Alison Keith

Ovid in Lucan: The Poetics of Instability

After Vergil’s Aeneid, no text so thoroughly informed the early imperial Roman literary imagination as Ovid’s Metamorphoses (published 8 AD). This chapter examines the impact of the literary and imperial programs of the Metamorphoses on Lucan’s civil war poem, for the Bellum Ciuile is the first example of largescale negotiation of the Aeneid through the lens of the Metamorphoses. I argue that Lucan draws on Ovidian subjects, themes and poetic techniques to trace fissures in the optimistic Virgilian epic paradigm.

Sisters and Their Secrets in Flavian Epic

The emotional bond between sisters emerges as a focus of Hellenistic epic, in Apollonios representation of Medea’s sister Chalciope. Roman epic poets thereafter repeatedly explore sororal relations: Ennius describes Ilia’s report of her dream to an unnamed sister (34–50 Sk); Vergil represents Anna as Dido’s confidante; and Ovid includes several myths of sisters’ transformations in the Metamorphoses. It is only in Flavian epic, however, that sisters interact in more than one episode or book. Valerius Flaccus takes Apollonios’ Argonautica as his primary model and further develops the relationship between Medea and Chalciope. Manipulation is a key feature of their relationship as Valerius extends Apollonios’ treatment to represent the goddess Juno impersonating Chalciope, thereby manipulating Medea directly. Statius takes up Valerius’ theme of manipulation but multiplies the number of sororal pairs: the Theban sisters Antigone and Ismene have a mortal analogue in the Argive sisters Argia and Deipyle, and an immortal analogue in the Furies Tisiphone and Megaera. Finally, Silius Italicus reworks Vergil’s portrait of the sisterly bond between Dido and Anna, with Juno appealing to the close emotional bond between the sisters and asking Anna, now the tutelary divinity of Lake Trasimene, to support Hannibal in his campaign against Rome.

Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic

1. Introduction: gender and genre 2. Epic and education: the construction of Roman masculinity 3. The ground of representation 4. Exordia pugnae: engendering war 5. Over her dead body 6. Epilogue.

S. M. Wheeler, A Discourse of Wonders: Audience and Performance in Ovid's Metamorphoses . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Pp. x + 272. ISBN 0-8122-3475-8. £38.95/US

In A Discourse of Wonders, Stephen M. Wheeler introduces a fresh perspective for readers of Ovids Metamorphoses. Drawing on Ovidian scholarship and twentieth-century literary theory, he argues that the poem is not an anthology or collection but a single continuous performance. Wheelers thorough, detailed analysis of how Ovid constructs, cultivates, and transforms his audience challenges the assumption that Ovids narrative persona addresses the reader. Wheeler proposes instead that Ovid represents himself in the poem as an epic storyteller moved to tell a universal history of metamorphosis in the presence of a fictional audience. The longstanding critical interest in Ovids poetics, Wheeler maintains, has tended to obscure the role of the audience in reading and interpreting the Metamorphoses. A Discourse of Wonders offers an imaginative and accessible revaluation of one of the greatest surviving works of classical poetry, one whose enduring influence can be found in literature, art, music, and the performing arts from the Middle Ages to the present.