When Apollo crowns himself
with laurel, it is God enveloping himself with
the body of that which he has made his mother.
with laurel, it is God enveloping himself with
the body of that which he has made his mother.
Ovid - 1901 - Ovid and His Influence
He would have
enjoyed seeing his stories of Pyramus, Narcis-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
sus, Byblis and Phaethon extracted from their
context and retold in what to the Mediaeval
author seemed a modern way. The presence of
the ancient poet is also evident in the lengthier
romances, those of Crestien de Troyes as well
as those which deal with ancient subjects, such
as the anonymous Enias and the Roman de
Troie of Benoit de Sainte-More. The latter
poem is a kind of Mediaeval Homer, at several
removes; the former is the Mediaeval Virgil.
The authors are not illiterate yokels, peering at
antique figures through a mist of Mediaeval
ignorance. They are cultivated gentlemen who
know the Classics well. They are following the
rule of an established literary form and adjust-
ing their material to it. In contrast to these
romances, and in deliberate contrast, other
poets retold ancient stories in the Latin heroic
hexameter with a closer conformity to history.
Such works deserve the name of epic rather
than romance. Thus Joseph of Exeter in the
twelfth century wrote a poem De Bello Troiano
in very decent Latin verse, and applying the
same method to a contemporary subject, sought
to immortalize the Crusades in his Antiocheis.
Similarly, the story of Alexander the Great re-
ceived a twofold treatment. The career of the
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
Macedonian, something of a romance even in
its strictly historical form, had been embel-
lished with marvels from various sources, and
it furnished the theme for several romances in
the popular tongues. Ovid has contributed
something to their making. For instance, the
author of the Spanish poem, Libro de Alex-
andre, in the thirteenth century, imitates him
in more than one passage. But Ovid's influence
is no less obvious in the soberer Latin epic
Alexandreis which Gualterus de Insulis wrote
a hundred years earlier.
V. ARTS OF LOVE AND THE KNIGHTLY CODE
The Renaissance of the twelfth century was,
among other things, an age of knight-errantry
and courtly love. The poets of chivalry ac-i
cepted as a standard authority, with some mod-
ifications, Ovid's gay text-book on the art of
love. Crestien de Troyes translated it, and
though the translation is lost, Ovid is abun-
dantly present in the poet's romances. If the
historical Ovid took Paris and Helen from
Homeric epic and metamorphosed them into
figures for his comedy of love, the posthumous
Ovid assisted Crestien in a similar abstraction
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
of Lancelot and Guinevere from Celtic fairy-
legend, and a similar adaptation of their char-
acters to his romance.
In the next century, Ovid's poem is imme-
diately the inspiration of various poetical
treatises on the art of love. From France, Ovid
passes to Spain, and furnishes many sugges-
tions for the Libro de Buen Amor of the Ar-
cipreste de Hita, Juan Ruiz.
The acme of the Mediaeval transformation
of Ovid's treatise is reached in the Romance
of the Rose, one of the greatest works of the
period and of all time. It is a composite pro-
duction by two very different authors. Guil-
laume de Lorris, probably between 1225 and
1230, began a romance in the form of a vision.
A lover in his dream wanders amid a garden of
enchantment, where the Rose, the symbol of
his loved one, is guarded in a castle. With the
help of the god of love, Amors, he is about to
pluck the rose, when the poem abruptly ends;
the author, after some four thousand lines,
had not finished his work. The treatment is
leisurely, for Mediaeval romancers were not
pressed for time; like other undertakings of
the period, their work was done sub specie
aeternitatis. An air of dreamy mysticism, la
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
douce savor de la rose, pervades the story. The
poet takes much from Ovid, but what is taken
is absorbed and refined. The sentiment of love
is as pure, and as passionate, as in some of the
later Mediaeval hymns to the Blessed Virgin,
the Rose of Heaven.
Forty years later, the work was completed
by Jean Clopinel, or Chopinel, de Meun. He
enters at the eleventh hour and allows no pluck-
ing of the rose for over fifteen thousand verses
more. The Lover is not to win without knowing
what he wins and why. Jean de Meun is no
dreamer, but a scholar, versed in all the Latin
Classics, a philosopher, familiar with ancient
and contemporary thought, and a satirist, alive
to the weaknesses of nobles and churchmen
and women. He is likewise a poet and a wit,
and doubtless knew full well that he was strain-
ing the plot to the limits of its elasticity. The
Lover still dreams his dream, and, at the far-
off end, plucks the Rose; but the poem has
been changed from a romance into what the
author calls it, "A Mirror of Love. " It is a
grand debate among diverse types of thought
and feeling. Ovid and Boethius clash at the
start, and after other contestants have had their
say, Ovid emerges triumphant. He has, in the
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
process, been considerably reformed. Perhaps
the most profitable of all his metempsychoses
is that in the genius of Jean de Meun.
Vi. FORGERIES
A great name attracts to itself both inter-
esting stories, told originally about somebody
else, and seemingly characteristic works, which
somebody else had written. A number of such
writings clusters about Ovid's name. In the
twelfth century, the multitudinous Ovidians of
that period not only wrought out a new elegiac
comedy in Ovid's spirit, but sought fame, at
the expense of their identity, by ascribing some
of their performances to Ovid himself. A
comedy of enormous vogue and influence, en-
titled Pamphilus sive de Amore, was perhaps
not attributed to Ovid at the start. The author
of The Flea {De Pulice) may have wished to
provide his master with something to match
The Gnat {De Culice) ascribed to the youthful
Virgil. Other intruding bits are: The Fall of
Troy, Money, The She-Wolf, The Louse, Book
of the Three Maidens, The Rustic, The Won-
ders of the World, -- these titles indicate the
range of topics on which Ovid was made,
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
whether by accident or intention, to have writ-
ten. In the case of the forgeries, the perpetra-
tors should not be regarded as literary bandits,
laying dark schemes to fool an innocent pub-
lic; they are rather confederates of the eminent
men of letters who startled our generation not
many years ago with the publication of a
"Fifth Book" of Horace's Odes.
