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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2015
It is well known that Ovid's Amores begin with a reference to Virgil's Aeneid in the very first word, arma (‘weapons’, Am. 1.1.1 = Verg. Aen. 1.1), which implies that the elegist had been composing epic before Cupid, by stealing a foot, apparently forced him to write elegy. In spite of this incapacitation at the hands of the love god, Ovid continues to toy with Virgil's epic by making the first two poems of his collection of elegiacs into a mini-Aeneid, or – to be precise – by making the second poem of the collection into the second half of the Aeneid. One result is that the three-book edition of Amores threatens to be over even before it has begun. Another is that Ovid can be identified with the Latin enemies, on the wrong side of history, from the Aeneid. I restrict the argument largely to what can be observed in Amores 1.2, leaving aside, for instance, the possibility that Ovid shot by Cupid's arrow in 1.1 might be thought comparable to Dido, similarly shot and causing Aeneas to dally in Carthage with her in Aeneid 4.
I would like to thank many people for help and advice with this article, especially colleagues from Manchester – Roy Gibson, Ruth Morello, Andrew Morrison, and Alison Sharrock – and an anonymous reviewer. All translations are my own, though they may allude to those of others.
1 This holds true even if reference is being made to the first, five-book (therefore bigger) edition of the Amores: see A. Barchiesi, Speaking Volumes. Narrative and Intertext in Ovid and Other Latin Poets (London, 2001), 159–61. So, too, if arma + bella (‘arms’ and ‘wars’, Am. 1.1.1) verbally cues the Aeneid's ‘proem in the middle’ (dicam horrida bella, ‘I will speak of awful wars’, Aen. 7.41): see J. C. McKeown, Ovid. Amores. Volume II. A Commentary on Book One (Leeds, 1989), 12.
2 This analysis builds on G. B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation. Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, trans. C. Segal (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 85–7, who reads the epigram prefacing the three-book edition in tandem with the epigram preceding the Aeneid; for more on this, see Jansen, L., ‘On the Edge of the Text: Preface and Reader in Ovid's Amores’, Helios 39 (2012), 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Thus I am indirectly challenging readings that ‘the program proper is contained in Am. 1.1–3’ (B. W. Boyd, Ovid's Literary Loves. Influence and Innovation in the Amores [Ann Arbor, MI, 1997], 147), and adapting the position of N. Holzberg, Ovid. The Poet and His Work, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (Ithaca, NY, 2002), 46–7, who seems to read the first part of Amores 1 as a 2 + 3.
4 On false closure, see first Fowler, D., ‘First Thoughts on Closure: Problems and Prospects’, MD 22 (1989), 97–101Google Scholar.
5 Miller, J. F., ‘Reading Cupid's Triumph’, CJ 90 (1995), 294Google Scholar: ‘about which readers of the Amores have argued for years’. McKeown (n. 1), 58 notes the ‘playful allusion to Augustan propaganda’ and ‘trivial context’; cf. Harvey, F. D., ‘Cognati Caesaris: Ovid Amores 1.2.51/2’, WS 17 (1983), 89–90Google Scholar. See in particular H. Walter, ‘Zum Gedichtschluss von Ovid, Am. 1,2’, in W. Schubert (ed.), Ovid. Werk und Wirkung. Festgabe für Michael von Albrecht zum 65. Geburtstag (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), i.87–97, whose approach focuses much more on Propertian intertextuality.
6 See, among many other discussions, R. O. A. M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford, 1987), 187–8; D. Quint, Epic and Empire. Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 75–80; M. Lowrie, ‘Vergil and Founding Violence’, in J. Farrell and M. C. J. Putnam (eds.), A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and Its Tradition (Malden, MA, 2010), 399.
7 Cf. J. Wills, Repetition in Latin Poetry. Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1996), 251.
8 For the long-range link of condere, see R. J. Tarrant, Virgil. Aeneid Book XII (Cambridge, 2012), 340; cf. Henderson, J., ‘The Camillus Factory: per astra ad Ardeam’, Ramus 29 (2000), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Another example, regarding a verbal echo between Aeneas and Turnus, is treated below.
9 Buchan, M., ‘Ovidius Imperamator: Beginnings and Endings of Love Poems and Empire in the Amores’, Arethusa 28 (1995), 64Google Scholar, insists on the ‘hiding’ implication of protegere, to match Cupid's earlier ‘hidden art’ (tecta… arte, 1.2.6).
10 A.-F. Sabot, Ovide. Poète de l'amour dans ses oeuvres de jeunesse (Paris, 1976), 182: ‘L'imitation de Properce est évidente’ (‘The imitation of Propertius is evident’). However, note that S. J. Heyworth, Cynthia. A Companion to the Text of Propertius (Oxford, 2007), 183, deletes the Propertian couplet as an imitation of Ovid; though cf. P. Fedeli, Properzio. Elegie libro II (Cambridge, 2005), 497–9, who keeps it! R. Dimundo, L'elegia allo specchio. Studi sul I libro degli Amores di Ovidio (Bari, 2000), 37–43, concentrates rather on Prop. 3.1–5 as a model for Ov. Am. 1.1–3; McKeown (n. 1), 33–4, 59, sees 1.2 as reflecting Prop. 3.1 or 2.16.41–2. P. A. Miller, Subjecting Verses. Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 149–52, compares Am. 1.2.51–2 to the citation of Venus’ lineage in Prop. 3.4.19–20, while Prop. 3.4.1 replays Aen. 1.1 in the manner of Am. 1.1.1.
