Ovid's Metamorphoses

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QUAE PATER UT SUMMA VIDIT SATURNIUS ARCE,

INGEMIT ET, FACTO NONDUM VULGATE RECENTI

FOEDA LYCAONIAE REFERENS CONVIVIA MENSAE,

INGENTES ANIMO ET DIGNAS IOVE CONCIPIT IRAS

CONCILIUMQUE VOCAT; TENUIT MORA NULLA VOCATOS.

EST VIA SUBLIMIS, CAELO MANIFESTA SERENO;

LACTEA NOMEN HABET, CANDORE NOTABILIS IPSO.

HAC ITER EST SUPERIS AD MAGNI TECTA TONANTIS

REGALEMQUE DOMUM. DEXTRA LAEVAQUE DEORUM

ATRIA NOBILIUM VALVIS CELEBRANTUR APERTIS.

PLEBS HABITAT DIVERSA LOCIS; HAC PARTE POTENTES

CAELICOLAE CLARIQUE SUOS POSUERE PENATES.

HIC LOCUS EST QUEM, SI VERBIS AUDACIA DETUR,

HAUD TIMEAM MAGNI DIXISSE PALATIA CAELI.

 

THE SATURNIAN FATHER, AS HE SAW THESE THINGS FROM HIS HIGH CITADEL,

GROANED AND, RETURNING TO WHAT HAD RECENTLY TRANSPIRED, THE NOT-YET PUBLICISED

[TALE OF] THE FEAST AT THE TABLE OF LYCAON,

CONCEIVED A GREAT ANGER IN HIS MIND, WORTHY OF JOVE

AND CALLED A MEETING; THOSE CALLED MADE NO DELAY.

THERE IS AN UPLIFTED WAY, VISIBLE IN CLEAR SKIES;

IT IS CALLED THE MILKY WAY, AND IS NOTABLE FOR ITS WHITENESS.

THIS IS THE PATH FOR THE GODS TO THE ROOF AND REGAL HOME OF THE GREAT THUNDERER

ON THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT ARE THE COURTYARDS OF THE NOBLE GODS

WHICH ARE FILLED IN THEIR OPEN DOORS.

THE PLEBS LIVE IN A DIFFERENT PLACE; IN THIS PLACE THE POWERFUL

AND FAMOUS AMONG THE GODS HAVE PLACED THEIR HOUSEHOLD GODS.

THIS IS THE PLACE WHICH, IF IT WERE ALLOWED TO BE DARING WITH WORDS,

I WOULD NOT FEAR TO CALL THE PALATINE OF HEAVEN.

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I said last week that we were done with the grand, cosmological part.  Today, we begin the first ‘story’ episode of the poem – this will be the first one with characters and dialogue and all that jazz.  Our first character is (who else?) Jupiter!*  We glimpsed him as a young man fighting his dad back in the Silver Age, but now he’s all grown up and ruling heaven.  Naturally, he wears (and speaks in) purple, the imperial colour.  Who ever said man was made in God’s image?  (Ovid did, but shush, I’m making a point…)  Ovid’s Jupiter is made in the image of man; specifically, he is made in the image of one man, Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.  While Ovid doesn’t mention what colours Jupiter is sporting this season, you can see from the Latin that the equation is about as subtle as a sledgehammer.  Jupiter lives on the “Palatine of Heaven” (“Palatia caeli”, line 176), the location of Augustus’ house in Rome.  Barchiesi notes that this is an usual choice, especially since Jupiter already had a house of his own in Rome: his temple on the Capitoline hill.  Just as power in Ovid’s time had shifted from the Senate to the Palatine, so does the location of Jove’s poetic house, apparently.  Combined with the tradition of comparing Augustus’ role in Roman society with that of Jupiter in heaven – Vergil, in both the Georgics and the Aeneid, was a big fan of this device – Ovid is working within a fledgling tradition of poetics developed for the new imperial culture.  The comparison between the two might be taken as positive for the emperor.  After all, who wouldn’t want to be constantly compared with the king of the gods?  Well, it’s a little unclear which way the comparison is going here. The noble gods Jupiter calls to the council actually seem kind of mortal.  They live in houses (not unusual, but still not often emphasised), are divided by class (again, clearly an established part of mythological canon, but not often spoken of in the terms Ovid uses) and even have penates of their own (line 174).  Penates were the household gods of the Romans, and are in theory used here to denote the idea of ‘home’ in the Roman mind.  Still, it is a strange depiction.  Their history was unclear, even to the Romans themselves: Vergil famously depicted Aeneas’ father, Anchises, saving them from the fires of burning Troy; this attempt to explain the penates as a relic of a lost civilisation is poetically beautiful, but serves to illustrate that the Romans were basically in the dark about their origins.  Nevertheless, it is clear that they provided a kind of protection for the household, probably going back to prehistoric ancestor wroship.  The penates were a link between mortals and the realm of the supernatural.  That gods, the rulers of the supernatural universe, would need penates at all is absurd.  Therefore, by placing them here, Ovid calls into question the identity of the gods he is describing.  If Jupiter is Augustus, then the Council of the Gods must certainly be the Roman Senate.  Thus, instead of elevating Augustus to heaven, Ovid has, as Aristotle and Longinus accused Homer of doing, elevated his men to gods and degraded his gods to men.  Suddenly, it makes sense why the comparison between heaven and the Palatine is so “daring” (line 175).

For all of you astronomy buffs out there, you might be interested that Barchiesi notes lines 168-9 as the first reference to a Milky Way.  Previous authors, such as Cicero, and even later authors such as Pliny the Elder refer to a “milky circle”, but the notion of the Milky Way as a road makes its first appearance here.

That’s all for now.  As the story becomes more narrative, and the references less dense (they will never cease being dense, though) my commentary will also thin out a bit.  Hopefully this will allow for more nuanced information from me, and less walls of text hitting your face when you scroll past the comic.  So until next week, macte esto!

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*As Ovid himself says in Book 10 (lines 148-9): “ab Iove, Musa parens (cedunt Iovis omnia regno),/ carmina nostra move […]” (from Jupiter, obedient** Muse, move my song (all things give way to the kingdom of Jupiter)”

** Yes, I know that word is a double-entendre, and that it is referring to Calliope as the mother of Orpheus.  And yes, I do realise I just put a footnote within a footnote (footception?).  It’s been one of those kind of days…