UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN CLASSICS a80 c^^-y. ^/*y-?/ ILLINOIS CLASSICAL STUDIES VOLUME XIV.l & 2 SPRING/FALL 1989 Miroslav Marcovich, Editor ISSN 0363-1923 each Lost Book is $50.00. The person charging this material is responsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- nary action and may result in dismissal from University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN RPRO& ILLINOIS CLASSICAL STUDIES VOLUME XIV. 1 & 2 Spring/Fall 1989 Mi ro Slav Marcovich, Editor SCHOLARS PRESS ISSN 0363-1923 ILLINOIS CLASSICAL STUDIES VOLUME XIV. 1 & 2 S ilver and Late Latin Poetry The Board of Trustees University of Illinois Copies of the journal may be ordered from: Scholars Press Customer Services P. O. Box 6525 Ithaca, New York 14851 Printed in the U.S.A. EDITOR Miroslav Marcovich ASSOCIATE EDITOR David Sansone ADVISORY EDITORIAL COMMITTEE John J. Bateman Howard Jacobson David F. Bright J. K. Newman Gerald M. Browne CAMERA-READY COPY PRODUCED BY Barbara J. Kiesewetter Illinois Classical Studies is published semi-annually by Scholars Press. Camera-ready copy is edited and produced in the Department of the Classics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Each contributor receives twenty-five offprints. Contributions should be addressed to: The Editor Illinois Classical Studies Deparunent of the Classics 4072 Foreign Languages Building 707 South Mathews Avenue Urbana, Illinois 61801 . 9 Contents 1 Homer, Vergil, and Complex Narrative Structures in Latin Epic: An Essay 1 FREDERICK AHL, Cornell University 2. Tityrus in Rom—Bemcrkungen zu eincm vcrgilischen Thema and seiner Rezcptionsgeschichte 33 JOCHEM KOPPERS, Technische Hochschulc Aachen 3. Parce, precor . ou Tibulle et la priere. Etude stylislique 49 J. HELLEGOUARC'H, Universite de Paris-Sorbonne 4. Was Ovid a Silver Latin Poet? 69 KARL GALINSKY, University of Texas at Austin 5. Lycaon: Ovid's Deceptive Paradigm in A/e^amorp/io^cj I 91 WILLIAM S. ANDERSON. University of California at Berkeley 6. Silver Threads Among the Gold: A Problem in the Text of Ovid's Metamorphoses 103 R. J. TARRANT, Harvard University 7. Knaves and Fools in Senecan Drama 1 1 ANNA LYDIA MOTTO and JOHN R. CLARK. University of South Florida 8. The Anapaests of the Ociavia 135 GEORG LUCK, The Johns Hopkins University 9. The Confessions of Persius 145 JOEL C. RELIHAN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 10. Petronius Satyricon 46. 8: lillerae thesaurum est 169 CHARLES WITKE, The University of Michigan 1 1 . Martial et la pensee de Scncque 175 PIERRE GRIMAL, Institut de France 12. Martial's "Witty Conceits": Some Technical Observations 185 JOHN P. SULLIVAN, University of California at Santa Barbara . 13. Marzialc e la Letteratura per i Satumali (poetica dcH'intraltenimenlo e cronologia della pubblicazione dci libri) 201 MARIO CITRONI, Universita di Firenze 14. Notes on Slatius' r/jefca/d Books I and II 227 J. B. HALL, University of London 15. Later Latin Poetry: Some Principles of Interpretation 243 J. K. NEWMAN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 16. Des droits et des devoirs du poete salirique h I'age d'argent de la lalinite 265 JEAN GERARD, Universiie de Paris X-Nanterre 17. On Housman's /wvewa/ 285 R. G. M. NISBET, Corpus Christi College, Oxford 18. Man and Nature in Ausonius' Moid/e 303 R. P. H. GREEN, University of St. Andrews 19. D'Aratos a Avienus: Asironomie et ideologie 317 HUBERT ZEHNACKER, Universite de Paris-Sorbonne 20. Some Aspects of Commodian 331 BARRY BALDWIN, University of Calgary 2 1 Allegory and Reality: Spes, Victoria and the Date of Prudentius's Psychomachia 347 DANUTA SHANZER, University of California at Berkeley 22. Palestra bei FYudentius 365 CHRISTLAlN GNILKA. Westfalische Wilhelms-Univcrsitat, Miinstcr 23. Proserpina's Tapestry in Claudian's De raptu: Tradition and Design 383 MICHAEL von ALBRECHT, University of Heidelberg 24. Die Ubcrliefcrungsgeschichte von Claudians Carmina maiora 391 PETER L. SCHMIDT, Universitat Konstanz 25. Prosper, De /ngrar/i: Textual Criticism 417 MIROSLAV MARCOVICH, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 26. L'imitation de Stace chez Dracontius 425 CLAUDE MOUSSY, Universite de Paris-Sorbonne 27. Platons KuB und seine Folgcn 435 WALTHER LUDWIG, Universitat Hamburg Homer, Vergil, and Complex Narrative Structures in Latin Epic: An Essay FREDERICK AHL Nikos Kazantzakis was arguably the last major European poet to write epic. Epic, especially in languages no longer understood or spoken outside academic circles, is now the scholar's preserve. The general reader encounters the Iliad and Odyssey in translation and through the intermediacy of scholars who often study the originals for reasons other than poetic, searching Homer for information, linguistic and social, about the Bronze Age. General interest in Hellenistic and Roman heroic epic is waning, despite the flurry of publication, since its appeal is its literary form and its political and intellectual resonances, which have less to allure scholars or readers whose primary interest is