metamorphoses 1.100

I took the Python program I wrote yesterday and made it into a JS program, then put it over on this page. Now I can generate a random passage from my reading list[1] or my for-fun list from a bookmark in my browser, something about which I am ridiculously pleased.

Today's roll is off the reading list, but it's a good one: Ovid's Metamorphoses 1.100.

Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89–100

Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,
sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.
poena metusque aberant, nec verba minantia fixo
aere legebantur, nec supplex turba timebat
iudicis ora sui, sed erant sine vindice tuti.
nondum caesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem,
montibus in liquidas pinus descenderat undas,
nullaque mortales praeter sua litora norant;
nondum praecipites cingebant oppida fossae;
non tuba derecti, non aeris cornua flexi,
non galeae, non ensis erat: sine militis usu
mollia securae peragebant otia gentes.

The Golden Age was first to be established, which (with no defenders,
absent force, lacking laws) cultivated honesty and righteousness.
Punishment and fear were absent, and menacing words weren't
posted in bronze, and the rabble didn't fear the mouth
of their own judge, but were safe without defenders.
Not yet had hewn pines come down from their mountain homes
to behold an alien world on flowing waters,
nor had any mortal known a shore except his own;
not yet had steep ditches encircled now-fortified towns;
nor had trumpets been raised, nor horns of bronze curved,
nor did helmets or swords yet exist: without use for soldiers,
untroubled peoples passed their lives in gentle leisure.

notes

vindice: Okay, so you know how I think Ovid is the sexiest motherfucker in this place? Yeah, so one of the things in which he delights is using his law degree to do poetry. In Latin legal terminology, a vindex is someone who brings a legal claim. This word is super unusual in Latin poetry pre-Ovid. E. J. Kenney says of it:

...I wish here to dwell only on the last group of words...those connected with the process of making a legal claim called vindicatio: vindex, vindico, vindicta, assero, assertor...In classical prose and post-Augustan verse these five words are by no means limited to their technical legal significations; and it seems highly probable that the credit for removing them from the legal and prose sphere and introducing them to the metaphorical resources of high poetry belongs to Ovid. Unobtrusive linguistic innovation of this kind is one of the hallmarks of the Ovidian style.

— "Ovid and the Law", 254[2]

For context: by Kenney's numbers, Ovid uses vindex as many times in these eleven lines as Horace does in his entire corpus of poetry (twice). Ovid really likes this word.

sponte sua: Similarly legal terminology. "The expression refers to the opposite of situations in which one is bound to do something by law, agreement, order of a magistrate or of the person under whose power he is, or by necessity" (Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, s.v. "sponte".)

works cited

  • Berger, Adolf. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953.
  • 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.
  1. One of the classic elements of a PhD program in classics (in the US at least) is Greek and Latin language exams, for which part of the preparation is studying a list of texts assigned by the school (Yale's, for example, is here). The other thing about these lists is that everyone pretends that you'll walk into the exam having read everything on the list and unfortunately not everyone also knows that that's complete bullshit.^
  2. By the way, if you for some crazy reason ever need to read about legal language in Ovid, this is the paper everyone cites.^