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OVID's METAMORPHOSES and UNIVERSAL HISTORY Stephen M

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OVID's METAMORPHOSES and UNIVERSAL HISTORY Stephen M CHAPTER NINE OVID'S METAMORPHOSES AND UNIVERSAL HISTORY Stephen M. Wheeler In ancient literature and literary criticism, poetry and history do not always make strange bedfellows. 1 Even Ovid flirts with Clio. From the very beginning of his most ambitious work, the Metamorphoses, he carries on a dialogue with the traditions of ancient historiography. After announcing his subject ( 1. 1-2 in nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas/ corpora), Ovid introduces a historical dimension when he prays to the gods to favor his undertaking (2-3 di coeptis (nam vos mutastis et ilia)/ adspirate meis) and to guide it continuously from the beginning of the world down to his own times (3-4 primaque ab origine mundil ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen). 2 Ludwig was the first to point out that the idea to include all time in the Metamorphoses derived from the genre of universal history, which flourished toward the end of the first century B.C.E. 3 Ludwig claimed further that Ovid based the unity and structure of his epic on the historian's division of time into three epochs: early (1.5-451), mythological (1.452-11.193), and historical ( 11.194-15.870). Ovid's purpose, according to Ludwig, was to do for poetry what the universal historian had done in the realm of history: namely, to document the progress of human civilization from chaos to the Roman empire. Ludwig's observation that the chronological comprehensiveness of the Metamorphoses is indebted to 1 For the increasingly recognized affinities between poetry and historiography in subject matter and rhetorical treatment see Wiseman ( 1979) 143-53, Woodman (1988) 98-100, and Wiseman in ch. 17 below. Cf. also Feeney (1991) 250-64, although he is interested in ancient criticism that differentiates the closely related genres of epic and history. 2 Tony Woodman (per littera.s) points out that Ovid, as 'poetic historian', puts into practice what Livy, the historian-who-would-be-poet, can only wish for, which is to begin his history with a prayer to the gods. Cf. Livy praej 13 cum bonis potius ominibus votisque et precationibus deorum dearumque, si, ut poetis, nobis quoque mos esset, liben­ tius inciperemus, ut orsis tantum operis successus prosperos darent. 3 Ludwig (1965) 74-86, esp. 80. 164 STEPHEN M. WHEELER universal history has found agreement in subsequent secondary lit­ erature, but few accept his thesis that Ovid systematically implements chronological order - the hallmark of historical writing - to struc­ ture the Metamorphoses. 4 More recently, Schmidt has maintained that any comparison of the Metamorphoses with universal history is erro­ neous.'> He argues that the purpose of the chronological framework in the proem is not to structure the Metamorphoses, but to lend its true subject, humanity, an air of totality. In Schmidt's view, Ovid has no interest in history and does not think historically. His epic is not historically structured; there are no historical epochs, no his­ torical processes. The Metamorphoses is instead a timeless gallery of human characters, whose transformations into animate and inani­ mate nature are narrative metaphors for human behavior. The ques­ tion is, does Schmidt go too far in his critique of the universal historical interpretation of the Metamorphoses? 6 The purpose of this paper is to introduce new evidence support­ ing the claim that Ovid borrows the techniques of the historian and exploits the traditions of ancient historiography to shape and direct the response of his audience to the Metamorphoses. To begin with, I demonstrate that Ovid's announcement of a chronological starting­ and end-point in the proem is a topos found in historical prefaces and that the maximum expansion of his chronological coverage is characteristic of universal history. Once the connection with uni­ versal history in the proem has been substantiated, the question arises whether the Metamorphoses may be read as a universal history. If one assumes that historical narrative consists of a succession of events in chronological order, then the Metamorphoses may not always fit the bill. However, the ordering of time in universal history has another dimension that distinguishes it from the norm of local history: namely, the synchronic narrative of events in different parts of the world. In the second part of the paper, I show how the historians Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and Pompeius Tragus achieve a universal per­ spective by alternating between diachrony and synchrony in the ordering of their narratives. In the concluding part of the paper, I 4 See Galinsky (1975) 85 and Solodow (1988) 18 and 29-30; cf. Hardie (1986) 379-80. 5 Schmidt (1991) 43ff. " Cf. Hardie's review ( 1993a) 264: 'He throws the baby out with the bath-water in draining the poem of all historical and temporal sense'. .
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