Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as

Philosopher Gareth D. Williams (Editor)

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/philosophy-in-ovid-ovid-as-philosopher-gareth-d-willia
ms-editor/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Law and Love in Ovid: Courting Justice in the Age of

Augustus Ioannis Ziogas

https://ebookmass.com/product/law-and-love-in-ovid-courting-
justice-in-the-age-of-augustus-ioannis-ziogas/

Empire of Letters: Writing in Roman Literature and

Thought from Lucretius to Ovid Stephanie Ann Frampton

https://ebookmass.com/product/empire-of-letters-writing-in-roman-
literature-and-thought-from-lucretius-to-ovid-stephanie-ann-
frampton/

Jesus As Philosopher: The Moral Sage in the Synoptic

Gospels Runar M. Thorsteinsson

https://ebookmass.com/product/jesus-as-philosopher-the-moral-
sage-in-the-synoptic-gospels-runar-m-thorsteinsson/

The Creators of Inside Money 1st ed. Edition D. Gareth

Thomas

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-creators-of-inside-money-1st-
ed-edition-d-gareth-thomas/
Logical Empiricism as Scientific Philosophy Alan
Richardson

https://ebookmass.com/product/logical-empiricism-as-scientific-
philosophy-alan-richardson/

Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy

Donovan Miyasaki

https://ebookmass.com/product/nietzsches-immoralism-politics-as-
first-philosophy-donovan-miyasaki/

The Book of Doors Gareth Brown

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-book-of-doors-gareth-brown/

Adorno's philosophy of the nonidentical: thinking as

resistance Adorno

https://ebookmass.com/product/adornos-philosophy-of-the-
nonidentical-thinking-as-resistance-adorno/

Surgery Morning Report: Beyond the Pearls 1st Edition

Austin D. Williams

https://ebookmass.com/product/surgery-morning-report-beyond-the-
pearls-1st-edition-austin-d-williams/
Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher
 Philosophy in Ovid,
Ovid as Philosopher
Edited by
KAT HA R I NA VO L K A N D G A R E T H D. W I L L IA M S

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Volk, Katharina, 1969- editor. | Williams, Gareth D., editor.
Title: Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as philosopher / [editiors] Katharina Volk
and Gareth D. Williams.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021033980 (print) | LCCN 2021033981 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197610336 | ISBN 9780197610350 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D.—Criticism and
interpretation. | Philosophy in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.
| Essays.
Classification: LCC PA6537 .P45 2022 (print) | LCC PA6537 (ebook) |
DDC 871/.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033980
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033981

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197610336.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 Contents

Preface  vii
Contributors  ix

Introduction  1
Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams

PA RT I : OV I D’ S S A PI E N T IA
1. Ouidius sapiens: The Wise Man in Ovid’s Work  23
Francesca Romana Berno

PA RT I I : T H E E R O T IC C O R P U S
2. Elegy, Tragedy, and the Choice of Ovid (Amores 3.1)  49
Laurel Fulkerson
3. Ovid’s Ars amatoria and the Epicurean Hedonic Calculus  63
Roy Gibson
4. Criticizing Love’s Critic: Epicurean parrhesia as an Instructional
Mode in Ovidian Love Elegy  84
Erin M. Hanses
5. Ovid’s imago mundi muliebris and the Makeup of the World
in Ars amatoria 3.101–​290  104
Del A. Maticic
6. Ovid’s Art of Life  124
Katharina Volk

PA RT I I I : M ETA MOR PH O S E S
7. Keep Up the Good Work: (Don’t) Do It like Ovid
(Sen. QNat. 3.27–​30)  145
Myrto Garani
vi Contents

8. Venus discors: The Empedocleo-​Lucretian Background of

Venus and Calliope’s Song in Metamorphoses 5  164
Charles Ham
9. Labor and pestis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  184
Alison Keith
10. Cosmic Artistry in Ovid and Plato  207
Peter Kelly
11. Some Say the World Will End in Fire: Philosophizing the
Memnonides in Ovid’s Metamorphoses  226
Darcy A. Krasne

PA RT I V: T H E E X I L IC C O R P U S
12. Ovid against the Elements: Natural Philosophy,
Paradoxography, and Ethnography in the Exile Poetry  251
K. Sara Myers
13. Akrasia and Agency in Ovid’s Tristia  267
Donncha O’Rourke
14. Intimations of Mortality: Ovid and the End(s) of the World  287
Alessandro Schiesaro
15. The End(s) of Reason in Tomis: Philosophical Traces,
Erasures, and Error in Ovid’s Exilic Poetry  308
Gareth D. Williams

PA RT V: A F T E R OV I D
16. Philosophizing and Theologizing Reincarnations of Ovid:
Lucan to Alexander Pope  335
Philip Hardie

Works Cited  351

Index of Passages 377
General Index 393
Index of Latin Words  399
Index of Greek Words  401
 Preface

