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Praeceptor Amoris: Ovid's Ars Amatoria and the Augustan D3EA of Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

P. J. Davis
P. J. Davis*
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
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Extract

In Tristia 2 Ovid claims that he has always been devoted to the emperor. It is mere that he defends both himself and the Ars Amatoria:

      per mare, per terrain, per tertia numina iuro,
      per te praesentem conspicuumque deum,
      hunc animum fauisse tibi, uir maxime, meque,
      qua sola potui, mente fuisse tuum.
      optaui, peteres caelestia sidera tarde,
      parsque fui turbae parua precantis idem,
      et pia tura dedi pro te, cumque omnibus unus
      ipse quoque adiuui publica uota meis.
      quid referam libros, illos quoque, crimina nostra,
      mille locis plenos nominis esse tui?
      (Tristia 2.53-60)

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 181 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1995

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References

1. This paper was first presented to the ninth Pacific Rim Imperial Latin Literature Seminar at the American Academy in Rome on 2 June 1995. I would like to thank the all participants for their helpful comments and suggestions, especially Alessandro Barchiesi and Tony Boyle.

2. Quotations from Tristia come from Luck’s edition (Heidelberg 1967)Google Scholar. Quotations from the Ars come from Kenney, E.J. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris (Oxford 1994)Google Scholar. All translations are my own.

3. For the complexities of reading Tristia 2 see, for example, Barchiesi, A., ‘Insegnare ad Augusta: Orazio, Epistole II, 1 e Ovidio, Tristia II’, MD 31 (1993), 149–84Google Scholar; Nugent, S.G., ‘Tristia 2: Ovid and Augustus’, in K.A. Raaflaub & M. Toher (eds.), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and his Principate (Berkeley 1990), 239–57Google Scholar; Williams, Gareth, Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s Exile Poetry (Cambridge 1994)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

4. Williams, G., Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire (Berkeley 1978), 80Google Scholar.1 must confess that the logic of this sentence escapes me: that these works were conceived in Rome is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

5. Conte, G.B., Latin Literature: A History, tr. J.B. Solodow (Baltimore 1994), 345Google Scholar.

6. Rudd, N., Lines of Enquiry: Studies in Latin Poetry (Cambridge 1976), 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Sharrock, A., Seduction and Repetition in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria II (Oxford 1994), 138Google Scholar.

8. Though well aware of the importance of the distinction to be made between Ovid and the praeceptor (a distinction that Ovid himself emphasises in Tristia 2), I use the word ‘Ovid’ for the most part in this paper rather than ‘the praeceptor’ for the sake of stylistic convenience.

9. See also 3.27f, 57f.

10. Anderson, W.S., Ovid’s Metamorphoses Books 6–10 (Norman 1972), 502Google Scholar.

11. Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen Buch X-XI (Heidelberg 1980), 117Google Scholar.

12. Cf. Catullus 7.8, 67.41, 68B.136, 140, 145; Tibullus 1.5.7, 1.5.75, 1.9.55, Propertius 1.16.20, Virgil Aeneid 4.171, Ovid Amores 1.4.18, 1.11.3, 2.2.15, 2.5.6, 2.8.8.

13. Kenney brackets these lines as doubtful in both his first and second editions.

14. See also AA 1.347f, where we are told that women like ‘fresh pleasure’ and people are captivated by what is not their own (et capiant animos plus aliena suis).

15. As at 1.267, 2.739, 3.6.

16. Note too the use of the word uxor at 2.362.

17. The word ‘Caesar’ and its cognates occur 162 times in all of Ovid. It is most noticeable that these words are relatively rare in the pre-exilic works (4 times in Amores, 4 in the AA, 6 in the Metamorphoses), while there are 27 in Fasti, 56 in Tristia and 65 in Ex Ponto. Of course not all uses of ‘Caesar’ refer to Augustus. Sometimes the poet has Julius in mind or some other member of the imperial family (eg Gaius in AA, Germanicus in Fasti).

18. 1.171, 177, 184, 203.

19. Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939), 470fGoogle Scholar.

20. Lateiner, D., ‘Mythic and Non-Mythic Artists in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Ramus 13 (1984), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 4.

21. See Plutarch, Caesar 66.12.

22. See also 3.450f.

23. Hollis, A.S., Ovid Ars Amatoria Book I (Oxford 1977), 72Google Scholar.

24. Galinsky, K., ‘The Triumph Theme in the Augustan Elegy’, WS 3 (1969), 101Google Scholar.

25. And is still so interpreted. For a recent example see Millar, F., ‘Ovid and the Domus Augusta: Rome seen from Tomoi’, JRS 83 (1993), 1–17Google Scholar, esp. 7.

26. Williams (n.4 above), 79.

27. Booth, W.C., A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago 1974), 10Google Scholar.

28. Booth (n.27 above), 11.

29. Booth (n.27 above), 11.

30. Booth (n.27 above), 12.

31. Williams (n.4 above), 80.

32. See, for example, Richlin, A., ‘Reading Ovid’s Rapes’, in A. Richlin (ed.). Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York 1992), 158–79Google Scholar, esp. 166–68. For a political reading see Myerowitz, M., Ovid’s Games of Love (Detroit 1985), 61–68Google Scholar.

33. For details see Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1988), 201–10Google Scholar.

34. For details see, for example, Coarelli, F., Guida Archeologica di Roma (Rome 1980), 109Google Scholar (Forum of Augustus); Kleiner, D., Roman Sculpture (New Haven 1992), 90–98Google Scholar (Ara Pacis), 99–102 (Forum of Augustus); Zanker (n.33 above), 201ff. (Ara Pacis and Forum of Augustus).

35. Dio records that Augustus was eager for the name of Romulus (53.16.7). See also Suetonius, Diuus Augustus 7.

36. Suetonius, Diuus Augustus 95.

37. Georgics 3.27 and Aeneid 6.777ff. For the Georgics passage see Mynors, R.A.B., Virgil Georgics (Oxford 1990), 184Google Scholar, and for the Aeneid passage see Austin, R.G.P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Sextus (Oxford 1977), 242Google Scholar. As Austin points out, the chronological sequence of Roman heroes is broken so that Romulus can be juxtaposed with Augustus.

38. See, for example, Kleiner, D., Roman Sculpture (New Haven 1992), 89Google Scholar.

39. Richlin (n.32 above), 167.

40. As Hollis (n.23 above), 55, points out. He compares Iliad 22.139f., Theocritus 11.24.

41. Livy 1.9.16: cupiditate.

42. Cf. Aen. 6.129.

43. I would like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council for my research.