The most famous of these Mediaeval hoaxes
is the poem called The Hag (De Vetula),
known almost surely to be the production of
Richard de Fournival in the thirteenth cen-
tury. The author asserts that the work was
found in the times of the Emperor Vastasius
(1222-1255) m Ovid's tomb in Colchis! To
understand the character of this fiction, we
must bear in mind the Mediaeval fondness for
romances, and for a particular variety, still
inadequately studied, that may well be called
historical romance. Its nature may be partly
illustrated by the vernacular poems on ancient
themes at which we have glanced, and is still
more evident in the work called Dolopathos,
written by Johannes de Alta Silva at the close
of the twelfth century. This author, starting
with the familiar story of the Seven Sages,
deliberately gives it an ancient setting with
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
Virgil, the magician, as the hero. He is exceed-
ingly well read in the ancients, Ovid included,
and is perfectly familiar with Virgil's real char-
acter, but he moulds that character to fit his
design, just as he shapes the matter of his
story to fit the ancient background. Chaucer
applies the same art in his Troilus, as we have
recently learned to see. 42
In precisely this fashion, the author of the
Vetula introduces Ovid in an appropriate role;
he has been transmuted into a hero of romance.
The Hag is the ugly old nurse of a maiden with
whom the poet is in love. With a stratagem
that recalls a scene from the Fasti,43 she prom-
ises the lover a rendezvous with her mistress,
and at the appointed hour takes her mistress's
place. The girl marries another, and Ovid must
wait twenty years for the man to die; by that
time, his lady is vetula herself. Ovid then de-
cides that the best love is the love of learning.
The closing book, which somewhat suggests the
Convivio of Dante, is a series of meditations
on philosophy, astrology and religion. Ovid
reasons in an orthodox way on various theolog-
ical problems, sums up the heathen prophecies
of the Virgin's Son, and concludes with a
prayer to the Virgin. The poem had a wide
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
vogue, and was translated into the vernacular.
The jeu d'esprit was taken more seriously, per-
haps, than even its author had anticipated.
Vii. OVID'S TRANSFORMATIONS
We are now to follow our poet in a series of
mental and moral transformations which his
posthumous spirit, aided by the lively imagina-
tion of the Middle Ages, was called on to per-
form. First, he dons the sober disguise of a
moralist.
Ovidius Ethicus
Mediaeval thinkers were quick to see that
beneath Ovid's persiflage runs a vein of so-
briety and moral acuteness. Juvenal, we noted,
could study Ovid to good effect, for Ovid, as
Landor remarks, " with all his levity, had more
unobtrusively sage verses than any, be he Ro-
man or Athenian. " Landor was anticipated by
Chaucer. In his Tale of Meliboeus, translated
from a Latin work of the thirteenth century by
Albertano of Brescia, he preaches a fine sermon
on true friendship, with illustrations chosen
both from Holy Scripture and from the Pagans.
The work is a notable monument of Christian
humanism. Ovid appears here in good com-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
pany, with Seneca and St. Paul, Solomon and
Job.
Nor was Chaucer or his Latin predecessor
the first to treat our poet as a source of edifi-
cation. As early as the twelfth century, Hilde-
bert of Tours, or one of his contemporaries,
compiled a work entitled Moralis Philosophia
de Honesto et Utili, which consists of brief
definitions of various ethical terms followed by
copious quotations from the ancient authors
and the Bible. Ovid is cited, for instance, to
show that
Venus and wine shatter the heart's ideals,
and this line from the Fasti is capped by a
verse from Ecclesiasticus. ** The "moral Se-
nek " has his peer in the moral Naso. Human-
ists like John of Salisbury and Peter of Blois,
scholastics like Alanus de Insulis and Roger
Bacon, Vincent of Beauvais the encyclopaedist,
John of Garland the educator, mystics like
Hugo of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux,
His Holiness Pope Innocent III in his De
Contemptu Mundi, -- these and many more
cite Ovid as an authority on morals and other
sober subjects. Abelard takes counsel with
Ovidius Ethicus in discussing monastic rules,
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
for the benefit of Eloise. He warns against ex-
cessive strictness, quoting from the Amores:
We strain at rules and crave what is forbidden. *6
Eloise, on her part, in writing her lord and
master of her disapproval of a common table
for monks and nuns, adds that " even the poet
of wantonness and teacher of turpitudes has
shown in his Book of Amatory Art what chance
for improper conduct is afforded by a banquet. "
Then follow six lines from the Art of Love. *"
Either Eloise had these verses at her tongue's
end, or the volume itself was not far away. She
knows its character well enough, and yet seeks
its advice in a matter of morals, -- fas est et
ab hoste doceri.
To descend a moment into a later age, it is
of some interest to note that Martin Luther
wrote inside the cover of an edition of St.
Anselm four verses of the Amores, one of them
being that familiar line, veritably a winged
word in the Middle Ages:
We strain at rules and crave what is forbidden.
Luther was not breaking monastic rules in jot-
ting down these verses; he was paying tribute,
in the traditional way, to Ovidius Ethicus. It
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
is a pity that he was not more deeply read in
Ovid; Erasmus had read to some profit.
Ovidius Theologus
If Ovid can give instruction in morals, it is
no long step thence to theology. Again we find
the starting-point for the excessive zeal of later
interpreters in Ovid himself, in the unfeigned
piety of the tale of Philemon and Baucis, in the
apparent knowledge of the Old Testament dis-
played in his story of the Creation and the
Flood, in the theistic modification of atomism
likewise apparent in this story, in the philo-
sophical competence of his Pythagorean solu-
tion presented in the last book of his cosmic
epic. It was natural, then, that Ovid, like Vir-
gil, should be subjected to the same spell of
allegory that was cast over all literature, all art,
and all natural phenomena in the Middle Ages;
it was a universal reading of life.
With the twelfth century, this new interpre-
tation is perfected into a science. A certain
Johannes reveals in his versified Integumenta
the secrets concealed in the Metamorphoses.
A typical specimen of his ingenuity is his in-
terpretation of the tale of Mars and Venus, de-
tected in their amour by the jealous Vulcan.
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
Vulcan is Summer, Venus is the Spring;
Vile Mars, the Fall, doth alien bounties bring.
Whatever the appositeness of this glossing,
"the smartest scandal Heaven ever heard"
here becomes safe enough for any heaven. The
work of Johannes is only one of many allegori-
cal commentaries written on the Metamor-
phoses in the twelfth century, still reposing,
unpublished, on library shelves. One exposition,
doubtless appreciated, was prepared in usum
nonnarum; nuns read Ovid moralized but not
expurgated, -- really a more courteous way to
treat the poor pagan, and the poor nun.
