Ovid's use of Lucretius inMetamorphoses1.67–8

Abstract

Here Ovid treats the demiurge's disposition of weightlessaetherover the other elements. This section of the cosmogony follows one that is devoted to the sphere ofaer(52–66) where the creator settles the turbulent winds and other threatening meteorological phenomena. Recently Denis Feeney has suggested that Ovid's demiurge ‘does not act in a very epic manner’ by placing weightlessaetheron top of the winds. He argues: ‘The oddness of the control is caught in a moment of comparison with Vergil's universe: Vergil's Jupiter controls the winds by putting on top of them a mass of mountains(Aen.1.61), while Ovid'smundi fabricatorplaces above them theaether, explicitly “liquid and lacking weight, containing nothing of earthly sediment” (liquidum et gravitate carentem/aethera nee quicquam terrenae faecis habentem, 1.67–8)’. Feeney's observation has much to recommend it. To begin with, Ovid's excursus on the cardinal winds (57–66) evokes Vergil's set piece on the cave of Aeolus inAeneid l. And the demiurge's subsequent placement ofaether (‘haec super inposuitliquidum et gravitate carentem / aethera’) seems to echo the action of the Vergilian Jupiter(‘hocmetuens molemque et montisinsuperaltos /imposuit,’ Aen.1.61–2). However, Feeney's conclusion that the demiurge's action is ‘redolent of anti-epic allegiances’ needs some adjustment.4 For his reading neglects an important verbal and structural allusion to the cosmogony of Lucretius (D.R.N.5.495–501). Accordingly, the conclusion to be drawn from lines 67–8 may be, not that Ovid momentarily reveals his Callimachean colours in an epic context, but that he plays Lucretius off against Vergil and so establishes his own position in the epic tradition of cosmological poetry.