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The Ending of Ovid's Fasti

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Carole Newlands
Carole Newlands*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

When applied to the Augustan age, the term ‘ideology’ has frequently carried the same negative associations that it often bears in general use. Sir Ronald Syme was influential in creating a picture of Augustus as the deliberate founder of a monarchy who manipulated traditional sources of power for his personal ends. In his chapter ‘The Organisation of Opinion’ in The Roman Revolution, Syme argued that Augustus appropriated literature, coinage, festivals and monuments in a calculated attempt to create an impregnable system of autocracy. Although Paul Zanker in his The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus provided a more positive view of Augustus as an astute and benevolent monarch, the instigator of a great flowering of the arts, he followed Syme in seeing Augustus as the mastermind of a system of ideas and imagery specifically calculated to promote his personal power and ideals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 23 , Issue 1-2 , 1994 , pp. 129 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1994

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References

1. Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939), 459–75Google Scholar.

2. Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1988Google Scholar).

3. Williams, R., Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford 1983), 153–57Google Scholar.

4. Eagleton, T., Ideology (London and New York 1991), 198Google Scholar.

5. Eagleton (n.4 above), 222.

6. Feeney, D., ‘Si licet et fas est: Ovid’s Fasti and the Problem of Free Speech under the Principate’, in Powell, A. (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (Bristol 1992), 1–25Google Scholar, at 3.

7. Feeney (n.6 above), 3.

8. For instance, Wilkinson, L.P., Ovid Recalled (Cambridge 1955), 262Google Scholar: ‘In fact he could hardly have put his pen more completely at the service of the regime.’

9. Both the Metamorphoses and the Fasti are generally accepted to have been in the process of composition chiefly between 1–8 CE. See Bömer, F. (ed.), Ovid: Die Fasten (Heidelberg 1957Google Scholar), i.l5ff.

10. For a detailed discussion of the later years of the Augustan principate see Wiedemann, T., ‘The Political Background to Ovid’s Tristia 2’, CQ 25 (1974), 264–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Although Ovid tells Augustus at Tristia 2.549f. that he had actually written twelve books of the Fasti, his attention in exile was directed to revising or rewriting the first six books; the second part of the work may have existed, if at all, only in draft. On the vexed question of the poem’s state of incompletion see Peeters, F., Les Fastes d’Ovide: Histoire du texte (Brussels 1939), 63–77Google Scholar; Bömer (n.9 above), i.17–22. Bömer concludes that it is most likely that Ovid never wrote any verses beyond Book 6. On Ovid’s revisions of the Fasti see Fantham, E., ‘Ovid, Germanicus and the the Composition of the Fasti’, in Cairns, F. (ed.), Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar Vol. 5 (Liverpool 1985), 243–81Google Scholar, and ‘The Role of Evander in Ovid’s Fasti’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 155–70Google Scholar.

12. Fantham, ‘Composition’ (n.ll above), 245.

13. Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Propaganda and Dissent? Augustan Moral Legislation and the Love-Poets’, Klio 67 (1985), 180–84Google Scholar; Wyke, M., ‘In Pursuit of Love, the Poetic Self and a Process of Reading Augustan Elegy in the 1980’s’, JRS (1989), 165–73Google Scholar.

14. Beard, M., ‘A Complex of Times: No More Sheep on Romulus’ Birthday’, PCPS 33 (1987), 1–15Google Scholar.

15. Beard (n.14 above), 1.

16. Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Time for Augustus: Ovid, Augustus and the Fasti’, in Whitby, M., Hardie, P. & Whitby, M. (eds.), Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble (Bristol 1987), 221–30Google Scholar.

17. F. 3.523–710; F. 4.943–54.

18. In Res Gestae 20 Augustus boasts that he built or restored eighty-two temples in Rome; other eminent men too were involved in the rebuilding and adornment of Rome. They thus helped reinforce and support the imperial programme of religious reform that was so intimately connected with the concept of Roman powerfulness, for the temples of Rome were often founded in honour of military occasions and thus stood as proud icons of martial supremacy as well as religious practice.

