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Virgil: the Literary Impact W.R

Virgil: the Literary Impact W.R

CHAPTER SEVEN

VIRGIL: THE LITERARY IMPACT W.R. Barnes ,

Virgil is everywhere in Ovid; I a new index is needed.2 also is in the NIet., with the criticism of Homer,3 which will have influ­ enced Ovid's reading of Virgi1.4 is there behind Virgil, in some places significantly.5 But the epithet for Ovid among modern scholars, even in the Met., is Callimachean, not Virgilian.6 The poem is a poem of many genres.7

Genre. Ovid's response to Virgil first presents itself as a matter of generic preference in .s Announcing in 1.1 in the man­ ner of Roman admirers of that he will not write hexa­ meter verse on arms and battles but verse on , he begins with his failure to write a poem like the , and ends with his Muse taking the crown that Octavian might take in the . 9 In

I So, a little differently, F. B()mer in Ovid (ed. M. von Albrecht, E. Zinn, Darmstadt 1968),198 (= (;Jmn.66 (1959), 285). Bibliography on Ovid and Virgil: ANRW 2.31. I (1980), 59ff. (Suerbaum), 2.3 1.4 (1981), 2204if (Hofmann), EV s.v. Ovidio. On Ovid's "sources" and "models" in general, ANRW2.31.4.2200ff (Hofmann), 1". Bomer, Gymn. 81 (1974), 511ff. 2 The standard index remains A. Zingerle, Ovidius . ..2 (Innsbruck 1871 ). A mass of material in Bomer's , but until an index appears, cf. his notes to 12.76, 14.1 02L 3 M. Lamberg, Boreas 5 (1982), 112ff. 4 Ovid as oi l primo critico di Virgilio', R. Lamacchia, 12 (1960), 310ff. Popular or scholarly criticism of Virgil is another matter, but cL .I.e. M cKeown, PUS 2 (1979), 172 on Arn.3.12.38. 5 P.E. Knox, Ovid's Metamorphoses . . .( PCPhS SuppL 11 1986), 69ff. On to Virgil and to Ennius behind Virgil see also Bomer (n. I , 1974), 503ff. and his n. on 1\1et.9.48f.; on the practice of 'double' allusions in general, S. Hinds, 17te rnetamorpllO­ sis q[ Persephone (Cambridge 19B7), 151 , n. 16. (i Ovid as 'Callimachean': cf. EJ. Bernbeck, Beobachtungen <.ur DarsteLLungsart in Ovids Metamorphosen (Munchen 1967), 126f., 130f. Ovid as 'Hellenistic' or 'Callimachean' in his response to Virgil: Bomer (n. I, 1959/1968), 198, R. Lamacchia, AR 14 (1969), 4, n. 5. But detail seems to bc lacking. 7 'An anthology of genres', EJ. Kenney, in his introduction to A.D. Melville's trans. (Oxford 1986), xviii. !I O.S. Due, Changing Forms (Copenhagen 1974), 45ff. 9 Cf. .J.C. McKeown Ovid, Amore.r 2 (Liverpool 1989) on 1.1-2. V. Buchheit, 0mn.93 (1986), 2571f, with further bibL, 257, n. 2. 258 CHAPTER SEVEN

the he compares himself to Virgil as a writer of to a writer of epic (395f.). !O But in the Metamorphoses he announces something new, which he writes in verse; II a poem which he later describes, with whatever irony, in terms that Virgil had used for the second half of the Aeneid ( 2.63f.). Virgil himself had passed from the rejection of heroic epic in the Bucolics to the post­ ponement of it in the Georgi£s to the writing of it in the Aeneid; Ovid perhaps alludes to a significant passage in the Georgics. 12 The Aeneid had its Alexandrian, "Callimachean", elegiac features; Ovid takes po- . etic advantage of that generic complexity. I:> He himself brought to the Metamorphoses certain features of sentence and verse structure, and certain motifs and themes, from elegy.1 4 The generic character of the Metam01phoses, as a whole and in its part", is more overtly complex than that of the Aeneid, and description of it continues. 15 Ovid's re­ sponse to Virgil in the poem is only one feature, or rather two or three, of that complexity. What follows will focus on Ovid's response to Virgil; larger questions lie beyond. Callimachus may not have said quite as much about long poems in hexameter verse on heroic sub­ jects as has been thought; and his Roman admirers' allusions to his principles may need to be reconsidered. 1G The prooemium in its implication of ·adherence to Callimachus' principles resembles and perhaps echoes Buc.6Y (Whether that ad­ herence is partial, whether perpetuum indicates a departure, and whether it is ironical, are three further questions.)18 The opening sequence of the poem, from to Cosmogony to and Pyrrha and then a series of mythological stories, resembles the sequence of ' song in Buc.6. 19 The story is in a prominent position in both

10 Other explicit references to Virgil and to the -legend arc common enough in Ovid's earlier poctry (e.g. Am.1.l5.25f., An 3.337f.) but need a little caution Oike Prop. 2.34.65f.; R.F. Thomas, PLLS 5 (1985), 71, n. 2). I i V. Buchheit, flerm .94 (1966), 83[, EJ. Kenney, PCPhS 22 (1976), 46f., Knox (n. 5), 9. 12 Thomas (n. 10), 61ft, AJP 99 (1978), 449f. 13 Hinds (n. 5), 133f. 14 Elegiac theme and variation, as in 1.489f.; caesurae, Knox (n. 5), 84ff. , motifs and themes, H. Trankle, Henn.91 (1963), 459ff. 15 Cf. S.E. Hinds' review of Knox (n. 5), CP 84 (1989), 266ff. 16 Knox (n. 5), 9f with n. 12, A. Cameron, TAPA 122 (1992), 305ft:; but notice Knox (n . 5), 71 on "thc invention of the Augustan ". 17 Knox (n. 5), 10. 18 Contrast Knox (n. 5), 10. 19 ib. 1Off.