A Student's Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 10. Shawn O'Bryhim

Introduction

      i. Ovid’s Biography

      Most of what we know about the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso comes from Tristia, a collection of autobiographical poems that he wrote after Augustus relegated him to the Black Sea. Because this information cannot be confirmed by independent sources, it must be used with caution, particularly when it comes to Ovid’s complaints about his place of exile.

      At Tristia 4.10, Ovid says that he was born into a respectable equestrian family of moderate means on March 20, 43 BC, in Sulmo (modern Sulmona), a small city about 100 miles to the east of Rome. Ovid’s brother, who was born in the previous year, shared his birthday. Both were educated by the best local teachers. While Ovid’s brother favored oratory, Ovid himself gravitated toward poetry. When his father attempted to dissuade him from focusing on verse because he thought that there was no money in it, Ovid tried to please him by writing prose. This ultimately failed: as the rhetorician Seneca the Elder (Controversiae 2.2.8) put it, he simply wrote verse in prose. When his brother died at the age of 20, Ovid embarked upon a political career. He was first elected to the board of the tresviri capitales (three officials who oversaw policing), and later to that of the decemviri stlitibus iudicandis (ten officials who judged lawsuits) (Fasti 4.383–384). The next logical step was a major political office. Politics, however, did not interest Ovid. Instead of continuing on this course, he returned to his first love: poetry.

Ovid went to Rome and began giving public recitations of his love poetry, much of which centered on his (possibly fictional) lover, “Corinna.” His talent made him popular in literary circles and provided access to the most famous poets of the time: Macer, Propertius, Ponticus, Bassus, and Horace. After two divorces, he married a woman who gave him a daughter and stood by him even after Augustus relegated him in AD 7 to Tomis, a settlement on the west shore of the Black Sea (modern Constanţa, Romania). This punishment was particularly irksome to Ovid, as the locals did not know Latin and therefore were unable to appreciate his talent.

      Ovid maintains that he was not expelled from Rome because of a crime (Tristia 4.10.90), but because of “a poem and a mistake” (carmen et error, Tristia 2.207). He provides few specifics, since – he claims – the details are well known. Nevertheless, he does identify the poem as Ars amatoria, a didactic work on seduction (Tristia 2.8; 3.1–8; Ex Ponto 2.9.76). The dissemination of this poem is a classic example of bad timing, coming as it did on the heels of Augustus’ moral legislation and the exile of his daughter, Julia, on the charge of adultery. While Ovid is open about the incriminating poem, he does not reveal the nature of his error, claiming that he does not want to reopen the wound that he inflicted upon Augustus. Nevertheless, he repeatedly avers that his offense was no crime (Tristia 2.208–210, 4.4.37–42, 5.4.18–22; cf. Ex Ponto 2.3); it was not rebellion (Tristia 2.51–56), murder, fraud, or the breaking of any law (Ex Ponto 2.9.63–75). Rather it was something that he witnessed (Tristia 2.103–104). Whatever this was, his failure to report it offended Augustus, who banished Ovid on his own authority instead of sending his case to the Senate or to a court (Tristia 2.131–138). It may be that he was privy to something embarrassing and that the emperor, not wanting to make this matter public, used the Ars amatoria as a pretext for Ovid’s exile. Although he defends himself at length against the charge of teaching adultery through the Ars (Tristia 2.211–212, 2.237–572), he steadfastly refuses to reveal the reason for his exile, perhaps because he hoped to obtain a pardon or, at the very least, a transfer to a more genial location.

      Ovid was never allowed to return to Rome. He was forced to remain in Tomis, over eight hundred miles from his home, writing poetry when he could, trying to learn the native language, and even strapping on armor to ward off the neighboring tribes (Tristia 5.10). He died in the ninth year of his exile, during the winter of AD 17/18, at the age of 60.

      ii. Ovid’s Works

Ovid describes Amores as a work of his youth (Tristia 4.10.57–58). It originally consisted of five books; a revision reduced it to three, which is the version that has survived. At Amores 1.1–4, Ovid says that he had intended to write an epic poem on a military topic. Indeed, the first line begins with the word arma, as does Vergil’s Aeneid. Cupid, however, stole a foot from every other line, thereby transforming an epic poem in dactylic hexameter into a collection of love poems in elegiac couplets. When Ovid complains that he should not be writing love poetry because he has never been in love, Cupid responds by shooting him with an arrow, thereby transforming him into a lover. The object of his desire is a woman named Corinna, whose identity was not known to Ovid’s contemporaries or to later writers (Ars amatoria 3.53–58; Apuleius, Apologia 10.2). This suggests either that “Corinna” is a pseudonym for an unidentified woman or that the character who bears this name is fictional (Tristia 4.10.59–60). Ovid’s Amores takes a light-hearted look at the vicissitudes of love and contains many of the tropes and characters found both in previous love poets and in New Comedy.

      Heroides consists of verse letters in elegiac couplets written by the heroines of myth to their husbands, lovers, and potential lovers. Focused on character exposition and persuasion, these poems owe much to Ovid’s education in rhetoric, and particularly to the tradition of suasoriae, “speeches of persuasion” (Seneca, Controversiae 2.2.8). They also involve prosopopoeia or ethopoeia (“character drawing”), a rhetorical exercise in which speeches are composed that portray the characteristics of famous individuals (Quintilian 3.8.52). While Ovid claims that Heroides represents an entirely new genre (Ars amatoria 3.346), the pieces in this collection are reminiscent of speeches from Euripidean tragedy and may have been inspired by a fictional letter in Propertius 4.3. Poems 1–15 appear to be youthful compositions in the personae of individual female characters, while poems 16–21 – the “double heroides,” in which letters from heroines are answered by their male addressees – come from a later period. These poems take possibilities left open by earlier authors as their jumping-off point (e.g. a letter that Penelope could have written after her interview with Odysseus in the guise of a beggar). Ovid’s use of varied source material allows for new perspectives on familiar tales, while his refashioning of his sources into something unique foreshadows his compositional technique in Metamorphoses.

Ars amatoria is a didactic poem in three books. Here Ovid plays the role of “teacher of love” (praeceptor amoris). The first two books teach men how to find and obtain lovers; the third does the same for women. While previous didactic poems were written in dactylic hexameter, Ovid uses elegiac couplets, a meter that is more appropriate