In the thirteenth century, the moralization of
Ovid's tales becomes most elaborate. Chretien
Legouais subjects the Metamorphoses to a
three-fold explanation: historical, moral and
theological. The story of Apollo and Daphne,
for instance, is interpreted in five different
ways. According to the last of these, Daphne
is the Blessed Virgin, loved by God, the real
sun of the world.
When Apollo crowns himself
with laurel, it is God enveloping himself with
the body of that which he has made his mother.
Verily, the force of supernature can no further
go. No less profound is the moralization of the
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
poem written by Petrus Berchorius (Bercuire).
It is only Book 75 of his Reductorium Morale,
a gigantic work begun at Avignon and finished
at Paris in 1342. While at Avignon, he turned
for various bits of information to Petrarch,
whose passion for allegory was not what one
might expect of the "first modern man. "
After the foregoing specimens of allegorical
ingenuity, we need not be surprised to find
Ovid actually quoted as Holy Writ. King
James I of Aragon (1218-1276) declares in his
Chronicle," that at an assembly of the Bishops
and the Barons of his realm, he "rose and
began a text of Scripture:
'To keep is no less virtue than to learn. '"
If we are disposed to smile because the verse
comes from the Art of Love (ii. 13), we should
first ask ourselves whether we have ever heard
the maxim about tempering the wind to the
shorn lamb, -- the utterance of a somewhat
Ovidian author -- attributed to the Bible.
Ovid's line had acquired a similarly proverbial
character; it had appeared in the Moralis Phi-
losophia of Hildebert.
The story of Ovid the theologian is an ex-
ample of a perfectly natural process which goes
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
on in any age. To the age itself, such adap-
tation seems a brilliant and a modern affair;
to coming generations it seems quaint. The
author in his posthumous existence is simply
adjusting himself to his new environment; he
is a chameleon, exercising the art of protective
coloring. The condition of Ovid in an age of
allegorical interpretation is no more ridiculous
than that of Virgil in a century of Wissen-
schaft.
Ovidius Medicus
Ovid's Remedia Amoris served a practical
purpose in the Mediaeval schools; it was a
text-book in both Latin and ethics. Nor was it
treated less seriously by competent physicians.
For instance, Arnaldus de Villa Nova, a great
medical scholar (1240-13n), in discussing the
lover's malady, herosis, takes more than one of
his cures for amatory frenzy from Ovid. The
patient should get to work, occupy his mind
with some useful pursuit, seek a change of
scene, enlist in the army, and rule his madness
by dividing it among several sweethearts. For
all these precepts, chapter and verse are cited
from Ovid; he is an authority. Finally, Ar-
naldus calls in a hag, vetida turpissima, who
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
displays the imperfections of the mistress in
a way even more revolting than they are set
forth either in Ovid or in the Mediaeval Vetula.
If the lover can stand such a disclosure, Ar-
naldus declares, he must be not a man but a
devil incarnate, and may be abandoned to
eternal perdition.
Ovidius Magus
The career of Master Virgil, the Magician,
has something of a counterpart in Ovid's post-
humous history. Strange stories clustered about
his memory, as is natural enough in the case
of any great man. We hear of two students
who paid a visit to his tomb and asked his
ghost what was the best of all his verses. The
answer promptly came:
Virtue will even shun permitted joys.
This sentiment is Helen's, in her reply to Paris.
The answer to the second question, what was
the poet's worst, is no less satisfactory. The
lines recanted by the poet come from Phaedra's
epistle:
Pleasure is truth, truth pleasure. Jove says so:
'Tis all he knows, and all he needs to know.
Having compassion on the repentant heathen,
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
the young men offered prayers in his behalf.
At that there came a voice from the tomb:
No paternosters, I pray;
Traveler, go on your way.
The peasants about Sulmona know wilder
tales than this. Ovid, "Uiddiu," as they call
him, learned magic arts in the mystic grove of
the sorceress near Lucco. In one night he put
up a splendid villa, surrounded by gardens,
vineyards and orchards, and watered by a
spring which still is called "The Fount of
Love. " To punish the curiosity of sight-seers,
he changed the men into birds, and the maidens
into a long line of poplars. When the terrified
inhabitants prayed his mercy, he mounted a
great chariot with horses of fire, and dashed
off to Rome. There he plied his profession as
before, creating warriors from dragons' teeth,
giving life to statues, changing a woman's hair
to snakes, or her legs to a fish's tail. Finally,
the King's daughter fell in love with him and
he with her. But the King was obdurate, and
sent the conjurer away to Siberia, a land of
perpetual snow. There the wizard died. But
he still visits his villa, and every Saturday night
he goes off with the witches to the nut-tree of
Benevento.
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
Here is a curious weaving of popular fancy
about the tales of the Metamorphoses. Once
Ovid's stories were let loose by some cleric, the
good people of Sulmona could readily have at-
tached them to the poet himself, along with
other marvels. This process may indicate that
the stories about Virgil the magician were more
largely a product of Italian fancy than Com-
paretti, in his famous work, Virgil in the
Middle Ages, would admit. Travellers like
Conrad of Querfurt and Gervasius of Tilbury
were not altogether wild-eyed barbarians; they
may have exaggerated what they heard in Italy,
but they doubtless heard wonders in plenty.
Ovid, along with his magic, is the hero of
various amorous adventures, one of which, a
famous one, had been told of Virgil. At the
same time, Ovid is a very holy man, and num-
bered among the prophets of the coming of our
Lord. Somewhat later than our period -- in
fact in the full flush of the sixteenth century
-- Ovid passed, with little difficulty, from
magic to alchemy. Nicholas Valois composed
in French verses a work, finished by the priest
Vicot, entitled Le Grande Olympe, in which he
sets forth for the first time, he declares, the
true meaning of the stories of the Metamor-
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
phoses. Ovid's text is made a quarry for the
alchemist's pick and shovel. He strikes gold
immediately and constantly. The fable of
Deucalion and Pyrrha, for instance, betokens,
like the twin peaks of Parnassus, the masculine
and the feminine elements among the metals,
that is, gold and silver, from the union of which
the philosopher's stone is produced. In this
fashion, the whole poem is subjected to the
fatal touch of Midas; Ovid's gold is converted
into the baser metal. This sort of interpreta-
tion must have had something of a history be-
fore Valois and Vicot; one of their authorities
was Arnaldus de Villa Nova, who was as
learned in alchemy as we have found him in
medicine.
