1. Knox’s words on the importance of tone for understanding Euripides are equally valid for Ovid: Knox, B., Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (Baltimore 1979), 329fGoogle Scholar.

2. Elder Sen. Contr. 9.5.17; Quint. Inst. Or. 10.1.88; Sen. Nat. Quaest. 3.27.13–15.

3. Doblhofer, E., ‘Ovidius Urbanus: Eine Studie zum Humor in Ovids Metamorphosen’, Philologus 104 (1960), 63–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 223–35, outlines the scholarship in detail; Hopkins, D., ‘Dryden and Ovid’s “Wit out of Season”’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), Ovid Renewed (Cambridge 1988), 167–90Google Scholar, and Anderson, W.S.Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books 1–5 (Norman OK 1997), 12Google Scholar, in general. von Albrecht, M., ‘Ovids Humor: ein Schlussel zur Interpretation der Metamorphosen’, All 6 (1963), 47–72Google Scholar, outlines books and their parts according to whether they are serious or comic in tone. The current tendency is to find his humour deep and humane, but for different reasons (so von Albrecht; Anderson; Doblhofer; Due, O.S., Changing Forms: Studies in the Metamorphoses of Ovid [Cophenhagen 1974]Google Scholar; Hopkins; Myers, K.S., Ovid’s Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses [Ann Arbor 1994]CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tissol, G., The Face of Nature [Princeton 1997])Google Scholar, or to find it cruel and misogynistic (so Galinsky, G.K., Ovid’s Metamorphoses [Berkeley 1975]Google Scholar; Richlin, A., ‘Reading Ovid’s Rapes’, in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York 1992), 158–79Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘Philomela’s Web and the Pleasures of the Text: Reader and Violence in the Metamorphoses of Ovid’, in Wilhelm, Robert M. and Jones, Howard (eds.), The Two Worlds of the Poet (Detroit 1992), 281–95Google Scholar.

4. Aristotle seems to take pains to divest humour of any blackness (Poet 1449a.32–37); Cicero connects the laughable with the ugly (De Or. 2.236.1–2).

5. A.R. Pratt, ‘Introduction: The Nature of Black Humor—Defining Black Humor’, and O’Neill, P., ‘The Comedy of Entropy: The Contexts of Black Humour’, in Pratt, A.R. (ed.), Black Humor: Critical Essays (New York 1993)Google Scholar.

6. K. Numasawa, ‘Black Humor: An American Aspect’, in Pratt (n.5 above Critical Essays), 44.

7. Plato acknowledges the attraction of gore in the story of Leontios, who fights a losing battle against his eyes’ desire to gawk at corpses. It is a short step from here to black humour (PI. Rep. 439e7–440a3).

8. Duff, J.W., A Literary History of Rome, from the Origins to the Close of the Golden Age³ (London 1960), 439Google Scholar; Frankel, H., Ovid: A Poet Between Two Worlds (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1945), 215fGoogle Scholar.

9. Wilkinson, L.P., Ovid Recalled (Cambridge 1955)Google Scholar, passim; Ahl, F., Metaformations (Ithaca 1985)Google Scholar, passim; Otis, B., Ovid as an Epic Poet² (Cambridge 1970)Google Scholar, passim; Galinsky (n.3 above), passim; von Albrecht (n.3 above), passim.

10. Due (n.3 above), 77: ‘The barrocchismo of Ovid may appear perverse and repulsive to us but it may nevertheless have found favour with Ovid’s contemporary readers.’ Galinsky (n.3 above), 129 and 138f: ‘Other episodes for which Ovid encountered no similarly established conventions suggest that he reveled in bloodthirsty and repulsive descriptions of human agony simply because he liked cruelty,’ and ‘it is a concession to the taste of a Roman public that delighted in the gladiatorial games and to the pantomimes.’ In agreement with Galinsky are Macaulay in Trevelyan, G.O. (ed), The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay I (New York 1878), 413Google Scholar: ‘a man so witty and so heartless’; Richlin (n.3 above), 164: ‘I echo the critics who quote Dryden’s comment “If this were Wit, was this a Time to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the Agony of Death?”’; Segal (n.3 above), 281: ‘In places, Ovid seems to trade on this [Roman] taste for blood; it is hard otherwise to account for the detail in which he describes the battles in the house of Phineus in Metamorphoses 5 and in the house of Pirithous in Metamorphoses 12.’ Wilkinson (n.9 above), 160, explains the grotesque in Ovid as ‘characteristic of the jaded palate of Hellenistic decadence’.

