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The Poetry of Ovid's Exile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

E. J. Kenney
E. J. Kenney
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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Extract

In the general revaluation of Ovid's poetry that began in earnest with the publication of Hermann Fränkel's book in 1945, and received a vigorous impetus from the celebrations attending the bimillenary of his birth in 1958, the poetry of his later years has not adequately shared. Even Mr Wilkinson's warm sympathies have not been moved to more than what, with great respect, I would call a somewhat perfunctory appraisal: for his chapter on the poems of exile, though not unjust, gives the reader no idea of how good some of the best of them are and—which perhaps is more important—why and how they are good. In a word, I do not believe that this poetry has yet been read with the critical attention that is its due, and a glance at the relevant pages of L'Année Philologique for the past thirty years or so reinforces this impression. Not that no opinions respecting it are on record. For instance, in the Preface to A. Scholte's edition of Book 1 of the Epistulae ex Ponto (Amersfurt, 1933) will be found a substantial section entitled ‘Iudicia de Epistulis ex Ponto’, in which are recorded the opinions of editors and readers ranging from Edward Gibbon to P. J. Enk. Such doxographies tend to recur in editions of classical writers: a recent example is to be found in Raoul Verdière's very disappointing edition of Grattius (Wetteren, [1964]). What value they have is not critical but historical—and also, indirectly, admonitory: for they ought to remind us of our obligation to read the poems for ourselves, looking for enlightenment not to the experience of previous readers but to our own experience in the light of the guidance provided by the poet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 11 , 1965 , pp. 37 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1965

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References

page 37 note 1 H. Fränkel, Ovid: a Poet between two Worlds. The way had already been shown by an article of Higham, T. F.'s that has acquired something approaching classic status, ‘Ovid: some aspects of his character and aims’, C.R. XLVIII (1934), 105 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 37 note 2 Wilkinson, L. P., Ovid Recalled (1955), ch. xGoogle Scholar, ‘Among the Goths’; cf. particularly pp. 359–61.

page 37 note 3 Fraenkel, E., Horace (1957), pp. 26, 208 f.Google Scholar, 370 n. 1.

page 38 note 1 ‘The Style and the Man’, Phoenix XVIII (1964), 216–31Google Scholar.

page 38 note 2 D'Elia, S., Ovidio (1959)Google Scholar. Cf. C.R. N.S. XIV (1964), 345Google Scholar.

page 38 note 3 A.A. III, 346Google Scholarignotum hoc aliis ille nouauit opus.

page 38 note 4 1, 4; but, as has often been pointed out, amatory elegy already possessed a strongly didactic and admonitory flavour.

page 38 note 5 Cf. H. Fränkel, op. cit. 237 n. 36, pointing out that the situation of Alcaeus was quite different.

page 39 note 1 Atti del Convegno Internazionale ovidiano (1959), II, 409Google Scholar.

page 39 note 2 Cf. Wilamowitz, , Hermes LXI (1926), 298–9Google Scholar.

page 39 note 3 Marg, W., ‘Zur Behandlung des Augustus in den “Tristien”’, Atti, II, 345 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 40 note 1 Simcox, G. A., A History of Latin Literature (1883), p. 361Google Scholar; quoted by Scholte, op. cit. xii.

page 40 note 2 The use of the word sanctas in v. 33 is worth attention. I have elsewhere tried to make a similar point with reference to Juvenal: cf. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. N.S. 8 (1962), 38–9Google Scholar; Latomus XXII (1963), 718–19Google Scholar. Mr G. R. Watson has suggested to me that there may also be a reference to Ovid's own poetry in heroidas.

page 40 note 3 ‘Personal poetry’ is a concept that needs careful handling: see now the fascinating discussion by Dover, K. J., ‘The Poetry of Archilochus’, in ArchiloqueGoogle Scholar (Hardt, Fond.Entretiens, vol. x), pp. 183–222Google Scholar. Personal poetry in the sense in which we nowadays tend to use the term hardly existed before Catullus (cf. Quinn, K. F., The Catullan Revolution [1959], esp. pp. 44 ff.Google Scholar), and its domain in Ovid's day was still limited by inherited convention.

page 40 note 4 This word is singularly ill chosen.

page 40 note 5 Sorley, H. T., Exile (1964), p. 41Google Scholar. Similarly Rand, E. K., though in a more sympathetic spirit, utterly misunderstood the tone of the poem (Ovid and his influence, p. 94)Google Scholar.

page 41 note 1 Obviously excepting the cases where mock modesty was itself a literary convention, as in the formal recusatio.

