Lucretius and Ovid on Empedoclean Cows and Sheep

Garani, Myrto

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199605408.003.0010

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Am. II 476, where Ovid seems to be imitating Lucretius (on Ovid and Lucretius, see Garani [2013]). The stress on recognition implied by cognita sunt is attractive for reasons that I outline shortly.…”

Section: The State Of the Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

The poetics of anthropogony: men, women, and children in Lucretius, book five

Holmes

2014

Eugesta

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“The Poetics of Anthropogony: Men, Women, and Children in Lucretius, Book Five” analyzes how Lucretius handles a significant problem in Epicurean accounts of the origins of humans and human culture – namely, how a species that, unlike any other, enters the world “in need of every kind of vital support” (indigus omni uitali auxilio) as Lucretius himself famously writes in an argument against a providential ordering of the cosmos, ever managed to survive. The young nurturing earth plays a crucial role in the early survival of the species, but the earth’s aging necessitates another solution. I argue that this takes the form of the early societies that Lucretius describes in a well-known but puzzling excursus at 5.1011-1027. With the rise of human society, fathers come to take on the role of the young earth in protecting children as well as women, while at the same time taking care to protect themselves through a male community. The passage thus responds not only to Epicurean ideas about justice and friendship but also obliquely addresses, through what I term “poetic logic”, questions of infancy, vulnerability, and care that are generated by the first phases of the origin narrative.

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Section: The State Of the Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

The poetics of anthropogony: men, women, and children in Lucretius, book five

Holmes

2014

Eugesta

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“…In this demythologizing process, Seneca adopts a critical stance towards the Ovidian world of mythical transformation, which, as he suggests, is erroneously imbued with wonder and fear. 27 In Seneca promptly dismisses the mythological explanation regarding Scylla, since he is well aware, as he states, that this promontory is not particularly perilous for navigation. 28 Regarding Charybdis, however, he wonders whether, contrary to the legend, this part of the sea is disturbed by only one particular wind or any passing storm.…”

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Seneca’s Etna: the Epicurean principle of multiple explanations, anti-sublimity and the Stoic sage (Ep. 79)1

Garani

2023

dictynna

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“…His familiarity with Empedocles and Lucretius is especially well documented, but the influence of Heraclitus, Plato, and Stoics, among others, has received attention too. Ovid and philosophy : Rusten 1982;McKim 1984McKim -1985Myers 1994: 27-60, 133-66;Hardie 1995;Segal 2001;Hardie 2002: 150-163;Hardie 2009: 136-52;Nelis 2009: 248-52, 261-67;Van Schoor 2011;Garani 2013;Garani 2014;O'Rourke 2014: 20-25;Schiesaro 2014;Moser 2017;Kelly 2019;Volk and Williams 2022. 7. Labate 1984: 124-169;Liebermann 1999;Gibson 2005;Kelly 2019.…”

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confidence: 99%

Of Philosophers, Crowns, and Boundary Stones: Revisiting Cipus in Metamorphoses 15

Marks

2023

dictynna

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Among the exempla Valerius Maximus uses to illustrate the virtue of pietas erga patriam, "devotion to one's country", is a quasi-historical figure of the Republic named Genucius Cipus, who grows horns on his head, which portend that he will be king if he enters Rome (5.6.3). The story, as Valerius tells it, has a simple narrative arc, moving directly from problem to resolution, and offers a straightforward moral message : horns appear on Cipus' head when he is leaving Rome ; they indicate that he will be king if he returns to the city ; to avoid that outcome, he goes into self-imposed exile ; the problem is solved, and Cipus is an example of pietas for the ages. Ovid in his Metamorphoses provides our other major version of this story (15.565-621), which is sometimes read as an illustration of Cipus' pious, anti-monarchical devotion to the Republic as well. 1 That reading is hard to maintain, however, since the many plot twists and turns of this version, its ambiguities of language and symbolism, and the seemingly illogical and self-contradictory actions of its characters, all confound a straightforward moralizing interpretation of the story. 2 This is not to say that the moral impulse of Ovid's Cipus comes under great suspicion - he appears to be committed to not being king as Valerius' Cipus is - but, rather, that it is unclear whether he avoids kingship at all or has a real choice in the matter ; indeed, there is much in the episode to suggest that, in the end, monarchy is inescapable and is even realized by Cipus himself, albeit in a different form. Ovid's version destabilizes, therefore, two "truths" on which Cipus' exemplarity in Valerius' version is based, that he avoided kingship (because he may not have) and that he made a moral choice, and a morally praiseworthy one at that (because the outcome may have been out of his control). 3 2 Some years ago, I offered an interpretation of this sort, identifying the unavoidability of kingship in Rome rather than Cipus' moral choice as the central message of Ovid's tale. 4 I argued that the poet uses the preceding story of the hasta Romuli, "Romulus'

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Lucretius and Ovid on Empedoclean Cows and Sheep

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

The poetics of anthropogony: men, women, and children in Lucretius, book five

The poetics of anthropogony: men, women, and children in Lucretius, book five

Seneca’s Etna: the Epicurean principle of multiple explanations, anti-sublimity and the Stoic sage (Ep. 79)1

Of Philosophers, Crowns, and Boundary Stones: Revisiting Cipus in Metamorphoses 15

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