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Booking the return trip: Ovid and Tristia 1*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Stephen Hinds
Stephen Hinds
Affiliation:
Girton College, Cambridge
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Extract

Two journeys are implied by the existence of Tristia 1: one, by a poet, a from Rome to the gates of the Black Sea; the other, by a book, from the gates of the Black Sea back to Rome. Each of these journeys is explicitly, and prominently, discussed in Tristia 1; and each makes its presence felt in various ways throughout Tristia 1. Leaving for another day the outward voyage, described especially in the second, fourth, tenth and eleventh poems, I am going to deal in this essay with the return trip of Ovid's book to Rome, as anticipated at some length in the very opening poem of the collection. And (because that is still a somewhat unwieldy topic) I am going to focus on the final destination of Tristia 1 within Rome, as specified in the last twenty lines or so of this first poem: viz: the bookcase in Ovid's Roman home. In these programmatically charged lines, the personified first book of exile poetry finds itself face to face with the poetry books written by Ovid before his exile. I want in the ensuing pages to take a closer look than is usually taken at some details of this and other encounters with Ovid's past writings in the first poems from exile; and my hope is that this analysis will tell us a few things along the way about how the poet is trying here to relate his literary present to his literary past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 31 , 1985 , pp. 13 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

NOTES

To avoid clutter in the footnotes, 1 give the details of my bibliography now, and employ an abbreviated system of citation hereafter.

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1. For the influence of Horace, Epistles 1.20, see e.g. Luck (1967-77), introduction to Tristia 1.1; Nagle (1980) 35 and 83. For the influence of Horace, Epistles 1.13, see Luck (1967-77) on Trist. 1.1.93-4, 101-2, 125-6; also, perhaps, in Ovid's twice repeated uade (Trist. 1.1.3, 15) and four times repeated caue (Trist. 1.1.22, 25, 87, 104), there is an acknowledgement of Horace's final exhortation uade, uale, caue ne titubes … (Ep. 1.13.19).

2. A (false) etymology current in late antiquity actually derives lĭber from liberatus, in the context of the origin of the lĭber as ‘bark’ used for writing: Cassiodorus, Inst. 2.praef 4 liber autem dictus est a libro, id est arboris cortice dempto atque liberato; cf. Isidore, Orig. 17.6.16 liber est corticis pars interior, dictus a liberato cortice, id est ablato. Perhaps, then, as often in Ovid (cf. n. 18 below), there is an etymological feel to the implicit pun in Trist. 1.1.1-2.

At the end of Tristia 3.1, the ‘sequel’ to the present poem (see n. 11 below), Ovid's personified book finds upon its arrival in Rome that it is not, after all, completely free; and the lĭber/līber pun seems to me to be invoked again in an interesting way to mark the change:

nec me, quae doctis patuerunt prima libellis,

atria Libertas tangere passa sua est.

in genus auctoris miseri fortuna redundat,

et patimur nati, quam tulit ipse, fugam (Trist. 3.1.71-4)

3. For incultus as a literary term, see e.g. Horace, Epist. 2.1.233 incultis … uersibus et male natis, with Brink (1982) ad loc.; OLD s.v.incultus 3b. 4.

4. Trist. 1.1.11 nec fragili geminae poliantur pumice frontes; Catullus 1.1-2… lepidum nouum libellum/arida modo pumice expolitum. For the allusion see Fréaut (1972) 311 n.44; Evans (1983) 33-4.

5. Amongst the commentators who note the echo of Her. 3.3, Nagle (1980) 84 & n.27 is alone in cautiously seeing in it an ‘indication … of the literary pedigree of the exilic elegies’.

6. For Propertius 4.3 as the prototype for the Heroides, see, e.g., Anderson (1973) 67.

7. Remember that elegy is the genre of weeping: thus a litura caused by the writer's tears is a most appropriate ‘trade-mark’ for epistles written in elegiac metre.

