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Ovidiana*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

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

Investigations apropos of the passage in Ovid to which we shall ultimately come have revealed that one kind of Latin genitive at least is still far from satisfactorily charted by authorities more eminent even than M'Turk. This is the genitive of material. More often than not grammarians and commentators do not distinguish this usage from the genitive of definition. So for instance at Ovid, Met. 3. 315 the phrase lactis alimenta is identified by Bomer ad loc. and by H. J. Roby (A grammar of the Latin language from Plautus to Suetonius (1896), ii. § 1302) as genitive of definition. This is correct as far as it goes, in the sense that lactis defines the alimenta; but the definition is what they were made of, their material. So again at Met. I. III flumina iam lactis, iam ftumina nectaris ibant (on which Bömer does not comment) the rivers consisted of milk and nectar. This passage, however, was classified by J. N. Madvig (A Latin grammar for the use of schools, trans. R. Woods, 4th ed. (Oxford, 1859), p. 249) under expressions involving number, measure or quantity. This is not unreasonable, but Madvig's examples illustrate the need for care in drawing the line. They include, for instance, aceruus frumenti (the genitive with aceruus is of course common) and uini tres amphorae. Now a heap may be thought of as containing its constituents, but it also consists o/them, which is not true of a vessel and its contents. Thus, though there is some semantic justification for including both these expressions, as Madvig did, under the ‘measure or quantity’ rubric, they are nevertheless grammatically distinct. The fluidity (!) of the borderlines in this area is evident also in flumina lactis, an undeniable genitive of material which is, however, clearly analogous to a not uncommon class of expressions such as riuus/fons aquae, lapidum imber, uolumina fumi, campus harenae, silicum uenae, ὔδατος ῥος, κρνη ὔδατος, ργρου πηγ, etc., in which the notion of quantity as well as composition is present.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , December 1993 , pp. 458 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

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References

1 Itself, as Professor Coleman remarks, not an entirely satisfactory term, since it is the general function of the genitive case to define.

2 The list omits what must surely be one of the most striking instances in the whole of Greek, Aesch. Ag ϕλογς μγαν πώγωνα; cf. Eur. fr. 836 N. πώγωνα πυρς This is indeed practically a genitive of material in the primary sense.

3 ll. 4. 137 ἔρκος κντων (!).

4 Xen, . Anab. 6. 4. 4Google Scholar κρνη δος ὔδατος is glossed ‘etwas anders’ without further comment.

5 Professor Coleman suggests as the identifying characteristics of the genitive of material: (i) That it is interchangeable with the adjectival phrasing: uincula ferri /ferrea uincula (ii) That it represents a nominalization of the predicate: uincula ferri = uincula quae e ferro facta sunt.

8 Such as Virg, . Aen. 3. 483Google Scholarauri subtemine or Ov.Met. 11. 514 tegmine cerae. Also omitted are instances with aceruus et sim. connoting number, measure or quantity as well as composition.

7 It will be evident that the presence or absence of one or more qualifying adjectives in these expressions is immaterial to the point at issue.

8 But cf. below, n. 10.

9 Contributed by Mr Hollis, who notes that ‘theoretically there might have been a participle meaning “made” [cf. next n.] at the start of thefollowing line, but my instinct is against that’.

10 Adduced by Smyth, H. W. (Greek grammar, rev. G. M. Messing (Cambridge, MA, 1963), p. 318, §1324)Google Scholar. This is an interesting case, neatly straddling the borderline noticed above: a chaplet of flowers might reasonably be classified under the rubric of number or quantity, but not one made of gold. Formally different again are expressions in which there is a verb of making, as at e.g. ll. 18. 574, Od. 19. 226, Mosch, . Em. 44,47, 54Google Scholar, Thuc. 4. 31. 2 (cf. Kühner-Gerth i. 376, Gow on Theoc. 28. 8, Gow-Page, HE ii. 140), but the genitive is of precisely the same kind.

11 Contrast 2. 75. 4 χλινον τεȋχος.

12 I know of no general discussions since those of Howe, G., ‘A type of verbal repetition in Ovid's elegy’, Studies in Philology 13 (1915), 81–91Google Scholar, and Elizabeth Breazeale, ‘Polyptoton in the hexameters of Ovid, Lucretius, and Vergil’, ibid. 14 (1917), 306–20. Breazeale notes (307) that polyptoton is more frequent in Ovid than in Lucretius or Virgil.

13 That the definition of polyptoton was always in practice elastic is shown by Quint, . I.O. 9. 3. 37Google Scholar; cf. Hofmann-Szantyr, pp. 707–8. For Ovid's use of it with proper names cf. e.g. A.A. 1. 27 Clio Cliusque sorores, 545, 2. 573, 3.11, Rem. 64, Fast. 1. 704, 2. 39, 525, 3. 199; and cf. McKeown, on Am. 1. 10. 19Google Scholar.

