Cynthia Liu (University of Oxford)
Ovid’s Tristia manipulates temporal and spatial distances in its exilic strategies. In many poems the poet evokes death in his descriptions of Tomis, placing himself in the underworld and attempting, through poetry, to move from death to the living world. I suggest that this reversal of the poetic-katabasis trope, famously attached to Orpheus, takes on a Dionysiac-mystic tone in Tr. 5.3, which employs mystic-ritual strategies and dithyrambic characteristics to comment on both Ovid’s death-like position and his poetic activity.
Such a reading is at home in the hymnic genre and ritual context of the poem. The poet hymns Bacchus and at the same time identifies himself with the god in his various troubles (Miller 2019). Identification with the god, particularly through religious enthusiasm or possession, is a hallmark of Dionysiac mysteries. Ovid’s identification with Bacchus has two implications, both of which draw on mystic elements. Firstly, the concept of enthusiasm in a Dionysiac-mystic sphere easily transfers to the poetic concept of inspiration. Archilochus, in fact, famously claimed to “lead the dithyramb when lightning-struck by wine” (fr. 120). Wine, lightning, death, and rebirth are characteristic of both dithyramb and mystic experience alike (Lavecchia 2013) and these elements appear in 5.3. In lines 35-8, Ovid calls on the help of Bacchus, grapes, and the thunderstruck (attonito, 38) sound of the Bacchae and Satyrs, emphasizing the point with an acrostic (FUSA) that connects wine and poetic libation. Because of Bacchic assimilation and enthusiasm, Ovid is able to write this dithyrambic poem in the first place.
Second, Ovid-as-Bacchus brings in the concept of rebirth. Dionysus’ double-birth is alluded to twice, first with Parcae singing twice for twice-born Dionysus (26-7) and then with Semele’s lightning-struck death (31-2). The theme of Dionysus’ lightning-assisted double-birth is characteristic of dithyramb (Pi. Fr. 58, Eur. Bacch. 519-29) and central to his mysteries. The bolt that doomed Semele and Ovid also delivered Dionysus, connecting death with divine inspiration and mystic rebirth and suggesting a return to life/Rome for Ovid. Furthermore, it is not only Bacchus to whom the poet assimilates himself. “And when you heard a poet had been struck by lightning (percussum fulmine)” (31), though perhaps hinting at Archilochus’ dithyrambic spirit, moves in the next line to Semele. Ovid implies, I suggest, a rescue from the underworld since Dionysus once performed a katabasis to rescue his mother from Hades (Diod. Sic. 4.25.4). A few lines later Ovid says “fer...opem” (35) and then “huc ades” (43), asking Dionysus to come to Tomis. Epiphany is common in hymns and particularly striking and salvific in a Dionysiac context. The requested epiphany extends to intercession with the emperor, which, in the context of katabasis and rulers, might suggest Bacchus’ intercession in Hades with Persephone on the Bacchic-Orphic gold tablets. Ovid flits, as befits a mystic milieu, between god to initiate. Thus, Tr. 5.3 harnesses elements of Dionysiac mysteries to compose for himself a poetic anabasis and rebirth.