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OVID'S EPIC FOREST: A NOTE ON AMORES 3.1.1–61
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2013
Extract
As the first poem of the last book of Ovid's Amores, 3.1 parallels the programmatic recusatio of the first two books, which present the traditional opposition of elegy to epic. In Amores 3.1, the personified Elegy and Tragedy compete for Ovid's poetic attention, and scholars have accordingly scrutinized the generic tension between elegy and tragedy in this poem. My study, by contrast, focusses on the import of the metapoetic locus in which Ovid sets his contest between the two genres, by considering the linguistic and allusive play in the opening lines. Ovid exploits the metaphor of literary tradition as an ancient and sacred forest to transform an author's choice of poetic genre into a walk in the woods. Moreover, allusions to Virgil's Aeneid 6.179 and Ennius' Annales 175 (Sk.) in the first line guide Ovid's audience to expect the more traditional opposition of elegy and epic. The less conventional contest between the genres of elegy and tragedy soon overturns this expectation; nevertheless, elegy's customary opposite, epic, maintains a presence in the form of a woodland context for Ovid's innovative generic opposition.
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Footnotes
1
I would like to thank Cillian O'Hogan, Alison Keith, Kevin Lawson, Jarrett Welsh, CQ's anonymous referee and its editor, Bruce Gibson, for their helpful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to James C. McKeown and Brian Walters for generously sharing their unpublished work.
References
2 See Farrell, J., ‘Ovid's generic transformations’, in Knox, P. (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Malden, MA, 2009), 370–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a recent discussion of the recusatio in Roman erotic elegy with further bibliography.
3 See e.g. Bretzigheimer, G., Ovid's Amores: Poetik in der Erotik (Tübingen, 2001), 61–76Google Scholar; Davis, J.T., Fictus Adulter: Poet as Actor in the Amores (Amsterdam, 1989), 108–13Google Scholar; Wyke, M., The Roman Mistress (Oxford, 2002), 115–54Google Scholar.
4 I quote the text of Ovid's amatory poetry from Kenney, E.J. (ed.), P. Ovidii Nasonis Amores Medicamina Faciei Femineae Ars Amatoria Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar.
5 Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 12Google Scholar. See OLD, s.v. silua, 5b; Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, histoire des mots (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar, s.v. silva; Maltby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991)Google Scholar, s.v. silva. See also Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.34; Gell. praef. 5–6.; Quint. Inst. 10.3.17; Tert. De anim. 2.6. See Petrain, D., ‘Hylas and silva’, HSPh 100 (2000), 409–21Google Scholar and Keith, A.M., Propertius: Poet of Love and Leisure (London, 2008)Google Scholar, 125 for the play of ὕλη as materia in Prop. 1.20; with respect to Statius' title, Silvae (Silv. 3 pr. 7, 4. pr. 25), see e.g. Bright, D.F., Elaborate Disarray: The Nature of Statius' Silvae (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980), 20–49Google Scholar; Newlands, C., Statius Silvae II (Cambridge, 2011), 6–7Google Scholar; and Wray, D., ‘Wood: Statius' Silvae and the poetics of genius’, Arethusa 40 (2007), 127–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 I quote the text of Cicero's Orator from Wilkins, A.S. (ed.), M. Tulli Ciceronis Rhetorica, Tomus II (Oxford, 1903)Google Scholar.
7 Hinds (n. 5), 11–14; for a comparison of all three passages and bibliography, see e.g. Jackson, G., ‘Commentario al Libro VI’, in Flores, E., Esposito, P., Jackson, G. and Tomasco, D. (edd.), Quinto Ennio Annali (Libri I–VIII), Vol. II (Naples, 2002), 122–8Google Scholar; Skutsch, O., The Annales of Q. Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 340–3Google Scholar.
8 See Keith, A.M., ‘Slender verse: Roman elegy and ancient rhetorical theory’, Mnemosyne 52 (1999), 41–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 48, on the resonance of siluae in Hor. Epist. 1.4 (with a comparison to Am. 3.1). I quote the text of Horace's Epistulae from Wickham, E.C. (ed.), Q. Horati Flacci Opera (Oxford, 1901)Google Scholar.
