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Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Kovacs
David Kovacs
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is, first, to demonstrate to future editors of the Metamorphoses , whether conservative or sceptical, just how improbable is the reading of the majority of MSS, illas , and how strong are the claims of the variant ilia , first recommended by P.Lejay in 1894 and vigorously championed by E.J.Kenney in 1976; and, second, to suggest an interpretation of this reading that is open to fewer objections than the one proposed by Kenney.I have given above the beginning of Ovid's longest poem as it ought to stand in all modern editions and as it stands in fact in only one, the French school edition of selections edited by Lejay in 1894: ‘Gods, on my undertakings (for you have changed them as well) breathe your favour.’ To be sure, all of Ovid's MSS read illas in line 2, and ilia is attested only as a variant in two of them.But majorities, in textual as in other matters, are frequently wrong.Even before the minority report of the Urbinas had been heard, Lejay adopted ilia , av.1.in the Erfordensis.1

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , December 1987 , pp. 458 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

1 Lejay, P., Mérceaux choisis des Metamorphoses d'Ovide (Paris, 1894).I was able to consult only the 4th edition (Paris, 1911), in which the discussion of 1.2 is on p.67.Google ScholarAnderson, W.S., Ovidius: Metamorphoses (Leipzig, 1982) cites ilia as a conjecture of Lejay.(Ironically, it was the Berkeley library, at Anderson's own university, that furnished on interlibrary loan the copy of Lejay I consulted.) It may be a conjecture, but if so it is no later than the Erfordensis, whose third hand, according to F.Munari, is contemporary with the other two, belongs to the 12th or 13th century, and added the variant readings: see Catalogue of the MSS of Ovid's Metamorphoses, BICS Suppl.4 (1957), 21 and (on the Urbinas) 70.Google Scholar

2 See Kenney, E.J., ‘Ovidius Prooemians’, PCPSn.s.22 (1976).Google Scholar

3 An abundant source of Ovidian wit is the sort of zeugma whereby the same action is performed (with differences deliberately suppressed) on both things or persons and words, e.g.Met. 1.525–6: ‘Plura locuturum timido Peneia cursu/ fugit cumque ipso verba imperfecta reliquit.’ Here Apollo is put on the same level with his unfinished speech.See also, e.g., 2.505.In the proem, the gods have changed both the world and the poem which describes the world.For further examples of this figure, see J.-M.Frecaut, ‘Une figure de style chére à Ovide: le zeugma ou attelage’, Latomus 28 (1969), 28–41.Further confirmation of ilia has been sought from Fulgentius byGoogle ScholarJ.C.Relihan, ‘Ovid Metamorphoses 1.1–4 and Fulgentius' Mitologiae’, AJP 105 (1984), 87–90.The connection, to my mind, is hard to see.Google Scholar

4 For an account of the parenthesis in the poem, see Albrecht, M.von, Die Parenthese in Ovids Metamorphosen und ihre dichtehsche Funktion (Hildesheim, 1964).Von Albrecht's list on pp.29–35 of all the parentheses in the poem, supplemented by an examination of Anderson's edition, is the basis for the generalizations about parentheses below.Google Scholar

5 See Albrecht, von, ‘Zum Metamorphosenproem Ovids’, RM 104 (1961), 272: ‘die Prägung carmen perpetuum kündigt ausdriicklich an, was Kallimachos zu schreiben abgelehnt hatte’Google Scholar

6 The sense of these lines has recently been recovered by Bailey, D.R.Shackleton in CQ 32 (1982), 393: the pauca are not the whole fifteen books but only the end, and surgens is neuter, modifying opus. If these lines are indeed a quotation, the date of Trislia II (A.D.9 according to Syme) would be the terminus ante quern for Ovid's proem.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 The primary meaning of deduce in the passage is ‘bring down the story to a later time.’ There is also a secondary meaning 'spin out a literary composition like a thread, i.e.to elaborate, prepare, compose’ (L&S s.v.II.B.2).Ross, D.O., Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy, and Rome (Cambridge, 1975), 19, 26, 65–6, 134–5, and 140, discusses a number of occurrences, including our passage, of deducere in Augustan poetry, all of which, he claims, are allusions to the Callimachean topos.(I owe this reference to David Mankin.) Of these I find his discussion of Verg.Eel. 6.71, Prop.1.1.19 and 24, and Hor.Car. 3.30.14 particularly unconvincing.Where destination or point of departure are explicitly named, any notion of ‘thinning out’ seems excluded by the context: can Horace have meant that he took ‘Aeolium carmen’ and thinned it out to Italian verse? Horace is no slenderer than Sappho nor is Latin metre slighter or more refined than Greek.‘Brought it home (as a bride)’ (L&S s.v.I.B.5c), or any other usage involving motion, would make better sense.See alsoGoogle ScholarGilbert, C.D., ‘Ovid, Met.1.4’, CQ 26 (1976), 111–12, who cites Horace, Episl. 2.1.225 and Propertius 1.16.41, neither plausibly.Callimachus’ name should not be invoked on such slender grounds.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Tarrant, R.J., ‘Editing Ovid's Metamorphoses: Problems and Possibilities’, CP 77 (1982), 351 n.35;Google ScholarLuck, G., ‘Zum Prooemium von Ovids Metamorphosen’, Hermes 86 (1958), 499–500.Note that Ovid is quite explicit in the Amores (1.1.4, 30 and 3.1.8, 37, 66) and the A.A. (1.264) that love poetry is connected with elegiac metre.As late as Rem .390, Ovid expects his reputation to grow provided that he continues in the same metrical form.Google Scholar

