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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2011
Two poets addressed by Propertius in his first book are in fact pseudonyms. Ponticus was formed on the model of Horace's Alpinus to designate someone who embodies the antithesis of the poet's Callimachean sensibilities. Bassus is none other than Horace himself, who was then in the course of writing iambics. In the eleventh epode, Horace responded in kind by creating the pseudonyms Pettius, Lyciscus and Inachia, all of which derive from aspects of Propertius' first book. This exchange between Horace and Propertius has echoes in their later work. We conclude by examining why Ovid seems to treat Ponticus and Bassus as real poets in the Tristia.
I am very grateful to David Langslow and Neil Allies for their help with vulgar Latin; to Ivana Petrović for pointing out the relevance of Aristotle's views on the origin of iambic; to Jennifer Ingleheart for organizing the Classical Association conference panel for which the initial version of this paper was written; and to Kathleen Coleman, Alessandro Barchiesi and the Journal's readers for their advice.
1 For a detailed survey of the evidence and a starting-point into the enormous bibliography, see Cairns, F., Sextus Propertius: the Augustan Elegist (2006), 70–145.Google Scholar On Propertius' deliberate problematization of the relationship of the name of Gallus to an individual in the real world, see Nicholson, N., ‘Bodies without names, names without bodies: Propertius 1.21–22’, Classical Journal 94 (1998–1999), 143–61Google Scholar, Janan, M. W., The Politics of Desire: Propertius IV (2001), 34–6Google Scholar and Hinds, S., ‘Between formalism and historicism’, in Barchiesi, A. and Scheidel, W. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (2010), 369–85Google Scholar, at 372–7. In his next book, Propertius went on to introduce another pseudonymous poet, Lynceus, as the addressee of 2.34.
2 On the seductive nature of the ‘reality effect’ produced by the names of the male addressees in the first book of Propertius, see Wyke, M., ‘Written women: Propertius’ scripta puella', Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987), 47–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 47–9 and Sharrock, A., ‘Constructing characters in Propertius’, Arethusa 33 (2000), 263–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 263–72.
3 Hollis, A. S. (ed.), Fragments of Roman Poetry: 60 BC–AD 20 (2007)Google Scholar, 426 classifies Ponticus as a real name, but not without a measure of incredulity: ‘apparently his real name, not a pseudonym’; elsewhere he allows that Ponticus' Thebaid may be a fiction (Hollis, A. S., ‘Propertius and Hellenistic poetry’, in Günther, H.-C. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Propertius (2006), 97–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 102, n. 22).
4 For continuing treatment of these figures as real, see Brill's New Pauly, ss.vv. ‘Ponticus’ and ‘Bassus’. Boucher, J.-P., Études sur Properce: Problèmes d'inspiration et d'art (2nd edn, 1980)Google Scholar, 271 and Vessey, D. W. T. C., ‘Nescio quid maius’, Proceedings of the Virgil Society 9 (1969–70), 53–76Google Scholar, at 54 took it as self-evident that Ponticus was a pseudonym, but neither of them took the slightest account of Ovid's evidence, so their views have rightly carried little weight.
5 On the difficulties in construing line 37, see Courtney, E., The Fragmentary Latin Poets (1993), 197–8Google Scholar. The best solution is offered by Nisbet, R. G. M. in Harrison, S. J. (ed.), Collected Papers on Latin Literature (1995), 394–5Google Scholar, who plausibly sees a reference to Lake Constance, which would make luteum caput a deliberately paradoxical reference to the second source of the river.
6 On the imagery of these lines, see Bramble, J., Persius and the Programmatic Satire: a Study in Form and Imagery (2007), 64–6Google Scholar.
7 See Brown, P. M. (ed.), Horace: Satires I (1993)Google Scholar, 187 and Muecke, F. (ed.), Horace: Satires II (1993), 185Google Scholar. There are exceptions; for the claim that Alpinus is a real name, see Wissowa, A., ‘Ueber die den dichter Furius betreffende Stelle in Horaz: Sat. 2.5.39–41’, Jahres-Bericht des Koeniglichen katholischen Gymnasiums zu Breslau (1867), 3–10Google Scholar, at 10. On Horace's use of pseudonyms in the Satires in general, see Rudd, N., The Satires of Horace: a Study (1966), 147–9Google Scholar.
