Paper Example on Ovid: Celebrated Roman Poet and Artist's Influential Legacy

Ovid, also known as Publius Ovidius Nasco is a Roman poet whose vivid retellings and influence on the poets and artists of the middle ages, renaissance, and beyond is impressive. He was born in Aristotic family in Roman town of Sulmo. Ovid's love for poetry made him quit his legal training as a lawyer, he was a natural poet and as such, had no real interest in law contrary to his father's expectation. He eventually became a full-time poet with the financial support of a wealthy patron called Mesalla.He married twice and divorced twice at the age of thirty with no children of his own, but his third wife had a daughter of a previous husband .He wrote a great deal about premarital sex ,but maintained that his poetic persona should not be mistaken with autobiography declaring ,'My Muse is slutty,but my life is chaste.' His love poetry focuses less on feeling than on behavior, and less on love than sex. Ovid's works targeted the more conservative member of the Roman society but unfortunately for him , Augustus the emperor having conquered power after the battle of Actium(in 31 B.C.E), a long civil war (Ovid 1026).

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Augustus was determined to impose order on the fragmented society of Rome in 19-18 B.C.E to encourage married couples to have children, and in punish adultery with exile. A law which Ovid deliberately opposed through his work, Ars Amatoria which pointed out monumental hypocrisy of Roman sexual mores and suggested that having extramarital sex is more traditional than Augustus family values since it was the order of the day in Rome, and they had been doing it from the very beginning. It was through the rape of the Sabine women that the male inhabitants of the new city acquired wives, and were able to supply Rome with future citizens. Ovid's worst tragedy was involving the emperor's daughter Julia who was having an illicit affair, and constantly irritating Augustus with his provocative stance. Without approval from the Senate, Augustus sent Ovid to a permanent exile, and this intensified the course of change for Romans. At the end of the exile, Ovid was accomplishing his great work, the Metamorphoses (Greek for 'changes'). This provided a radical challenge to both Augustan moral, political values, and to traditional poetic norms (Ovid 1027).

The Metamorphoses is the only renown epic poem that Ovid wrote in the epic meter, dactylic meter, there is no single protagonist, and all the moral values ironically presented. However, an element common in his works is transformation, despite its free and roundabout course. The narrative has a discernible direction as Ovid presents in his introduction, ''From the world beginning to the present day.'' Starting with the creation of the world, the transformation of the matter into living bodies (the first great metamorphosis). Ovid tells of human beings changed into animals , flowers, and trees (Ovid 1027). He then moves through Greek myth to stories of early Rome, and to his own time. Culminating in the ascension of the murdered Julius Caesar to the heavens in the form of a star, and the divine promise that Augustus too, in the future will become god; we cannot speculate that Ovid hoped in vain to improve his relationship with the emperor by means of these few lines by Ovid (Ovid 1027).

Apart from the theme of change which encompasses all other issues evident in Metamorphoses, there is a theme of love and transformation, hubris, loyalty, and betrayal. Ovid's perspective of love is distinct from our popular conception today. He presents that love has power over everyone, mortals, and gods alike .It was perceived as a dangerous , destabilizing force than a positive one. Love overcomes reason and morality. A person in love may be desperately attracted by a brother, a father, or even a bull (Ovid 1033) .While transformations, in metamorphoses usually follow from the course or effects spurred on by love (Ovid 1028).

The power of love to change can be as quotidian as pregnancy. This is seen in Jove's attempt to rape Europa .Jove takes on the form of a bull, in his rape of Europa, in order to quench his desire. Apollo changes into his beloved's sister so as to reach her (Ovid 1033). Additionally, those pursued by love-mad gods also transform themselves in an effort to evade unwanted attention (Ovid 1029). Perhaps the most evident of these transformations is the metamorphosis of Daphne into a laurel tree when Apollo follows her (Ovid 1032) . Love is most often the actual driving factor behind the changes in Metamorphoses by Ovid (Ovid 1040).

Love can also affect change when it plays a role in metamorphosis for political reasons, as seen in the regime of Augustus. Major trials were made to control morality through the creation of legal and illegal forms of love. To facilitate low marriage rates and birth rates in the upper classes, to encourage marriage and legitimate heirs, whereas adultery could be punished with exile to discourage love outside marriage in Rome. Certainly, Ovid's several examples of the dangers of hubris also conform to the prevailing critical view of Metamorphoses as a mock-epic. Some, commonly, women tend to challenge the gods and goddess to defend their powers. A good example is Arachne being summoned for her hubristic challenge by being metamorphosized to a spider. Niobe is also punished with the violent death of all her children is thereafter changed into a statue. Other characters such as Achilles and Neptune depict hubris by ignoring their morality. Achilles annoys his son, Cycnus, and Apollo punishes this severely by plotting for Achilles to die in humiliation at the hands of Paris.

Loyalty and betrayal ; adherence was considered one of the most valued behaviors in Ovid's age . Cities needed to rely on each other in times of war, for with an absence of a network of friendly towns,no one would ever be at peace. On the other hand, betrayal was harshly punished for Roman crimes. Scylla betrays her father, king Nissus and in return losses the trust of king Minos. She is entirely unworthy of love as a result of degrading action she committed. Similarly, Medea announces herself in the role of the Villain when she betrays her father and helps Jason get the golden fleece. Ovid expects the reader to view Media as a corrupt person since her eventual tag c follows from this initial betrayal of her home (Ovid 1036).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the title of this poem Metamorphoses is most appropriate to a range of issues as presented by Ovid. There are quite a number of transformations throughout the poem. In fact, all most everything in this poem is in a changing process. Chaos is transformed into the universe, springs and rivers are created from nothing (Ovid 1030). People change into animals, and islands break off from the land; people are transformed by love and hate . One reasonable conclusion is that the title and the themes are merely a device, a semi-successful means of bringing together a group of very different stories .Ovid also integrates the metaphor of transformation in a manner that encompasses the poem as a whole (Ovid 1031). Many of the stories that do not have specific elements of change are drawn from Roman history and thus conform to the idea of the evolution of Rome and the Roman people (Ovid 1028).

Works Cited

Fulkerson, Laurel, and Tim Stover, eds. Repeat Performances: Ovidian Repetition and the< i> Metamorphoses< i. University of Wisconsin Press, 2016.

Pugh, Syrithe. Spenser and Ovid. Routledge, 2017.