II PATERNITY AND TRUTH

At the beginning of Ovid's narrative, Phaethon plans his journey as a means of finding out whether he is actually the progeny of Sol (1.773–9):Footnote ²

‘Fert animus’, harking back to the poem's opening line, ‘in nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas/ corpora’ (‘my mind leads me to tell of bodies changed into new forms’), hints at the metapoetic dimensions of the story,Footnote ³ which are also suggested by the comparable treatment of the Daedalus myth in the Ars Footnote ⁴ and further strengthened by the contiguity between Sol and Apollo.Footnote ⁵ But Phaethon's ascent to the sky in search of the truth follows in the footsteps of a distinguished series of thinkers and philosophers who, metaphorically or otherwise, had embarked on the quest for extra-terrestrial knowledge.Footnote ⁶ Prominent among them is Pythagoras, who at Met. 15.63 ‘approached the gods with his mind’ (‘mente deos adiit’Footnote ⁷), but ‘concipit aethera mente’ (which reappears at 2.76–7 ‘concipias animo’) arguably evokes the most recent and most daring of such attempts at superhuman knowledge: Epicurus' flight of mind in search of the ultimate truths about the universe as described in the first book of DRN (1.72–7):

‘Concipit aethera mente’ recalls a similar, striking metaphor in DRN 3.15, where Lucretius extols ‘the philosophy to which Epicurus’ superhuman intellect gave birth' (‘divina mente coorta’),Footnote ⁸ while Cic., fin. 2.102 also employs ‘mente peragrare’ in connection with Epicurus, whose epistemology assigns considerable importance to ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας (‘apprehension by intellect’).Footnote ⁹ We soon realize that the intertextual connection between this part of the Metamorphoses and Lucretius transcends this initial point of contact. In fact my contention is that Phaethon's journey towards the sky should be comprehensively read as a probing comment on Epicurus' metaphoric flight, and by extension on Lucretius' poetic and philosophical project.Footnote ¹⁰

A couple of initial clues already set the tone. Phaethon is introduced as ‘magna loquentem’ (1.751), a direct take on Lucretius' ‘magnanimum Phaethonta’ (5.400 ‘ambitious Phaethon’), but, as we will see, not without an interesting spin. A few lines later the youth doubts whether he is ‘caelesti stirpe creatus’ (1.760), a turn of phrase which echoes Lucretius' praise of Empedocles, a thinker so extraordinary ‘that he seems hardly to be born of mortal stock’ (1.733 ‘ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus’).Footnote ¹¹ Both contexts deal with the superhuman, indeed divine nature of exceptional philosophers, to which a long tradition (witness Plato) connects the power to fly with their own minds.Footnote ¹² While Empedocles, the author of ‘illustrious discoveries’ (1.732 ‘praeclara reperta’) is endowed with a ‘divine mind’ (1.731 ‘divini pectoris’), Epicurus is an outright god — ‘deus ille fuit, deus’ (5.8) — who has been able to understand the one form of majesty that really matters, (5.7 ‘maiestas … rerum’), and thus transports mankind out of darkness into bright light (3.2 ‘inlustrans commoda vitae’ ‘illuminating the blessings of life’; 5.12 ‘in tam tranquillo et tam clara luce locavit’ ‘settled [life] in such a calm and in light so clear’).Footnote ¹³ Lucretius plans to trace Epicurus' steps (3.3–4 ‘inque tuis nunc/ ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis’ ‘and now on the marks you have left I plant my own footsteps firm'; 5.55 ‘ingressus vestigia’ ‘his steps I trace’) in search of fatherly instruction (9–10 ‘patria …/ praecepta’), Phaethon actually to visit his father's abode (1.779 ‘patrios ortus’), in order to find out for himself the ‘true signs of his father’ (1.764 ‘veri … signa parentis’).

Both journeys are in different ways highly ambitious,Footnote ¹⁴ and — to different degrees — redolent of the Giants' hubristic challenge to the skies (Phaethon's journey is not an hubristic act in itself, but it eventually turns into one).Footnote ¹⁵ The parallel between Epicurus' attack on heaven and the Gigantomachy was pointed out long ago by Bignone,Footnote ¹⁶ who also suggested a comparison with a passage of Plato's Sophist (246 a–b) where a contrast is drawn between idealists and materialists (though not necessarily of the atomistic variety), and the latter are said to be bent on ‘bringing down to earth everything from the sky and the non-visible’. Phaethon, also, looks up too closely at his divine father (contrast the pious looking up of his mother at 1.767), and cannot stare at him directly because of an excess of light (2.21–3).Footnote ¹⁷ He finally succeeds, not unlike Epicurus, the first mortal man capable of facing religion, which showed its caput from the ‘regions of the sky’ (1.64), and of staring upwards at it, like an epic warrior,Footnote ¹⁸ without being deterred by the very thunderbolts which will eventually seal Phaethon's fate:Footnote ¹⁹ ‘primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra/ est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra,/ quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti/ murmure compressit caelum’ (1.66–9 ‘a man of Greece was the first that dared to uplift mortal eyes against her, the first to make stand against her; for neither fable of the gods could quell him, nor thunderbolts, nor heaven with menacing roar’). Phaethon's success, however, is short-lived, and Lucretian connections spotlight the troubling connotations of his audacia. A key point in Sol's attempt to dissuade his son is compressed in the pointed contrast between poena and munus at line 99 — ‘poenam, Phaethon, pro munere poscis!’ (‘Phaethon, you ask for punishment as your reward’) — for which a parallel is offered by DRN 5.118, in a context where the Giants are explicitly mentioned and to which we will turn again later (5.114–21):

As a consequence of his daring flight of mind, Epicurus breaks ‘the confining bars of nature's gates’ (1.71 ‘naturae … portarum claustra’), Phaethon enters the richly carved doors of the Sun's palace,Footnote ²⁰ a distant but recognizable relation — I would like to argue — to the archetypical doors of knowledge leading into the Kingdom of Light described by ParmenidesFootnote ²¹ in considerable detail.Footnote ²² The palaceFootnote ²³ itself is a triumph of anti-Epicureanism: everything is gold and silver, in spite of Lucretius' intimations at 2.24–8, and geared towards the celebration of divine craftsmanship.Footnote ²⁴ Vulcan's work of art establishes once again, this time at a remove, the gods' comprehensive rôle in creating a cosmos which is unapologetically replete with mythological creatures rather than with natural laws. Indeed, both in Vulcan's relief and in the extensive account of the world's beginnings offered in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses, as, later, in Manilius' emphatic eulogy of ‘the force of a divine spirit’ (1.250 ‘vis animae divina’) which rules the whole fabric of the world (1.247 ‘opus … constructum corpore mundi’), the god's creative agency far surpasses the properties of the raw matter, in direct contrast with Lucretius' warning at 5.158 that the ‘world's nature’ (5.157 ‘mundi naturam’) should not be regarded as the ‘admirable work of the gods’ (‘opus divom’). ‘Materiam superabat opus’ (2.5 ‘the workmanship surpassed the material’), in its epigrammatic density, neatly encapsulates the ideological and aesthetic conflict between Ovid and Lucretius.

III THE LIMITS OF DIDACTIC

Phaethon's journey to the fountain of knowledge is rewarded with an education of sorts. Predictably, his attitude as he enters the Sun's palace is marked by wonder and fear at ‘rerum novitas’ (2.31), emotions he shares with the disciple who confronts for the first time the revelations of Epicureanism.Footnote ²⁵Rerum novitas is a recurrent concern — and point of pride — in DRN.Footnote ²⁶ As early as 1.139, in the context of his programmatic statement about the nature of his project, Lucretius underlines the difficulties arising from the ‘paucity of language’ and the ‘novelty of the subject matter’ (‘egestas linguae’ and ‘rerum novitas’). A more intriguing parallel can be established with Lucretius' extensive reformulation of the concept at the end of Book 2. First of all he warns readers that a ‘nova res’ (2.1024) is shortly to be announced, a ‘nova … species rerum’ (2.1025 ‘a new aspect of creation’). But they should not fear, nor reject a new theory (2.1040–1), because even the most wondrous aspects of nature come gradually to be accepted and regarded as normal, even, he adds, ‘the bright light of the dazzling sun’ (2.1032 ‘solis preclara luce nitorem’). Even the notion that the world is doomed to destruction, a ‘novel and strange revelation’ (5.97 ‘res nova miraque’), will eventually gain acceptance.

While removal of fears and worries ranks highest among Lucretius' objectives, Sol does his best to emphasize the dangers Phaethon faces. Midway into its journey, the chariot will touch the highest point in the sky. The vista above lands and seas is exceptional — we are reminded of Lucretius' own view from above in 4.410–13 — but frightening even for a seasoned traveller: ‘unde mare et terras ipsi mihi saepe videre/ fit timor et pavida trepidat formidine pectus’ (2.65–6 ‘whence to look down on sea and earth often scares even me, and my heart trembles with terror and fear’). The association of formido, timor and pavor echoes DRN 5.1218–23, where Lucretius discusses the existence and nature of the gods, but a similar train of thought and choice of words recur again at the beginning of Book 6, where formido arises from the contemplation of what men see happening on earth and in the sky (6.50–5), which in turn echoes the first formulation of the concept at 1.151–4. In the Ovidian context not only should men stand in fear of forces and phenomena they cannot comprehend, let alone control, but even gods, we gather, acknowledge firm limits to what each of them can or cannot do. Thus Phaethon's Lucretian-sounding request that his father remove him from error (2.39 ‘hunc animis errorem detrahe nostris’ ‘take away this uncertainty from my mind’) actually draws readers' attention to the fact that the errores Lucretius had repeatedly warned against stand here as undoubted truths. Gods not only do exist: they also regulate their own existence and that of men according to unfathomable and unchangeable designs.

