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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 April 2014
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). 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).
1 Barchiesi, A., ‘Allusion and society: Ovid the Censor’, AJAH 13 (1997), 96–105Google Scholar = Speaking Volumes (London, 2001), 155–9.Google ScholarPubMed
2 In the Valla edition (vol. 1; Rome, 2005), Barchiesi parts company with Tarrant's OCT (Oxford, 2004) in reading temptata (Bern, N a.c.?, L) not temptanda (the majority of the old MSS), but as had already been noted in the critical appendix of the commentary by A.G. Lee (Cambridge, 1953), it is not a plausible claim to make that everything has been attempted previously (prius).
3 This is the reading of the oldest manuscripts (Bern HMNBGL); others have uulnus, but that is apparently drawn from immedicabile uulnus at 10.189. Bömer argues that corpus has the sense ‘flesh’ or ‘organ’, but neither seems straightforward, so there is a case for membrum, as Burman saw in reporting it from the Vatican excerpta; and we might also consider cancer (cf. 2.825). Goold prints curae in the Loeb.
4 The historical problems involved in the date of the conspiracy, the name and identity of the ringleader are clearly set out by Barrett, A.A., Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome (New Haven, CT, 2002), 318–19Google Scholar (when he begins by writing ‘Gaius’ for ‘Gnaeus’, it is apparently just a slip). Dio sets it amidst the events of a.d. 4. The historicity of the conspiracy itself is not something with which this note will be concerned: both Dio and Seneca, Clem. 1.9.3–12 use Cinna as a rhetorical peg on which to hang their moral and political reflections.
5 On the topic in general, see Wickkiser, B.L., ‘Augustus, Apollo, and an ailing Rome: images of Augustus as a healer of State’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 12 (Brussels, 2005), 267–89Google Scholar; she draws attention among other passages to Tiberius’ description of Augustus as an ἰατρὸς ἀγαθός in his funeral oration, as reported at Dio 56.39.2, but concentrates on attributions of the motif to divine figures for Augustus, as in Met. 1 (discussed on pp. 285–6). Dio has Augustus using the trope himself in his speech to the unmarried knights at 56.6.1 οἱ ἰατροὶ συχνοὺς καὶ καίοντες καὶ τέμνοντες … θεραπεύουσιν. On the development of the image in Greek political writing, see Brock, R., Greek Political Imagery from Homer to Aristotle (London, 2013)Google Scholar, ch. 5 ‘The body politic’, noting in particular Agamemnon's intention to apply the knife or cautery to cure any ills that have arisen in Argos in his absence (Aesch. Ag. 848–50).
6 Or is the sense ‘without its being utterly destroyed’, as with ut non in Latin?
7 His text speaks of L. Cinna (1.9.2), but it was rather Lucius’ half-brother Gnaeus who was a grandson of Pompey (1.9.3). However, Seneca's dating (cum annum quadragensimum transisset et in Gallia moraretur, 1.9.2) is internally consistent in placing the event in Augustus’ forties, when Gn. Cinna might still be described as adulescens (1.9.3); and Augustus was in Gaul from 16 to 13. Thus Adler, M., in his detailed comparison of the two texts, ‘Die Verschwörung des Cn. Cornelius Cinna bei Seneca und Cassius Dio’, ZÖstG 60 (1909), 193–208Google Scholar, and recently Adler, E., ‘Cassius Dio's Livia and the conspiracy of Cinna Magnus’, GRBS 51 (2011), 133–54Google Scholar, at 135–6.
8 ‘Do what doctors do: when the usual remedies are proving ineffective, they try the opposite.’
9 The others come later in Book 1, where Apollo foresees Daphne standing, as laurel, outside the gates of the princeps (1.562–3), and at the very end of the text, when Ovid comes down to his own day (15.746–870).
10 I do not include verses 204–6 here because they do not affect the point at issue and in any case I regard them as an interpolation, demonstrated by the incompatibility of 206 with 207–8, and confirmed by the absence of the lines in some old MSS.
