The Cornerstone Forum
Keeping Faith & Breaking Ground
"The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." Luke 20:17
Following on the discussion of Vergil’s understanding of fama as an image of both fame and myth Gil Bailie, takes up the work of Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid – Vergil’s later contemporary) contrasting these two exemplars of Roman letters. Where Vergil used his creative genius to undergird the Pax Romana Ovid reflects a more ironic perspective in his works. Ovid’s Metamorphoses evince a world of unceasing change – a world ontologically ‘fickle’ where the sense of transcendence is lost. Ovid is the anti-ideologue to Vergil’s ideological support for the Roman world view; becoming a 'deconstructor' of the pagan gods.