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THE BONES OF TIBULLUS: OVID, AMORES 3.9.59

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2024

Kyle Gervais
Kyle Gervais*
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues for an emendation to Ovid, Amores 3.9, Ovid's lament for Tibullus. The transmitted text of line 59 would seem to present a contradiction: Ovid speculates about aliquid nisi nomen et umbra surviving death, and then proceeds in the next few lines to identify that aliquid as, precisely, Tibullus’ umbra. Ovid's original text was most likely aliquid nisi nomen et ossa, referring to a burial site and funerary inscription; with this text, Ovid reproduces details from Tibullus 1.3, a poem which he reworks throughout his elegy.

Keywords

OvidAmoresTristiaTibullustextual criticismLatin elegy
Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 5
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Neil Bernstein and the two anonymous readers for their wise suggestions, some of which I have foolishly ignored. And I thank in particular Chris Brown for putting me on the right track with this emendation, as he has done in the past.

References

1 Bornecque, H. (ed., transl.), Ovide: les Amours (Paris, 1930)Google Scholar; Munari, F. (ed.), P. Ovidii Nasonis Amores (Florence, 1951)Google Scholar; McKeown, J.C. (ed.), Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and Commentary in Four Volumes (Leeds, 1987, 1989, 1999, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Kenney, E.J. (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Amores, Medicamina faciei femineae, Ars amatoria, Remedia amoris (Oxford, 1995 2)Google Scholar; de Verger, A. Ramírez (ed.), Ovidius: Carmina amatoria. Amores; Medicamina faciei femineae; Ars amatoria; Remedia amoris (Munich and Leipzig, 2003)Google Scholar.

2 P.J. Davis (ed., transl.), Ovid Amores Book 3 (Oxford, 2023), ad loc. suggests instead that in lines 59–60 Tibullus has a ‘substantial existence’ in Elysium and ‘is not an umbra’ until explicitly named as such in lines 65–6.

3 Cf. similar formulations at Prop. 2.34.53 nec si post Stygias aliquid restabimus undas and 4.7.1–2 sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit, | luridaque euictos effugit umbra rogos.

4 E.g. G. Showerman (ed., transl.), Ovid: Heroides, Amores. Rev. G.P. Goold (Cambridge, MA, 1914); Bornecque (n. 1) (une ombre); A.D. Melville (transl.), Ovid: The Love Poems (Oxford, 1990).

5 G. Lee (transl.), Ovid's Amores (London, 1968); P. Green (transl.), Ovid: The Erotic Poems (London, 1982).

6 This is the clamor supremus referred to in line 43. The ritual involved the relatives of the deceased calling him or her repeatedly by name: J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Baltimore, 1971), 44.

7 See the verbal echoes listed by Munari (n. 1), 94–6 and Davis (n. 2), and the discussion of Huskey, S.J., ‘In memory of Tibullus: Ovid's remembrance of Tibullus 1.3 in Amores 3.9 and Tristia 3.3’, Arethusa 38 (2005), 367–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar (with further bibliography in n. 2). Beyond Tibullus 1.3, scholars also identify echoes of Tibullus 1.1, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6.

8 Note in particular that the first funeral rite Tibullus mentions is the gathering of ossa after the funeral fire (line 6).

9 If Am. 3.9.37–40 (cf. J.H. Taylor, ‘Amores 3.9: a farewell to elegy’, Latomus 29 [1970], 474–7, at 476) or 3.9.39–40 iacet ecce Tibullus … capit (Huskey [n. 7], 380) are to be understood as an epitaph for Tibullus, reworking Tib. 1.3.55–6, then Ovid has already shown us Tibullus’ nomen on his gravestone before we reach line 59.

10 On the wide variety of inscriptions found in Ovid's works, see Frampton, S.A., Empire of Letters: Writing in Roman Literature and Thought from Lucretius to Ovid (Oxford, 2019), 141–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Ramsby, T.R., ‘Striving for permanence: Ovid's funerary inscriptions’, CJ 100 (2005), 365–91Google Scholar. Frampton's focus is on the Tristia; Ramsby compares Amores 2.6 (the parrot poem), 3.9 and Tr. 3.3, but misses the crucial links with Tibullus 1.3 and minimizes the force of Amores 3.9 in order to conclude that ‘the best memorial is the work of a woman [that is, Corinna in Amores 2.6]’ (373) as a prelude to an argument mainly focussed on the Heroides.

11 See also Ov. Am. 2.6.59–62 and Her. 14.127–30, descriptions of buried ossa marked by an epitaph but without the word nomen.

12 Cf. Aen. 6.379–81 ossa piabunt | et statuent tumulum et tumulo sollemnia mittent, | aeternumque locus Palinuri nomen habebit. In these two passages nomen also refers to the toponyms Caieta and Palinurus: Gervais, K., ‘Positioning Aeneas: a proposed emendation to Aeneid 7.5’, CJ 115 (2019), 146–73Google Scholar, at 186 n. 84. Ovid too will exploit more than one sense of nomen.

13 See Nisbet, R.G.M. and Rudd, N., A Commentary on Horace, Odes, Book III (Oxford, 2004), 368Google Scholar for ‘poetry as a sepulchral monument’ here.

14 Huskey (n. 7).

15 As we have seen, both Catullus and Tibullus ponder questions about what survives of us after death. We can only speculate about whether Ovid also has in mind similar questions pondered by Gallus and Calvus, but it is perhaps noteworthy that two of the surviving fragments of Calvus (15–16) mention physical remains (cinis).