Ovid's Other Metamorphoses (part 2)

Ovid's Other Metamorphoses

Love, With Rosy Cheeks

“She who was called Corinna by me (not her real name),

She stirred my wit, she who was sung throughout the city.” —Tristia 4.10

As soon as I met her I immediately apprehended why Cornelius had called her a definite enemy — or why she might perceive me to be one. I was on the panel of one hundred citizens who might be called at any time to render legal judgment, and the Bacchanalia was only barely legal. Furthermore, Caesar Augustus disapproved on the grounds that it promoted unclean behavior, debauchery, and immorality, especially among women. Rome had few enough natural-born citizens of her own, and it was said that Augustus was most concerned that the birth rate had been going steadily downward. There could be no more immorality, no more carousing, the First Citizen said, and he was prepared to enforce that ideal upon everyone using the very courts for which I officiated. Women must marry, obey their husbands, and bear children for Rome.

As Cornelius had predicted, obtaining the allegiance of his hidden companion took diplomacy and negotiation. Nearly a year passed, during which Cornelius promised me that he labored continuously to secure his secret ally’s cooperation. When I finally realized her identity, as I finally saw her there before me at the foot of Palatine, it was instantly obvious that the daughter of Augustus, Julia Caesari, had not wished to compromise her position with any indiscretion.

She was a charming woman, with a head of luscious black curls and a face of dimpled cheeks, and at twenty-two, she was four years my senior. The daughter of Caesar Augustus was clad in a modest tunic of vibrant purple that covered her from shoulders to ankles, yet somehow her excellent figure failed to be concealed by it. Her sleeves had been slit, and bound in regular knots, so that her bare arms could be seen beneath the fabric; and her tunic had been similarly sliced to allow a diligent onlooker an occasional glimpse of a supple calf or of a rounded thigh. The throat of her tunic hung in rounded drapes of fabric from her shoulders, baring her clavicle. Around her upper arms she wore a pale yellow palla as a shawl. Standing still, she was the picture of chaste modesty; in motion, with her flesh peeking through her garments, she was a tempting vision of such grace and beauty as I had never observed in the female form. She had confidence and charm, and a ready wit; in every step she took, it was as if I could see Muses in her wake, composing stanzas of adoration.

“Ovidius, I am pleased to be in the presence of your genius,” smiled this shapely angel on the day in Februarius that we met. “Your Ars Amatoria has touched me deeply. I am honored that our friend Cornelius requested that I speak with the poet so young who knows so much already of love.”

“My education by Cupid was arduous, but always rewarding,” I responded without a stammer, despite the hammering of my heart. “There are times that I regret having chosen to commit so rashly to a bride, when there is still so much to be learned.”

“Oh, indeed?” she said, arching one of her delicate brows. “I see no defect in your charms, Publius Ovidius, but it may be that any deficiency is concealed on first inspection. Shall we consider a brief ramble around Viminalis Hill? The fount at the Aqua Marcia on the east side is always such a spectacle to see.”

I bowed my head to Julia and said, “I would be content to accompany you around any hill, but I fear once you have apprehended me better, you will perceive my numerous flaws.”

Julia Caesari laughed gaily, and I felt the jealous stab of treacherous Cupid’s arrow. Did that wayward son of Venus not know I was already married, and she too? Her husband was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, nephew of Augustus, the man for whom the theater was being constructed on Palatine Hill. To be seen to dally and flirt with the daughter of the First Citizen was to tempt the Fates themselves. And yet how could I not, for so unearthly was her attraction?

“My father is vexed with your poetry,” said Julia amiably as we strolled along Vicus Longus beneath the swaying laurel trees. “He says your erotic poems promote lasciviousness and depravity.”

“There is nothing sinful in my song,” I replied. “My verses are comic, not lecherous.”

“Not lecherous, indeed?” Julia said, with one modest hand covering her smile. The bare flesh of her arm peeked between the knots in her tunic sleeve. “Why else should I consider reading them?”

“You do me an injustice,” I smiled. “But allow me to say that if even only one member of your family should condescend to read my poetry, I am very happy that it should be you.”

