Ovidian Poetry during the Moral Renaissance of Augustan Rome Many years of chaos, social strife, and war precluded Augustus? reign as emperor of Rome. The people felt that the Gods were punishing them because they had forsaken their traditions and ancestors. So, Augustus revived many rituals and games and he also built many temples to renew the magnificence of the Gods in the peoples eyes. He especially focused on the worship of Apollo.# Being a simple man of vast power and influence, Augustus tried to reform the degenerate upper classes. He passed many laws regarding marriage and other unions which should be held sacred. Ovid?s Metamorphoses was a rhetoric tool used to persuade the Roman audience into a new, rebellious outlook on Roman tradition through mythology, especially with regards to the Principate?s moral and social purity campaign.
Born only one year after the death of Julius Caesar, Publius Ovidius Naso was only twelve years old when Augustus? Principate of moral and social reform was being established.
Ovid by Anton von Werner. "Bibliothek des allgemei...
Augustus of Prima Porta, statue of the emperor Aug...
Ovid's Metamorphoses at the Cathedral of PortoGroomed to be a lawyer and politician, the obvious careers of his equestrian class, Ovid chose to become a poet instead when he found his talent of verse and rhetoric.# Ovid and his generation were growing up in a time of relative peace and stability in the Empire. They never knew the harsh realities of war and chaos that their parents lived through during the fall of the republic and the rise of Augustus.# Therefore, as a younger, more vibrant generation, Ovid and his young contemporaries would mock the older generation. He could be considered the antithesis to older, more traditional writers as Horace and Virgil. For example, in the Ars Amatoria, Ovid could be seen mocking the work in Virgil?s Georgics. Where Virgil celebrates the traditional Roman morals and country by writing...