LIT 231
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Metamorphoses, Books 14-15

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. How does Ovid's story of Aeneas differ from Virgil's?  Why does Ovid emphasize the episodes (and digressions) that he does (Galatea and Polyphemus, Scylla and Glaucus, the Sibyl, Achaemenides and Macareus, the war between the Latins and the Trojans)?  What impressions do you get of Polyphemus, Scylla, Circe, the dead, the Latins, and Aeneas?  How are those impressions like or unlike the impressions you get of the same characters in the Aeneid?  Why doesn't Ovid, like Virgil, just tell the story in a more straightforward manner?  What is the focus of the story in Ovid's version?  How does that focus differ from Virgil's?
2. What do you make of the long sermon of Pythagoras in Book XV?  Is it self-parody by Ovid (who, like Pythagoras, was an exile interested in change), or does Pythagoras voice Ovid's own philosophical beliefs?  If the latter, what are those beliefs?  How would Ovid be situating himself in the Roman debate over Hellenism from the second century B.C. (as described in Gruen's Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy)?
3. As he relates legends of the early history of Rome, what does Ovid seem to value in Roman culture?  Ovid focuses on a number of unlikely heroes (Vertumnus, Myscelus, Hippolytus, Cipus), as well as on other more conventional figures (Romulus, Numa, Caesar).  Which stories are more interesting or more memorable?  What do we learn about Ovid's values from the heroes he chooses to immortalize?  What does the story of Aesculapius tell us about what Ovid admires in his own people?  Does he value the same things in his people that Virgil does?