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ovid the lawyer

250

Ovid and the Law

in general the legal terms which figure in his poetry derive from the courts and not the schools; indeed, as will be seen, the language is on occasion almost aggressively technical.

oratio eius iam tum nihil aliud poterat videri quam solutum carmen.

Even then [i.e. while Ovid was in school], his speech could be seen as nothing other than poetry in prose.[1]

—Seneca Maior, Controversiae 2.2.8

74

Roman Law and Latin Literature

The legal status of Ovid’s relegation depends on a privilegium published in an edict (2.131–138). Ovid highlights the decision’s arbitrary nature and the princeps’ failure to bring his crimes openly to court. The poem spoofs legal language throughout and undermines the law’s seriousness. Ovid’s exile appears cruel and illegitimate, but the joke is on Augustus, represented to posterity as exacting vengeance on a defenceless poet.

Ovid himself disliked the more legalistic types of declamation, Seneca informs us, so it was perhaps even more the case with him that declamation was a training in sheer rhetorical invention, the skill of speaking engagingly to any given circumstance, a strictly artificial exercise in verbal dexterity. It is telling also how regular a point of reference Ovid’s poetry is in Seneca’s discussion of declamatory practice—the practices of declamation and poetry could get very close indeed...To propose that Ovid is writing primarily for lawyers would be unforgivably glib, no doubt, but it may not be entirely lacking in explanatory power.

Morgan, Ovid: A Very Short Introduction

works cited

  • Kenney, E. J. "Ovid and the Law." In Studies in Latin Poetry, edited by Christopher M. Dawson and Thomas Cole, 243–63. Yale Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
  • Lowrie, Michèle. “Roman Law and Latin Literature.” In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society, edited by Paul J. du Plessis, Clifford Ando, and Kaius Tuori. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • Morgan, Llewelyn. Ovid: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
  1. Lit. "poetry unbound".^