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Tiresias the Judge: Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.322–38*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

K. M. Coleman
K. M. Coleman
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Extract

Incongruity and anachronism characterize Ovid's treatment of the gods and mythological figures in the Metamorphoses; frequently the resulting discrepancy between the superhuman world of mythology and characteristic aspects of Roman society serves to pillory that society as well as to undermine the dignity of the traditional mythology. Linguistic parody is one of the tools Ovid uses to highlight these discrepancies. An example recently noted is that of the serenade delivered by Polyphemus the landlubber to his marine beloved, Galatea (Met. 13.789–869): by casting this in the form of Gebetsparodie, Ovid mocks the literary topoi of the paraclausithyron as well as reducing the heroic status of the mythological protagonists. I suggest that in Tiresias’ brief appearance in Metamorphoses 3 Ovid imitates the pedantic locutions of jurists’ language in order to demonstrate how trivial and undignified are the preoccupations of the bickering Olympians.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 571 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 See Yardley, J. C., Eranos 76 (1978), 32–4Google Scholar.

2 See Kenney, E. J., Philologus 111 (1967), 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Frécaut, J.-M., VEsprit et I'humour chez Ovide (Grenoble, 1972), p. 131Google Scholar.

3 See Kenney, E. J., YCS 21 (1969), 254–6Google Scholar.

4 First observed by Gronovius, , Observations ii. 1Google Scholar: see Frécaut, op. cit. (n. 2), p. 328 n. 96.

5 ‘No kissing, or else…’, in L, Wallach. (ed.), The Classical Tradition. Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Kaplan (Ithaca and New York, 1966), pp. 222–31Google Scholar.

6 McKeown suggests that Ovid's mistress is a freedwoman, and that the uir is her patron, who exercises vestigial droits de seigneur over her (Ovid Amores, ii [Leeds, 1989], p. 77)Google Scholar.

7 Art cit. (n. 5), 228.

8 Noted in neither the commentary of F. Bömer (Heidelberg, 1959) nor that of A. A. R. Henderson (Bristol, 1979).

9 Bömer, ad he, TLL v. 1.1756.80Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Dig. 1.2.2.45–6 (Pompon.) ‘Trebatius peritior Cascellio, Cascellius Trebatio eloquentior fuisse dicitur, Ofilius utroque doctior…Tubero doctissimus quidem habitus est iuris publici et priuati’, TLL v.l. 1756.27–30, 1759.60–4Google Scholar.

11 See Morillon, P., Sentire, sensus, sententia. Recherche sur le vocabulaire de la vie intellectuelle affective et physiologique en latin (Lille, 1974), pp. 387–99 (especially p. 393)Google Scholar.

12 Dig. 4.8.21.1, 4.8.33, 4.8.50, 10.2.47, 10.2.52.2, 33.3.4: seeVIR v.873.25–8.

13 In the jurists firmare is used with a somewhat different range of abstractions (e.g. consuetudinem, ius, obligationes etc.): see VIR ii.894.41–5.

14 Hofmann-Szantyr, p. 298.

15 Except for Gell. 17.2.10, all ancient authorities referring to this passage quote the normalized form solis occasus; hence solis was accepted by Mommsen as the original reading (see Riccobono, , FIRA i. 28–9)Google Scholar. But the nominative sol, quoted by Gellius with the comment ‘non insuaui uetustate est’, is accepted as a genuine ab urbe condita construction by Laughton, E., The Participle in Cicero (Oxford, 1964), p. 86Google Scholar n. 1.

16 Examined by Laughton, op. cit. (n. 15), pp. 84, 89.

17 For examples in Plautus and Terence (involving opus/usus est) see Tammelin, E. J., De participiispriscae Latinitatis quaestiones syntacticae (Helsinki, 1889), 104–14Google Scholar; for the handful of instances in Horace's Odes see Nisbet-Hubbard, on Odes 1.37.13Google Scholar(adding 1.13.18 and 1.25.9). The ubiquity of this construction in Livy and Tacitus is noted in all the major syntactical handbooks, e.g. Hofmann-Szantyr, p. 256; the prose development from early Latin is concisely illustrated by Woodcock, E. C., A New Latin Syntax (London, 1959), pp. 76–7Google Scholar(and for this construction with the future participle add Laughton, op. cit. [n. 15], p. 99).

18 Cf. Cic. Cat. 4.8 ‘sancit ne quis eorum poenam, quos condemnat, aut per senatum aut per populum leuare possit”, Suit. 63 ‘nemo iudicium reprehendit, cum de poena queritur, sed legem. damnatio est enim iudicum, quae manebat, poena legis, quae leuabatur’, , Suet.Galba 9.1Google Scholar ‘quasi solacio et honore aliquo poenam leuaturus’.

19 See Kelly, J. M., Roman Litigation (Oxford, 1966), pp. 102–17Google Scholar.

20 See Hofmann-Szantyr, p. 408.

21 See Kaser, M., Das römische Zivilprozefirecht (Munich, 1966), pp. 41–3Google Scholar.

22 See Kelly, J. M., Studies in the Civil Judicature of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 1976), p. 119Google Scholar. Cicero's later admission (Fin. 4.74) that this passage was deliberate mockery has been interpreted as evidence that the two terms were in reality treated as distinct even in Cicero's day: see Broggini, G., Iudex Arbiterue. Prolegomena zum Officium des römischen Privatrichters (Cologne, 1957), pp. 199–200Google Scholar. But for Cicero's joke to have been effective it must have recalled genuine linguistic controversies (Kelly, p. 118). For Cicero's mockery of jurisprudence see Haury, A., Ulronie el Vhumour chez Cicéron (Leiden, 1955), p. 232Google Scholar.

23 Parentheses in the Metamorphoses often serve to justify and highlight behaviour recounted in the narrative; on the inseparability of ‘logische/psychologische Funktion’ in these explanatory parentheses see Albrecht, M. von, Die Parenthese in Ovids Melamorphosen und ihre dichterische Funktion (Hildesheim, 1964), 112–14Google Scholar.

24 TLL. vii.2.431.73 – 432.2.

25 Cf. Dig. 28.3.6.7 (Ulp.), ‘testamenta irrita constitutiones faciunt’, 31.77.5 (Papin.), ‘si…mulier uenditionem irritam faceret’, 48.11.8.1 (Paul.), ‘eadem lex uenditiones locationes eius rei causa pluris minorisue factas irritas facit.’

26 Forms of Roman Legislation (Oxford, 1956), pp. 6–8Google Scholar.

27 For licet with a dative to specify the sphere of application in legal sources see VIR iii. 1629. 13–1630.52Google Scholar.

28 TLL vii.2.1360.45–62, Hofmann-Szantyr, pp. 351–2.

29 This propensity of legal language is well illustrated by the tendency of English (handicapped by its lack of inflection) to avoid pronouns, employing instead ‘backward-oriented reference to previously mentioned nouns’ in an attempt (frequently unsuccessful) at greater precision: see Danet, Brenda, Law & Society Review 14 (1980), 478Google Scholar. The war waged by legal language against ambiguity is noted by Melinkoff, D., The Language of the Law (Boston and Toronto, 1963), pp. 22–3Google Scholar.

30 Slightly different in arrangement from the phenomenon of ‘substantive Parataxen’ that Landgraf sees as characteristic of Latin expression, including juristic writing: ALL 5 (1888), 169Google Scholar.

31 On parenthesis as a distancing technique in the Metamorphoses see von Albrecht, op. cit. (n. 23), 209–15.

32 By Albrecht, M. von, Der altsprachliche Unterricht 6.2 (1963), 68Google Scholar.