This volume grew out of the editors’ longstanding interest in two apparently
unrelated topics: Ovidian poetry and Roman philosophy. While many clas-
sical Latin poets were increasingly studied for their philosophical allusions
and affiliations, Ovid was until relatively recently still often considered an
irreverent virtuoso averse to serious thought. But could an Augustan poeta
doctus really be so out of touch with one of the most significant intellectual
developments of his time? Was there no philosophy in Ovid—​and no way of
seeing Ovid as a philosopher?
With these questions in mind, we contacted an international group of
scholars—​ both seasoned Ovidians and younger colleagues—​ and asked
whether they might be interested in participating in a conference on Ovidius
Philosophus. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic; one person
even told us that he had been waiting his “whole life for this conference to
come along”! The event took place at Columbia University on March 29–​30,
2019, and the chapters in this volume are (sometimes significantly) revised
versions of the papers delivered then. We are most grateful to the authors for
making the conference a success and contributing their work to the volume.
In organizing the conference and seeing the publication to completion,
we have relied on the support of many individuals and institutions, which
it is a pleasure to acknowledge in these pages. The Stanwood Cockey Lodge
Foundation generously subsidized both the original event and the volume’s
preparation for publication. Additional funding for the conference came
from the Columbia Department of Classics, the Columbia University
Seminars, Columbia’s Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, and Columbia’s
Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities. We are most
grateful for their support and also wish to convey our heartfelt thanks to
Lien van Geel for her skill and good cheer in taking care of the conference
logistics.
We are delighted that our exploration into Ovidian philosophy has found
a home with Oxford University Press and thank Stefan Vranka for his be-
lief in the project and for his help and support throughout. We are grateful
to Ponneelan Moorthy for steering the book through production and to
viii Preface

Donald Watt for his impeccable copy-​editing, as well as to the Press’s anon-
ymous readers, whose detailed comments and suggestions have, we believe,
enabled us to improve the volume significantly. For his invaluable help in
preparing the manuscript for submission, we wish to thank our editorial as-
sistant John Izzo, whose eagle eye has saved us from many an error.
The volume’s cover image is by the Spanish photographer Joaquín Bérchez
from the book Photographica Ovidiana (edited by him and his son Esteban
Bérchez Castaño), a serendipitous discovery made by one of the editors
during a stay in Madrid. We are most grateful to Joaquín for permitting us to
use his beautiful photograph, which we believe provides a most fitting entry
to our volume.

KV
GDW
New York, June 2021
 Contributors

Francesca Romana Berno is Associate Professor of Latin language and literature

at Sapienza University of Rome. She has published mostly on Seneca the Younger’s
prose works, but also on Cicero and Ovid, always paying attention to philosophical
issues, and in particular to rhetorical strategies aimed at moral exhortation.
Laurel Fulkerson is Associate Vice President for Research and Professor of Classics at
the Florida State University. Her research focuses on Latin poetry and the emotions.
She has just published a book with T. E. Franklinos, Constructing Authors and
Readers in the Appendices Vergiliana, Tibulliana, and Ouidiana (Oxford University
Press 2020).
Myrto Garani is Assistant Professor in Latin Literature at the National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She has published widely on Empedocles’
reception in Latin literature, especially in Lucretius and Ovid. She is currently
working on a monograph on Seneca’s Natural Questions Book 3 to be published in
the Pierides series (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) and a commentary on Lucretius’
De rerum natura 6 (for the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla).
Roy Gibson is Professor of Classics at Durham University and has published widely
on Ovid and Roman love elegy. His most recent book, Man of High Empire: The Life of
Pliny the Younger, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
Charles Ham is Assistant Professor of Classics at Grand Valley State University, and
his research focuses on philosophical discourse in Augustan poetry. Current projects
include a book on Ovid’s reception of Empedocles in his elegiac poetry and an article
on Pythagoreanism in Fasti 6.
Erin M. Hanses is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Penn
State University. Her primary research interests lie in the intersection of Latin love
elegy and Roman Epicureanism, and she has several articles forthcoming on literary
manifestations of Epicurean thought in the Roman world.
Philip Hardie is Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Emeritus Honorary
Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Cambridge. His Sather Lectures
were published in 2019 as Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry.
Alison Keith is Professor of Classics and Director of the Jackman Humanities
Institute at the University of Toronto. She has published widely on gender and genre
in Latin literature and Roman society, and is the author most recently of a volume on
Virgil in the Understanding Classics series published by Bloomsbury Academic.
x Contributors

Peter Kelly is Lecturer in the Classics department of the National University of

Ireland, Galway. He has published a number of major articles on Ovid and Greek
Philosophy. He is currently finalizing his monograph, The Cosmic Text from Ovid to
Plato, which is under review with Cambridge University Press.
Darcy A. Krasne is Lecturer in Classics at Columbia University. She has published
articles and book chapters on Valerius Flaccus, on Ovid’s Ibis, Metamorphoses, and
Fasti, and on Vergil’s Aeneid; she is also the co-​editor of After 69 ce: Writing Civil
War in Flavian Rome (De Gruyter, 2018). Her current project, a monograph enti-
tled Cosmos and Civil War in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, is under contract with
Oxford University Press.
Del A. Maticic is a doctoral candidate in Classics at New York University, completing
a dissertation on raw materiality in Augustan literature.
Donncha O’Rourke is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh.
He has published widely on Latin elegiac and didactic poetry, including as editor of
Approaches to Lucretius: Traditions and Innovations in Reading the De Rerum Natura
(Cambridge University Press, 2020) and as co-​editor of Didactic Poetry of Greece,
Rome and Beyond: Knowledge, Power, Tradition (Classical Press of Wales, 2019). His
forthcoming monograph Propertius and the Virgilian Sensibility will be published by
Cambridge University Press.
K. Sara Myers is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. She is the au-
thor of Ovid’s Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses (Michigan
University Press, 1994), a commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses 14 (Cambridge
University Press, 2009), and numerous articles on Roman poetry. Her current re-
search project is on ancient Roman literary gardens.
Alessandro Schiesaro is Professor of Classics at the University of Manchester. He has
held chairs at Princeton, King’s College London, and Sapienza University of Rome.
His main fields of interest include Latin literature, literary theory, and psychoanal-
ysis, and he has published work on several Roman authors, including Lucretius,
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca.
Katharina Volk is Professor of Classics at Columbia University and has published
widely on both Ovid and Roman philosophy, among other topics. Her most recent
monograph, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in
the Age of Cicero and Caesar, is about to be published by Princeton University Press.
Gareth D. Williams is Professor of Classics at Columbia University and has published
books on Ovid and Seneca and, most recently, Pietro Bembo on Etna: The Ascent of a
Venetian Humanist (Oxford University Press, 2017).
 Introduction
Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams

