My Latin IV students are reading Ovid in translation, and this week we’re covering book 5, which is essentially a pastiche of the major genres of epic, moving from a parody of Odysseus and the suitors, to Hesiod’s Helicon, and finally a Homeric hymn.
To give students an idea of the kind of parody they were reading, we talked about some modern parallels in film, but the clearest example was Housman’s Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, as epic and tragedy are the two traditional genres of elevated poetry. The following lines got the biggest laughs:
. . . wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.. . . . .
CHORUS: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
ALCMAEON: Mud’s sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
. . . . .
ALCMAEON: A shepherd’s questioned mouth informed me that–
CHORUS: What? for I know not yet what you will say.
ALCMAEON: Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
. . . . .
ERIPHYLE: He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.CHORUS: I would not be reputed rash, but yet
I doubt if all be gay within the house.ERIPHYLE: O! O! another stroke! that makes the third.
He stabs me to the heart against my wish.CHORUS: If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
But thine arithmetic is quite correct.
Now the parody of style is one thing, but the gore! The gore is the thing in Ovid.