Ovid's Alter Ego
After Virgil's fame was overgrown with mag-
ical accretions, a new personage came into be-
ing, utterly unlike his historical counterpart;
his biography, separately recorded, touches the
experience of our Virgil at hardly a single
point. Ovid's personality did not quite double
itself in this way, though there is material
enough to form a lengthy and exciting career
for an alter Ovidius. A good approach is made
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
by certain commentators of the twelfth cen-
tury, who explain the poet's exile by his refusal
to accede to the amorous proposals of the Em-
peror's wife, who then, indignant at this slight,
falsely accused him to her husband. Livia in
the role of Potiphar's wife and Ovid in that of
Joseph, or Joseph Andrews, is indeed a novelty.
Possibly the full history of Ovid's double may
be discovered after all. A German poet of the
thirteenth century who continues the Chronicle
of Rudolf of Ems gives at least the outline of
such a story. 48
A heathen known to fame
Had Ovid for his name.
A writer of some note,
'The Tale of Troy' he wrote.
Far in a foreign land,
There ruled a monarch grand.
He knew nor shame nor fear;
His virtues had no peer.
He made Ovidius
His Chancellarius
And his chief scribe. The lay
Says that one fatal day
To wrath the monarch stirred
What from his Queen he heard.
So to avenge his wife,
He sought the poet's life.
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
The King's method was to set Ovid adrift in a
ship, first granting his request for a supply of
pens, paper and parchment. On the voyage,
Ovid wrote his Tale of Troy, and, on landing,
sent back the book to the King. The King,
who took a lively interest in the Trojan legend,
pardoned the poet, and the work was translated
from heathen Latin into good German.
Viii. DANTE AND CHAUCER
At the end of the Mediaeval period, its two
greatest writers, Dante and Chaucer, reflect in
their different mirrors all that is most typical
of the age. Both of them inevitably include in
their picture of life something of what Ovid
was and of what he had become.
Dante
For Dante, Ovid is one of the great world-
poets, one of those whom with Virgil, his good
guide, he meets in the pleasant greensward that
delights the reader, somewhat unexpectedly, in
the Limbo of Hell; Homer, Horace and Lucan
are the other members of this tranquil group,
and Statius greets the two travellers in Purga-
tory. Dante's reading of Ovid is shown by the
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
most diverse sorts of reminiscences, which are
more abundant than those of any Latin poet
except Virgil. The spirit of Ovid the lover,
chastened and refined, comes to Dante through
the troubadours and the singers of the dolce
stil nuovo; it is exalted, in the lyrics of the Vita
Nuova and the Convivio and finally in the di-
vine allegory of the Commedia, to heights of
which Ovid never dreamed.
To Ovidius Ethicus, Dante appeals when dis-
coursing, in the spirit of Juvenal, on true no-
bility. 49 Nor does Dante, supported by the
allegorizing tendencies of his day, fail to find
in the Metamorphoses a treasury of hidden
meanings. With Ovidius Magus he has no con-
cern, save with the magician who can set a
metamorphosis before our eyes. To him he
flings the challenge of a rival in his art. As he
describes the simultaneous transformation of
the robber Brunelleschi into the form of a ser-
pent and of the serpent into the form of Brunel-
leschi, he exclaims:50
"Let Ovid be silent concerning Cadmus and
Arethusa, for if, poetizing, he converts him into
a serpent and her into a fountain, I envy him
not; for two natures front to front never did
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
he transmute, so that both the forms were
prompt to exchange their matter. " (Norton)
This is a gauntlet too heavy for Ovid to raise.
His magic is legerdemain. We admire the dex-
terity with which he deludes us, but we are
conscious of the trick and of the performer's
consciousness of it. When Dante tells the tale,
we bow before a miracle.
Chaucer
If Ovid hardly touched the spirit of Dante,
he contributed profoundly to the development
of Chaucer's genius; Chaucer and Jean de
Meun are the most conspicuous reincarnations
of Ovid in the Middle Ages. Their tempera-
ments are their own, but Ovid dwells within
them. Chaucer, like Dante, names Ovid among
the great poets of old,
Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan and Stace,51
and, it is safe to say, owes him a greater debt
than to any other poet, old or new.
Chaucer learned Ovid in the writings of
French masters, especially Jean de Meun and
Guillaume de Machaut, and he also read him
at first hand. His earlier works are packed with
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
Ovidian matter, nicely adjusted to his own de-
sign. In the new Aeneid which adorns the walls
of the Temple of Venus in his House of Fame,
Dido is drawn after Ovid rather than Virgil,
and the epic itself is what Virgil's poem would
be if it filtered through the Art of Love. One
of the pillars in the House of Fame is erected to
\enus clerk, Ovyde,
That hath y-sowen wonder wyde
The grete god of Loves name.
Chaucer is professedly Ovid's pupil in the art
of love, and he deeply understands the master's
teaching.
Chaucer has also studied the nature of
woman with Ovid's help, as is obvious in
Troilus. The plan of the Legend of Good
Women no less than much of its matter was
furnished by Ovid. Ovid, as we have seen, had
taken up the cudgels for the injured race in the
third book of his Art of Love. Chaucer's de-
fence is presented with the same enthusiasm
and the same delicious undertone of irony,
In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer fulfils a
prophecy implicit in the House of Fame and
fills his stage not with characters drawn from
books but with the men and women of his own
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
times, the "neyghebores" at his door. His
debt to Ovid in this achievement is, at first
sight, less conspicuous than before. Allusions
and borrowings are far less abundant than in
the earlier works. He has transcended Ovid,
the singer of the tender loves, and now enters
the list against Ovid the master of narrative
and of a novel sort of epic. Though the subjects
of the Metamorphoses and the Canterbury
Tales have nothing in common, they are both
collections of diverse stories which the authors
would weave into a harmonious pattern. Chau-
cer did not finish his design, but that design,
we may be sure, would have exhibited in the
whole as it does in the parts a dexterity that
matches Ovid's in securing variety, contrast,
shifting of the scenes, unity in diversity and a
self-concealing art.
