Metamorphoses

As Ovid states in the beginning of the Metamorphoses, his goal is to cover events from the very beginning of time up until his own day. To the modern reader, this seems to cover both mythological and historical events. It is important to note that such a distinction is a modern imposition on the poem; the events of the Metamorphoses would not have been so neatly divided into categories by the ancient Roman reader. This is evident in the way the text treats the theme of empire, which pervades both events that we would consider mythological and that we would consider historical. Given Ovid’s reasonably high social standing in ancient Rome, politics are ever-present, and empire is always in the background of the Metamorphoses, which he composed during the early imperial period under Rome’s first emperor Augustus.

The direct ancestor to imperial Rome in the Metamorphoses is Troy. Stories of Troy take up much of Book 12 and the beginning of Book 13. The city of Troy has its roots in the divine—both Neptune and Apollo even helped build the city’s famous walls. Neptune reminds Apollo of this after the war has gone on for many years. He says, “do you not groan to see / this citadel at any moment now / about to fall?” (292). Apollo agrees with Neptune, as both the gods feel a great deal of personal investment in the city. Despite these divine origins, however, Troy does ultimately fall. Ovid writes of the aftermath, “Ilium [Troy] was burning, / its fires not yet died down; Jove’s altar drank / old Priam’s scanty blood” (307). This description goes on, showing the level of destruction that the Greeks create in the city. By covering the myths of Troy in the first place, Ovid links his Metamorphoses back to the canonical Greek epics, particularly Homer’s Iliad. The Trojan War was a frequent source of literary topics in antiquity, and so it makes sense that Ovid would cover such an important civilization within his expansive work.

More importantly for a Roman audience, however, Ovid also covers the myth of Aeneas, the Trojan prince who links his city of birth to the land where Rome will eventually be founded. Aeneas, who is also semi-divine through his mother Venus, escapes the burning city. Ovid writes, “even so the Fates did not allow Troy’s hopes / to fall to ruins with her walls” (314). Although the city itself is gone, through Aeneas her legacy remains, and Ovid begins to transition toward more Rome-centered myths and stories. Some of these stories, such as those of the Sabine women and the early Roman kings, are important in other works of literature, such as the historian Livy’s History of Rome, written in the earlier decades of Augustus’ rule shortly before Ovid completed his Metamorphoses. Moreover, Ovid creates a clear, transitive connection between imperial Rome, Troy, and the gods through his presentation of Julius Caesar. Caesar had, historically, been deified in Rome before Augustus became emperor, so Ovid only embellishes this story, rather than inventing it from scratch. However, including Caesar’s deification gives Augustus and imperial Rome in general a more immediate divine origin than the long-distance ancestors of Trojan Aeneas and Venus. In Ovid’s account of the apotheosis, he writes, “lest therefore [Augustus] be born of mortal seed, / his father must be made divine” (375). This reasoning would not have made sense historically, since Caesar was deified before Augustus became emperor and took on the title “Augustus,” yet Ovid presents Caesar’s apotheosis as if it creates the inevitability of a later imperial and divine ruler. The links that Ovid creates from the gods to Troy to the land of Rome is important to the city’s self-image, which the epic poet Virgil had already used as the basis for his poem the Aeneid.