A large section of the episode is devoted to astronomical instruction, suitably dotted with Lucretian suggestions, even leaving aside the use of ‘adde, quod’ (2.70 ‘consider, too …’) as a nod in the direction of the DRN's didactic formulas. Sol, unable to persuade Phaethon that his request is unreasonable, tries at least to offer some practical instructions on how to steer the chariot in the right direction. Phaethon's obstinacy is hubristic. Sol's statement ‘magna petis …/ munera’ (2.54–5 ‘the gift you are asking for is enormous’), while expressing paternal worries, turns Lucretius' magnanimum and Ovid's magna loquentem into a charge of unruly excess, especially when coupled with adfectas just a few lines later (2.58)Footnote ²⁷ and with the explicit ‘sors tua mortalis; non est mortale quod optas’ (2.56 ‘your lot is mortal, but what you wish for is not’). This latter statement turns on its head Empedocles' boast that he is ‘an immortal god, not a mortal man’ (B 112.4 DK ἐγὼ δ' ὑμῖν θεὸς ἄμβροτος, οὐκέτι θνητός), but also Ovid's own claim to fame in Amores 1.15, where in his opening address to Livor he contrasts earthly occupations like the army and the law with the immortality of poetic renown to which he aspires: ‘mortale est, quod quaeris, opus; mihi fama perennis/ quaeritur, in toto semper ut orbe canar’ (1.15.7–8 ‘the work you ask of me is mortal, but I am seeking eternal fame, to be forever known in song all over the world’).Footnote ²⁸

The path (2.79 via), which Phaethon plans to navigate is thus no less unholy than the ‘path of crime’ (DRN 1.81–2 ‘viam …/ sceleris’) which Memmius may wrongly be afraid of entering because of Epicurean teaching. Lucretius assuages Memmius' worries by pointing out that religion itself ‘brought forth criminal and impious deeds’ (1.83 ‘scelerosa atque impia facta’) and by telling the story of a young woman slain in the name of Realpolitik and its religious underpinnings, a story which Ovid evokes in Met. 13 and, indirectly, in this book as well.

Sol's extensive and detailed astronomy lesson actively engages the DRN, as we should expect, both in specific points and in its general outlook. The overall import of this intertextual dialogue is of course critical. Following on from Virgil's debunking of Lucretian epistemic certainties, Ovid offers a dazzling view of the sky and its workings which is far removed from the dry certainties of natural law.Footnote ²⁹ In good Epicurean fashion Phaethon must follow the right vestigia (2.133), to be sure, but these turn out to be, quite literally, no more than the tracks left by the chariot's wheels, in a scaled down, literal variation on Lucretius' ambition to follow Epicurus' footsteps.Footnote ³⁰ These vestigia are manifesta, as they often are certa in the Georgics, not because of the explanatory powers of the pupil or the teacher's doctrine, but simply because they are guaranteed by divine authorityFootnote ³¹ — in this case, as it happens, with no intermediary involved. These vestigia, moreover, are firmly and strictly material. They do not lead to generalization and abstraction, but can at best keep Phaethon on course: neither he nor his father are interested in a general theory of the skies, let alone the universe, but in sturdy practical advice on how to drive safely. Sol points out the correct iter (2.133) while Epicurus ‘pointed the way, that straight and narrow path by which we might run without turning (recto … cursu)’ (6.27–8)Footnote ³² towards the bonum summum (6.26).

This process of the materialization and literalization of Lucretius' theoretical ambition is particularly evident in the second section of Sol's speech, after he has given up trying to dissuade Phaethon and combines a compressed description of the theory of the five zones with an implicit explanation of how the sun moves across the sky. In his account, a natural phenomenon turns into a tale of animal unruliness and weak human control which seems to make a mockery of Lucretius' position on the matter. In Book 5 of DRN we are told that ‘pilot nature’(‘natura gubernans’) steers the course of the sun and the moon without any divine intervention (5.76–81):

This Nature is a competent pilot, perfectly capable of steering (flectere) the sun along the right path, unlike Ovid's Phaethon, who at 2.169–70 ‘does not know where to steer the reins’ (‘qua flectat habenas/ nec scit’). His horses do move sponte sua (2.128), or arbitrio (2.234), in a show of free will which is at odds with the well-regulated laws of the Epicurean universe, yet actually harks back to the vivid image Lucretius employs when describing the strength of volition at 2.263–5. Indeed, when they have overcome Phaethon's weak attempts once and for all, his horses run wild (2.204 ‘sine lege’). In his own Phaethon episode Lucretius had polemically paved the way for this subversion by transferring the epithet ‘cuncta gubernans’ (5.404) to Sol as he restores order after his son's demise, but he had immediately qualified it in the very next line with the sceptical caveat: ‘that, you know, is the tale which the old Grecian poets have sung’ (5.405 ‘scilicet ut veteres Graium cecinere poetae’).

The contrast between the two poets' assumptions is even more marked if we look at the lines which immediately follow this passage in DRN Book 5. The ordered, natural movement of sun and moon is proof that the gods have no business interfering in any aspect of the natural world, since they lead a ‘carefree existence’ (5.82 ‘securum … aevom’). On the contrary, curae (worries) overcome Sol, as a god in charge of the sun and now as a father. He wishes Phaethon could perceive his ‘patrias … curas’ (5.94) and mixes words with sighs since his heart is full of anxiety (5.125 ‘pectore sollicito repetens suspiria dixit’). Even before this tragic turn of events his had been a long, hard and unrewarding labor, the very opposite of ataraxia: ‘sors mea principiis fuit inrequieta, pigetque/ actorum sine fine mihi, sine honore laborum’ (2.386–7 ‘from the beginning of time my lot has been unrestful, and I am weary of toils without end and without honour’).

The nature of Sol's teaching is in itself a denial of Lucretian aspirations and objectives, for it turns out to be utterly ineffectual. Ovid stages here a model of instruction which was central to the Roman tradition, a model based on the authoritative transmission of ethical and practical principles from father to son.Footnote ³³ While Lucretius also casts Epicurus in the rôle of a metaphorical father-figure, he then proceeds to offer a largely impersonal, objective form of knowledge which is essentially anti-authoritative in so far as it promises to raise pupil and teacher to the same open-ended level of understanding, ‘exaequat victoria caelo’ (1.79 ‘victory exalts us as high as heaven’). Sol's teachings are practical and specific, similar to the ‘technical’ instructions Virgil's Georgics parade in their pointed distancing from the Epicurean tradition. But they are also a spectacular failure. Phaethon's request is too bold, if not altogether impious, and the price for this transgression of boundaries is nothing short of death. Riding the sun's chariot cannot be taught because what is ultimately at stake is not how to master the relevant techne. What matters is not how it is done, but who tries to do it, and in this respect even the father of the gods, as Sol bitterly points out, would fail miserably should he try to steer the chariot (2.59–62).Footnote ³⁴ Phaethon lacks — literally — the required gravitas (2.162), the chariot feels empty (2.166), and the horses do as they please.

Ovid reflects a model of knowledge where the personal qualities and authority of the teacher and pupil count for far more than the contents of the technical instruction imparted, casting severe doubts in the process, as he had already done in the Ars, on the very foundations of Lucretius' approach to didactic poetry. In this hierarchic model allotted rôles cannot be modified and epistemic distances cannot be bridged. The implications are relevant both on a scientific and a political level. The world of metamorphosis stands as the ultimate denial of a doctrine built upon the premise that nothing comes from nothing and nothing returns to nothing. If things could come out of nothing, then ‘all kinds of thing could be produced from all things’ (DRN 1.159–60), and ‘men could arise from the sea, from the earth scaly tribes, and birds could hatch from the sky’ (1.161–2): we would end up, that is, in the kind of world that Ovid's Metamorphoses triumphantly explore.

