FER, FVSA, ΦΥΣΑΩ: DITHYRAMBIC AND ACROSTIC STRATEGIES IN OVID, TRISTIA 5.3

Abstract

In the hymn to Bacchus (Tristia 5.3), Ovid looks from Tomis back to Rome, where the chorus of poets gathers for the Liberalia. This article argues that Ovid fashions in Tristia 5.3 a poetic rebirth out of Tomis, deploying in this elegy themes and motifs from the god’s mysteries to bolster the pervasive message of persistence in the Tristia. This Bacchic mystic tone is accomplished through the hymn’s ritual elements and dithyrambic strategies, which reflect on both Ovid’s death-like position in exile and his poetic activity there. Furthermore, this article argues that Ovid encodes his mystic dithyrambic strategies in a hitherto unnoticed bilingual acrostic. Through ritual and dithyrambic strategies, Ovid merges three loci of time and space—past Rome, present Rome and present Tomis—and thus reintegrates himself into Rome, rearticulating his Roman citizenship as a literary one.

In Tristia 5.3, Ovid looks from lonely Tomis back to Rome and describes a happy festum poetarum for Liber/Bacchus connected to the Liberalia. ¹ It has recently been proposed that this yearly event, in which poets sing praises to Liber and constitute the god’s chorus, is the festival context for a group of Roman poems with shared Dionysiac features and a high number of cross references. ² In discussing this festival context, Alex Hardie introduces Tristia 5.3 to this intertextually linked group of poems, which have been read as Roman versions of dithyrambs or at least as displaying dithyrambic features. ³ I take my cue from Hardie’s concluding thoughts on Ovid’s poem: ‘The matter calls for a fuller treatment of Tristia 5.3, its relationship to the corpus of Augustan poetry for Liber/Bacchus, and the interconnections within that same body work.’ ⁴ In this article, I will suggest that Tristia 5.3 draws on dithyrambic characteristics and strategies in its hymn to Bacchus, but reworks the genre for the poet’s exilic context to negotiate a return to Rome and its lively literary community. ⁵

Despite the difficulty, even in antiquity, in determining exactly what a dithyramb is or ought to be, ⁶ the characteristics of the dithyramb—whether performed, imagined or debated—were recognizable enough to be perceived by Roman readers. ⁷ In the Greek imagination, the Dionysiac chorus, and dithyramb especially, represented liberation, salvation and civic cohesion; in Roman discourse, it has been shown, the same nexus of concepts, grounded in the genre’s mythological and social dimension, influenced the triumphus. ⁸ Some of the aforementioned ‘Roman dithyrambs’ contain Dionysiac material and triumphal celebration. ⁹ In discussing Tristia 5.3, however, I am less concerned with triumph—though the thematic association of arrival and liberation remains relevant ¹⁰ —than with the dithyramb’s association with ritual, especially with Dionysus’ mysteries and their relevance to the soteriological and reintegrative concerns of Tristia 5.3. I will, therefore, discuss ritual elements concerning time and space (sections 1 and 2) as well as specifically mystic themes of possession, rebirth and transformation (section 3) and concepts of initiation and exclusivity (sections 4 and 5) in Ovid’s renegotiation of Roman belonging for an exile. The Liberalia, to which Tristia 5.3 refers, was a distinctly Roman festival and not directly related to the mysteries, but it did involve the musical group worship of a god who as Liber/Bacchus hovered between Greek and Roman cultural modalities. In Metamorphoses Book 4, Ovid draws on Greek hymnic elements and several ritual epithets, including those associated with the mysteries, but crowns the hymnic passage with a direct address to the Roman Liber (4.11–17). ¹¹ Similarly, in Tristia 5.3 Ovid blends a Roman festival with Greek chorality. ¹²

A reading of Tristia 5.3 in conversation with chorality must, however, consider the exilic position of the author. The poem is not simply a ‘Roman dithyramb’: the poet’s isolation is highlighted, and chorality is more theme than immediate reality. Rather, I suggest that Ovid draws on the genre’s characteristics and connotations in order to navigate the tension between ‘past presence and present absence’ and the desire to reintegrate, which thematizes his exilic poetry. ¹³ The salvific and communal tones of the dithyramb thus become very poignant in Tristia 5.3. In imagining, and perhaps effectively translating, Ovid out of solitary exile into a new kind of Roman chorus, Tristia 5.3 offers a dithyrambic mystic solution to the final line of the first elegy in Book 5: uobiscum cupio quolibet esse modo (‘I want to be with you in any way I can’, Tr. 5.1.80). ¹⁴

