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OPVS IMPERFECTVM? COMPLETING THE UNFINISHED ACROSTIC AT OVID, METAMORPHOSES 15.871–5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2023

Gary P. Vos
Gary P. Vos*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
gvos@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article argues that the incomplete acrostic INCIP- at Ov. Met. 15.871–5 can be completed. If viewed as a ‘gamma-acrostic’, we can supply -iam from line 871, so that it receives its termination in retrospect. Ovid's manipulation of gamma-acrostic conventions caps his persistent confusion of beginnings and endings, and emphasizes the role of the reader as co-creator of his metamorphic œuvre.

Keywords

OvidMetamorphosesTristiaacrosticintertextualitytemporality
Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , May 2023 , pp. 243 - 249
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

1 For Ovidian acrostics/telestics, see Damschen, G., ‘Das lateinische Akrostichon: neue Funde bei Ovid sowie Vergil, Grattius, Manilius und Silius Italicus’, Philologus 148 (2004), 88–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kronenberg, L., ‘Seeing the light, part II: the reception of Aratus's LEPTĒ acrostic in Greek and Latin literature’, Dictynna 15 (2018), par. 21–4Google Scholar; Robinson, M., ‘Arms and a mouse: approaching acrostics in Ovid and Vergil’, MD 82 (2019a), 23–73Google Scholar; Robinson, M., ‘Looking edgeways: pursuing acrostics in Ovid and Virgil’, CQ 69 (2019b), 290–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, K., ‘Ovid's hidden last letters on his exile—telestichs from Tomis: postcode or code?’, CCJ 66 (2020a), 144–64; Mitchell, K., ‘Acrostics and telestics in Augustan poetry: Ovid's edgy and subversive sideswipes’, CCJ 66 (2020b), 165–81Google Scholar; Hanses, M., ‘Naso deus: Ovid's hidden signature in the Metamorphoses’, in Sharrock, A., Möller, A. and Malm, M. (edd.), Metamorphic Readings: Transformation, Language, and Gender in the Interpretation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Oxford, 2020), 126–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vecchio, J. Abad Del, ‘Literal bodies (somata): a telestich in Ovid (Metamorphoses 1.406–11)’, CQ 71 (2021), 688–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Anagrams: Ahl, F., Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca, 1985), 44–54Google Scholar; Nelis, D., ‘Arise, Aratus’, Philologus 160 (2016), 177–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Kronenberg, L., ‘Seeing the light, part I: Aratus's interpretation of Homer's LEUKĒ acrostic’, Dictynna 15 (2018)Google Scholar; Kronenberg (n. 1); Kronenberg, L., ‘The light side of the moon: a Lucretian acrostic (LUCE 5.712–15) and its relationship to acrostics in Homer (LEUKĒ, Il. 24.1–5) and Aratus (LEPTĒ, Phaen. 783–87)’, CPh 114 (2019), 278–92Google Scholar.

3 See, infamously, Hilberg, I., ‘Ist die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?’, WS 21 (1899), 264–305Google Scholar and ‘Nachtrag zur Abhandlung “Ist die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?”’, WS 22 (1900), 317–18; cf. Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 37–8Google Scholar; Korenjak, M., ‘ΛΕΥΚΗ: was bedeutet das erste “Akrostikhon”?’, RhM 152 (2009), 392–6Google Scholar; Hilton, J., ‘The hunt for acrostics by some ancient readers of Homer’, Hermes 141 (2013), 88–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Cf. Robinson (n. 1 [2019b]), 290–2.

5 A. Barchiesi, ‘Endgames: Ovid's Metamorphoses 15 and Fasti 6’, in D.H. Roberts, F.M. Dunn and D.P. Fowler (edd.), Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (Princeton, 1997), 181–208, at 195.

6 Text: Tarrant, R.J. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar.

7 Cf. n. 3 above for agnosticism.

8 Compare our ‘matrix of texts’ in Fowler, D.P., ‘On the shoulders of giants: intertextuality and classical studies’, MD 39 (1997), 13–34Google Scholar = Roman Constructions: Readings in Postmodern Latin (Oxford, 2000), 115–37, 14–15; Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 50–1Google Scholar.