The Project

The sixteen essays collected in this volume began life as papers delivered at
a conference held at Columbia University in March 2019. This event, organ-
ized by the present editors under the title of Ovidius Philosophus: Philosophy
in Ovid and Ovid as a Philosopher, brought together a distinguished group
of scholars from both sides of the Atlantic in an attempt to explore from dif-
ferent but mutually informing viewpoints Ovid’s profound engagement with
philosophical sources and influences across his poetic corpus.
Ovid’s close familiarity with philosophical ideas and with specific philo-
sophical texts has long been recognized, perhaps most prominently in the
Pythagorean, Platonic, Empedoclean, and Lucretian shades that have been
seen to color his Metamorphoses. This philosophical component has often
been perceived as a feature implicated in, and subordinate to, Ovid’s larger
literary agenda, both pre-​and post-​exilic; and because of the controlling
influence conceded to that literary impulse, readings of the philosophical
dimension have often focused on the perceived distortion, ironizing, or
parodying of the philosophical sources and ideas on which Ovid draws, as if
his literary orientation inevitably compromises or qualifies a “serious” philo-
sophical commitment.
The Columbia conference sought to counter this tendency by (i) consid-
ering Ovid’s seriousness of engagement with, and his possible critique of, the
philosophical writings that allusively inform his works; (ii) questioning the
feasibility of separating out the categories of the “philosophical” and the “lit-
erary” in the first place; (iii) exploring the ways in which Ovid may offer un-
usual, controversial, or provocative reactions to received philosophical ideas;
and (iv) investigating the case to be made for viewing the Ovidian corpus
not just as a body of writings that are often philosophically inflected, but
also as texts that may themselves be read as philosophically adventurous and

Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams, Introduction In: Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher. Edited
by: Katharina Volk and Gareth D. Williams, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197610336.003.0001
2 Introduction

experimental. Few scholars would now hesitate to call Ovid philosophically

informed; but what further light might be shed on his poetics if he should
be perceived as philosophically confident, adept, and resourceful? To what
extent can or should Ovidius philosophus be seen as an abiding or evolving
presence in our reading of his oeuvre? In what ways did the post-​Ovidian
literary tradition at Rome recognize philosophical import in, and/​or perhaps
the philosophical idiosyncrasy of, his writings?
Certain of these questions have been well treated in important
contributions on specific Ovidian texts in recent times,1 but we hope in this
volume to broach the topic of Ovid’s philosophical engagement frontally, so
to speak: to prioritize the philosophical component, that is, and to show how
Ovid uses his literary apparatus to deploy, test, and experiment with ideas
received from a range of schools and thought systems. Even though this area
of Ovidian studies continues to show encouraging signs of growth,2 much
work remains to be done: it is telling that in both the Brill and the Cambridge
Companions to Ovid, each of which was published in 2002,3 there is no index
entry on philosophy, let alone any dedicated chapter on Ovid’s treatment of
philosophical ideas; and the same holds true of the Blackwell Companion of
2009.4 Against this background, the essays collected in this volume are in-
tended at the individual level to address in new ways many particular aspects
of Ovid’s recourse to philosophy across his corpus. Collectively, however,
they are also designed at least partially to redress what, in general terms, re-
mains a significant lacuna in Ovidian studies.

Problems of Definition

But what precisely do we mean by the term Ovidius philosophus? Did Ovid’s
philosophical affinities and preferences as glimpsed or revealed in his writings
shift or evolve over time, and can any pattern of philosophical consistency or
development be discerned across his oeuvre? To what extent might any such

1 To focus for now only on Anglophone contributions, see on Ovid’s erotic corpus Kleve 1983;

Dillon 1994; and esp. R. K. Gibson 2007 (building in important ways on Labate 1984). On an exilic
front, see already DeLacy 1947, but esp. Claassen 1999 and 2008 with Kelly 2018. On the Fast. and
Met. (esp. the cosmogony in Met. 1 and Pythagoras’ speech in Met. 15), McKim 1984–​5; P. Hardie
1991 and 1995; Myers 1994; Nelis 2009; van Schoor 2011.
2 See esp. Beasley 2012; Ham 2013; Kelly 2016, 2019, and 2020.
3 Boyd, ed. 2002; P. Hardie, ed. 2002.
4 Knox, ed. 2009.
 Introduction 3