The prevailing tone of the Canterbury Tales
is that of comedy, with seasonings of ribaldry,
irony and banter; but Chaucer's comedy is not
merely gay. It is true to the full and ancient
idea of comedy, the mirror of life, and has
place for pathos, which may also deepen into
tragedy. In " the Knight's Tale" and that of
"the Man of Law," we have two stories ap-
propriate for romance, one Classical and one
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enjoyed seeing his stories of Pyramus, Narcis-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
sus, Byblis and Phaethon extracted from their
context and retold in what to the Mediaeval
author seemed a modern way. The presence of
the ancient poet is also evident in the lengthier
romances, those of Crestien de Troyes as well
as those which deal with ancient subjects, such
as the anonymous Enias and the Roman de
Troie of Benoit de Sainte-More. The latter
poem is a kind of Mediaeval Homer, at several
removes; the former is the Mediaeval Virgil.
The authors are not illiterate yokels, peering at
antique figures through a mist of Mediaeval
ignorance. They are cultivated gentlemen who
know the Classics well. They are following the
rule of an established literary form and adjust-
ing their material to it. In contrast to these
romances, and in deliberate contrast, other
poets retold ancient stories in the Latin heroic
hexameter with a closer conformity to history.
Such works deserve the name of epic rather
than romance. Thus Joseph of Exeter in the
twelfth century wrote a poem De Bello Troiano
in very decent Latin verse, and applying the
same method to a contemporary subject, sought
to immortalize the Crusades in his Antiocheis.
Similarly, the story of Alexander the Great re-
ceived a twofold treatment. The career of the
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
Macedonian, something of a romance even in
its strictly historical form, had been embel-
lished with marvels from various sources, and
it furnished the theme for several romances in
the popular tongues. Ovid has contributed
something to their making. For instance, the
author of the Spanish poem, Libro de Alex-
andre, in the thirteenth century, imitates him
in more than one passage. But Ovid's influence
is no less obvious in the soberer Latin epic
Alexandreis which Gualterus de Insulis wrote
a hundred years earlier.
V. ARTS OF LOVE AND THE KNIGHTLY CODE
The Renaissance of the twelfth century was,
among other things, an age of knight-errantry
and courtly love. The poets of chivalry ac-i
cepted as a standard authority, with some mod-
ifications, Ovid's gay text-book on the art of
love. Crestien de Troyes translated it, and
though the translation is lost, Ovid is abun-
dantly present in the poet's romances. If the
historical Ovid took Paris and Helen from
Homeric epic and metamorphosed them into
figures for his comedy of love, the posthumous
Ovid assisted Crestien in a similar abstraction
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
of Lancelot and Guinevere from Celtic fairy-
legend, and a similar adaptation of their char-
acters to his romance.
In the next century, Ovid's poem is imme-
diately the inspiration of various poetical
treatises on the art of love. From France, Ovid
passes to Spain, and furnishes many sugges-
tions for the Libro de Buen Amor of the Ar-
cipreste de Hita, Juan Ruiz.
The acme of the Mediaeval transformation
of Ovid's treatise is reached in the Romance
of the Rose, one of the greatest works of the
period and of all time. It is a composite pro-
duction by two very different authors. Guil-
laume de Lorris, probably between 1225 and
1230, began a romance in the form of a vision.
A lover in his dream wanders amid a garden of
enchantment, where the Rose, the symbol of
his loved one, is guarded in a castle. With the
help of the god of love, Amors, he is about to
pluck the rose, when the poem abruptly ends;
the author, after some four thousand lines,
had not finished his work. The treatment is
leisurely, for Mediaeval romancers were not
pressed for time; like other undertakings of
the period, their work was done sub specie
aeternitatis. An air of dreamy mysticism, la
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
douce savor de la rose, pervades the story. The
poet takes much from Ovid, but what is taken
is absorbed and refined. The sentiment of love
is as pure, and as passionate, as in some of the
later Mediaeval hymns to the Blessed Virgin,
the Rose of Heaven.
Forty years later, the work was completed
by Jean Clopinel, or Chopinel, de Meun. He
enters at the eleventh hour and allows no pluck-
ing of the rose for over fifteen thousand verses
more. The Lover is not to win without knowing
what he wins and why. Jean de Meun is no
dreamer, but a scholar, versed in all the Latin
Classics, a philosopher, familiar with ancient
and contemporary thought, and a satirist, alive
to the weaknesses of nobles and churchmen
and women. He is likewise a poet and a wit,
and doubtless knew full well that he was strain-
ing the plot to the limits of its elasticity. The
Lover still dreams his dream, and, at the far-
off end, plucks the Rose; but the poem has
been changed from a romance into what the
author calls it, "A Mirror of Love. " It is a
grand debate among diverse types of thought
and feeling. Ovid and Boethius clash at the
start, and after other contestants have had their
say, Ovid emerges triumphant. He has, in the
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
process, been considerably reformed. Perhaps
the most profitable of all his metempsychoses
is that in the genius of Jean de Meun.
Vi. FORGERIES
A great name attracts to itself both inter-
esting stories, told originally about somebody
else, and seemingly characteristic works, which
somebody else had written. A number of such
writings clusters about Ovid's name. In the
twelfth century, the multitudinous Ovidians of
that period not only wrought out a new elegiac
comedy in Ovid's spirit, but sought fame, at
the expense of their identity, by ascribing some
of their performances to Ovid himself. A
comedy of enormous vogue and influence, en-
titled Pamphilus sive de Amore, was perhaps
not attributed to Ovid at the start. The author
of The Flea {De Pulice) may have wished to
provide his master with something to match
The Gnat {De Culice) ascribed to the youthful
Virgil. Other intruding bits are: The Fall of
Troy, Money, The She-Wolf, The Louse, Book
of the Three Maidens, The Rustic, The Won-
ders of the World, -- these titles indicate the
range of topics on which Ovid was made,
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
whether by accident or intention, to have writ-
ten. In the case of the forgeries, the perpetra-
tors should not be regarded as literary bandits,
laying dark schemes to fool an innocent pub-
lic; they are rather confederates of the eminent
men of letters who startled our generation not
many years ago with the publication of a
"Fifth Book" of Horace's Odes.
