OVID IN CHRISTIAN CULTURE

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 b.c.–a.d. 17), one of the most gifted of Roman poets, exercised an influence on Christian and secular poetry in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance second only to that of Vergil. Within a few years of his death his Metamorphoses became the standard work of reference for Greek and Roman mythology and legend, a position it has never lost. For painters, poets, and preachers, it became the greatest single source of myth, although the Heroides and Fasti were much used also. Similarly, Ovid's treatment of love is the most significant single literary formulation of erotic experience in the Latin tradition. When Augustine (Conf. 3.1) says, "I was not yet in love, but in love with loving" (nondum amabam sed amare amabam ), he uses the word "love" (amare ) with just that shade of meaning given it by Ovid. In the tradition before Ovid, love was usually treated as an aberration, madness, or sickness (furor, uesania, morbus, etc.) affecting the individual lover. Ovid extended and deepened this conception to emphasize his view that love is essentially a mutual experience between two persons who are equally involved. His Pyramus and Thisbe, Ceyx and Halcyone, Philemon and Baucis, and many others become typical examples for the Latin tradition after him. One always thinks of these lovers in pairs, whereas the typical lover of Greek epigram, the new comedy, or earlier Latin elegy is usually thought of by himself.

In technical matters, such as metrics, prosody, and poetic diction, Ovid's usage became the classical standard. Later writers admired Vergil but wrote in the language of Ovid. Ovid's influence became so dominant in the 12th and 13th centuries, especially as the patron of the wandering scholars, that the great medievalist L. Traube called this period the Aetas Ovidiana in Latin poetry. In the Middle Ages Ovid was widely interpreted in an allegorical manner and so ingeniously construed as to be found an authority on moral conduct. His works were an important source of the tradition of courtly love. E. K. Rand says that Chaucer owed to Ovid "a greater debt than to any other poet, old or new." He was much used by Dante and Boccaccio and had a great vogue in Neo-Latin poetry in general.

Poets tend like other craftsmen to learn their trade from earlier masters; in this sense Ovid has been one of the great masters, not only in the Latin tradition, but in modern European languages also. The English authors Dryden, Pope, and Milton, among many others, were his pupils. The Romantic revolt in poetry may be understood as a rebellion against the too dominant and restrictive influence of those standards of classicism that Ovid seems best to represent.

Bibliography: m. schanz, c. hosius, and g. krÜger, Geschichte der römischen Literatur 4 v. in 5 (Munich 1914–35) 2:206–264. e. k. rand, Ovid and His Influence (Boston 1925). r. r. bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, Eng. 1954). h. f. frÄnkel, Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (Berkeley 1945). f. munari, Ovid im Mittelalter (Zürich 1960). Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters,v.1–3, indexes s.v. Ovidius. l. k. born, "O. and Allegory," Speculum 9 (1934) 362–379. j. seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, tr. b. f. sessions (New York 1953).

[m. p. cunningham]