The contrast between fact and fiction is encoded in an apparent diversion from the main business at hand. Sol warns Phaethon that as he travels across the sky he should not expect to see sacred groves, citiesFootnote ³⁵ of the gods or temples full of offerings (2.76–8): rather, he should worry that he will have to negotiate a path ‘per insidias … formasque ferarum’ (2.78 ‘amid lurking dangers and fierce beasts of prey’). Sure enough, at 2.194 Phaethon ‘sees marvels scattered everywhere in the sky, the figures of huge wild animals, and he trembles’ (‘vastarumque videt trepidus simulacra ferarum’) as he loses his grip, literally and metaphorically — ‘quidque agat ignarus stupet’ (2.191 ‘as in a daze, he does not know what to do’). The notion of a sky alive with worryingly realistic, or even real, creatures, is patently non-Epicurean, and turns on its head a specific point which Lucretius had made exempli gratia when discussing his own, very different, simulacra (4.129–42):Footnote ³⁶

Turning innocuous chance images into terryifing reality, Ovid seems to be commenting here on a central tenet which Lucretius repeats three timesFootnote ³⁷ in his poem (2.55–61):

Don Fowler rightly suggests that ‘fingunt … futura’ at 58 may be playing on the etymology of figura (for which he compares Varro, LL 6.78),Footnote ³⁸ a term which may also be evoked by futura itself. The reference here is to a specific aspect of the Epicurean theory of simulacra as discussed at 4.26–41: we can ‘see’ ‘figuras … miras’ which scare us, for instance the simulacra of the dead, because particles of torn film let loose by objects fly around in the sky and can be reconfigured into different shapes which can also impact our mind as we sleep (34–5). Phaethon experiences this theory in a terrifyingly literal fashion: the aurae he is journeying across are actually full of the simulacra of animals, except that these are not innocuous mental concoctions of atomic particles, but, we are led to believe, live and dangerous simulacra.Footnote ³⁹ ‘The sun's rays and the bright shafts of day’ (2.60 ‘radii solis neque lucida tela diei’) thanks to which Lucretius had optimistically enjoined men to dispel vain fears and terrors become here, in a pointed reversal, rather part of the problem, not of the solution. And the only ‘tela diei’ which have any effect are Iuppiter's thunderbolts, the very ones which Lucretius himself labels ‘patris … telum’ (6.398). Divine thunderbolts, unlike the workings of nature, can truly aspire to sublimity.

Both Sol and Phaethon have a go at teaching and learning in Epicurean fashion, with abysmal results. Midway through his journey Phaethon falls into a sort of epistemic daze. Significantly, this follows from a revelation which is close enough, in wording at least, to Epicurean notions about the vastness of the sky. Epicurus' flight yields as its most significant result a firm knowledge of the universe: indeed, undeterred by the frightful sight of religio displaying its head from heaven, he ‘traversed the immeasurable universe in thought and imagination’ (1.74 ‘omne immensum peragravit mente animoque’). Phaethon's animus, alas, is not up to the task, and the very size of the sky makes him lose his bearings (2.187–90):

The paralysing, rather than liberating, effect of the privileged viewpoint Phaethon attains is remarked upon more than once, and allusions to Lucretius abound again. Let us take first 2.178–80: ‘ut vero summo despexit ab aethere terras/ infelix Phaethon penitus penitusque patentes,/ palluit’ (‘when the unlucky Phaethon looked down from the heights of the sky at the earth far, far below he grew pale’). The immediate, antiphrastic model here is Aen. 1.223–4, a reference to Iuppiter's visual control over the world, but we are also reminded, again by contrast, of the image of visual control from on high at DRN 2.8–10:

A reference we should combine once more, encouraged by the shared presence of the verb pateo, with the final result of Epicurus' revelation as told in 3.28–30:

We should also remember a second description of how much and how far Phaethon can now see at lines 2.227–8: ‘tum vero Phaethon cunctis e partibus orbem/ aspicit accensum’ (‘then indeed does Phaethon see the earth on fire from all sides’).

Ovid resorts again to literalism as a means to attack and deflate Lucretian aspirations to comprehensive rational knowledge. In the same passage from DRN 3 ‘the walls of the world open out’ (16–17) as a consequence of Epicurus' revelation, and all of nature, gods included, can be clearly discerned. Yet, even as the earth does not hinder our ability to see what lies in the depths, ‘nowhere appear the regions of Acheron’ (25–6), since of course they do not exist. But the ambition to be able to ‘look inside’ is crucial to Lucretius' project from the very beginning, when he promises Memmius a poem ‘whereby [he] may see into the hearts of things hidden’ (1.145 ‘res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis’). Since Phaethon causes the earth to burn and rip open (2.210–11), he, too, can see what lies beneath it,Footnote ⁴⁰ but what can be seen is precisely what Lucretius had ruled out: ‘dissilit omne solum, penetratque in Tartara rimis/ lumen et infernum terret cum coniuge regem’ (2.260–1 ‘everywhere the ground breaks apart, light penetrates through the cracks down into Tartarus, and terrifies the king of the underworld and his queen’).

A similar contrast is set up shortly after. The father of the gods is at a loss as to how he could rescue the earth from burning, since ‘at that moment he had no clouds to bring over the earth, nor rain to send down from the sky’ (2.309–10). Again, this can be regarded as a literal twist on Lucretius' description of the abodes of the gods (3.18–22):

IV PHAETHON'S TWO EPITAPHS

Knowledge, then, is either impossible, or lethal, or both. Phaethon's reckless audacity does raise him to the stars (‘exaequat victoria caelo’) but only so as to make his fall more grandiose — at the same time a tragic and epic event. Rather than revealing the pervasive rationality of the universe and freeing mankind from superstition, religion, and subservience to mythological explanations, his attempt comes very close to causing the return of primeval chaos (2.299 ‘in Chaos antiquum confundimur’), as if Phaethon's intellectual hybris could be regarded as a moral equivalent and a narrative pendant to Lycaon's — and the Giants' — crimes in Book 1.Footnote ⁴¹ Only a harsh taskmaster's recourse to force can actually prevent such an extreme scenario, and then only at the price of Phaethon's death. As Chaos threatens to return — hardly an impossibility given the fact that the flood had already been cast as a reassertion of chaos over order — it is not knowledge, but power, which prevails. Tellus begs Iuppiter to intervene with an exhortation — ‘rerum consule summae’ (2.300 ‘take charge of the safety of the universe’) — which mischieviously blends Lucretius' ‘rerum … summa’ (5.368) with a nod to Roman political terminology.Footnote ⁴²

Moreover, Ovid stages the last scenes of Phaethon's story as a near-miss ekpyrosis shot through with Lucretian images of the end of the world.Footnote ⁴³ The choice is apt, for Lucretius in Book 5 turns his attention to the Phaethon myth precisely in the context of a wider discussion about the inevitable or, as we gather at the end of Book 2 (2.1150–74), even imminent death of our world (5.324–95). Epicurus had been able to exit unscathed the ‘flaming walls of the world’ (1.73 ‘flammantia moenia mundi’) only to come back as victor (1.75). Phaethon does go up in flames, while the walls of the sky (2.401 ‘moenia caeli’) resist thanks to Iuppiter, who promptly inspects them for damage (2.402–3 ‘ne quid labefactum viribus ignis/ corruat explorat’ ‘he checks whether anything has been set loose by the power of the fire’). As he does so, the father of the gods reasserts his providential rôle in the ordered life of the universe, and, again turning metaphor into reality, responds to DRN 5.114–21, where the materialistic thinkers, like impious Giants, are seen as potentially ‘shaking the walls of the world’ (5.119 ‘disturbent moenia mundi’). Had Iuppiter not intervened, everything would have perished ‘because of a harsh destiny’ (2.305–6 ‘nisi opem ferat, omnia fato/ interitura gravi’), thus fulfilling Lucretius' prediction that ‘the walls of the mighty world … shall be stormed all around, and shall collapse into crumbling ruin’ (2.1144–5 ‘sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi/ expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas’). Fatum may not be the most Lucretian of concepts, but it is used four times in the DRN, and at 5.309, where there is a clear effort to coordinate ‘fati … finis’ with the more orthodox ‘naturae foedera’,Footnote ⁴⁴ the context is especially relevant (5.306–10):

Finally, the Phaethon episode contains not one, but two epitaphs. The most evident, which we will discuss shortly, is the inscription which carves in stone Ovid's comment on the youth's fate. But a striking comment can be found earlier on, at line 181, where ‘suntque oculis tenebrae per tantum lumen obortae’ (‘and over his eyes came darkness through so much light’) proleptically sums up the various aspects of Phaethon's forthcoming loss of understanding. There is more to this line than the exploitation of paradox we expect in Ovid, at least if we accept that a confrontation with Lucretian and Epicurean themes has been a recurrent concern throughout the episode. Here the reference is, I would argue, to one of the most famous and important lines of the DRN, the opening of Book 3 ‘o tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen,/ qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae’ (3.1–2 ‘o you who first amid so great a darkness were able to raise aloft a light so clear, illumining the blessings of life’). Phaethon falls not because of darkness, but because of light, an excess of light which, far from securing salvation, hastens his downfall. Lucretius presents the doctrine of Epicurus, who in de finibus (2.70) is polemically labelled ‘vestrum lumen’, as the light which removes the obscurity of superstition, and suitably conveys it in his ‘enlightening song’, (1.933–4 ‘lucida/ carmina’). The concept recurs in the proem to Book 5. Epicurus is undoubtedly a god, because ‘per artem/ fluctibus et tantis vitam tantisque tenebris/ in tam tranquillo et tam clara luce locavit’ (5.10–12 ‘by his skill he brought life out of those tempestuous billows and that deep darkness, and settled it in such a calm and in light so clear’). Regrettably, a remark of Colotes in Philodemus' Pragmateiai quoted by UsenerFootnote ⁴⁵ is a misreading,Footnote ⁴⁶ or we would have a direct invocation to Epicurus as the sun which should come to enlighten darkness, yet we can still rely on Lucretius 3.1043–4, where, admittedly in a sombre context, the master is said to have outshone all mortals by the measure the sun outshines all other stars: ‘qui genus humanum superavit et omnis/ restinxit stellas exortus ut aetherius sol’ (‘he, whose intellect surpassed humanity, who quenched the light of all as the risen sun of heaven quenches the stars’).Footnote ⁴⁷

