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The Mole on the Face. Erotic Rhetoric in Ovid's Amores

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The Mole on the Face. Erotic Rhetoric in Ovid's Amores 0 Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics The Mole on the Face. Erotic Rhetoric in Ovid’s Amores Version 1.1 10 2008 Christian Kaesser Stanford University Abstract: The paper examines the role of formal rhetoric in Ovid’s Amores. It points out that while in modern aesthetics the experience of art is dissociated from the experience of love and sex, the ancients had developed an erotic aesthetics that associated the two. Recalling the metaphor that describes a text as a body and the ancient view according to which rhetoric could make a text appealing just like cosmetics could a real body, it argues that Ovid uses formal rhetoric to inspire in his readers desire for his text. The appearance of voluptas in the epigram to Amores 1 confirms this view. It also suggests that the eroticization of Ovid’s text resonates within the contemporary political situation in Rome, where sex had become a matter of politics. © name. [email protected] 1 THE MOLE ON THE FACE Erotic Rhetoric in Ovid’s Amores There is no doubt, according to Richard Tarrant, “that Ovid’s poetry displays the techniques of formal rhetoric, and in particular the use of formally structured arguments as an instrument of persuasion, more often and more openly than that of any other Latin poet.”1 At a time when classicists still wrote biographies of ancient authors, the openly rhetorical character of Ovid’s poetry was easily explained as a function of the rhetorical education Ovid had received in his youth. After all, Seneca the Elder reports in a well- known and vivid account that Ovid had studied with some of the most famous rhetoricians of his time, and refers in particular to his predilection for suasoriae. But today, I think this explanation is no longer persuasive, not just because classicists in general have ceased to believe that the events of a poet’s life can explain what he writes in his works. More specifically, and more importantly, Seneca the Elder’s account of Ovid’s rhetorical education actually contradicts the explanation for which it once served as evidence in at least two ways. Just after having mentioned Ovid’s training with the rhetoricians, Seneca singles out one aspect of the rhetorical design of Ovid’s poetry, namely his choice of words (Suasoriae 2.2). In this discussion, first of all, Seneca does not suggest that when Ovid started to compose poetry he simply continued to write in the same highly and overtly rhetorical way that he used to use when he still composed rhetorical school exercises. In fact, Seneca says exactly the opposite, namely that in his school exercises Ovid restrained his display of rhetoric, and started to use rhetoric more 1 Tarrant (1995), 63. 2 licentiously only when he had turned to the composition of poetry. And secondly, and more importantly, Seneca discourages the assumption that the overt display of rhetoric in Ovid’s poetry is a somewhat mechanical consequence of his earlier rhetorical training, as if in his youth Ovid had been so immersed in rhetoric that he could not help but display it in the works he wrote as an adult. In fact, Seneca suggests again the opposite, citing an incident that he believes serves as evidence that Ovid was well aware of the extent to which he used rhetoric, and that he did so consciously. Seneca reports that some of Ovid’s friends once criticized his overt display of rhetoric. In his response Ovid suggested that they write down those of his verses they would most want him to remove from his poetry because they are too rhetorical, under the condition that in return they grant him to write down those that he would most want to retain. Noting that both Ovid and his friends wrote down the same two conspicuously rhetorical verses, one from the Ars Amatoria and one from the Amores, Seneca observes: “it is clear from this that the great man lacked not the judgment but the will to restrain the license of his poetry.” And he adds how Ovid justifies this rhetorical license: “he used sometimes to say that a face is the more beautiful for some mole.”2 Seneca’s account does not so much suggest that the open display of rhetoric in the poetry Ovid wrote as an adult resulted from the education he had received in his youth; it instead suggests that it is used knowingly and on purpose. And in fact, the mole to which 2 The full passage runs as follows (Suasoriae 2.2): verbis minime licenter usus est nisi in carminibus, in quibus non ignoravit vitia sua sed amavit. manifestum potest esse, quod rogatus aliquando ab amicis suis ut tolleret tres versus, invicem petit ut ipse tres exciperet in quos nihil illis liceret. aequa lex visa est; scripserunt illi quos tolli vellent secreto, hic quos tutos esse vellet; in utrisque codicillis idem versus erant, ex quibus primum fuisse narrabat Albinovanus Pedo, qui inter arbitros fuit: semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem (= Ars Amatoria 2.24) secundum: et gelidum Borean egelidumque Notum (= Amores 2.11.10) ex quo adparet summi ingenii viro non iudicium defuisse ad compescendam licentiam carminum suorum sed animum. aiebat enim decentiorem faciem esse in qua aliquis naevos esset. 