A carmen and an error, An Emperor and a poet, and a 2000 year old enigma.

More than any other classical poet, Ovid has had the longest and most far reaching influence on western literature. His 'Metamorphoses' , a fifteen book mythological narrative written in epic metre, and ' Amores' and ' Ars Amatoria' his collections of erotic poems,are his most famous, if not infamous works. How did the first major Roman poet end his life in a banishment by the inclusive intervention of the Emperor Augustus, without the participation of the Senate, or of any Roman judge? Which poem did Augustus never forgive him for? Why did he end his days in Tomis on the Black Sea without revealing the nature of his error and the identity of the 'carmen' (poem)? What was it about his writing that caused the Goliards, those wandering scholars of medieval Europe , to claim him as their patron? The man, who influenced Chaucer, Bernini, Cervantes, Montaigne. Shakespeare, and the Romantics, was unable to use his considerable linguistic dexterity to sway the heart and mind of Augustus, a fellow writer. Or was his crime too serious for words to remedy?Perhaps, the answer lies hidden in the lines of the very poems he was banished for. Was it fear or superstition that silenced him? Was it something otherworldly?Or is there substance to the most recent thesis that Ovid's exile was not real, and that the gap between biography and invention that Roman poets talk about is in Ovid's case true? I believe the answer may lie in his first book of poetry, and in Ovid's breach of something that was dearer to Augustus' heart than any of his moral reforms.

The 'Amores' was Ovid's first book of poetry, and it was published in 16 BCE It was originally published in five books, but was later edited by the poet into its surviving three book form. It follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, involving the possibly fictitious Corinna, the name Corinna being a pun on the Greek word for maiden, 'kore'. Although Ovid followed the popular model of the erotic elegy, he is often subversive with its tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices. He makes extensive use of humour and parody to celebrate the elegy as a creative mode as deserving of immortality as the Virgilian epic.Reading it now all these years later, Ovid surprises in his modernity. Few poems address abortion as directly as he does in Book 2 Elegy X111 and X1V, named The Abortion and Against Abortion. In Elegy X111, he writes:

'Corinna lies there exhausted in danger of her life,
after rashly destroying the burden of an unborn child.
I should be angry; she took that great risk
and hid it from me:but anger's quelled by fear'.

This is then countered in Elegy X1V with;

'But tender girls do it, though not unpunished:
often she who kills her child, kills herself..'
This is a typical Ovidian two-scene sequence. Augustus imposed penalties on those who failed to marry, or who married but remained childless. From this and from the references to abortion in the literature, the frequent occurrence of abortion in Imperial Rome can be deduced. The legislative opposition, though, came much later. Was it then his promotion of adultery that caused offence?  Did the lines written in Elegy 4 in Book 2 provoke Augustus' rage? 'He's so provincial who's hurt by his wife's adultery/and he's not observed the ways of Rome enough..'Many commentators have insisted that as Augustus was determined to restore Roman public morality he could not fail to punish an author who represented himself as a promoter of what Augustus had made a civil crime instead of a personal one, the penalties of which did include punishment. However, if that were the case, surely writers would have commented on it in the years subsequent to the demise of both Ovid and Augustus. The absolute silence of the next four centuries-and indeed of such extant authors as Tacitus-argues strongly against such ex post facto knowledge. The balance of probability is that the secret was indeed well kept, that few were privy to it, and that for all practical purposes the truth died with Ovid, as he said it should, but there is a mischief in Ovid, a kind of Midsummer glee, that hides in plain view clues to the real subversiveness of his art, a mischief that demands we re-read the text of The Amores in the cultural context of his day. A cultural context that we have been reading in the language of the flesh, and by so doing, we may have mistranslated the language of the spirit.. The first clue lies in augury.

Augury was the practice from ancient Roman religion of  interpreting omens from the observed flight of birds. When the individual known as the augur interpreted these sign, it was referred to as 'taking the auspices'. There were five different types of auspices;ex caelo (from the sky),ex avibus(from birds), ex tripidus (from the 'dance' of birds feeding, ex quadrupedibus (from quadrupeds) and ex diris (from portents). Ovid gives us a portent of an ominous sort, disguised in humour in The Death of Corinna's Parrot in Elegy 6, Book 2. In a grove of dark holm oaks beneath the Elysian slopes 'Parrot gaining a place among those trees/translates the pious birds in his own words'. As the Roman Empire came to prominence, talking parrots, apparently Psittacula parrots from India, were all the rage among the upper classes. Professional parrot teachers were employed to teach the birds to speak Latin. The death of Corinna's parrot presages a much more serious assault on the very fabric of meaning in Augustus' Rome. It is one thing to poke fun at the belief system of augurs, but what he did in the subsequent book would have, I believe, rattled Augustus to his very core.
                                                                                               

Then a light-winged crow slid from the air
and settled cawing on the green turf,
and three times poked the snowy heifer's front
with impudent beak, tearing away a tuft of white hair.
Lingering a long time, she abandoned bull, and meadow-
but carrying on her chest a black bruise;
and seeing bulls grazing the pasture far away-
she hurried to them, and joined her herd,
and looked for earth with greener grass.
                                                                                                                      Elegy 5, Book 3.

