Time, Fate, and Poetry Theme Analysis

In the first chapter of the Metamorphoses, Ovid describes the world as a jumble of indistinct parts “called Chaos.” The gods give order to this chaos by sorting out the elements by their weight and qualities. In this way, it seems that the gods are responsible for the universe, especially as they go on to have a huge influence over the world’s affairs. However, Ovid’s work presents other forces over which the gods themselves have no control. On occasions when gods try to alter a character’s age, Jupiter reminds them that only Fate has control over age. Later, when Venus hears that Julius Caesar is to be betrayed and murdered, she tries to save his life, but Jupiter reminds her that his death is already written on the tablets of Fate. These moments of the gods’ futility suggest that even they, the creators of the universe, must contend with the fact that the world they created cannot resist the march of time. In this way, time and fate, by propelling human characters and the universe towards certain fixed ends, assert themselves as the true driving forces of the universe. However, Ovid notably presents certain workarounds for the inexorability of time and fate. Venus gets around this problem by memorializing Julius Caesar as a god after he dies, thereby reasserting her dominance over the force of time. In the epilogue which follows directly after Caesar becomes a god, Ovid similarly asserts that he himself will live beyond his body’s decay as a posthumously famous poet. By making an analogy between himself as a writer and Caesar as a god, Ovid suggests that writing, as a work of creation, has a divine aspect and can even circumvent time and fate to a certain extent.