19. Barthes, R., Mythologies (Paris 1957Google Scholar).

20. Philippus’ father (cos. 56) had married Atia, Augustus’ mother, a second marriage for them both. Philippus the younger (cos. suff. 38) was son of the first marriage of Philippus the elder. To complicate matters further, Philippus the younger seems to have married the younger sister of his stepmother, Atia the younger, who was Augustus’ aunt. On the complicated family relationships underlying Ovid’s passage see Bömer (n. 9 above) on F. 6.801.

21. Suetonius, Diu. Aug. 29.5.

22. Pliny, AW 35.66.

23. On the topographical location of the temple of Hercules Musarum see Nash, E., Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome (New York 1961-62), 471Google Scholar.

24. On the complicated family relationships underlying this passage cf. n.20 above.

25. Bettini, M., Antropologia e Cultura Romana: Parentela, Tempo, Immagini dell’Anima (Rome 1988), 77–112Google Scholar.

26. E.P. 1.2.136–42, where Ovid adds that Atia, Augustus’ aunt, approved too of his wife. Cf. also E.P. 3.1.75–78.

27. E.P. 1.2; 3.3; 3.8; 4.6.1–16.

28. On Ovid’s use of allusion to the endings of other poetry books and its significance for the question of the ending of the Fasti see Barchiesi, A., ‘Fins de Partie. Ovidio: Metamorfosi 15 e Fasti 6’, in Ovidio (Rome forthcoming 1994Google Scholar).

29. I use here the terminology of H. Smith, Barbara, who in her study of how poems end (The Poetics of Closure [Chicago 1968]Google Scholar) distinguishes between structural and non-structural means of closure. Among the latter she cites references to the theme of finality and closural allusions (172).

30. On the date of the founding of the temple of Hercules Musarum see Skutsch, O., The ‘Annals’ of Quintus Ennius (Oxford 1985), 144–46Google Scholar.

31. On Ennius’ relationship with Fulvius Nobilior see Gruen, E., Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden 1990), 106–23Google Scholar.

32. Skutsch (n.30 above), 553 and 649f.

33. Macrobius, Sat. 1.12.16.

34. Skutsch (n.30 above), 313f.

35. Gruen (n.31 above), 118.

36. Gruen (n.31 above), 91.

37. Fantham, ‘Composition’ (n.ll above), 272f.

38. Forward references in the extant text to events in the months of August and December remind us of the poem’s failure to complete its design (3.199f.; 5.145–58). See Feeney (n.6 above), 17–19.

39. See for instance Stahl, H.P., Propertius: ‘Love’ and ‘War’. Individual and State under Augustus (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1985), 265–305Google Scholar, who conjectures that Propertius chose silence rather than compromising himself with the public, Augustan voice he fleetingly assumes in Book 4.

40. Goldhill, S., The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge 1991), 274Google Scholar.

41. Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford 1978), 135–55Google Scholar.

42. Fantham, ‘Composition’ (n.ll above), 214f.

43. Vell. 2.103.3; Fasti Amite mini, in Degrassi, A. (ed.), Inscriptions Italiae, vol. 13 (Rome 1963), 187Google Scholar. See Syme (n.41 above), 33.

44. See Barchiesi (n.28 above).

45. On Livia as Juno see Ross Taylor, L., The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (Middletown 1931), 229–32Google Scholar. In the Fasti Juno is most notably identified with Livia at F. 1.650.

46. Livia promoted the cult of Concordia as a sign of the domestic harmony of the imperial family. See Flory, M., ‘Sic Exempla Parantur: Livia’s Shrine to Concordia and the Porticus Liviae’, Historia 33 (1984), 309–30Google Scholar. Ovid commemorates Livia’s shrine of Concordia at F. 1.649 and 6.637f.

47. Syme (n.41 above), 149–51, discusses the authenticity of the stories concerning Agrippa Postumus’ death and Marcia’s involvement.

48. Goldhill (n.40 above), 274.

49. Skutsch (n.30 above), 563–65; Gruen (n.31 above), 120f. Gruen cautions against the view of Ennius as attached firmly to individual patrons; Ennius’ prolific and varied output as well as the number of individuals he praises betoken his poetic autonomy.

50. See OLD on summits. Coeptis also has programmatic meaning. Thus in Met. 1.2 Ovid refers to his new work as coeptis, as does Vergil in Georgics 1.40.

51. Ovid, Fasti, tr. Frazer, J. (Cambridge MA 1931), 383Google Scholar.