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Ovid's use of Lucretius in Metamorphoses 1.67–8

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephen M. Wheeler
Stephen M. Wheeler
Affiliation:
Penn State University
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Extract

Here Ovid treats the demiurge's disposition of weightless aether over the other elements. This section of the cosmogony follows one that is devoted to the sphere of aer (52–66) where the creator settles the turbulent winds and other threatening meteorological phenomena. Recently Denis Feeney has suggested that Ovid's demiurge ‘does not act in a very epic manner’ by placing weightless aether on top of the winds. He argues: ‘The oddness of the control is caught in a moment of comparison with Vergil's universe: Vergil's Jupiter controls the winds by putting on top of them a mass of mountains(Aen. 1.61), while Ovid's mundi fabricator places above them the aether, explicitly “liquid and lacking weight, containing nothing of earthly sediment” (liquidum et gravitate carentem / aethera nee quicquam terrenae faecis habentem, 1.67–8)’. Feeney's observation has much to recommend it. To begin with, Ovid's excursus on the cardinal winds (57–66) evokes Vergil's set piece on the cave of Aeolus in Aeneid l. And the demiurge's subsequent placement of aether (‘haec super inposuit liquidum et gravitate carentem / aethera’) seems to echo the action of the Vergilian Jupiter(‘hoc metuens molemque et montis insuper altos / imposuit,’ Aen. 1.61–2). However, Feeney's conclusion that the demiurge's action is ‘redolent of anti-epic allegiances’ needs some adjustment.4 For his reading neglects an important verbal and structural allusion to the cosmogony of Lucretius (D.R.N. 5.495–501). Accordingly, the conclusion to be drawn from lines 67–8 may be, not that Ovid momentarily reveals his Callimachean colours in an epic context, but that he plays Lucretius off against Vergil and so establishes his own position in the epic tradition of cosmological poetry.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , May 1995 , pp. 200 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1995

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References

1 The text followed is the Loeb edition, Miller, F. J. (ed., trans.), Ovid: ‘Metamorphoses’, rev. by Goold, G. P., 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA and London, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 Feeney, D. C., The Gods in Epic (Oxford, 1991), p. 190Google Scholar.

3 Hardie, P. R., Virgil's ‘Aeneid’: Cosmos andImperium (Oxford, 1986), p. 93 n. 23Google Scholar, observes in particular that Ov. Met. 1.57–60 is a variation upon Verg. Aen. 1.58–9; cf. also Schmitzer, U., Zeitgeschichte in Ovids Metamorphosen (Stuttgart, 1990), p. 38Google Scholar. It may not be accidental that Ovid treats the topic of the winds as potential destroyers of the universe in precisely the same book and lines as the Aeneid; for another ‘book and verse’ citation of the Aeneid by Ovid (Met. 10.475 ~ Verg. Aen. 10.475), see Smith, R. A., Gymnasium 98 (1990), pp. 458–60Google Scholar.

4 Feeney, above (n. 2), 189–90, admits that the cosmogony is ‘more epic than neoteric’ (the basic arguments for the epic affiliations of Ovid's cosmogony are presented by S. Hinds in his review of Knox, P. E., Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses’ and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry, CP 84 [1989], pp. 269–70)Google Scholar, but adduces the demiurge's action as an example of the subversion of epic norms. Yet his distinction between an ‘epic’ universe under divine control and a ‘neoteric’ universe, undesigned and random, does not consider the influence of the Lucretian universe, which is undesigned and random, but scarcely ‘neoteric’. Indeed, the distinction between ‘epic’ and ‘neoteric’ cosmogonies may be a false one: see Farrell, J., Vergil's ‘Georgics’ and the Traditions of Epic (Oxford, 1991), pp. 276–8 and 291–314Google Scholar, who shows that natural philosophical epic may not be incompatible with a Callimachean program rejecting heroic epic. For the usual association of natural philosophy with the epic genre, cf. Innes, D. C., ‘Gigantomachy and Natural Philosophy’, CQ N. S. 29 (1979), 165–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardie (above n. 3) passim.

