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To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: James Butrica <jbutrica@morgan.ucs.mun.ca>
Subject: Re: Bill Clinton as Ovid??

>Dear List,
>
>In yesterday's *Washington Post*, a column by Richard Cohen said
>that Bill Clinton's enemies saw him as "some oversexed,
>overliberal, overbearing latter-day Ovid."
>
>What interests me, and surprises me, is Cohen's choice of
>*Ovid*. I suppose "oversexed" could apply well enough to Ovid,
>and perhaps even "over-liberal"; but the use of "overbearing,"
>with the apparent implication that Ovid was in a position of
>some power, would surely strike the author of *Tristia* as
>rather wide of the mark. (Not to mention the further implication
>that Bill Clinton is a poet!!)
>
>I'm curious to know if Cohen's words read equally oddly to other
>list members. Was he just carried away with the repetition of
>those "Ov-" sounds, perhaps assuming that few of his readers
>would have any notion of who Ovid was, anyway? Or has the
>praeceptor amoris made his way into popular culture as some sort
>of symbol of middle-aged excess, and I just hadn't noticed
>before now?
>
>Elizabeth Vandiver

Just when I was starting to wonder about parallels between George Dubya and
his Difficult Daughter on the one hand and Augustus and Julia Sr on the
other...

Or should the thirsty one be cast as the younger Julia, as being
granddaughter of George Sr? Then, if Clinton were to sleep with her now, we
could perhaps get into Ovid territory. (By the way, while pursuing the
context of the Aphra Behn poem discussed recently, I ran into her letter of
Ovid to Julia, which takes it for granted that Ovid had an affair with
Augustus' granddaughter.)

I don't know that "overbearing" needs to imply a position of power, but
just as the Amores Ovid could be described as oversexed, and the Ars
Amatoria Ovid could be described as overliberal, I think that the Ovid of
the exile-poetry, Tristia II above all, could be described as overbearing
in the fundamentally arrogant, dishonest, and insulting way he responds to
the charges against him.

I doubt that recent "popular culture" can be blamed for creating such an
image of Ovid; in fact, his latest incarnation, in Jane Alison's "The Love
Artist," is just as unrealistic and forgiving of Ovid as any "scholarly"
discussion I've read. But he's not totally unknown to popular culture;
several years ago I saw an episode of "Politically Incorrect" in which one
participant (her name, unfortunately, now escapes me) was clearly familiar
with Ovid and had written about him in a column. Is Ovid now a by-word for
"libertine"? If so, how?

Perhaps Mr Cohen meant "Ovoid," as in "Egg-head." (Humour alert).

James Lawrence Peter Butrica
Department of Classics
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's, Newfoundland  A1C 5S7
(709) 737-7914


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