The reference to the rising and setting of the sun to indicate the unceasing duration of an action becomes a τόπος in Latin poetry from an influential distich of Cinna onwards, which was reworked a number of times in Augustan poetry. As well as Vergil and Horace, who adapt the model to different genres and occasions, the treatment of it by the elegists is interesting, in whom the two terms that define East and West are set in relation to the (...) eternity of poetic renown. This transformation may go back to Gallus, to whom Ovid, above all, makes significant references. The numerous occurrences of the τόπος in different authors and genres make possible interesting comparisons. (shrink)

In a recent note, I collected instances of ‘stichometric allusion’, the technique in which poets allude, in one or more of their own verses, to source verses with corresponding line numbers. The technique existed in Hellenistic Greek poetry, but seems more prevalent (or at least, detectable) among the Latin poets of the Augustan era, who applied it to Greek and Latin predecessors alike, as well as internally to their own work. New illustrations of each type may be added here to (...) those previously brought to light. Further examples, detected in an unsystematic fashion, no doubt lie dormant in published discussions and commentaries. Callimachus is still the only known Greek practitioner; perhaps his Roman successors considered the technique not merely Hellenistic but Callimachean. Authors of later ages employ the same techniques in equally haphazard fashion, although this does not mean that they had necessarily noticed examples from antiquity. (shrink)

The notice in the Scholia Bernensia about Vergil, Georgics 4.468 that links the name of Gallus to the katabasis of Orpheus can be read as a confirmation of the relation between Vergil’s short poem and the elegiac poet’s work. Significant in this sense is the term formido, very elegant as used by Vergil and maybe part of the poetic lexicon of Gallus, as is perhaps suggested by a passage of the Philae stele.

Intense scrutiny can raise chimaeras, and Virgil is the most scrutinized of Roman poets, but he may have engineered coincidences in line number (‘stichometric allusions’) between certain of his verses and their Greek models. A handful of potential examples have now accumulated. Scholars have detected Virgilian citations of Homer, Callimachus and Aratus in this manner, as well as intratextual allusions by both Virgil and Ovid, and references to Virgil's works by later Roman poets using the same technique. (For present purposes (...) I disregard the separate, though related, phenomenon of correspondingnumbers of linesin parallel passages: G. Knauer,Die Aeneis und Homer(Göttingen, 1964) suggests several examples of such correspondences between Homer and Virgil, especially in speeches. Another purely formal mode of allusion faintly present in Roman poetry is homophonic translation (the technique which Louis Zukofsky's 1969 translations of Catullus pursuein extenso); thus Virgil'sfagus, beech, corresponds with Theocritus'phagos, oak.) If genuine, the phenomenon lacks any consistent method or regular pattern (and the degree of plausibility varies); if genuine, it is very rare, even if accidents in textual transmission could have obscured some examples; if genuine, it probably originated in the Hellenistic period, although such a case has yet to be made. Virgil presently seems the earliest and most copious practitioner of stichometric allusion. A previously undetected example in theAeneidis proposed below. (shrink)

This article describes how cc. 39 and 37 create distinct tones of voice and use them to preclude the social pretensions of Egnatius in different spheres. The style of c. 39, markedly oratorical—and non-Catullan—in the syntax of its opening lines, develops into the voice of a respectable senex by way of archaisms of vocabulary and syntax and is capped by a figure of humor otherwise absent from the polymetrics, the apologus. The style thus creates a voice perfectly suited to chastise (...) Egnatius' social ineptitudes and, more importantly, constitutes on the verbal level an embodiment of the standards of the urban elite. Catullus thus illustrates to Egnatius that a subtle system of social gestures can be learned - something which Egnatius, for all his apparent pretensions to social prominence, manifestly has not grasped, marred as he is by the habit of grinning inappropriately. C. 37, which ends with an attack on the same Egnatius, is far different in tone, commingling tokens of artfulness with vulgarity and forcefulness. That mixed style exercises ironic decorum towards Lesbia's lovers, who are themselves an oddly mixed group, well-off on the one hand, but "backstreet adulterers" on the other. But the two tones of voice, and indeed the two groups of lovers, also embody the paradoxes of the Roman construction of stylish behavior, which could be represented as elegant dalliance or reprehensible vice. Inasmuch as Egnatius' fashion affectations, ridiculed at the poem's end, fail to qualify him for the ranks of Lesbia's lovers, he is represented as outside sophisticated society, however it be constructed. In concert the two poems utterly derail Egnatius' social pretensions: c. 39 as it were outflanks him on the "right," barring him from respectable society, and c. 37 outflanks him on the "left," barring him from the "jet set.". (shrink)

InEpistulae ex Ponto4.8, one of the last poems written from exile (dated to 15 or 16c.e.), Ovid expresses his increasing hopes for Germanicus' assistance in effecting his recall to Rome. Though ostensibly addressed to his stepdaughter's father-in-law, P. Suillius Rufus, the poem contains a petition to Germanicus (27–88), as a poet to a poet, which promises future commemoration in Ovid's poetry if he is removed from Tomis:clausaque si misero patria est, ut ponar in ullo,qui minus Ausonia distet ab Vrbe loco,unde (...) tuas possim laudes celebrare recentesmagnaque quam minima facta referre mora. (85–8)and if my country is closed against me in my misery, may I be placed in any place less distant from the Ausonian city, whence I might celebrate your praises while they are recent and relate your great deeds with the least delay. (shrink)

