Labor and pestis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

This chapter treats the relationship between philosophy and mythology in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in connection with two famous “problems” of Epicurean philosophy: labor (“toil” or “trouble”) and pestis (“plague”). Labor and pestis come together in Lucretius’ account of the rise and fall of civilization in two passages of De rerum natura, literally in Book 5 and symbolically in Book 6. Ovid recuperates this complex in three passages of the Metamorphoses: the rejuvenation of the earth’s population by Deucalion and Pyrrha after the great flood (1.348–415), the plague at Aegina (7.517–660), and Hercules’ death on Mt. Oeta (9.152–272). The chapter argues that Ovid pointedly undermines the tenets of Epicurean ethics in remythologizing his Latin epic predecessor. His elaboration and refutation of Epicurean ethics in the Metamorphoses exhibits both his characteristic playfulness and the comprehensive knowledge of Hellenistic philosophies that so excited the imaginations of Lucretius and the Augustan poets.