V STRIVING FOR THE SUBLIME

Phaethon's journey is indeed a sublime attempt, or, better, an attempt at sublimity.Footnote ⁴⁸ Longinus himself points us in this direction, both explicitly, in a sharp analysis of the chariot's rush in Euripides' play (ch. 15), already attuned to the metapoetic implications of the chariot's journey,Footnote ⁴⁹ and implicitly in ch. 35, where he discusses man's natural aspiration to transcend the boundaries of his own mind and the ability of great literary talents to rise well above the rest of mankind, for ‘the sublime raises them close to divine wisdom’ (36.1). Appropriately, Phaethon's epitaph at 2.327–8 can be seen to echo a similar statement in Peri Hypsous 3.3, where Longinus reports approvingly the notion that ‘to slip from a high place is after all a noble fault’.Footnote ⁵⁰

The perceptible metapoetic dimension of Phaethon's story, which Longinus himself highlights, invites a parallel reading with the story of Daedalus and Icarus, whose metaliterary components, especially in its Ovidian versions, have been very well analysed.Footnote ⁵¹ Some key pointers discussed above are worth mentioning again:Footnote ⁵²fert animus with its programmatic tenor and Dionysiac overtones at 1.775; the elaborate metapoetic implications at the beginning of Book 2; the chariot's journey (a much-used metaphor for poetry) through CallimacheanFootnote ⁵³ and indeed Lucretian — even ParmenideanFootnote ⁵⁴ — avia (2.205) after it has abandoned a well-trodden path, tritum (2.167).Footnote ⁵⁵ The proem to Georgics 3 already shows that the imagery Lucretius employs to describe Epicurus' victorious intellectual flight can be referred to a poetic programme: ‘temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim/ tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora’ (3.8–9 ‘I must attempt a path whereby I, too, may rise from earth and fly victorious on the lips of men’). Virgil vows to join Ennius and Lucretius among the poets who can fly high, with victor nodding in the direction of the DRN's first proem (1.75 victor, cf.1.72 pervicit, 1.79 victoria) and tollere humo significantly picking up tollere contra just a few lines before (1.66).Footnote ⁵⁶ A central objective of Virgil's georgic project, as articulated most intensely in the diptych comprising the conclusion of Book 2 and the beginning of Book 3, lies in the attempt to decouple Lucretian sublimity from lack of pietas, to make sure that his own via (3.8) to poetic glory is not Lucretius' ‘viam …/ sceleris’ (DRN 1.81–2 ‘path of crime’), while retaining as much as possible of its daring and sublimity, of its audacia (Georg 1.40 ‘audacibus adnue coeptis’ ‘assent to my bold enterprise’). Ovid builds upon this crucial distinction, much as we could argue, of course, about the nature and import of his pietas.

At this stage I would want to go a step further and argue that Ovid's commentary on Phaethon's hubristic — and sublime — attempt at reaching a divine level of knowledge should be read as a specific critique of the Lucretian sublime,Footnote ⁵⁷ which is at the same time an epistemic, aesthetic and ideological strategy.Footnote ⁵⁸ In the DRN sublimity advertises the enormity of the Epicurean revelation, unprecedented in scope and reach; it raises often mundane topics into complex poetry where hypsos joins forces with Callimachean sophistication and Dionysiac enthusiasm; ideologically, it impresses upon readers the exhilarating power of liberation from ‘proud masters’ (2.1091 ‘dominis … superbis’) which this kind of poetry makes possible thanks to Epicurus' boldness (1.67 ausus). In Ovid's eyes, a recipe for disaster, were it not for its enormous poetic appeal.

A specific reference to Lucretian sublimity can be read as soon as Phaethon is introduced at the end of Met. 1. Lucretius' magnanimus (5.400)Footnote ⁵⁹ turns here into magna loquens (1.751). A clear marker of sublimity, magnanimus translates μεγαλόϕρων (9.2 ‘high-minded’); sublimity, according to Longinus, is τὸ μεγαλόϕρον, or μεγαλοϕροσύνης ἀπήχημα (9.2), ‘the echo of a great soul’, rooted in ‘the greatness of conceptions’, τὸ μεγαλοϕυές (9.1). While magnanimus is repeated verbatim at 2.111, magna loquentem incorporates in this case a meaningful reference to verbal expression. The claim that he teaches ‘major things’, magnae res, is central to Lucretius' poetic programme in Books 1 and 4. He deserves his laurels first and foremost because his ‘teaching is of high matters’ (4.6 ‘magnis … de rebus’), an ambition which he does not see as contradicting, but rather necessitating the Callimachean ‘labor limae’ he also aspires to take credit for. Thus Ovid's epitaph mourns together Phaethon's hybris and Lucretius' sublimity, with ‘magnis tamen excidit ausis’ (2.328 ‘yet he fell in a heady endeavour’), certifying failure while recognizing the importance of the attempt: the double-edged evaluation of the DRN's ambitions sealed in the concessive is a recurrent feature, as we will see, of both Ovid's and Virgil's attitude towards their larger-than-life predecessor.

VI AUREA MEDIOCRITAS

Phaethon and his extraordinary journey are bound to inspire both admiration and concern, divina voluptas alongside horror — Ovid's cecidit materializes the fear of falling inscribed in the Lucretian vision of a cosmos which suddenly breaks open under our very feet (3.17), thus offering a critique of the exhilarating sense of empowerment extolled in the DRN. Footnote ⁶⁰ Phaethon's story, a cautionary tale about the risks implicit in the pursuit of the sublime, doubles up as a more general indictment of any attempt to subvert power relations. This interconnectedness is already central in Lucretius, since, as we have seen, the sublime is the style of choice for a comprehensive attack on ‘proud masters’, whose impotence to intervene in a universe regulated by impersonal laws finally sets nature free (2.1090–1). Inevitably, Ovid's notion of ‘proud masters’ is more inclusive than Lucretius' criticism of the gods at the time of the Republic, albeit in its dying days. Now those masters occupy not only the metaphoric ‘Palatine of the sky’, but the very real palaces of Rome's imperial power, and the link between style and power which already plays a central rôle in Lucretius' poem acquires new implications.

Sol's main piece of advice to his unruly son, once he has given up hope that Phaethon may settle for a different token of his affection, is that he steer a middle course between opposite extremes (2.135–7):

The epiphonematic conclusion ‘medio tutissimus ibis’ is normally connected with the praise of mesotes in its proverbial Horatian rendering ‘auream … mediocritatem’ (carm. 2.10.5 ‘the golden mean’), but before we turn to the ethical implications of Sol's admonition and its Horatian background, it is important to recognize further ramifications of this statement.

Sol contrasts a safe middle course with two extremes, altius and inferius, thus creating a tripartite distinction which echoes the division of style, both in poetry and in prose, into ‘high’, ‘low’ and ‘middle’, medius. Cicero offers a valuable discussion of the relative merits of the three styles in the Orator, and his description of the middle style is especially relevant (98):

The last sentence is very close in wording and train of thought, albeit with a different twist, to Ovid's Longinian exculpation of the high style; this, for Cicero, is indeed fit for the princeps oratorum, but it should be used sparingly, since the inability to resort to the other two would create a relentless excitement which would appear insane, indeed Bacchic (99).

While he recognizes the psychagogic importance of the high style (97 amplus, copiosus, gravis, ornatus ‘magnificent, opulent, stately and ornate’), and recommends a judicious alternation of the three styles according to the subject matter or their blending even in the same work, Cicero reserves his most convincing praise for the middle style, which he regards as safe yet elegant, refined yet accommodating. The key words here are temperatus and its cognates, which occur seven times in sections 95–103, but especially mediocritas (96), a term which sums up all the positive features of the genus orationis which is ‘restrained and temperate’ (95 ‘modica ac temperata’). Phaethon is told very early on that Sol ‘temperat orbem’ (1.770), i.e. he manages to regulate the world thanks to his skills — he is able, after all, to control the steeds which would rashly carry him away while he accomplishes his daily feat (an achievement which cannot really be considered humile). Mediocritas defines here a style which allows for much richness (95 ‘verborum … lumina omnia, multa etiam sententiarum’ ‘all figures of language, and many of thought’) yet avoids dangerous pitfalls, rises high but not so much as to risk a disastrous fall. Importantly, the middle style is not a compromise, a faute de mieux average between the pedestrian and the sublime, but a capacious, inclusive concept that we may be tempted to identify with Ovid's versatile and inclusive brand of epic.

In another detailed discussion of the three styles, Cicero effectively compares the orator's ability to mix them according to the topic at hand with the perfect, immutable structure of the universe, which, for the survival and safety of us all (de or. 3.177) cannot be modified even in the slightest without endangering the whole fabric of the cosmos.

Horace, following in Aristotle's footsteps, transposes this praise of mediocritas to the field of ethics, without losing sight of its aesthetic dimension, in Ode 2.10, a poem which for all its proverbial memorabilityFootnote ⁶¹ poses a number of difficult questions, not least because of the tantalizing uncertainties regarding its addressee.