14 Adnot. super Luc. 4. 31 Endt a Romulo coepit hoc signum, utfaeni manipulus praeferretur. For more examples of manipulus with feni and other genitives see TLL s.v. 316. 57ff.

15 Rudd, N., ‘Daedalus and Icarus (i)’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), Ovid renewed (Cambridge, 1988), p. 22Google Scholar. Cf. Myerowitz, Molly, Ovid's games of love (Detroit, 1985), p. 153Google Scholar.

16 Myerowitz (n. 15), p. 167.

17 Cf.Ars 2. 537 ardua molimur, sed nulla nisi ardua uirtus.

18 Cf. Ars 1. 9 ille quidem ferus est et qui mihi saepe repugnet. If ever a god was sui iuris it was Eros/Amor.

19 See McKeown ad he., Kenney, in Ovid. The Love Poems, trans. Melville, A. D. (Oxford, 1989), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

20 Myerowitz (n. 15), p. 161.

21 Citroni, M., ‘Ovidio, Ars 1, 3–4 e Omero, Made 23, 315–18: l'analogia tra le artes e la fondazione del discorso didascalico’. Sileno 10 (1984)Google Scholar(Studi in onore di Barigazzi, A. i), 157–76Google Scholar.

22 The speech was probably more generally familiar than the sequel, for it enjoyed some independent currency as a locus classicus for Homer as an authority on τχναι Citroni (n. 21), 161, citing Plat. Ion 537a–b, Xen, . Symp. 4. 6Google Scholar.

23 A.R. 1. 105ff.

24 Cic. S. Rose. 98, Varr. Sat. Men. 257, Juv. 1. 61; ‘the symbol of a tearaway’ (Green on Auson. Epist. 8. 10). Myerowitz (n. 15) uncritically follows Ovid in stating that he was ‘legendary for…mastery of…[the] chariot’ (p. 79).

25 ll. 17. 459ff., especially Hector's comment at 486–7, on which see Edwards ad he. Cf. Krischer, T., ‘Patroklos, der Wagenlenker Achills’, RhM 135 (1992), 97–103Google Scholar, esp. 98 ‘Es gibt… nicht den geringsten Zeifel, dass der eigentliche Wagenlenker Achills Patroklos ist und nicht Automedon.’

26 Discussion of the role of Achilles would take us too far afield. Myerowitz (n. 15), pp. 43–7, is unsatisfying.

27 Ovid: the erotic poems, trans, with an introduction and notes by Green, Peter (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1982), p. 363Google Scholar. I have reservations about ‘Horatian’, but they do not affect the point at issue.

28 Rudd (n. 15), p. 23.

29 See for the chronology Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford, 1978), pp. 13–15Google Scholar. The case for postulating a ‘first edition’ of the Ars dating to 7 B.C:. or possibly earlier (ibid. 18–19) is not, however, compelling: cf. Kenney, op. cit. (n. 19), p. 235.

30 Ars 1. 7, 17; cf. Myerowitz (n. 15), pp. 162–3, Green, loc. cit. (n. 27).

31 A. S. Hollis arfl. 17.

32 Rent.139 periere Cupidinis arcus, 653–4 fallal et in tenues euanidus exeat aura|perque gradus molles emoriatur amor and Lucke ad loc, citing Plat. Symp. 203e κα οὑτε ὡς θνατος πϕυκεν οὔτε ὡς θνητς λλ ττε μν τς αὐτς μρας θλλει τε κα ξῇ, ταν εὐπορσῃ, ττε δ ποθνῄσκει, πλιν δ ναβιώσκεται… If Ovid ever read any Plato, the obvious candidates are the Symposium and the Phaedrus.

33 Cf. Kenney, in Russell, D. A. (ed.), Antonine literature (Oxford, 1990), pp. 197–8Google Scholar.

34 Ov. Her. 16. 47–50 (see below), 17. 239–40 et uatum timeo monitus, quos igne Pelasgo/Ilion arsurum praemonuisse ferunt; cf. Hygin. 91. 2 coniectoribus, Diet. Cret. 3. 26 aruspices, and the scholiasts on Homer and Euripides (Jocelyn, H. D., The Tragedies of Ennius (Cambridge, 1967) p. 222)Google Scholar.

35 I owe this information to Dr R. G. Mayer.

36 Lycophron, predictably, is difficult to pin down.

37 Fr. 55 Powell; cf. SH 453.

38 Bömer, on Met. 11. 749–95 (p. 430)Google Scholar.

39 See Hollis, , ZPE 92 (1992), 109–10Google Scholar, arguing for the genuineness of fr. [815] Pf.

40 Cf. Stevens, on Eur. Andr. 296Google Scholar, Jocelyn (n. 34), pp. 222–3. On traces of Ennius in the letters of Paris and Helen see Jacobson, H., Phoenix 22 (1968), 299–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Diana G., HSCP 74 (1970), 187–91Google Scholar; Kenney, , CQ 29 (1979), 398CrossRefGoogle Scholar.