Retiring Apollo: Ovid on the politics and poetics of self-sufficiency

Abstract

It has long been recognized that Cupid's intervention in Ovid's poetic project in Amores 1.1 functions as a humorous reworking of the cliché of the would-be epic poet diverted by a god to 'lighter' genres. What has received less attention is the question of whether it is particularly significant that a role which is usually played by Apollo, the patron god of poetry, is here taken over by Cupid. It is my contention that the displacement of Apollo by Cupid in Amores 1.1 forms part of a larger Ovidian project of sidelining the god in order for the poet to assert his own greatness and independence more loudly than ever. In addition to the Cupid encounter, Ovid's various disavowals of divine inspiration add flesh to the bones of the picture of his poetic independence, and have been the focus of some scholarship already, the proem to the Ars Amatoria being the most obvious and most fertile ground for such discussions. 1 The quarrel between Cupid and Apollo in Metamorphoses 1 has also been seen as a competition between genres, a meta-poetic struggle which playfully asserts the superiority of the elegiac and erotic over the epic within a poem which is, at least superficially, itself an epic. Apollo's subsequent unsuccessful attempt to rape Daphne displays him as a failed lover (and failed elegiac poet?) as well as a failed promoter of epic. 2 What I want to do here is collect together the various appearances of Apollo in Ovid's love poetry, 3 as well as some instances when we might have expected him to appear, but he does not. I believe that it is possible to see these not just as a string of unconnected jokes at the god's expense, but as a conspiracy of one against Apollo, and a conspiracy with both poetic and political ramifications. The importance of Apollo to the Augustan regime is a familiar subject: the identification between Octavian/Augustus and the god, which began in the forties .., 4

Ille ego Romanus vates: a autoridade poética do relegatus nos Tristia e Epistulae ex Ponto, de Ovídio

“…Para a figura de Apolo em Met, ver, i.a. Nicoll (1980), Armstrong (2004) e Hasegawa (2018b). 148 Cf.…”

“… Amann (2006, 225).159 Hardie (2015, 283).160 Ibid. 161 Sobre isto, verArmstrong (2004). Pode-se pensar que também nas Met haveria episódios como estes, por exemplo, o de Dafne e Apolo, em 1.452-567.162 Cf.…”

Os preceitos ovidianos

“…Mas não é apenas por conta de Asclépio que a relação de Apolo com a medicina é apontada. Segundo R. Armstrong (2004), tal associação entre o Apolo e a medicina era recorrente na sociedade da Roma antiga:…”