8. Cf. in general terms Rahn (1958), Anderson (1973) 81.

9. With the collocation Trist. 1.1.14 de lacrimis factas … meis, compare Propertius 4.3.4 e lacrimis facta … meis. However, Trist. 1.1.13 qui uiderit illas perhaps looks rather towards Her. 3.3 quascumque aspicies, thus strengthening the strand of allusion which is more likely on general grounds to be immediate to the reader of Tristia 1.

10. This principle of two-tier allusion is enunciated by Cairns (1979) 121; cf., e.g., Kenney(1979) 106-12 with n.31 on the sources of Virgil, , Aen. 2.471-5 and 496–9Google Scholar.

11. For the systematic recall of Tristia 1.1 in Tristia 3.1, see Frćaut (1972) 311-12, Evans (1983) 51-2, and the discussions of Trist. 3.1.71-2 in n.2 above, and of 3.1.11-12 in section ii below.

12. In Trist. 3.1.15 littera suffusas quod habet maculosa lituras, note that littera can be interpreted either as ‘a letter, a written character’ (OLD s.v. littera 2), or as ‘a letter, an epistle’ (OLD s. v. littera 7). Both usages are frequent in Ovid, as is the play between them.

Trist. 3.1.15 contains another interesting verbal detail too. If Ovid smudges with his tears the littera that he is writing, what results, we read, is a litura. The paronomasia between the two key words in the line may conceivably be felt to offer a concrete enactment of the very relationship which they describe: for, if one of Ovid's tears were to land in the middle of the word littera itself, as Ovid was writing it here in Trist. 3.1.15, would not the resultant smudge (littera … maculosa) cause it to become visually indistinguishable from … the word litura? One might perhaps argue for the same reflexive twist in the earlier Her. 3.1 & 3 too.

13. Kennedy (1984).

14. John Henderson helped me to clarify this point.

15. For the poet-parent image in Ovid's exile poetry, see now Davisson (1984); for the poet-parent image elsewhere in classical and post-classical literature, see Curtius (1953) 132-4 and Davisson (1984) 111.

16. So, e.g.. Luck (1967-77) on Trist. 1.1.113-4, Nagle (1980) 84.

17. For the Ulysses comparison in Ovid's exile poetry, see Rahn (1958) 115-8= (1968) 492-8, Evans (1983)40.

18. Ovid's liking for etymological word-play will be demonstrated in detail in Dr McKeown's forthcoming commentary on the Amores. Such play is an important feature of all learned poetry at Rome: cf. Cairns (1979a) 90-9 on Tibullus, Snyder (1980) on Lucretius.

19. Many Greek names are compounded from τῆλε ‘far’: see Chantraine (1968-80) s.v.

20. Note that the quibble works in Greek as well as in Latin translation: πούς admits precisely the same ambiguity between bodily and metrical feet as does pes. Greek poets do not seem to exploit this fact as frequently as do their Latin successors; but for two ‘textbook examples’ see Aristophanes, , Frogs 1323–1324Google Scholar, and Simias, , Egg (= A.P. 15.27) 6ffGoogle Scholar. pointed out to me by Neil Hopkinson.

21. So especially Nagle (1980) 22, who adds the observation that ‘all Ovid's pes-puns contain a statement of poetics’.

22. Kenney (1982) 446.

23. I.e. Luck (1967-77), trans, of Trist. 1.1.112.

24. I am not quite fair here. Since I first drafted this section of my essay, two of my fellow-participants in the boom in late-Ovidian studies have independently come up with the same improved answer given below: Posch (1983) 61 n.118, and Davisson (1984) 112.

25. Riley (1851), note on Trist. 1.1.113-4.

26. Met. 1.1-2 in noua fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora.

27. uoluo and its cognates often connote changeability in Latin: see especially OLD s.v. uolubilis 2b ‘liable to change, unstable’, uolumina itself is thus used by Pliny, Nat. 7.147 magna sortis humanae … uolumina.

28. See, e.g., Kenney (1982) 446.

29. ''See Grisart (1959) and, e.g., Evans (1983) 43–4.