The most famous of these Mediaeval hoaxes
is the poem called The Hag (De Vetula),
known almost surely to be the production of
Richard de Fournival in the thirteenth cen-
tury. The author asserts that the work was
found in the times of the Emperor Vastasius
(1222-1255) m Ovid's tomb in Colchis! To
understand the character of this fiction, we
must bear in mind the Mediaeval fondness for
romances, and for a particular variety, still
inadequately studied, that may well be called
historical romance. Its nature may be partly
illustrated by the vernacular poems on ancient
themes at which we have glanced, and is still
more evident in the work called Dolopathos,
written by Johannes de Alta Silva at the close
of the twelfth century. This author, starting
with the familiar story of the Seven Sages,
deliberately gives it an ancient setting with
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
Virgil, the magician, as the hero. He is exceed-
ingly well read in the ancients, Ovid included,
and is perfectly familiar with Virgil's real char-
acter, but he moulds that character to fit his
design, just as he shapes the matter of his
story to fit the ancient background. Chaucer
applies the same art in his Troilus, as we have
recently learned to see. 42
In precisely this fashion, the author of the
Vetula introduces Ovid in an appropriate role;
he has been transmuted into a hero of romance.
The Hag is the ugly old nurse of a maiden with
whom the poet is in love. With a stratagem
that recalls a scene from the Fasti,43 she prom-
ises the lover a rendezvous with her mistress,
and at the appointed hour takes her mistress's
place. The girl marries another, and Ovid must
wait twenty years for the man to die; by that
time, his lady is vetula herself. Ovid then de-
cides that the best love is the love of learning.
The closing book, which somewhat suggests the
Convivio of Dante, is a series of meditations
on philosophy, astrology and religion. Ovid
reasons in an orthodox way on various theolog-
ical problems, sums up the heathen prophecies
of the Virgin's Son, and concludes with a
prayer to the Virgin. The poem had a wide
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
vogue, and was translated into the vernacular.
The jeu d'esprit was taken more seriously, per-
haps, than even its author had anticipated.
Vii. OVID'S TRANSFORMATIONS
We are now to follow our poet in a series of
mental and moral transformations which his
posthumous spirit, aided by the lively imagina-
tion of the Middle Ages, was called on to per-
form. First, he dons the sober disguise of a
moralist.
Ovidius Ethicus
Mediaeval thinkers were quick to see that
beneath Ovid's persiflage runs a vein of so-
briety and moral acuteness. Juvenal, we noted,
could study Ovid to good effect, for Ovid, as
Landor remarks, " with all his levity, had more
unobtrusively sage verses than any, be he Ro-
man or Athenian. " Landor was anticipated by
Chaucer. In his Tale of Meliboeus, translated
from a Latin work of the thirteenth century by
Albertano of Brescia, he preaches a fine sermon
on true friendship, with illustrations chosen
both from Holy Scripture and from the Pagans.
The work is a notable monument of Christian
humanism. Ovid appears here in good com-
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
pany, with Seneca and St. Paul, Solomon and
Job.
Nor was Chaucer or his Latin predecessor
the first to treat our poet as a source of edifi-
cation. As early as the twelfth century, Hilde-
bert of Tours, or one of his contemporaries,
compiled a work entitled Moralis Philosophia
de Honesto et Utili, which consists of brief
definitions of various ethical terms followed by
copious quotations from the ancient authors
and the Bible. Ovid is cited, for instance, to
show that
Venus and wine shatter the heart's ideals,
and this line from the Fasti is capped by a
verse from Ecclesiasticus. ** The "moral Se-
nek " has his peer in the moral Naso. Human-
ists like John of Salisbury and Peter of Blois,
scholastics like Alanus de Insulis and Roger
Bacon, Vincent of Beauvais the encyclopaedist,
John of Garland the educator, mystics like
Hugo of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux,
His Holiness Pope Innocent III in his De
Contemptu Mundi, -- these and many more
cite Ovid as an authority on morals and other
sober subjects. Abelard takes counsel with
Ovidius Ethicus in discussing monastic rules,
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
for the benefit of Eloise. He warns against ex-
cessive strictness, quoting from the Amores:
We strain at rules and crave what is forbidden. *6
Eloise, on her part, in writing her lord and
master of her disapproval of a common table
for monks and nuns, adds that " even the poet
of wantonness and teacher of turpitudes has
shown in his Book of Amatory Art what chance
for improper conduct is afforded by a banquet. "
Then follow six lines from the Art of Love. *"
Either Eloise had these verses at her tongue's
end, or the volume itself was not far away. She
knows its character well enough, and yet seeks
its advice in a matter of morals, -- fas est et
ab hoste doceri.
To descend a moment into a later age, it is
of some interest to note that Martin Luther
wrote inside the cover of an edition of St.
Anselm four verses of the Amores, one of them
being that familiar line, veritably a winged
word in the Middle Ages:
We strain at rules and crave what is forbidden.
Luther was not breaking monastic rules in jot-
ting down these verses; he was paying tribute,
in the traditional way, to Ovidius Ethicus. It
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
is a pity that he was not more deeply read in
Ovid; Erasmus had read to some profit.
Ovidius Theologus
If Ovid can give instruction in morals, it is
no long step thence to theology. Again we find
the starting-point for the excessive zeal of later
interpreters in Ovid himself, in the unfeigned
piety of the tale of Philemon and Baucis, in the
apparent knowledge of the Old Testament dis-
played in his story of the Creation and the
Flood, in the theistic modification of atomism
likewise apparent in this story, in the philo-
sophical competence of his Pythagorean solu-
tion presented in the last book of his cosmic
epic. It was natural, then, that Ovid, like Vir-
gil, should be subjected to the same spell of
allegory that was cast over all literature, all art,
and all natural phenomena in the Middle Ages;
it was a universal reading of life.
With the twelfth century, this new interpre-
tation is perfected into a science. A certain
Johannes reveals in his versified Integumenta
the secrets concealed in the Metamorphoses.
A typical specimen of his ingenuity is his in-
terpretation of the tale of Mars and Venus, de-
tected in their amour by the jealous Vulcan.
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
Vulcan is Summer, Venus is the Spring;
Vile Mars, the Fall, doth alien bounties bring.
Whatever the appositeness of this glossing,
"the smartest scandal Heaven ever heard"
here becomes safe enough for any heaven. The
work of Johannes is only one of many allegori-
cal commentaries written on the Metamor-
phoses in the twelfth century, still reposing,
unpublished, on library shelves. One exposition,
doubtless appreciated, was prepared in usum
nonnarum; nuns read Ovid moralized but not
expurgated, -- really a more courteous way to
treat the poor pagan, and the poor nun.
In the thirteenth century, the moralization of
Ovid's tales becomes most elaborate. Chretien
Legouais subjects the Metamorphoses to a
three-fold explanation: historical, moral and
theological. The story of Apollo and Daphne,
for instance, is interpreted in five different
ways. According to the last of these, Daphne
is the Blessed Virgin, loved by God, the real
sun of the world.