pattern be influenced by generic or thematic considerations—​ethical philos-

ophy predominating in his erotic elegiac corpus, say, before Ovid expands
in a more natural-​philosophical direction in the Fasti and Metamorphoses,
only to reassert the ethical emphasis with a different valence in the thera-
peutic eclecticism of his exilic phase? If the outlines of an overall (if adaptable
and loosely coordinated) philosophical program are posited across Ovid’s
oeuvre, does he strive for any effect or vision of “progress” that connects his
disparate works and career stages?
Then there are different grades of philosophical reference to consider, at
the levels both of literary evocation and technical specialty: if direct refer-
ence to a given source (such as Empedocles, say, or Epicurus, as discussed in
a number of the chapters that follow) constitutes “hard” allusion, to what ex-
tent and effect does Ovid use “soft” evocation of a less source-​specific kind?
In what ways might the difference between “hard” and “soft” here resemble
the difference that has been long (and hotly) debated on a literary-​critical
front between allusion on the one hand and intertextuality on the other?5
That is, to what extent could the presence of well-​known philosophical ideas
in Ovid be viewed as part of a repository of intertextual contact points that
inflect his discourse without necessarily carrying a specially charged or
targeted meaning from a specific source of allusion?
As for the matter of technical specialty, can Ovid be seen to purvey a “phi-
losophy” even when there are few, if any signs of his recourse to any par-
ticular philosophical school or technical language? In the Ars amatoria
and Remedia amoris, for example, Ovid arguably projects an idiosyncratic
outlook on love that promotes its own vision of anthropology, psychology,
and ethics: can this be counted as one example of Ovidian “philosophy” on
a spectrum that embraces at another extreme his harder-​core, directly allu-
sive experimentation with (say) Empedoclean ideas in the Metamorphoses?
In the Metamorphoses alone, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Book 1 and Philemon
and Baucis in Book 8 are rewarded by the gods for the simple piety of their
ways: can this promotion of humility count as an ethical “philosophy” of
sorts, and one that in turn causes us (philosophically?) to question the be-
havior of the Ovidian gods when they resort to more extreme forms of per-
secution and libidinous excess toward mortals elsewhere in the poem? More
broadly, to what extent might Ovid’s portrayal of ethical or ethically ques-
tionable behavior in many episodes of the Metamorphoses as well as other

5 For overview, see Hinds 1998, esp. 17–​51.

4 Introduction

parts of his corpus (e.g., the erotic ethic inculcated in the male lover in Ars
1 and 2, say, or the suspect loyalty of various friends in his exilic corpus) be
viewed as philosophically meaningful even if such ideas cannot be straight-
forwardly aligned with any one doctrine or school? In contrast to the
fate-​driven teleology of the Aeneid, moreover, fate in the Metamorphoses
resembles a “historical prop”6 that struggles to assert itself amidst the narra-
tological, chronological, and scene-​shifting twists and turns of Ovid’s met-
amorphic cascade of stories: does this conspicuous rejection of Virgilian
teleology constitute a form of counter-​“philosophy” by which Ovid resists
the implication that the Augustan “Golden Age” is the culmination of Roman
historical development?
For present purposes, the flexible potentialities of “philosophy” that are
opened up by such questions help to delimit the definitional parameters for
the Ovidius philosophus featured in this book. In terming him philosophus,
we broadly mean Ovid’s appeal to, and manipulation of, well-​known phil-
osophical ideas (Pythagorean, Platonic, Epicurean, Stoic, etc.) that were al-
ready in wide currency in Roman literature; what sets him apart is not the
ideas themselves, but his idiosyncratic application of them. In general terms,
we stress that the Roman adaptation of Greek philosophy from Lucretius and
Cicero onward down to the younger Seneca and beyond is deeply complex
in its shifting modes of reception, trends of interpretation, and styles of ar-
ticulation.7 Furthermore, given that Ovid’s uses of philosophy are manifold,
as well as subject to change from one context to another, we have no wish to
assert a monochromatic (and, in our opinion, unprovable) view of his phil-
osophical allegiances and development over time. In contrast to a schematic
approach of this kind, we prefer to stress an organic approach that assesses
each text on its own terms and according to Ovid’s philosophical needs or
aspirations in the moment.
But how then does Ovidius philosophus differ from other late Republican
and Augustan poets who were no less philosophically engaged? Lucretius
must in many ways constitute a special case as a philosophical pioneer
in Latin, a fundamentalist who renders Epicureanism through poetic
techniques of a deep Empedoclean stamp;8 by comparison, Ovid’s recourse
to philosophy is less obsessive in doctrinal focus, more eclectic in its range
of influences, and more varied at least in the diversity of the applications

6 Tissol 2002: 309.

7 See on these tendencies Volk forthcoming.
8 See esp. Sedley 1998.
 Introduction 5

to which he puts those many influences in different contexts.9 More perti-

nent for now are Horace and Virgil, partly because of the scale and variety of
their respective oeuvres, and partly also because of the many different shades
that characterize—​as in Ovid’s case—​their philosophical palettes. For a ho-
listic overview of these palettes, we turn to the elegant summations of two
scholars: John Moles on Horace, and Susanna Braund on Virgil.
In his 2007 essay entitled “Philosophy and Ethics,” Moles tellingly uses in-
verted commas to capture in Horace’s case the slipperiness that we have just
imputed to Ovidian philosophy: “ ‘Philosophy,’ both in its broadest sense and
in the narrow sense of specific philosophies, informs Horace’s own poetry”
(165). In surveying this informing process across Horace’s oeuvre, Moles
nicely captures in his own mixture of firm statement and equivocation (as if
always taking aim at a moving target) the difficulty of “fixing” the Horatian
philosophical position. Yes, the Satires show Bionian, Cynic, and diatribic
traces, but Epicurean shades can also be discerned in a shimmering texture
where recognition is sure in one sense but ever qualified in another (168):

Philosophical programmes, then, can be presented piecemeal and unsequen­

tially, implemented, Romanised, incompletely descriptive, ironised, redefined,
subverted, etc.: but they must be recognized.