1. ILLA DIES HAEC EST

Ovid’s Bacchic elegy contains strategies of temporal and spatial manipulation that have been connected to choral poetry, particularly to dithyramb. ¹⁵ The ability of ritual, specifically of choral performance in ritual, to manipulate space and time has been noted. ¹⁶ One aspect of this is the establishing of continuity between present, past and future; what is performed in the ever-present ‘now’ has been performed since a mythical prototype and will continue to be performed forever. This continuity is also imagined as combining temporally and spatially separated events (mythical past, ritual present and indeterminate future) into event isotopes. ¹⁷ Albert Henrichs links moments when dramatic choruses refer explicitly to their own activity (‘self-referentiality’) to moments when they locate their own dancing outside of their immediate performance context and into imagined past or future performances or when they project their identity onto other choral groups ‘in the allusive realm of the dramatic imagination’ (‘choral projection’). ¹⁸ Thus, when choruses sing about their own or other groups’ choral activity at another time/place, they create (or enter) a ritual dimension of time that is repetitive and eternally so. Following Henrichs’s observations that such self-referentiality and choral projection metatheatrically connect dramatic choruses to the ritual context of their performance, ¹⁹ Eric Csapo identifies dithyrambic and mystic qualities in these choral odes: vivid descriptions of Dionysiac chorality, circular dancing and primordial groups such as Bacchants, dolphins and Nereids. ²⁰ Recently, Naomi Weiss has further analysed the ways in which such a ‘breach in the action’ created by choral projection to a far-away time/place integrates with tragic muthos itself. The associative process or synthesis, which exists between what is performed in the play and what is imagined in the words of the choral ode and which is triggered by this separate choral dimension, she calls ‘imaginative suggestion’. Such a framework considers the thematic and dramatic narrative function of allusion to a particular genre, such as the dithyramb. ²¹

This ritual ‘combination of separateness and embeddedness’ ²² connects with soteriology in mystic contexts. The chorus is central to Dionysus’ mysteries, especially to their transformative force as transition rituals shifting participants from an uninitiated identity to an exclusive initiated identity. Initiands, joining the frenzied music-making of Bacchic ritual, are dislodged from their uninitiated identity and, in a state of religious ecstasy, are connected in sympathetic divine enthusiasm with the rest of the thiasos. Bacchic music both represents and effects divine possession, or enthusiasmos (literally, ‘god within’). In Bacchic mysteries, this close identification with the god carries salvific and even eschatological ramifications. The transitional and transformative force of the mysteries coalesces with the broader time- and space-manipulating aspect of ritual. In ritual what can be claimed for the past can be claimed for the present and vice versa; by the same logic, whatever is claimed to be true in ritual, such as the initiate’s status with relation to the god, can be extended to the future. Thus, ritual strategies of spatial and temporal manipulation contribute to mystic transformation of initiates. Furthermore, the mysteries link the ritual present to a specific future—namely, the afterlife. The ritual present, then, can make claims for the fate of the soul after death. These ritual concepts of divine identification/inspiration and movements within space and time will be relevant for the poetic activity and afterlife of a Bacchic adept already in the Underworld.

The opening phrase of Trista 5.3 encapsulates the temporal and spatial manipulation, which is characteristic of ritual chorus: this time is that time, this place is that place (5.3.1–4):

illa dies haec est, qua te celebrare poetae,

si modo non fallunt tempora, Bacche, solent,

festaque odoratis innectunt tempora sertis,

et dicunt laudes ad tua uina tuas.

This day is that day when poets usually celebrate you, Bacchus—as long as time does not deceive. They bind their merry temples with fragrant garlands and speak your praises to your vine.

As we will see, there are at work three dimensions of temporal and spatial manipulation, each infused with motifs from Dionysus’ mysteries. The present and the past of Ovid’s worship of Bacchus are combined, the places of Tomis qua Underworld and of Rome as locations of Bacchic worship are merged, and ultimately the present and the future of Ovid’s reception in Rome are conflated. The second line of the poem begins si modo non fallunt tempora (‘as long as time does not deceive’, 5.3.2), but we will realize by the final line that the poet himself, author of tempora cum causis (Fast. 1.1), is behind the deceptive movement of time and space in the poem. ²³

2. PAST AND PRESENT

After signalling these strategies, Ovid describes his present distance from Rome and recalls his past participation in poetic symposia at the Liberalia and in the chorus of the Muses. This combines his past experience with the vividness of his present relegation, his memory of Rome with his existence in Tomis (Tr. 5.3.5–12):

inter quos, memini, dum me mea fata sinebant,

non inuisa tibi pars ego saepe fui,

quem nunc suppositum stellis Cynosuridos Vrsae

iuncta tenet crudis Sarmatis ora Getis.

quique prius mollem uacuamque laboribus egi

in studiis uitam Pieridumque choro,

nunc procul a patria Geticis circumsonor armis,

multa prius pelago multaque passus humo.

