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Conversing After Sunset: A Callimachean Echo in Ovid's Exile Poetry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Gareth D. Williams
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge

Extract

In his note on lines 27–8 Luck gives two Ovidian parallels for conversation outlasting the day, P. 2.4.11–12 and P. 2.10.37–8, but he makes no reference to lines 2–3 of Callimachus' epigram on Heraclitus of Halicarnassus (Epigr. 2[Pf.] = A.P. 7.80)

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Luck, G., P. Ovidius Naso, Tristia (Heidelberg, 1977), ii.325 ad loc.Google Scholar

2 With Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L., The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge, 1965), ii. 191Google Scholar. I read Bentley's ἠέλιον λέσχῃ for λιον ν λέσχῃ, taking λέσχῃ to mean ‘conversation’ (cf. Call. fr. 178.16 [Pf.]) rather than ‘a place where people converse’ (cf. Hes. Op. 493). For full discussion of the problem, see Gow and Page, loc. cit., MacQueen, J. G., ‘Death and Immortality; a Study of the Heraclitus Epigram of Callimachus’, Ramus 11(1982), 54 n.15 and my note 3 belowGoogle Scholar. In later usage the phrase τòν ἤλιον καταδύειν assumes the proverbial connotation of tedium; cf. D. Chry. 10.20, καταδύεις τòν ἤλιον περì πάντων περωτν, Aristaenet. 1.24, τοιατα…ἄπερ εἰ βουληθείην ξς παγγεῖλαι, καταδύσειν μοι δοκ τòν ἥλιον πì τῷ μκει το λóγου.

3 ‘Cantando’ indicates that Virgil understood λέσχῃ in the sense of ‘conversation’. Note also a point of irony in the Virgilian allusion; Moeris claims to have forgotten all his boyhood songs (‘nunc oblita mini tot carmina’, 53), but in the previous line one particular ‘carmen’, Callimachus'epigram, is only too vividly recalled. Perhaps Moeris' memory is not as frail as his self-deprecation suggests.

4 Cf. Claassen, J.-M., Poeta, Exsul, Vates: a Stylistic and Literary Analysis of Ovid' Tristia and Epistolae ex Ponto (diss. Stellenbosch, 1986), p. 282Google Scholar on P. 2.10.37–8: ‘the road was shortened, and the day condensed, by pleasant converse, in the usual Callimachean mode [i.e. Epigram 2]’. I know of no other reference to the epigram in modern scholarship on the exile poetry.

5 A later parallel in Persius (‘tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles’, 5.41) suggests acquaintance with Virgil rather than Callimachus. Cf. Tennyson's ‘We drank the Libyan sun to sleep’ (A Dream of Fair Women, 145) and Edward Young's ‘How often we talked down the summer's sun’, Night Thoughts ii, both cited by Mustard, W. P., Classical Echoes in Tennyson (New York, 1904), p. 141.Google Scholar

6 This Atticus, the addressee of P. 2.7 and possibly also Am. 1.9, cannot be identified; Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford, 1978), p. 72Google Scholar lists various candidates.

7 ‘Conloquium’ is rare in the sense of ‘conversation’ or ‘talk’ in a written form; see OLD s.v. Id with Vega, A. P., ed. Ovidio: Epistulae ex Porno II (Seville, 1989), p. 167Google Scholar on P. 2.4.1. For Ovid's portrayal of letters as a substitute for conversation, cf. Tr. 3.7.1–2, 5.13.29–30, P. 1.2.5–6, 1.7.1, 2.6.1–4, 4.9.11–12.

8 Strabo (14.656) cites Heraclitus as one of the celebrities of Halicarnassus. Swinnen, W., ‘Herakleitos of Halikarnassos, an Alexandrian Poet and Diplomat’, Ancient Society 1 (1970), 3952Google Scholar argues on the basis of inscriptional evidence from Euboea, Chios and Argos that Heraclitus had a distinguished career in public service either in the Ptolemaic court or as a representative of Halicarnassus.