The (meta)literary aspect of the poem is under-estimated but perceptible. Horace conveys the three standard options — excessive caution, rashness, and the ‘right’ middle course — through nautical metaphors which not only implicate a well-known poetological dimension, but specifically evoke the contrast mapped out in Ars 28: ‘serpit humi tutus nimium timidusque procellae’ (‘creeps along the ground, overcautious and fearful of the gale’). The word altum in the opening line of the ode, whose primary spatial reference is horizontal, neatly suggests a vertical movement as well, with premendo at line 3 also contributing the accessory notion of ‘pressing down’. The tale of dangerous excess which occupies the first three stanzas admonishes against stylistic extremes just as it cautions against immoderate behaviour.

Upon closer observation, the points of contacts between the ode and a key section of Ovid's Phaethon story are more extensive than is usually remarked. The link between tutus (6) and aurea mediocritas paves the way for a sustained intertextual dialogue which is particularly intense in the closing section of Sol's admonitory speech, when he reluctantly must yield the chariot to his son: ‘ne dubita, dabitur (Stygias iuravimus undas)/ quodcumque optaris -sed tu sapientius opta’ (2.101–2 ‘have no doubt, it will be given to you (we have sworn by the waves of the Styx), whatever you choose; but do choose with more wisdom!’). ‘Sapientius opta’ – Sol's last words for now — mirrors Horace's opening ‘rectius vives’ (‘you'll live more honestly’) in a ring-composition of sorts which echoes sapienter in the last stanza (line 22), an unlikely coincidence given, among other factors, the relative rarity of the adverb in poetry.Footnote ⁶²Premit (2.104) and altos (2.105)Footnote ⁶³ pick up two key words of the first stanza, with aureus at 2.107 gesturing towards auream at the beginning of the second line (5). In his second set of injunctions, when he tries at least to limit the damage, at 2.135–40, Sol resorts again to Horatian concepts and words.Footnote ⁶⁴

The connection between Ovid's text and its Horatian model is all the more intriguing if the addressee of Ode 2.10, Licinius, is the politician who joins Fannius Caepio's conspiracy against the Princeps in 22 b.c., i.e. either the consul designate for 23 b.c., A. Terentius Varro Licinius MurenaFootnote ⁶⁵ or his brother L. Licinius Varro MurenaFootnote ⁶⁶ — their sister, Terentia, was married to Maecenas.Footnote ⁶⁷ Dio's detailed chronicle of the conspiracy is suggestive. The casus belli appears to have been the prosecution brought against Marcus Primus, on whose behalf Licinius acted as counsel. When Augustus himself intervened in court, unasked (Dio 54.3.2), to testify against the defendant, Licinius reacted with strong words, questioning the emperor's right to appear in this capacity (54.3.3). He was apparently true to form, since Dio remarks that he was notoriously ‘unrestrained and violent in his outspokenness (παρρησίᾳ) towards all alike’ (54.3.4), and this very outspokenness (his ‘Republican candour’)Footnote ⁶⁸ may have been the reason why he was thought to have been involved in the conspiracy, a fact about which Dio remains non-committal.

If Horace's Licinius is the champion of παρρησία vividly described by Dio, the ethical advice proffered in the first half of Ode 2.10 would acquire a distinctive political overtone, with ‘excess’ redefined to include an imprudent exposure to dangerous, oppositional politics. Παρρησία is a loaded word in this (admittedly uncertain) context, because the Epicureans had championed it not only as the golden rule of interpersonal exchange and debate within their school, but also as ‘the right to speak freely to everybody, even to monarchs’Footnote ⁶⁹ — Philodemus' περὶ παρρησίας (On Freedom of Speech) is eloquent about this point.Footnote ⁷⁰ A reckless speaker, who would not refrain from haranguing Augustus himself when he felt it necessary, Licinius would be the ideal recipient of admonitions, dwelling ‘with calculated caution’Footnote ⁷¹ on the necessity to avoid the lightnings which are apt to strike ‘the tops of the mountains’ (11–12 ‘summos/ … montes’), while stressing that Iuppiter and Apollo —gods who cannot fail to evoke Augustus' own powerFootnote ⁷² — alternate between benevolence and anger.Footnote ⁷³

The issue of Licinius' identity cannot be settled beyond a reasonable doubt, but the political subtext of the Phaethon story is nonetheless perceptible, and raises bigger questions about the episode as a whole. Iuppiter appears in the story as the supreme guarantor of order, and a very Roman one at that, as emphasized by Tellus' use of the verb consulo in her appeal.Footnote ⁷⁴ In fact, Tellus' request for help in her emotional prosopoeia is a strong pointer, because its most direct model, as far as I know unnoticed, is arguably the speech delivered by a personified Patria in Cicero's first Catlinarian. Patria, whose definition of ‘communis … parens omnium nostrum’ (‘shared mother of us all’) at Cat.1.17 paves the way for Ovid's compact (and Lucretian) ‘alma tellus’ (2.272 ‘nourishing earth’), is evoked twice,Footnote ⁷⁵ first (ch. 18) in a quasi-hymnicFootnote ⁷⁶deprecatio of Catiline, and shortly after (chs 27–9) as the author of a direct appeal to the consul, Cicero, spurring him to take action before it is too late. The conclusion of Patria's second speech is particularly relevant, because her final words on that occasion point out that Cicero's failure to act may well result in his being damaged by the incendium himself: ‘an, cum bello vastabitur Italia, vexabuntur urbes, tecta ardebunt, tum te non existimas invidiae incendio conflagraturum?’ (29 ‘or when Italy is laid waste by war, when her cities are destroyed, her dwellings in flames, do you not think that then you will be consumed by a blaze of unpopularity?’). Tellus will close on a similar note (2.294–300): the final ekpyrosis caused by Phaethon now threatens even the ‘regia caeli’ (298), just as Sol had feared in his useless explanation to his son (136 ‘altius egressus caelestia tecta cremabis’ ‘if you go too high you will burn up the dome of heaven’). Both Cicero and Iuppiter (the First Catilinarian ends with the former's appeal to the latter)Footnote ⁷⁷ must protect their city and its walls against the risk of complete annihilation, because if Phaethon materially threatens a final ekpyrosis, Catiline's conspiracy is no less terminal in its potential consequences, aiming ‘at nothing less than a wholesale collapse of cosmic order’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Both Catiline and Phaethon threaten the exitium of the whole world, as Cicero (1.9 ‘hic, hic sunt in nostro numero ... qui de huius urbis atque adeo de orbis terrarum exitio cogitent!’ ‘here, here in our very midst there are men who plan the destruction of this city and even that of the whole world’) and Tellus point out (2.290 ‘sed tamen exitium fac me meruisse’ ‘but, grant that I have deserved destruction …’).

VII OVID'S ASTRONOMY

A ‘proemio al mezzo’ in Fasti 1 offers a useful point of reference for the complexities of Ovid's attitude towards Lucretius with specific reference to some of the issues raised in our reading of the Phaethon episode (1.295–8):

Ovid has devoted a significant portion of the book so far — the question-and-answer session with Janus is just over — to an outline of the aetiological and antiquarian programme of the poem. Now he pauses to discuss a different course of action, one which, if pursued, would significantly alter the nature of his project, aligning him much more closely with a distinguished tradition of didactic poetry. Nothing, on the face of it, ‘forbids’ (vetat) more ambitious undertakings such as the exploration of astronomical themes, an expansion of his Callimachean blueprint into Aratean territory.

Lucretius is evoked repeatedly in this passage, both directly and indirectly, and so is Virgil.Footnote ⁷⁹ Indeed many references work in both directions at once: ‘perfusaque gloria fuco’ (303) recalls ‘purpura regum’ (‘the purple of kings’) at Georg. 2.495 as well as the polemical implications brought out by ‘ostro … rubenti’ (‘blushing purple’) at Lucretius 2.35, which in turn lurks behind Virgil's ‘Sarrano … ostro’ (‘Tyrian purple’) just a few lines later in the same passage (2.506).Footnote ⁸⁰ ‘Magnarumque fames … opum’ (304) develops the theme of political ambition mixed with greed of DRN 2.9–14 and Georg. 2.495–9 while echoing specifically DRN 2.31 ‘magnis opibus’ and Georg. 2.507 ‘condit opes’ (‘hoards wealth’). The folly of political and material ambition which besets the philosophically ignorant is an unrewarding labor (302), a keyword in the proem to DRN 2 (lines 2 and 12), but also a risk eschewed by the followers of Virgil's georgic project at Georg. 2.496–9. Specifically Lucretian imagery, however, is predominant, especially in lines 305–6, where these early astronomers are said to be replicating Epicurus' feat, that of ‘bringing back to us in his victory’ (DRN 1.75 ‘refert victor’) the understanding of distant and otherwise unknowable phenomena. Moreover, ‘aetheraque ingenio subposuere suo’ also subverts a key programmatic image in Lucretius' praise of the master in DRN 1: whereas before his revelation religio ‘displayed her head from the regions of heaven, lowering over mortals with horrible aspect’ (64–5), here the intellectual prowess of these natural philosophers succeeds in reversing the spatial and hierarchic positioning and actually ‘submitting the sky to their mind’, a twist on Lucretius 1.78–9 ‘quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim/ obteritur’ (306), which is also picked up at Georg. 2.491–2 ‘metus omnis et inexorabile fatum/subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari’ (‘has cast beneath his feet all fear and fate's implacable decrees’). The central rôle of Lucretius in this programmatic passage is clinched by the reference to ‘sublimia pectora’ at 301, a pointed echo of Ovid's fulsome — if ultimately mischievious — praise of ‘sublimis Lucretius’ in Amores 1.15.23–4 (‘carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,/ exitio terras cum dabit una dies’ ‘the verses of sublime Lucretius will perish only then, when a single day will give the earth to doom’).

