Caroline A. Perkins, “Ovid's Erotic Vates“, Helios 27.1, 2000, p. 53-62.

Ovid's use of vates in Amores 3.9 clarifies one aspect of his poetic debt to Tibullus
and at the same time brings further understanding to the tone and purpose of the
poem. In the opening lines of the poem (5-6), Ovid defines Tibullus as a vates of Elegy,
a definition that forms a contrast with the idea of vates as a dignified prophet and
teacher. (1) Later, however, he declares that he and Tibullus are to be included among
the ranks of the sacri vates whose voices are divinely inspired and eternal (26, 29).
Still later he addresses Tibullus himself as sacer vates (41). The cumulative usages
of vates can be interpreted in one of two ways. On the one hand, Ovid's emphatic
calling forth of the bards of old and his inclusion of both himself and Tibullus in their
number may contribute to the solemnity of the poem, and may reveal the intensity of
Ovid's reaction to Tibullus' death. (2) Ovid's definition of the vatic Tibullus, which
progresses from the elegiac to the sacer, seems to support this view. On the other
hand, it is unusual that Ovid should so affirm Tibullus' vatic connections when Tibullus
called himself a sacer vates but once in his corpus (2.5.114). Tibullus' self-description
and its context are significant, however, and he may have inspired Ovid to create his
own version of an erotic vates.

Ovid's creation of the erotic vates plays a complex role in the Amores. The numerous
appearances of vates in poems that establish or affirm Ovid's decision to write elegy,
and the designation of the functions of this vates in these and other poems, are
consistent with the humorous tone of the Amores, and suggest as well that Ovid is
answering a poetic conceit cultivated by his contemporaries. Ovid's agendas, in turn,
must influence the emphasis on vates in Amores 3.9 and thus contribute to the ironic
nature of the poem. (3)

Tibullus as vates appears appropriately enough in a poem to Apollo (C.2.5). Written

to celebrate the Sibylline priesthood of Messalinus, the poem focuses naturally on the
vatic/prophetic/didactic powers of Apollo and his Sibyl, who is twice called vates (18,
65). Late in the poem Tibullus shifts briefly from Apollo to Cupid and from Cupid to
Nemesis, whom he defines as the source of his poetic inspiration:

at tu, nam divum servat tutela poetas,

praemoneo, vati parce, puella, sacro,
ut Messalinum celecrem...

But you, for the protection of the deities guards poets,

I am warning, spare your sacred vates, girl,
so that I might celebrate Messalinus... (113-15)

In a reversal of the usual elegiac recusatio – "Spare me Epic/Tragedy, so that I may

write elegy" – Tibullus allies himself with the prophetic Sibyl as he asks his girl to allow
him to write of Messalinus' achievements. Yet because he is asking Nemesis to spare
her sacer vates, he is blending the concepts of sacer vates and vates Elegiae, a
connection he makes more clear with his joining of vates to the poetas of the previous
line, and with the insertion of puella into the phrase vati parce... sacro. Furthermore,
he raises the poeta of elegy to the level of sacer vates with his attribution to the vates
Elegiae of the protection of deity. Tibullus in general is not overly concerned with
defining his poetic persona. C. 2.5 contains the only appearances of vates in the
established Tibullan corpus, while poeta appears one other time (1.4.61). Putnam
suggests that Tibullus' designation of himself as a sacer vates "cannot be taken
entirely seriously in a context where the Sibyl has twice been called vates" (194), but
Tibullus' message is very deliberate. Just as Apollo combines elements of war with
peace, music, and prophecy, so Tibullus the poet combines serious political themes
with elegy. No better example of this blending exists than C. 2.5 itself. This "most
'Roman"' of Tibullus' poems displays as well the most representative elements of his
elegiac art. (4) Thus Tibullus calls the elegiac poet a sacer vates and presents himself,
overtly and covertly, as both, a view that Ovid ostensibly supports in Amores 3 9. (5)