“In the Epodes, as elsewhere, ‘soft’ philosophical colouring denotes

Epicureanism, ‘hard’ Stoicism, Cynicism, or both” (170): that “elsewhere,”
of course, includes the Odes, where Stoicism is “the dominant philosoph-
ical presence in few odes,” Epicureanism dominant in “more than twice
as many odes,” the two juxtaposed in “[a]‌nother important group . . . , in
varying relationships of tension” (172). About a third of the Odes are thus
ruled “varyingly philosophical,” and though the pull to Epicureanism is
strong, Horace nevertheless avoids “the exclusive commitment alien to his
temperament (or its representations), to his role as Augustan vates, and to the
collection’s literary, political, social and philosophical fecundity” (173). Once
totally absorbed in philosophy in Epistles 1 (cf. 1.1.11), Horace lies low in
Epicurean fashion (cf. latet, 5), but in thrall to no single philosophical master
(13–​15), oscillating as he does between the Stoics (16–​17) and Aristippus

9 See Schiesaro 2014 (focusing on the story of Phaethon in Met. 1 and 2) for a powerful case

study—​with important ramifications for other parts of the Met.—​of Ovid’s engagement in “a strategy
of active confrontation and pointed contrast” (74) with Lucretius.
6 Introduction

(18–​19). Moles discerns two main strands in Epistles 1: first, “Socratic non-​
commitment and Academic, Panaetian and Aristippean relativism legitima-
tise not just flexibility within philosophies but choice between philosophies”
(177); second, Epicureanism comes to the fore, and there it remains into
Horace’s last decade, “the main thread, not just of his poetry, or even of his
philosophy, but of his life” (179).
Many aspects of Moles’s coverage of Horace usefully contextualize Ovid’s
own philosophical maneuverings: to reapply Moles’s words, “Philosophy,”
both in its broadest sense and in the narrow sense of specific philosophies,
informs Ovid’s own poetry, and the Horatian medley of influences is matched
by a similar Ovidian versatility of philosophical appeal, even if the two may
invoke different strands of doctrinal influence to different extents and effects.
In these respects there is nothing remarkable about Ovid’s turning to phi-
losophy per se; what matters is the idiosyncratic imprint that he imposes on
that larger tendency—​an imprint that Moles’s Horace expresses through “the
main thread” of his Epicureanism. But Virgil now provides another impor-
tant but different philosophical perspective before we focus more closely on
the distinctive Ovidian imprint.
In her 2019 essay entitled “Virgil and the Cosmos: Religious and
Philosophical Ideas,” Braund shows how the poet has been “claimed” for
various philosophical schools, the Stoic and Epicurean chief among them;
but—​like Moles on Horace—​she eschews this reductive approach for a more
flexible view of the poet’s philosophical range and ambitions. She focuses not
on “the narrow questions of Virgil’s sources and consistency” (282–​3), but on
his elaboration of three main ideas—​issues of physics and cosmology; ethical
issues; eschatology—​in contexts where the philosophical component is con-
ditioned by localized concerns. Take the cosmological aspect (289–​90):

It is clear that in matters of cosmology, Virgil absorbs ideas from a variety

of sources and is much less concerned to produce a coherent synthesis than
to integrate his material into its immediate context, which is often highly
politicized.

Virgil was not “a doctrinaire member of any particular school of thought”

but “uses different ideas for different purposes in different contexts” (296)—​
words that could equally be applied to Ovid. What distinguishes the phil-
osophical approach of Braund’s Virgil, however, is its coordination with
mainstay techniques of Roman cultural formation, especially exemplarity
 Introduction 7

and appeal to the weight of tradition (mos maiorum). Hence in summation

(297, our emphasis):

Virgil’s poems are illuminated when viewed not in terms of systems of phil-
osophical thought but as reflecting and participating in the exemplarity
central to the formation of the Roman man (vir) and Roman manhood
(virtus). This in turn corresponds to the function of Roman education,
which was not to develop freethinkers but to focus the individual’s thoughts
upon his role as an individual in the state. Virgil’s prime allegiance is to Italy
and to Rome.

As in Horace’s case (and that of Ovid), Virgil’s recourse to philosophy is

unsurprising, but the conceptual trajectory it enables or supports is all-​
important. If the distinctive philosophical signature of Moles’s Horace lay in
“the main thread” of his Epicureanism, Braund’s Virgil applies his philosoph-
ical apparatus in the wider service of Roman self-​definition—​in an intellec-
tual context, that is, where the strands of Hellenistic thought “were adapted
to serve specifically Roman needs, both for the individual and for the collec-
tive Roman state with its ideal of Romanitas” (282).
What, then, of any signature tendencies in Ovidius philosophus? If the fact
of his appeal to diverse philosophical ideas is unremarkable in itself, what in
general terms might distinguish his approach to those ideas? We offer three
proposals here, the first of them predicated on the view taken of Virgil ear-
lier. Born in 43 bce, Ovid belonged to a generation that came of age after the
battle of Actium in 31 and the dawn of the Augustan era. True, the arrival of
the pax Augusta could hardly dispel overnight the factional hatred that had
riven Rome for decades; but Ovid was too young to know at first hand the
bloody horrors of previous generations, and in this respect the pax Augusta
encouraged, even if it did not cause, the indifference to the cursus honorum
that he himself articulates.10 The consolidation of Augustus’ power and myth
also created a discursive landscape in which Augustanism was an inescap-
able fact of life at Rome, an all-​penetrating phenomenon that manifested it-
self in the emperor’s rebuilding program, his moral reforms, his intervention
in Rome’s religious and ritual calendar, and in so many other facets of Roman
life. From this perspective, the Augustan presence in Ovid’s writings inev-
itably poses a problem of signification: the phenomenon of Augustus is no