The makarismos at lines 297–8,Footnote ⁸¹ therefore, is liable to be taken at first sight as a straightforward statement of admiration for Lucretius. Clearly Ovid is echoing Virgil's own comments about the DRN in Georgics 2, but this is a rather problematic gesture given the fact that ‘felix qui potuit’ refers there to an impossible aspiration, one immediately abandoned for the safer option of devoting oneself to the care of rural gods. Nor is animae, to be sure, the most obvious term one would use to refer to a materialistic philosopher. In the famous close to Book 2 Virgil has just explained that Aratean-Lucretian astronomy is an attractive but terrifying theme, which guarantees gloria at too high an emotional, and theological, price. Fright takes on a physical dimension, and ‘cold blood around the praecordia’ (2.484 ‘frigidus … circum praecordia sanguis’) paralyses the poet — a clever twist given the Empedoclean origin of this notionFootnote ⁸² — in the same way that ‘gelida formido’ seals Phaethon's descent into mental paralysis at Met. 2.200. Only Lucretius' ‘sublimia pectora’ had proved able to withstand this sudden drop in temperature caused by the revelation of sublimity, a heady combination of ‘divina voluptas/ … atque horror’ (3.28–9 ‘divine delight and shuddering’).

We are entitled to wonder, at this stage, to what extent Ovid's apparently generous praise can remain unaffected by its Virgilian model, and, as a consequence, whether the Verneigung at lines 307–8 (‘sic petitur caelum, non ut ferat Ossan Olympus/ summaque Peliacus sidera tangat apex’) does not actually give the whole game away. Didactic poetry of an astronomical kind is ostensibly set up as a positive way of ‘reaching for the sky’, as opposed to the Giants' impiety and, by implication, epic poetry, but the opposition is further blurred by the use, just a few lines later, of military language in ‘sub ducibus’ and ‘ponemus … signa’ (309–10), picking up on the strong subposuere of line 306, but also reiterating the triumphal metaphors already at work in Lucretius' ‘refert victor’, which are in turn modelled on Alexander the Great's myth-historical exploits (line 305 already combines Lucretius 1.66 and 67).Footnote ⁸³ We might also note, incidentally, that scandere (1.298) is the verb Horace employs to describe the Giants' ascent to heaven in carm. 2.19.22. Overall, it would appear that the Epicurean-Lucretian project is no less aggressive than the Giants', or, in principle, than Phaethon's.Footnote ⁸⁴ Nor, we might add, ultimately less bound to failure, for all its apparent ability to overcome the boundaries of the human condition: it does manage to attain sublimity, but is nonetheless perishable, since, as Lucretius would have been the first to admit, one day will indeed witness the demise of our world and thus the end of his poem's renown.

Ovid's rather unexpected, if energetic, declaration of interest in astronomical themes at this juncture remains isolated. Astronomical themes do not loom large in the Fasti, which are devoted to a vast number of gods, rural and otherwise, and the many stories associated with their origin and cult. While at first sight ‘nos quoque’ at line 309 appears to diverge from Virgil's ‘fortunatus et ille’ (2.493 ‘happy, too, is the man …’) by suggesting agreement with the project he has just praised, it actually ends up fulfilling the same contrastive function: vis à vis Lucretius' brand of natural philosophy the form of instruction championed by the Fasti shares a lot of common ground with the Georgics. Occasional references to astronomical events are scattered here and there, mostly by way of chronological indication, but no section of the poem discusses them with anything like the breadth and depth we find in Aratus or Lucretius. Actually, in the other most extended Fasti passage on the topic the same ambivalent attitude persists. Romulus did get his year all wrong, but for some very understandable reasons, and in any event the Romans had weightier matters at hand than advanced astronomical research. This was a task better left to the Greeks, an ‘eloquent but hardly brave people’ (3.102 ‘facundum sed male forte genus’). Since the Romans' ars (valour) eventually encompasses all other artes, it was only a matter of time until Greece was conquered and handed over its knowledge to the winners (101–2). The contrast between military and astronomical signa this time is explicit and so is the reference to Lucretius, with ‘caelo labentia signa’ at 113–4 (‘non illi [sc. ancient Romans] caelo labentia signa tenebant,/ sed sua, quae magnum perdere crimen erat’ ‘heaven's gliding ensigns were beyond their reach, not so their own, to lose which was a great crime’) contrastively picking up the second line of DRN (‘caeli subter labentia signa’ ‘beneath the smooth-moving heavenly signs’).

To return to Book 1 of the Fasti, it is perhaps just a coincidence, but nonetheless an intriguing one, that the first practical application of Ovid's new and short-lived programmatic ambition ends with a factual mistake which thus also stands as an encrypted recusatio of sorts: we are told that in the third night before the January Nonae the constellation of Cancer cannot be seen because it has set into the West (1.311–14). However, this phenomenon actually takes place in June, not in January.Footnote ⁸⁵ It is not just the constellation, it appears, that falls head first, praeceps, into the horizon.

VIII THE REMYTHOLOGIZATION OF LUCRETIUS

Phaethon's story exemplifies Ovid's ‘remythologization’ of Lucretius,Footnote ⁸⁶ a category that applies as well to the creative dialogue between the Metamorphoses and its Epicurean model as it does to the interaction between Virgil and Lucretius. Turning a few lines of the DRN into an emotional story about troubled ancestry and Oedipal competition between father and son interspersed with tragic intertexts marks quite clear generic, ideological and stylistic distances. This is, however, just part of the picture. Ovid is always an incisive and often subtly polemical reader, as we know full well from his attitude towards Virgil. Rather, he shows an uncanny ability to direct his attention — and ours — to problematic aspects of his chosen models, and Lucretius' Phaethon is no exception to the rule.

At a general level it is of course relevant that Ovid's target for ‘remythologization’ is in this instance an explicitly mythical passage in the DRN, albeit one which Lucretius carefully edits for his purposes. As I mentioned above Lucretius is at pains to distance himself, as he usually does in similar circumstances, from the truth value of the myth he is narrating, but he does so in a fairly tortuous fashion, and the fact remains that the disruptive force of myth in the texture of an Epicurean poem can never be entirely contained, even — perhaps especially — when we are dealing with a myth which has already been involved in the vicissitudes of philosophical interpretation at least from Plato.Footnote ⁸⁷ This does not mean that we should rush back to anti-Lucrèce theories, only that we should heed the nuanced methodological lesson set out by Don Fowler in his posthumous paper on ‘Philosophy and Literature in Lucretian Intertextuality’.Footnote ⁸⁸ Although he points out that he is taking ‘a conservative view of the effect … of the intertexts’ he discusses, with an ‘emphasis on the way in which they contribute to the master argument of the DRN rather than on their potential for disruption’, Fowler does actually highlight the dialectical consequences for Lucretius' argument entailed by the appropriation of mythical texts.

There is, however, a more specific reason why Ovid's abundant references to Lucretius in his Phaethon narrative are pointed. In his searching analysis of the logical texture of the whole section spanning lines 380–415 Carlo Giussani pointed out long ago a number of logical shortcuts and non sequiturs which led him to a forceful conclusion: ‘Poetic reasoning is not enough to justify what we should call, rather than agility, looseness of thought [sbrigliatura del pensiero], which moves forward by hiding logical connections so much that it is not always easy to divine them.’Footnote ⁸⁹ I cannot rehearse Giussani's argument about Gedankengang in full, nor analyse the previous part of the book, where the sequence of arguments is, according to both Bailey and Giussani, ‘not very logically constructed’,Footnote ⁹⁰ but a couple of examples can be illuminating.Footnote ⁹¹ The overall structure of the passage in which the Phaethon passage is inserted is in itself doctrinally unimpeachable. Lucretius embarks at line 235 on an exposition of the tenet that the world is native and mortal, and focuses first and foremost on the mortality of all the constitutive elements of our world; indeed we must wait until line 416 before switching from destruction to an account of how the world actually came into being. The immediate context of Phaethon's story, however, is more nuanced. Already at 338–44 Lucretius refers in general terms to ancient beliefs about the destruction brought about by flooding or scorching heat. Now, at 394–5, he brings up flood and fire again as real events: ‘ut fama est’ (‘as the story goes’) at 395 is corroborative, as once more at 412, this time referring to the flood only. The association of Phaethon's story with the apparently uncontested tradition of the flood thus weakens at least in part the forceful — if predictable — disclaimer at 405–6.