Ovid's notion of the vates Elegiae, however, is very different from Tibullus'. Whereas
Tibullus elevated the idea of poeta by connecting it with vates, Ovid appropriates the
concept of vates as teacher and inspired bard and subverts it by locating it more firmly
within the context of his own brand of elegiac poetry. The first and last poems of the
Amores establish and confirm his agenda. In a humorous interchange in 1.1, Ovid's
poet calls himself a Pieridum vates (6), which is how Vergil would characterize a vates
(e.g., Aen. 7.41). Amor throws this designation back at the poet when the divinity
obliges the poet to assume his poetic task (24). These appearances of vates have
been defined by scholars as "ironic" and "pretentious" (6) – as indeed they are – but
their significance lies also in their change of context. While the source of the poetic
inspiration changes from the Muses to Amor, the term vates does not. It becomes
parodic because its context has degenerated from the solemn to the erotic. (7)
Moreover, just as Amor deflates the vates; own self-importance, so too Ovid undercuts
the concept of the sacer vates; the term is therefore doubly parodic because Ovid joins
the mockery of the vates with a kind of self-mockery. (8) The same contrast of context
and terminology occurs when Ovid begins the last poem of his collection with an
address to Venus: quaere novum vatem, tenerorum mater Amorum ("Seek a new
vates, mother of sweet loves," 3.15.1). As befits a vates, his mood is solemn, recalling
his pronouncement to Amor in Amores 1.1.6. Yet his invitation is to Venus, who
necessarily undermines his lofty stance.

In Amores 2.1, another programmatic poem, Ovid engages in a humorous way the
sacerdotal pose of divine inspiration (9) and upholds his poet's commitment to elegy;
yet he also affirms the parody of Amores 1.1 and 3.15 with a change of context for
vates suggesting, significantly, a function for his bard. A theme of 2.1 is the benefit of
elegy to the love relationship, and so it should not occasion surprise that the vates
appears when Ovid details a specific outcome of the gift of poetry:

at facie tenerae laudata saepe puellae

ad vatem, pretium carminis ipsa venit.
magna datur merces.

But often when the appearance of a sweet girl receives praise,

to the vates as a payment for his song she herself comes.
A great reward is given. (33-35)

The tone of these lines is incongruous. The vates has become a merchant who offers
his wares for a specific price. (10) His materialism results logically from his earlier
definition of elegy as the best weapon against closed doors (17-22), but its dryness
forms a contrast with the almost impassioned praise of poetry (23-28) which precedes
these lines. Parody thus reigns in this poem as well because both priestly language
and the vates have been removed from elevated to more mundane contexts; and while
Ovid allows his vates to assume the poses of teacher and immortalizer, he undermines
these functions with the almost banal result of their power.
Humor and incongruity distinguish the appearances of vates in two other
programmatic poems that replay the themes of Amores 1.1 and 2.1. Both poems,
Amores 2.18 and 3.1, show a struggle. In 2.18, the poet desperately attempts to write
of noble subjects despite the many distracting blandishments of his girl. In a scene
reminiscent of the interchange of Amores 1.1 (11) and the whole of 1.2, a laughing
Amor again defeats a hapless vates defended by nothing more than the lofty symbols
of tragedy:

sceptra tamen sumpsi curaque tragoedia nostra

crevit, et huic operi quamlibet aptus eram:
risit Amor pallamque meam pictosque cothurnos
sceptraque private tam cito sumpta manu;
hinc quoque me dominae numen deduxit iniquae,
deque cothumato vate triumphat Amor.