11. Cf. Catullus 16.5f; Ovid Trist. 2.353–56; Martial 1.4.8.

12. For black humour as an aesthetic category in its own right, see Kayser, W., The Grotesque in Art and Literature, tr. U. AVeisstein (New York 1963Google Scholar; orig. Das Groteske: seine Gestaltung in Malerei und Dichtung [Oldenburg 1957]Google Scholar).

13. Douglass, Keith, Alamein to Zem Zem (New York 1966), 25Google Scholar; Friedman, B.J., Black Humor (New York 1965)Google Scholar, Foreword; O’Connor, Flannery, Collected Works (New York 1988), 957Google Scholar; Solondz, Todd, ‘That Lovin’ Feeling’, FilmMaker Magazine 7.1 (fall 1998), 36–39Google Scholar and 104f.

14. For a good discussion on the ways in which Ovid unifies his work while at the same time making his stories self-standing see Due (n.3 above), passim.

15. I intend to publish a narratological approach to the Procne, Philomela, Tereus episode that, I hope, does do justice to the tonal variations Ovid makes.

16. See Zumwalt, N., ‘Fama subversa: Theme and Structure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 12’, CSCA 10 (1977), 209–20Google Scholar, who argues that in Nestor’s narration of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs his bias undermines his credibility. See also Hopkins (n.3 above), whose overall conclusions on Ovid’s use of humour in this episode are quite similar to those suggested in this paper. Cf. Frankel (n.8 above), 102, who thinks Ovid gives the tale to Nestor as a way of avoiding telling the ‘brutal tale’ himself. For additional considerations of internal narrators, with various explanations for their function, see Anderson (n.3 above), 526 and passim; Keith, A., The Play of Fictions: Studies in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 2 (Ann Arbor 1992), 4fCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Myers (n.3 above), 69–94; Wheeler, S., A Discourse of Wonders: Audience and Performance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Philadelphia 1999)Google Scholar, ch. 3 and 222 n.12.

17. O’Neill (n.5 above), 65.

18. For Ovid’s critique of philosophy and dogmatism, see Myers (n.3 above), chs. 1 and 4.

19. The epic genre and the Met. have seen much debate. Elements of almost all genres are found in the work. Similar elements, however, are seen in Vergil’s epic. Current thought, therefore, sees the epic tradition as open and all-embracing. And so in form and content, Ovid’s work falls within epic categories (traditional and cosmological/scientific), though it uses them in incongruous ways. See Myers, S., ‘Survey Article, The Metamorphosis of a Poet: Recent Work on Ovid’, JRS 89 (1999), 190–204Google Scholar at 191–94.

20. Myers (n.3 above), 14.

21. Three examples are (1) Jove as he woos Io; (2) Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne; (3) Perseus in his rescue of Andromeda.

22. For the gods as comedy, see Wilkinson (n.9 above), 190–203; Due (n.3 above), 72.

23. Zumwalt (n.16 above), 212, calls it (and the fight between Achilles and Cycnus) ‘a brilliant representation of heroic ineptitude’.

24. ‘Similarly in Ovid’s Iudicium Armorum, an incident that traditionally portrayed the heroic devotion to the ideal of aifev has been reduced to an unseemly squabble about status and recognition calculated to alienate civilised sensibility.’ Coleman, R., ‘Structure and Intention in the Metamorphoses’, CQ 21 (1971), 461–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 474f.

25. Due (n.3 above), 142–46, notes a problem that Vergil had to address in the Aeneid and Ovid in the Met.: the incongruity between the heroic setting and action and the humanity of the characters. Vergil keeps ‘balance between traditional heroic conventions and the human reality of his own days, which was far more bourgeois than heroic…Vergil conquers the inherent incongruity, Ovid exploits it’. Ovid’s means is epic deflation by modernisation. When Ovid notes the cost of constructing walls in the Peleus episode, he turns focus away from the epic value of hard work to the bourgeois concern for cost. When Alcyone turns to her toilette upon hearing of the arrival of Peleus and is able to get it only half-done, the action is out of normal epic character: Ovid has Alcyone do what a typical ‘bourgeois wife does when a business-friend of her husband turns up’.

