he
required Ovid himself to live thereafter in the remote border town of
Tomis on the Black Sea. Dismayed at the sentence, Ovid burned the
manuscript of his Metamorphoses. But happily the great work was
saved: it survived in the copies taken by his. friends. Ovid consented
to have the poem made public, regretting that it lacked his final re-
vision.
During his exile Ovid continued to write poetry. His nature was
an Aeolian harp, musical even in the rude blasts of Pontus. In the
Tristia and the Epistles from Pontus, he appealed to various persons,
lamenting his fate and endeavoring to obtain a milder place of banish-
ment. These poems have been much read but are valuable chiefly for
what they tell us about the poet and his other work. A treatise on
fishes and a lost poem in Getic showed Ovid willing to find inspiration
even in his uncongenial enviroment. The Ibis, written in imitation of a
similar work by Callimachus, appears to be obscure and learned vitu-
peration of a personal enemy. Still in Tomis, Ovid died at the age of
sixty, about the year 18 A. D.
'Among later admirers of the Fatti were Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
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? METAMORPHOSES IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
S The Metamorphoses remains Ovid's greatest and most continuously
popular work. From the vast number of ancient myths recorded
briefly in his Manual or the studies of Varro or here and there in the
work of earlier poets, Ovid contrived to select all that were most
appropriate for his purpose; retell each as a fascinating poetical
narrative; and relate all to one another so as to form a single work
of art. Crude, half organized records of popular belief he transmuted
into a great literary masterpiece.
/ For the subject of his great work, Ovid chose the idea of changes
'in physical form. He mentioned some of the more ordinary examples
of the phenomenon, such as the mutation of an egg into a bird, and
a number of supposed observations from nature, such as the trans-
formation of Nilotic mud into animals, which were approved by the
science of his time; but he dealt chiefly with the more extraordinary
cases recorded by mythology.
/ The idea of miraculous alteration of form, like mythology in gen-
eral, originated at a very early stage of human culture and has
occurred in all parts of the world. Savage men believed that animals,
plants, and inanimate objects were inspired by an intelligence like
their own and might assume the human shape. They believed also that
human beings might relapse into lower forms. They ascribed extra-
ordinary power to their medicine men and to the divinities whose aid
the medicine man was thought to invoke. And they often supposed
that a miraculous change was due to motives of a hero or divinity
which were for savages a matter of course but which were rather hard
for their more civilized descendants to justify. For savage men the
interest lay chiefly in the motive and success of their hero. In a world
governed by supernatural powers, a metamorphosis might give added
interest; but it seemed neither strange nor incredible. It was merely
a necessary incident of the myth.
3 At this stage of Greek culture examples of metamorphosis entered
literature and appear in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. They were
mentioned in the course of some adventure, often so casually that the
modern reader hardly realizes that there was any transformation at
all. The Theogony and other poems treating sacred myth preserved
a similar attitude. Three centuries later the feeling of the more en-
lightened Greeks began to change. Men were loath to reject any part
of the sacred history which had come down from the past; yet tales
of a noble human being or even a god changing suddenly into a beast
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struck them as unpleasantly odd and grotesque. Aeschylus merely
suggested Io's transformation by introducing a maiden wearing the
horns of a cow, and elsewhere the tragic poets alluded to metamor-
phoses but kept them off the stage. Similar feeling appears in the
art of the time. A painter would show Actaeon as a graceful youth
and near by he would paint the skin of a stag to imply the tragic story.
Plato, still more cautious, used such myth symbolically, as illustration
of philosophical truth.
For the intellectual leaders of Alexandrian times a still different
attitude came into being. These later Greeks had made some advance
in science and philosophy. They might still believe occasionally in a
very extravagant tale; but they could no longer take the old-time
mythology seriously. They used it instead as material for their
studies of Greek culture or for re-telling as a diverting story. In a
rather scientific spirit, they began to investigate the local traditions of
little known Greek communities. Callimachus made them the subject
of a long poem called Origins. This material did not afford a single
dominating theme or a well proportioned treatment, such as the older
poets had attempted in epic and tragedy. But for the Alexandrians
both the subjects and the methods of earlier times had become a twice
told tale. They welcomed new material and desired only that the poet
should present a new idea briefly and in graceful style. Then let him
stop or pass on to something else. The example of Callimachus sug-
gested to Nicander and others a further exploiting of local tradition.
