Predecessors to Rome
Brief Chronology
• Roman Republic 509- 31
B.C.
• Century of Revolution
133-31 B.C.
• Gracchi 133-122
• Civil Wars
•
Marius and Sulla
•
105-81 B.C.
• Caesar and Pompey
•
55-45 B.C.
• Octavian and Antony
•
43-31
• Principate 27BC-193 AD
• Julio-Claudians 27
BC -68 AD
• Year of 4 Emperors 69
• Flavians 69-96
Ovid Born 43 BCE
in Sulmo Italy
Died 17/18 CE
in Tomis on the Black Sea
Manuscripts and Books
William Caxton 1480
Translations
Ted Hughes 1997
• Arthur Golding 1567
Survival in Art and Literature
Poets and Genres
• Epic
• Lyric
• Drama: Tragedy and Comedy
• Pastoral Elegy:
• Theocritus, Vergil
•
• Lyric
•
•
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam
fortasse requiris
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et
–
excrucior
• Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius of
Rhodes,
• Callimachus, Apollonius
• Aratus
• Ennius, Lucretius, Vergil
• Sappho and Alcaeus,
•
• Callimachus Theocritus
• Athenian, Plautus
• Terence
• Horace
• Catullus
• Tibullus
• Propertius
•
Sulpicia
Two Different Genres
Elegiac Lyric
• Short topical poem relating
Epic
experience or feeling
• Poet/persona is himself
the hero
• Long narrative poem
• Collection traces ups and
downs of affair
• Focus on single hero
• Actions related are serious • Playful, trivial, lower genre
and involve death and • Meter Elegiac Couplet,
gods
which is one dactylic
hexameter line, followed by
• Poet anonymous narrator,
one dactylic pentameter
– Not part of story
line, called hemiepes
• Meter dactylic hexameter
because it is actually the
first half of a hexameter
repeated
Ovid as Lover: 15-1 BC
Amores, The Art of Love, Remedies for Love, On Facial Treatments for Ladies
Heroides: 15-2 B.C.:Ovid as Epistle
Writer and Psychologist of Separation
Ovid as Epic Poet and Mythographer:
Metamorphoses 1-8AD
Fasti- A Roman Sacred Calendar in Verse,1-8 AD
January to June Completed
Ovid as Antiquarian
Ovid in Exile: Tristia and Black Sea Letters, 8-17 AD
• Vita verecundia est; jocosa musa mea. (Tristia, 2
Though two charges, carmen et error, a
poem and an error,
ruined me, I must be silent about the
second fault:
I’m not important enough to re-open
your wound, Caesar,
it’s more than sufficient you should be
troubled once.
The first, then: that I’m accused of being
a teacher
of obscene adultery, by means of a vile
poem. Book 2, 202-212
…But why is my Muse so wildly wanton,
why does my book tempt one to love?
Nothing for it but to confess my sin and
my
open fault: I’m sorry for my wit and taste.
Why didn’t I attack Troy again in my
poems,
that fell before the power of the
Greeks?...
• Warring Rome didn’t deny me
matter,
• it’s virtuous work to tell one’s
country’s tale.
• Lastly, since you’ve filled the world
with deeds,
• some part of it all was mine to sing,
• as the sun’s radiant light attracts the
eye
• so your exploits should have drawn
my spirit.
• while I’m undeservedly blamed.
Narrow the furrow I plough:
• while that was a great and fertile
theme.
• A little boat shouldn’t trust itself to
the waves
• because it dares to fool about in a
tiny pond.
• Perhaps – and I should even
question this – I’m fit
• for lighter verse, adequate for
humble music:
• I returned to my light labours,
the songs of youth,
• stirring my feelings with
imaginary desires.
• I wish I hadn’t. But destiny drew
me on,
• and my cleverness punished me.
• Ah, that I ever studied! Why did
my parents
• educate me, or letters entertain
my eyes?
• This lewdness made you hate
me, for the arts,
• you were sure, troubled sacred
marriage-beds.
• But no bride learned deception
from my teaching,
• no one can teach what he
scarcely knows.
• I made sweet pleasurable songs
in such a way
• that no scandal ever touched my
name.
• There’s no husband even in the
lower ranks,
• who doubts his paternity through
my offence.
• .Believe me, my character’s other
than my verse –
• my life is modest, my Muse is playful
• and most of my work, deceptive and
fictitious,
• is more permissive than its author.
• A book’s not evidence of a life, but a
true impulse
• bringing many things to delight the
ear.
• Or Accius would be cruel, Terence a
reveller,
• and those who sing of war
belligerent , Tristia, Book 2, 312-360