H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: OVIDIO

M.: Boys, since the rain has rendered cricket metaphysical, we shall turn to Ovid. G.: A better use of weather. Shropshire.: Better nor cricket, sir. Cricket’s only Latin when they score. M.: Quite. Our question is not what Ovid wrote best, but what he wrote first. G.: Or at least first datably. M.: Just so. We are not in search of a printer, only of chronology. Shropshire.: So not first published, sir, but first one as can be pinned down. M.: Precisely. And pinned down by evidence, not by enthusiasm. G.: Then the obvious starting-point is his own autobiography. M.: Yes. Tristia 4.10. Shropshire.: That’s the one where he tells us about himself after everyone has stopped enjoying him. G.: A fair summary of exile literature. M.: Ovid says there, in effect, that his poems on Corinna were his earliest work. G.: Which makes the Amores, in some form, the earliest datable composition. Shropshire.: “Poems on Corinna” sounds a bit tidier than love elegy in installments. M.: It usually is tidier than the poems themselves. G.: The complication being that the surviving Amores are a second edition. M.: Exactly. First in five books, later reduced to three. Shropshire.: Cut down, like school pudding. G.: Or improved, which is the editorial superstition. M.: Quite. So the earliest datable composition is not necessarily the surviving first poem in our present text, but the earliest phase of the Amores. G.: And the date usually proposed is around 25 or 26 before Christ. Shropshire.: Before Christ, sir, or before collections? M.: Do not become jocular about chronology. G.: One should rather say, if one is to sound Roman, around 729 or 728 ab urbe condita. Shropshire.: There he goes. M.: And he is right to go. If boys insist on speaking of Romans, they should sometimes date like Romans. Shropshire.: Very well, sir. Seven hundred and twenty-eight or twenty-nine from t’ founding. G.: Do not flatten the city before we have founded it. M.: Let us keep both systems in view. Ovid born in 43 B.C., that is 711 A.U.C., and if he began the earliest Amores at seventeen or eighteen, the date comes out around 729 or 728 A.U.C., that is 25 or 26 B.C. Shropshire.: I can do the Christian one easier. G.: Which is exactly why you should be made to do the Roman one. M.: Now, titles. G.: I distrust titles. M.: We know. Shropshire.: He distrusts everything till it’s in Latin and declining. G.: Titles are often posterity in a wig. M.: Still, Amores is at least useful. G.: Only as a shelf-label. What I want is the incipit. M.: Naturally. Shropshire.: He wants the first line, sir. Says it catches the poet before editors start dressing him. G.: A good incipit is less diplomatic than a title-page. M.: Then the surviving opening of Amores 1.1 is where we begin. G.: Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam. Shropshire.: In the vernacular, sir? M.: Yes, since you are here as our provincial conscience. Shropshire.: “I were settin’ to do arms and them violent wars in a proper heavy metre.” G.: It is comforting that Augustus conquered the world for that. M.: Continue. G.: Edere, materia conveniente modis. M.: And the sense? G.: “I was preparing to set forth arms and violent wars in weighty verse, with subject matching measure.” Shropshire.: “I were goin’ to write about fightin’ proper, in t’ right sort o’ beat for it.” M.: Better than I feared. G.: Then Cupid steals a foot, and the whole martial pretension collapses into elegy. M.: Exactly. Which is one reason the incipit matters. It gives us not merely a beginning, but a programmatic false beginning. Shropshire.: He starts like Virgil and ends up mooning after Corinna. G.: A useful career summary. M.: Now, the incipit belongs to the surviving edition. Does that prove it was the very first thing he ever composed? G.: No. M.: Good. It proves only that the extant Amores begin there. Shropshire.: So there may’ve been earlier bits in the old five-book version. G.: Or indeed some juvenile piece now lost, like the famous Gigantomachia half-promised by scholars and never met in the street. M.: Just so. There is vague evidence of youthful exercises, but the first secure datable composition remains the early Amores. G.: “Poems on Corinna,” as the autobiographical testimony has it. Shropshire.: Corinna again. She gets in earlier than history. M.: Love often does. G.: Then perhaps the earliest datable composition in the strictest sense is the original five-book Amores. M.: Yes, or the earliest strata of them. Shropshire.: Strata sounds geological. As if he were quarried. G.: Poetry is usually sediment once enough grammarians have walked over it. M.: Now, if we want a date, we must be careful. We can date the beginning approximately, but not assign a day and month to the first elegiac couplet. G.: Quite. Chronology here is by life-stage, not by docket. Shropshire.: So “about twenty-five before Christ,” or “about seven hundred and twenty-nine from t’ city,” and leave it at that. M.: Leave it with dignity, yes. G.: I would prefer 729 A.U.C. as the classroom formula. Shropshire.: Because it makes it sound as if Rome mattered more than Bethlehem. G.: In Roman poetry, it generally did. M.: Enough. Let us return to the incipit. G.: Very well. Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam. M.: What do we learn from it, besides the fact that Ovid is teasing epic? G.: That he announces the generic temptation before surrendering to Cupid. Shropshire.: He starts off all helmet and no discipline. M.: More soberly, he places himself against the epic tradition, only to decline from it by metrical violence. G.: Or metrical theft. M.: Quite. Cupid steals a foot. A splendidly technical myth. Shropshire.: That bit I like. God of love as petty thief from t’ prosody cupboard. G.: A commoner’s insight, but not a bad one. M.: Then if we are dating the earliest datable composition, we date not merely a love poem, but the beginning of Ovid’s career-long habit of opening by generic disturbance. G.: That is well put. Shropshire.: He likes beginning by pretending to begin something else. M.: Exactly. That is why the incipit matters. G.: And why titles matter less. M.: Less, yes, but not not at all. Shropshire.: That’s nearly English. G.: It is Roman enough if doubled properly. M.: Now, other titles and dates, for order’s sake. Heroides come after the earliest Amores. G.: As Ovid himself indicates in Amores 2.18. M.: Yes. Tragedy is also mentioned as an intervening aspiration. Shropshire.: He nearly went tragic before settling for women with stationery. G.: A useful description of the Heroides. M.: Then later come the Ars, the Remedia, and so on. G.: But none of these dislodge the autobiographical priority of the Corinna poems. M.: Correct. Shropshire.: So if a master were cruel enough to ask, “What is Ovid’s earliest datable composition?” we say— G.: The earliest phase of the Amores, the poems on Corinna, composed when he was about seventeen or eighteen. M.: And if the same master were crueller and asked for a date? Shropshire.: About 25 or 26 B.C. G.: Or 729 or 728 A.U.C. M.: Very good. And if he asked for the surviving incipit? G.: Arma gravi numero violentaque bella parabam. Shropshire.: “I were set to do war in a proper grand metre,” until Cupid pinched a foot and turned it into dalliance. M.: That last part is not the incipit. Shropshire.: No, sir, but it’s what happens to it. G.: Which is more than can be said for many school translations. M.: Now, before we close, Mr Grice wished to say something absurd about the gens Ovidia. G.: Only that Ovidia sounds alarmingly like ovum. Shropshire.: Egg, sir. M.: Thank you, Mr Shropshire. We have Latin in the room. G.: I do not propose a serious etymology. Only that to an inattentive ear Ovidii sound as if they ought to hatch. Shropshire.: Poet comes out of an egg and starts on Corinna. M.: You will not write that in an essay. Shropshire.: No, sir. Only in memory. G.: Quite right. The nomen is Ovidius; the gens Ovidia; any resemblance to breakfast is accidental. M.: A relief to philology. Shropshire.: Though Naso doesn’t help much either. G.: No. One gets either eggs or noses, and neither quite produces Sulmo. M.: Boys, Roman names are not to be reconstructed from schoolboy zoology. Shropshire.: No, sir. Only gently mocked by it. G.: As all noble nomenclature ought to be. M.: One final matter. If we give the date A.U.C., what Roman numeral would you write for 729? Shropshire.: DCCXXIX. G.: And 728 is DCCXXVIII. M.: Correct. So the classroom answer, in its most Roman dress, would be: Ovid’s earliest datable composition is the earliest phase of the Amores, the poems on Corinna, composed about DCCXXVIII–DCCXXIX A.U.C. Shropshire.: Which in the Christian calendar is 26–25 before Christ. G.: There is something indecent in making Ovid answer to the Christian calendar. M.: History has many indecencies. Schoolmasters must survive them. Shropshire.: Like cricket in rain. G.: Or titles without incipits. M.: Enough. Write down the Latin, both dates, and one sentence on why the incipit matters more than the title. Shropshire.: In English or Latin, sir? M.: In English. I have suffered enough vernacular for one hour. G.: That is an incipit of a schoolmaster if ever there was one. M.: Out.