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A Literary Commentary on the Fifth Book of Ovid's Fasti

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A Literary Commentary on the Fifth Book of Ovid's Fasti A LITERARY COMMENTARY ON THE FIFTH BOOK OF OVID'S FASTI by Ian Nigel Brookes Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics N- -u. nC'--u. nN-r-40''00'N-N-r-10'0' c0u. nwww Univarsity of Newcastle upon, Tyne September 1992 NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CCCCCdiCCCC---------------------------- 092 51760 6 ---------------------------- 00000000000000000000000000000000000000 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the literary nature of Ovid's For ti. This aspect of the poem has been largely neglected in previous commentaries, yet recent research on the Fasti indicates that the poem was composed with considerable literary artistry. The introduction outlines the major issues surrounding the interpretation of the Fasti as a poetic work, and establishes the text of Book V which will be used for the purposes of this investigation. The main body of the thesis falls into two parts. In Chapters 1-13 1 subject each of the constituent episodes of Book V to close scrutiny and attempt to trace the techniques which the poet uses to present his material in an entertaining fashion. In Chapters 14-17 I consider various elements which pervade the book as a whole, looking at the poet's success in investing his composition with poetic language and drama, and his ingenuity in manipulating his material. My analysis leads me to conclude that Ovid's literary achievement in the Fazti may be greater than many critics have been prepared to admit, and indeed that Ovid's primary goals in writing this piece were surely poetic rather than didactic or political. CONTENTS 1 Abstract ........... .................................... Contents 2 ............................................... 5 Acknowledgements ....................................... Introduction ........................................... 6 Chapter 1: The Etymology of May ....................... 15 1.1 Commentary on V. 1-110 1.2 The Dramatic Form of the Debate 1.3 Roman Themes in Polyhymnia's Speech 1.4 Malestas and Roman Politics 1.5 The Style of Calliope's Speech 1.6 Programmatic Elements in the Opening of Book V Chapter 2: Capella .................................... 72 2.1 Commentary on V. 111-128 2.2 The Catasterism of the Goat Chapter 3: The Lares the Bona 80 and Dea ................. 3.1 Commentary on V. 129-158 3.2 The Imperial Family's Restoration of Religious Monuments - 3.3 Explicit and Implicit Etymologising Chapter 4: The Hyades ................................. 97 4.1 Commentaryýon V., 159-182 4.2 Irony in the Story of Hyas Chapter 5: The Floralia .............................. 109 5.1 Commentary on V. 183-378 5.2 The Dialogue Between Ovid and Flora 5.3 The Characterisation of Flora 5.4 The Persona of the Narrator 5.5 Flora and Juno: The Goddess in Distress 5.6 The Magic Flower of V. 251-252 Chapter 6: Centaurus ................................. 180 6.1 Commentary on V. 379-416 6.2 The Characterisation of Chiron 6.3 The Characterisation of Achilles 6.4 Irony in the Death of Chiron 2 Chapter 7: The Lemuria ............................... 204 7.1 Commentary on V. 417-492 7.2 The Romulus and Remus Saga in the Fas-ti 7.3 The Remus Legend and Augustan Politics Chapter 8: Orion ..................................... 234 8.1 Commentary on V. 493-544 8.2 The Genre of the Hospitality Story 8.3 The Characterisation of Hyrieus 8.4 The Role of the Gods in the Story Chapter 9: Mars Ultor ................................ 262 9.1 Commentary on V. 545-598 9.2 The Panegyric of Augustus 9.3 The Date of the Dedication of the Temple Chapter 10: Taurus ................................... 286 10.1 Commentary on V. 599-620 10.2 The Europa Story in Literature and Art 10.3 Sexual Language in the Europa Story Chapter 11: The Argei ................................ 299 11.1 Commentary on V. 621-662 11.2 The Origin and Meaning of the Festival 11.3 The Characterisation of the River God 11.4 The Influence of Virgil's Aeneid Chapter 12: Mercury .................................. 325 12.1 Commentary on V. 663-720 12.2 The Poet and the Merchant 12.3 Mercury's Version of the Dioscuri Legend Chapter 13: The Epigrams " ............................. 353 13.1 Commentary on V. 721-734 13.2 The Role of Epigrams in the Fasti 13.3 Epigrams as a Means of Closing an Elegiac Book Chapter 14: The Unity of Book V ...................... 363 14.1 Symmetrical Arrangement of the Episodes 14.2 Transitions 14.3 Recurrent Themes 3 Chapter 15: The Poetry of Book V ..................... 382 15.1 Imagery 15.2 Descriptive Language 15.3 Metre and Rhythm 15.4 Word Order Chapter 16: Dramatic Technique in Book V 399 ............. 16.1 Narrative Technique 16.2 The Narrator and his Informants Chapter 17: The Fakt: and Augustan Politics.......... 410 17.1 Ovid and Augustus 17.2 The Fas ti as an Augustan Poem 17.3 Politics in Book V Conclusion ........................................... 421 Appendix: The Revision of Book V During Ovid's Exile. 