However, I grabbed the scepter and from my work

a tragedy grew, and I was pretty fit for the job:
Love laughed at my garb and my painted boots
and the scepter grabbed so quickly with an amateur hand;
from here the power of my mistress led me away,
and Love triumphed over the booted vates. (13-18)

The humor arises in part from the picture of the poet who has been decked out
ridiculously (sceptra, pallam, cothurnos) and inappropriately (privata) and has been
plunked into the poetic morass; his props and appearance may be the sole reason he
is suited to his task. There is more than humor in this scene, however. While Amor
neatly dominates the whole (risit Amor... triumphat Amor), the domina iniqua holds a
powerful position in her line, and both me and vates receive emphasis in their lines.
Thus there is a balance of sorts among the three players and the vates is not as
helpless as his defeat might suggest. Furthermore, if the poet is indeed conflating
character and genre, (12) which both numen dominae and the pun on the verb deduco
("to lead away," "to spin a tale") support, then the picture of the vates in the power of
his mistress/Elegy reinforces the new context assigned to the vates in Amores 1.1,
2.1, and 3.15. With this return to elegy, Ovid specifies for the vates the function alluded
to in Amores 2.1. Immediately following these lines the poet suggests as a possibility
that he become a praeceptor amoris: aut artes teneri profiremur Amoris / (ei mihi,
praeceptis urgeor ipse meis) ("Either I profess the arts of tender Love / [Alas I am hard
pressed by my own teachings]," 19-20). Whether or not Ovid is referring to the Ars
Amatoria, (13) his poet is suggesting for himself a didactic function toward which, he
declares, his feelings are mixed. Thus the vates is retaining a traditional function of
poet/teacher, although his new context determines the nature of his teachings.

Amores 3.1 presents another tug of war, one now between Tragedy and Elegy, with
the poet again as the rope. The humor of the poem appears in the scenario that
carefully prepares us for an epiphany (1-6) and the ironic juxtaposition of the
descriptions of the two contenders (7-14), who resemble physically the genres they
represent.(15) Tragedy derides the erotic vates and his genre: saepe aliquis digito
vatem designat euntem / atque ait "hic, hic est, quem ferus urit Amor" ("Often someone
with a finger points out the vates as he passes, / and says, 'Here, here he is whom
Love torments,'" 19-20). Tragedy's prognostications are doom-laden as she envisions
the poet as the object of unwelcome attention and disdain. (16) Later, the poet refers
to himself as a vates when he begs Tragedy for more time to write elegy (67-68). At
this point, it is possible that the poet has begun to compose a tragedy and has failed
in his attempt. (17) His attire in this instant, altera me sceptro decoras altoque cothurno
("One of you decorates me with a scepter and the high boot," 63), recalls Tragedy's
own appearance earlier in the poem (14-15), as well as Ovid's appearance during his
earlier attempt to assume the tragic role in Amores 2.18.15-16. Yet Amores 3.1
maintains the poet's decision of 1.1, 2.1, and 2.18, although Elegy has persuaded the
poet, not forced him as Amor and the puella had in the earlier poems. (18) In this poem
Ovid's poet/narrator is corrupting again the traditional context of vates even as he
retains the term, some of the trappings, and again the function. While he may be
overtaken by an "amorous version of vatic madness," (9) this madness does not
elevate him to the status of prophet. Instead, Ovid's poet adjusts the vatic pose by
bringing it down to Elegy's level, and it is this absurdity--the vatic poet in Elegy's bed-
-that becomes the parody. The parody deepens because this vates is a teacher.
Olstein has suggested that the poet asks Tragedy for more time to write "... Elegy
because Elegy has defended her 'vatic' power to be instructive and useful" (255).
Elegy's "teachings," however, focus on topics that she herself affirms as levis: adultery,
deception, and sex. Elegy in fact has called herself love's lena (43-44), thereby
anticipating Ovid's lament of Amores 3.11.19-20 and his description of his own role in
Amores 3.12. With his recommitment to E/elegy, Ovid validates his notion of Amores
2.18 that his vates is a teacher, albeit not quite the teacher envisioned by a Vergil or
a Horace.

