Rhetoric in Ovid’s Time

Ovid writes exclusively in the postwar period of Augustus’ reign, a time of martial peace but also of political upheaval as the offices of the republic came under the hegemony of one man, the princeps. Along with the political developments that led to the transformation of the Roman republic to the order of the principatus, the societal role of rhetoric underwent change (Kennedy 1994: 172). Institutions such as the Forum and the senate, the main locations for political rhetoric, witnessed a shift in the

Style and approach of oratory (see chapters 9, 24); at the same time displays of rhetoric blossomed in the lecture halls of the professors, where rhetoric’s influence on literature was significant. About one hundred years after Ovid, Maternus in Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus points out the relationship between the establishment of the principatus and the altered conditions of political rhetoric (cf. chapters 9, 24):

Quid enim opus est longis in senatu sententiis, cum optimi cito consentiant? quid multis apud populum contionibus, cum de re publica non imperiti et multi deliberent, sed sapientissimus et unus? (Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus 41.4)

Why in fact is there a need for long speeches in the senate when the best men consent quickly? Why is there a need for many public meetings when it is not the inexperienced crowd that deliberate about the state but only the one and wisest [princeps]?

Due to the changed political circumstances, many rhetoricians concentrated more intensively on the artistic and elaborate arrangement of their speeches. In Ovid’s time rhetoric was ‘‘l’expression d’un goiat nouveau, d’un raffinement exquis de sentiments exprimes dans une forme recherchee et brillante’’ (‘‘the expression of a new sensibility, of an exclusive refinement of feeling conveyed in a studied and sparkling form,’’ Sabot 1976: 346). Ovid’s audience and readers, being ‘‘connoisseurs of rhetoric’’ (Jacobson 1974: 97), were able to appreciate his style. Ovid himself confesses how much he enjoys living in his own culturally refined time:

Prisca iuvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum gratulor: haec aetas moribus apta meis

... quia cultus adest nec nostros mansit in annos rusticitas priscis illa superstes avis.

(Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.121-2, 127-8)

Let others promote ancient times. I congratulate myself that I was not born until now: this age is in keeping with my nature. . . because culture is here and rusticity, which persisted until our old grandfathers, has not lasted to our time.

The importance of rhetoric in this highly refined literary environment is a complex issue that has ignited much debate. Naturally the use of rhetorical devices in literature can serve many purposes depending on the author’s motives. Indeed, some scholars have argued, with regard to a variety of authors of Ovid’s time, that rhetoric offered a means to criticize the princeps safely in literature, thus implying that rhetoric’s significance is largely content driven and dependent upon the politics and social concerns of the time (cf. e. g., Ahl 1985; Hinds 1987: 115-34; Newlands 1995). Although political and social concerns are naturally bound up with the use of rhetoric, Ovid seems especially motivated in aesthetic terms with regard to rhetoric; for Ovid rhetoric is a means to play with form, to be witty, to be imaginative. And the evidence for this aesthetic motivation is present in the accounts concerning Ovid’s rhetorical education.