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Bimillennial Reflections on Ovid
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
In a book that is commonly presented to boys and girls in recognition of their progress in classical languages and literature, the studious recipient will read of Ovid that ‘he may fairly be called the wickedest writer on the world's bookshelves’. This was in 1912. The opinion of a critic who was at little pains to read the authors (Plautus, for example) whom he was so ready to dismiss with cursory jibes is not in itself worthy of citation. Allowing, however, for gross exaggeration, we can no doubt regard his judgement as consistent with the prevailing opinion of that time. We know too much about ‘wicked writers’ now to give Ovid the prize for wickedness, or even, what he might have aspired to, a very high mark for ‘naughtiness’. Such knowledge was not, indeed, outside the reach of Stobart's contemporaries, but the classical scholars of those days seem to have confined their improper reading to the classics and to have reacted, publicly at least, with expressions of shocked disapproval. The combined romanticism and puritanism of the nineteenth century in England were disastrous to what remained of the popularity that Ovid had enjoyed from Chaucer onwards, and, as usually happens, moral censure was reinforced by aesthetic depreciation. The worthy Sellar did not live long enough to put together the chapter on Ovid in his Roman Poets of the Augustan Age. The chapter we have, concocted from his posthumous notes by W. P. Ker, makes rather depressing reading. We are reminded that Ovid is, in his love poetry, ‘the poet of pleasure and intrigue’, Tibullus and Propertius poets ‘of serious sentiment or passion’.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1958
References
page 2 note 1 Stobart, J. C., The Grandeur that was Rome (London, 1912; 3rd edn., revised by F. N. Pryce, 1934), 269.Google Scholar
page 2 note 2 Amores ii. 1. 2 (‘ille ego nequitiae Naso poeta meae’).Google Scholar
page 2 note 3 Ibid. iii. 9 and ii. 6.
page 3 note 1 Rand, E. K., Ovid and his Influence (New York, 1925)Google Scholar and Fränkel, H., Ovid, Poet between Two Worlds (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1945).Google Scholar Though I accept Wright's criticism of the latter, I would give the author more credit for not a few illuminating comments.
page 3 note 2 The 2000th anniversary of Ovid's birth is to be celebrated on 20 March 1958 (see Trist, iv. 10. 11–14).Google Scholar
page 3 note 3 Fränkel's illustrations of Ovid are given in prose renderings that do little justice to the poet's language.
page 4 note 1 A.A. ii. 683–4.Google Scholar It is an incongruous situation to find oneself appealing to Ovid as a creditable witness against high ecclesiastical opinion as expressed at the Church Assembly (see The Times, 15 11 1957, p. 7).Google Scholar
page 4 note 2 Mr. T. F. Higham dealt with Ovid's literary aims and achievement and with criticism of these in his article on ‘Ovid: some aspects of his character and aims’, Classical Review, xlviii (1934), 105–16.Google Scholar That ground having been so effectively covered, my present reflections deal rather with the personality and attitudes revealed by the poet.
page 4 note 3 Nowadays such advice, if given at all, would be addressed to the female.
page 5 note 1 e.g. A.A. iii. 585–6.Google Scholar
page 6 note 1 Ovid Recalled, 204–5.Google Scholar Cf. Ovid, Met. xi. 410 ff.Google Scholar (ignis, 1. 445), vii. 690 ff.; Heroides xiii.
page 6 note 2 See also Ex Ponto iii. 1. 107–8.Google Scholar In Trist. v. 5Google Scholar, written for his wife's birthday, she is compared to Penelope and other heroines.
page 7 note 1 Unless indeed he is the unnamed object of Horace's jibes in Epist. ii. 2.Google Scholar 91 ff., a passage that, with A.P. 453 ff., shows the current of hostility in Horace's attitude to such fellow poets as he did not approve of. Ovid's attitude is shown in Tristia iv. 10, 41–42Google Scholar (‘temporis illius colui fouique poetas, | quoique aderant uates rebar adesse deos’).
page 7 note 2 Ovid's elegy on the death of Tibullus (Amores iii. 9)Google Scholar is in the same company as Lycidas, Adonais, Thyrsis, and Ave atque Vale.
page 8 note 1 See, for example, Quintilian x. 1. 87. Cicero in Q. Fratr. ii. 9.Google Scholar 3 is, to say the least, perfunctory! Ovid also creates an opportunity to mention Lucretius, with Ennius, in Trist, ii. 423–6.Google Scholar
page 8 note 2 Cum uiuis adnumerarer (1. 4) is like Keats's ‘I am leading a posthumous existence’ (Letter to Charles Brown from Rome, 30 November 1820).
page 8 note 3 Ex Ponto ii. 9Google Scholar and iv. 7.
page 10 note 1 See also Trist. i. 3. 19–20.Google Scholar
page 10 note 2 From the Renaissance onwards she has been asserted and denied to have been Ovid's stepdaughter. The name, whether real or assumed, is Greek (Perillus was the craftsman who made Phalaris' brazen bull); in Trist. ii. 437Google Scholar (O.C.T.), where per illos is a v.l., it is a ‘homophonous’ pseudonym for Metella.
page 11 note 1 Sat. vi. 434 ff.Google Scholar
page 12 note 1 A point rarely made is the initiative and ingenuity exercised by Ovid in adding to the resources of poetic (and hence Silver Age prose) vocabulary. In the course of desultory reading I have noticed the following words apparently first used, and in many cases no doubt invented, by him: contumulare, diffamare, ematurescere, ensiger, excusabilis, fuscare, harundifer, iaculatrix, illectus, immadescere, immansuetus, imperiuratus, inadustus, inambitiosus, inamoenus, inassuetus, inattenuatus, incaeduus, incalfacere, incommendatus, inconsolabilis, inconsumptus, incorrectus, incruentatus, inculpatus, incustoditus, indeclinatus, indefletus, indeiectus, indelebilis, indelibatus, indeploratus, indesertus, indestrictus, indetonsus, indeuitatus, indigestus, infragilis, irreprehensus, irrequietus, irresolutus, perlatere, proximitas, recalfacere, recompositus, semiadapertus, semibos, semicaper, semicrematus, semicremus, semideus, semilacer, semireductus, semirefectus, semisepultus, semisupinus, turifer, turilegus.