When Apollo crowns himself
with laurel, it is God enveloping himself with
the body of that which he has made his mother.
Verily, the force of supernature can no further
go. No less profound is the moralization of the
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
poem written by Petrus Berchorius (Bercuire).
It is only Book 75 of his Reductorium Morale,
a gigantic work begun at Avignon and finished
at Paris in 1342. While at Avignon, he turned
for various bits of information to Petrarch,
whose passion for allegory was not what one
might expect of the "first modern man. "
After the foregoing specimens of allegorical
ingenuity, we need not be surprised to find
Ovid actually quoted as Holy Writ. King
James I of Aragon (1218-1276) declares in his
Chronicle," that at an assembly of the Bishops
and the Barons of his realm, he "rose and
began a text of Scripture:
'To keep is no less virtue than to learn. '"
If we are disposed to smile because the verse
comes from the Art of Love (ii. 13), we should
first ask ourselves whether we have ever heard
the maxim about tempering the wind to the
shorn lamb, -- the utterance of a somewhat
Ovidian author -- attributed to the Bible.
Ovid's line had acquired a similarly proverbial
character; it had appeared in the Moralis Phi-
losophia of Hildebert.
The story of Ovid the theologian is an ex-
ample of a perfectly natural process which goes
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
on in any age. To the age itself, such adap-
tation seems a brilliant and a modern affair;
to coming generations it seems quaint. The
author in his posthumous existence is simply
adjusting himself to his new environment; he
is a chameleon, exercising the art of protective
coloring. The condition of Ovid in an age of
allegorical interpretation is no more ridiculous
than that of Virgil in a century of Wissen-
schaft.
Ovidius Medicus
Ovid's Remedia Amoris served a practical
purpose in the Mediaeval schools; it was a
text-book in both Latin and ethics. Nor was it
treated less seriously by competent physicians.
For instance, Arnaldus de Villa Nova, a great
medical scholar (1240-13n), in discussing the
lover's malady, herosis, takes more than one of
his cures for amatory frenzy from Ovid. The
patient should get to work, occupy his mind
with some useful pursuit, seek a change of
scene, enlist in the army, and rule his madness
by dividing it among several sweethearts. For
all these precepts, chapter and verse are cited
from Ovid; he is an authority. Finally, Ar-
naldus calls in a hag, vetida turpissima, who
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
displays the imperfections of the mistress in
a way even more revolting than they are set
forth either in Ovid or in the Mediaeval Vetula.
If the lover can stand such a disclosure, Ar-
naldus declares, he must be not a man but a
devil incarnate, and may be abandoned to
eternal perdition.
Ovidius Magus
The career of Master Virgil, the Magician,
has something of a counterpart in Ovid's post-
humous history. Strange stories clustered about
his memory, as is natural enough in the case
of any great man. We hear of two students
who paid a visit to his tomb and asked his
ghost what was the best of all his verses. The
answer promptly came:
Virtue will even shun permitted joys.
This sentiment is Helen's, in her reply to Paris.
The answer to the second question, what was
the poet's worst, is no less satisfactory. The
lines recanted by the poet come from Phaedra's
epistle:
Pleasure is truth, truth pleasure. Jove says so:
'Tis all he knows, and all he needs to know.
Having compassion on the repentant heathen,
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
the young men offered prayers in his behalf.
At that there came a voice from the tomb:
No paternosters, I pray;
Traveler, go on your way.
The peasants about Sulmona know wilder
tales than this. Ovid, "Uiddiu," as they call
him, learned magic arts in the mystic grove of
the sorceress near Lucco. In one night he put
up a splendid villa, surrounded by gardens,
vineyards and orchards, and watered by a
spring which still is called "The Fount of
Love. " To punish the curiosity of sight-seers,
he changed the men into birds, and the maidens
into a long line of poplars. When the terrified
inhabitants prayed his mercy, he mounted a
great chariot with horses of fire, and dashed
off to Rome. There he plied his profession as
before, creating warriors from dragons' teeth,
giving life to statues, changing a woman's hair
to snakes, or her legs to a fish's tail. Finally,
the King's daughter fell in love with him and
he with her. But the King was obdurate, and
sent the conjurer away to Siberia, a land of
perpetual snow. There the wizard died. But
he still visits his villa, and every Saturday night
he goes off with the witches to the nut-tree of
Benevento.
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
Here is a curious weaving of popular fancy
about the tales of the Metamorphoses. Once
Ovid's stories were let loose by some cleric, the
good people of Sulmona could readily have at-
tached them to the poet himself, along with
other marvels. This process may indicate that
the stories about Virgil the magician were more
largely a product of Italian fancy than Com-
paretti, in his famous work, Virgil in the
Middle Ages, would admit. Travellers like
Conrad of Querfurt and Gervasius of Tilbury
were not altogether wild-eyed barbarians; they
may have exaggerated what they heard in Italy,
but they doubtless heard wonders in plenty.
Ovid, along with his magic, is the hero of
various amorous adventures, one of which, a
famous one, had been told of Virgil. At the
same time, Ovid is a very holy man, and num-
bered among the prophets of the coming of our
Lord. Somewhat later than our period -- in
fact in the full flush of the sixteenth century
-- Ovid passed, with little difficulty, from
magic to alchemy. Nicholas Valois composed
in French verses a work, finished by the priest
Vicot, entitled Le Grande Olympe, in which he
sets forth for the first time, he declares, the
true meaning of the stories of the Metamor-
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
phoses. Ovid's text is made a quarry for the
alchemist's pick and shovel. He strikes gold
immediately and constantly. The fable of
Deucalion and Pyrrha, for instance, betokens,
like the twin peaks of Parnassus, the masculine
and the feminine elements among the metals,
that is, gold and silver, from the union of which
the philosopher's stone is produced. In this
fashion, the whole poem is subjected to the
fatal touch of Midas; Ovid's gold is converted
into the baser metal. This sort of interpreta-
tion must have had something of a history be-
fore Valois and Vicot; one of their authorities
was Arnaldus de Villa Nova, who was as
learned in alchemy as we have found him in
medicine.