These authors were interested in the extraordinary number of myths
leading to a strange metamorphosis. They tried to describe the
process as if it were a scientific phenomenon and even to give their
incredulous readers the momentary feeling that the miracle was pos-
sible. The idea was new and fascinating. Many poets collected tales
of metamorphoses and artists depicted the changes as actually taking
place.
The Romans followed the Alexandrians in cultivating the new
literary form. Ordinarily they did not make collections of meta-
morphoses; but Cicero, Vergil, and many others experimented eagerly
with individual tales of this kind.
Poetical treatment of marvellous transformation proved supremely
congenial to Ovid. The first idea of treating such a theme came to
him probably when Aemilius Macer read him his poem on the mar-
vellous origin of birds. But Ovid wisely extended his own treatment
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to all varieties of mutation. For individual tales, he gladly profited
by previous work of Vergil, Calvus, Cinna, and other Roman prede-
cessors and by such lesser Alexandrians as Boeus or Parthenius. And
in both method and material he owed very much to Nicander. This
Alexandrian had written many poems dealing with local tradition, of
which the most famous was called Transformations (Heteroioumena).
He was the first to record many little known and remarkable myths
and had learned to relate them with one another by a variety of skill-
ful devices.
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? OVID'S LIFE: APPROXIMATE DATES
B. C. 43 Ovid's birth at Sulmo, March twentieth
Ovid educated at Sulmo, Rome, and Athens
The Battle of Gods and Giants (Gigantomachia)
Ovid for a while a Minor Official at Rome
B. C. 18 The Amores (First Edition)
Medea
The Heroides (Fifteen Epistles)
B. C. 11 The Amores (Second Edition)
The Heroides (Six more Epistles)
Travel in Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily
A Poem on Cosmetics (De Medicamina Formes')
B. C. 1 The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria)
Remedies for Love (Rimedia Amoris)
A. D. 8 Ovid banished. The Metamorphoses published
At least six books of the Fasti complete
The Tristia
The Fasti revised
A Treatise on Fishes (Halieutica)
Epistles from Pontus
The Ibis
A. D. 18 Ovid's Death
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In the Metamorphoses Ovid composed his masterpiece. When he
began this work, a long and brilliant poetical career had given him
unconscious preparation, his ability was at its height, and he was
acclaimed as the greatest and most popular author of his time. Under
these happy auspices, Ovid wrote the last great poem of the Augustan
era and one of the most important for the subsequent culture of
Europe.
Until Ovid finished the Metamorphoses, his life was unusually happy
and successful. Sulmo, his native town, escaped the chief evils of the
Roman Civil Wars. The poet himself was born in B. C. 43, the year of
Cicero's death, and was therefore too young to share the dread and
uncertainty preceding the reign of Augustus. Ovid's family was of
fairly high rank and well to do. His father seems to have been anxious
that his sons should have the best possible education. His early
training Ovid received at Sulmo. The town occupied part of a beau-
tiful, well watered valley and was sheltered by the highest peaks of
the Apennines. In later years, the great author often remembered
pleasantly his native valley and profited by his early acquaintance with
simple people, beautiful groves, and clear streams.
For more advanced training, the father took Ovid and his brother
to Rome. There they were taught by the two leading rhetoricians of
the day, Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro. They studied myth-
ology and poetry as preparation for oratorical training, and learned
how to plead the cause of a character in mythology with originality
and skill. For young Romans in general such training was too far
removed from the needs of actual life and in the following century it
led to excessive artificiality and the decline of literature. Even for
Ovid such training was not wholly fortunate; but it bore rich fruit
and made possible the justly famous debate between Ajax and Ulysses
(Book 13). The most advanced part of his education Ovid received
at Athens, which had become once more the chief center of Greek cul-
ture. Here he gained an acquaintance with Greek painting and sculp-
ture, which influenced him more than it influenced any other Roman
poet and appears continually in his masterpiece.
Although in ancient times books were somewhat rare and difficult
to obtain, Ovid read eagerly and not only enjoyed the best formal
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education but had access to comparatively good public and private
libraries. He read for pleasure rather than for scholarship and he
enjoyed the obvious merits of an author without weighing his impli-
cations or looking for any deeper significance. But he was catholic in
taste, and many of the authors whom he read were among the very
best.