I remember that I was often among them, when my fate allowed me, as a participant not hated by you; now the Sarmatian shore, joined to the savage Getae, holds me placed under the stars of the Little Bear. I, who once led a pleasant life free from labour in my studies in the chorus of the Muses, am now encircled by the sounds of Getic weapons, far from my fatherland and having already suffered much at land and at sea.

In recalling the festival and his former involvement in poetry-making related to the festival, Ovid also remembers his own earlier depiction of the Liberalia in Fast. 3.715–24. ²⁴ The verb memini (Tr. 5.3.5) serves as a kind of trigger or sign for intratextual memory: Ovid recalls on the current occasion of the Liberalia an earlier Liberalia, thus bringing these temporally and spatially separated events together, and not only the religious occasions themselves but also his poetic activities on those occasions. Both Tristia 5.3 and Fasti Book 3 address Bacchus. Furthermore, in remembering the past chorus of Roman poets together with his earlier poetic activity, Ovid assimilates poetry written for Bacchus to choral worship of the god. It is not insignificant, then, that the Fasti passage recalled constitutes a pseudo-hymnic aretalogy, or aretalogy/recusatio: nec referam (‘I will not retell’, Fast. 3.715) and sed non est carminis huius opus (‘but it is not the purpose of this song’, Fast. 3.724). The passage fittingly also contains the myth of Bacchus and the pirates (3.723–4), famously told in the Homeric Hymn to Bacchus and retold in Ovid’s own Metamorphoses (3.572–700). ²⁵ The myth of the Tyrrhenian pirates has often been considered an aition of the dithyramb. The Fasti passage also mentions Semele struck by lightning and Dionysus’ double-birth (3.715–18), Pentheus (3.721) and Lycurgus (3.722). I will return to the significance of these myths to Tristia 5.3 and dithyrambs.

The recollection in Tristia 5.3 of Ovid’s earlier choral (and literary) activity alternates with lines describing his current situation, oscillating between past and present. Note the pattern nunc–prius–nunc–prius (7, 9, 11, 12). Particularly striking is the juxtaposition of his current position, encircled (11) with sounds of violence and the harshness of the environment in Tomis, with his former place among Bacchic worshippers (inter quos, 5) and Muse choruses (10). The juxtaposition makes acute Ovid’s present isolation and draws attention to the distance between choral participation and exilic cacophony. On the other hand, strategies of choral projection and imaginative suggestion allow Roman chorality to be read into the poet’s present circumstances. Moreover, such choral ritual strategies bring with them allusive memories, implicating past literary activity with present literary efforts. This closely knit oscillation, simultaneously depicting and eliding distance, ²⁶ contributes to the temporal and spatial flux of the poem by employing ritual logic: my current activity is the same as that other activity in another time and place, ²⁷ and so this activity is not bound by the linearity of time or the three dimensions of space. Different times and places merge, allowing the poet to operate on a poetic fourth dimension. Ovid’s singular, isolated and lonely voice, through the hymn’s choral strategies, can begin to negotiate a place in the Roman festival. By the end of the poem, Ovid addresses the poets in Rome, bringing his past attendance and present absence (or displacement in Tomis) into the present ritual occasion in Rome.

3. TWO DITHYRAMBIC MYSTIC STRATEGIES AND AN ACROSTIC

Having established his past participation in Bacchus’ chorus, Ovid invokes him in present Tomis. He compares himself to the god, giving the same number of lines to Bacchus and to himself, marking the lines with ipse quoque (19) and me quoque (27). These parallel openings invite and secure the comparison (Tr. 5.3.19–34): ²⁸

ipse quoque aetherias meritis inuectus es arces,

quo non exiguo facta labore uia est.

nec patria est habitata tibi, sed adusque niuosum

Strymona uenisti Marticolamque Geten,

Persidaque et lato spatiantem flumine Gangen,

et quascumque bibit decolor Indus aquas.

scilicet hanc legem nentes fatalia Parcae

stamina bis genito bis cecinere tibi.

me quoque, si fas est exemplis ire deorum,

ferrea sors uitae difficilisque premit.

illo nec leuius cecidi, quem magna locutum

reppulit a Thebis Iuppiter igne suo.

ut tamen audisti percussum fulmine uatem,

admonitu matris condoluisse potes,

et potes aspiciens circum tua sacra poetas

‘nescioquis nostri’ dicere ‘cultor abest’.