10 Cf. Am. 1.15.1–​6, Tr. 4.10.33–​40; McKeown 1987: 31.

8 Introduction

fixed commodity but a fluid object of representation and controversy, and

one that defies a reductive view of Ovid’s attitude to the princeps; at issue
is not whether Ovid can be seen to be solidly or consistently pro-​or anti-​
Augustan, but the extent to which he captures Augustus’ elusiveness as a
floating signifier, or as an idea that is always in development.11
Against this background, the ironic flippancy that has long been
detected in Ovid’s earliest work, his Amores, represents a youthful spirit of
nonconformity—​a voice that is not anti-​Augustan per se, but sets itself in
tension, however playfully, with the new values and conventions of Augustan
discourse. This tendency may undergo adjustment as Ovid expands the scale
of his literary ambition in the Heroides, Ars amatoria, and Remedia amoris
and then, in the early years ce, in the Fasti and Metamorphoses down to his
exile in 8 ce. But if in these works Ovid serially tests the underpinnings of
Augustan meaning and authority, his independence of outlook suggests the
freethinker’s detached viewpoint, not the more disciplined form of Roman
mindset (focusing “the individual’s thoughts upon his role as an individual in
the state”) that Braund associates with Virgil.12 So in the matter of Ovid’s ex-
perimentation on a philosophical front: in an age when the fissures between
the Augustan legend and reality were becoming increasingly open to interro-
gation, when fanciful hypothetical scenarios were all the rage in the declam-
atory schools, and when the compass of Roman self-​identity was being sorely
tested in the transition from Republic to Empire, in many contexts Ovid can
be seen to probe and play with philosophical ideas rather than ideologically
building with and on them in the Virgilian sense; to posit ideologies of the self
rather than of the state (witness the erotic “philosophy” of the Ars), and even,
in his erotodidaxis, to explore certain “techniques of the self ” that touch on
and redirect the ethical-​therapeutic strain in philosophy from the Hellenistic
age onward;13 and, in his restless appetite for experimentation, to be more in-
terested in the intellectual process of inquiry than in its end result. In effect,
the advancing Augustan times set for Ovidius philosophus an agenda very
different from that of Virgil in particular: Ovid is no less seriously engaged

11 On these points, Feeney 1992, esp. 2–​ 6, 9; Barchiesi 1997b, esp. 7–​11, 43–​4, 254–​6; Myers
1999: 196–​8. For the aggression of Ovid’s competitive tendency, cf. Oliensis 2004: 316 (in connection
with the Ibis) for his wish “not just to destroy Augustus but to take over his place and his power.” In
this and other ways Ovid advances a broader movement within Augustan poetry—​a vision now well
articulated by Pandey 2018b in exploring “the poets’ public responses to imperial iconography as a
tool for dissecting, debating, even disrupting imperial power” (5).
12 S. Braund 2019: 297
13 On these techniques, Rabbow 1954; Foucault 1986: 37–​68; Hadot 1995; Sellars 2009.
 Introduction 9

with philosophical ideas than Virgil, but the sociopolitical context gives a
different ideological meaning to and motivation for his probings. True, after
his banishment to Tomis in 8 ce, a more somber philosophical demeanor
prevails, with notable shades of a Horatian turning-​within; but there, too, the
exploratory impulse still remains visible, as several chapters in this volume
seek to show.
Second, and to modify the sociopolitical thrust of this first point: experi-
ence of Ovid’s habit of reapplying received literary tropes with a startling pa-
nache and an eye for extreme effect (hyperbole, bathos, parody, etc.) should
put us on our guard on a philosophical front. In the Metamorphoses, for ex-
ample, epic burlesque competes against itself when, after battle has already
been spectacularly waged at the wedding banquet of Perseus and Andromeda
in Book 5, a still greater battle rages between the Lapiths and Centaurs at
the wedding feast of Pirithous and Hippodamia in Book 12: there, ever
more bizarre weaponry of an impromptu kind—​goblets, a table leg, even a
far-​flung altar—​vastly diversify what now looks like the much more banal,
relatively conventional weaponry (a mere brand from an altar, say, or the
odd mixing bowl) deployed in the Perseus-​Andromeda scene.14 Here is
only one, albeit extreme instance of how Ovid characteristically challenges
the received tradition: might we not anticipate a similar appetite for infla-
tionary elaboration or arch provocation in his deployment of philosophical
ideas? Take, for example, Pythagoras’ discourse on the universality of change
in Metamorphoses 15: one of the many conundrums posed by this speech
arises from Pythagoras’ stress on the wonder-​inducing effects of inquiry
into nature’s secrets. Lucretius’ Epicurus is a major source of inspiration for
Ovid’s cosmic adventurer; but Pythagoras’ eye for wonder is directly at odds
with the Lucretian rhetoric of reason that seeks systematically to demystify
natural marvels.15 A paradoxical mismatch results between the Lucretian
literary aspiration of his discourse and its philosophical thrust—​just one of
the eccentricities that contribute to the episode’s capstone value in Book 15
as a bravura philosophical parody, not paradigm. Again, the Lucretian com-
ponent in Pythagoras’ Empedoclean epos16 underscores the depth and scale
of pre-​Ovidian experimentation in philosophical poetics. But Ovid’s flam-
boyance in treating inherited literary topoi might yet lead us to anticipate a

14 On the parodic element in Book 12, Mader 2013 with Musgrove 1998.
15 For this approach, Beagon 2009 with Myers 1994: 133–​66.
16 P. Hardie 1995.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hazel
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Hazel

Author: Mary White Ovington

Illustrator: Harry Roseland

Release date: May 8, 2022 [eBook #68017]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Crisis Publishing Company,

1913

Credits: David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (The New York Public
Library's Digital Collections)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAZEL ***

Hazel
 HAZEL
BY
MARY WHITE OVINGTON
AUTHOR OF “HALF A MAN”

