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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2013
Anagrams and syllabic wordplay of the kind championed by Frederick Ahl in his Metaformations have not always been favourably received by scholars of Latin poetry; I would hesitate to propose the following instance, were it not for the fact that its occurrence seems peculiarly apposite to the context in which it appears. That Roman poets were prepared to use such techniques to enhance the presentation of an argument by exemplifying its operation at a verbal level is demonstrated by the famous passage of Lucretius (DRN 1.907–14; also 1.891–2) in which the poet seeks to illustrate the tendency of semina … ardoris to create fire in wood by the literal presence of elements from the word for ‘fires’ (IGNes) in that denoting wood (lIGNum). A similar conception may underlie the association insinuated by the love elegists between amor and mors, suggesting that death is somehow ‘written into’ love: so Propertius declares laus in amore mori (2.1.47), while Tibullus appears to point to the lurking presence of death in the pursuit of love in the lines interea, dum fata sinunt, iungamus amores: | iam ueniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput (1.1.69–70) – so swift and unexpected is death's approach that it is already present in aMOReS in the preceding line. Ovid's awareness of the poetic potential of this kind of play (if that is the right word for it) is fully exhibited in his celebrated account of Echo and Narcissus in Metamorphoses 3, where the subject matter gives the poet ample scope to exploit the humorous and pathetic possibilities afforded by Echo's fragmented repetitions of the frustrated entreaties of her beloved.
1 Ahl, F.M., Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and other Classical Poets (Ithaca, NY, 1985)Google Scholar; see especially pp. 40, 45, 49, 110, 138–9, 215, 264–5, 310 on amor.
2 On this passage, and on other instances of such argumentation in Lucretius, see especially Snyder, J.M., Puns and Poetry in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (Amsterdam, 1980)Google Scholar.
3 See Papanghelis, T.D., Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (Cambridge, 1987), 41–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who relates Propertius' collocation of amor and mori to Lucretius' assertion of an etymological relationship between amor and umor at DRN 4.1045–60; Hardie, P., ‘Lethaeus amor: the art of forgetting’, in Gibson, R., Green, S. and Sharrock, A. (edd.), The Art of Love: Bimillennial Essays on Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris (Oxford, 2006), 166–92Google Scholar at 186 (‘The association of Amor and Mors has a long history in love elegy’).
4 See Papanghelis (n. 3), 41–5 (comparing Ov. Am. 2.7.10, alterius dicor amore mori), 64.
5 See Bassi, K., ‘Desired silence: amor and mors in Tibullus 1.1’, Syllecta Classica 5 (1994), 53–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 On this episode see especially Galinsky, G.K., Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975), 52–60Google Scholar; Hardie, P., Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002), 143–72Google Scholar; Pavlock, B., The Image of the Poet in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Madison, 2009), 14–37Google Scholar. For a later example of the phenomenon, also with reference to Echo, see Tordoff, R., ‘A note on Echo in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 5.25’, CQ 58 (2008), 711–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Indeed, love may already have permeated the text in line 83 as well: nAM MORa dat uires (where either of the two ms could be used to constitute the single m of amor – see n. 12 below).
8 For plays on amor and mora in Latin love elegy more generally, see e.g. Kennedy, D.F., The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge, 1993), 74–5Google Scholar; Pucci, P., ‘Lingering on the threshold’, Glyph 3 (1978), 52–73Google Scholar.
9 Papanghelis (n. 3), 41 n. 62 points to Varro's relaxed attitude towards differences in quantity in his treatment of Latin etymologies; also Ahl (n. 1), 35, 54–60.
10 CQ's editor suggests to me that this might also be seen as a glance at Roma, whose survival depended on the Sabine women. On Amor/Roma see Cairns, F., ‘Roma and her tutelary deity: names and ancient evidence’, in Kraus, C.S., Marincola, J. and Pelling, C. (edd.), Ancient Historiography and its Contexts (Oxford, 2010), 245–68, esp. 264–5 with bibliography (264 n. 35)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKeown, J.C. (ed.), Ovid: Amores, vol. III: A Commentary on Book Two (Leeds, 1998) on Ov. Am. 2.9.17Google Scholar.
11 On the expression, see Gibson, R.K. (ed.), Ovid: Ars Amatoria, Book 3 (Cambridge, 2003), ad locGoogle Scholar.
12 Cf. also Ars am. 3.473–4, again arguing for the erotic effectiveness of delay: postque breuem rescribe morAM: MORa semper amantes | incitat …
13 Some manuscripts have amans: see Kenney's apparatus.
14 See OLD s.v. uerbum 6; Henderson, A.A.R. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Remedia Amoris (Edinburgh, 1979), ad locGoogle Scholar.
15 For surveys see e.g. S.J. Green in Gibson et al. (n. 3), 1–20; Ariemma, E.M., ‘Il punto sull’ars amatoria di Ovidio (1991–2000)’, BStudLat 31 (2001), 579–99Google Scholar.