And as for you, you were yourself deservedly taken to the celestial citadels, whither the path is made with much labour. Nor did you dwell in your fatherland, but you went all the way to snowy Strymon and warlike Getae, and to Persia and the wide-flowing Ganges, and those waters which the dark-skinned Indian drinks. Indeed, the Parcae, spinning the fatal thread, sung this sentence twice for you at your double birth. And as for me, if it is allowed to use the gods as examples, an iron and cruel thread of fate strangles me. I fell no more lightly than he whom Jupiter threw down from Thebes with his lightning for having boasted greatly. Nevertheless, when you heard that a poet had been struck by lightning, you could have had sympathy because of memory of your mother. You could say, examining the poets circling your rites, ‘someone of my worshippers is missing’.

Bacchus’ eastern wanderings are matched by Ovid’s eastern exile: lex (‘sentence’, 25) of wandering, sung by the Parcae, is likened to the sors (‘fate’, 28) of exile oppressing Ovid. The poet deftly swaps lex and sors—the Parcae usually weave fates and exile is typically a legal sentence—suggesting that Bacchus’ travels were a legal matter and prompting further comparison between himself and the god. ²⁹ As discussed earlier, a similar identification with the god is central to Dionysus’ mysteries. Such sympathetic participation in Dionysus’ vicissitudes shades into Bacchic possession, as we will see in the next several lines. In myth and his broader cult, Dionysus is always arriving and paradoxically always already among his worshippers (though often unseen). ³⁰ Thus, the enthusiastic music of his rituals is both sign and trigger of his presence. The proximity, even to the point of elision, of Bacchus and his worshipper is reflected in the linguistic dimension: both god and initiate are called Bakchos. Ovid’s assimilation of himself to the god in and through his Bacchic hymn has two implications drawn from the god’s mysteries: inspiration/possession and transformation/rebirth.

These two implications are modulated through dithyrambic characteristics. Dithyrambs, known as the ‘circular chorus’ (kuklios choros), were an expression of civic cohesion. Beyond its circular and communal nature, the dithyramb was also, among choral genres, most closely attached to the Bacchic mysteries. ³¹ The enthusiasmos from a Dionysiac mystic sphere easily transfers to the poetic concept of divine inspiration, already a mainstay of poetic self-presentation from Hesiod’s investiture by the Muses (Theog. 31–2). If Dionysus metonymically is wine, then drunkenness, too, is possession, and the god is literally present in ‘drunken’ poetry. The earliest mention of the dithyramb, a fragment of Archilochus, expresses the poet’s wine-inspired state: ὡς Διωνύσοι᾿ ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος οἶδα διθύραμβον οἴνῳ συγκϵραυνωθϵὶς φρένας (‘I know how to lead the dithyramb, the lovely song of lord Dionysus, when I am struck by lightning in the wits with wine’, fr. 120 West). ³² This fragment contains key features of the dithyramb: Dionysus, wine, privileged knowledge, self-referentiality and a lightning link to Semele and the myth/ritual moment of Dionysus’ very first epiphany. ³³ Dithyrambic knowledge and efficacy are identified here with an experience akin to both drunkenness qua possession and Dionysus’ lightning-facilitated arrival. ³⁴ This combination reproduces the experience of Bacchic initiation. ³⁵ Thus, the production of dithyramb is assimilated to Bacchic mysteries, both involving experiential identification with Dionysus. ³⁶

The ritual experience of Dionysus’ epiphany replays on one level the god’s first appearance at his (second) birth which was facilitated by lightning. ³⁷ Early dithyrambs may have been perceived as performing or inducing Dionysus’ epiphanic modality by recollecting through their ecstatic ritualized music the myths of his arrivals, such as his double birth and other miraculous appearances among mortals. One such myth is his appearance among the Tyrrhenian pirates, mentioned in the Liberalia passage of Book 3 of the Fasti, a passage that shares many features with the myth of Arion, inventor of the dithyramb. ³⁸ Other prominent myths are those of Pentheus and Lycurgus, which will soon appear in Tristia 5.3. The association of the dithyramb’s name with Dionysus’ thunderous second birth, making the dithyramb a song for Dionysus–Dithyrambus (‘Dionysus-through-two-doors’), ³⁹ frames lightning as the facilitator of both the genre and the god’s first epiphany. So much is reflected in Archilochus’ fragment. Ovid seems to gesture towards this same aspect of the genre’s association with Dionysiac ritual and myth in bis genito bis cecinere tibi (26). ⁴⁰ The double bis may constitute etymological play on the putative derivation of dithyrambos from δίς (‘twice’), ⁴¹ making the Parcae singers of dithyramb and giving the genre eschatological significance. The poet, himself percussum fulmine (31), is thereafter likened to the twice-born god, an identification strengthened by admonitu matris (32) in the next line.