26. Cf. si se non nouerit (‘if he should not know himself, 3.348).

27. It is also joyous and fantastically interesting.

28. A main difference between Ovid, our primary narrator, and the narrator Lelex is that Ovid asks us not to believe in the literal truth of the stories but in their metaphoric truth. Lelex asks for literal belief of a story that is quite naive, idealistic, and sentimental—things which Ovid consistently asks his readers to reject. That said, scholarship disagrees on the nature of the belief of Ovid and his primary narrator—sceptical, credulous, unbelieving. Feeney, D.C., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford 1991), 230–32Google Scholar, argues that for successful reading of the Met. we must be both Lelex and Pirithous: we ‘believe’ in the teeth of the poet’s reminders of the work’s fictional status. Due (n.3 above), 169 n.95, rightly takes incredulity as almost self-evident. For the advantages gained from establishing an incredulous narration, see Hopkins (n.3 above), 177f. For more on the debate see Myers (n.3 above), 19–21, 56–58, 93; Wheeler (n.16 above), 66–74.

29. Coleman (n.24 above), 473; Myers (n.3 above), 158.

30. For a similar reading of this story, see Due (n.3 above), 106–08.

31. As an ‘educated god’ Jupiter knows that according to Stoic theory he must use water instead of fire (Due [n.3 above], 72). For scholarship on Ovid’s use of philosophy, see Wheeler, S., Narrative Dynamics in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Tubingen 2000)Google Scholar, 12 n.25.

32. Current thinking is to speak of Ovid as anti-conformist or conformist rather than pro- or anti-Augustus. For an overview of the topic in Ovid’s Fasti, see Myers (n.19 above), 196–98. For a survey of the literature on the Met. as panegyric, apolitical, or anti-Augustan, see Schmitzer, U., Zeitgeschichte in Ovids Metamorphosen (Stuttgart 1990), 1–12Google Scholar.

33. In light of this passage, Ovid’s mention of Jove at the epic’s end may have Augustus in mind also: Due (n.3 above), 35; Leach, E.W., ‘Ekphrasis and the Theme of Artistic Failure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Ramus 3 (1974), 102–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the Jupiter/Augustus analogy, see Due (n.3 above) and Feeney (n.28 above), 188–249.

34. For the necessity of ambiguity in criticising regimes, see Ahl, F., ‘The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome’, AJP 105 (1984), 174–208Google Scholar.

35. These expressions have been viewed as having a variety of functions, including Ovid footnoting his sources. For scholarship on them, see Wheeler (n.31 above), 25 n.64. The work is also inconsistent, and intentionally so: Wheeler (n. 15 above), 128f. For temporal inconsistency in learned poetry, see Weber, C., Two Chronological Contradictions in Catullus 64’, TAP A 113 (1983), 263–71Google Scholar; O’Hara, J., ‘They Might Be Giants: Inconsistency and Indeterminacy in Vergil’s War in Italy’, ColbyQ 30 (1994), 206–26Google Scholar, at 209f.

36. For more on this ‘reactive’ aspect of the work, see Due (n.3 above), ‘Conclusion’; Janan, M., ‘The Book of Good Love? Design versus Desire in Metamorphoses 10’, Ramus 17 (1988), 110–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 134.

37. O’Neill (n.5 above), 74.

38. Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford 1980)Google Scholar, has argued that Homer creates meaning through comparing and contrasting life and death, human and divine, peace and war. Graves, Robert, Good-bye to All That (New York 1929), 232Google Scholar, notes that in their war poetry he and Siegfried Sassoon attempted to do the same through the tensions of war and peace.

39. For a study of these, see von Albrecht, M., Die Parenthese in Ovids Metamorphoses und ihre dichterische Funktion (Hildesheim 1964)Google Scholar; Wheeler (n. 15 above), 108–11.

40. Mack, S., Ovid (New Haven and London 1988), 117Google Scholar.

41. Ovid is fond of the character whose verbosity runs against the demands of the situation— Hercules is discussed below. Of Onetor Due (n.3 above), 144, writes: ‘He is as verbose as any tragic messenger and there is a certain incongruity between the obvious need for quick action and this otiose message with all its dispensable details.’

42. Later on in grief over his son Phaethon’s death, Phoebus yokes the horses and drives them furiously. For, Ovid tells us, ‘he was furious’ (Phoebus equos stimuloque dolens et uerbere saeuit/(saeuit enim) natumque obiectat et inputat Wis, 2.399f.).