Ovid's Alter Ego
After Virgil's fame was overgrown with mag-
ical accretions, a new personage came into be-
ing, utterly unlike his historical counterpart;
his biography, separately recorded, touches the
experience of our Virgil at hardly a single
point. Ovid's personality did not quite double
itself in this way, though there is material
enough to form a lengthy and exciting career
for an alter Ovidius. A good approach is made
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
by certain commentators of the twelfth cen-
tury, who explain the poet's exile by his refusal
to accede to the amorous proposals of the Em-
peror's wife, who then, indignant at this slight,
falsely accused him to her husband. Livia in
the role of Potiphar's wife and Ovid in that of
Joseph, or Joseph Andrews, is indeed a novelty.
Possibly the full history of Ovid's double may
be discovered after all. A German poet of the
thirteenth century who continues the Chronicle
of Rudolf of Ems gives at least the outline of
such a story. 48
A heathen known to fame
Had Ovid for his name.
A writer of some note,
'The Tale of Troy' he wrote.
Far in a foreign land,
There ruled a monarch grand.
He knew nor shame nor fear;
His virtues had no peer.
He made Ovidius
His Chancellarius
And his chief scribe. The lay
Says that one fatal day
To wrath the monarch stirred
What from his Queen he heard.
So to avenge his wife,
He sought the poet's life.
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
The King's method was to set Ovid adrift in a
ship, first granting his request for a supply of
pens, paper and parchment. On the voyage,
Ovid wrote his Tale of Troy, and, on landing,
sent back the book to the King. The King,
who took a lively interest in the Trojan legend,
pardoned the poet, and the work was translated
from heathen Latin into good German.
Viii. DANTE AND CHAUCER
At the end of the Mediaeval period, its two
greatest writers, Dante and Chaucer, reflect in
their different mirrors all that is most typical
of the age. Both of them inevitably include in
their picture of life something of what Ovid
was and of what he had become.
Dante
For Dante, Ovid is one of the great world-
poets, one of those whom with Virgil, his good
guide, he meets in the pleasant greensward that
delights the reader, somewhat unexpectedly, in
the Limbo of Hell; Homer, Horace and Lucan
are the other members of this tranquil group,
and Statius greets the two travellers in Purga-
tory. Dante's reading of Ovid is shown by the
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
most diverse sorts of reminiscences, which are
more abundant than those of any Latin poet
except Virgil. The spirit of Ovid the lover,
chastened and refined, comes to Dante through
the troubadours and the singers of the dolce
stil nuovo; it is exalted, in the lyrics of the Vita
Nuova and the Convivio and finally in the di-
vine allegory of the Commedia, to heights of
which Ovid never dreamed.
To Ovidius Ethicus, Dante appeals when dis-
coursing, in the spirit of Juvenal, on true no-
bility. 49 Nor does Dante, supported by the
allegorizing tendencies of his day, fail to find
in the Metamorphoses a treasury of hidden
meanings. With Ovidius Magus he has no con-
cern, save with the magician who can set a
metamorphosis before our eyes. To him he
flings the challenge of a rival in his art. As he
describes the simultaneous transformation of
the robber Brunelleschi into the form of a ser-
pent and of the serpent into the form of Brunel-
leschi, he exclaims:50
"Let Ovid be silent concerning Cadmus and
Arethusa, for if, poetizing, he converts him into
a serpent and her into a fountain, I envy him
not; for two natures front to front never did
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
he transmute, so that both the forms were
prompt to exchange their matter. " (Norton)
This is a gauntlet too heavy for Ovid to raise.
His magic is legerdemain. We admire the dex-
terity with which he deludes us, but we are
conscious of the trick and of the performer's
consciousness of it. When Dante tells the tale,
we bow before a miracle.
Chaucer
If Ovid hardly touched the spirit of Dante,
he contributed profoundly to the development
of Chaucer's genius; Chaucer and Jean de
Meun are the most conspicuous reincarnations
of Ovid in the Middle Ages. Their tempera-
ments are their own, but Ovid dwells within
them. Chaucer, like Dante, names Ovid among
the great poets of old,
Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan and Stace,51
and, it is safe to say, owes him a greater debt
than to any other poet, old or new.
Chaucer learned Ovid in the writings of
French masters, especially Jean de Meun and
Guillaume de Machaut, and he also read him
at first hand. His earlier works are packed with
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? OVID AND HIS INFLUENCE
Ovidian matter, nicely adjusted to his own de-
sign. In the new Aeneid which adorns the walls
of the Temple of Venus in his House of Fame,
Dido is drawn after Ovid rather than Virgil,
and the epic itself is what Virgil's poem would
be if it filtered through the Art of Love. One
of the pillars in the House of Fame is erected to
\enus clerk, Ovyde,
That hath y-sowen wonder wyde
The grete god of Loves name.
Chaucer is professedly Ovid's pupil in the art
of love, and he deeply understands the master's
teaching.
Chaucer has also studied the nature of
woman with Ovid's help, as is obvious in
Troilus. The plan of the Legend of Good
Women no less than much of its matter was
furnished by Ovid. Ovid, as we have seen, had
taken up the cudgels for the injured race in the
third book of his Art of Love. Chaucer's de-
fence is presented with the same enthusiasm
and the same delicious undertone of irony,
In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer fulfils a
prophecy implicit in the House of Fame and
fills his stage not with characters drawn from
books but with the men and women of his own
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? THROUGH THE CENTURIES
times, the "neyghebores" at his door. His
debt to Ovid in this achievement is, at first
sight, less conspicuous than before. Allusions
and borrowings are far less abundant than in
the earlier works. He has transcended Ovid,
the singer of the tender loves, and now enters
the list against Ovid the master of narrative
and of a novel sort of epic. Though the subjects
of the Metamorphoses and the Canterbury
Tales have nothing in common, they are both
collections of diverse stories which the authors
would weave into a harmonious pattern. Chau-
cer did not finish his design, but that design,
we may be sure, would have exhibited in the
whole as it does in the parts a dexterity that
matches Ovid's in securing variety, contrast,
shifting of the scenes, unity in diversity and a
self-concealing art.
The prevailing tone of the Canterbury Tales
is that of comedy, with seasonings of ribaldry,
irony and banter; but Chaucer's comedy is not
merely gay. It is true to the full and ancient
idea of comedy, the mirror of life, and has
place for pathos, which may also deepen into
tragedy. In " the Knight's Tale" and that of
"the Man of Law," we have two stories ap-
propriate for romance, one Classical and one
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