Ovid

            The importance of constellations and astrological references in Ovid’s Fasti and Metamorphoses has been well-documented (Newlands 1995; Gee 2000), but such references in the Ars Amatoria have received relatively little attention.

Still Waters Run Deep: Interpretations of the Metamorphoses' Pools

            The construction of gender within Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a subject of perennial interest, largely because of the characters’ self-determination, and even transformation, of their gender identities. Characters who transform their gender, such as Iphis, Tiresias, Caenis/Caeneus, and Salmacis/Hermaphroditus, provide the clearest look at how gender is constructed (Kamen 2012, Liveley 2003, Pintabone 2002).

At the end of the Metamorphoses, after celebrating others’ transformations, Ovid envisions himself as a typical Greek hero, defeating toothed creatures— in this case, the monster Time (Biebighauser, 2005). While the Greek heroes finally reach resting places of worship, he completes his apotheosis with a post-mortem fusion with Rome (Met. XV, 870-5).

Ovid’s epic Council of the Gods (Met. 1.167-252) is convened by Jupiter to deal with the problem of the wicked Iron Age race of men on earth. The passage draws many subtle parallels between Jupiter and Augustus, and the first simile in the poem (1.200-205) makes the comparison explicit. In his first speech to the council, Jupiter explains that the plebeian demigods –nymphs, Fauns, Satyrs, and Silvanuses—live on the earth and that they are endangered by those Iron Age humans.

Frederick Ahl’s Metaformations argues for pervasive wordplay based on the “anagrammatic rearrangements” of words and subwords (specifically syllables) in Ovid’s

Ovid’s story of Echo and Narcissus consists of parallel narratives based on the illusory power of vocal and visual reflections. The myth was also a popular subject of wall paintings in and near Pompeii, a few of which include a female figure commonly identified as Echo.

Latona arrived in Lycia tired and thirsty, carrying her newborn twins. When the Lycians refused her water, she turned them into frogs (Meta. 6.313-381). While engaged with Ovid’s etiological poetics (Myers, 85-89; Clauss), the myth dramatizes hydraulic politics, a timely issue when Augustus was reforming the law and infrastructure of Rome’s aqueducts (Front. Aq. 9-12, 98-99).

This paper is concerned with the artistic and sexual embodiment of Galatea in Ovid's Metamorphoses (10.243–97) and involves an ancient medical perspective over the myth of Pygmalion. In his work, Bauer (1962) argued that in the Ovidian corpus, infusion with humours or loss of humidity is strongly related to the fluctuations of feminine feelings and emotions (e.g. Galatea's body humidified by love and Echo's petrifaction caused by excessive love).

Ioannis Ziogas has demonstrated the pervasive influence of Hesiod on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Ziogas 2013). Yet, there is one Hesiodic myth that is surprisingly missing from Ovid’s epic, namely the myth of Pandora. This omission is all the more surprising given Ovid’s interest in the literary creation of women, or “womanufacture,” to use Sharrock’s term (1991).