Tiresias, Ovid, gender and trouble : generic conversions from Ars into Tristia

Ovid’s brief Tiresias episode in the third book of his Metamorphoses (Met. 3.316-38) represents one of the most eloquent examples of Ovidian self-representation and contamination between his elegiac, epic and exilic corpora. Tiresias’ chauvinistic statement on the nature of women’s sexual pleasure constitutes the first point of connection between the Theban seer and the praeceptor of the Ars Amatoria. Additionally, as it has already been noted for the Actaeon story that precedes the Tiresias episode (which is explicitly paralleled by Ovid himself to his own fate in Tristia 2.103-8), Met. 3.316-38 also features what anachronistically sound like unmistakable echoes of the obsessive language and themes displayed throughout the Tristia. Such resonances, coupled with similarities between Tiresias and the praeceptor amoris, invite us to read Tiresias’ undeserved punishment at the hands of Juno as a double of Ovid’s own punishment for writing the Ars, a recognition which may also shed further light on Livia’s involvement in the verdict on Ovid’s exile