Among the older poets of Greece, Ovid was familiar with the Iliad
and the Odyssey. He was acquainted with Hesiod's great didactic
poem, The Works and Days. In all probability he had read at least
some lyric poetry of Sappho and Anacreon. And he surely knew two
tragedies of Sophocles (the Ajax and the Trachinian Women) and
several tragedies of Euripides.
Among the later Greek poets, Ovid appears to have had a quite
extensive acquaintance. To us these poets are often little more than
names; but to him they were early favorites, from each of whom he
profited even in his masterpiece. He had enjoyed the love poetry of
Antimachus and all the then celebrated comedies of Menander. He
knew something of the minor Alexandrian poets Phanocles, Herme-
sianax, and Philetas. He was familiar with the chief works of such im-
portant Alexandrians as Callimachus and Theocritus. He had some
knowledge of the mimes of Herondas and the pastorals of Bion.
Apollonius's great poem on the voyage of the Argo, Ovid seems to
have known only from a rather crude Roman adaptation. Probably
he knew in the original Aratus' poem describing the constellations,
which was long a favorite among educated Romans. And he was
familiar with another poet, even more admired at Rome, the late
Alexandrian, Nicander.
In Roman poetry Ovid became exceedingly well read. He was among
the few who still enjoyed Ennius and he appears to have known some
tragedies by Pacuvius and Accius. He admired the early masters
Lucretius and Catullus and could quote from a few comedies of
Terence. Very congenial to him was the amatory poetry of Gallus
and his successors, and he read with enthusiasm the work of Vergil and
Horace. He showed appreciation also of a great number of minor
poets, who wrote either before or during his own lifetime.
In prose Ovid probably read much less. But he was able to draw
on two of the chief sources of information used by educated men
of his day. The first of these was an Alexandrian manual of Greek
mythology very similar to the one which now survives under the name
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of Apollodorus. The other was a series of great treatises dealing with
science and history prepared by the Roman scholar Varro.
Inspired by his reading, Ovid desired very early to become a poet.
Like Horace, and perhaps by his example, Ovid had a supreme belief
that through poetry he was to obtain greatness and immortality.
With reference to this belief, he more or less consciously arranged his
life. The polytheistic religion of the time, which Augustus was reviving,
he regarded with rather incredulous amusement, although he did not
openly break with it. But the ceremonial and mythology of this re-
ligion offered infinite material for poetry. The various philosophies
which were attracting educated Romans he cared for still less; but he
appreciated the picturesqueness of their teaching about natural science
and in the Metamorphoses his phrasing sometimes gave them lasting
fame. To ethical principle as such he was comparatively indifferent.
His subjects were chosen solely for their interest and their possibilities
of brilliant treatment. He welcomed the applause of the gay and cor-
rupt society of Rome. Yet he wished also to speak for the more
thoughtful men of his time; to become the national poet of his age;
and even to emulate Vergil and other supreme poets of the past.
Intent on such ideals, he devoted himself to poetry. Compared
with this, all else appeared to him unimportant. He read and prac-
tised writing sedulously and took little interest in any other career.
Though not ascetic, he avoided whatever might lessen his chance of *
success. He seems to have engaged little, if at all, in the dissipation
of which he often wrote. He rarely tasted wine and looked on cards
and dice as waste of valuable time. Even less harmful pleasure could
not lure him from his work. He took no part in athletic sports and
probably yielded but rarely to his fondness for gardening.
In his chosen field Ovid soon attracted attention. While a mere
boy, he read his verses in public. He seems to have planned his work
quickly and written with ease. He was anxious, however, to protect
himself from a fatal facility. He was a severe critic of his work and
was glad to profit by the advice of friends. He must have labored to
remove whatever was not clear and pleasing in the style or smooth and
musical in the verse. And often he burned a poem which he felt unable
to make sufficiently good.
Ovid's father had destined him for a career of law and public office.
After returning from Athens, Ovid pursued this vocation for a time
and held a few minor offices. But he found neither official nor military
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? METAMORPHOSES IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
service congenial and soon gave them up. Ovid married three times.
The first marriage, which occurred when he was very young, was un-
happy. Both the first and the second were of brief duration. A third
marriage seems to have been happy. The third wife was associated
with the prominent house of the Fabii and was a personal friend of
the Empress Livia Augusta. Ovid had also a daughter and a step
daughter.