9 See Walters, B., ‘Cicero's silva (a note on Ad Atticum 12.15)’ CQ 63 (2013), 426–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argues that Cicero is metaphorically describing the writing process in this letter. I quote the text of Cicero's Ad Atticum from Shackleton-Bailey, D.R. (ed.), Cicero's Letters to Atticus, vol. 5 (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar.
10 Bretzigheimer (n. 3), 62, Hunter, R., The Shadow of Callimachus (Cambridge, 2006), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Keith (n. 8), 48, and J.C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores: Text, Prolegomena and Commentary in Four Volumes (n.d.), Vol. 4, on 3.1 briefly mention but do not elaborate on the metapoetic connotation of silua at Am. 3.1.
11 Cf. e.g. the description of Diana's sacred grove in Ov. Met. 3.155–64 (arte laboratum nulla, 3.158) and Erysichthon's violation of Ceres' sacred grove at Met. 8.738–878 (ille etiam Cereale nemus uiolasse securi | dicitur et lucos ferro temerasse uetustos, 741–2); and see further McKeown (n. 10), on Am. 3.1; Thomas, R.F., ‘Tree violation and ambivalence’, TAPhA 118 (1988), 261–73, at 263–5Google Scholar.
12 Hinds (n. 5), 14; Thomas (n. 11), 261–73. Hinds cites Quint. Inst. 10.1.88: Ennium, sicut sacros uetustate lucos, adoremus, and Hor. Epist. 2.1.54: adeo sanctum est uetus omne poema.
13 Newlands, C., Statius' Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 36 cites Serv. Auct. Aen. 1.310, who defines silua as an uncultivated grove (silua diffusa et inculta; cf. OLD s.v. silua, 2), and Quint. Inst. 10.3.17, where silua is a hasty literary production (diuersum est huic eorum uitium qui primo decurrere per materiam stilo quam uelocissimo uolunt, et sequentes calorem atque impetum ex tempore scribunt: hanc siluam uocant). Walters (n. 9) traces this connotation of silua back to Cicero.
14 We may find another instance of spatior in the sense of browsing at Ars am. 1.67, where the poet-teacher directs his pupils to ‘stroll’ down the Portico of Pompey as they search for a puella: tu modo Pompeia lentus spatiare sub umbra. The narrator of Am. 3.1 will indeed come upon puellae – the embodiments of the poetic choices available for his ars. I am grateful to B. Gibson for drawing this to my attention. See further Keith, A.M., ‘Corpus eroticum: elegiac poetics and elegiac puellae in Ovid's Amores’, CW 88 (1994), 27–40Google Scholar and Wyke (n. 3), 115–54 for the construction of the puella as the subject and the corpus of the elegiac poet in the Amores.
15 See e.g. Perkins, C.A., ‘The figure of Elegy in Amores 3.1: Elegy as puella, Elegy as poeta, puella as poeta’, CW 104 (2011), 313–31Google Scholar, at 313–17, for a recent discussion of their traits with further bibliography.
16 Boyd, B.W., Ovid's Literary Loves: Influence and Innovation in the Amores (Ann Arbor, 1997), 196Google Scholar; Hunter (n. 10), 28–30; Wimmel, W., Kallimachos in Rom (Wiesbaden, 1960), 296Google Scholar; Wyke (n. 3), 122.
17 Berman, K.E., ‘Ovid, Propertius and the elegiac genre: some imitations in the Amores’, Rivista di Studi Classici 23 (1975), 14–22Google Scholar, at 15–16; A. Caro, De, Si qua fides: gli Amores di Ovidio e la persuasione elegiaca (Palermo, 2003), 140Google Scholar; Luck, G., ‘The cave and the source’, CQ 7 (1957), 175–9, at 179 n. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKeown (n. 10); Morgan, K., Ovid's Art of Imitation (Leiden, 1977), 17–20Google Scholar; and Wimmel (n. 16), 296. Boyd (n. 16), 196–8, moreover, points to Prop. 4.1 for a model of a generic ἀγών closer to the one faced by the Ovidian narrator.
18 Contra: Gibson, R.K., Excess and Restraint: Propertius, Horace, and Ovid's Ars Amatoria (London, 2007)Google Scholar, 74, who argues that Am. 3.1 relies on the ‘binary polarities’ characteristic of elegy.
19 Skutsch (n. 7), 342.
20 I quote the text of Virgil from Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.), P. Vergili Maronis Opera (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar.