Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T05:06:12.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discordant Muses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Alessandro Barchiesi
Alessandro Barchiesi
Affiliation:
Università di Verona
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Quaeritis unde is a good opening for a book of the Fasti (5.1). The question and answer form here exemplified is basic to the poem, even if in the classic Callimachean form from which Ovid draws his inspiration it is the poet who asks the questions – and this in fact happens with the exhortation dicite in line 7. But this quaeritis unde has also, I believe, an allusive value: it opens another book of elegiac poetry, Propertius' second book, where it is the more remarkable as an opening in that as far as we know it is the earliest example of a direct address to the reader in Roman poetry.

The purpose of this allusion becomes clear if we take a wider look at the two contexts. In the first elegy of his second book Propertius inserts a celebrated negation of the Musenweihe:

non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo (2.1.3)

while Ovid, on the contrary, is just about to consult Calliope and her sisters. The allusion offers other points of interest if we consider the subsequent development of Propertius' poetics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 37 , 1992 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Axelson, B. (1945) Unpoetische Wörter.Google Scholar
Barchiesi, A. (1986) ‘Problemi d'interpretazione in Ovidio: continuità delle storie, continuazione dei testi’, MD 16, 77–107.Google Scholar
Bömer, F. (1957–1958) P. Ovidius Naso. Die Fasten, 1–11.Google Scholar
Brink, C. O. (1971) Horace on Poetry. The ‘Ars Poetica’, 1971 (1985 2).Google Scholar
Citroni, M. (1989) ‘Dedícatari e lettori della poesia elegiaca’, in Tredici secoli di elegia latina, 93–143.Google Scholar
Fantham, E. (1983) ‘Sexual comedy in Ovid's Fasti: sources and motivation’, HSCP 87, 185–216.Google Scholar
Fantham, E. (1985) ‘Ovid, Germanicus and the composition of the Fasti’, PLLS 5, 243–81.Google Scholar
Fraschetti, A. (1989) ‘Le feste, il circo, i calendari’, in Storia di Roma, II, 609–27.Google Scholar
Harries, B. (1989) ‘Causation and the authority of the poet in Ovid's Fasti’, CQ n.s. 39, 164–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heinze, R. (1960) ‘Ovids elegische Erzählung’ (1919), in Heinze, , Von Geist des Römertums, 308–403.Google Scholar
Hinds, S. (1987a) The metamorphosis of Persephone.Google Scholar
Hinds, S. (1987b) ‘Generalising about Ovid’, Ramus 16, 4–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, R. L. (1989) Apollonius. Argonautica III.Google Scholar
Kenney, E. J. (1986) Ovid. Metamorphoses.Google Scholar
Lafaye, G. (1971) Les métamorphoses d'Ovide et leurs modèles grecs (1904 1).Google Scholar
Lieberg, G. (1980) ‘Ovide et les Muses’, LEC 48, 3–22.Google Scholar
Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P. (1983) Supplementum Hellenisticum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, J. F. (1982) ‘Callimachus and the Augustan aetiological elegy’, ANRW 2 30.1, 371–417.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F. (1983) ‘Ovid's divine interlocutors in the Fasti’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin literature and Roman history, III, 156–92.Google Scholar
Peter, H. (1907) P. Ovidius Naso, Die Fasten.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, R. (1949) Callimachus, I–II.Google Scholar
Scheid, J. (1989), ‘Religione e società’, in Storia di Roma, II, 631–59.Google Scholar
Wimmel, W. (1960) Kallimachos in Rom.Google Scholar
Wyke, M. (1989) ‘Reading female flesh: Amores 3.1’, in Cameron, Averil (ed.), History as text, 113–43.Google Scholar