Phaethon's ill-fated ride brings about disasters all over the world, as Ovid details in a sort of un-Lucretian aetiological catalogue which spans over thirty lines. This is a list of momentous events, which explain among other things why Aethiopians are dark-skinned, Lybia is largely a desert or the sources of the Nile cannot be found, and generally paints a picture of near-final catastrophe, a foreshadowing of what a real ekpyrosis might look like. There are few immediate victims, though, apart from some beached seals and the swans crowding the banks of the river Caystros in Maeonia: ‘et quae Maeonias celebrabant carmine ripas/ flumineae volucres medio caluere Caystro’ (252–3 ‘and the river birds which thronged with their song the banks of Maeonia were scorched in the middle of the Cayster’).

These lines notoriously evoke Lucretius at 2.344–5: ‘et variae volucres, laetantia quae loca aquarum/ concelebrant circum ripas fontisque lacusque’ (‘and the different birds which throng the joyous regions of water around bank and spring and lake …’). I am almost tempted to think that Ovid's combusted swans may suggest that what is ending up in flames here is also Epicurus-the-swan as mentioned — again — in the proem to Book 3 of DRN (3.7) and his dream of a poetry which can be both precious and all-revealing.Footnote ⁹² At the very least, we should wonder whether Lucretius' association between Epicurus and the Giants, which Ovid expands into a wider comparison of Epicurus and Phaethon, can be handled with complete safety even with the help of Lucretius' careful caveats and distinctions which he interposes at several points.

Lucretian poetry and philosophy are a central concern in the Phaethon episode, a highly ambitious programmatic passage on several different counts. On this reading, Ovid approaches the DRN with the same complex strategy — a mixture of admiration and somewhat ironic criticism — which we are accustomed to detect in his approach to Virgil and especially to the Aeneid. As in that case, Ovid's critique is enormously important for what it tells us both about his own project and about the model he is interpreting. Few critics can claim his eye for spotting the fault-lines which make poetry great, and enriching a text with telling suspicions. Allusion always involves, to a degree, disruption and subversion,Footnote ⁹³ subversion being understood, of course, as a bidirectional process, since a later reading can do much to destabilize and problematize its model. In the case of the Metamorphoses and the DRN, however, we face a rather unusual instance of this phenomenon, because of the marked asymmetry in what the two texts have at stake. The Metamorphoses' broad church, with its post-modern exuberance, makes no great claim to orthodoxy, while Lucretius (like Iuppiter) must exercise a careful watch over his own doctrinal ramparts. Lucretian subtexts in the Metamorphoses enrich and vary its conceptual texture, but can hardly jeopardize, by and large, a non-existent theoretical coherence — although it is fair to say that in a story such as Phaethon's allusions to the DRN do add to a view of divine agency as unpredictable or at times even cruel. Ovid's searching reading, on the other hand, may retroactively destabilize, or even disrupt, those parts of the DRN where he spots ideological hesitations which Lucretius would have been hard-pressed to account for.

IX OEDIPAL COMPLICATIONS

Reading Phaethon's disaster as a cautionary tale against the risks of sublimity, with its disregard for epistemological and aesthetic boundaries, does nothing to erase the profound appeal of the poetic programme it advertises. Pursuing avia may well be dangerous, but can we really expect Ovid to forsake nova Footnote ⁹⁴ and opt for the safety of a highly un-Callimachean beaten path, as Sol recommends (2.167 tritum)? Can divina voluptas be forsaken just in order to eschew the attending horror? The key tamen Footnote ⁹⁵ of the epitaph (2.328) carries much weight, with the concessive troping the tension between divergent, equally irresistible drives: recusatio, a Verneigung of sorts, always leverages its allegiances.

From this different angle we can read the Phaethon episode as a more comprehensive reflection on the nature and objectives of epic poetry — a constant focus of attention of Ovidian poetics. But the emphasis placed by the narrative on Iuppiter's political rôle and the ever-looming overlap between the father of the gods and the Princeps also deepen the political implications of the episode beyond those already suggested by the Lucretian scenario.

A crucial aspect of the Phaethon episode, in fact, is represented by Sol's venting his rage at Iuppiter both by momentarily depriving the world of light, and by shouting his criticism at the harsh punishment of what he regards as a youthful and understandable mistake, one which even the king of the gods himself could have committed (392–3). This different allocation of responsibilities allows for the development of two distinct but intertwined narrative strands, one focused on the issue of paternity and succession, the other on the dialectics between creativity and power.

Phaethon's story is both a tale of contested paternity and of failed succession. The Oedipal overtones of this compact Bildungsroman are intense, for Phaethon, mixing up self-doubt and aggression, is equally eager to gain his father's recognition and to hasten his replacement in the masterful steering of the chariot.Footnote ⁹⁶ Already in Lucretius the interaction between Sol and his son is shot through with the imagery of succession, neatly reversed. We are left to surmise Phaethon's objectives, but after Iuppiter restores order Sol reappropriates the ‘lampada mundi’ (literal and metaphorical) which had been seized by his son with a gesture that subverts the orderly generational flow inscribed in ‘traditio lampadis’: ‘Solque cadenti/ obvius aeternam succepit lampada mundi’ (5.401–2 ‘and the Sun, meeting his fall, caught up from him the everlasting lamp of the world’).

In his desire for reunion with, and acknowledgement from, his absent father, Phaethon follows the archetypal steps of young Telemachus. Telemachus engages in a chariot journey in Odyssey 3 as he moves from Pylos to Sparta in order to establish his credentials as Odysseus' worthy successor and, at a more fundamental level, to ascertain his true lineage, about which he harbours some lingerings doubts, as he confesses to Athena in disguise: ‘my mother claims that I am his [sc. Odysseus’] son, but I do not know: in fact no one really knows his engendering' (1.215–16). He undertakes his journey of discovery at the goddess' suggestion (Od. 1.279–83), just as Phaethon departs heeding his mother's advice (1.773–5).Footnote ⁹⁷

The Homeric model is particularly challenging because it weaves together a story of coming of age and a reflection on the evolving nature of poetry.Footnote ⁹⁸ Telemachus' quête is less tragic than Phaethon's, but he is still bound to play ‘the inherently contradictory role of the unsucceeding successor’.Footnote ⁹⁹ The youth does find his father and puts to rest any doubt about his legitimacy, but in doing so he also reaffirms his subordination and youth. He may actually be doing more than that: he may also be attesting, as Richard Martin has suggested,Footnote ¹⁰⁰ the end of a poetic tradition, the impossibility of emulating and carrying forward the age of heroes and the epic that revolves around them. Telemachus does survive his journey, but he will not be able to grow into a new Odysseus.

By shifting the murder of Phaethon from Sol onto Iuppiter, and expanding upon Sol's compassion and anger in the closing moments of the story, Ovid allows multiple emotional alignments between characters and readers and signals the complexity of the signifying strategies mobilized by the (failed) Oedipal plot.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The father's rôle as guarantor of authority is diffracted:Footnote ¹⁰² Sol does not relinquish his power, but nor does he kill his own offspring directly. As Phaethon fails to equal his father in a much more gruesome fashion than Telemachus, he nonetheless attests to the impossibility of succeeding Sol (let alone Iuppiter), not just, as we have seen in the first part of this paper, as purveyor of sublimity, but more broadly of (epic) poetry.

This impossibility, we may add, stems from self-doubt as much as from external causes. Phaethon is not prepared to accept at face value his mother's reassuring words about his lineage, and Telemachus takes for granted that such doubts are part and parcel of the human condition. This ‘Phaethon complex’Footnote ¹⁰³ translates anxiety about legitimacy into inadequacy to succeed, effectively morphing into a self-fulfilling prophecy: even after these young men have put to rest their genealogical doubts, they are shown to be more or less tragically unable to equal their imposing fathers.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The Oedipal masterplot doubles up as Sol's and Iuppiter's actions and reactions diverge, with the latter portrayed as an exceedingly harsh, almost tyrannical ruler. Both the concessive force of Phaethon's epitaph and Sol's expostulations conspire to elicit sympathy for the youth. This is not the first or only occasion when the Metamorphoses debate the appropriateness of divine punishment, though the element of force majeure strongly invoked by Tellus adds a different twist.

As discussed earlier, Iuppiter's actions are presented as distinctly political, an element that reinforces the overlap, frequent in Ovid, between Iuppiter and Augustus. The god's wielding of the fatal thunder which causes Phaethon's death suggests a parallel with his attack on the Giants (a metaphor of Augustus' ascent to power), as described both in the Metamorphoses (1.151–5) and in Tr. 2.333 (‘domitos Iovis igne Gigantas’ ‘the Giants tamed by Iuppiter's thunderbolt’). Much as the context differs, Phaethon, like Epicurus, is a Giant of sorts, whose aspiration to enter the sky is over-reaching: the verb adfectare, applied to Phaethon at 2.58 refers to the Giants in 1.152 (‘adfectasse ferunt regnum caeleste Gigantas’ ‘they say that the Giants assailed the kingdom of heaven’), where regnum emphasizes the political subtext of the action.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Even allowing for a good deal of scepticism on Ovid's part towards the Lucretian and Epicurean project, which we can read into his narrative of Phaethon's actions, Sol's anger at Iuppiter calls into question the punishment he metes out, and the adjective saevus applied to the thunder confirms Ovid's qualms. Tr. 2.333–8 provides an important parallel. There Ovid justifies his decision not to engage in epic, or, periphrastically, ‘to tell of the Giants subjected by Iuppiter’. The reasons adduced for his choice are worth looking at. His ingenium is not up to the task, because the ‘immania Caesaris acta’ (‘Caesar's mighty deeds’) require a stronger inspiration. Better to give up, or Ovid's craftmanship (opus) may be surpassed by the subject matter at hand: ‘materia ne superetur opus’ is a clever twist on the epiphonematic statement which sums up the description of the Palace of Sun at the beginning of Book 2. This is precisely what has happened when Ovid tried his hand at epic (2.336).