30. Note that as well as meaning ‘my offspring, my flesh and blood’ (OLD s.v. uiscus 5), as the context here demands, uiscera nostra can also contain a hint of ‘my <own> vitals’ (OLD s.v. uiscus 2): the language allows Ovid to identify for a moment with Meleager as well as with his mother.

31. Trist. 1.7.18 et melior matre fuisse soror, Met. 8.463 pugnat materque sororque, 475 esse tamen melior germana parente. Trist. 1.7.17 utque cremasse …, 20 imposui rapidis uiscera nostra rogis, Met. 8.478 rogus iste cremet mea uiscera. For these echoes, see Grisart (1959) 127 and n.3, Davisson (1984) 112.

32. Luck (1967-77) on Trist. 1.7.25-6 appears to take the point.

33. Simon Goldhill helped me to clarify this.

34. See throughout Evans (1983) 43.

35. Note the further pun within Trist. 1.7.4 itself: temporibus non est apta corona meis ‘a crown does not befit my temples’; but also more than a hint of (cf. Trist. 1.1.4) ‘a crown does not befit my present circumstances’.

36. Note, incidentally, that this is not the only occasion in the first century A.D. when a new transformation is put up for membership of the Metamorphoses; and it may indeed be from Trist. 1.1.119-22 that Seneca gets the idea for his famous conceit in the Apocolocyntosis: 9.5 … censeo uti diuus Claudius ex hac die deus sit ita uti ante eum quis optimo iure factus sit, eamque rem ad Metamorphosis Ovidi adiciendam.

37. With Trist. 1.1.1-2 and 15-16 compare in the ‘Metamorphoses preface’ Trist. 1.7.35-6; with Trist. 1.1.46 scriptaque cum uenia qualiacumque leget compare in the main body of the seventh elegy Trist. 1.7.11-12 carmina … / … quae mando qualiacumque legas and 1.7.31 ueniam pro laude peto; and, amongst other elements which make one think of the Tristia 1.1 programme in connection with the Metamorphoses here, note especially the recurrence at Trist. 1.7.38 of the poet-dominus image found in Trist. 1.1.1-2.

38. See Evans (1983) 35 n.9.

39. Trist. 3.10.75 aspiceres nudos, sine fronde, sine arbore campos; Met. 8.789 triste solum, sterilis, sine fruge, sine arbore tellus, with Hollis (1970) ad loc. What is immediately striking is the recurrence of those adjectival phrases with sine; but the echo gains in piquancy if the reader of Trist. 3.10.75 happens to recall the first two words of the line being alluded to.

40. Martin Helzle drew my attention to the echo:

omnia perdidimus: tantummodo uita relicta est,

praebeat ut sensum materiamque mali (Pont. 4.16.49-50)

omnia perdidimus: superest, cur uiuere tempus

in breue sustineam, proles gratissima matri (Met. 13.527-8)

The two laments are all the closer in that Hecuba is mistaken in her flicker of optimism in Met. 13.527-8. She learns immediately after these lines that her proles gratissima, Polydorus, is in fact dead: thus Ovid's version of her words in Pont. 4.16.49-50 can be felt to be a response to the full reality of her situation, of which she has not yet been made aware.

41. Kenney (1965) 39-42.

42. The suggestion is reported at Kenney (1965) 40n.2. For the title ‘Heroides’, attested in Priscian, Gramm.Lat. ii.544 Keil, see Palmer (1898) x-xi. The probability is strong that both this and the longer form ‘Epistulae Heroidum’ go back to Ovid.

43. The fact that Ovid's Penelope in Heroides 1 is very closely modelled on Homer's (see the brilliant discussion of Kennedy (1984)) lends added point to the conceit here. Incidentally, Jacobson (1974) 409, discussing the arrangement of the Heroides, accounts for Penelope's pride of place in terms of this literary ancestry: as the representative of Homer, the first poet, she is the one chosen by Ovid to begin the collection.

44. Lee (1959) 407, also taking heroidas in 33 as a reference to Ovid's own poetry, attractively interprets its epithet sanctas as an allusion to the fact that the mythological characters of the Heroides boast a grander generic pedigree (epic, tragic) than do the women found in conventional love elegy.