5 At issue here is the degree to which Lucretius is an important model for Ovid. Knox, P. E., Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses’ and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry (Cambridge, 1986), 11Google Scholar, dismisses Lucretian echoes as conventional (‘how else could a poet of this time approach the topic?’); Helzle, M., ‘Ovid's Cosmogony: Metamorphoses 1.5–88 and the Traditions of Ancient Poetry’, PLLS 7 (1993), 129Google Scholar, argues that Ovid merely uses Lucretian terminology ‘to give his narrative the appearance of scientific expertise’. But there is no reason to treat Lucretius as a special case among Ovid's sources. For a sensible reappraisal of Lucretius' influence upon Augustan poetry and specifically the Vergilian deduction carmen of Silenus, (Eel. 6.31–40)Google Scholar, an important model for Ovid's cosmogony, see Farrell (above n. 4), 171–2, 300–307; cf. also Hinds (above n. 4), 269–70.

6 Cf. Nicoll, W. S. M., CQ N.S. 30 (1980), 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Lucretian character of the cosmogony in the Ars, see Hollis, A. S., ‘Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris’ in Binns, J. W. (ed.), Ovid (London, 1973), pp. 108–10Google Scholar.

7 The parallelism is noted by Zingerle, A., Ovidius und sein Verhaltnis zu den Vorgdngern und gleichzeitigen romischen Dichtern I–III (Innsbruck, 1869–1870), vol. 2, p. 46Google Scholar; cf. Munro ad Lucr. 5.500.

8 Ovid's imitation is noted by Wakefield, Merrill, and Bailey ad Lucr. 5.497.

9 In line 53, it is worth observing that Goold, like the majority of editors, accepts the correction of Constantius Fanensis, ‘pondus aquae levius’, instead of the corrupt paradosis ‘pondere aquae levior’, whereas Anderson's Teubner edition adheres to the manuscripts and omits the superior Renaissance reading from its apparatus. As CQ's anonymous referee pointed out to me, this textual matter was settled by Housman in his preface to Lucan, (M. Annaei Lucani Belli Civilis Libri Decent [Oxford, 1970], pp. xxvii–xxix)Google Scholar; cf. also Tarrant's, R. J. review article of Teubner, Anderson's, ‘Editing Ovid's Metamorphoses: Problems and Possibilities’, CP 77 (1982), 353Google Scholar.

10 On ‘double allusion’ in Ovid, see McKeown, J. C., Ovid: ‘Amores’, Volume I, Text and Prolegomena (Liverpool, 1987), pp. 37–45Google Scholar, and Hinds, S., The Metamorphosis of Persephone (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 56Google Scholar and 151 n. 16; cf. Thomas, R. F., ‘Virgil's Georgics and the Art of Reference’, HSCP 90 (1986), 188Google Scholar, on ‘window reference’.

11 For more detailed analyses of Vergil's complex conflation of literary models in this scene, see Hardie (above n. 3), 90–93, 180–83, and 237–40.

12 On the polemics of Vergil's imitation of Lucretius here and in general, see Hardie (above n. 3), 180–3 and 233–7.

13 Cf. D.R.N. 5.502–4 nee liquidum corpus turbantibus aeris auris / commiscet: sinit haec violentis omnia verti turbinibus, sinit incertis turbare procellis.

14 Cf. Kenney, E. J., ‘Ovid’, in Kenney, E. J. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Volume II, Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1982), p. 440CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who observes that Ovid's treatment of religion is much nearer in spirit to Lucretius than to Vergil.

15 Ovid also deviates from Vergil by treating the winds as inhabitants of the sky rather than of the Aeolian cave, and so appears to follow and expand upon the Homeric catalogue of cardinal winds at Od. 5.295–6 (cf. Verg. Aen. 1.85–6, 102); later, however, in the flood episode (1.262), he adopts the Vergilian motif of the cave of the winds.

16 Cf. Hardie, P., The Epic Successors of Virgil (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 60–1Google Scholar.

17 The opposing philosophical perspectives of Vergil and Lucretius are, of course, illustrated by the Metamorphoses' cosmological frame: the teleological creation episode in Book 1 and the anti-teleological speech of Pythagoras in Book 15.

My thanks to Archibald Allen, Allan Kershaw, and CQ's anonymous referee for helpful comments and advice in preparing this note.