page 41 note 2 Cf. Wilamowitz, , Hellenistische Dichtung (1924), I, 241Google Scholar: ‘Nur ein unsterbliches episches Gedicht entstand noch unter Augustus, das sich an Kunstwerk mit der Aeneis messen kann und an Wirkung auf die Nachwelt nicht sehr viel unter ihr bleibt, die Metamorphosen Ovids’.

page 41 note 3 Cf. Martini, E., Einleitung zu Ovid (1933), p. 52Google Scholar.

page 41 note 4 Cf. Owen, S. G., Ovid Tristia Book I3 (1902)Google Scholar, ad loc. Various transpositions have been suggested in an effort to clear up the difficulty; none is satisfactory.

page 42 note 1 Grisart, A., ‘La publication des “Métamorphoses”: une source du récit d'Ovide’. Atti, II, 125 ffGoogle Scholar. My comment on this article at C.R. N.S. X (1960), 223Google Scholar, was not altogether just.

page 42 note 2 It is mentioned by Ganzenmüller, C., Die Elegie Nux und ihr Verfasser (1910), p. 22Google Scholar, as one of those poems ‘wo der Dichter uns zu packen versteht und fast noch der alte ist’.

page 42 note 3 It is absolutely necessary to accept Wilamowitz's transposition of vv. 41–2 to follow 36: to anybody with the faintest feeling for literary form the transmitted order of the verses is intolerable.

page 43 note 1 I can contribute nothing to the textual problem of v. 2.

page 43 note 2 Cf. Quinn, K. F., in Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. Sullivan, J. P. (1962), pp. 31 ffGoogle Scholar. This type of poem was developed from Hellenistic epigrams such as A.P. x, 1Google Scholar (Leonidas of Tarentum).

page 43 note 3 E. Fraenkel, op. cit. 418–19.

page 43 note 4 For Ovid's debt to Horace cf. Poeschl, V., ‘Ovid und Horaz’. Riv. di cultura class, e med. I (1959), 15–25Google Scholar; and cf. below on ex P. III, 3Google Scholar.

page 46 note 1 Hes., Theog. 26–8Google Scholar; Callim, . Hym. III, 136–7Google Scholar; I, 60.

page 46 note 2 Prinz, K., ‘Untersuchungen zu Ovids Remedia Amoris’. Wien. Stud. XXXVI (1914), 43–4Google Scholar; XXXIX (1917), 94–6. To Prinz I am indebted for a good deal in the foregoing discussion.

page 47 note 1 It is perhaps worth remarking that the alert reader might well be reminded by Ovid's description of another more famous apparition: Virg., Aen. II, 268 ff.Google Scholar, esp. 274 ff. ei mihi, qualis erat, quantum mutatus ab illo ∣ Hectore e.q.s. (For Virgil's debt to Ennius, which in the present context might be significant, see Serv., ad II, 274Google Scholar, Vahlen, 2ad Ann. 6Google Scholar.) There are many passages in the poems of exile which seem to invite the reader to remember Virgil, and sometimes this is clearly intentional and to be reckoned with as part of the designed effect of the poem. A striking case in point is that of Tr. I, 3, 25–8Google Scholar, where a reference to Virgil is obviously intended; indeed I am inclined to go so far as to suggest that the parallel in Ovid's mind between himself and Virgil's Aeneas at the sack of Troy is an essential key to the understanding of the poem. Cf. Lee, A. G., Greece & Rome XVIII (1949), 118Google Scholar, on Tr. II, 8, 29–30Google Scholar.

page 47 note 2 The description of the god is of one in mourning; but here the image of vv. 19–20, with its connotation (so I see it) of soiling (cf. tractatam), seems to me important. I find it difficult not to discern in these lines a reference to Ovid himself.

page 47 note 3 Op. cit. 412.

page 48 note 1 Book IV of the Odes was written between 17 and 13 B.C., and Virgil had died in 19 B.C.

page 48 note 2 See above, p. 44, n. 2, for possible chronological difficulties. If Paullus had held the consulship at the earliest possible age he would have been about twenty-eight when Horace wrote the Ode: puer is perhaps less jocose than a reflection of the difference between the ages and expectations of the two men.

page 48 note 3 The echo must be deliberate: so, rightly, L. P. Wilkinson, op. cit. 290.

page 49 note 1 Cf. D'Elia, op. cit. 414, 416–17. In v. 21 Camps's correction (C.R. N.S. IV [1954], 206–7) must be right: quae non uenit (for iuuat) inrita semper (I am not convinced that in v. 22 it is necessary to diange et to ut).