8 Hollis, op. cit. (n. 3, 2007), 118–45, revives an old identification, anticipated in many particulars by Skutsch in RE ss.vv. ‘Furius (32) Alpinus’ (7.318.59–319.66) and ‘M. Furius (37) Bibaculus’ (320.34–322.36).
9 Thus Skutsch, op. cit. (n. 8), 319.64, who refers this observation in part back to Bentley (319.22); see also Hollis, op. cit. (n. 3, 2007), 125.
10 The link from this passage back to the name Alpinus is strengthened by the observation that omasum is a Gallic word for tripe; see Skutsch, op. cit. (n. 8), 319.51, Bramble, op. cit. (n. 6), 64, n. 4 and Hollis, op. cit. (n. 3, 2007), 124.
11 A few lines later in the same satire, Horace applies this image of the silty, muddy river explicitly to Lucilius: Sat. 1.10.50–1. On the parallel in the relationship between Horace and Lucilius and between Callimachus and Antimachus, see Krevans, N., ‘Fighting against Antimachus: the Lyde and the Aetia reconsidered’, in Callimachus (Hellenistica Groningana 1) (1993), 149–60Google Scholar, at 159.
12 Barchiesi, A., ‘Quando Virgilio era un moderno: una delle più antiche recite delle Georgiche, e il contesto di una spiritosaggine’, Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici (2004), 21–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 28 further suggests that the name Alpinus suggests the frigid reception which will greet his poetry.
13 Syme, R., History in Ovid (1978), 98Google Scholar: ‘“Ponticus” is rare, it invites inspection — but cannot repay it …’
14 See Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (1995)Google Scholar, 454–83 with the important reservations of A. Barchiesi, ‘Roman Callimachus’, in B. Acosta-Hughes, L. Lehnus and S. Stephens (eds), Brill's Companion to Callimachus (forthcoming): ‘at times he [Cameron] seems to claim that the Roman poets must have had the intellectual honesty to read Callimachus the way that he, Alan Cameron, does, and that their recusationes do not need the epic tradition, not even as a straw genre. This argument does not provide any extra mileage for the interpretation of Callimachus in a Ptolemaic context, and it severely distorts the agenda of the Roman poets.’
15 The scholia which identify as Antimachus the (possibly hypothetical) prolix epic poet whom Horace refers to in the Ars Poetica (146) may well be useless as evidence for reconstructing his Thebaid, but they do attest to the reputation for verbosity and bombast it had developed. See Matthews, V. J. (ed.), Antimachus of Colophon: Text and Commentary (1996), 73Google Scholar and Vessey, D. W. T. C., ‘The reputation of Antimachus of Colophon’, Hermes 99 (1971), 1–10Google Scholar, at 9.
16 On the way the names of Callimachus and Antimachus predestined them to become antithetical, see Krevans, op. cit. (n. 11), 149–50. Propertius only ever names Antimachus at 2.34.45, where he is yoked with Homer as joint representatives of epic.
17 See Matthews, op. cit. (n. 15), 17–18, 33–4.
18 See, for example, Sharrock, A. R., ‘Alternae voces – again’, Classical Quarterly 40 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 570–1, at 571.
19 On the allusion to Tantalus, see Smyth, W. R., ‘Interpretationes Propertianae’, Classical Quarterly 43 (1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 118–25, at 119, 123 and Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Propertiana (1956)Google Scholar, 27.
20 There is an interesting parallel for Ponticus in mid-stream, which, curiously enough, also occurs in a poem involving a literary name-game. In support of the claim that Virgil's Codrus is a pseudonym, one commentary quotes a poem of Valgius Rufus which also addresses a poet (probably Messala Corvinus) under the name Codrus: Hollis, op. cit. (n. 3, 2007), 293–6. The final couplet reads: ‘falleris insanus quantum si gurgite nauta / Crisaeae quaerat flumina Castaliae.’ Here we have similar vocabulary to Propertius (insanus, quaerat) in the context of Callimachean polemic. Just as the useless water of Ponticus' flumen implies a contrast with the pure spring of poetic inspiration, here we have an explicit contrast between undrinkable sea water and the undeniably metapoetic spring of Castalia. It is not clear which of these two passages influenced the other.
