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ENCORE LA FEMME: OVID, ARS AMATORIA 3.27–30

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2020

T.J. Leary
T.J. Leary*
Affiliation:
London
*
[email protected]
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Extract

      nil nisi lasciui per me discuntur amores:
      femina praecipiam quo sit amanda modo.
      femina nec flammas nec saeuos discutit arcus;
      parcius haec uideo tela nocere uiris.
It was pointed out in 1992 by E.J. Kenney that femina in line 28 ‘sabotages the poet's … disclaimer’ that it is not women generally but ‘only those not ruled out of bounds by stola and uittae’ who are to benefit from his instruction. He suggests instead that, since what is wanted is a variation on the previous line, one should read nec proba, or, as a better possibility, non proba. Kenney's objection to femina is accepted by Roland Mayer, in a note published the following year. After observing, however, that, ‘when a word has intruded itself from a nearby line and expelled the authentic reading, the ductus litterarum is no guide to emendation’, and that bold measures are therefore admissible, Mayer proposes Thais, comparing Rem. am. 385–6 Thais in arte mea est: lasciuia libera nostra est; | nil mihi cum uitta; Thais in arte mea est. Later, W.S. Watt suggested talis, viz. lasciua, noting talis at 142 and talem at 157. None of these suggestions is entirely compelling, however, and Gibson is therefore right just to obelize femina in his edition; but he also points out in the commentary ad loc. the ‘greater oddity’ relating to amanda, asking ‘Should Ovid not be declaring his intention to teach women how to love, rather than declaring that he will teach how they should be loved?’ and even going so far as to suggest that the whole pentameter is fundamentally corrupt and should be obelized.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 910 - 911
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the anonymous CQ reader of this note for several suggestions.

References

2 Kenney, E.J., ‘Chassez la femme’, CQ 42 (1992), 551–2Google Scholar.

3 Mayer, R., ‘La femme retrouvée’, CQ 43 (1993), 504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Watt, W.S., ‘Notes on Latin poetry: Ovid, Lucan, Silius Italicus, Statius, Martial, Rutilius, and fragmentary Latin poets’, BICS 42 (1997–8), 145–58Google Scholar, at 147.

5 Gibson, R.K. (ed.), Ovid Ars Amatoria Book 3 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

6 Other examples can be found at TLL 7.1.691.51–71 s.v. improbus [O. Prinz].

7 This was first expounded by Leach, E.W., ‘Georgic imagery in the Ars Amatoria’, TAPhA 95 (1964), 142–54Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Mart. 3.86.4 ‘non sunt haec mimis improbiora’.

9 The ‘adventurous love poems’ of Servius have not survived, but see A.S. Hollis, Fragments of Roman Poetry c.60 b.c.–a.d. 20 (Oxford, 2007), 427–8.

10 Gibson (n. 5), 26.

11 Cf. Hofmann, J.B., Szantyr, rev. A., Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik (Munich, 1972)Google Scholar, §202A and Woodcock, E.C., A New Latin Syntax (London, 1959)Google Scholar, §203.