Stories of Silencing and Censorship in Metamorphoses

Throughout Metamorphoses, Ovid attempted to narrate how society transformed from uncivilized to civilized through self-contained transformation stories. These stories often portray female characters who were victims of male authority and violence. These women often do not hold the power to fight back. However, Ovid chose to tell their stories in ways that evoke our emotions to place emphasis on these characters. I will argue that by giving these female characters a voice within the stories during a time when they had little freedoms and no voice in society, and by evoking our emotions to pity the victims, Ovid is challenging us to look within these characters for more meaning and subtle parallels between the experiences of these victims and his own experience of being silenced by Caesar Augustus.

When looking into the life of Ovid, he was silenced through his exile in 8 AD by an authoritative male figure who we know as Caesar Augustus. After being exiled, his works were banished from libraries throughout Rome. While we do not know for certain why he was exiled by Augustus, scholars, such as Sarah Mack, have made connections between Augustus’s plans for reverting Rome’s values back to the older, more conservative values to the time in which Ovid was exiled through evidence in his epic poem Ars armatoria. She has made a strong claim that perhaps Ovid was exiled due to his racy and politically charged poetry, which became a problem for Augustus to overcome when he wished to revert Rome back to its conservative ways (Mack, 38-39). In addition to examining Ars for clues that lead us to the cause of his exile, one can find evidence of Ovid’s experience of being silenced within some of Ovid’s character depictions in Metamorphoses. Scholars, such as Leo C. Curran, argue that this epic poem is really a critique of Roman values and traditions that Augustus was trying to bring back to life (263). Much attention is brought to the experience and behavior of women in situations where they fall victim to superiority. While we know that Metamorphoses was primarily written before his exile, if one looks deeper within the experiences of Ovid’s victim characters, most of which being women, there are far too many parallels between their experiences and that of his own exile for one to ignore. There is enough to make one believe that Ovid went back and made some revisions to Metamorphoses. However, we will never know to what extent.

One story that stands out is the story of Apollo and Daphne in Book I. In this story, Apollo falls in love with Daphne due to the fury of Cupid. Wishing to remain a virgin, Daphne asked her father to change her appearance so that she may disappear and flee Apollo’s forced love. She was able to remain a virgin and was ironically “liberated” by being transformed into a tree as a result of challenging a superior figure. After recognizing that she cannot be his lover any longer due to her being a tree, Apollo decided to keep the tree as a decoration. He claimed her as “his own tree who will adorn great Roman generals and protect the portals of Augustus” (Ovid Met. I.770-777). Apollo was only able to gain control of her after she was silenced, similar to the control Ovid may have felt he was under through his own silencing and banishment. After choosing the path of innocence, Daphne was still penalized due to the self-centered thoughts of Apollo. Even after she was turned into a tree and became powerless, he still did not abandon his love for her. Just as Ovid challenged authority and was silenced because of it, Daphne challenged a god and was inadvertently tricked into submission by living her life as a tree, still  owned by Apollo.

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While the story of Arachne in Book VI did not entail her being dominated by a male figure, she was still suppressed by a superior figure. Her story of censorship parallels with Ovid’s in that she was a talented artist who was passionate about her work. Similar to how poetry was Ovid’s form of self-expression, weaving was primarily an art that was for women and was one of the few outlets of self-expression women had. He put such great detail into the description of Arachne’s work that he established sympathy for the character, dedicating a whole 37 lines to his description of Arachne’s work. “Arachne shows Europa tricked by a Jove in semblance of a bull upon the sea and done so naturally you would have thought the bull and the waves he breasted were both real” (Ovid Met.VI.145-8). However, due to her work offending the goddess Minerva, she was transformed into a spider. Similar to how Arachne’s work was rejected by Minerva, Ovid’s work was found offensive and rejected by Augustus. In addition, Arachne’s works were actual depictions of transformations, which is literally the central theme to Metamorphoses. She depicted the gods conquering and deceiving humans and perhaps was what angered Minerva so much considering her tapestry glorified the gods. This is enough evidence here to make one believe that this story was meant to represent the censorship of Ovid’s literature by the Roman government. Just as Arachne continued to weave her web after her transformation, Ovid continued to write and revise his poetry after being exiled.

Another story with ironic connections to Ovid’s exile is the story of the sisters Procne and Philomela in Book VI. Philomela was raped by her sister’s husband Tereus, who then cut off her tongue because she threatened to tell others of his act, raped her again, and then left her imprisoned. Philomela’s tongue being cut off in response to her challenging an authoritative male figure is similar to how Ovid’s works were taken from the libraries of Rome due to them  imposing a threat on the vision Augustus had for reverting Rome back to its old ways. Ovid used vibrant language that dramatized the scene when describing the cutting off of her tongue. It was described as “falling to the black earth trembling and murmuring, and twitching as it flings itself about, just as a serpent’s severed tail will do” (Ovid Met.VI.804-8). Ironic to that time, Philomela’s story did not go unheard, and Tereus did not go unpunished. Due to her being unable to speak, she used her tapestry-making skills to weave the story into the tapestry to send to her sister. The art in which Philomela created is ultimately what saved her, likewise to how Ovid probably felt about his poetry. Once Procne received the tapestry, she found her sister, and they plotted violent revenge – to kill their son and put the pieces of his body in Tereus’ dinner. Philomela got her ultimate revenge. Similarly, Ovid was silenced, and his art liberated him by telling his story. One could consider the sisters’ revenge on Tereus a parallel to Ovid’s revenge as him still writing during his exile.

 Ovid was oppressed and silenced in the same way the women in these stories were. Ovid chose to use women to represent himself because he recognized the irony in the parallels between his experience of being a silenced poet and the oppression and censorship of women in the changing Roman culture. His exile made him feel silenced, powerless, and victimized just as women in society were. He used dominating male and submissive female roles to depict his silencing in ways that the reader would understand at that time while at the same time criticizing the conservative side of the Roman empire. To demonstrate the importance of these scenes, he told the tales through violent and descriptive language that appealed to the reader’s emotions. When taking Ovid’s biographical circumstances into consideration when reading Metamorphoses, one can begin to interpret the violence centered around women through a different lens, one that gave them a voice and allowed his readers to interpret social and political issues of the Roman empire at that time.

Bibliography

• Curran, L. (1978). Rape and Rape Victims in Metamorphoses. Arethusa, 11(1/2), 213-241.
• Mack, S. (1988). “Ovid.” New Haven: Yale University Press.