Abstract

The passage in Ovid’s Fasti that deals with animal sacrifice implicitly criticizes the legal system of the late Augustan period. In particular, it is the increasing arbitrariness of the emperor’s judgments that is addressed in a metaphorical way. In order to make explicit the hidden criticism, this article first compares the passage to the parallel section in the 15th book of the Metamorphoses, then reads it within the context of the first book of the Fasti and finally places it in the context of Ovid’s exile poetry. It emerges that the gods’ behaving more and more unjustly can be connected to the emperor himself, whereas the slaughtered birds recall the implicit author of the Fasti, who in his exile poetry constantly presents himself as the miserable victim of an unjust relegation to the Black Sea.