Ovide poète de l'actio dans les Métamorphoses

This paper focuses on the way Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, depicts changing bodies, and in particular their “oratorical action” (actio), in the process leading up to the transformation from the human state to the animal or plant state. This study is built around the rhetorical concept of the actio, as is defined in the Greek and Roman treatises; the definition includes both the orator's voice and gestures. Ovid attributes verbal language and gestures to his characters, at the time of their metamorphosis, in a novel way in comparison to the codes of the epic style. Cases reviewed in this paper are particularly those of Ocyrhoe, who is transformed into a horse while uttering prophetic words (Met. 2, 635-675), and of Cadmus, whose story ends with him being transformed into a snake and making his farewells (Met. 4, 756-603). Ocyrhoe's half-horse half-man actio takes place during a soliloquy. In contrast, Cadmus, who shows the most comprehensive “metamorphic” actio in the whole poem, chants each step of his own transformation with words of farewell and arm gestures he expresses to Harmonia. This pathos-filled last scene must be interpreted in light of a lost tragedy fragment relating to Cadmus (Euripides, fragment 930 N2) and the critical judgement on Euripides's text in a treatise on rhetoric from the imperial period (Hermogenes, De inv. 4, 12).