Ibis (Ovid)
{{Short description|Curse poem by the Roman poet Ovid}}
{{italic title}}
{{quote box|bgcolor=#FFFFF0|width=33%|align=right|salign=right
|quote= Ovid's Ibis is a highly artificial and history-bound product and does not make pleasant reading. But it is interesting, among other things, because it illustrates the writer's propensity for moving on more than one plane of reality. The poem contains elements from three distinct modes of reacting to the same outrage; of these, the first may be called realistic, the second romantic, and the third grotesque.
|source=Hermann Fränkel, Ovid: A Poet
between Two WorldsHermann Fränkel, Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (University of California Press, 1956), p. 152.
}}
Ibis is a curse poem by the Roman poet Ovid, written during his years in exile at the port of Tomis on the Black Sea (AD 8–14). It is "a stream of violent but extremely learned abuse", modeled on a lost poem of the same title by the Greek Alexandrian poet Callimachus.Oliver Taplin, Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 437 [https://books.google.com/books?id=OLPDHKpYz5MC&dq=%22Ibis%2C+a+stream+of+violent+but+extremely+learned+abuse%22&pg=PA437 online.]
Identity of Ibis
The object of the poet's curses is left unnamed except for the pseudonym "Ibis", and no scholarly consensus has been reached concerning the figure to whom this pseudonym might refer. Gaius Ateius Capito,Verdière, R. (1971). "Un amour secret d'Ovide". L'Antiquité Classique, 623-648; Janssens, L. (1981): "Deux complexes d'acrostiches délateurs d'Ibis, alias C. Ateius Capito. Le mysticisme du culte d'Abrasax", Revue de Philologie 55, 57-71. Hyginus, Cassius Severus, Titus Labienus, Thrasyllus of Mendes,[https://books.google.com/books?id=9mJIAAAAYAAJ&dq=scottish%20editor%20ibis%20ovid&pg=PA406 The Athenaeum, No. 2840, April 1, 1882] Caninius Rebilus, Ovid's erstwhile friend Sabinus, and the emperor AugustusA. Schiesaro, "Ibis Redibis," Materiali e Discussioni 67 (2011): 79–150. have all been proposed, as well as the possibility that "Ibis" might refer to more than one person,Martin Helzle, "Ibis," in A Companion to Ovid, edited by Peter E. Knox (Blackwell, 2009) [https://books.google.com/books?id=zMMeWI2xbPkC&dq=%22There+can+be+no+certainty+as+to+who+is+hiding+behind+the+pseudonym+Ibis%22&pg=PT203 online.]{{rp|185}} to nobody at all,A. E. Housman, "The Ibis of Ovid," Journal of Philology 35 (1920): 287–318G. D. Williams, The Curse of Exile: A Study of Ovid's Ibis (1996). or even to Ovid's own poetry.{{Cite journal |last=Krasne |first=Darcy |date=2012-12-01 |title=The Pedant's Curse: Obscurity and Identity in Ovid's Ibis |url=https://journals.openedition.org/dictynna/912 |journal=Dictynna. Revue de poétique latine |language=fr |issue=9 |doi=10.4000/dictynna.912 |issn=1765-3142|doi-access=free }}
It was conjectured by the Belgian scholar Raoul Verdière that Tristia 3.11 and 5.8, which like Ibis (line 40) address an anonymous enemy of Ovid with the word {{lang|la|improbe}} 'shameless', were written in admonishment of the same person, a former friend of Ovid who dropped him when Ovid was relegated. Noting that the final letters of Tristia 5.8.1–4 read Atei, Verdière suggested that the person anonymously mentioned was the jurist Gaius Ateius Capito.Verdière, R. (1971). "Un amour secret d'Ovide". L'Antiquité Classique, 623-648. Subsequently another Belgian scholar, Lucien Janssens, discovered acrostics and a telestic containing the names Ateius Capito in both Tristia 5.11 and in Ibis, which, if correct, would confirm Verdière's conjecture.Janssens, L. (1981): "Deux complexes d'acrostiches délateurs d'Ibis, alias C. Ateius Capito. Le mysticisme du culte d'Abrasax", Revue de Philologie 55, 57-71. CA P I T O is found at the beginning of lines 8, 14–15, and 1–2 of Ibis and AT EI AT EI at the end of lines 3, 8, 13, and 18, with VS in lines 10 and 11. In Tristia 5.11 all three names CAIVS ATEIVS CAPITO are interleaved as an acrostic in lines 20–29.