It was with many advantages that Ovid began his literary career. He
was of good family, well educated, a good conversationalist, a good re-
citer of poetry, and a brilliant wit. By nature he was kindly and social,
and, though severe in judging his own work, he was generous in ad-
miring the poetry of others. He soon became one of a literary group
which used to gather at the house of Messala; was an intimate friend
of the distinguished Propertius; and enjoyed cordial relations with
others working in many departments of poetry. Vergil he only saw,
and Tibullus died before Ovid could enjoy his friendship; but Ovid
listened with delight when Horace gave readings of his Odes. And an
older poet, Aemilius Macer, did Ovid the honor of asking his advice
about a poem dealing with the transformation of human beings into
birds.
Ovid first attempted an epic, the Battle of the Gods and Giants
(Gigantomachia). The work proved unsuccessful and he destroyed it
unfinished. He had not the gifts required for a great epic poet, and
he wisely turned to a more congenial field.
His next work was the Amores, a collection of comparatively short
poems. They treated chiefly imaginary episodes of a love affair with
a married woman named Corinna and many of them were written in
a vein of ironical humor. Ovid enjoyed both the cleverness with which
the lover pursued his courtship and the undignified embarrassment in
which he became involved. Ovid's work probably did not exceed in
grossness the usual standard of love poetry in ancient times and it
possessed unusual merit. It was whimsical and light-hearted, original,
varied, and beautiful. So well portrayed was Corinna that Ovid's
contemporaries believed her an actual person and many years later
they were still trying to discover her identity. Although the love
story was in part a good-natured parody of Tibullus, one of the other
poems commemorated his death with genuine sorrow and appreciation.
For the verse Ovid used the elegiac couplet, which in Greek had been
perfected by the famous Alexandrian poet Callimachus, and which
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Gallus had made the medium of amatory poetry in Latin. But in this
and succeeding works, Ovid gave the couplet a grace and flexibility
never attained by any other Roman poet. He even made it suitable
for animated narrative. He became the model for all who would write
good Latin elegiac verse and has remained so to this day. The
Amores were a great success with the pleasure-loving leaders of society
and even with those of more serious aims. Ovid became the chief poet
of the younger generation, and Horace did him the honor of quoting
him prominently in his final books of Odes. 1
For his third attempt, Ovid turned again to mythology and wrote
a tragedy called Medea. It is probable that he treated Medea's de-
struction of her children and her rival Creusa, for later he dismissed
that part of the story very briefly in the Metamorphoses. Ovid could
hardly have become a great dramatist: he lacked the singleness of
aim and the power of sustained narrative. But he was fond of drama
and in such tales as that of Myrrha he could portray tragic passion.
He seems to have been well pleased with his tragedy. A century later
his countrymen still read it with interest, and Quintilian pronounced
it the only work in which Ovid showed due regard for brevity and
restraint. But the Roman stage no longer welcomed good drama. It
was given over to mimes, recitation, and spectacle. Ovid found no
opportunity for success in tragedy and did not repeat the attempt.
His play is now lost but may have contributed to the Medea of Seneca.
Ovid then used mythology once more for his Heroides. These were
fifteen epistles supposed to have been written by distressed ladies to
their lovers. The epistle in verse had been made famous already by
Horace; and Propertius had written an epistle from a contemporary
Roman lady to her warrior husband. But Ovid imagined that his
letters were penned by heroines of ancient myth. This was something
quite new. The Heroides were an artificial form of poetry. All Ovid's
heroines wrote with similar elegance and all wrote like educated women
of Augustan Rome. Some of the letters were supposed to have been
written under incredible circumstances and some degenerate into
wearisome scolding. But on the whole theirs was a pleasing artificiality.
They showed unusual understanding of women and treated romantic
stories in beautiful verse.
They were admired by Ovid's contemporaries
and have delighted many of the chief poets in later times. 2
1 Among later admirers of the Amores were Ronsard, Marlowe, and Goethe.
* Among these were Chaucer, Pope, and Wordsworth.