43. With these intrusions, Ovid plays with the contrast between the ignorance of Actaeon’s companions and Actaeon’s impossible desires.

44. The technique is similar to that used in the movie Scream, which self-consciously criticises horror movie conventions while at the same time upholding them. The overall effect in Ovid as in the movie is critical and comic.

45. 7.144–46: tu quoque uictorem conplecti, barbara, uelles:/sed te, tie faceres, tenuit reuerentia famael/obstitit incepto pudor.

46. On the absence of moralising in the Met., see Due (n.3 above), 161–65.

47. Additional instances include: Marsyas at 6.385; Byblis at 9.488–91 (Wilkinson [n.9 above, 207] views these as conceits); Alcyone at 11.700f. (for a discussion of this wordplay, see Murphy, G.M.H., Ovid’s Metamorphoses XI [Bristol 1979], 77Google Scholar); the debate between Ajax and Ulysses at 13.6–390, good discussions of which can be found in Due (n.3 above), 153f., and Coleman (n.24 above), 474f.; Hecuba’s speech at 13.494–532, which Seneca (n.l above) marked as distasteful; and Polyxena’s speech at 13.460–73, concerning which Due (n.3 above), 155, in partial agreement with Otis (n.9 above), 285, writes the following: ‘Apparently the taste for such exaggerated heroism displayed in macabre contexts was a fact upon which Ovid could count—and did count.’

48. Dryden, J., ‘Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern, translated into verse’, in Watson, G. (ed.), John Dryden: Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays (London 1962), 279Google Scholar.

49. For further instances of humour in this passage, see Solodow, J.B., The World of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Chapel Hill 1988), 101fGoogle Scholar.

50. In addition, in the midst of this world catastrophe, Ovid gives a humorous aetiology: Nilus in extremum fugit perterritus orbemlocculuitque caput, quod adhuc latet: ostia septemlpulueru-lenta uacant, septem sine flumine ualles (‘The Nile runs in terror to the far reaches of earth and hides its head, which to this day remains hidden; the seven mouths are empty, full of ash; the seven valleys are without a river’, 2.254–56).

51. Other instances include: 1.720f.; 2.218, 410, 705-07; 3.124f.; 7.339f., 348f.; 11.83f. (concerning which see Wheeler [n.16 above], 153).

52. Though he is correct in his interpretation, his reasoning is not sound. Within the context of the Met. where deities and oracles are anything but pious, the notion of the inviolability of oracles is naïve and characterises him as such.

53. It might be objected that one can note Ovid’s critique only after a second reading because the nature of deities in the Met. is not yet established. This may be so. In opposition I suggest that the proem and ages of man are comic enough for a reader to catch it on first reading. Once this tone is caught, one may easily catch Ovid’s criticism. Due (n.3 above), 162, also reads the opening cosmogony as ‘flippant’.

54. Anderson (n.3 above), 512, notes that for this ‘grim joke [chewing the spear] there will be a long future, notably in Lucan’.

55. More on this and wordplay generally in Tissol (n.3 above), 17 and passim; Schwaller, D., ‘Semantische Wortspiele in Ovids Metamorphosen und Heroides’, GB 14 (1987), 199–214Google Scholar.

56. On the Met. as an interpretation of the Aeneid, see Feeney (n.28 above), 219.

57. Two more examples are 2.667–69 and 4.588f.

58. Glenn, E.M., Ovid’s Roman Games (Lanham MD 1986), 8Google Scholar.

59. 1.553–56: hanc quoque Phoebus amat positaque in stipite dextralsentit adhuc trepidare nouo sub cortice pectuslconplexusque suis ramos ut membra lacertisloscula dat ligno; refugit tamen oscula lignum (‘Phoebus loves this too, and putting his hand on the trunk feels a chest still shaking under its new shell; and taking in embrace the branches as if they were arms, he kisses the bark—and still the bark shrinks from his kisses.’)

60. A humorous allusion to Homer (Il. 18.489): Giangrande, G., ‘“Arte Allusiva” and Alexandrian Poetry’, CQ 17 (1967), 85–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 85; Johnson, W.R., ‘The Problem of the Counter-Classical Sensibility and its Critics’, CSCA 3 (1970), 123–52Google Scholar, at 126; Wheeler (n.16 above), 128.

