Ovid

The most important evidence of Ovid’s influence on Ariosto lies in the poet’s youthful experiment in drama that has never reached posterity, the Tragedia di Tisbe, the story of the unhappy love of the two Babylonian youths Priamus and Thisbe, taken from a story in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. But it is of course the Furioso, which contains so many links with Ovid’s works, that points to how Ludovico had an absolutely privileged relationship with this Latin poet. We should for example note how Melissa’s encounter with Ruggiero in VII, 51-69 recalls similar episodes in both Virgil and Ovid. Octave 54: ‘Di ricche gemme un splendido monile / gli discendea dal collo in mezzo al petto; / e ne l’uno ne l’altro già virile / braccio girava un lucido cerchietto. / Gli avea forato un fil d’oro sottile / ambe l’orecchie, in forma d’annelletto; / e due gran perle pendevano quindi, / qua’ mai non ebbon gli Arabi né gli Indi’ recalls Ovid, Heroides, IX 55-60: ‘Vidit in herculeo suspensa monilia collo / […] / Non puduit fortis auro cohibere lacertos, / et solidis gemmas opposuisse toris’. Also derived from Ovid is a whole series of similitudes, as the one in Furioso XL 29: ‘Come nel mar che per tempesta freme, / assaglion l’acque il temerario legno, / ch’or da la prora, ora da le parti estreme / cercano entrar con rabbia e con isdegno; / il pallido nocchier sospira e geme, / ch’aiutar deve, e non ha cor né ingegno; / una onda vien al fin, ch’occupa il tutto, / e dove quella entrò, segue ogni flutto’ drawn from Metamorphosis, XI 529-532: ‘Sic ubi pulsarunt noviens latera ardua fluctus, / vastius insurgens decimae ruit impetus undae, / nec prius abstitit fessam oppugnare carinam, / quam vekutr in captae descedat moenia navis’. Ovid contributes to Ariosto’s style as is evident from the many repetitions and the way adjectives are used.  An example can be found in Furioso XLI 9, 5-6 : ‘Surgono altiere e minacciose l’onde, / mugliando sopra il mar va il gregge bianco’ which is drawn from Metamorphosis, XI 501: ‘[mare] spumis […] albet’.