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Seriously Playful: Philosophy in the Myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses

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Seriously Playful: Philosophy in the Myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses Seriously Playful: Philosophy in the Myths of Ovid’s Metamorphoses Megan Beasley, B.A. (Hons) This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Classics of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities Discipline of Classics and Ancient History 2012 1 2 For my parents 3 4 Abstract This thesis aims to lay to rest arguments about whether Ovid is or is not a philosophical poet in the Metamorphoses. It does so by differentiating between philosophical poets and poetic philosophers; the former write poetry freighted with philosophical discourse while the latter write philosophy in a poetic medium. Ovid, it is argued, should be categorised as a philosophical poet, who infuses philosophical ideas from various schools into the Metamorphoses, producing a poem that, all told, neither expounds nor attacks any given philosophical school, but rather uses philosophy to imbue its constituent myths with greater wit, poignancy and psychological realism. Myth and philosophy are interwoven so intricately that it is impossible to separate them without doing violence to Ovid’s poem. It is not argued here that the Metamorphoses is a fundamentally serious poem which is enhanced, or marred, by occasional playfulness. Nor is it argued that the poem is fundamentally playful with occasional moments of dignity and high seriousness. Rather, the approach taken here assumes that seriousness and playfulness are so closely connected in the Metamorphoses that they are in fact the same thing. Four major myths from the Metamorphoses are studied here, from structurally significant points in the poem. The “Cosmogony” and the “Speech of Pythagoras” at the beginning and end of the poem have long been recognised as drawing on philosophy, and discussion of these two myths forms the beginning and end of the thesis. Much scholarly work on these two myths has focused on the natural philosophical material, and this thesis accordingly addresses the need for work on other philosophical topics such as ethics and epistemology. In addition to this philosophical ‘frame’, however, two myths from the inner books are also studied, the “Musomachia” and the “Orpheus”. The length and position of these four myths imply that they are of particular importance in the poem as whole. In order to draw out the connections between the four myths and trace the development of themes over the course of the Metamorphoses, the sequence of the myths in the poem has been followed in the structure of the thesis. 5 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... 11 Abbreviations and Ancient Sources ............................................................................................ 13 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 15 i) Philosophy in the Metamorphoses.................................................................................... 15 iii) The Intertextual Method ................................................................................................... 27 iv) Myths from the Four Quarters of the Poem ...................................................................... 31 v) A Kaleidoscope of Competing Positions .......................................................................... 43 Part 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 1: The Creation .................................................................................................... 47 i) The Limits of the “Cosmogony” ...................................................................................... 50 ii) Framing the Metamorphoses ............................................................................................ 52 iii) Antiquum Chaos ............................................................................................................... 53 iv) A Poetic Cosmos .............................................................................................................. 57 v) Crafting the Cosmos ......................................................................................................... 59 vi) Zoogony............................................................................................................................ 65 vii) Anthropogony ................................................................................................................... 69 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 73 Chapter 2: Myths of the Cosmogony ................................................................................ 77 i) The Four Ages .................................................................................................................. 79 ii) Lycaon and the Gigantomachy ......................................................................................... 84 iii) The Flood ......................................................................................................................... 98 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 108 Part 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 111 Chapter 3: The “Musomachia” ....................................................................................... 113 i) Pyreneus ......................................................................................................................... 115 ii) The “Musomachia” and Gigantomachy ......................................................................... 118 iii) Ontological Status in the “Musomachia” ....................................................................... 122 iii) Truth and Deception ....................................................................................................... 128 7 iv) The Song Contest ........................................................................................................... 132 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 137 Chapter 4: The “Rape of Persephone” ............................................................................ 139 i) Venus ............................................................................................................................. 141 ii) The Seasons ................................................................................................................... 143 iii) Agriculture ..................................................................................................................... 145 iv) Renewal.......................................................................................................................... 149 v) The Stellio and the Bubo: Two Unheeded Warnings .................................................... 153 vi) Arethusa ......................................................................................................................... 157 vii) Lucretian Reminiscences ............................................................................................... 158 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 160 Part 3 .......................................................................................................................................... 165 Chapter 5: The Life and Death of Orpheus ..................................................................... 167 i) The Divine and the Human ............................................................................................ 168 ii) The Nature of Humanity ................................................................................................ 184 iii) The Natural World ......................................................................................................... 193 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 197 Chapter 6: The “Song of Orpheus” ................................................................................. 201 i) Grief among the Gods .................................................................................................... 203 ii) A Prophylactic Love Song? ........................................................................................... 209 iii) Perverted Love ............................................................................................................... 223 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 234 Part 4 .......................................................................................................................................... 237 Chapter 7: Pythagoras’ Physics ....................................................................................... 239 i) Pythagoras’ Introduction ................................................................................................ 242 ii) The Elements ................................................................................................................
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