61. turn primum radiis gelidi caluere Triones et uetito frustra temptarunt aequore tingi, quaeque polo posita est glaciali proxima Serpens, frigore pigra prius nee formidabilis ulli, incaluit sumpsitque nouas feruoribus iras. te quoque turbatum memorant fugisse, Boote, quamuis tardus eras et te tua plaustra tenebant. (2.171-77)

62. Anderson (n.3 above), 268f. cites Verg. Aen. 3.26ff. (less its solemnity) as Ovid’s model.

63. 3.99f.: Me diu pauidus pariter cum mente coloremlperdiderat, gelidoque comae terrore rigebant.

64. Solodow (n.49 above), 102f., sees the passage as illustrative of Ovidian humour.

65. The line is uncertain, casuque ferit is Housman’s conjecture. Additional possibilities are casuque fuit; casuque canit; casuque fugit; casuque cadit (‘and in his fall he was/sings/flees/ falls’). From the standpoint of content, there is little difference among them: each possibility paints a similar image—a song resulting from his fall—and each has an element of black humour. Since a choice must be made, ferit seems the most vivid. For the app. crit. see Magnus, H., P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphosen Libri XV (Berlin 1914)Google Scholar, 172.

66. It is informative to compare and contrast Ovid’s violence to Homer’s: the descriptions are often very similar in content while differing widely in tone. Though the Iliad is not without humour, and some of it black, the tone of Homer’s violent description is serious, calculated to bring about pity.

67. In the Odyssey, Homer gives the Phaiakians noble epithets as they cower to the ground before Odysseus (Od. 8.190f.).

68. Cf. Meleager’s ability to withstand equal pain (8.515–25).

69. Galinsky, K., ‘Hercules Ovidianus (Metamorphoses 9.1–272)’, WS 85 (1972), 93–116Google Scholar, views Hercules’ last moments as comical but (wrongly in my opinion) superficial.

70. Davis, G., ‘The Problem of Closure in a Carmen Perpetuum: Aspects of Thematic Recapitulation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 15’, GB 9 (1980), 123–32Google Scholar, at 126, sees in the apotheoses of Hercules, Aeneas, Romulus and Caesar a game of elements: fire, water, aer, aether.

71. For a similar reading of the passage, see Zumwalt (n.16 above), 212f.

72. Of the passage Due (n.3 above), 149, writes: ‘The confrontation of the greatest killer with the invulnerable man gives occasion for such paradoxes that make the story extremely un-Homeric, regardless of all loans. The two heroes are virtually comical.’

73. For two views that rightly see a balance between the serious and comic, see Due (n.3 above), 146f., and Hopkins (n.3 above), 179–90.

74. O’Neill (n.5 above), 77f.

75. Another example of blood driving out weapon is found in the story of Ajax: nee ualuere manus infixum educere telum:lexpulit ipse cruor (‘hand was not strong enough to draw out the blade wedged within him; his blood itself forced it out’, 13.393f.).

76. Earlier (6.537) she called herself a paelex sororis, which Curran, L.C., ‘Rape and Rape Victims in the Metamorphoses’, Arethusa 11 (1978), 223Google Scholar, offers as an example of Ovid’s accurate psychological insight into the state of mind of the raped.

77. Pavlock, B., ‘The Tyrant and Boundary Violation in Ovid’s Tereus Episode’, Helios 18 (1991), 39Google Scholar, interprets the act of stretching out the neck as the language of sacrifice: ‘A proper victim must not struggle.’ Rather it is the language of the amphitheatre: Ovid presents us with a character who, like a gladiator, willingly embraces death and so triumphs. See Barton, C.A., The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans (Princeton 1993), 11–46Google Scholar.

78. Fränkel (n.8 above), 42, rightly notes that the double entendre is an instance of grim humour.

79. For a similar reading of the apostrophe that takes into account intertextual play on Vergil, see Makowski, J., ‘Bisexual Orpheus: Pederasty and Parody in Ovid’, CJ 92.1 (1996), 25–38Google Scholar, at 37.

80. For additional instances of humour, see Makowski (n.79 above), which contains a good discussion of the high literary humour of Cyparissus and the stag in drag.

81. Douglass (n.13 above); Friedman (n.13 above); O’Connor (n.13 above); O’Neill (n.5 above); Pratt (n.5 above).

82. For their suggestions for improvement I thank the anonymous readers, Richard Hebein, James Keenan, and James Pfundstein.