Ovidius Prooemians

Abstract

In noua fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora: di, coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa) adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen. illa P.Lejay ex Erfurtano Amploniano 1 saec. xii: illas codd. In spite of several valuable contributions to the understanding of this proem that have appeared in the last few years, it does not seem to me that modern exegesis has as yet taken all the points that Ovid has contrived to pack into it. This is an astonishingly brief introduction to an epos over 12,000 lines long; and that very brevity ought to put us on our guard. We should expect that not a word will be wasted; and with so little sea-room we should further expect that the reader, though he may be playfully tantalized, will not be actually misled. That was a risk Ovid could not afford to take. Unfortunately his editors have taken it for him by printing and justifying the nonsense which his copyists have made of the second verse of the poem. By so doing they have set a stumbling-block before the feet of the reader on the very threshold, just where the going should be smooth and the omens fair.

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