21 See Suits, T. A., ‘The iambic character of Propertius 1.4’, Philologus 120 (1976), 86–91Google Scholar, amplified in important ways by Fedeli, P., ‘Elegy and literary polemic in Propertius’ Monobiblos', Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 3 (1981)Google Scholar, 227–42, at 233–4, Cairns, F., ‘Propertius 1.4 and 1.5 and the “Gallus” of the Monobiblos’, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 4 (1984), 61–103Google Scholar, and Barchiesi, A., ‘Alcune difficoltà nella carriera di un poeta giambico: giambo ed elegia nell’ epodo 11', in Tovar, R. C. and Corte, J. C. F. (eds), Bimilenario de Horacio (1994)Google Scholar, 127–38.
22 Quintilian (10.1.96) lists Catullus, Furius Bibaculus and Horace; Diomedes the grammarian lists Lucilius, Catullus, Horace and Bibaculus (Keil, H. (ed.), Grammatici latini (1857)Google Scholar, 1.485).
23 For the Roman habit of making jokes out of these unflattering cognomina, see Corbeill, A., Controlling Laughter (1996), 57–98Google Scholar.
24 Kajanto, I., The Latin Cognomina (1982)Google Scholar, 243–4.
25 See TLL s.v. ‘1. bassus’.
26 Jacobsohn (in TLL s.v. ‘Bassus’): ‘fort. orig. oscae.’ In this period Herennius was used both as an Oscan first name and as a Latin gentilicium, so that cannot tell us whether Bassus was functioning here already as a Roman cognomen; see Münzer in RE ss. vv. ‘Herennius’ (661.67–662.33) and ‘Herennius (19)’ (666.5–16). On the uneven process of Romanization, see M. Lejeune, L'anthroponymie osque (1976), 125–6.
27 Thus Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (1939)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘bassus, -a, -um’: ‘Adj. bas latin, peut-être d'origine osque’.
28 The nature of the chronological relationship between classical Latin, vulgar Latin and Romance is disputed. For an overview of the problems, see Väänänen, V., ‘Introduction au latin vulgaire’ (1981), 3–26Google Scholar and Tovar, A., ‘A research report on vulgar Latin and its local variations’, Kratylos 9 (1964), 113–34Google Scholar.
29 Elcock, W. D., The Romance Languages (1960), 154Google Scholar.
30 For similar examples, see Väänänen, op. cit. (n. 28), 75–81.
31 See Marx, F., ‘Die Beziehungen des Altlateins zum Spätlatein’, Neue Jahrbücher für antike und deutsche Bildung 23 (1909), 434–48Google Scholar; for the expression ‘classical gap’, see Palmer, L. R., The Latin Language (1988), 171Google Scholar. For a sceptical view, see Mańczak, W., ‘Latin vulgaire et latin archaïque’, in Abellán, C. A. (ed.), Actes du VIIème Colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif (2006), 443–8Google Scholar.
32 Sat. 2.1.34–9
33 On Horace's self-affiliation in this passage, see Muecke, op. cit. (n. 7), 107.
34 cf. the phrases pulsis Sabellis and per vacuum; the latter is a notably extreme and unlikely claim. On the probable intermingling of Roman colonists and the local population around Venusia, see Salmon, E. T., Samnium and the Samnites (1967), 316Google Scholar, n. 3.
35 cf. Radke in RE s.v. ‘Venusia’ (894.22–5): ‘… überhaupt das Griechische bis in die Zeit des Horaz neben dem Lateinischen (und Oskischen) gesprochen sein wird.’
36 This information is doubted by Mommsen (CIL, vol. 9, sect. 23 ‘Venusia’, intro.), but the later writers he prefers (e.g. Pliny, NH 3.104) are less convincing witnesses, as they will have been influenced by the testimony of the town's most famous son.
37 Sat. 1.5.54.
38 See Skutsch, O., ‘Messius Cicirrus’, in Betts, J. H., Hooker, J. T. and Green, J. R. (eds), Studies in Honour of T. B. L. Webster, Vol. 1 (1986), 223–4Google Scholar.
39 For Cicirrus, see Brown, op. cit. (n. 7), 145 and Skutsch, op. cit. (n. 38), 223 on Hesychius s.v. ‘κίκιρρος’.
40 Skutsch, op. cit. (n. 38). Another theory is that Messius alludes to the Oscan name for a character in the fabulae Atellanae: Salmon, op. cit. (n. 34), 119, n. 3; for a similar suggestion regarding Cicirrus, see Skutsch, op. cit. (n. 38), 224, n. 3. Savage, J. J. H., ‘The cyclops, the sibyl and the poet’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 93 (1962), 410–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar is misled by the belief that the name should be explained with reference to the Latin word messis.
41 Poetics 1448b.
42 ‘libertino patre natus’ (Sat. 1.6.6). For another Archilochean moment in Horatian autobiography, see ‘relicta non bene parmula’ (Odes 2.7.9) with Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I (1970), 113Google Scholar and Fraenkel, E., Horace (1957), 11–12Google Scholar. On the biographical tradition around Archilochus' supposedly self-confessed faults, see Rotstein, A., ‘Critias’ invective against Archilochus', Classical Philology 102 (2007), 139–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 143–6.
43 ‘corporis exigui, praecanum, solibus aptum’ (1.20.24).
44 ‘ab imo ad summum totus moduli bipedalis’ (2.3.308–9); see also Sat. 1.4.15.
45 Epodes 15.12 and Satires 2.1.18–19. See Watson, L. (ed.), A Commentary on Horace's Epodes (2003), 472–3Google Scholar against the overstated objections of Parker, H. N., ‘Flaccus’, Classical Quarterly 50 (2000), 455–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 See below for the relative chronology.
47 Suits, op. cit. (n. 21), 88.
48 One of the Journal's readers points out the relevance of a passage in Epode 17, where Horace praises the beauty and purity of Canidia with frank insincerity (39–41), and of its Catullan model (poem 42), where the poet likewise swivels suddenly from abusing a woman to feigned praise.
49 See Heyworth, S. J., Cynthia: a Companion to the Text of Propertius (2009)Google Scholar, 60 for this as a statement of allegiance to elegy.
50 On the importance of recitation as a form of publication in the Augustan age, see Quinn, K., ‘The poet and his audience in the Augustan age’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.30.1 (1982), 75–180Google Scholar, at 76–93 and 140–67 and Dupont, F., ‘Recitatio and the reorganization of the space of public discourse’, in Wallace-Hadrill, A. (ed.), The Roman Cultural Revolution (1997), 44–59Google Scholar.
51 See Heslin, P., ‘Virgil's Georgics and the dating of Propertius’ first book', Journal of Roman Studies 100 (2010), 54–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 See Barchiesi, op. cit. (n. 21), 133–4.
53 See Leo, F., ‘De Horatio et Archilocho’, in Ausgewählte kleine Schriften II (1960), 139–57Google Scholar and Luck, G., ‘An interpretation of Horace's eleventh epode’, Illinois Classical Studies 1 (1976), 122–6Google Scholar. Horace winks at the importation of elegiac content into an iambic context by punning on the metrical sense of pes in the phrase incerto pede (11.20), as discussed by Barchiesi, op. cit. (n. 21), 134–5. Since the poem is set in the month of December (11.5), there may also be a hint of Saturnalian rôle-reversal.
54 Syme, R., ‘Missing senators’, Historia 4 (1955), 52–71Google Scholar, at 66.
55 Livy 23.43–4.
56 Thus Barchiesi, op. cit. (n. 21), 132–3, n. 13, who cites M. Labate for the view that the Marathus elegies ‘sono un'anticipazione della “distruzione dell'elegia dall'interno” che verrà intrapresa da Ovidio praeceptor amoris’. It might be better to say that the particular conception of elegiac love that Ovid chooses to undermine and subvert owes more to Propertius than Tibullus.
57 Am. 1.1.19–20, where he is clearly speaking of his own potential materia (‘nec mihi materia est’) rather than that of a heterosexual female elegist like Sulpicia. Cf. Ars Am. 2.684 with Williams, C. A., Roman Homosexuality (1999), 27–8Google Scholar. See also McKeown, J. C. (ed.), Ovid, Amores: Text, Prolegomena and Commentary (1987–), vol. 2, 23Google Scholar.