3 Ovid referred is a sizeable one, for while Ovid’s choice of words is not everywhere as rhetorical as in the two verses he and his friends had singled out, his poetry displays other features of rhetoric, for instance the use of formally structured arguments as a means of persuasion, very regularly. But what is the purpose of this rhetoric? I think this question is particular suggestive and necessary in the case of the Amores. The reason for this is not that the ancients would have believed, like some of Ovid’s Romantic critics, that rhetoric in general has no place in love poetry, as if it hindered the poet’s sincere expression of his feelings and desires. The ancients did not share this Romantic notion: on the contrary, there is a long ancient tradition that associates the use of rhetoric with erotic discourse. In Greece, the goddess Peitho is often associated with Aphrodite (e.g. Aesch. Hic. 1038-42); so-called erotikoi logoi, such as Lysias’ speech in Plato’s Phaedrus or ps.-Demosthenes 61 seem to represent a well established genre in the early practice of rhetoric; and in the Phaedrus Plato juxtaposes, oddly for us but much less oddly for an ancient audience, a discussion of rhetoric with a discussion of love. In Rome, in turn, no writer was more receptive to this tradition than Ovid. In the Fasti, he explains that it was the need to articulate erotic desire that first prompted the development of formal rhetoric (Fasti 4.107-12).3 And in the Ars Amatoria, he admonishes the young men of Rome to study rhetoric, not just because rhetoric helps them woo a jury at the bar, but also because it helps them woo a girl (Ars Amatoria 1.459-62).4 But while, against the background of this tradition, it is hardly surprising that Ovid uses rhetoric in the Amores, it is surprising that he displays his use of rhetoric openly. For 3 prima feros habitus homini detraxit: ab illa | venerunt cultus mundaque cura sui. | primus amans carmen vigilatum nocte negata | dicitur ad clausas concinuisse fores, | eloquiumque fuit duram exorare puellam | proque sua causa quisque disertus erat. 4 disce bonas artes, moneo, Romana iuventus, | non tantum trepidos ut tueare reos | quam populus iudexque gravis lectusque senatus, | tam dabit eloquio victa puella manus. 4 this open display breaks the rules for the use of rhetoric in erotic discourse that he himself had laid out in the Ars Amatoria. In the passage just cited, Ovid continues by saying that while it is advisable to use rhetoric in erotic discourse, one should avoid the open display of one’s rhetoric. To be persuasive in erotic discourse, rhetoric must be well concealed by what the ancient rhetoricians called dissimulatio artis (Ars Amatoria 463-6): “But hide your powers, and don’t display your rhetorical skill; let your pleading avoid heavy words. Who, save an idiot, would recite declamations to his sweetheart?”5 But to generations of his readers, from Seneca the Elder down to Richard Tarrant, Ovid in the Amores behaves just like that idiot. As always in Ovid, it is hard to define precisely when he breaks, and when he abides by, the rules of stylistic decorum; and the ancient rhetoricians knew well that it may be hard to distinguish in general terms between the open display of rhetoric on the one hand and its concealment through dissimulatio on the other. But even so, there can be no doubt that in the Amores, Ovid produces one suasoria after another, and composes many verses as openly rhetorical as the one that already his friends had, according to Seneca the Elder, highlighted. It must be asked, then, why Ovid disobeys in the Amores his own precepts from the Ars Amatoria and displays openly, instead of concealing, the use of rhetoric in his erotic discourse. In other words, it must be asked what the purpose is of the mole of openly displayed rhetoric that is so conspicuously visible on the face of the Amores. This is the question that I seek to answer in this paper. 5 sed lateant vires, nec sis in fronte disertus; | effugiant voces verba molesta tuae. | quis, nisi mentis inops, tenerae declamat puellae? | saepe valens odii littera causa fuit. 5 I. Pleasure, Glory, and Praise Given that Ovid had studied the composition of suasoriae with some of Rome’s foremost rhetoricians, one could expect him to employ the techniques of persuasive rhetoric with great success.
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