Gianpiero Rosati is one of the world’s most highly-regarded Latinists. He has made major contributions in several fields, but is best known for his work on Ovid. His short book Narciso e Pigmalione: Illusione e spettacolo nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio (1983; reprinted in 2016; now published in English by Oxford University Press [2021]) has proved enormously influential, while his Heroides (1989) is the still the most reliable edition of that difficult text. He is also a significant contributor to the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla commentary on Metamorphoses (Books 4-6; 2007, 2009; to be published in English by Cambridge University Press in 2023).
This collection gathers together five papers on Ovid based on works published between 2008 and 2018. Although the last essay ranges more widely, all discuss, as the book’s title suggests, Ovid’s treatment of desire and the body.
Chapter 1 considers Ovid’s treatment of the female body as an object of desire. Taking Am. 1.5 as a starting point, Rosati argues that Ovid is exceptional in fetishizing the female body and that the Ovidian body is not just a biological datum but an object inviting fantasies of pleasure, fulfilment and power. This leads to discussions of the cultivation of the body in Ars Amatoria and the resemblance of bodies to statues (and vice versa) in Metamorphoses. Of particular interest is the next stage of the argument which, following René Girard, explores aspects of the mechanism of falling in love/lust, emphasising imitation (lovers already know what they are supposed to find desirable; Amores and Heroides are relevant here), obstacles to fulfilment (difficulties increase desirability; especially in Amores and Metamorphoses) and imagination (with detailed discussions of Apollo and Tereus in Metamorphoses).
Chapter 2 examines Ovid’s treatment of hair as located at the boundary between nature and culture, both as a natural product, as something that needs to be cared for in private and as a form of social communication. Here Ovid’s distinctive contributions to the European tradition are the eroticization of disordered hair and the fetishization of hair as a symbol of female vitality and sensuality.
Chapter 3 turns to desire in Metamorphoses. Here Rosati takes as his starting point Ovid’s challenge to epic conventions. This is a poem without a central hero or goal. While the Aeneid posits Rome as history’s end, Metamorphoses sees only endless change and even foresees Rome’s fall. The epic is also exceptional in that its characters tend not to die. This, Rosati argues, removes fixed points and destabilizes the narrative. The result is a world in which the only law is constant change and in which hierarchies of power are always at risk. Rosati also examines the Perseus and Arachne episodes in detail, arguing that they offer different forms of critique of the Aeneid, of Aeneas as hero and of the gods as morally superior beings. In this poem desire, especially that of male gods, is a dominant force fundamentally in conflict with the structures and ideologies which preserve the cosmos from chaos.
Desire in Metamorphoses, Chapter 4 argues, is overwhelmingly presented as asymmetrical and commonly takes the form of pursuit and flight. (The few exceptions, those which involve mutual love and affection, usually result in tragedy.) It is important to note, however, that voices within the poem protest against the dominant model, most notably Cyane in Book 5 and Arachne in Book 6.
Chapter 5 rewrites and extends the argument of ‘The Loves of the Gods: Literature as Construction of a Space of Pleasure’, which was first published in English in 2013 (Paschalis and Panayotakis [edd.], The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel). Taking as starting point those ecphrases in ancient novels which present scenes of sexual activity, this essay explores a variety of texts (including Heroides 19, Metamorphoses and Tristia 2, as well as Roman and later Italian painting), arguing that works of art are presented as offering prestigious models of desire which legitimize the fantasies of ordinary mortals.
One question which this volume prompts is: ‘What is the point of republishing articles in book form?’ When Diggle and Goodyear published the Classical Papers of A. E. Housman in 1972 they performed more than an act of piety. They made available in three convenient volumes many articles which were otherwise difficult to find. The world, however, has changed. A few keystrokes will find almost anything that Housman wrote. For the most part, there seems to be little value in republishing recent articles and chapters in book form.
This volume, however, is different because it publishes material that Anglophone scholars would not normally come across. While English-speaking Ovid scholars might be familiar with Ovidio 2017 (edited by Fedeli and Rosati; reviewed in BMCR 2020.10.56), they are less likely to be aware of Aspetti della fortuna dell’antico nella cultura europea ([2014] edited by Audano and Cipriani) or Y el mito se hizo poesía ([2012] edited by Álavarez and Iglesia Montiel). This volume serves an important purpose because it makes available to the wider scholarly community the thoughts of a major Latinist on topics central to current Ovidian scholarship. Another function of this volume is to trigger reviews like this one, reviews which draw attention to Rosati’s most recent ideas on Ovid’s treatment of sexuality and desire.