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Ovidius Prooemians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

E. J. Kenney
E. J. Kenney
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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Extract

      In noua fert animus mutatas dicere formas
      corpora:
      di, coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa)
      adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
      ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen.
      illa P.Lejay ex Erfurtano Amploniano 1 saec. xii: illas codd.

In spite of several valuable contributions to the understanding of this proem that have appeared in the last few years, it does not seem to me that modern exegesis has as yet taken all the points that Ovid has contrived to pack into it. This is an astonishingly brief introduction to an epos over 12,000 lines long; and that very brevity ought to put us on our guard. We should expect that not a word will be wasted; and with so little sea-room we should further expect that the reader, though he may be playfully tantalized, will not be actually misled. That was a risk Ovid could not afford to take. Unfortunately his editors have taken it for him by printing and justifying the nonsense which his copyists have made of the second verse of the poem. By so doing they have set a stumbling-block before the feet of the reader on the very threshold, just where the going should be smooth and the omens fair.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 22 , 1976 , pp. 46 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

NOTES

1. In particular Herter, H., AJP 69 (1948) 129–48Google Scholar = Ovid (ed. von Albrecht, M. – Zinn, E., 1968) 340–61Google Scholar; Fleischer, U., A&A 6 (1957) 27–59Google ScholarPubMed; von Albrecht, M., RM 104 (1961) 269–78Google Scholar.

2. Cf. Fleischer, art. cit. 32.

3. The phrase contains all five vowels, as does the first hemistich of Aen. 1. 1 (Bömer ad loc). Cf. on Am. 1. 1. 1 Stroh, W., Die römische Liebeselegie als werbende Dichtung (1971) 145 n. 19Google Scholar.

4. See (ed.) Lee, A. G., P. Ouidi Nasonis Metamorphoseon Liber I (1953)Google Scholar ad loc.

5. Which is to be preferred to that of (ed.) Haupt, M.–Ehwald, R., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen I ed. 10 rev. von Albrecht, M. (1966) ad loc.Google Scholar: ‘denn wie alle anderen (die kosmischen und physischen…), so sind auch diese Verwandlungen euer Werk’. Cf. von Albrecht, art. cit. (n. 1) 277.

6. Hartman, J. J., De Ovidio poeta commentatio (1905) 83Google Scholar.

7. Bömer, F., P.Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen Buch I–III (1969) ad loc.Google Scholar

8. It seems to be due to N. Heinsius; his father's text reads ‘& serrae repperit vsum / Primus, & ex vno’ eqs. ‘Repperit…primus’, as Dr Diggle reminds me, recalls Greek .

9. Hartman, op. cit. (n. 6) 83–4; Luck, G., Hermes 86 (1958) 499–500Google Scholar.

10. For the last suggestion cf. Fleischer, art. cit. (n. 1) 47–8.

11. Galinsky, G. K., Ovid's Metamorphoses. An introduction to the basic aspects (1975) 103–7Google Scholar.

12. For the distinction cf. Kenney, E. J., ‘The style of the Metamorphoses’, in (ed.) Binns, J. W., Ovid (1973) 138 and n. 116Google Scholar.

13. On the stylistic importance of the parenthesis in Met. see von Albrecht, M., Die Parenthese in Ovids Metamorphosen and ihre dichterische Funktion (1963)Google Scholar.

14. See especially Herter, art. cit. (n. 1) 139–44 = 351–7; and cf. Nisbet–Hubbard on Hor. C. 1. 7. 6.

15. Cf. Wimmel, W., Kallimachos im Rom (1960) 132ff.Google Scholar

16. Kenney, loc. cit. (n. 12) 116–17.

17. Cf. Otis, B., Ovid as an epic poet ed. 2 (1970) 334Google Scholar.

18. Cf. Ross, D. O., Backgrounds to Augustan poetry (1975) 134–5Google Scholar. That Ovid uses deducere here in an unusual sense is remarked by Eisenhut, W., ‘Deducere carmen. Ein Eintrag zum Problem der literarischen Beziehungen zwischen Horaz und Properz’, Gedenkschrift für George Rohde (Aparchai 4, 1961) 91Google Scholar = (ed.) Eisenhut, W., Properz (Wege der Forschung 237, 1975) 247Google Scholar; but he detects no double meaning.

Addendum. My confidence in the suggestion put forward in the last paragraph of this article is strengthened by the fact that it has also been made independently by MrGilbert, C.D. at C.Q. N.S. 26(1976) 111–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.