58 On the programmatic significance of the switch from homosexual to heterosexual love, see Miller, P. A., Subjecting Verses: Latin Love Elegy and the Emergence of the Real (2004), 85–7Google Scholar.
59 Meleager may hint at a derivation from μυῖα rather than μῦς in a Myiscus epigram in which a fly makes an appearance as a contrast to the eagle of Zeus (Anth. Gr. 12.70.4), though metre and sound favour μῦς. In another epigram Meleager seems to link the name instead perhaps with μύρον: Ἡδὺς ὁ παῖς, καὶ τοὔνομ' ἐμοὶ γλυκύς ἐστι Μυΐσκος καὶ χαρίεις (Anth. Gr. 12.154.1–2). On the other hand, the tiny sea-mussel called μυΐσκος (myiscus in Latin: Pliny, NH 32.149) was clearly the diminutive of μῦς. The obvious meaning of the name was therefore ‘little mouse’, but we should allow that Meleager was fond of playing with other possibilities.
60 Barchiesi, op. cit. (n. 21), 132 notes the additional irony that this boy shares the lupine part of his name with the ‘domina elegiaca per eccellenza, LYCoris’.
61 The most notable wolf-like name in iambic poetry is Archilochus' Lycambes, which has often been thought a pointed pseudonym; see Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (1979), 243–52Google Scholar. Davis, G., ‘Carmina/Iambi: the literary-generic dimension of Horace's Integer vitae (C. 1.22)’, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 27 (1987), 67–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that Horace in the Odes characterizes his earlier iambic ferocity via the figure of the wolf.
62 cf. Watson, op. cit. (n. 45), 366–7: ‘Her name establishes Inachia's profession: Italian prostitutes typically bore Greek names … sometimes as here ones with mythological associations.’ That is true as far as it goes, but it does not explain why Horace would invent this particular name, in contrast to the other Horatian courtesans whose Greek names are elsewhere attested for freedwomen and courtesans and have meanings very obviously pertinent to their profession. The claim by Mankin, D. (ed.), Horace Epodes (1995), 196Google Scholar that Inachia should make us think of the ‘bovine’ Io sits uneasily with the account of Horace's passion for her. Barchiesi, op. cit. (n. 21), 132, n. 12 offers the most interesting alternative explanation, suggesting that we are to think of Danae of Argos, whose greed for gold in the allegorical reading of the myth reflects Inachia's preference for the dives amator. The main difficulty is the obscurity of skipping directly to the rationalization of the Danae myth (on which see Nisbet, R. G. M. and Rudd, N., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book III (2004), 203Google Scholar) without a clear indication that this particular Argive heroine out of the many is meant.
63 Prop 1.13.29–32. For simplicity the text is Barber's; controversy over the text of the first couplet is not relevant here.
64 Thus Rothstein, M. (ed.), Elegien, Propertius Sextus (1966), 145Google Scholar, who pointed out that they coaxed their new husbands into bed despite their murderous intentions. If Clytemnestra is one of the tribus in the previous couplet, then danger and husband-murder is not at all foreign to the context. Other commentators have preferred to see a generic reference to Greek mythological heroines, but that would be bland after the specificity of the previous couplet. More recently, Booth, J., ‘Amazing grace: reading between the lines in Propertius 1.13.29–32’, Classical Quarterly 56 (2006), 528–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 536–7 takes the phrase as a poetic plural, referring to Io. But the plurality of the sisters is precisely what makes them a fitting climax after una tribus; this suggestion also turns blandior into an absurdity, for when we think of Io after her encounter with Jupiter we think of her bitterly lamenting (as in Prometheus Bound 561–886) or mooing inarticulately (as later in Ovid, Met. 1.635–57, 729–46).
65 For a good overview of the extensive bibliography on the question of the relationship of Horace and Propertius, see R. Dimundo, ‘Properzio e gli augustei’, in Catanzaro, G. and Santucci, F. (eds), Properzio alle soglie del 2000: un bilancio di fine secolo (2002), 295–318Google Scholar, at 295–303.
66 See Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book II (1978), 223–4Google Scholar and Cairns, op. cit. (n. 1), 16–23.