In Ovid's dream a white heifer leaves her sleeping mate, a bull, after being pecked three times by a light-winged crow, to join bulls grazing a pasture far away.The interpreter of midnight dreams is consulted by the poet, who identifies the heifer as the adulterous wife and the crow as an old procuress. Some commentators have insisted that this elegy isn't even written by Ovid, which is strange because it is as typical of Ovid as any of his two-scene sequences. The major clue as to how this scene is to be interpreted comes in the preceding elegy, named 'Adultery'. The line 'Argus had a hundred eyes, at front and back' is a reminder for the reader as to which deity the white heifer in the dream represents-Juno. Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counsellor of the state. She also looked after the women of Rome. In Greek mythology, ravens are associated with Apollo, the god of prophecy. They are the god's messengers in the mortal world. According to the mythological narration, Apollo sent a white raven, or crow to spy on his lover: Coronis. Here, we suddenly have a possible reference point for the identity of Corinna. Is Corinna a play on Apollo's Coronis? When the raven brought back the news that Coronis had been unfaithful to him, Apollo scorched the raven in his fury, turning the animal's feathers black. Argus was Juno's faithful servant, whom she sent to spy on her husband's mistress, Io, whom Jupiter changed into a white cow to escape his wife's wrath. So all of a sudden this dream's significance casts a different light over the whole of The Amores. If gods engage in adultery who is Augustus to defy them? Romulus and Remus,who are mentioned in the previous elegy, founded the city of Rome after receiving divine signs at their hills. Remus first saw six vultures, Romulus later saw twelve.Dreams in antiquity were thought to offer access to the will and knowledge of the gods, and dream interpretation was widespread. According to the ancient theory of dream interpretation, the time of night determines whether a dream is false or true. Ovid says 'It was night', but places the dream in the 'dense grove of holm-oaks', the same place Corinna's parrot goes to when it dies. This place is the realm of the gods, and is it night because the gods are not being propitiated properly in Augustus' Rome? The interpreter of dreams is the midnight interpreter, so does this position the dream at midnight? Augustus believed so strongly in the prophetic nature of dreams that he created a new law requiring every citizen who had a dream about the empire to talk about it on the market in their town. In 17 BCE he reintroduced the Secular Games. The last games had been played a century before. Augustus' Secular Games was a Roman religious celebration, involving sacrifices and theatrical performances, held in Rome between May 31 and June 2. The games Augustus revived took place the year before the publication of Ovid's 'The Amores'.On June 1 white bulls were sacrificed to Jupiter, a white heifer to Juno before theatrical representations were offered to Apollo, the three gods that hover over The Dream. By celebrating these games, the Romans were taking out a new 'lease' with the gods. The name Augustus means 'blessed by the gods', but Ovid is implying that he isn't. In 133 BCE, Rome was a democracy. Little more than a hundred years later, it was governed by an Emperor. By the time Augustus dies, popular elections had all but disappeared. Power was located in the imperial palace. The idea of the 'free republic' was just the romantic pipe dream of a few nostalgics and poets, one of whom Ovid, devised an allegorical map in 'The Amores' that a careful reading will uncover as a direct assault on mortal Augustus' appropriating the will of the gods. One of my favourites is -
'The gods too have eyes: the gods have hearts!
If I were a god, I'd let girls with lying lips
deceive my divinity without punishment..'          Elegy 3, Book 3.
Of course Corinna is fictitious.As the paramour of a god, she is protected. No-one can pin an identity on to her, that could cause her to be prosecuted. She lives in the grove of holm-oaks. And it is the power of those gods that protects him from death. Augustus may not have been afraid of what would happen to him in that 'grove of holm oaks', but he would have feared revolt from those who remembered the old freedoms granted by gods, no less.
In 'Ars Amatoria' Ovid provides us with a tantalising insight into the manner of his poetic vision.
'Art works when it is hidden: discovery brings shame
and time destroys faith in everything of merit.'
                                                                     Book 2 Part 8
It is no surprise that several years after the games and the rise of Ovid, that Augustus had The Sibylline Books moved to the Temple of Apollo, where a new copy was made. The Sibylline Books were consulted on the order of the Senate at times of crisis and calamity, in order to learn how the wrath of the gods could be allayed. They were accidentally burned in 83 BCE, and envoys were sent all over the known world to collect a set of similar utterances. Augustus had the new collection put in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill. This served to strengthen his position as representative of the gods, a position that religious leaders from all faiths have copied ever since, and then, and only then, did he banish Ovid to the Black Sea. In a final burst of melodrama, before leaving Rome, Ovid flung his 'Metamorphoses' in the fire, declaring it unfit for publication. Ovid knew there were other copies of his work in circulation.His banishment was of the type known as 'relegatio', in which the victim retained his property and citizenship, but had his place of exile specified. In Ovid's case, his books were banned from Rome's three public libraries. The poet who had so cleverly mocked imperial aspirations had been outmanoeuvred by a lesser poet, a powerful Emperor who believed in his version of the gods. And it was those very gods and their overweening presence in the hearts and minds of the Roman people that saved his life. The curse poem Ibis that he wrote in exile was probably directed at the person who divulged to Augustus the satirical intent of 'The Amores'. In this case, Augustus made a huge error, because had he ignored the opus, Ovid would not have attracted the attention of subsequent ages. Today, as writers face execution for their work, our present day Emperors would do well to remember the tale of the poet Ovid, whom the gods blessed for his championing of them against those who tried to garner all their gifts unto himself, and to whom they too gifted with an immortal influence on the affairs of present day man, whether we are quite aware of it or not. The grove of the holm-oaks continues to shelter all her poets, especially when their errors are seen as virtues by the inhabitants of that sylvan place.The poet, who died in present day Constanta in Romania, who has been dubbed The First Romanian poet, who had a town 'Ovidiu' named after him, and whose name is a common first name in Romania remains with us still to guide all poets as they traverse all sides of the moon.