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The Dramatic Coherence of Ovid, Amores 1.1 and 1.2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John Moles
John Moles
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

In his magisterial new commentary on the Amores J. C. McKeown alleges an ‘inconsistency’ or ‘flaw in the dramatic continuity’ between Amores 1.1 and 1.2: ‘whereas Ovid is fully aware in 1.1 that he is under Cupid's domination, he shows no such awareness in the opening lines of 1.2.’ Previously A. Cameron had used this ‘inconsistency’, together with the evident programmatic character of 1.2, as an indication that the second poem must in fact have been the first poem of one of the original five books of Amores; then when Ovid decided to reduce the number of books from five to three, he wanted to keep Esse quid hoc dicam and had no choice but to put it as near as possible the front of the first book, immediately after that book's own introductory poem. This reconstruction McKeown rightly rejects on the ground that 1.2's emphasis on Ovid's newness to love makes it out of place in any book other than the first.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 551 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Ovid: Amores Volume II. A Commentary on Book One (ARCA 22, Leeds, 1989), p. 33Google Scholar, cf. Ovid: Amores Volume I. Text and Prolegomena (ARCA 20, Liverpool, 1987), p. 93 n. 13.Google Scholar

2 CQ n.s. 18 (1968), 320–2.

3 Cf. e.g. Davis, J. T. in ANRW II.31.4 (1981), 2468–72Google Scholar, and indeed McKeown i.92–102. Neither in ANRW not in his discussion of Amores 1.1 and 1.2 in Fictus Adulter: Poet as Actor in the Amores (Amsterdam, 1989), pp. 67ffGoogle Scholar. does Davis discuss the ‘inconsistency’ between the two poems.

4 Ovid: Amores Book 1 (Oxford, 1973), p. 45.Google Scholar

5 Who rightly cites Cairns, F., Tibullus.a Hellenistic Poet at Rome (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 166ffGoogle Scholar. as the basic modern discussion of this technique.

6 Cf. e.g. the discussions of Fehling, D., Herodotus and his ‘Sources’ (translated by J. G. Howie, Leeds, 1989 = ARCA 21), pp. 157ff.Google Scholar; Westlake, H. D., ‘Legetai in Thucydides’, Mnemosyne 30 (1977), 345–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horsfall, N., ‘Virgil and the Illusory Footnote’, Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar, Sixth Volume, 1990 (Leeds, 1990), pp. 49–63, esp. 59–60.Google Scholar

7 Cf. e.g. Liv. 1.6.3, 1.7.5, 1.34.9, 1.36.6, 1.39.4, 1.55.6; Plu. Cic. 49.2–3, Brut. 36.2–37.1; App. 4.134; Cooper, G. L., ‘Intrusive Oblique Infinitives in Herodotus’, TAPA 104 (1974), 23–76Google Scholar; Stadter, P., Arrian of Nicomedia (Chapel Hill, 1980), p. 106.Google Scholar

8 This, the conventional reading, seems to me clearly correct. An alternative reading is suggested to me by Professor Woodman: Ovid thinks he is suffering the rigours of life on campaign (the lover being a soldier), hoc (line 1) is both prospective (looking forward to the quod-clauss) and retrospective (looking back to 1.1.25ff.), and the point is that though Ovid fully recalls the events of 1.1 he did not expect his wounding by Cupid to have this particular effect. But (a) the details of 1.2.1–4 better suit the distracted lover, (b) the ‘lover-as-a-soldier’ is a much more active figure, and (c) the economy of Amores 1 requires that this motif be kept back until 1.9 Militat omnis amans.

9 Interpretation of 1.1.26 is of course vexed (see McKeown ad loc; Davis in ANRW 2468 n. 20), but the meaning ‘hitherto empty’ (not precisely ‘fancy-free’) seems to me guaranteed by the parallel 1.2.8 possessa ferus pectora versat Amor and by the apparent legal colour of vacuo (see McKeown ad loc), which rules out the meaning ‘still fancy-free’, since Amor is now the rex of Ovid's pectus. (The pleasing paradox that Ovid is a lover without a beloved is not excluded by this interpretation.)

10 Of course the sentiment of line 5 is also comically absurd, an absurdity pointed by (the often ironic) puto (surely one knows if one is in love), but that absurdity is evident only to those with some experience of love, not at this point in the narrative to Ovid the dramatic character.

11 I thank Tony Woodman and Trevor Fear for comments on an earlier draft of this note.