11 For stichometric repetition – which I admit is by no means a certainty – and the theory surrounding it, see Lowe, D., ‘A Stichometric Allusion to Catullus 64 in the Culex’, CQ 64 (2014), 862–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 See e.g. the authoritative discussion from this journal of Lyne, R. O. A. M., ‘Lavinia's Blush: Vergil, Aeneid 12.64–70’, G&R 30 (1983), 55–64Google Scholar.
13 E. Reitzenstein, ‘Das neue Kunstwollen in den Amores Ovids’, in M. von Albrecht and E. Zinn (eds.), Ovid (Darmstadt, 1968), 218–22, a classic treatment originally dating from 1935; A. Cameron, ‘The First Edition of Ovid's Amores’, CQ n.s. 18 (1968), 320–33.
14 The formulation of A. Sharrock, ‘Ovid and the Discourses of Love: The Amatory Works’, in P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge, 2002), 156.
15 As stressed by G. Bretzigheimer, Ovids Amores. Poetik in der Erotik (Tübingen, 2001), 25.
16 See I. M. le M. du Quesnay, ‘The Amores’, in J. W. Binns (ed.), Ovid (London, 1973), 10, on the reversal of audience expectation here.
17 P. Hardie, Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002), 53, links the opening sleeplessness to Cat. 50, in which Catullus at least started his writing in companionship with Calvus.
18 This prominent intertextuality holds despite Sen. Con. ex. 2.2.8, with its testimony that Ovid is using here a declamation of Porcius Latro, as in the discussion of Ovid's use of controuersiae in J. T. Davis, Fictus Adulter. Poet as Actor in the Amores (Amsterdam, 1989), 4, not to mention the parallels with Meleager and Prop. 1.1.1–4: see A. de Caro, Si qua fides. Gli Amores di Ovidio e la persuasione elegiaca (Palermo, 2003), 94.
19 Du Quesnay (n. 16), 45, n. 40, identifies Dido at Aeneid 4.1 as a parallel for ‘sleeplessness as a sign of love’. She can be closely affiliated with Turnus as an ‘enemy’ of Aeneas. For genealogical analysis, appropriate in the context of the kinship of Augustus and Cupid, see Hannah, B., ‘Manufacturing Descent: Virgil's Genealogical Engineering’, Arethusa 37 (2004), 141–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the eroticization of Turnus, see J. D. Reed, Virgil's Gaze. Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid (Princeton, NJ, 2007), 44–72, esp. 61–3 on his similarity to Dido.
20 So J. O'Hara, Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 68–9.
21 See N. Horsfall, Aeneid 7. A Commentary (Leiden, 2000), 284.
22 Noted by D. Feeney, The Gods in Epic (Oxford, 1991), 170.
23 This declaration of authenticity balances the observations of J. Moles, ‘The Dramatic Coherence of Ovid, Amores 1.1 and 1.2’, CQ n.s. 41 (1991), 553, on dicitur (‘it is said’, 1.1.4) as ‘distancing formula’ to represent the dramatic development from Am. 1.1 to 1.2 (in 1.2.10, fertur ironically means ‘it is carried’ rather than ‘it is said’).
24 Ziogas, I., ‘The Permanence of Cupid's Metamorphosis in the Aeneid’, Trends in Classics 2 (2011), 160Google Scholar.
25 See Casali, S., ‘Altre voci nell’ Eneide di Ovidio’, MD 35 (1995), 70–1Google Scholar, on how the Aeneid's hostile voices become Ovid's epic voice in the ‘Little Aeneid’ of the Metamorphoses, with a focus on Turnus’ ‘promised bride’ (Met. 14.451).
26 D. West, ‘Amores 1.1–5’, in C. S. Kraus, J. Marincola, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ancient Historiography and Its Contexts. Studies in Honour of A. J. Woodman (Oxford, 2010), 144.
27 But see B. Weinlich, Ovids Amores. Gedichtfolge und Handlungsablauf (Stuttgart, 1999), 28: ‘die Argumentation entbehrt nicht einer gewissen Komik’ (‘the argument does not lack a certain humour’).
28 See Athanassaki, L., ‘The Triumph of Love and Elegy in Ovid's Amores 1,2’, MD 28 (1992), 129Google Scholar.
29 A. G. McKay, ‘Non enarrabile textum? The Shield of Aeneas and the Triple Triumph in 29 b.c. (Aen. 8.630–728)’, in H.-P. Stahl (ed.), Vergil's Aeneid. Augustan Epic and Political Context (London, 1998), 199–221.