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Before undertaking a new work, Ovid revised his Amores, rearrang-
ing their order and apparently destroying many which he did not
like. He added some new poems also, in one of which he graciously
returned the compliment of Horace. The revised edition of the
Amores we have today. A friend of Ovid's named Sabinus had com-
posed replies to Ovid's Heroides. Struck by the idea, Ovid seems to
have continued the work by adding six more letters, three from heroes
of mythology and three in reply from their ladies. These new letters
gave Ovid a somewhat larger field and proved even more brilliant and
attractive than the old. The Roman stage had failed to encourage
Ovid's tragedy; but it was glad to profit by his amatory poems.
Actors recited them in the theater accompanied by music and dancing.
The audience sometimes included Augustus himself.
After these early successes, Ovid and a friend named Pompeius
Macer left Rome for an extensive tour. They visited Athens and the
site of Troy; travelled through many famous cities of Asia Minor;
and spent a year enjoying the charms of Sicily. The experiences of
this tour benefited Ovid later in the tales of Proserpina and Scylla
(Book 13) and probably in the story of Ceyx and many tales of Asia
Minor.
Returning to Rome, he again attempted parody and the rather
realistic treatment of love. This time Ovid adopted the medium of a
treatise in verse. Neither the poetical form nor the subject was
entirely new. Among the Alexandrians it had often been the practice
to give lengthy instruction in hexameter. At Rome Lucretius, Vergil,
and Horace had each written such a poetical essay with unparalleled
success, and Tibullus had imitated some of their methods for an ama-
tory poem in elegiac verse, where the god Priapus gave counsel to a
lover. Ovid attempted an elaborate parody of the poetical form in
general, but he was nearest in subject and meter to Tibullus.
After a preliminary work dealing with the use of cosmetics (De
Medicamina Forma), Ovid wrote his Art of Love. In the first two
books, he purported to reveal the most effective methods by which a
young libertine might prosecute an intrigue with a courtesan. In the
third he offered to show the courtesan what methods she might employ
most effectively in return. Following the example of Vergil's Georgics,
Ovid enlivened instruction by appropriate tales from mythology--
some of which he was to tell even better in his masterpiece. The Art
of Love was extraordinarily daring and brilliant. Yet the subject was
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not a happy one. It appealed to lawless classes and lent itself easily
to abuse. The treatment was cynical: Ovid seemed to know little of
the better examples of feminine character and to imply that even
Penelope might have been won.
The poem was an extraordinary success. It was welcomed by the
Emperor's daughter Julia and immediately made Ovid the spokesman
of the gay and reckless society which was defying the Emperor's social
reform. And it appeared almost immediately before the conduct of
Julia reached a climax and she was banished in disgrace. The Em-
peror, though usually tolerant of licentious literature, was chagrined
by his ill success and exasperated by the great and lasting popularity
of the Art of Love. He regarded Ovid as the enemy of civic discipline.
But fortunately he concealed his resentment and allowed the poet to
continue untroubled for many years.
From other directions, however, there was considerable protest.
Accordingly Ovid wrote his Remedies for Love. In this work he pre-
tended to correct the evil of his previous treatise by showing how
either a man or a woman might escape the consequences of imprudent
passion. He referred also to those who attacked him and replied
that his methods were justified by their success. 3 The Remedies was
his last venture in the field of realistic love. Probably Ovid could not
improve in this direction on what he had done already. Certainly he
desired to do greater work and win the approval of the wiser and more
serious among his countrymen. And he may have learned to appre-
ciate in some measure the reforms by which Augustus had saved a
great empire and given ancient civilization a new lease of glory.
In any case, Ovid planned two great serious poems, both tending
to show the grandeur of Rome and encourage the policy of Augustus.
He designed the two poems together and he may even have turned
from one to the other as inclination served. In each he had a distinct
purpose and was careful to avoid intrusion on the material of the
other. The Metamorphoses was to be a poetical history of the world
from the creation to the time of Augustus. It was to deal chiefly with
Greek myth and to be narrative in form. This poem Ovid pushed for-
ward much the more rapidly and was able to finish. Before making
* Both the Art of Love and the Remedies for Love were immensely popular dur-
ing the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Their effect appears to have been
deepest in the work of the Spanish and Portuguese novelists who wrote and were
internationally famous during the sixteenth century, In other countries, the Art
of Love was a favorite with Chretien de Troyes, Dryden, and Fielding.
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final corrections, Ovid showed the work to a number of his friends.
They were enthusiastic in their admiration and some of them even
made copies of it from beginning to end.
