Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
Summary
Ille levi virga (virgam nam forte tenebat),
Quod rogat, in spisso litore pingit opus.
“Haec” inquit “Troia est” (muros in litore fecit),
“Hic tibi sit Simois; haec mea castra puta.
Campus erat” (campumque facit), “quem caede Dolonis
Sparsimus, Haemonios dum vigil optat equos.
Illic Sithonii fuerant tentoria Rhesi;
Hac ego sum captis nocte revectus equis –”
Pluraque pingebat, subitus cum Pergama fluctus
Abstulit et Rhesi cum duce castra suo.
He [Odysseus] with a slender branch (for he happened to have one),
Draws the plan she [Calypso] requests on the compact sand.
“Here,” he said, “is Troy” (he drew walls on the sand),
“Let this be Simoeis; consider this my camp.
There was the plain” (which he drew), “which we sprinkled
with Dolon's blood, whose wakeful spying prayed to win Achilles' horses.
There were the tents of Thracian Rhesus;
But here I am the one who returned with captured horses at night –”
He was drawing more, when suddenly a wave washed away the citadel of Pergamus and the camp of Rhesus along with its leader.
(Ovid, Ars amatoria 2.131–40)In those long years with Calypso, Ovid tells us, the goddess kept asking Ulysses – not all that handsome but a smooth talker – to tell the story of the fall of Troy; and he told it over and over (of course emphasizing his own particular exploits), always the same, always different.
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- Homer's Trojan TheaterSpace, Vision, and Memory in the IIiad, pp. 1 - 13Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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