Two journeys are implied by the existence of Tristia 1: one, by a poet, a from Rome to the gates of the Black Sea; the other, by a book, from the gates of the Black Sea back to Rome. Each of these journeys is explicitly, and prominently, discussed in Tristia 1; and each makes its presence felt in various ways throughout Tristia 1. Leaving for another day the outward voyage, described especially in the second, fourth, tenth and eleventh poems, I am going to deal in this essay with the return trip of Ovid's book to Rome, as anticipated at some length in the very opening poem of the collection. And (because that is still a somewhat unwieldy topic) I am going to focus on the final destination of Tristia 1 within Rome, as specified in the last twenty lines or so of this first poem: viz: the bookcase in Ovid's Roman home. In these programmatically charged lines, the personified first book of exile poetry finds itself face to face with the poetry books written by Ovid before his exile. I want in the ensuing pages to take a closer look than is usually taken at some details of this and other encounters with Ovid's past writings in the first poems from exile; and my hope is that this analysis will tell us a few things along the way about how the poet is trying here to relate his literary present to his literary past.

This paper began life a long time ago as a kind of response to Robert Maltby's Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds 1991); it took shape on the conference circuit at the same time that James J.O'Hara's True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor 1996) was nearing completion. 1 It had an even more remote reference point in a working out of some unresolved feelings about Frederick Ahl's Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca 1985). A combination of new department chairing and new parenthood caused the paper to miss its appointment with a publisher back in 1998. It then sank into the dormancy from which I am here rescuing it, encouraged on the one hand by a number of friends and colleagues who have read and commented on privately-circulated copies over the years, and on the other by the hoped-for hospitality of an electronic journal to work of a slightly irregular kind. It may now appear just in time to mark the next major event in Latin etymologizing interpretation: John Henderson's Isidore's Creation: Truth from Words (Cambridge) will be published soon. Although I have updated individual references where appropriate, I have not tried to recast the argument in any major way, nor to offer full bibliographical back-up for every passing generalization: the paper is intentionally presented as what it is, a lightly annotated lecture and a mid-1990s period-piece.Venus, Varro and the vates: toward the limits of etymologizing interpretation the bondage of love is a quite literal statement of the agency of Venus. Let the late-Republican polymath and grammarian Varro explain, in a passage of his De Lingua Latina which describes how heat and moisture are embodied, respectively, in the male and the female reproductive forces (LL 5.61-2):… et mas ignis, quod ibi semen, aqua femina, quod fetus ab eius humore, et horum vinctionis vis Venus. Hinc comicus: "huic victrix Venus, videsne haec?" Non quod vincere velit Venus, sed vincire. ipsa Victoria ab eo quod superati vinciuntur 3 … and fire is male, which the semen is in the other case, and water is female, because the embryo develops from her moisture, and the force that brings their vinctio "binding" is Venus "Love'. Hence the comic poet says, "huic Venus victrix …"not because Venus wishes (or signifies) vincere "to conquer", but vincire "to bind'. Victory herself is named from the fact that the overpowered vinciuntur "are bound'.In a footnote here, the Loeb editor Roland Kent, on behalf of mid 20 th century classical linguistics, offers a brisk reprimand to Varro for the high-handedness of these etymological explanations: 4 'Apparently Venus is said to be the basis of the word vinctio; wrong.' No meeting of minds across the millennia here, evidently. But Varro's words make a good deal of sense in a Roman poetic context. Consider Propertius again, four poems earlier in Book 3, resolving to take the time to negotiate a kind of lovers" contract before going to bed with his girl (3.20.19-23):...

The aim of this essay is to confront some ageing generalisations about Ovid which seem to have survived the latest close readings of his poetry intact. Most of the critics who have recently been casting new light on particular poems and passages have been too cautious to use their very specific findings to call explicitly into question long-established overviews of the Ovidian oeuvre. However, an attempt of some kind should be made. Today's generalisation is nothing more than an accretion of yesterday's particular readings; and reassessment of it can come only when it is tested against a new generation of particular readings. My focus, therefore, will be on specifics, but with an untimid eye towards overviews. A like absence of timidity will also be found in my specifics themselves. Writers of ‘general’ articles tend to eschew difficult or controversial interpretations of particular passages, lest some overall balance in their presentation of an author be upset. I shall have few such qualms: one of my aims is precisely to destabilise — however slightiy — the terms of reference within which Ovidian poetry is usually read. Indeed, I shall risk beginning with what will probably be the most controversial reading in my essay.

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