The same admission occurs at the beginning of Amores 2.1. There, in spite of the lighter tone, it is Iuppiter who, in a sense, suffers Phaethon's fate; ‘magnis tamen excidit ausis’ finds a precedent in Ovid's summing up of his decision to abandon epic themes: ‘excidit ingenio Iuppiter ipse meo’ (2.1.18 ‘Iuppiter himself dropped from my thoughts’). The poem is based on a systematic inversion of proportions, and of rôles. Ovid ‘had in his hands’ nothing less than thunder-clouds, lighting-bolts and Iuppiter himselfFootnote ¹⁰⁶ — or, in fact, a poem about all of this: a bold undertaking (11 ausus), but one for which he had adequate inspiration (12 ‘et satis oris erat’ ‘my words were up to the task’), and which would have resulted in a Gigantomachy, the ‘cosmic struggles’ (11 ‘caelestia bella’) which define epic poetry. Both thunderbolt and Iuppiter fell out of interest (17 ‘ego cum Iove fulmen omisi’ ‘I let Iuppiter fall with his lightning’) once the poet realized that the thunderbolts (fulmen refers both to a thunder- and a fire-bolt)Footnote ¹⁰⁷ threatened against him by his girlfriend are a much more dangerous prospect that Iuppiter's own.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

These different takes on the same issue — Ovid's decision not to write ‘now’ (a certain kind of) epic poetry — are all part and parcel of his ongoing reflections on the nature of epic, his creative rewriting of the rules of the genre, and his self-positioning within the canon of epic writers. Ovid never renounces epic, as of course the Metamorphoses attest, but by blurring the boundaries between epic and elegy, by elegizing epic and epicizing the distich, he simultaneously proclaims his original contribution to the genre's evolving and expanding brief and marks his distance with respect to his most illustrious epic predecessors. Ovid is neither a Lucretius nor a Virgil: he wants to be both. The Metamorphoses claim a place of honour in the genealogy of the Ennian-Virgilian brand of epic, witness Pythagoras' speech,Footnote ¹⁰⁹ while also incorporating the different approach championed by Lucretius (and Empedocles).Footnote ¹¹⁰ This polymorphic attempt at encompassing all the available routes to epic success through generic experimentation entails an agonistic attitude towards his predecessors,Footnote ¹¹¹ which includes a margin of aggression and perhaps a residual anxiety not so much of influence as of failure,Footnote ¹¹² or at least of concern about what the ‘proper’ boundaries of epic should be.Footnote ¹¹³ By Ovid's time, Virgil is already ‘Virgil’, not just the poet laureate par excellence, but also the embodiment (programmatically, at least) of a peculiar form of connection between artistic and political power such as the one theorized at the beginning of Georgics 3,Footnote ¹¹⁴ where Virgil shows himself willing and able to drive not one, but a hundred chariots in honour of Augustus (3.18 ‘centum quadriiugos agitabo ad flumina currus’ ‘I will drive a hundred four-horse chariots beside the stream’).Footnote ¹¹⁵ When Ovid denounces Virgil's indiscretions in Tristia 2, pointing out that the Aeneid is hardly the candid poem Augustus naively praises, ‘ille tuae felix Aeneidos auctor’ (2.533 ‘the happy author of your Aeneid’) packs in its two adjectives more in the way of pained barbs than frothy irony. ‘Your Aeneid’ points, both wistfully and scornfully, to a level of closeness and connivance between ruler and poet that Ovid cannot (or would not) approach, with the inevitable result that the fate of ‘lucky’ Virgil stands in marked contrast to infelix (elegiac) Ovid.

The lines preceding this statement are also remarkable: Ovid pictures himself as an obedient Phaethon, whose horses are confined to the narrow orbit of a predictable manège (Tr. 2.531 ‘invida me spatio natura coercuit arto’ ‘grudging Nature has confined me within a narrow space’), eschewing the wider spaces which proved fatal to the youth (Met. 2.167–8 ‘quod simul ac sensere, ruunt tritumque relinquunt/ quadriiugi spatium nec quo prius ordine currunt’ ‘when they feel this, the four-horse team runs wild and leaves the well-trodden track, and runs no longer in the same course as before’). In cruel paradox, however, this tritum spatium, the only one suited to his limited poetic strength,Footnote ¹¹⁶ is not even safe, while Virgil's lofty bella have turned him into the prince's darling. Even after we allow for the operation, in this context, of the founding patterns of exilic poetry — the insistence on poetic weakness, Augustus' interpretive mistakes — this section of Tristia 2 can be seen to stage a poetic rivalry played out in the contrast between epic and amatory poetry, and closely associated with the issue of acceptance on Augustus' part. In a compressed and allusive fashion, the passage prefigures the relationship between the Thebaid and the Aeneid which Statius will voice in his poems: the end of the Thebaid (12.816–17) ‘vive, precor, nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta,/ sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora’ (‘live, I pray, nor rival the divine Aeneid, but follow afar and even venerate its footsteps’) points to distance and respect (these vestigia will not allow him to reach the Aeneid itself), but coupled with the hope of imperial favour (814 ‘iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar’ ‘already great-hearted Caesar deigns to know you’), while Silvae 2.7.79–80 voices competition, or even superiority, rather than respectful adoration.

The underlining notion that what is at stake is also a competition for the favour of the master helps us to understand why Iuppiter's action against Phaethon is presented in such polemical terms, rather than as an inevitable measure taken in order to forestall the destruction of the world. Just beneath the reassuring conventions of recusatio there lurks a complex set of emotions, a mixture of admiration for the rebellious epic of Lucretius, the lofty status of Virgil as the epic poet laureate, a resentment of the fact that the avoidance of epic (partial or total) did not result in acceptance but in rejection on the part of the only critic whose opinion, whatever its technical shortcomings, really does matter. Phaethon is, after all, an inspired poet, driven by the same violent inspiration which Ovid experiences. His mind ‘leads’ him (fert underscoring passivity) into uncharted territories, soon revealing a nightmare scenario punctuated by the recurrence of the same verb,Footnote ¹¹⁷ until the final fertur at 2.321, which marks the final stage of his downfall as it turns the active force of inspiration into passive punishment. His desire to be accepted as a fellow god literally (and metapoetically) — ‘ede notam tanti generis meque adsere caelo’ (1.761 ‘offer proof of such an illustrious parentage and show that I belong to heaven’) — echoes in vain Horace's similar request for poetic recognition: ‘quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres,/ sublimi feriam sidera vertice’ (carm. 1.1.35–6 ‘but if you rank me among lyric poets I will touch the stars with my exalted head’).Footnote ¹¹⁸

The epic, thundering Iuppiter is the guarantor of a poetic order, of a hierarchy of genres, which still holds in the face of Ovid's protests. Lucretius and Virgil — not less than Iuppiter and Augustus — are authoritative father-figures who are bound to elicit a panoply of conflicting sentiments: admiration, envy, aggression, desire to emulate. Even if we accept that Ovid's unwillingness to engage in a certain type of epic is in effect Augustus' own fault — he is the one who would force the poet to sing of ‘immania … acta’, hardly a reassuring twist on res gestae — the decision to follow this particular line of conduct exacts a heavy price. Poetic rivalry, plotted onto the scheme of Oedipal conflict and competition for attention and approval is not assuaged just because, under particular circumstances, one of the competitors feels unable, or unwilling, to enter the fray.

Nor is the potential aggressiveness of Ovid's attitude very far behind. Striving for recognition (of his rôle, his innocence, his misery, his fame), and the hierarchic subordination it ostensibly entails, is easily morphed, as in so much of his exile poetry, into a thinly disguised threat, if not outright aggression.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Accustomed as he is to ride triumphantly on his own currus, Augustus, too, should be alert to the dangers his position implies. When, in a feat of Epicurean ouranobatein (57 ‘mente videbo’),Footnote ¹²⁰ Ovid imagines the emperor's (fictional) triumph over the Germans of Tristia 4.2, Ovid casts Augustus triumphator in the rôle of a poet,Footnote ¹²¹ and, tellingly, voices the dangers he must now face: the chariot's horses are so excited by the tumultuous acclamations of the crowds that they buck, at the risk of overturning the chariot: ‘ipse sono plausuque simul fremituque calentes/ quadriiugos cernes saepe resistere equos’ (53–4 ‘you will yourself often see the horses, yoked four abreast, rear in confusion at the song, the applause and the din all at once’). The path to glory, whether for a poet or an emperor,Footnote ¹²² is always a risky Phaethontian business: ‘ardua per praeceps gloria vadit iter’ (4.3.74 ‘glory scales the heights by the steepest paths’).Footnote ¹²³ In his exilic misfortune it is for Ovid to fear thunder-fires and shaky chariots. In the long-term stakes of eternal gloria, such risks are more evenly allocated, and may even be reversed.