9 Cf. D.L. 4.17, where Heraclitus is described as λεγείας ποιητς and Callimachus' epigram in his honour is quoted.

10 In their apparatus criticus Gow and Page, op. cit., i.106, record the epigram's ascription to one ‘Ηράκλητος, or ‘Ηρακλείδης, presumably simple corruptions of ‘Ηράκλειτος. But for reservations on the point, see Hirst, G., ‘Professor Gildersleeve on Cory's Version of Callimachus’, CW 25 (1932), 127Google Scholar and Swinnen, op. cit. 42.

11 But Callimachus may term Heraclitus' poetry ‘nightingales’ for symbolic reasons. Firstly, Swinnen, op. cit. 42 takes ηδόνες to be typological on the analogy of [ηδονίδες] (Aet. fr. 1.16 [Pf.]). The latter term characterizes Callimachus' own poetry in contrast to the poetic ideal of the Telchines; so, by terming Heraclitus' poetry ηδόνες, Callimachus gives it an aesthetic value based on his own ideals. Secondly, nightingales sing after dark, so that in the words of MacQueen, op. cit. 52–3, ‘the voice of Heraclitus has in his nightingales conquered darkness and death’. Thirdly, as noted by Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge, 1988), p. 249Google Scholar, ‘the nightingale's song was proverbially a lament; Heraclitus’ ηδόνες can be imagined as bewailing their own poet's death’.

12 On the motif of mental vision in the exile poetry see Nagle, B. R., The Poetics of Exile: Program and Polemic in the Exile Poetry of Ovid. Coll. Latomus 170 (Brussels, 1980), pp. 92–8Google Scholar. On Ovid's use of ‘imago’, in the basic sense of ‘reflection’, ‘likeness’, see Viarre, S., ‘L'image et le symbole dans la poésie d'Ovide. Recherches sur l'imaginaire’, REL 52 (1974), 2756.Google Scholar Cicero also employs the motif of mental vision in certain of his letters from exile (e.g. ad fam. 14.2.3 [to Tarentia], ‘mihi ante oculos dies noctesque versaris’, cited with ad fam. 14.3.2 by Nagle, op. cit. p. 35). The possible influence of his exilic letters on Ovid's exile poetry has long been recognized (see, e.g., Wilkinson, L. P., Ovid Recalled [Cambridge, 1955], p. 312Google Scholar, D'Elia, S., Ovidio [Naples, 1959], pp. 386–91Google Scholar, Nagle, op. cit., pp. 33–5 etc.), and it may extend to Ovid's use of the motif of mental vision.

13 For ‘imago’ as a representation or description in words see OLD s.v. 7a with examples.

14 For further examples of ‘imago’ in this sense see OLD s.v. 9.

15 A loose structural similarity with Catullus 50 may suggest a further literary ‘reflection’ in P. 2.4, though mere resemblance is no proof of direct Catullan influence. Catullus contrasts the memory of happy hours spent in Calvus’ company (1–6) with his anguished present at the time of writing (7–17); he is fearful of rejection and warns Calvus to that effect (18–21). Ovid, too, recalls the hours he spent with Atticus and is equally fearful of rejection - hence his muted warning in lines 257–8. If the parallel is pressed, Catullus' playful, neoteric reverie with Calvus (cf. ‘lusimus’, 2, ‘uterque…ludebat’, 4–5, ‘reddens mutua per iocum et vinum’, 6) may prefigure the nature of Ovid's own ‘ioci’ (cf. 10) with Atticus.

16 E.g. Theseus/Pirithous, Tr. 1.5.19–20, 1.9.31–2, 5.4.26, P. 2.3.43; Orestes/Pylades, Tr. 1.5.21–2, 1.9.27–8, 5.4.25, P. 2.3.45; Euryalus/Nisus, Tr. 1.5.23–4, 1.9.33–4, 5.4.26, Achilles/ Patroclus, Tr. 1.9.29–30, 5.4.25, P. 2.3.41–2.

