They come to see, and to be seen themselves,
and many other lines show keen observation, knowledge of humanity, and no little humor; but, in spite of these beauties of detail, the poem is, as a whole, so uninteresting that its immorality has probably done little harm.
The Cure of Love offers various means for freeing oneself from the bonds of passion. The Cure of Love. Activity and travel are recommended; the lover who longs for freedom is advised to consider the faults of his mistress, and the expense she causes him; he is told to make her show her faults; is urged to fall in love with another, to avoid reminders of the beloved when she is absent, and to shun poetry, music, and the dance. All this is uninteresting enough; but this poem, like the Ars Amatoria, contains many fine details. The Remedia Amoris is the last of Ovid’s poems on the subject of love. From beginning to end his love poems show the greatest ease and fluency of expression, superb mastery of technique, much imagination, wit, and humor, but an almost absolute lack of real feeling and serious purpose.
With the Fasti, or calendar of Roman festivals, Ovid’s poetry becomes more serious. The Fasti. When this work was begun can not be determined, but it probably occupied part of the poet’s time for several years. The description of the festival of Juno in the Amores (III, xiii) shows an interest in religious ritual, and it may be that Ovid conceived the idea of writing the Fasti even before the Ars Amatoria was published. However that may be, the Fasti never reached completion. The poem as planned was to consist of twelve books, one for each month of the year, and was dedicated to Augustus; but, when six books had been written, the work was interrupted by Ovid’s banishment. After the death of Augustus, Ovid began a revision of the poem, and prefixed to it a dedication to Germanicus; but the revision progressed no further than the first book. As this book contains references to events as late as 17 A. D., the entire work as we possess it must have been published after Ovid’s death.
Poetic descriptions of festivals, with accounts of their origin, had been written by the Alexandrians, notably by Callimachus, and four elegies of Propertius (see p. 135) had introduced such subjects into Roman poetry. Ovid undertook to treat systematically all the Roman festivals, arranging them according to the days on which they occurred. This arrangement often causes related myths to be widely separated, and the same myth to be treated in several places, thus destroying the poetic unity of the work. The poet is also obliged by his subject to regard the astronomical as well as the antiquarian aspects of the calendar, and this double interest destroys the harmony of the poem. Ovid was not a careful student of astronomy, and the astronomical parts of his work contain some serious mistakes; but they are interesting on account of their clear descriptions, their variety of expression, and the myths connected with the stars which are introduced. The days that mark important events in Roman history are treated with especial fulness, and the poet takes every opportunity for the expression of patriotic sentiments, and for the praise of Augustus and the Julian family. The descriptions of festivals are lively and beautiful pictures of Roman life. Events of the poet’s own times, or of the early, mythical period, are described with great variety, sometimes in elaborate detail, sometimes more briefly, but always with easy and attractive grace. The causes or origins of festivals and customs are introduced in various ways; sometimes a god appears and reveals them, sometimes they are narrated by a friend or contemporary of the poet, or again the poet tells them without adducing any authority. The Greek myths narrated are derived from some of the many collections of such material familiar to the Romans of Ovid’s day; and even in the matter of Roman legends Ovid probably made no original researches. The grammarian Verrius Flaccus had compiled a prose calendar, with explanations of the established customs pertaining to each day, and it is probably from this that Ovid derived much of his antiquarian lore. The books from which Ovid derived his information are lost, and his work is now one of the chief sources from which we can gain knowledge of Roman ritual, belief, religious antiquities, and even topography, for Ovid frequently mentions the relative positions of temples and other buildings. To the student of Roman life the six books of the Fasti are therefore of great importance. And their importance is not less to the student of Roman poetry, for they teem with beautiful and lively descriptions and interesting stories, and the patriotic sentiments eloquently expressed in several passages show that Ovid was something more than the careless, frivolous writer of corrupt love poems. In beauty of workmanship, vividness of description, and fluent grace of narrative, many portions of the Fasti are equal to any works of Roman literature, not even excepting the Metamorphoses of Ovid himself.
The Metamorphoses.The fifteen books of the Metamorphoses are Ovid’s greatest achievement. When he began the work we do not know, but, according to his own statement,[82] he had finished it at the time of his banishment, though he had not revised and perfected it to his own satisfaction. In his grief he put the manuscript in the fire and burned it, but several copies must have been made, so the work survived. The opening lines of the poem explain its purpose:
Of forms transmuted into bodies new
My spirit moves to tell. Ye gods (for ye
Did change them), lend my task your favoring breath,