No abstract

No abstract

In his review of the first edition of Brooks Otis's Ovid as an Epic Poet, William Anderson challenges the notion that structural symmetry is the principle that governs Ovid's narrative design. To propose an alternative view of Ovidian aesthetics, he takes for his example the weaving contest of Arachne and Minerva in Book 6. Minerva's tapestry which depicts her own victory in the contest for the naming of Athens is arranged in a completely symmetrical design. The judging gods stand six on either side of Jupiter; the disputants likewise stand on opposite sides. Each corner of the tapestry contains a panel showing the punishment of mortals who in one way or another have challenged the gods, and the whole is framed with an ornamental border of olive leaves. “The goddess,” as Anderson says, “produced a perfect piece of Classicistic art, structurally balanced and thematically grandiose, in support of the established order.” With this monumental and authoritarian piece of work, the tapestry of Minerva's rival Arachne contrasts in every way. It is flagrantly asymmetrical and lifelike: a swirl of divine figures in unedifying situations … one god after another gratifying his lust for a human woman. There is no apparent structure to the tapestry which consists of nine affairs of Jupiter; six of Neptune; four of Apollo and one each of Liber and Saturn. Juxtaposed as they apparently are, they have a cumulative effect, much as Baroque paintings do by contrast with the neatly arranged masterpieces of Raphael.

No abstract

As examples of the Roman poetry book composed of ten poems, Vergil's Eclogues, Horace's Sermones 1 and Tibullus' first book of Elegies are conspicuous for their similarity of form, all three containing poems of uniform metre and comparable length. Although we cannot be certain that these were the first or only ten poem books in the history of Latin poetry, we cannot help but notice the circumstances that draw them together: their close succession within the space of a decade, their identical positions as the first major publication of each author's career and the well-documented personal association between Horace as central figure of the succession and his two fellow poets, especially his close friendship with Vergil at the time he was composing the Satire Book. While inconclusive in themselves, these circumstances are an inducement to look closely at such similarities of compositional design as the books themselves may show.