Amores1.1–5

Abstract

Abstract ‘There's a certain ... if anyone here will wish to know ... madam. Her name is Mrs Thirsty’. Comic scripts need a comic to perform them. Read silently they are dead. For this opening to Amores 1.8 the epexegete has to imagine a brilliant performer carrying it off: his timing, gesture, pitch and pace of voice, play of features (leer? or frown?), pregnant pause while the listeners realize they are being mocked. Ovid was a brilliant performer. It was a great sorrow to him in exile that if he were to recite his poems, nobody would understand him (Tristia 3.14.39-40). Composing a poem which you can't read to anyone is the same thing as performing rhythmic gestures in the dark (Pont. 4.2.33). This chapter attempts to imagine Ovid's recitation of Amores 1.1-6 to track the flight of the performing flea of Latin poetry: risisse Cupido dicitur.

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