Date of Award
5-2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Departmental Honors
Department
History
Abstract
Pythagoras' speech at the climax of Metamorphoses (15.60-478) has frustrated all attempts to pin it down. To many it seems playfully vacuous, a harmless intellectual exhibition. Mack, for instance, calls it "vehement and impassioned...but signifying little." Solodow argues that it does not have "any special significance in itself nor lends any to the poem as a whole." Little sees only "superficial correspondence with [Ovid's] subject matter." Particularly troublesome is its culminating injunction to "empty the mouth of meats and choose harmless foods " (ora vacent epulis alimentaque mitia carpant! 478), which seems not only out of place in the context of Latin poetry but was in fact a trope often used to spoof Pythagoras. Of all the moral qualities for which this sage was known, this is an odd one to emphasize, especially at the finale of an epic cosmogony.
Recommended Citation
Tarbet, Alex M., "Burlesque of the Herbivore: Ovid's Comic Pythagoras in Met. 15" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects. 625.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/625
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Faculty Mentor
Mark Damen
Departmental Honors Advisor
Susan Shapiro