Ovid's The Metamorphoses and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

Man is now "by steel assaulted, and by gold betray'd" and "Mankind is broken release from righteous bands," killing each other, with adeptice so oppress that it returns to heaven (Ovid). Ovid saw a world where chastity is the nigh important attribute and pleasure is just a by-product rather than a consuming pursuit. He states, "the teacher of virtue and praiseworthy deeds...contributes much of utility to mankind, yet no pop appears more fruitful and of greater benefit than that part that discourses on duties and the morals of mankind, whence come wholesome precepts for living well, steadfastly, and with arrogance" (Spreng).

In Marcus Aurelius' The Meditations, he elucidates the stoic philosophy that points man toward his intimate self where he can be morally independent and non dependent upon external things. Marcus Aurelius saw a polar world from the chaotic and immoral one of Ovid; instead, he viewed it as watched over by divine providence and ordered accordingly, a world where virtue is the most important attribute, and pleasure is just a byproduct rather than a consuming pursuit. In the book's introduction, Gregory Hays states, "Stoicism is...a deterministic system that appears to leave no room for human free will or moral responsibility," although the Stoics "attempted to get around the difficulty by delimitate free will as a voluntary alteration to what is in any case inevitable" (Aurelius & Hays xx).

Aurelius, Marchus; coal miner, Jeremy. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Manchester, U.K.: George Routledge & Sons, 1896.

lius starts his meditations by reflecting upon the qualities that he values in his family members, and they are all qualities that exemplify moral behavior-"character and self-will" from his grandfather Verus, "integrity and manliness" from his father, and from his mother-"her reverence for the divine, her generosity, [and] her inability not only to do wrong but even to perceive of doing it" (Aurelius & Hays 5). In the second book, Aurelius terms the inability to blemish between good and evil a "defect" (Aurelius & Collier 29) and asserts that philosophy "consists in keeping the divinity within us from injury and disgrace, superior to pleasure and pain," nevertheless ending with the statement, " spirit never does any mischief" (Aurelius & Collier 31). It is here that Aurelius departs from Ovid. Where Ovid relates ethical motive to virtue and emphasizes that man's departure from virtue creates corruption in the world, Aurelius suggests that lousiness is not man's fault; the things we deem immoral are just the natural consequences of nature herself, who does no wrong. Therefore, regardless of the h
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