“My stepmother Livia does not object to it,” said Julia, “but she would never approve, either — not where Father could hear. As for my stepbrother Tiberius, I care not what he likes. He is an odious man, alternately unctuous and depressing. He is older than you, I think, Ovidius, but he acts as a spoiled child. Father has Rome on a platter before him, but Tiberius must be coerced into happiness, begged to enjoy the benefits of his station. I was raised by his mother Livia, you know, and I have seen his every selfish tantrum.”

We had proceeded down Vicus Longus and arrived at a sharp bend which led up and over the spine of the hill. We turned to the right and climbed that street to pass the lovely baths built by the consul Sulla. Here, on this shaded avenue, there were fewer pedestrians around us. Only the sparrows twittered overhead.

“Our common friend Cornelius has spoken to me,” Julia said at my side, so quietly that I wondered that I had even heard. “Do you recall what you said to him?”

“I have heard stories of an alabaster pitcher,” I murmured. “Manufactured by the gods.”

She nodded gravely. “Perhaps I have heard of it. I may even have seen something like it.”

“The Greeks call it the Amphora of Dionysus,” I said.

“So I have heard, too,” she said. “It is a lovely tale, is it not?”

“I would like to taste a drop of its wine,” I ventured. “Would you know where I might see an amphora of alabaster, carved in front with the shape of a woman holding the spout?”

She did not seem in the least surprised or vexed, but there was an air of satisfaction. I believed in that moment that I had impressed her deeply, and again I felt the pangs of unrequited love. This felicitous creature was one I could never possess, for a husband and wife stood between us, and a jealous father overhead. “You have indeed seen the — a vessel very much like the one I know,” Julia conceded. “Publius Ovidius, you are a marvel of wisdom in youth. Might I inquire if you have discerned the means by which it functions?”

I could not resist a touch of pride. “I have studied it for a year and followed every tale of it that I could find across all of Sicily,” I boasted. “If I cannot penetrate its secrets, I shall not rest until I have done so.”

“And why, would you say, is this matter of such great importance?” Julia asked me innocently. She turned her gray-flecked eyes upon me, framed by those lustrous curls, while the dappled sunlight played in her hair through the laurel leaves above. “Are you hoping by this relic to get closer to the gods?”

A poet must always be prepared to speak with a silver tongue, but in this instance I could conceive of no better words to say. “In your presence,” I told her, “I believe I am already as close as I shall ever come.”

Julia Caesari smiled at me again, banishing the shade of the street with her illumination.

---

The daughter of Caesar Augustus promised to arrange entrance into the Bacchanalia for Cornelius and me, and she was as good as her word. Within a week I received a letter at home, in Greek — Flavia spoke Greek but could read none of it, so it was in that language that Julia and I agreed to exchange correspondence. She would vouch for our character to the Bacchae and would secure our admission into their secret rituals. Unspoken in her communication was what might occur if we were fool enough to betray the daughter of the First Citizen. Julia Caesari had left me no evidence, no signature, no confirmation that could be used against her. Our discussion had taken place in private. The only arrangement committed to writing was this anonymous letter, which asked me to inspect the Bacchic Cordial on the third day before the first of Maius, in the groves of Simila upon Aventine Hill, west of Via Ostiense.

The Bacchanalia were everything that decent citizens avoided. They lacked decorum and dignity; they were held at night; they involved wild, lewd acts of sex and depravity; the mode of dress was primitive and barbarous; and they were run by women. Needless to say they were quite popular in their own way; the Senate had never successfully stamped them out. Julius Caesar, whom many now nostalgically recalled as a friend to the common people, had finally brought them back in a limited way. He reasoned if you’re going to have them anyway they might as well have rules.

Cornelius and I didn’t know the rules of the wild orgies and processions that followed that night on the first of Maius, but we weren’t the only ones. We had heard enough stories to be forewarned not to wear anything conspicuously formal like a toga, or garments that appeared too rich. I wore a cloak and my old traveling tunic, and Cornelius dressed the part of a common plebian.

“I have friends who are actors,” he said to explain his costume, he he suppressed a yawn. “This was simple to borrow.”

We had agreed to meet southeast of the Circus Maximus, by the aqueduct, and already he was feeling the lateness of the hour. I was wide awake, my heart hammering in my chest: tonight I might possibly have my first confirmation that the magic of the Gods was real. How could I profane such an occasion with a yawn?