The humor darkens in two other elegies that refine how Ovid's erotic vates fits his
notion of the function of elegy. In the comic Amores 1.8, (20) the drunken bawd Dipsas
calls this vates a poor choice for a lover: his divine mentor may be wealthy, but the
man himself has nothing more than poetry to offer his potential mistress: ecce, quid
iste tuus praeter nova carmina vates / donat? amatoris milia multa leges ("Look! What
does your vates offer besides new songs? / You will gather your lover's many
thousands," 57-58). Dipsas, of course, is disdainful as she designates poetry as the
medium of exchange for sexual favors, and her language is exaggerated (ecce) and
pretentiously rude (iste... vates) (21) Her suggestion that the poet has nothing other
than poems to give anticipates the poet's own words of Amores 2.1. Dipsas sees this
gift as a failing on the part of the lover. The poet, however, has seen his poetry as the
focus of the relationship: without one the other cannot exist. Thus he has anticipated
again the view expressed in Amores 3.1 that Venus cannot exist without Elegy. Finally,
in a reversal of this situation (Amores 2.4.19-20), Ovid's response to the woman who
reproaches the bard and his poetry takes the form of a specific sexual invitation. The
poet's wantonness in this scene mirrors his attitude in the entire poem. He is not
entirely concerned that he cannot control his erotic impulses – in fact, he revels in
them. These poems present the vates and his poetry in a way that coarsens both. By
reducing the immortalizing function of poetry to one-half of an "X-rated" quid pro quo,
the poet corrupts as well the vatic immortalizer. But the vates has not merely become
the poeta (22) – his appearances in these contexts are much too deliberate. At the
point when the vates is thoroughly conjoined with his song and becomes the prophet
of his puella and his relationship, the poet's humor is cynical; this must have shocked
and amused an audience accustomed to imagining a more exalted function for its
bard.

It is well established that Ovid's Amores are a "playful reworking" of the elegiac genre,
that Ovid's characters and themes are humorous responses to situations found in his
predecessors and older contemporaries, and that Ovid's elegies concern poetry as a
means to love rather than love itself. Ovid's use of vates fits these patterns well. The
appearances of vates in the Amores demonstrate that Ovid is aware of the elevated
functions of vates, and that he adapts these roles when he usurps the term for his own
poetic purposes. (23) He acknowledges the solemn vates in Amores 3.6.17 and
3.12.41 (24) and in the program poems Amores 1.1, 3.1, and 3.15. In the latter poems,
however, this notion of vates finds itself in the same wastecan as the genres and topics
that are his special province. It is not that Ovid's vates lacks divine inspiration, but that
his divinity is the cruel and mocking Amor. Greater and more positive inspiration is to
be found in the personification of his genre, Elegy, or in the subject of his genre, the
puella(e). Both are inextricably connected to the genre in terms of physical
appearance, and both cannot exist without the genre. Ovid's close and consistent
connection of vates to these ideas is not coincidental: his vates enables their very
existence. Thus Ovid's erotic vates functions on a variety of levels. Possibly inspired
by Tibullus who was encouraged by Nemesis to celebrate Messalinus, Ovid's vates,
inspired by erotic figures to celebrate the erotic, retains some didactic and prophetic
functions. His didactic program, however, is so humorous and bleak – his vates, after
all, uses his poetry to procure sexual favors – that we must conclude that Ovid has
also established for his vates a parodic and critical reaction to the lofty ideal of vates,
to the elegiac innovation, and even to Ovid's own reconfiguration of the concept. These
conclusions in turn color the several appearances of vates in Amores 3.9. While Ovid
is acknowledging Tibullus' combination of the erotic and divine functions of vates by
calling Tibullus a vates Elegiae and by including him in the ranks of the sacri vates,
throughout the Amores Ovid has adjusted his concept of vates to fit his erotic program.
This adjustment in turn supports the conclusion that Amores 3.9 operates on more
levels than that of a lament for the dead Tibullus. (25)

CAROLINE A. PERKINS is Professor of Classical Studies at Marshall University in

Huntington, West Virginia. She publishes primarily on Tacitus and Ovid, and is
currently working on a book on Tacitus' Histories.

