Humiliation and revenge in Ovid’s Fasti

Abstract Unlike most poems of the Augustan age, Ovid’s Fasti is unusually fond of recording Roman defeats and moments of national humiliation. From the complete thrashing of the Fabii in the battle of the Cremera to Crassus’ disaster at Carrhae, Ovid’s poetic calendar offers an intriguing, ‘alternative’, view of Roman history. This chapter offers a fresh consideration of these and other related episodes, and argues that the recurrence to humiliation and revenge in the Fasti amounts to a persistent attempt by Ovid to assert that the need to avenge humiliation is hardwired into Rome’s DNA. In making this argument, the chapter will focus on not only the poet’s depiction of Augustus as ultor par excellence, but also offer a new interpretation of the Fortuna–Servius–Tullia episode in Fasti 6. I will suggest that this sequence of aetiological narratives about concealment, sexual shame, and dynastic strife may be seen to allude to the poet’s banishment and the punishment of the two Julias.