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
HARRY ROSELAND

CRISIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

26 Vesey Street
NEW YORK
 Copyright, 1913
BY
MARY WHITE OVINGTON

Robert N. Wood,
Printer
202 East Ninety-ninth Street, New York
 TO
E. D. M.
 PREFACE
When I was a little girl, my favorite books dealt with children whose
lives were like my own. I smudged with many readings the pages
that told of Susy and Prudy and Dotty in Portland, of their visits to the
country, of their every-day happenings. Their adventures were far
dearer to me than those of foreign lads and lasses and richly clad
little princesses whose ways were not as my ways.
I have thought for some time that the colored children in the United
States might also like to have their intimate books telling of
happenings that were like their own. They must be tired of reading
always of far-away children. So, out of my years of experience
among these soft-eyed, velvet-cheeked small friends, I have written
this story.
I have purposely avoided dialect. Correct English spelling is difficult
enough to young readers without superimposing other forms for the
not too-familiar words. I have, however, tried to give the turn of
expression in the southern speech.
I hope my colored child friends will smudge my pages. And if the
white child stops to read, I trust that she will feel an awakened
sympathy for the dark-faced boys and girls whose world is outside
her own.
M. W. O.
Brooklyn, N. Y.,
September 15, 1913.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Queen of Sheba 7
II. Health and a Day 20
III. Leave Taking 30
IV. The Journey 41
V. Granny 54
VI. Letters 67
VII. That Old Time Religion 74
VIII. Brother and Sister 84
IX. Lost 98
X. Spring 114
XI. Choosing a Birthday 125
XII. Good-Bye 139
XIII. Home 153
HAZEL
 CHAPTER I
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

