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Homer, Ovid and Heroides 1.15–16

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

      quando ego non timui graviora pericula veris?
      res est solliciti plena timoris amor.
      in te fingebam violentos Troas ituros;
      nomine in Hectoreo pallida semper eram.
      15 sive quis Antilochum narrabat ab Hectore victum, Antilochus nostri causa timoris erat;
      sive Menoetiadenfalsis cecidisse sub armis flebam successu posse carere dolos.
      sanguine Tlepolemus Lyciam tepefecerat hastam, 20 Tlepolemi leto cura novata mea est.
      denique quisquis erat castris iugulatus Achivis, frigidius glacie pectus amantis erat.
      (Ovid, Her. 1.11–22)

Lines 15-16 of Penelope’s letter have given rise to much debate over the years because numerous scholars have found that the couplet contains a mistake over the fate of Antilochus. Some attribute the mistake to scribal corruption in the transmission of the text, others to Ovid himself. Such a cloud of scholarly dust has the passage raised that no apology is necessary for yet another attempt to clarify so minor a point. The crux of the problem lies in the meaning of victum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 32 , November 1998 , pp. 24 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1998

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References

1 While many scholars note that at Hyginus, Fab. 113, Antilochus’ killer is indeed Hector, they note also that the text is almost certainly corrupt at this point since Memnon has just been named as the killer at Fab. 112. It is, in any case, hardly likely that Ovid would have worked outside Homer in this letter.

2 Housman, A.E., CR 11 (1897) 102-3.Google Scholar

3 From the false division of hoste revictum to give hostere victum, Housman (n.2) traces a course of textual corruption: under the influence of Hectoreo in line 14, hostere was probably transposed to hestore before passing into hectore. Knox, P.E., Heroides: Select Epistles (Cambridge 1995)Google Scholar, ad loc., faithfully echoes Housman’s low opinion of the received text (‘The corruption is also betrayed by the feeble repetition of nomine in Hectoreo … Hectore’) and comments that Housman’s emendation ‘restores the sense of the passage, if not perhaps O.’s exact words’.

4 Showerman, G., Ovid with an English Translation: Heroides and Amores (Cambridge, Mass. 1914) (2nd edn. revised by Goold, G.P., 1977)Google Scholar, and Knox (n.3).

5 Even a cursory inspection of just the Heroides reveals such examples of Ovid’s penchant for repeating names as praeposuit Theseus, nisi si manifesta negamus, I Pirithoum Phaedrae Pirithoumque tibi (Her. 4. 111Google Scholar-2) and Anna soror, soror Anna, meae male conscia culpae (Her. 7. 191).Google Scholar

6 Barchiesi, A., P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum 1-3 (Florence 1992).Google Scholar

7 Palmer, A., P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides with the Greek Translation of Planudes (Oxford 1898) ad loc. He notes these three emendations offered by Politian, Muncker and Schoppa respectively.Google Scholar

8 Jacobson, H., Ovid’s Heroides (Princeton 1974)253.Google Scholar

9 Jacobson (n.8) 252 cites the opinions of Meziriac and Parrhasius.

10 From the myriad examples of vincere with this meaning, two from Ovid’s highly celebrated encounter with Corinna in the Amores will suffice: cumque ita pugnaret tamquam quae vincere noliet, I vieta est non aegre proditione sua (Am. 1.5.15–16).Google Scholar

11 These scholars ad loc.: Palmer (n.7); Showerman and Goold (n.4), Knox (n.3), and Barchiesi (n.6).

12 Hall, J.B., CR 46 (1996)24.Google Scholar

13 Jacobson (n.8) 252-3. Ovid’s familiarity with Vergil’s masterpiece is apparent in the single Heroides from such imitations as that of Aen. 4 at Her. 7, and of Aen. 2.29, hie Dolopum manus, hic saevus lendebat Achilles, at line 35 of this poem, illic Aeacides, illic tendebat Ulixes.

14 Ovid gives Penelope another crescendo at lines 81-4 of this letter, where he wittily departs from the Homeric story to make his elegiac heroine a more faithful wife than her epic model: me pater Icarius vidua discedere ledo I cogit et immensas increpat usque moras. I increpet usque licet; tua sum, tua dicar oportet; I Penelope coniunx semper Ulixis ero!

15 Housman (n.2), Jacobson (n.8) 252, Knox (n.3) ad loc.

16 Other examples of denique used with this meaning appear in Virgil at Aen. 2.70Google Scholar and 2.295, and in Ovid himself at Met. 2.95 and Am. 1.7.43.Google Scholar