Alison Sharrock (University of Manchester)
The goal of this paper is to draw out the interpenetration of the human and vegetable worlds as created in Ovid’s epic poem, to explore not only how an ancient audience might have been in a position to visualise damage to plants in terms of human suffering, but also how a modern reading of an ancient poem may encapsulate contemporary concerns beyond the literal imaginative possibilities of Ovid and his first readers, in this case with regard to the effects of climate change. The paper builds on the linguistic interactions in Ovidian descriptions of trees and humans, established for example in Gowers 2005 and Sharrock 2020. Where previous studies have concentrated on the synchronicity between human to tree, this paper seeks to push further the boundary-busting potential of metamorphosis by considering also Ovid’s presentation of trees that are ‘just trees’. It will begin, however, with a brief account of some of those beings who hold human and vegetable identities in tension, such as Daphne, Myrrha, Lotis and Dryope, in order to draw attention to forms of suffering undergone by women-trees. Erysichthon’s destruction of Ceres’ sacred grove, the mobile wood that attends to Orpheus, and the burning of Aeneas’ ships will serve as intermediaries along the spectrum of human and vegetable identity, taking us to the burnt tree.
Ovid’s account of what happens when the world is no longer protected from the full force of the sun, source of its light and power but also agent of destruction, reads today like a premonition of our current and all-too-imminent future situation, with wildfires burning out of control, destructive droughts, and large-scale changes to the topography of the world. The description of this sudden global warming draws on all the Ovidian tricks of linguistic metamorphosis between human and vegetable, but perhaps equally striking is the simple description of a single tree, cum frondibus uritur arbor (‘with its leaves a tree burns’, Met. 2.212). The singularity and simplicity of this tree stands in the midst of complex metaphorical presentation: grey-haired fields (pabula canescunt); rising sap, blood vessels/bone marrow, and the life-force in veins of the earth (sucis…ademptis, 2.211); and especially the obvious but nonetheless powerful personification of Tellus as a fertile mother (2.285-9). That image uses the violence of ploughing (‘of legitimate children’, we might say) to express the suffering of the world worn out by excessive childbearing. Such images will be realised later in the pain of Myrrha’s dendrological parturition. Her story alludes also to violent attack on trees such as that perpetrated by Erysichthon. Many plants can survive being chopped down and some benefit from appropriate pruning, but careless hacking away or violent uprooting, as the centaurs employ to crush Caeneus (12.510-16), will destroy even the most resilient of perennials.
Is such personification of constituent elements in the natural world an unfortunate sign of an anthropocentric mentality which fails to acknowledge the identity proper to the vegetable world? Probably, but it is a valuable first step towards appreciating the need for conservation