Meanwhile Ovid continued with his other poem, the Fasti. This
work was to be a carefully written treatise in elegiac verse, following
as chief literary model the Origins (Aitia) of Callimachus. Ovid
wished to explain and make popular the new Roman calendar. For
his countrymen the subject was of great interest. Men still living
could remember a period when methods of calculating time had fallen
into hopeless confusion. So crude was the older Roman system that
the official year was regularly ten days too short. At least once in
four years it had been the duty of the high priest to insert a special
month, which might bring the calendar abreast of the advancing sea-
sons. But so ineffectual were his efforts that shortly before Ovid's
birth the calendar lagged three entire months behind the season! It
was recording the beginning of winter when it should have recorded
the beginning of spring. Julius Caesar had inserted the three months
needed to correct this error and also instituted a far better system for
reckoning in the future. Yet even Caesar's methods proved inaccu-
rate within a few years. And so the Emperor Augustus had established
a still better system, so accurate that it was to remain in force nearly
sixteen centuries.
This great reform Ovid wished to promote by his Fasti. Beginning
with the month of January, he would discuss in succession the twelve
months of the Augustan calendar. He would describe in order each
Roman festival, showing how the date was calculated from the stars
and what had been its origin in the fabulous past. He would deal
chiefly with Roman myth and explain how the events of sacred story
affected details of a contemporary ceremony. Since the calculation
of a festival would often require him to tell of some human being or
some animal that became a constellation, Ovid reserved material of
this kind for the Fasti and excluded it from the Metamorphoses.
Ovid completed the first half of the Fasti, six books ending with the
month of June. The first of these he later revised in the hope of con-
ciliating a prince called Germanicus. On the whole Ovid found the
subject very congenial. It allowed him to contrast interesting descrip-
tion of his own time with brief tales from the romantic past and to
adapt his material with infinite skill. And, although Ovid often mis-
stated the methods of calculating a festival from the stars, he gave
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the festival itself new interest for the Romans and even for men of
later times. The Fasti has continued to be read both for its own
merit and for the unusual information which it gives about' Roman
life. 4 It is valuable also for understanding many parts of the Meta-
morphoses.
But, while Ovid was pushing forward rapidly with the Fasti, he
made a disastrous blunder. He may have been implicated in the dis-
grace of the Emperor's granddaughter; he may have become involved
in a plot against the succession of Tiberius. The facts we can only
conjecture; but a second time Ovid offended Augustus. The Emperor
had often shown fondness for literature. He had taken continual
interest in Vergil and Horace, encouraging them to do their greatest
work; he rewarded Propertius and many other poets; and he found
time even under the tremendous pressure of administrative duties to
write some poetry of his own. We should like to think that he saw
merit in Ovid, the last great poet of his reign. In many ways he
showed Ovid forbearance. He allowed the poet to retain both citizen-
ship and property and to correspond at will with his friends. But he
expelled from the public libraries all copies of the Art of Love and he
required Ovid himself to live thereafter in the remote border town of
Tomis on the Black Sea. Dismayed at the sentence, Ovid burned the
manuscript of his Metamorphoses. But happily the great work was
saved: it survived in the copies taken by his. friends. Ovid consented
to have the poem made public, regretting that it lacked his final re-
vision.
During his exile Ovid continued to write poetry. His nature was
an Aeolian harp, musical even in the rude blasts of Pontus. In the
Tristia and the Epistles from Pontus, he appealed to various persons,
lamenting his fate and endeavoring to obtain a milder place of banish-
ment. These poems have been much read but are valuable chiefly for
what they tell us about the poet and his other work. A treatise on
fishes and a lost poem in Getic showed Ovid willing to find inspiration
even in his uncongenial enviroment. The Ibis, written in imitation of a
similar work by Callimachus, appears to be obscure and learned vitu-
peration of a personal enemy. Still in Tomis, Ovid died at the age of
sixty, about the year 18 A. D.
'Among later admirers of the Fatti were Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Goethe.
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? METAMORPHOSES IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
S The Metamorphoses remains Ovid's greatest and most continuously
popular work. From the vast number of ancient myths recorded
briefly in his Manual or the studies of Varro or here and there in the
work of earlier poets, Ovid contrived to select all that were most
appropriate for his purpose; retell each as a fascinating poetical
narrative; and relate all to one another so as to form a single work
of art. Crude, half organized records of popular belief he transmuted
into a great literary masterpiece.