67 See Postgate, J. P. (ed.), Select Elegies of Propertius (1958), xxxii–xxxivGoogle Scholar; Palmer, A. (ed.), The Satires of Horace (1964), 219Google Scholar attributes the original observation to Passerat, while Flach, D., Das literarische Verhältnis von Horaz und Properz (1967), 92Google Scholar cites Lieven van der Beke.
68 For a negative view, see Brink, C. O. (ed.), Horace on Poetry (1963–1982), vol. 3, 316Google Scholar, 325, who seems to have changed his mind in the nearly twenty years between the publication of volumes 1 and 3: cf. vol. 1, 186, n. 1. Rudd, N. (ed.), Horace, Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (1989), 15Google Scholar is mildly sceptical; on the other hand, see Quinn, op. cit. (n. 50), 149 (‘almost certainly Propertius’).
69 For Mimnermus as a declared model, see Prop. 1.9.11; for Callimachus, see 2.1.40, 2.34.32, 3.1.1, 3.9.43, and above all 4.1.64.
70 Some have inferred a bitter feud between Horace and Propertius; see Dimundo, op. cit. (n. 65), 295–303 for bibliography. An extreme view is taken by Sullivan, J. P., Propertius (1976), 12–31Google Scholar and Sullivan, J. P., ‘Horace and Propertius: another literary feud?’, Studii Classice 18 (1979), 81–92Google Scholar; more nuanced is Nisbet, R. G. M., ‘Review: Horace and Propertius’, Classical Review 21 (1971), 57–9Google Scholar, at 57: ‘There were differences of social background and literary principle, perhaps also profounder discordances of temperament: the one may have seemed a Philistine, the other a poseur. Hence perhaps the unfriendly reference in the Epistles to the imitator of Callimachus and Mimnermus (2.2.100–1).’
71 A Bassus appears in Odes 1.36.14, where the name may connote a heavy drinker, due to its resemblance to Bassareus: thus Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 42), 405. It was a nice coincidence that the next major writer of Latin lyric was named Caesius Bassus (Quint. 10.1.96). When Persius implicitly likens him to Horace (Sat. 6.1–6), was the name a bonus? Martial often pins the name Bassus or Bassa on the targets of his abuse; perhaps the sense of ‘low’ is active in those contexts.
72 The praecordia that the boy so easily changes is perhaps a reminiscence from the symptoms of Horace's indignation in Epode 11: ‘quodsi meis inaestuet praecordiis libera bilis’ (15–16). Likewise the inability of the boy to do real harm may respond to the catalogue of physical insults and wounds Horace complains about there (‘fomenta volnus nil malum levantia’ (17), ‘lumbos et infregi latus’ (22)).
73 For the revised date, see Heslin, op. cit. (n. 51). Ovid gives his year of birth as 43 b.c. at Trist. 4.10.5–6.
74 For the insistently temporal emphasis of this passage, see Fredericks, B. R., ‘Tristia 4.10: poet's autobiography and poetic autobiography’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 106 (1976), 139–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 153.
75 For a reading of this poem that similarly sees Ovid as moving in death from a geographically marginal to a poetically central position, see Oliensis, E., ‘The power of image-makers: representation and revenge in Ovid Metamorphoses 6 and Tristia 4’, Classical Antiquity 23 (2004), 285–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 305–6.
76 Ars Am. 3.538. The way this poem plays with the gap between reality and earnest autobiographical narrative in precisely the manner of Latin love elegy can go a long way to explaining why Ovid puts so much emphasis on his career as a love elegist in this poem. For puzzlement on that score, see Fairweather, J., ‘Ovid's autobiographical poem: Tristia 4.10’, Classical Quarterly 37 (1987), 181–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 183, n. 15 and Fredericks, op. cit. (n. 74), 144, n 16. This is why he describes himself from the first line of this autobiographical poem as a player of games (‘tenerorum lusor amorum’, 1).
77 On the ‘detachability of names’ and Ovid's exilic identification with the Pontus, see Hardie, P., Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (2002), 295Google Scholar.
78 On the funerary overtones of these phrases, see Fairweather, op. cit. (n. 76), 186–8.
79 The poem is addressed at the start to posteritas, 2; it concludes: ‘tibi grates, candide lector, ago’, 132.
