Nicoletta Francesca Berrino - Helen, Ovid's Troublesome Character
(pag. 23-44)
The episode of Paris, Helen and Menelaus in the second book of the Ars amatoria (ll. 357-372) seems to justify Ovid’s relegatio in Tomis better than other controversial and deplored passages of the poem. The Ovidian episode, in fact, is very likely to underlie the defence of Julia the Elder, daughter of Augustus, who in 2 B.C was banished from Rome officially for indecent behaviour, but unofficially for political motives since she joined an opposition filo-oriental movement. The connection between the historical event and the poetic fiction lies chiefly in Helen, evoked in the Ars, in the Remedia (ll. 773-776), and in the Heroides (16, 299-316). A further evidence of this connection may lie in the Augustan order to expunge the episode of Helen from the second book of the Aeneid (ll. 567-588) to avoid any parallel between the Ovidian Helen/Julia the Elder and the Virgilian heroine. The order of expunction (in about 9 A.D.) was probably a precaution taken after a challenging “grassing” of Ovid on Vergilius. In fact, just in 9 A.D. the banished poet sent to Augustus his libellus of auto-defence where he polemically offered an irreverent interpretation of the Virgilian episode, not without blame, to exculpate himself and to hint to Augustus’ actual or pretended disregard of the Virgilian immoral lines in contrast with the law.