En este trabajo abordamos la figura de Helena como rival amorosa en la Heroida 5, cuya redacción –en el plano ficcional– Ovidio atribuye a Enone. A través del análisis de distintos lexemas y sintagmas intentaremos demostrar que la voz enunciativa construye un relato con la intención de realzar su imagen y conmover al héroe para que regrese; y que, en contraste, pone en juicio las acciones de su rival con términos que cuestionan sus cualidades morales, su naturaleza fiable y sus (...) deberes matrimoniales, centrando toda la responsabilidad del abandono en las acciones de la espartana. Asimismo, mostraremos cómo, de acuerdo con el entramado de referencias intra e intertextuales que operan en torno a la figura de Helena en la tradición literaria, la voz de Enone construida por Ovidio no se limita a presentar a la rival como la causante de una desgracia personal, sino también como el motivo del padecimiento de pueblos y héroes. (shrink)

Arma uirumque cano… ‘Je chante les armes et l'homme …’ ainsi commence l’Énéide, ainsi devrait commencer toute poésie.It is far from an overstatement to make the claim that in the surviving corpus of Latin poetry no phrase is more immediately identifiable than the pronouncement of the Virgilian narrator on the ‘arms and the man’ of his subject matter. The presence ofarma uirumquein a particular formation cannot fail to put us in mind of theAeneidand its concomitant ideological associations. A consequence of (...) the epic's centrality as a canonical text was the emergence in antiquity ofarma uirumqueas a synecdochic quotation for the work as a whole and, as such, for the figure of the poet himself. This transformation was further actuated by the ancient practice of ascribing titular authority to a poem's incipit, ensuring that arms and the man took on especial resonance. Even within theAeneid, self-referential intratextual play with the Virgilian utterance can be detected. Furthermore, in post-Augustan verse, Fowler argues thatarmaalone is always loaded in a metaliterary fashion, serving as an identifying marker for Virgil's epic or, more broadly, for epic in general. This was so marked a phenomenon that the opening word of the poem was recycled and reworked by Ovid around a decade after the compositional beginnings of theAeneid, in the first book of theAmores, in what formed an announcement of the redeployment of epicarmainto the elegiac world ofmilitia amoris(Am. 1.1–2). (shrink)

Ovid completes his narrative of the origin of Croton with the following lines (Met. 15.58–9):talia constabat certa primordia famaesse loci positaeque Italis in finibus urbis.It was agreed by sure fame that such were the beginningsof the place and of the city established within Italian borders.

This article proposes and interprets a previously undiscussed connection between Horace'sCarmen2.15 and the description of the Corycian gardener at Virgil'sGeorgics4.125–48. It argues that this allusion to Virgil sharpens the moral pessimism of Horace's ode. It first considers the circumstantial, general and formal elements connecting these two poems; it then considers how the model of the Corycian gardener brings further point and nuance to the moralizing message ofCarmen2.15 and the way in which this allusion is meaningfully echoed atCarmen3.16.

This article argues that the incomplete acrosticINCIP- at Ov.Met. 15.871–5 can be completed. If viewed as a ‘gamma-acrostic’, we can supply -iamfrom line 871, so that it receives its termination in retrospect. Ovid's manipulation of gamma-acrostic conventions caps his persistent confusion of beginnings and endings, and emphasizes the role of the reader as co-creator of his metamorphicœuvre.

Aeneas' encounter with Deiphobus forms a critical juncture in Vergil's "Aeneid". In the underworld Aeneas retraces his past to its beginning; so too Vergil's audience returns to its starting point: the fall of Troy. Deiphobus himself is a metonym of Troy, embodying her guilt and punishment. But Aeneas is frustrated in his attempt to reconcile himself to this past. Aeneas attempts the Homeric rites of remembrance-heroic tumulus and epic fama-but these prove to be empty gestures. The aition of Deiphobus' tomb (...) is revealed to have miscarried. Rhoeteum was known as the tomb and shrine of Telamonian Ajax, not Deiphobus, and Octavian's recent restoration of the Rhoetean memorial would have strengthened the already close association between Rhoeteum and Ajax in the mind of Vergil's audience. Vergil exploits Rhoeteum's resonance with Telamonian Ajax and Odysseus, Antony and Octavian, to reflect on the process of constructing national memory, a process of which epic is an integral part. Vergil suggests that one hero's memorial frequently involves the appropriation and effacement of another. In a similar vein, the heroic fama of Deiphobus which Aeneas had heard in Troy is proven false. Deiphobus' narrative of his death is replete with Odyssean allusions which critique both Homeric heroism and Homeric kleos. Evocative allusions to Catullus' laments for his brother suggest eternal elegiac mourning as an alternate generic model for memorial and reconciliation with the past. But Aeneas is denied this option. At the center of the epic, at high noon, on a cosmic crossroads, Aeneas is poised between past and future, between mourning and hope, between Deiphobus and Deiphobe, between epic and elegiac. The Sibyl interrupts and moves Aeneas forward. Aeneas is not purged of his past, but rather denied the opportunity for true reconciliation, which is bestowed not by forgetting but by remembrance. (shrink)

This article defends Baehrens’ reading cenam for caelum at Catullus 6.17 as more sensible than scholars have thought, based on allusions to Meleager, AP 5.175. It then proposes a new emendation to the line that is suggested by this Greek source.