Ovid in writing Amores 3.11.38–9 showed awareness of Metellus Macedonicus’ speech of 131, which proposed compulsory marriage in order to stimulate the birth rate and which was read to the senate and published at large by Augustus (Suet. Aug. 89.2).Footnote 1 I wish to suggest that when he wrote Book 1 of the Metamorphoses Ovid was evoking another political debate in which Augustus was involved. Jupiter announces to the gods that in the end radical surgery is needed when the wickedness of mankind becomes incurable (Met. 1.187–91):
Now wherever Nereus surrounds the globe with the sound of the sea I need to destroy the human race: I swear by the rivers of the underworld flowing below the earth in the Stygian grove. Everything must be tried first, but the incurable body must be cut out with the sword, lest the undamaged part be infected.
Cassius Dio has in Book 55 of his Roman History a long and implausibly detailed account of a private discussion between Augustus and Livia in which she counsels him on how to deal with the conspiracies that are making him sleepless with anxiety (55.14.1–22.2: the plot of Gnaeus Cornelius CinnaFootnote 4 is the immediate issue). Livia's advice makes much use of medical imagery,Footnote 5 especially in chapter 17, e.g. section 1:
ἢ οὐχ ὁρᾶις ὅτι καὶ οἱ ἰατροὶ τὰς μὲν τομὰς καὶ τὰς καύσεις σπανιώτατά τισι προσφέρουσιν, ἵνα μὴ ἐξαγριαίνωσιν αὐτῶν τὰ νοσήματα, τοῖς δὲ αἰονήμασι καὶ τοῖς ἠπίοις φαρμάκοις τὰ πλείω μαλθάσσοντες θεραπεύουσι;
Are you not aware that doctors very rarely use surgery or cautery on people for fear that they worsen their afflictions, but treat them by alleviating most maladies with poultices and mild drugs?
and 20.3:
ἂν δὲ δὴ νοσήσηι τι, θεραπεύειν τε τρόπον τινὰ αὐτὸ καὶ ἐπανορθοῦν, ἵνα μὴ παντελῶς φθαρῆι.
And if there is some sickness [i.e. among the citizen body], <one must> cure it in some way and correct it, so that there is notFootnote 6 utter destruction.
A shorter account of the discussion is given by Seneca in De clementia.Footnote 7 His Livia too uses the medical profession as a model, though to different effect (1.9.6): ‘Fac quod medici solent, qui, ubi usitata remedia non procedunt, temptant contraria.’ Footnote 8 The expression here is akin to Ovid's cuncta prius temptanda; but most strikingly similar to the rest of Met. 1.190–1 is the phrasing attributed to Livia at Dio 55.18.1–2:
καὶ οὐ λέγω τοῦτο ὅτι δεῖ πάντων ἁπλῶς τῶν ἀδικούντων φείδεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τὸν μὲν ἴτην καὶ πολυπράγμονα καὶ κακοήθη καὶ κακόβουλον καὶ ἀνηκέστωι τινὶ καὶ διαρκεῖ πονηρίαι συνόντα ἐκκόπτειν ὥσπερ που καὶ τὰ πάνυ ἀνίατα μέρη τῶν σωμάτων, τῶν δὲ δὴ ἄλλων ὅσοι τι νεότητι ἢ ἀμαθίαι ἢ ἀγνοίαι ἢ καὶ ἑτέραι τινὶ συντυχίαι οἰ μὲν ἑκόντες οἱ δὲ καὶ ἄκοντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν, τοὺς μὲν λόγοις νουθετεῖν, τοὺς δὲ ἀπειλαῖς σωφρονίζειν, τοὺς δὲ καὶ ἕτερον τινα τρόπον μετρίως πως μεταχειρίζεσθαι.
I do not mean that you must forgive absolutely all wrongdoers, but that it is the reckless man, the one who interferes in everything, the nasty, the wicked, the man who involves himself in some desperate [literally incurable] and persistent act of criminality, it is this sort of man whom you must eradicate [literally cut out], as one does, I suppose, also with totally incurable parts of the body; and as for the rest, anyone who goes wrong through youth or ignorance or folly or some other circumstance, whether willingly or not, to some of them you should give words of advice, some you should set on the right path with threats, and others you should deal with in some other, quite moderate way.
What are we to make of this? In the first place, I think we can rule out coincidence. The relevant passage of Met. 1 is one of only three in the poem in which there is reference to Augustus and contemporary Rome:Footnote 9 Olympus is daringly called the Palatine of heaven (1.175–6) and the response of the gods to Jupiter's announcement of the plot to kill him is compared to the uproar amongst men when there is a conspiracy to spill Caesar's blood (1.199–203):
They all shouted out and with burning passion demanded the man who had dared acts like this: just so, when an impious band raged to drown the name of Rome with Caesar's blood, the human race was struck by sudden fear of such disaster and the whole world shuddered.