not poetry. Much of it lies in what Paul Friedlander called "the graveyard of literary history": extant, but unread. The fall from favor of Statius' once admired Thebaid coincides with the gradual disappearance of epic as a vital narrative form, with the rejection by poets of extended narrative verse, and with the growing feeling among scholars that the value of an epic is in some way proportional to its usefulness as primary source material for other studies. Scholars reacted with overwhelming enthusiasm to Milman Parry's "oral" theory of Homeric composition, and his insistence that the Iliad and Odyssey not be treated as "literary" epics. His theory of the "oral" origins and transmission of the Iliad and Odyssey, which dominated Homeric scholarship for several decades, encouraged the epics to be approached not as the product of a master poetic craftsman but as a patchwork, with evident sutures, of different and sometimes conflicting oral traditions. Observed narrative complexity in the Iliad or Odyssey could be attributed not to artistic design but to felicitous seaming by rhapsodes, or to coincidental juxtaposition of ideas which, however artistically conu-ived they might appear to literary critics, were not the product of conscious artisuy. Ironically, the "oral" theory replaced poetic complexity with other scholarly complexities. Indeed, the chief complaint leveled against the "oral" Homer by literary critics was, until recently, that it "deterred the reader from taking Homer's expression at its face value."' ' P. Vivanle, Homer (New Haven 1985) 12. 2 Illinois Classical Studies, XIV Michael Lynn George, in his excellent Word, Narrative, and the Iliad, puts the problem this way: All Parry's work took shape within the horizon of a world whose cardinal points had been charted by Matthew Arnold. For this critic concerned with the translation of Homer, the epics were conceived as the great Utopia of transparency: Homeric poetry possessed "the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky." Within this context of unequivocal purity, transparency and translatability, Arnold promulgated those four cardinal truths—"directness," "simplicity," "rapidity" and "nobility"—which were to acquire canonical status in Homeric scholarship. Parry's theory of orality was to be marked by a constant return to and reworking of these principles.^ For a while Homer was set almost beyond reach of literary criticism, until, paradoxically, the deconstructionists, as foes of authorial intentionality, reunified him by denying him altogether: by talking of text rather than poet, and thereby allowing us to examine the text's poetic implications quite apart from presuppositions about what the poet (or poets) intended. The Novel istic Model Post-Homeric epic is clearly not "oral." Yet scholars still evaluate it in terms of what Lynn George calls Arnold's "four cardinal truths" which have acquired "canonical status" as measures of nairative excellence in ancient epic generally. There lingers from the days of gentlemanly Classical education a D. H. Lawrence-like aversion to insincerity, to the ironic, and to the non-explicit. Scholars arrived at three what one might call models of narrative to support the explicit reading of epic. A fourth model, that of the dcconsu-uctionist, has made little impact yet on Latin epic studies. The "scholarly" model sees poetic narrative as a vehicle for virtuoso imitation and reworking of earlier writers, and is explained in terms of emulation, of artistic rivalry as an end, very often, in itself. It is an outgrowth of "source-research," and has a narcissistic appeal because it construes the poet as a mirror-image of the scholar, struggling to find his place within a genre, within a tradition, making narrative choices governed by a desire to imitate and conform. In its darker moments, the scholarly model is influenced by self-hatred: the poet is a mere imitator whose work smells of the (Alexandrian) Library rather than the "real" world. The "political" model is applied mostly to Roman "national" epic—the Aeneid, Pharsalia, or Punica—whose intent is taken to be the validation (or subversion) of Rome, or a particular ruler and his program. The political ^ (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 1988) 58. See also Piero Pucci. Odysseus Poluiropos: Inlerlexlual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad, Cornell Studies in Qassical Philology 46 Glhaca and l^don 1987). Frederick Ahl 3 model usually assumes the poet is "sincere" in his encomia and flattery, treats the epic as a form of "propaganda," and interprets it accordingly. Less frequently, it denies that the poet is necessarily sincere, arguing that he can oppose program and ruler either overdy or covertly, that his flattery may be not tasteful admiration, but artful deceit. The subversive political model is usually applied, and then with reluctance, only to Lucan's Pharsalia, where the poet's hostility to his contemporary regime seems validated by external data: he took a leading role in a plot to kill Nero.