Ouidius sapiens

This chapter offers an analysis of the recurrences of sapio/sapiens in Ovid’s work, which present a wide range of meanings of this concept. First, the author focuses on the erotic works, where sapiens defines an artist, a specialist in the technai relating to love, someone who always knows what to do and what not to do to make girls fall in love. Another section is devoted to the Metamorphoses and Fasti. Here, the word sapiens is rare, and refers to people who are brilliant in rhetoric and in reaching their personal aims, even if not always frank and sincere: Brutus and Ulysses. Ulysses is a particularly relevant case because Ovid later compares himself to the Homeric hero and moreover the Stoics considered him an example of the wise man. The final section tackles the exile works: here, especially in the Tristia, sapiens is Socrates, another instance of the Stoic sage and a paradigm of sapientia in its widest sense. The conclusion summarizes the semantic evolution of the term sapiens in Ovid’s works, from a specific meaning linked to the idea of ars (erotic works), to a wider one linked to prudentia (long poems), to one applied to the effective philosopher (exile works). As for himself, Ovid identifies with the first, the one who sapienter amat, while, as far as the philosophical meaning is concerned, he either tries but fails to become a wise man or from the start declares his inability to do so.