Structure and themes
The 644-line poem, like all Ovid's extant work except the Metamorphoses,The Metamorphoses is written in dactylic hexameter; the first line of a Latin elegiac couplet is dactylic hexameter, however, so the Metamorphoses itself is not a metrical exception in Ovid's extant work. His lost tragedy Medea presumably used other measures. is written in elegiac couplets. It is thus an unusual, though not unique, example of invective poetry in antiquity written in elegiac form rather than the more common iambics or hendecasyllabics.{{rp|184}} The incantatory nature of the curses in the Ibis has sometimes led to comparisons with curse tablets (defixiones), though Ovid's are elaborately literary in expression;Gareth D. Williams, "On Ovid's Ibis: A Poem in Context," in Oxford Readings in Ovid (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 447, note 12 [https://books.google.com/books?id=xaFkpUUXNbQC&dq=%22The+influence+of+defixiones+or+curse+tablets%22&pg=PA447 online.]Andreas Dorschel, "Entwurf einer Theorie des Fluchens", Variations 23 (2015), § 24, pp. 167-175, p. 173. the poem has also been seen as a type of devotio.
Drawing on the encyclopedic store of knowledge he demonstrated in the Metamorphoses and his other work — presumably from memory, as he purportedly had few books with him in exileOv. Tr. 3.14.37–38 — Ovid threatens his enemy in the second section of the poem (lines 251–638) with a veritable catalogue of "gruesome and mutually incompatible fates" that befell various figures from myth and history,{{Cite book |last1=Kenney |first1=E. J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=obBASlX4t1IC&dq=%22During+his+first+years+at+Tomis%22&pg=PA454 |title=The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Volume 2, Latin Literature |last2=Clausen |first2=Wendell Vernon |last3=Clausen |first3=W. V. |date=1982-03-18 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-21043-0 |language=en}} including laming, blinding, cannibalism, and death by pine cone. Ovid also declares in the poem's opening salvo that even if he dies in exile, his ghost will rise and rend Ibis's flesh.{{Cite book |last=Kerrigan |first=John |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wRmxutD5kmoC&dq=%22Having+said+that+Ibis+will+not+be+safe%22&pg=PA129 |title=Revenge Tragedy : Aeschylus to Armageddon: Aeschylus to Armageddon |date=1996-04-18 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-159172-3 |language=en}}{{rp|129}}
The basic structure of the poem is as follows:{{Cite journal |last=Krasne |first=Darcy A. |date=2016 |title=Crippling Nostalgia: Nostos, Poetics, and the Structure of the Ibis |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/619104 |journal=TAPA |volume=146 |issue=1 |pages=149–189 |issn=2575-7199}}
:I. Introduction
::1–66: Proem which lays out Ibis' crime and declares war
::67–126: Prayers to the gods to inflict on Ibis poverty, hunger, and exile
::127–208: The eternity of Ibis' torment, which will outlast both Ovid's death and Ibis' own
::209–250: A biography of Ibis' infancy and a divine mandate given to Ovid to curse him
:II. Catalogue
::251–638: Catalogue of mythological and historical torments which Ibis should suffer
:III. Coda
::639–644: Promise of an iambic followup should Ibis not cease and desist
Afterlife
The Ibis attracted a large number of scholia and was widely disseminated and referenced in Renaissance literature.R. Ellis, "On the Ibis of Ovid," Journal of Philology 7 (1877) 244–255, full text [https://books.google.com/books?id=KVwKAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22On+the+Ibis+of+Ovid+In+the+Repertorium+Vocabulorum+Exquisitorum%22&pg=PA244 online.] In his annotated translation (1577), Thomas Underdowne found in Ibis a reference guide to "all manner of vices punished, all offenses corrected, and all misdeeds revenged."{{rp|131}} An English translator noted that "a full reference to each of the allusions to be found in this poem would suffice to fill a small volume."Henry T. Riley, "The Invective Against the Ibis," in The Fasti, Tristia, Pontic Epistles, Ibis, and Halieuticon of Ovid, Literally Translated into English Prose (London 1885), pp. 475ff.
Online texts and translations
The editio princeps of Ovid's complete works, including the Ibis, was published in Italy in 1471. Full-text versions of the following Latin editions and English translations of the Ibis are available online.
=Latin=
- R. Ellis, P. Ovidii Nasonis Ibis, Oxford Classical Text, [https://books.google.com/books?id=UaINAAAAIAAJ 1881.]
- A. Riese, P. Ovidii Nasonis Carmina, vol. 3, [https://books.google.com/books?id=X0pO98eeejQC&dq=%22Tempus+ad+hoc+lustris+bis+iam+mihi+quinque+peractis%22&pg=PA200 1899.]
=English translations=
- Henry Thomas Riley, "The Invective Against the Ibis," prose, [https://books.google.com/books?id=0YVfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA475 1885.]
- A. S. Kline, "Ovid - Ibis," Poetry in Translation, [http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Ibis.htm 2003]
See also
- Libel as a genre of invective poetry