The ritual experience of Dionysiac epiphany on another level introduces possession and inspiration. The dithyramb’s association with Dionysiac epiphany has led even to its identification with the god himself as Dionysus–Dithyrambus: the dithyramb, beyond ordinary hymn, contains the god himself as performer and energizer of the song. In the Archilochus fragment and, as we will see, in the more explicitly hymnic section of Tristia 5.3 such inspiration activates poetic ability. As the twice-born god is both transforming and transformative, the possessed/inspired characteristic of the dithyramb also contributes to its changeable nature and its ability to perform change in the singing community and beyond. ⁴² From Dionysiac transformation and identification with the god who was himself born twice, one arrives at the soteriological aspect of Dionysiac myth and mysteries, which likewise finds expression in the dithyramb. ⁴³ Ovid seems to hint also at the dithyramb’s association with the mysteries with tua sacra (33), which, especially after mention of Dionysus’ rebirth and assimilation of the poet through lightning to the god’s experience, likely refers to the Bacchic mysteries. ⁴⁴

Following these gestures towards the dithyramb and the mysteries, Ovid, in a more forceful hymnic section, summons the aid of wine and the sounds of mythic satyrs and Bacchants, onto whose music he projects his poetic activity, encircled as it is by the noisiness of war (11). The sound of these primordial Bacchic choruses is, like the poet, thunderstruck (attonito, 38). Thus, their Dionysiac and inspired activity can be conceptually merged with Ovid’s hymning. Ovid thus transfers the lightning of Dionysiac dithyrambic epiphany, inspiration and rebirth to his exilic state. In this way, he not only maps his own poetry onto a mythical/ritual choral occasion but also reworks his own lonely circumstances through imaginative suggestion, bringing Bacchic choreia into his elegy in Tomis. The nature of lightning morphs from punitive (31), though even there are suggestions of salvific Bacchic mystic lightning, to inspired (38). He changes the very force of the lightning of Tomis and the nature of the sounds around him, making his lonely circumstances, through the medium of the hymn itself, a new kind of Roman Bacchic choreia.

As in the Archilochus fragment, Ovid’s dithyrambic hymning involves wine. The sympathetic ‘drunkenness’ between Ovid and the mythical Bacchic choruses is emphasized with a hitherto unnoticed acrostic, FVSA, ‘poured out’, in lines 35–8 (Tr. 5.3.35–46): ⁴⁵

fer, bone Liber, opem: sic altera degrauet ulmum

uitis et incluso plena sit uua mero,

sic tibi cum Bacchis Satyrorum gnaua iuuentus

adsit, et attonito non taceare sono,

ossa bipenniferi sic sint male pressa Lycurgi,

impia nec poena Pentheos umbra uacet,

sic micet aeternum uicinaque sidera uincat

coniugis in caelo clara corona tuae:

huc ades et casus releues, pulcherrime, nostros,

unum de numero me memor esse tuo.

sunt dis inter se commercia; flectere tempta

Caesareum numen numine, Bacche, tuo.

Help me, good Liber: may another vine weigh down the branch, and may the grapes be filled with wine within. Thus may the energetic youthfulness of the Satyrs together with the Bacchae be present; may you not be kept hidden in their thunderstruck cry; may the bones of Lycurgus the axe-bearer be crushed; may Pentheus’ impious shade never lack punishment; and may the crown of your wife, bright in the heavens, glitter forever and surpass the neighbouring stars. Be here and soften my downfall, most fair one, remembering that I am one of yours. There is negotiation between the gods. Bacchus, try to bend Caesar’s might with your own.

While the poet calls for the aid of wine—both Liber himself, metonymically, and the grapes which will be full of his vintage—and Bacchic choral community, ⁴⁶ the perfect participle fusa in the acrostic indicates that already the wine is poured out and, as a result of Bacchic drunkenness, the composition of this dithyrambic hymn is possible in the first place.