Columns rose around us in the starlit gloom as we passed through the dark streets of the City. The moon was waning to a sliver, a mere crescent in the sky against the Great Dog on our right, peeking over Palatine Hill. We took our bearings from Aries and headed west toward the Tiber River. I had come prepared only with a bottle of wine and a knife, so I was glad to have my friend at my side. I was no soldier, having a poet’s physique, but any armed criminal would think twice about attacking Cornelius Quadratus.

As we climbed the hill toward the groves we began to apprehend the sound of carousing, already well begun. Women’s voices mingled with men’s, with occasional singing and the crash of cymbals. Someone was playing a lute, quite drunkenly, quite unable to find the same air as the carolers, but nobody seemed to care.

At the edge of the forest the path was flanked by a pair of statues symbolizing Ceres and Diana: one with her sheaf of wheat, the other with her bow. Between them stood a woman wearing a shawl made from the skin of a roe deer, an undyed peasant’s tunic, and a horned mask over her eyes. Her hair was decorated with twigs and leaves in a manner like, and savagely unlike, the traditional wreath of laurel.

“Publius Ovidius, the poet — and judge of the centumviri,” the woman intoned sagely, as we approached her. “And Gaius Cornelius, who seeks to outdo Homer. Bacchus has been expecting you. He trusts,” she added with a note of extra gravity, “that you will not perform your public service here this night. Tonight, in this sacred grove, you will not need your famous names.”

“You know who we are?” Cornelius asked.

She hesitated only for a fraction. “I was told to anticipate your coming. Allowances have been made. The Bacchae are understandably anxious at your presence.”

“I will leave my verses with Diana,” said Cornelius extravagantly, and gestured as if handing over a burden to the statue beside him. “She will watch over them while I join the revelry.”

“And you, Ovidius,” said the wild woman in the shadows of the trees. “It has come to our ears that you are seeking proof of the gods. I have been asked by . . . someone we both know to put that proof into your hands. You will not misdeliver it.”

I glanced at Cornelius beside me; this wasn’t precisely what we had arranged with Julia Caesari. Deliver the Cordial to Julia? Nevertheless, I said, “I have followed every tale, and they have led me to this grove. I have come too far to make a misstep now.”

The Baccha seemed unimpressed. “You must realize the concessions being offered to you, Publius Ovidius: you a stranger, a judge of the centumviri. It is only because we believe you may have acquired arcane wisdom that you will be entrusted with our secrets. Therefore you must also realize the danger of making an enemy of . . .”

“Our mutual friend,” I finished for her. “I am aware of the responsibility.”

“Then come with me,” said the Baccha, and turned into the forest.

We followed her into the grove toward the festive orange glow of torchlight, from which came the sounds of revelry. In a circle at the center of the grove, where stood a fountain fed by the Aqua Appia, a makeshift shrine to Bacchus had been erected: rough-hewn and wooden it was, its monstrous angles a figure of terror and dancing shadows. The nude Bacchus stood with something in his arms that might have been a vessel or an amphora; around his head had been placed real laurel leaves. The carving was primitive, barbarous, and his expression lustfully sinister. Around the fountain was a half-circle of crude wooden benches, and standing iron brackets holding sulfurous torches. Wine stained the marble of the fountain, and soaked the ground underfoot.

Attending the ceremony, in various states of undress, were about fifty women and half that many men. Most, like the Baccha who had greeted us, wore animal skins or tunics made of poorly spun cloth, if they wore anything at all. Many women were nude, or wore masks; some of the men were tied, or roped with collars, under their command. Couples fornicated in the benches among a sea of writhing arms and legs. One woman was bent over a wooden bench while a masked man took her from behind. Two women in animal skins kissed each other passionately, their fingers locked in each others’ hair. Men intertwined their bodies with other men, in an act frowned upon by many people in the City; most citizens would have insisted that men had been intended by the Gods to be dominant, and take possession of their partner with their erect mentula; to submit was to be a woman. Cornelius and I were men of the world, however, and we had both seen Athens: this sight was not new to either of us.