/ For the subject of his great work, Ovid chose the idea of changes
'in physical form. He mentioned some of the more ordinary examples
of the phenomenon, such as the mutation of an egg into a bird, and
a number of supposed observations from nature, such as the trans-
formation of Nilotic mud into animals, which were approved by the
science of his time; but he dealt chiefly with the more extraordinary
cases recorded by mythology.
/ The idea of miraculous alteration of form, like mythology in gen-
eral, originated at a very early stage of human culture and has
occurred in all parts of the world. Savage men believed that animals,
plants, and inanimate objects were inspired by an intelligence like
their own and might assume the human shape. They believed also that
human beings might relapse into lower forms. They ascribed extra-
ordinary power to their medicine men and to the divinities whose aid
the medicine man was thought to invoke. And they often supposed
that a miraculous change was due to motives of a hero or divinity
which were for savages a matter of course but which were rather hard
for their more civilized descendants to justify. For savage men the
interest lay chiefly in the motive and success of their hero. In a world
governed by supernatural powers, a metamorphosis might give added
interest; but it seemed neither strange nor incredible. It was merely
a necessary incident of the myth.
3 At this stage of Greek culture examples of metamorphosis entered
literature and appear in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. They were
mentioned in the course of some adventure, often so casually that the
modern reader hardly realizes that there was any transformation at
all. The Theogony and other poems treating sacred myth preserved
a similar attitude. Three centuries later the feeling of the more en-
lightened Greeks began to change. Men were loath to reject any part
of the sacred history which had come down from the past; yet tales
of a noble human being or even a god changing suddenly into a beast
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struck them as unpleasantly odd and grotesque. Aeschylus merely
suggested Io's transformation by introducing a maiden wearing the
horns of a cow, and elsewhere the tragic poets alluded to metamor-
phoses but kept them off the stage. Similar feeling appears in the
art of the time. A painter would show Actaeon as a graceful youth
and near by he would paint the skin of a stag to imply the tragic story.
Plato, still more cautious, used such myth symbolically, as illustration
of philosophical truth.
For the intellectual leaders of Alexandrian times a still different
attitude came into being. These later Greeks had made some advance
in science and philosophy. They might still believe occasionally in a
very extravagant tale; but they could no longer take the old-time
mythology seriously. They used it instead as material for their
studies of Greek culture or for re-telling as a diverting story. In a
rather scientific spirit, they began to investigate the local traditions of
little known Greek communities. Callimachus made them the subject
of a long poem called Origins. This material did not afford a single
dominating theme or a well proportioned treatment, such as the older
poets had attempted in epic and tragedy. But for the Alexandrians
both the subjects and the methods of earlier times had become a twice
told tale. They welcomed new material and desired only that the poet
should present a new idea briefly and in graceful style. Then let him
stop or pass on to something else. The example of Callimachus sug-
gested to Nicander and others a further exploiting of local tradition.
These authors were interested in the extraordinary number of myths
leading to a strange metamorphosis. They tried to describe the
process as if it were a scientific phenomenon and even to give their
incredulous readers the momentary feeling that the miracle was pos-
sible. The idea was new and fascinating. Many poets collected tales
of metamorphoses and artists depicted the changes as actually taking
place.
The Romans followed the Alexandrians in cultivating the new
literary form. Ordinarily they did not make collections of meta-
morphoses; but Cicero, Vergil, and many others experimented eagerly
with individual tales of this kind.
Poetical treatment of marvellous transformation proved supremely
congenial to Ovid. The first idea of treating such a theme came to
him probably when Aemilius Macer read him his poem on the mar-
vellous origin of birds. But Ovid wisely extended his own treatment
11
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? METAMORPHOSES IN EUROPEAN CULTURE
to all varieties of mutation. For individual tales, he gladly profited
by previous work of Vergil, Calvus, Cinna, and other Roman prede-
cessors and by such lesser Alexandrians as Boeus or Parthenius. And
in both method and material he owed very much to Nicander. This
Alexandrian had written many poems dealing with local tradition, of
which the most famous was called Transformations (Heteroioumena).
He was the first to record many little known and remarkable myths
and had learned to relate them with one another by a variety of skill-
ful devices.
