Student 3: Low Merit
Evidence of Ovid’s use of poetic devices in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses
(5)Line 193
Technical vocabulary
faunique satyrique et monticolae silvani
‘Fauns and satyrs, and hill-dwelling forest creatures’
The compound adjective monticolae is not a commonly used word, but technically describes the habitat of these
creatures.
(1) Line 199
Elisions and Assonance
confremuere omnes studiisque ardentibus ausum
talia deposcunt:
‘They all murmur in agreement and with enthusiastic zeal demand punishment for the man who has dared such things.’
Ovid has used the sound of ‘o’, ‘m’ and ‘n’ in the first two words to imitate the sound of people generally
murmuring in agreement. The elisions between confremuere and omnes, and between studiisque and ardentibus
also help to convey the ongoing murmuring.
Line 233
Onomatopoeia
exululat frustraque loqui conatur;
‘He howls, and tries in vain to speak.’
Ovid has used the onomatopoeic verb ululare to suggest the actual sound Lycaon made as he howled after being
turned into a wolf by Jupiter.
(2) Lines 244 - 245
Variation to suit metre
dicta Iovis pars voce probant stimulosque frementi
adiciunt, alii partes adsensibus inplent.
‘Some voice approval of Jupiter’s words and spur his raging on, others perform their parts with applause.’
Whereas in prose, correlative words alii . . . alii . . . for ‘some . . . others . . .’ would be expected, Ovid here has
departed from the usual practice by using pars for the first group. Because alii has three syllables, it would not have
fitted in line 244.
(3) Line 262 - 264
Personification
protinus Aeoliis Aquilonem claudit in antris
et quaecumque fugant inductas flamina nubes
emittitque Notum.
‘Immediately he (Jupiter) shuts the North Wind into the Aeolian caves and whatever breezes put to flight the
overcast clouds, and he sends forth the South Wind.’
Ovid has personified the winds from two directions, writing as if they have minds of their own to blow and as if
they are entities which can be either locked away safely (the North Wind), or sent out to do a job (the South Wind).
(4) Line 502
Simile
. . . fugit ocior aura
illa levi . . .
‘She (Daphne) fled, swifter than a light breeze,’
In a simple simile Ovid compares Daphne’s running away with a light breeze. While this conveys an image of her
fragility and inability to put up any resistance against Apollo if he were to catch her, yet it makes it clear that she is
as difficult to catch as a slight movement of air would be.
Line 534
Alliteration within a simile
. . . et hic praedam pedibus petit, ille salutem.
‘And one (a greyhound) seeks booty with its feet, the other (a hare), safety.’
Within a simile comparing Daphne’s flight from Apollo with the flight of a hare before a dog, Ovid uses the
alliteration of the consonant ‘p’ to suggest the pounding of the dog’s feet as it chases down the hare.
Lines 612, 616 and 722
Alternative name to suit scansion
. . . speciem Saturnia vaccae
quamquam invita, probat . . .
‘Juno (the Saturnian one), although unwilling to do so, likes the look of the cow’
. . . petit hanc Saturnia munus.
‘Juno requests her as a gift.’
excipit hos, volucrisque suae Saturnia pennis
collacat
‘Juno takes up these (eyes), and arranges them on the feathers of her bird’
In each of these lines Saturnia has been used instead of the name Juno, because it contains a dactyl, and that is the
type of scansion required for the fifth foot of a dactylic hexameter line. Juno would not have fitted these lines.
(8)Lines 717 - 719
Alliteration
nec mora, falcato nutantem vulnerat ense,
qua collo est confine caput, saxoque cruentum
deicit . . .
‘He wounded him with hooked sword, where the head joins the neck, and hurled down the head.’
The repeated hard ‘c’ sounds in these lines imitate the blows of the hooked sword, hacking off Argus’ head.
Was Ovid an atheist?
The main gods Ovid describes in Book 1 are Jupiter and Apollo.
At the start of the prescribed lines, Jupiter is shown talking to his fellow gods, explaining that he is as upset
about the world now, as he was at the time when the giants were attacking heaven. For mortals are living such evil
lives, that he is intending to destroy the human race. He says he had to deal to Lycaon, the terrible tyrant from
Arcadia, or the hill–dwelling forest creatures which he describes in the first extract above, would not be safe. In
line 199, Ovid uses elision and assonance to convey the general agreement and support for his plan which he
receives from the other gods.
Ovid narrates how Jupiter tells the other gods that he took the form of a mortal to come down to earth to
punish Lycaon. Line 233 expresses the dreadful howling which came from Lycaon when Jupiter had turned him into
a wolf for his wickedness and Lycaon realised that he could no longer speak. (7)This emphasises the power that
Jupiter, as king of the gods, was able to exert. Jupiter concluded his conference with the gods by confirming that he
will force mankind to pay the penalty for their wrongdoing, to which the gods gave their enthusiastic assent, as in
the note on Lines 244-245 above.
Ovid presents Jupiter as being able to think things through, in that although he first thought of using his
thunderbolts to destroy Earth by fire, he feared such a conflagration would affect the heavens, the dwelling place
of the gods themselves. So he changed his plan to creating a flood that would affect the whole world. Jupiter
arranged for rain-bearing winds to prevail as described in lines 262 ff.
Later in Book 1, Ovid recounts how the god Apollo was struck by one of Cupid’s darts, which caused him to fall
in love with the maiden, Daphne. But Daphne, also struck by a dart from Cupid, but one which caused her to shrink
from feeling love, fled from the pursuing Apollo. In line 502 Ovid uses a simple simile to convey how lightly she
slipped away, and how elusive she was. A longer simile in lines 533 ff. pictures Apollo as if he were a greyhound,
and Daphne as if she were a hare the dog was chasing. Alliteration is used in line 534 to conjure up a vivid sound of
Apollo’s pounding feet. Apollo failed to catch Daphne, for she called on her father Peneus for help, and was
changed into a laurel tree.
Ovid returns to a tale about Jupiter, who although he is so powerful, is depicted as being somewhat afraid of
what his wife, the goddess Juno would say, if she were to know that he had fallen in love with Io. As a human
husband might do, he tells Juno a lie about what he has been up to, and then gets caught out by his own lie. Juno
then becomes the centre of the story, and Ovid places her name several times in the fifth foot of a line – hence the
need to use her poetic name – Saturnia (daughter of Saturn). As a human husband sometimes does too, Jupiter
asks for another male to help him out of difficulty – in this case he asks his own son, Mercury, to get rid of the
watchdog ‘Argus’, which Juno has imposed on Io. The violent end to Argus that Mercury achieves is made all the
more horrific by Ovid’s use of alliteration (line 717), to mimic the sound of repeated blows of a hooked axe, hacking
through a living person’s neck.
(6)On the face of it, Ovid is not an atheist, because in the Metamorphoses he explains many aspects of the
world which are as they are because of interference by the gods. He seems to think that gods exist, because they
have had an effect. The gods which Ovid wrote about had superhuman powers and human qualities. He chose to
use his literary skills to write down the myths about the gods in verse but it is not possible to say for certain what
Ovid believed.