Those that were not fornicating were drinking: dipping cups into a barrel of wine and passing it around to any who were still conscious. Invisible to us, but audible, was a frenzied torch-lit dance that led through the grove. Laughter and merriment pursued after, not with a few nocturnal rustling bushes where exhausted couples had abandoned their vertical dancing for a more horizontal posture. All told, the attendees numbered a hundred or more. I will not pollute the reputation of any citizen whom I recognized there, and instead will politely excuse myself from any recollection of faces.

Cornelius and I must have appeared as patently obvious newcomers.

One of the Bacchae approached Cornelius and me with a bundle about the size of an infant wrapped in fine linens. Without a word, she placed the bundle into my hands.

Gingerly I took it and unwound the protective cloth. At the center of the labyrinth was a vase of alabaster, just as I had imagined it: about as long as my forearm and about as wide, with a graceful looping handle. The forward curve of the pitcher was decorated with the carving of a Maenad, her thighs pressed decorously together, her arms stretched above her head as if to hold the spout. The workmanship was nothing like that of modern Rome, but ancient. It might have been Greek, or even Mycenaean.

Cornelius was looking from the Cordial to me, seeking confirmation. “Is that it, Big-Nose?” he whispered. “Is that the one you’ve been looking for?”

I peered into the empty vessel and saw that it was filled with cobwebs. The fountain was close at hand, so I rinsed the dust from it. Two or three other Bacchae gathered nearby, whispering, observing my preparations with as much solemnity as drunken orgyists can.

The look on Cornelius’s face was perplexed and skeptical. “You just drink out of it? That’s too easy. How come they’re not using it? A magical flask would be most . . . useful here.”

“It doesn’t work,” said one of the Bacchae in a tipsy voice. “We’ve tried it. You put wine in it. It’s just a pitcher.”

“Shhh,” said another, just as inebriated. “Don’t blaspheme. That was made by Bacchus.”

Cornelius nudged me. “Now what?”

“Hold this,” I said, handing him the amphora, which he took as if handling a live lion cub. I fished into my tunic for the bottle of wine I had brought with me, a bottle I had never expected to use. I had never anticipated that locating the Cordial would have been this simple.

“It doesn’t work,” said the tipsy Baccha again, and she peered closer at the symbol that had been fired into the ceramic bottle. “What is that?”

“It’s fig wine,” I explained. “I had to look all over the City for it. There’s only two merchants that sell it, both near Esquilinus. There was the cheap vintage, and the expensive vintage. I decided Bacchus was worth the expense.”

The tipsy Baccha tittered. “He doesn’t care. He’s the god of all wine.”

Now I had gathered a crowd of six or seven of the Bacchae, in addition to the one who had admitted us, the one wearing the crown of twigs and leaves in her hair. One or two of the revelers looked on curiously from the benches, but most were too preoccupied with themselves and each other to care. Carefully I poured the elixir of fig wine into the Bacchic Cordial, and slipped the bottle back into my tunic.

“Quadratus?” I asked my friend, holding out my hand for the pitcher. “Are you planning to try this yourself, or would you like to leave that up to me?”

Cornelius had been peering into the depths of the pitcher, and looked up with a start. “No, no. You’d better be the one to try it, Big-Nose,” he said.

I took the Bacchic Cordial. It felt cool to the touch.

Stepping before the crude wooden statue of the Dionysian god, I poured a drop of fig wine into the carpet of dried leaves and twigs at the base of his pedestal in a small ceremony of sacrifice. I then drank deeply.

The vintner had done his job well. The fig wine was excellent, and I could feel it rushing down into my gut, warming and swirling. There was a tingle on the tongue, and a pleasant aftertaste of fruit.

“Anything?” Cornelius asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing yet.”

“Drink some more.”

I raised the pitcher again and took another capacious drink from its neck. There was only a drop left, so I finished it off. The liquor sat in my belly like a delicious fire on a chilly evening.

The Bacchae watched me. Cornelius watched me.

“I feel nothing,” I said, “except that my nose is turning numb—”

I reached up to my face to feel the flesh there. It was more than my nose becoming numb, it was all the features of my head. My ears, my lips, my tongue all began to feel thick and far away. But the alcohol in my stomach continued to exert a warm glow within my blood, almost a pulling sensation, as if it were a sponge and my body were water. It felt oddly as if the alcohol were drawing some essence of me away, some important element that was Publius Ovidius.

