Student 4: High Achieved
Evidence of Ovid’s use of poetic devices in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses
(1) Lines 220-221
Conflict of ictus and accent
signa dedί venisse deúm, vulgusque precari
coeperat
‘I gave signs that a god had come, and the common people had begun to pray.’
Because this is poetry, the beat of the line is on the second syllable of dedi and deum , whereas the word stress in
prose would be on the first syllable. This jerk in the rhythm represents the interruption in the normal lives of
ordinary people, having a god arrive among them.
(3) Lines 241-242
Allusion
. . . fera regnat Erinys.
in facinus iurasse putes!
‘Fierce Erinys reigns. You would think that the earth had sworn into crime!’
This is an allusion to one of the Furies, Erinys. Making references like this occurs frequently in poetry.
Line 457
Plural for singular
ista decent umeros gestamina nostros
‘Those things of yours that you are wearing suit my shoulders.’
Apollo is talking to Cupid and arrogantly telling him that he is not strong enough to hunt with bow and arrows. He is
using the royal ‘we’.
(4)Lines 492-493
Simile
utque leves stipulae demptis adolentur aristis
ut facibus saepes ardent,
‘and as light straw burns with the ears of corn removed’
Ovid has described how Apollo fell rapidly in love by comparing his situation with how straw bursts into flame when
ignited. It is very likely that all his readers would be able to identify with this experience.
(2) Line 637
Assonance
conatoque queri mugitus edidit ore
‘She gave out mooings with a mouth having tried to complain’
Io, now turned by Jupiter into a cow, discovers that she can no longer speak as she used to, but is mooing instead.
The ‘o’s in conato and ore and the ‘u’s in mugitus suggest the mooing sound.
Line 643
Chiasmus
patrem sequitur sequiturque sorores
‘She follows her father and follows her sisters.’
The order of noun, verb, verb, noun is called chiasmus. It makes the line more memorable by having this pattern.
Repetition for emphasis
Lines 651 and 653
“me miserum!”exclamat pater Inachus
“me miserum!”ingeminat
‘“Woe is me!” exclaims father, Inachus, “woe is me!” he repeats.’
The fact that Ovid has started two lines with Inachus saying “woe is me” emphasises how unhappy he is.
Circumlocution
Line 713
vidit Cyllenius omnes
‘The Cyllenian saw all.’
Cyllenius is a roundabout way of saying Mercury because he was associated with Mount Cyllene. This is another
form of allusion.
Line 716
Alliteration
languida permulcens medicata lumina virga
‘stroking the languid eyes with his drugged rod’
In this line the repetition of the ‘l’ sound suggests gentle stroking, as if licking with a tongue.
Was Ovid an atheist?
According to Ovid, Jupiter, the king of the gods, held a meeting with the other gods, to tell them he was most
displeased with how mortals were living down on earth. He told them how he had come down from Mt Olympus to
earth with the appearance of a mortal, to see how bad things were. In line 220 he notes that some ordinary people
were realising that he was a god and started to pay him respect by praying, but then goes on to describe how the
Arcadian tyrant, Lycaon, plotted to kill him in his sleep. In line 241 Jupiter is shown to be indignant and thoroughly
exasperated with the evil that mortals are getting up to, saying that fury reigns there. He tells the other gods that
he intends to destroy humankind, but then to create a better race to populate the earth.
Later in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses, (5) Ovid has something to say about Apollo. He too is arrogant, as can
be seen in line 457, where using the royal ‘we’, he derides Cupid for carrying a bow and arrows that he is not up to
using for hunting, whereas he, Apollo, is. Although Apollo scoffed at Cupid’s strength with the bow, he soon found
himself wounded by one of Cupid’s arrows, which caused him to fall deeply in love with Daphne. In line 492 Ovid
uses a fire simile to emphasise how quickly this happened. So although Apollo felt superior to Cupid, he was not
able to overpower the effect of Cupid’s arrow.
Ovid returns to telling stories about Jupiter. Like Apollo he also fell in love and he succeeded in catching Io and
making love to her. Jupiter’s wife Juno almost caught him out, but Jupiter hid the girl in time by turning her into a
beautiful cow. So Ovid showed that Jupiter, like humans, could be deceitful, be unfaithful to his wife, but could with
the power of a god get out of a temporary fix by an extraordinary act. Io did not want Jupiter as a lover. She also
did not like being turned into a cow, as is shown in the assonance of line 637, where she moans by making the
sound a cow makes – mooing. Tantalisingly she meets her father and sister who have been looking for her, and
they do not realise that it is Io, because of her new form, which means she can’t speak to them. Ovid uses a
chiasmus in line 643 to show that the members of the family walk around each other, searching and wondering.
The only way Io can try to tell them who she really is, after following them around and not succeeding, is by
drawing a letter on the ground littera pro verbis (line 649) with her hoof. It was lucky her name began with an ‘I’,
which a hoof could draw if the front leg were drawn back! Repetition is used in lines 651 and 653 to emphasise her
father’s emotion.
Jupiter has to ask Mercury for help when wanting to free Io from the watch of Juno’s watchman Argus, who
has 100 eyes. Ovid does not name Mercury, but in poetic tradition uses a literary epithet to tell the reader who he
is. Mercury is shown to be rather cunning, for he is able to lure Argus into falling asleep. He does this by singing and
playing and telling the story of the invention of the pipes of Pan. Finally he is able to smooth a sleep-inducing drug
over Argus’ eyes to confirm his sleep, and Ovid expresses this gentle wiping vividly in line 716 with the alliteration
of ‘l’.
(6)So in the prescribed lines, Ovid describes gods who have special powers, but who have character
weaknesses like humans and can behave just as badly as them. He was probably drawing together several
mythological stories which he had become aware of as he grew up and expanding on them from his own
imagination. It is unlikely that he believed in the actual existence of the gods. Ovid was very likely an atheist.