424 Bibliography ......................................... 434 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was conceived in the wake of correspondence with Tony Woodman and Stephen Heyworth in late 1988. It developed under the supervision of David West and Donald Hill, and benefited greatly from their enthusiasm and critical judgement. I have also profited from discussion and correspondence about the Fasti' with Alessandro Barchiesi, Stephen Hinds, John Miller, Carole Newlands and Jonathan Powell. 5 INTRODUCTION For many years the Fas is was something of an embarrassment to Ovidian scholars. The work was acknowledged to be of importance for the study of Roman religion, but was considered to be- a failure as a literary project. Scholars such as Fowler and Wissowa had used the Fasti as a source for their researches into Roman religious practices', and this treatment of the poem influenced commentators such as Bailey and Frazer2. Frazer's five volume edition of the Fasti, published in 1929, is, in spite of its large scale, predominantly concerned with questions of comparative anthropology, and leaves the literary aspects of the poem virtually untouched. This neglect has not been remedied by the only subsequent detailed commentary on the poem, that of " Bomer. Bömer's work gives detailed information about matters of philology, but makes little attempt at interpretation of the poem. I Apart from these commentaries there have only been two large-scale studies of the poem. Of these, the work of Peeters3 is primarily concerned with the manuscript tradition, while Porte4 discusses the aetiological 6 nature of the poem. Neither work pays much attention to the status of the Fis ti as poetry. In the absence of any full-scale literary studies of the taste, there grew up an orthodoxy that the poem was fundamentally flawed as a work of literatures. Probably the most influential work on the literary nature of the Fasti has been Richard Heinze 's essay 6 Ovids elegische Erzahlung, which was published in 1919. Heinze contrasted Ovid's handling of episodes in the Fazti with his treatment of the same stories in the Metamorphoses, and - concluded that in the Fas ti the elegiac genre has a fundamental role in Ovid's presentation of his material. Heinze's work had the effect of setting the agenda for the appraisal of the Fasti in terms of comparison, with the Metamorphoses, as though the Fasti were a carmen perpotuum. Not surprisingly, perhaps, this led to criticism of the rasti on several fronts. The subject matter of the Roman calendar dictates that the Fasts is constructed in a series of self- contained episodes each representing a different entry in the' Roman calendar. The Metamorphose., on the other hand, progresses in a fluent, sweeping narrative which 7 gains much of its appeal from skilful transitions between the different stories. In addition, the Fasts is composed in elegiac couplets, with each couplet forming an independent sense 7 unit. This verse-form imposes a certain regularity which has been judged monotonous in comparison with the variety achieved by the use of hexameters in the 8 Mý tarnvrpl7vses The failure of the Fasti to display the fluidity and variety observable in the Metamorphose- led scholars to question the aesthetic validity of a calendar poem. Frankel concluded that "Ovid's Fasti could never be real poetry: to versify and adorn-an almanac was not a sound proposal in the first place"9. However, it seems, to me that the view that the Fasti is a literary failure rests upon the observation that it does not match up to- the M4tamorphose- as a c at-menn per petuum. Scholars like Frankel and Otis pointed out that the Fasti does not approach the achievement of the Matamvrr>hose in terms of its large- scale construction, but'they did not analyse the poem on a smaller scale. The Fasti does not, in fact, claim to be a continuous narrative. On the contrary,. the poem is 8 to be read as a series of episodes, each self-contained but adding to the effect of the whole. In an article published in 197510, R. J. Littlewood challenged the prevailing orthodoxy about the literary status of the Fazti. Whereas previous critics had based their opinions on general surveys of the poem, Littlewood took a single entry - Ovid's treatment of the Lupercalia festival in Book II - and examined the passage in detail in order to reveal the poet's artistry. This approach has subsequently been applied to other entries", and has led to a reappraisal of the poem. By subjecting the individual entries to- close scrutiny, critics have discovered depths to the Fasts that had gone unnoticed in the more general surveys of earlier scholars, with the result that scholarly research on-the Pasti is now 'focused very much on " literary approaches to the poem12. Nevertheless, in spite of this upsurge in Interest in the literary aspects of the Fasti, many of the episodes in the poem have not been studied in detail, and John Miller has recently stated that "thorough explications of the individual entries remain one of the desiderata in research on the Fasti"13 9 This is particularly true of the fifth book of the raste.
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