It was raining, and Hazel Tyler had not been allowed to go out all
day. As she sat looking out of her window into the narrow Boston
street she would have made a pretty picture but for the woe-begone
expression on her brown face. Her hair was soft and curly, her eyes
dark and clear, her mouth full, but delicate. Usually it was happy in
expression; but this afternoon it drooped at the corners. Four o’clock!
Two hours more before supper. Oh, this stupid, stupid Saturday!
She got up and walked from the tiny parlor, where she had been
sitting, into a tiny bedroom where a large baby doll lay on the bed
she and her mother shared. Hazel took the doll up, shook it severely,
and put it down again. She was growing to care very little for dolls;
they were not warm and dimpled and you had to do all the talking for
them. She left the tiny bedroom and stepped into a tiny kitchen thus
making the tour of the apartment.
“Mother,” she said to a slender woman who stood at an ironing-
board, “may I go around and play with the McGinnis’s baby? It’s such
a little way.”
Mrs. Tyler looked up. Her face like Hazel’s was gentle and delicate,
but the features were finer and the skin lighter in shade. She was
ironing an elaborate pink tea gown, and she seemed ill-fitted for such
taxing work.
“No, Hazel,” she replied. “I’ve told you that you can’t go out in the
rain while you have a cold. There is no use in teasing.”
Hazel knew this to be true, and for a time was silent, watching her
mother. She ran her slender finger along the tucks of the pink gown.
“What pretty clothes Mrs. Hollingsworth always has,” she said. “I
wish I could have something pretty. I’ve nothing to wear but this blue
serge.”
Hazel’s mother looked at her a second and the child felt abashed.
She knew very well that since her father’s death—her dear, dear
father—her mother had had to support them both, and how hard she
had worked at whatever would bring in money—at sewing,
hairdressing, and even this tiring laundry. She knew, too, that when
the rent was paid, and the grocer’s and butcher’s bills settled, the
little money left went first to her and her wants. Why, only last week
she had had pretty hair ribbons; and her mother’s black dress was
growing shabby. She bent over and kissed the hand that was patting
the pink wrapper into place.
“I’ll go into the parlor and make my picture-puzzle,” she said.
“That’s right, dear,” Mrs. Tyler answered.
The little girl worked for a time at the elaborate puzzle spread out on
the parlor table; but its green trees were perplexing, and she soon
returned to the kitchen to find the pink dress finished and on the top
of a pile of speckless linen in the laundry basket. Her mother stood
with hat and coat on.
“I’m going to run out to make sure that John comes to-night to get
the clothes,” Mrs. Tyler said. “Now, don’t look so woe-begone, dear.
I’ll cook waffles for supper, and we’ll have the maple syrup that Mrs.
Brown brought us from the country.”
Hazel’s face brightened. “May we eat off the pretty china?” she
asked.
“Yes, you may set the table with it when I get back.” And Mrs. Tyler
went out into the narrow hall, down the dark stairs and into the
narrow street.
She could hardly have reached the corner when Hazel heard a
knock at the door, and opened it to a little black girl who at once
stepped gaily into the room.
“Where you been all day, Hazel?” she asked.
She was a jolly little girl of ten, a year younger than Hazel, with
plump arms and legs and a sturdy body. Her crinkly hair was tied
with a bright red ribbon, and she wore a gay bandanna about her
neck. Her black eyes shone with good will.
“How do you do, Charity?” Hazel said, a little hesitatingly.
She liked this new neighbor and had played with her the rare
afternoons that she had been allowed on the street; but she knew
her mother scarcely approved of Charity. But then her mother did not
approve of any of the girls and boys on Hammond Street and one
must play with some one.
“Your mother’s out,” said Charity. “I know, for I saw her go. Where
you been all day, Hazel?”
“Here at home,” Hazel answered. “I’ve got a sore throat, and I’m not
allowed to go out, and there’s nothing to do in this poky place.”
“Let’s play,” said Charity, “you shut your eyes and I’ll hide.”
“Pooh,” Hazel replied contemptuously, “you know, Charity, there isn’t
a single place here big enough for a cat to hide in.”
“Well, let’s, let’s,” Charity looked about for inspiration, and her glance
fell on the doll in the adjoining room, “let’s play house.”
“No, you would just beat the baby. Let’s play a new game, something
brand new that we never played before.”
Charity began jumping about on one foot, and on into the little parlor,
but she had no suggestion to offer. Hazel followed her and as her
eye fell on the family Bible, her face lighted with excitement.
“I know,” she declared, “let’s play a Bible game. Let’s act a Bible
story the way we act history at school.”
Charity stood on her two feet. “George Washington?” she asked.
“No, not George Washington, but like that. A Bible story. We can’t be
Joseph and his Brethren,” Hazel went on musing, “there’re too many
of them. I don’t like Jacob—”
“I’ll be King Solomon,” Charity exclaimed quite suddenly.
She sat in the arm chair and held herself erect. Taking her bandanna
she wreathed it in a turban about her head.
“That’s splendid, Charity,” Hazel said heartily. “That’s your crown and
you’re sitting on your throne. Now who shall I be?”
“You? Why, of course, you’ll be the Queen of Sheba.”
Hazel laughed gleefully. “I’ll be a real queen, won’t I? What’ll I do,
Charity?” Her friend’s knowledge of Bible history was evidently
greater than her own.
“You ask me questions,” Charity explained, “all sorts of questions,
and I answer them.”
“But what do I wear?”
“Let me recollect.” Charity shut her eyes to think the harder. “The
Queen of Sheba she come to Jerusalem, with, with a very great
train. You must wear a train, Hazel.”
“There isn’t a thing with a train here,” Hazel replied mournfully.
Looking into the kitchen her eyes fell upon the laundry basket with
the pink dress on top. “I could borrow Mrs. Hollingsworth’s tea
gown,” she said.
Now Charity might make slips in grammar and slap unoffending
dolls, but the laundry was sacred to her. Once the pile of muslin was
ironed and placed in the basket it was not to be tampered with.
“You daren’t,” she said.
Hazel walked into the other room, took the pink wrapper and slowly
put it on. Her heart beat fast and her fingers trembled, but she
fastened the dress at the throat and held it up about her. Entering the
parlor she went to the chair in which King Solomon sat, and bowed
low, dropping the pink dress so that it trailed upon the floor. Then she
looked up into the king’s dark face.
“Isn’t this a royal great train?” she said softly.
King Solomon nodded. He was saying to himself, “You bet, my
mother needn’t say she’s such a good little girl again!”
The Queen of Sheba bowed once more. “What do I do next,
Charity?”
“You ask me questions.”
“I can’t think of any;” and the queen, like Alice in Through the
Looking Glass, courtesied again to help her think. “What did I have
for dinner?” she said at last.
“Myrrh and mint and jasper and honey and the honeycomb.”
The queen looked up in admiration. “That’s a beautiful answer; how
did you think of all those things? But is jasper something to eat?”
King Solomon did not regard the question. “Ask me something else?”
he demanded.
“What—what—what did I have for breakfast?”
The king stuck out his tongue derisively. “Can’t you think of a single
thing, Hazel Tyler, but food?”
Hazel felt her lack of originality. “Have you had pleasant weather this
past week in Jerusalem?” she asked politely.
“It has rained,” replied King Solomon, “for forty days and nights; and
great was the fall thereof.”
The king’s answers were so much more impressive than the queen’s
questions that Hazel sought for first place.
“Now I shall dance before the king,” she said, and began slowly
advancing and receding before King Solomon’s throne, holding up
the pink dress as she moved. She looked very pretty and graceful as
she made her low courtesies and King Solomon’s eyes gleamed
approbation.
“If you like a me, as I like a you,” he began to sing and the Queen of
Sheba stepped in a little livelier fashion toward the kitchen door.
“’Cause I love you,” he went on, and the little queen danced before
him over the door-sill and into the kitchen where she struck against
the table and fell in a heap upon the floor.
The singing stopped. Charity stooped to where Hazel sat, a
frightened heap. She examined the pink gown. It had a black
smudge on the back.
“Have to be done all over again,” said Charity briefly.
Hazel rose and took the dress off. Her lip quivered.
“I’d best go home,” said Charity. “There ain’t nothing I can do. Oh,
Hazel won’t you catch it!”
“My mother never whips me,” said Hazel sharply.
“She ain’t like mine,” said Charity.
The bandanna was off King Solomon’s head and he crept out of the
door and down the stairs to his home.
The Queen of Sheba sat on the kitchen chair with the soiled dress
on her lap. Like the queen of old, “there was no more spirit in her.”
She remained quite still two, three, five minutes. Then she heard her
mother knock.
She opened the door, the dress in her hand, and showed the spot
without speaking.
“How did it happen?” Mrs. Tyler asked.
“I was playing with Charity. It wasn’t her fault,” hastily, “she told me
not to touch it, but I was the Queen of Sheba and I wanted a train.
Will it have to be done all over, Mother? Charity said it would have to
be done all over.”
“Yes, it will,” said Mrs. Tyler, and turned to the tub where she began
to draw water.
“You must go to bed, Hazel,” she said sternly. “Later I will bring you a
supper of bread and milk.”
As the little girl lay in bed, she could hear her mother rub, rubbing
the dress against the wash-board. Then that sound ceased, and the
door of the refrigerator was opened and shut. She silently ate the
bread and milk brought her. No jolly time together at the table over
the waffles and maple syrup and the pretty flowered plates! She
heard her mother’s tired footsteps moving from ironing-board to
stove and back to ironing-board, and she noted the click of the iron
as it fell upon the metal holder. She could almost count each
movement up and down the waist and the long skirt.