The acrostic might be further expanded in light of the broader content. Lines 39–40 recall Dionysus’ victory over his mythical enemies, Pentheus and Lycurgus, who, as we saw earlier, are recalled along with the Tyrrhenian pirates from the Liberalia passage of Fasti Book 3. ⁴⁷ As myths of Dionysiac epiphany and resistance that was turned into compliance, Pentheus and Lycurgus are, like the pirates who were turned into dolphins, similarly attached to the dithyramb’s origins. ⁴⁸ The epiphany of Dionysus in these myths marks the point when those who initially resist him are forced to accept his rites. Similarly, in Bacchic initiation, the choral presence of Dionysus marks the initiate’s change of status. It has been argued that the same shift is expressed in archaic dithyrambs—for example Pindar’s Dithyramb 2, ⁴⁹ in which the moment of the god’s appearance marks the transition between the mythical narrative section of the dithyramb and the self-referential expressions of the ritual setting of the performance. ⁵⁰ Conversely, the moment of Dionysus’ reappearance, that is, his epiphany, in his myths, often in a choral setting, marks the point when myth elides into ritual immediacy, where Dionysus is also understood to appear among his worshippers. The choral form of Dionysiac ritual re-enacts his mythic thiasoi, including those who once resisted him. Choral performance, then, links myth and ritual through the shared presence of Dionysus, creating the link across time and space through self-reference, choral projection and imaginative suggestion.

With such myths in the broader text it is possible to continue reading down the margins of lines 39–45 to give OISCHVS. The whole acrostic for lines 35–45 would then read: φυσάω ἰσχύς (‘I, divine might, blow’). ⁵¹ fer invokes, fusa expresses inebriation, and φυσάω suggests inspiration. If we can discern the first-person voice of the god in the margin, ⁵² then the efficacy of Ovid’s hymnic summoning of Bacchus’ epiphany is secured. Conversely, the god’s very (active) presence is the origin of the poet’s (passive) inspiration. In-text acrostic signposts are also discernible, which point the reader to the margin. Two lines before the beginning of the acrostic the reader will have read aspiciens (‘examining’, 32), encouraging them to look more closely. Relevant to myths in which initial resistance is met with divine epiphany, taceare (38) indicates a hidden nature, or rather, with non, the revelation of something hidden. ⁵³ The non-concealment of the god within the thunderstruck cry of the Bacchants links the acrostic to the force of ritual cry and cult hymn that effects epiphany. Immediately thereafter come the myths of the defeat of Bacchus’ enemies, that is, the moments of his epiphany. It is also the line where the passive Latin acrostic FVSA switches to the active Greek first-person φυσάω. ⁵⁴ incluso (36) likewise hints at enclosed or encoded meanings and, describing the requested wine contained in grapes, links the acrostic to Liber qua wine. ⁵⁵ The hidden presence of the acrostic parallels the about-to-arrive and paradoxically already-arrived characteristic of Dionysus discussed earlier. The secretive and exclusive nature of the mysteries, too, offers a fitting context for Bacchus’ acrostic presence. degrauet ulmum (35) suggests the downward direction of the letters, hanging like a bunch of grapes from the in-line fer. casus (43) again suggests a downward reading, perhaps recalling also the poet’s earlier cecidi (29) when struck by Jove’s lightning.

The ending of the final line of the acrostic, if suspended before the next line contextualizes the command, may prompt the reader to ‘try to translate’ (flectere tempta, 45) the Greek. ⁵⁶ Moreover, the line following the end of the proposed acrostic contains twice a possible Latin rendering of divine ἰσχύς: numen numine (46). numine adflatus/adflor translates ἐνθουσιαστικός, which, I have argued, underlies this passage that asks for Liber’s aid. Thus, the words of the context thematically secure the acrostic’s message of divine inspiration. The merging of Greek dithyramb with Roman festival in Tristia 5.3, too, provides an apt atmosphere for a transliterated Greek acrostic. When read with the horizontal text, the acrostic mutually confirms and is confirmed by a bilingual and biliteral/multiliteral atmosphere haunted by a biform and bicultural god. ⁵⁷

The simultaneity of the acrostic and the horizontal text furthermore enacts on the level of reading the same spatial and temporal manipulation at play on the level of the poem’s ritual logic. Ovid projects his current hymnic activity onto the mythical choruses of Dionysus and the past and present chorus of poets in Rome, calling on the divine presence that defines all of their chorality. At the same time, in his own margin he suggests that that same inspiring/inebriating presence has already invigorated and validated his own ritualized poetry, allowing such projection to be effective. The text is able to call on the god at the same time as it hints at the presence of the divinity that has already arrived. Various instances and modes of meaning occur simultaneously in the text in the same way that multiple events of myth, ritual and performance merge with Dionysus’ enthusing epiphany as the lynchpin.