(1.) Newman 100; Barsby 41.

(2.) von Albrecht 119.
(3.) The tone and purpose of this elegy are a matter of debate. Some see it as a serious lament on the
death of Tibullus: Morgan 94; Luck 49; Wilkinson 74; E. Thomas 599; Dickson 180; Fraenkel 10 and
32; and Berman 21. Others detect humorous or critical overtones in the poem: DuQuesney 8; Cahoon
1984: 31-32; and Perkins. Currie 149 notes that Amores 3.9 "seems too self-consciously elaborate and
literary to be a genuine expression of concern." The most recent assessment comes from Boyd, who
suggests "a reading that recognizes the delicate balance in this poem between sentiment and
cleverness, and that refrains from labelling reference as parody" (180).
(4.) Putnam 182-83.
(5.) With two exceptions, vates in Propertius' poetry refers to traditional seers and teachers. At 2.10.19-
20, Propertius defines himself as a vates of Augustus, thereby allying himself with the didactic/prophetic
function of vates. At 2.17.1-4, Propertius assumes a prophetic stance as well. Newman 86
acknowledges that Propertius is writing "personal verse," but does not see vates here as an elegiac
poet, possibly because of the vates' self-proclaimed prophetic functions; however, it is difficult to divorce
the term from its erotic context, which suggests that here at least Propertius, like Tibullus, is defining
an erotic vates.
(6.) Barsby 43. However, Keith 1992: 332 suggests that Ovid may be complimenting Vergil here and
acknowledging his innovations.
(7.) Morgan 27; Dane 9.
(8.) Kenney 201.
(9.) Lyne 185 distinguishes between the poet as sacerdos and the poet as vates. Ovid employs
sacerdotal language again at Amores 3.8.23-24.
(10.) Cahoon 1985: 33. Ovid offers similar sentiments in similar language at Amores 1.3.19-20 and
2.17.27-28. In Amores 1.10.62 he asserts that immortalizing carmina are superior to all other gifts, and
in Amores 1.15 he declares his own immortality and that of other poets.
(11.) See McKeown 9.
(12.) Wyke 133; Keith 28.
(13.) So Booth 186. Lacey sees a stronger link between Amores 3.12.11-12 and the Ars Amatoria
although she notes the connection at 2.18.19-20.
(14.) Later, in Amores 2.18.35-36, Ovid insists that erotic themes are appropriate to the war poetry of
Macer (the addressee of this poem), whom Ovid calls a vates.
(15.) Wyke 118-22.
(16.) Davis 1989: 110; Cahoon 1985: 34-35.
(17.) R. Thomas 447-50.
(18.) Berman 18-19.
(19.) Fyler 198: Olstein 253.
(20.) See Davis 1979: 197; McKeown 198; Courtney 80.
(21.) Barsby 99; McKeown 232; Ferguson 126.
(22.) Newman 103-04.
(23.) In another context, Ahern 44-48 demonstrates that Ovid plays with the idea of vates in the opening
lines of the Ars Amatoria by combining "prophetic authority" and "empirical method."
(24.) In these poems Ovid invokes the vates of old, only to call them liars. Both poems are meant to be
humorous: Amores 3.6 is a harangue by the exclusus amator to a river, and in Amores 3.12 the poet
reprises the ideas of Amores 1.8 and 3.1 that poetry prostitutes loved. Wilkinson 190 notes that 3.6.17-
18 anticipate 3.12.41-42. Davis 1989: 87 n. 47 notes that by calling all poets liars, Ovid engages the
liar's paradox. For Ovid to call poets liars is not disturbing, since ancient bards did not concern
themselves with literal truth (Pratt, Bowie).
(25.) I wish to thank the anonymous readers of Helios whose suggestions were very valuable to the
development of this article. I would also like co thank the late Professor John T. Davis who
commented on an earlier version and who has been an inspiration to my study of the Amores.

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