“Ovid?” Cornelius said with alarm. “You’re shrinking.”

“I know,” I said. My voice sounded unusual. “I know, you’re all getting bigger. Don’t panic.” Heavy weights had been attached to my head. My skull felt as if it were balanced precariously upon my neck. The grove was slowly starting to spin, rising up and away, as everything masculine about me swirled away down some cosmic drain. The bones in my hands popped; the muscles on my arms withered. In the double images of my drunken sight, my big nose shrank into something petite and adorable. My tongue, numb with the taste of fig, became crowded behind my teeth as my jaw shrank in proportion. Black curls of hair dropped before my eyes, fell to tickle my neck, cascaded to my back.

I could feel the fire in my belly growing warmer as it absorbed all my manly energy. My male mentula tried to resist, but I could feel it diminishing in stature, reducing to nothing, while my coleones vanished into the flesh between my thighs. Bacchus’s liquor boiled me away, as if the Cordial were a crucible that left only female portions behind. And on my torso, I could feel my tingling flesh desire to expand. Behind my nipples a pressure built, a furious tension that stole my breath away; then an instant later, two breasts burst forth from confinement and bounded into reality, quivering inside my tunic.

If Cornelius hadn’t reached out one of his large hands to take my shoulder, I would have fallen drunkenly to the earth. His touch kept me on my feet. “Ovid?” he asked again in utter astonishment. “Ovid?”

“Dear Gods, Cornelius,” I said, slurring my words badly. My words came out in a pleasant alto. “Do I feel as drunk as I look?”

“I would estimate you do,” he said, staring at me still with an open mouth.

“Oh, good,” I said vaguely, and looked down the length of my shortened body to find feminine curves. The ground was a good deal closer than I recalled it, yet somehow it was much harder to stay upright. Must be all that wine. All that wine? It had been one narrow carafe. One carafe of wine blessed by Bacchus.

The Bacchae approached me, hands reaching out to touch my flesh, brush my altered skin with their fingertips. I heard gasps of astonishment, oaths, prayers — belief and disbelief. Some of them dropped to their knees. Elsewhere in the grove, the revelers had barely taken notice.

I brought my head up unsteadily, my gaze weaving back and forth as I tried to look Cornelius in the eye. “It worked, didn’t it? I told you it would.”

Cornelius Quadratus simply gaped at me, his poetic discipline having deserted him.

“Oh, merda,” I said, and hiccupped. “I need to examine that amphora. It’s supposed to fill up again.”

It wasn’t in my hands, and that confused me greatly, until Cornelius extended the Cordial in his own grip. “When did you take this?” I said around my thick, disobedient tongue.

“I didn’t want you to drop it,” he said, offering it back.

I took it and tried to focus my gaze inside it. It felt heavy enough. “Did you refill this?”

“No, I swear I didn’t.”

“Well, it’s full now.” I took a sniff of the mixture inside. It wasn’t fig wine; it was something very familiar, almost like militites. “I’m not sure what it is. It may be mead.”

“Ahh,” said one of the Bacchae, the one crowned with the diadem made of twigs and leaves. It was a sound of profound understanding. “The stories are true, then. Inside the Cordial is your manhood. Drink the nectar from the jar, poet, and your male figure will be restored to you.”

“I am far too drunk,” I said, peering into the pitcher unsteadily. “Bacchus makes a potent brew. I can barely stand.”

“Do not delay too long. Someone else may drink your manhood,” the Baccha said with a sly smile. “And if it is a woman who drinks it, then she will be a man. If it is a man who drinks it, then he will be doubly potent. Perhaps your friend, poet, would care to try?”

I looked up at Cornelius with bleary eyes, then at the frankly lustful countenance of the Queen of the Bacchae, then back to him. His expression was still of astonished horror. “If I drink this,” I told Quadratus, “I’m going to black out.”

Cornelius nodded, perturbed but unafraid. “I’ll see that you get home.”

“My thanks,” I said, and lifted the Cordial to my lips again.