17 For ‘imago’ in this sense, see OLD s.v. 11 with examples.

18 This poetic representation of different kinds of picture is not an Ovidian response to the theory encapsulated in Horace's ‘ut pictura poesis’ (Ars 367). In Horatian terms, which Brink, C. O., Horace on Poetry II: the ‘ars poetica’ (Cambridge, 1970), p. 370Google Scholar, relates to Hellenistic literary theory, poetry resembles visual art in that a finely crafted poem, like a finely crafted painting, bears repeated inspection; see Brink, op. cit., pp. 368–71. Earlier (1–41) Horace also relates the notion of artistic ‘wholeness’ in poetry to ‘wholeness’ in pictorial art; a poem, like a picture, will be defective if it lacks stylistic or thematic integrity. While the concept of artistic ‘wholeness’ may be applicable to P. 2.4, in the sense that Ovid creates a configuration of complementary ‘imagines’, the poem is hardly a theoretical manifesto on the relation between poetic and pictorial art.

19 On Ovid's use of adynata see Thomsen Davisson, M. H., ‘Omnia naturae praepostera legibus ibunt. Adynata in Ovid's Exile Poems’, CJ 76 (1980), 124–8.Google Scholar

20 Op. cit. 126.

21 For a broader discussion of the concept of time in the exile poetry, with special emphasis on the ‘timeless now’ of Ovid's sojourn in Tomis, see Claassen, op. cit., pp. 293–8.

22 Macer is generally assumed to be Pompeius Macer, son of Theophanes of Mitylene. Mentioned by Strabo as procurator of Asia (13.618), presumably around 20 B.C., he was later made director of libraries by Augustus (cf. Suet. Jul. 56.7); see further Syme, op. cit., pp. 73–4. Macer may also have been related to Ovid by marriage; see P. 2.10.10 with Schwartz, J., ‘Pompeius Macer et la jeunesse d'Ovide’, RPh 25 (1951), 193Google Scholar, who takes Macer to be the father of Ovid's second wife.

23 So Syme, op. cit., p. 73, Schwartz, op. cit. 182, Vega, op. cit., p. 221.

24 Cf. P. 4.16.6, where Macer is termed ‘Iliacus’.

25 The Callimachean κλευθοι of Aet. fr.1.27 (Pf.) are suggestive here. For ‘iter’ in the sense of ‘poetic path’, cf. P. 4.16.32: ‘[cum] Callimachi Proculus molle teneret iter’.

26 For Typhon buried under Etna, cf. [Aesch.] P. V. 363–5, Pi. P. 1.19–20, Ol. 4.6–7, Ovid, M. 5.346–8, F. 1.573–4, 491–2, Sil. 14.196, V.F1. 2.24. For Enceladus buried under Etna, cf. Call. Aet. fr. 1.36(Pf.), Luc. 6.293–5, Stat. Theb. 3.595–7, 11.8, 12.275, Claud. Rapt. Pros. 1.153–4; these Latin examples all follow Virgil. The punishments of Typhon and Enceladus are reversed at Aen. 9.716 as well as at 3.578–80.

27 A list of supporting examples with bibliography is given by Hardie, P., Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), p. 87Google Scholar n. 6.

28 Hinds, S., The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse (Cambridge, 1987), p. 141Google Scholar n. 1.

29 So Hinds, loc. cit.

30 Nothing is known of this Celsus. Scholte, A., Publii Ovidii Nasonis Ex Ponto Liber Primus Commentario Exegetico Instructus (diss. Amersfurt, 1933), pp. 165–6Google Scholar on P. 1.9.1 and Syme, op. cit., p. 90 suggest that he may be Albinovanus Celsus, Horace's addressee in Ep. 1.8, but this identification is far from certain.