Returning to the question of soteriology: Ovid’s transferral of initiatory lightning into Tristia 5.3 also suggests Dionysiac rebirth and reintegration. As noted earlier, the dithyrambic poet, like the Bacchic initiate, is assimilated to Bacchus in being thunderstruck. Though the immediate point of comparison for the thunderstruck Ovid (31) is the unfortunate Semele (32)—or the boastful Capaneus (29–30)—in a dithyrambic context, the exilic image of lightning is overlaid with more positive connotations of Dionysus’ rebirth. Capaneus was struck by lightning for claiming invincibility on par with the gods. Ovid claims, though less explicitly, a similar likeness to Semele and Dionysus, both of whom were midwifed by lightning. The comparisons evoke, not without irony, two kinds of Jovian lightning: punitive and divinizing. The former flashes throughout the Tristia; in Tristia 5.3, the two strike in close succession. The bolt that doomed both Semele and Ovid also delivered Dionysus. percussum fulmine (31) thus connects death, and even penalty, with Bacchic epiphany, dithyrambic inspiration and mystic rebirth. Such connections suggest a return from death to life, and analogously from Tomis qua Underworld to Rome, for the poet through his inspired, even lightning-struck, hymn. But it is not only Bacchus and the Bacchic initiate to whom the poet assimilates himself. Dionysus once performed a katabasis to rescue his lightning-struck mother from Hades. ⁵⁸ The imperatives fer opem (35) and huc ades (43) summon or effect the presence of Dionysus into the very Underworld of Tomis. Epiphany is common in hymns and particularly striking and salvific in a Dionysiac context; the god’s presence is necessary for the mysteries’ eschatological goal. If Ovid is successful in effecting the epiphany of Bacchus in the Underworld of Tomis, his hymn will project him from deathly Tomis into the lively Roman chorus of poets, where the god is also present.

Ovid’s request for Bacchus’ epiphany in Tomis extends to Bacchus’ intercession with the emperor (flectere tempta | Caesareum numen numine, Bacche, tuo ‘Bacchus, try to bend Caesar’s might with your own’, 45–6). ⁵⁹ In the context of transformation and community, the request to ‘bend Caesar’s might’ suggests that the eschatologically concerned ritual strategies of the mysteries are deployed for a civic kind of salvation in Ovid’s ‘dithyramb’. Rescue from the Underworld of Tomis translates directly into social reintegration in Rome. Such soteriological civic concerns accord with dithyrambic narratives of resistance myths. As noted above, performance of rejection of the god also enacts the city’s eventual acceptance of his rites. ⁶⁰ Such change is played out in Pindar’s ‘Argive’ dithyrambs, which narrate Perseus’ conflict with Dionysus, itself the aetiology for the god’s local mysteries at Lake Alcyonis in Lerna. ⁶¹ Barbara Kowalzig places the dithyrambs in this cult context, arguing that Perseus’ resistance to Dionysus’ rites in the myth section of the dithyramb leads to the establishing of Dionysus’ mystery cult in Argos and the re-emergence of his rites in their choral form in the dithyramb itself. ⁶² The dithyrambs then perform the simultaneous rejection and acceptance of the rites, re-enacting the aetiological resistance myth and affirming through ritual performance the city’s acceptance of the god’s cult. ⁶³ Since the actors in Dionysiac resistance myth are usually members of the civic body (for example the Theban women in Euripides’ Bacchae), the dithyramb’s implication is a social reconfiguration of Dionysus’ worshippers qua members of society. ⁶⁴ In dithyramb, the re-enactment of Dionysiac myths, both those of his arrival and those of his resistance which was turned into acceptance, also performs his transformative and community-creating choral rites. Not all of Dionysus’ rituals are mystic—the eschatological concerns of the mysteries would be adjusted for civic concerns—but mystic strategies of involvement are suitable for addressing a wider audience. ⁶⁵ The dithyramb thus performs publicly (in the social or civic sphere) the kind of transformation normally exclusive to the mystic community. ⁶⁶

4. PRESENT AND FUTURE

The final dimension involved in this dithyrambic elegy’s temporal and spatial manipulation appears in the final twelve lines of the poem. Ovid turns from mythical choruses and projects his poetic activity in Tomis onto the current Bacchic celebrations in Rome, inaugurating his poetic reception (Tr. 5.3.47–58):

uos quoque, consortes studii, pia turba, poetae,

haec eadem sumpto quisque rogate mero.

atque aliquis uestrum, Nasonis nomine dicto,

opponat lacrimis pocula mixta suis,

admonitusque mei, cum circumspexerit omnes,

dicat ‘ubi est nostri pars modo Naso chori?’

idque ita, si uestrum merui candore fauorem,

nullaque iudicio littera laesa meo est,

si, ueterum digne ueneror cum scripta uirorum,

proxima non illis esse minora reor.

sic igitur dextro faciatis Apolline carmen:

quod licet, inter uos nomen habete meum.

