Callimachus' and Ovid's

CHAPTER ONE CALLIMACHUS, OVID, AND ALLUSION mortalia facta peribunt, nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivax. multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, quem penes arbitrium est et ius et norma loquendi. But all that mortals make will die, much less will the glory and lively charm of language remain. Many words now perished will be reborn and others will perish that now hold worthy places; use determines this, use which possesses the authority, law and standard of our speech. (Horace Ars Poetica 68-72) Introduction: Callimachus’ and Ovid’s “Callimacheanism” and Allusion Due to its complexity Callimachus’ poetry is difficult to briefly charac- terize, though the words “recondite” and “recherché” recur in secondary literature concerning his work.1 While in one sense these adjec- tives hit the mark, in another they are unfair and overlook the revolutionary nature of his poetry. To this description one should add that Callimachus’ poetic language is precise—every word counts—and that he seems to have been self-consciously re-working traditional ma- terial into a new, contemporary mode. In his poetry he revises the or- thodox conception of genre by, for example, inserting into one generic form the meter and subject matter of another.2 The end result of his ——— 1 E.g. Clausen (1964), 183; Pfeiffer (1968), 125-126; Bulloch (1989), 9-12; Parsons (1998), 132, 137-138. 2 See e.g. Kroll (1924), for his influential Kreuzung der Gattungen in connection with Ovid’s poetry. Rossi (1971) relates this Kreuzung to the bookishness of the Helle- nistic age, while Fantuzzi (1980), Schwinge (1981), and Zanker (1987) offer more 2 CHAPTER ONE experimentation is that his poetry never ceases to surprise the reader with the unexpected. His poems are filled with unusual tales, linked together in startling ways, and though he freely alludes to and adapts the work of other poets, verbal borrowings are rare. Throughout this poetry of novelty rooted in “the traditional” the reader is constantly aware of the self-conscious display of the learned poet himself.3 Ovid’s Metamorphoses is said to be a Callimachean poem, but what do scholars mean when they use the term “Callimachean”? Though some use this term indiscriminately,4 many scholars employ it to ex- press the general notion that Ovid’s epic is similar to Callimachus’ poetry in subject matter and general poetic style. Most of the Metamor- phoses’ stories, like those of Callimachus, are aetiological or are novel ——— recent discussions on the mixture of genres. Gutzwiller (1997) and Greene (2000) discuss the genus mixtum of Hellenistic poetry of Anyte, Erinna, and Nossis. See Harder, Regtuit, Wakker (1998), for studies concerning genre in Hellenistic poetry, as well as Depew and Obbink (2000), whose book provides generic investigations span- ning various periods of ancient literature. Other scholars reject the notion that the genus mixtum was a product of the Hellenistic age; see Hutchinson (1988), 199-201 and Bulloch (1985), 31ff. On the other hand, Harder (1998), 95 regards the Aetia as a “kind of generic catalogue in which the old literary genres are an object of reflection” and has distinguished three categories of generic allusion. 3 For more general descriptions of Callimachus’ poetry see Trypanis (1958), vii-xiv, and Parsons (1998), 132-138. For a more detailed description of his poetry see Bulloch (1989), 9-30 and Hutchinson (1988), 26-84. 4 In some secondary literature concerning Ovid’s Metamorphoses the terms “Alex- andrian”, “Hellenistic”, and “Callimachean” often appear to be used interchangeably to describe the epic. Several years ago, in the context of Callimachus’ influence on Latin poems, Clausen (1964), 187, wrote “[i]t is a mistake, not uncommon in our literary histories, to employ the terms ‘Hellenistic’, ‘Alexandrian’, ‘Callimachean’ interchangeably. The poetry of Catulus, Valerius Aedituus, Porcius Licinus, and Laevius might be called Hellenistic; but it had little to do with the New Poetry, which is Calli- machean in inspiration.” More recently Thomas (1993), 198 has reiterated this concern and has written that “[a]t times in discussions of Roman poetry even the term ‘Calli- machean’ seems to mean little more than ‘clever’, ‘very Callimachean’ little more than ‘very clever’, and in such cases it does not seem to matter whether the cleverness has any specific connection to Callimachus”, but later adds that “we use the word ‘Calli- machean’ [….to indicate] a programmatic attitude, stylistic outlook, or general poetic and scholarly position”. Some scholars are more discriminate with modifiers and describe the Metamorphoses as a whole as “Hellenistic” or “Alexandrian”, Martini (1933) and Myers (1994), 15. The linking narrative structure is described as “Hellenistic” by Wilkinson (1953), 235-236; Kenney (1992, repr.), 764; Knox (1986), 6; Hutchinson (1988), 329; Myers (1994), 15; though Heinze (1919) and Otis (1970, second ed.), 46- 47, believe that the epic’s narrative style is not “Hellenistic” (or “Callimachean”). Lafaye (1904), 8-12; Galinsky (1975), 1-2; Knox (1986), 18, 67-69, 75-79; Myers (1994), 15, categorize the Metamorphoses as “Hellenistic” in its choice and treatment of, and focus on, mythology, while Knox (1986), 1-6; Solodow (1988), 24-25; Myers (1994), 15; believe that the epic’s mixture of genres may be attributed to a general influence of Hellenistic poetry. .

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