9 Kenney well points out that ‘in nova fert animus’ plays a trick on the reader.It is syntactically complete and means ‘My mind carries me on to new things’.This meaning is not wholly effaced when the rest of the line and the first word of the next are read.Note that this makes in the same direction as ‘vos mutastis et ilia’.

10 See Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford, 1978), 17 andGoogle ScholarGrisart, A., ‘La publication des “Metamorphoses”: une source du recit d'Ovide’, in Atti del convegno internazionale ovidiano (Rome, 1959), 2.125–56.Grisart believes that the story of the burning is an elaborate imitation of the story of Vergil's attempt to burn the Aeneid, a story intended by Ovid to attract the attention of Augustus to the work.(I owe this last reference to John Miller.) Cf.Hollis‘ edition of Met. 8, Intr.p.x, and Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace, Odes 1.16.3.Google Scholar

11 The connection between lovis ira and exile is suggested tentatively by Charles Segal, ‘Myth and Philosophy in the Metamorphoses: Ovid's Augustanism and the Augustan Conclusion of Book XV, AJP 90 (1966), 290–2, who cites others less tentative.See also Nisbet, R.G.M., JRS 72 (1982), 54.Google ScholarGalinsky, G.K., Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects (Oxford, 1975), 254–5, disputes this reading of 871, pointing out that between 15.857ff.which identify Jupiter and Augustus, and 15.871, there is a reference to Jupiter as purely divine in 15.866, and this means that the reader will understand lovis in 871 as lovis. But Jupiter in that passage is mentioned en passant in the company of many other gods, and such a reference is not likely to efface the memory of the pointed comparison just above it.Rather more plausible is his second point, that ‘lovis ira’ picks up the phrase ‘fulminis iram’ of 811, one of the things - together with the fall of the heavens - against which the devices of fate are proof.I cannot see, however, that this is decisive.When Ovid says that Jupiter's wrath cannot destroy his work, having just said that Augustus is Jupiter on earth, it seems hard to deny that the phrase, which is unmotivated within the topos, looks like a reference to Augustus‘ wrath.Google ScholarPohlenz, Max, ‘Die Abfassungszeit von Ovids Metamorphosen’, Hermes 48 (1913), 1–13, finds further evidence of post-exile revision in two lines in the Actaeon episode (3.141–2).The elaborate denial that Actaeon was guilty of crime seems internally unmotivated but explicable when read in the context of similar pleas in the exile poetry and in particular the use of Actaeon as a parallel to the poet himself at Tr.2.103–8.Google Scholar

12 His exile poetry, of course, already made it plain to his readers that the composition of the Metamorphoses was not the result of his exile but antedated it.But Ovid is always the rhetorician, shaping the facts to suit the plea of the moment, and his first audience would not be deterred from interpreting the proem as I suggest by the knowledge that line 2 was secundum litteram untrue.After all, even within the exile poetry Ovid's rhetorical fictions are not consistent: Tr.1.1.117ff.seem hard to reconcile with Ovid's burning of his copy of the Metamorphoses.Ovid's audience would be used to some fudging of the facts and would furthermore realize that expresses on another level the undeniable truth that exile changed forever Ovid's coepta, the kind of poems he wrote.

13 I would like to thank Jenny Clay, Elaine Fantham, David Mankin, Jon Mikalson, John F. Miller, Mark Morford, Richard Tarrant, Temple Wright, the editors, and the anonymous referee for helpful suggestions and criticisms. Naturally, none of these is responsible for errors on my part.