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His Dupes and Accomplices: A Study of Ovid the Illusionist in the Amores

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Peter J. Connor
Peter J. Connor*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

Ovid tells us everything in the first poem. Love poetry requires a lover. Experience and involvement are essential ingredients of this poetry. The subjective nature of elegy is critical.

Cupid poises his bow: the picture is breath-catchingly drawn. After the crisp unfolding of the earlier part of the poem, these lines hang in suspense. We feel the suspended moments as the bow bends and the string tightens, as the arm steadies, takes aim and lets fly:

      questus eram, pharetra cum protinus ille soluta
      legit in exitium spicula facta meum
      lunavitque genu sinuosum fortiter arcum
      ‘quodque canas, vates, accipe’ dixit ‘opus.’

(I finished my complaint. Immediately, he opened his quiver, chose a dart made for my destruction and flexed the sinuous bow with strength; ‘a task to sing, poet,’ he said, ‘take this.’)

There is also the careful selection of the correct arrow and Cupid's statement, its effortful staccato imitating his physical tensing and swift release.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , 1974 , pp. 18 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1974

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References

1. See Parker, D., ‘The Ovidian Coda’, Arion 8 (1969) 80–97Google Scholar.

2. Akbar Khan, H., ‘Ovidius Furens: A revaluation of Amores 1,7’ Latomus 25 (1966) 880–894Google Scholar, at 894.

3. Fränkel, H., Ovid, a poet between two worlds (California, 1945), 21Google Scholar.

4. Compare also Syme, R., JRS 37 (1947) 221Google Scholar – review of Fränkel – ‘The cardinal instance occurs in the abject contrition confessed by the lover (Amores, 1,7) – after he has administered a beating to his lady.’

5. Anderson, W. S., ‘Hercules exclusus’, AJP 85 (1964) 1–12Google Scholar. Pillinger, H. E, ‘Some Callimachean influences on Propertius, Book 4’, HSCP 73 (1969) 171fGoogle Scholar.

6. Boyancé, P., ‘Properce’, Fondation Hardt Entretiens Tome II (Geneva, 1956) 169–220Google Scholar.

7. Reitzenstein, E., Wirklichkeitsbild und Gefühlsentwicklung bei Properz (Philol. Supp. xxix Heft 2) 1936, 92Google Scholar.

8. For paraclausithuron see Copley, F. O., Exclusus Amator (Oxford, 1956Google Scholar).

9. Verse translations here by Lee, Guy, Ovid’s Amores (London, 1968Google Scholar).

10. Lee, A. G., ‘Tenerorum Lusor Amorum’ in J. P. Sullivan (ed.), Critical Essays on Roman Literature, Elegy and Lyric (London, 1962), 149–179Google Scholar.

11. Otis, Brooks, ‘Ovid and the Augustans’, TAPA 69 (1938) 198Google Scholar.

12. Brooks Otis, ibid. 197.