Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Having major computer problems, will just post this for discussion by others and hope I can add content tomorrow.

In Book 12 Achilles gets the shaft. Literally, as Paris shoots him with an arrow, and figuratively, because he dies so unheroically. Later, in Book 13, after blood has been spilt in an argument over his shield, his ghost resurfaces to demand the death of Priam's daughter Polyxena. The Trojans have been whipped, Hector slain, and Priam humiliated. But Achilles, even dead, is not satisfied.

The Greeks do not acquit themselves very admirably in Ovid's vision. Is this because of the Roman belief that they were descended from the Trojans? Is this Ovid's way of defending the Trojans, by depicting the Greeks as bloodthirsty animals?

Patrice wrote: "Aphrodite is sex but Venus is sex + motherhood, She was the mother of Aeneas..."

Sex leads directly to motherhood, doesn't it? :) There were no contraceptive pills back then. Even the goddess of childbirth, Lucina, could only delay, but not prevent, the birth of Hercules.

Juno wouldn't be so enraged if her rivals didn't give birth to children, proofs of her humiliation.

Venus was the mother of Aeneas alright, but didn't raise him herself. He saw her mother only a few times in his life. At least that's the impression I got from Aeneid.

Thomas wrote: " Later, in Book 13, after blood has been spilt in an argument over his shield, his ghost resurfaces to demand the death of Priam's daughter Polyxena. "

Euripides also wrote about Achilles' demanding Polyxena as sacrifice in The Trojan Women and Hecuba. The Trojan War was bloody, even from a Greek perspective.

Patrice wrote: "Do you really think that Juno wouldn't be enraged if no child resulted? I never thought that the child was the issue, from what I can remember...."

Juno's soliloquy in the myth of Semele seems to hint at it. The child was one of the reasons Semele had to die, the other was her beauty.

If a mortal woman (Niobe) can defy and enrage a goddess because of her mortal children, how much more one with an immortal child?

Ovid makes it clear that Ajax was just as stupid as Odysseus was deceitful. Can it be that the loyalty of our author rested with the Trojans? I'm rather inclined to believe that he had little sympathy for both warring parties. Love rather than war (almost in the spirit of the 60's) is Ovid's subject, and what did these warriors know about love? Achilles was brutish enough to demand the killing of a another virgin even after he died.

The gods are capricious, but the kings and heroes may be even worse. I am beginning to suspect that the behaviour of the high and mighty will not improve as we come closer to Ovid's own days. Can it be that this was his coded message? Do not expect wisdom, not even much dignity from gods nor kings? In that case Augustus had a good reason after all to send the writer of these irreverent lines into exile.

Wendel wrote: "Ovid makes it clear that Ajax was just as stupid as Odysseus was deceitful. Can it be that the loyalty of our author rested with the Trojans? I'm rather inclined to believe that he had little sympa..."

The scenes of violence -- the ones with Perseus or the Lapiths and the Centaurs -- are so exaggerated that I have to think that Ovid meant them to be parody. And I wonder with you how much respect he really had for "heroes" of any stripe.

Does anyone know how Ovid's contemporaries received this poem? Was it understood to be at all humorous, or was it completely serious?

Thomas wrote: "...Was it understood to be at all humorous, or was it completely serious?..."

I don't know what the scholars say, but to my imagination, it seems impossible that Ovid's Metamorphoses was viewed as completely serious, rather like Gulliver's Travels being viewed as completely serious in another day and time, yet sometimes perhaps most serious where seemingly least somberly written.

Thomas wrote: "Does anyone know how Ovid's contemporaries received this poem? Was it understood to be at all humorous, or was it completely serious?"

I don't know, Thomas. But this is from Katharina Volk's recent study on Ovid's life and work (Ovid):
"There was a general understanding that myth was fictional and that especially its often scandalous stories about the gods had no claim to theological truth. A common way of pinpointing the fictionality of myth was to refer to mythological tales as the “lies of poets,” a formulation of which Ovid himself is fond. ... However, often a myth is (also) told for an ulterior purpose or to make a specific point. ... Throughout ancient literature, poets or literary characters employ mythological stories as exempla, effecting a comparison between the tale and the present moment. The myth is either used simply to illustrate or enhance the “real” situation or otherwise to persuade a character or the reader of a specific truth or the desirability of a certain course of action. ... Myth thus emerges as a kind of poetic language, an idiom with which Greek and Roman poets were intimately familiar and which they were adept at employing in a number of different pragmatic situations." (50-51).

Somehow I do not find this particularly helpful. Myths may have been employed both for amusement and in allegories, but how did Ovid use them, and how was he different in this respect from other Roman poets? From other sources I get the impression that the classic pantheon had not much emotional impact on Rome in the first century bc. Intellectual circles were more interested in Greek philosophy, while the common man felt more connected to the traditional Roman spirits, exemplified by the Lares and Penates. So it seems that Ovid's more intellectual readers would not take his myths very seriously, though the alternative is not necessarily 'humorous'.