9 uolet (873) could be future tense but is better understood, like finiat (874; ‘konzessiver Konj[unktiv]’: F. Bömer [ed.], P. Ovidius Naso: Metamorphoses. Kommentar, 7 vols. [Heidelberg, 1969–86], 7.489), as present subjunctive after cum. Conversely, ferar (876), legar (878), uiuam (879), taken as future tenses, can be present subjunctives with adhortative/optative force. Ovid's syntactical ambiguity seems an extension of his oscillation between beginnings and endings.

10 The term was coined by Morgan, G., ‘Nullam, Vare … Chance or choice in Odes 1.18?’, Philologus 137 (1993), 142–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 143, exploring Virgil's MARS/MARTEM-acrostic—dismissed by Hilberg (n. 3), 267; contrast Fowler, D.P., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7.601–4)?’, CQ 33 (1983), 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On signposting, Wills, J., Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar, passim, J.J. O'Hara, True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, 20172), 57–102. The best-known marker is the ‘Alexandrian’ (rather: Hellenistic) footnote.

11 The closest analogue is the ‘partial or humorously “failed”’ (Mitchell [n. 1 (2020b)], 7 n. 18) DISCE-acrostic at Hor. Carm. 1.18.11–15 (marker discernunt), discussed by Morgan (n. 10). For Ovid, Mitchell (n. 1 [2020b]), 10 with n. 27 detects an irregular gamma-acrostic (Met. 1.29–32 DEVS; 1.32 deorum, line-end) (cf. Hanses [n. 1]) and gamma-telestic (Pont. 3.3.7–10 TORO; 3.3.8 toro, line-end).

12 Cf. the Virgilian monogram Pu-Ve-Ma at G. 1.429–33 (E.L. Brown, Numeri Vergiliani: Studies in «Eclogues» and «Georgics» [Brussels, 1963], 102–4) or the boustrophedon acrostic-cum-telestic at Aen. 1.1–4 (C. Castelletti, ‘Following Aratus’ plow: Vergil's signature in the Aeneid’, MH 69 [2012], 83–95).

13 On Ovidian F/fama, see Guastella, G., Word of Mouth: Fama and its Personifications in Art and Literature from Ancient Rome to the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2017), especially 177–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, P. Hardie, Rumour and Renown: Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge, 2012), 150–77, 392–3 and the contributions by E. Peraki-Kyriakidou (‘The Ovidian Leuconoe: vision, speech and narration’) and A.N. Michalopoulos (‘famaque cum domino fugit ab Vrbe suo: aspects of fama in Ovid's exile poetry’) in S. Kyriakidis (ed.), Libera Fama: An Endless Journey (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2016), respectively 71–93, 94–110.

14 P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, transl. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1985–1988) explores the longue durée; for the reading's spatiotemporal ‘situatedness’, see Martindale, C., Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge, 1993), 3Google Scholar: ‘Meaning, could we say, is always realized at the point of reception; if so, we cannot assume that an “intention” is effectively communicated within any text’ (original italics; cf. his n. 39).

15 D. Feeney, ‘Mea tempora: patterning of time in Ovid's Metamorphoses’, in P. Hardie, A. Barchiesi, S. Hinds (edd.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid's Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge, 1999), 13–30 = Explorations in Latin Literature. Volume 1: Epic, Historiography, Religion (Cambridge, 2021), 203.

16 Cf. Martindale's dictum (n. 14) and ‘a writer can never control the reception of his or her work, with respect either to the character of the readership or to any use which is made of that work’ (3–4). Nevertheless, Ovid builds rapport with readers: Pandey, N., The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome: Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography (Cambridge, 2018), 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 118, 125, 131–3, 216, 226–30, 238–9.