11 F. Bömer (Heidelberg, 1969), ad loc. See also Barchiesi (Rome, 2005), ad loc.
12 On Cicero's use of the motif, see Wiseman, T.P., ‘Cicero and the body politic’, Politica Antica 2 (2012), 133–40Google Scholar.
13 Braund, S., Seneca, De Clementia: Edited with Translation and Commentary (Oxford, 2009).Google Scholar
14 So Miller, F., A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford, 1964), 78–9Google Scholar, and Swan, P.M., The Augustan Succession: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History, Books 55–56 (New York, 2004)Google Scholar, 148 (where he summarizes the views of other scholars). M. Adler (n. 7) makes a good case for indirect dependence by examining material shared by Dio's account with sections other than Clem. 1.9 (which Dio ignores on the dating). It is perhaps possible that Seneca himself has taken such material from the source, if that contained a detailed disquisition on clemency; more likely, though, is that Seneca's treatise influenced a rhetorical working up of Livia's speech.
15 Notably M. Adler (n. 7) and Manuwald, B., Cassius Dio und Augustus (Wiesbaden, 1979), 124–6.Google Scholar
16 Dio tells us a number of anecdotes about Livia, including in the obituary notice at 58.2.1–6 others that have a curious relationship with Ovid: see again Barchiesi, A., ‘Women on top: Livia and Andromache’, in Gibson, R. et al. (edd.), The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 2006), 96–120Google Scholar, at 117.
17 Glenn Lacki suggests to me that Augustus would have said that his inclination was to punish those guilty of conspiracy, but that Livia's appeal to clemency had persuaded him to change his mind. Christopher Mallan compares Livia's intercession for Plancina, mentioned at SCPP 113 and in the report of Tiberius's speech at Tac. Ann. 3.17.1 (matris preces obtendens).
18 One possibility, raised by M. Adler (n. 7), 195, is the elder Seneca (there are Stoic elements in the description of the mind's physical reaction to emotion at e.g. Dio 55.17.2; and Ovid may have known his works as he knew Ovid's [cf. Cont. 2.2.8–12 and 7.1.27]). He wrote history and gave personal detail about the death of Tiberius (Suet. Tib. 73), and his rhetorical inclinations might well have made for an extended version of Livia's advice; obviously the writing that described the death of Tiberius is too late for Ovid, but the author probably extended the text as years passed: note the phrasing of Seneca filius fr. 98 Haase: eius historias ab initio bellorum ciuilium … paene usque ad mortis suae diem. Augustus’ own De vita sua is a less likely source, given Suetonius’ precise assertion that they went Cantabrico tenus bello nec ultra (85.1).
19 This seems to imply that the library was itself sanctified space; it is mentioned as a meeting place also at POxy. 2435.32. Cf. also SCPP 1 in Palatio in porticu quae est ad Apollinis; Tabula Hebana 1 has the same words followed by in eo templo in quo senatus haberi solet; and for a later meeting in the temple itself Dio 58.9.3. The senatorial cast of Ovid's council is explored more fully by Barchiesi, A., in his ‘Senatus consultum de Lycaone: concili degli dei e immaginazione politica nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio’, MD 61 (2009), 117–45Google Scholar, at 126–35: besides aspects of procedure and location he brings out the senatorial tone of the rhetoric, not least the surgical imagery.
20 Bömer (Heidelberg, 1969), and W.S. Anderson (Norman, OK, 1997), ad loc.
21 Barchiesi (Rome, 2005), ad loc.
22 Chrisopher Mallan points out, however, that Dio repeatedly draws attention to the sword as the source of imperial power and wealth, e.g. at 75.6.2a, 78.10.4.
23 This note was kindly read by Alessandro Barchiesi, Glenn Lacki, Christopher Mallan and an anonymous referee for CQ: I am grateful to all for their encouragement and advice.