The general situations, consideration of the best response to a murderous conspiracy, are analogous, and Ovid's reader is forced by the context to think of plots against Augustus. BömerFootnote 11 in his commentary cites a number of Ciceronian passages as loci similes, but there is not equal closeness either of context or of expression in Pro Sestio 135, De officiis 3.32, or even Philippics 8.15 (in which Cicero, like Jupiter in Ovid, makes an explicit analogy between surgery on the body and on the body politic):Footnote 12
Ego nolo quemquam ciuem committere ut morte multandus sit; tu, etiam si commiserit, conseruandum putas. in corpore si quid eius modi est quod reliquo corpori noceat, id uri secarique patimur ut membrum aliquod potius quam totum corpus intereat. sic in rei publicae corpore, ut totum saluum sit, quicquid est pestiferum amputetur.
I do not wish any citizen to act in such a way that he needs to suffer capital punishment; you think he should be saved, even if he has acted so. If there is something in a body which would cause harm to the rest, we let it be cauterized or cut so that a limb perishes rather than the whole body. So in the body of the state, let whatever is diseased be amputated in order that the whole may be saved.
What stories can we put together to explain the shared phrasing then? In her commentary on the De clementia Footnote 13 Braund points out that the similarities between Seneca and Dio show that either Dio depends on SenecaFootnote 14 or there was a common model. But now we need to account for Ovid's text, published in a.d. 8; given that Ovid has no obvious relevance to Livia's advice, it is most unlikely to be the source of the imagery and phrasing. The similarity of Ovid's diction and Dio's reveals that they share a source; this effectively rules out the possibility that Dio's material comes to him entirely through Seneca, who lacks the relevant phrasing, and shows that the original source shared by Seneca and Dio must have been an early one, known already to Ovid. Braund (259–60) follows othersFootnote 15 in arguing that DioFootnote 16 is likely to be drawing on a rhetorical tradition, and that seems plausible in itself; but can such a tradition have arisen already by a.d. 8? A suasoria that puts words into the mouths of living people is surprising, and all the more so when the speaker is a woman and the audience is her husband receiving her advice. In any case, how did the story of the pardoning of Cinna reach public attention? Seneca uses it as a reliable fact to substantiate his case: some substance is needed to give the story authority. The case for clemency, as claimed in these texts, is the effect it will have on others; for Livia's advice to work, the indulgence of Augustus has to be made public. He might have told friends a vivid and memorable story about taking Livia's advice, a story that would need retailing to other acquaintances and so have been built into popular perception. But it is hard to think that the closeness of phrasing can be due to a widespread rumour, subsequently codified by a declaimer: the date of the Metamorphoses again seems to rule this out. Most likely, I suggest, is some fairly formal publication of the story, whether a speech of AugustusFootnote 17 (or Cinna) in the senate, or a letter widely circulated, or an account given to a curious annalist.Footnote 18
One may also consider what Ovid does with the allusion. In the first place, the way in which he describes the council of the gods encourages us to think that he alludes to a speech by Augustus in the senate. The gods are summoned to meet on ‘the Palatine of heaven’, in a marmoreus recessus (176–7): according to Suetonius (Aug. 29.3Footnote 19) Augustus held meetings of the senate on the Palatine (in the library; or perhaps in the temple of Apollo, celebrated for its marble: Ov. Tr. 3.1.60–1, Prop. 2.31.9, Verg. Aen. 8.720). Jupiter gives the judgement of the meeting (without any other speaker intervening) in terms strongly reminiscent of senatorial procedure: sic stat sententia (243). Barchiesi comments on this (ad loc.): ‘Sembra quasi di leggere una profezia epica della rappresentazione che Tacito fa del senato sotto i Cesari.’ This is particularly true of the following verses, in which the reception of the speech is described (Met. 1.244–5):
Some approve the words of Jupiter out loud and goad him on in his ranting, others play their part with assent.
The antithetical pair pars … alii … does not introduce opposition, but simply two forms of assent: some goad the ruler on in his anger, others play their part with acquiescence.
Secondly, the use of ensis in Met. 1.190 may pick up on language in Ovid's model. As the commentators note,Footnote 20 the word is not normally used for a surgical knife, and here it imports a sense of indiscriminate violence.Footnote 21 But it also provides us with another detail shared by Livia's speech in Dio (55.21.2):Footnote 22
οὐ πάντα τοι τὸ ξίφος διαπράττεται (μέγα γὰρ ἦν ἂν ἀγαθόν, εἰ σωφρονίζειν τέ τινας καὶ πείθειν ἢ καὶ καταναγκάζειν φιλεῖν τινὰ ἀληθῶς ἐδύνατο), ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν σῶμά τινος φθείρειεν ἄν, τὰς δὲ δὴ τῶν ἄλλων ψυχὰς ἀλλοτριώσειεν.
It is not everything that the sword can achieve (for it would be a great advantage if it could really make people see sense, and persuade them, or actually compel them, to like someone), but it would destroy the body of one man while alienating the minds of others.
Finally, we may contrast the use to which the imagery is put. Livia uses it, in both Seneca and Dio, to argue for clemency; but Jupiter, while acknowledging the importance of trying alternatives, has shown no clemency to Lycaon, the chief example of wickedness and conspiracy by his account (197–8, 209–43); and he will show no clemency to the rest of humanity when his flood destroys all bar Deucalion and Pyrrha. Of course, Ovid is describing the actions of Jupiter, and the Augustan reader may see the allusion as praising Caesar through the contrast. But Ovid has also forced the analogy between the two figures on the reader, and the evocation of the apparently familiar advice may be intended to undermine the very claim to clemency that the princeps has paraded.Footnote 23