17 Text: G. Luck (ed.), P. Ovidius Naso. Tristia, 2 vols. Volume 1: Text und Übersetzung (Heidelberg, 1967–1977).

18 Varying perspectives in Thibault, J.C., The Mystery of Ovid's Exile (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964)Google Scholar; Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Gaertner, J.-F., Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto, Book 1 (Oxford, 2005), 8–24Google Scholar.

19 Hinds, S., The Metamorphosis of Persephone: Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse (Cambridge, 1987), 10Google Scholar. Barchiesi (n. 5) takes up this line of enquiry.

20 So S.M. Wheeler, Narrative Dynamics in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Tübingen, 2000), 108–9, at 109. Cf. S. Hinds, ‘Booking the return trip: Ovid and Tristia 1’, PCPhS 31 (1985), 13–32; Williams, G.D., Banished Voices: Reading in Ovid's Exile Poetry (Cambridge, 1994), 79–83Google Scholar (‘Ovid's unpolished Muse’) on the aesthetic of imperfection of the Metamorphoses.

21 See P. Hardie in P. Hardie (ed.) and G. Chiarini (transl.), Ovidio: Metamorfosi. Volume 6: libri XIII–XV, transl. A. Barchiesi (Milan, 2015), 622, comparing the opening of Books 3, 7, 8 and 14.

22 For the linear/teleological drive of the Metamorphoses, see S. Hinds, ‘After exile: time and teleology from Metamorphoses to Ibis’, in P. Hardie, A. Barchiesi, S. Hinds (edd.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid's Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge, 1999), 48–67, at 51–3; Wheeler (n. 20); H.H. Gardner, Gendering Time in Augustan Love Elegy (Oxford, 2013), 249–50. For cyclical aspects, Feeney (n. 15), 13–14; Noorden, H. Van, Playing Hesiod: The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015), 212–60Google Scholar, especially 215–16, 259–60.

23 Barchiesi, A., ‘Discordant Muses’, HSPh 37 (1991), 1–21Google Scholar, at 6–7.

24 D. Feeney, Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 2007), 169, echoing Feeney (n. 15), 13. Cf. M. Labate, ‘Tempo delle origini e tempo della storia in Ovidio’ and S. Hinds, ‘Dislocations of Ovidian time’, both in J.-P. Schwindt (ed.), La représentation du temps dans la poésie augustéene: Zur Poetik der Zeit in augusteischer Dichtung (Heidelberg, 2005), respectively 177–201 and 203–30, at 208–11.

25 Wheeler (n. 20), 108–9.

26 For ‘exile as death’, see Claassen, J.-M., Ovid Revisited: The Poet in Exile (London, 2008), 16, 129–30Google Scholar, 136, 147; J.-F. Gaertner, ‘Ovid and the “poetics of exile”: how exilic is Ovid's exile poetry?’, in J.-F. Gaertner (ed.), Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond (Leiden and Boston, 2007), 155–72, at 160 n. 26; M.M. McGowan, Ovid in Exile: Power and Poetic Redress in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto (Leiden and Boston, 2009), 12 (with n. 44). The epitaphic/cenotaphic epilogue of the Metamorphoses aids the metaphor: P. Hardie, Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002), 84, 91–7; Hardie (n. 13), 393, connected to the Tristia by Martelli, F.K.A., Ovid's Revisions: The Editor as Author (Cambridge, 2013), 162–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 170–1; cf. Farrell, J., ‘The Ovidian corpus: poetic body and poetic text’, in Hardie, P., Barchiesi, A., Hinds, S. (edd.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid's Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge, 1999), 127–41Google Scholar, at 141; Fowler (n. 8 [2000]), 196.

27 Some take these passages as evidence for Ovid's banishment, although post-exilic textual changes remain difficult to explain: Murgia, C.E., ‘Ovid Met. 1.544–7 and the theory of double recension’, CA 3 (1984), 205–35Google Scholar.

28 CQ's reader suggests taking in noua as innoua, perpetuating Ovid's fiction of being commanded to write poetry.

29 Cf. n. 14 above.