As for you, poets, fellow scholars, observant crowd, each of you, when the wine is drunk, ask these same things. And some one of you, when Ovid’s name is mentioned, let him offer a cup mixed with his tears, and, reminded of me when he has looked around at everyone, let him say, ‘where is Naso who was just part of our chorus?’ And [do] this thus, if I have earned your favour by my honesty, if no writing has been harmed by my judgement and if, when I revere the worthy writings of ancient men, I nevertheless do not think recent ones are less than them. Thus, therefore, may you make a song with Apollo at your right hand: as is allowed, keep my name amongst you.

The words uos quoque (47) respond to ipse quoque (19) and me quoque (27), discussed earlier. These three points triangulate those involved in a ritual chorus: the choral community, the god and the individual. The chorus of poets share Ovid’s enthusiasm: they too drink wine (48) and perform for Bacchus. Ovid even asks them to make the same request he makes (48). Thus, Bacchus is among them in Rome and with Ovid in Tomis at the same time, merging the two disparate locations through the shared presence of the god.

Dithyrambic and mystic strategies of community creation continue as Ovid asks the poets to name him: Nasonis nomine dicto (‘when Naso’s name is mentioned’, 49), ubi est … Naso? (‘where is Naso?’, 52), inter uos nomen habete meum (‘keep my name amongst you’, 58). Repetitive naming is a strategy of cult music that is understood to effect epiphany. Bacchic music’s ability to effect the god’s presence and its simultaneous state of divine possession is reflected in the use of repetitive and accumulated epiklēsis, calling on the god’s various epithets. The force of such epiklēsis is imagined as effecting the god’s appearance in the midst of the chorus. ⁶⁷ Since several of Bacchus’ epithets derive from cult cries, the sound of the shouted/sung epithet becomes the sonic presence of the god. ⁶⁸ It is usually Augustus who is assimilated to a god (Jupiter with his punishing lightning), and so Ovid’s self-assimilation to Bacchus, particularly in such ritualized modes, strikes a defiant note. The repeated naming of Ovid extends his identification with Bacchus: as a chorus would name the god into appearing inter uos, so the Roman poets (Ovid claims) will name him and bring him into their midst in Rome.

5. CLOSING THE BOOKS

I will conclude with the metaliterary elements of these final lines, which allow Ovid to reflect back the dithyrambic strategies of transformation and rebirth on his literary corpus and upon Roman literature as well. Alex Hardie points out that dextro Apolline (57) responds to the setting of Propertius 3.17, the Palatine temple of Liber which is next to the Palatine Magna Mater (iuxta dea, Prop. 3.17.35). Nearby is the temple of Palatine Apollo and its library. The words dextro Apolline, literally ‘with Apollo on the right’, also encode the meaning ‘with Apollo’s library next door’. ⁶⁹ Reference to a library and the iudicium (54) of fellow poets is paired with the theme of (poetic) memory. Ovid refers to his own poetic memory, including himself in past and, importantly, contemporary Roman literature (55–6). At the same time, crucially, one of the present Roman poets will remember Ovid (51). The words admonitus mei (51) echo admonitu matris (32) in the same metrical position at the beginning of the line. Ovid’s dithyrambic recollection of Semele elides into the recollection of Ovid by Roman poets. On the one hand, assimilation to Semele suggests, as discussed above, anticipation of rebirth/rescue. On the other hand, the assimilation of story to story and of myth to myth anticipates Ovid’s reception in Rome through literary memory and suggests another kind of Bacchic transformation and rebirth: a place in the chorus merges into a place in the canon. ⁷⁰

However, it is not just Ovid’s own social-literary status that is transformed. As discussed earlier, identification between Dionysus and worshipper is central to his mysteries. Another facet of the identifying function of the mysteries is the creation of new exclusivity. The mysteries were famously exclusive and secretive, but by being open to practically anyone they differed from other religious avenues which limited participation to particular groups of people. ⁷¹ The enthusiastic presence of the god transforms the participants in the chorus and, by assimilating them to himself, eliminates social distinctions. Thus, the mysteries formed a paradoxically democratic exclusivity based on shared experience rather than pre-existing criteria. ⁷² It may be productive, then, to consider in this light Ovid’s claim throughout the Tristia to speak to his audience directly rather than through official channels; ⁷³ the excluded poet fashions his own new exclusivity. ⁷⁴ Furthermore, in addition to transforming the social status of his worshippers, as discussed above, Bacchus reconstitutes the entire civic body into his thiasos. ⁷⁵ The dithyramb performs publicly and communally the transformational force of the exclusive mystic choral group. In light of the potential for the dithyramb to be used in civic spheres to create and affirm communal identities, a further poetic—specifically relating to Ovid and Tomis—usage seems at the very least reasonable. Through the dithyrambic hymn in Tristia 5.3 Ovid redefines and refashions the Roman community into a literary thiasos to which he, even in exile, can claim he belongs.