30 McKeown (n. 1), 48.
31 Miller (n. 10), 164–6, after McKeown (n. 1), 48–9.
32 I owe this point to the anonymous reviewer.
33 This possibility comes into play later in the three-book collection: witness the development of Am. 1.2's triumph motif in Am. 2.12(13), with Lavinia a justification for war at 2.12(13).21–2. See J. Booth, Ovid. The Second Book of Amores (Warminster, 1991), 64–5.
34 Galinsky, G. K., ‘The Triumph Theme in the Augustan Elegy’, WS 82 (1969), 91–3Google Scholar, lists several parallels from the Georgics; R. Armstrong, Ovid and His Love Poetry (London, 2005), 29, observes the similarity of cedimus…cedamus (‘I yield…let me yield!’, Am. 1.2.9–10) and the famous line of Gallus in Verg. Ecl. 10.69 (nos cedamus Amori, ‘let me yield to Love’), as did D. F. Kennedy, The Arts of Love. Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge, 1993), 81, asserting that ‘erotic experience becomes a web of intertextual allusion’.
35 Galinsky (n. 34), 93; J. Barsby, Ovid's Amores Book One (Oxford, 1979), 49; M. Labate, L'arte di farsi amare. Modelli culturali e progetto didascalico nell'elegia ovidiana (Pisa, 1984), 68–9, who also pushes the additional intertext of Euripides’ Hippolytus.
36 Even if this parce has a different sense from that of parcere subiectis, the anonymous reviewer reminds me that McKeown (n. 1), 58, does entertain the possibility of Ovid being influenced in his choice of expression by the literal sense, ‘spare’.
37 Note that this vision has more precise affinities with a Roman aristocratic funeral: T. M. O'Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture (Cambridge, 2011), 53, with references.
38 McKeown (n. 1), 59.
39 Walter (n. 5), 94–5, makes the couplet about Mark Antony, as Propertius would have had it.
40 Though note that in Jupiter's Aen. 1 prophecy, bound Furor sat on saeua…arma, ‘savage weapons’ (Aen. 1.295).
41 See e.g. S. J. Harrison, Vergil. Aeneid Book 10 (Oxford, 1991), 202–3.
42 Likewise, ‘Ufens is a Volscian river turned into the leader of Aequians from Nersa’: S. Mack, ‘The Birth of War: A Reading of Aeneid 7’, in C. Perkell (ed.), Reading Vergil's Aeneid. An Interpretive Guide (Norman, OK, 1999), 130.
43 Contra Boyd (n. 3), 151. For the difficulty, noted by the anonymous reviewer, that the ‘happy weapons’ are not Ovid's, who should correspond with Ufens, I would suggest that – in the same way that Aeneas is assimilated to his opponents’ savagery – Augustus’ felicia arma in 1.2.49 could have been stripped from the enemies he has conquered (i.e. from Ovid).
44 At the same time, we could consider the pervasive erotic (orgasmic?) implications of death for Roman love elegy: the anonymous reviewer suggests to me that, for instance, the likely Gallan echo mentioned above (n. 34), earlier in the poem (1.2.9–10 Verg. Ecl. 10.69) could point back to Virgil's description of Gallus, indigno cum Gallus amore peribat (‘when Gallus was perishing with unworthy love’, Ecl. 10.10).
45 A nuance noticed by e.g. Gross, N. P., ‘Mantles Woven with Gold: Pallas' Shroud and the End of the Aeneid’, CJ 99 (2003–4), 138Google Scholar, and already with a narratological slant in Segal, C., ‘Art and the Hero: Participation, Detachment, and Narrative Point of View in Aeneid 1’, Arethusa 14 (1981), 71Google Scholar. For more on Ovid's theft of the Virgilian catchphrase arma uirum (‘arms and the man’), see A. Barchiesi, The Poet and the Prince. Ovid and Augustan Discourse (Berkeley, CA, 1997), pp. 16–17.
46 Servius thought Julius, while Turnebus thought Augustus: see e.g. O'Hara (n. 20), 155–63.
47 See G. B. Conte, ‘Proems in the Middle’, in F. M. Dunn and T. Cole (eds.), Beginnings in Classical Literature (Cambridge, 1992), 147–59, a first English version of a now celebrated treatment.
48 See the reminder of the first scholar to treat this issue in G. B. Conte, The Poetry of Pathos. Studies in Virgilian Epic, trans. E. Fantham (Oxford, 2007), 185–6; see also Mack (n. 42), 128–34.
49 See n. 1 above.
50 See e.g. A. R. Sharrock, ‘Ovid’, in B. K. Gold (ed.), A Companion to Roman Love Elegy (Malden, MA, 2012), 78. Barchiesi (n. 45), 16, notes the ‘marked inversion’ of Ovid's career, starting, apparently, with epic rather than working its way towards that goal.
51 See P. Salzman-Mitchell, ‘Snapshots of a Love Affair: Amores 1.5 and the Program of Elegiac Narrative’, in G. Liveley and P. Salzman-Mitchell (eds.), Latin Elegy and Narratology. Fragments of Story (Columbus, OH, 2008), 45–7, primarily on Am. 1.1.