Penelope in Ovid's Metamorphoses 14.671

Abstract

Penelope in Ovid's Metamorphoses 14.671 Mark Possanza In a passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses, book 14, the god Vertumnus, who has transformed himself into an old woman, is speaking to the orchardist nymph Pomona, who finds plants and trees more companionable than the opposite sex:1 concubitusque fugis nec te coniungere curas.atque utinam uelles! Helene non pluribus essetsollicitata procis nec quae Lapitheia mouitproelia nec coniunx +timidi aut+ audacis Vlixei. (668-71) timidi aut codd. Vertumnus offers three mythological exempla, Helen, Hippodamia, and Penelope, to persuade the nymph that if she did show an interest in men, she would attract more suitors than those illustrious heroines. Although the reference to Penelope in 671 is obvious and the epithet audacis looks genuine, it is not clear whether what lies hidden under the corrupt +timidi aut+ has to do with Penelope or Ulysses.2 Most of the proposed [End Page 89] emendations are based on the assumption that the words after coniunx belong to an epithet phrase that describes Ulysses.3 Of these, timidis audacis Vlixei, adopted by Heinsius from Vaticanus Barberinianus Lat. 70 (13th cent.),4 seems by far the least implausible, although the super fi cial attractions of the collocation timidis audacis begin to fade when one considers that the addition of timidis fits neither Ulysses nor the context. If we take audax as an epithet expressing a permanent quality of the hero, then timidus unduly limits the range of that quality embodied in audax, a quality that allowed Ulysses to best foes, the Cyclops, for example, who certainly cannot be called timidus. If, on the other hand, we are to interpret the combination of timidus and audax as the speaker ' s jibe at Ulysses' pretensions to heroic valor,5 it must be pointed out that such a jibe, while appropriate in the mouth of an Ajax, is completely out of place here where suitors, courtship, and sex are uppermost in the speaker's mind, not the ranking of Achaean warriors.6 Moreover, the [End Page 90] epithet phrase timidis audacis, by virtue of its riddling quality (are we to think of the encounter with Dolon? the slaughter of the suitors?) distracts attention from Penelope herself, who is, after all, the exemplum. In short, the addition of timidus either disparages the heroic stature of Ulysses in a context where such disparagement is clearly out of place or undercuts the force of the Penelope exemplum by giving prominence to the husband, when in fact it is Penelope who is the more important of the two. I want, therefore, to suggest that in its original form the line contained an epithet for Penelope, prudens, which can be taken as the equivalent of the Homeric epithet most often applied to Penelope, 7: line 671 would then read "proelia nec coniunx prudens audacis Vlixei." It may be coincidence that prudens, corresponding to Homeric , identifies the unnamed coniunx through her characteristic trait, which associates her with Pomona, who exhibits that same trait in shunning suitors. And it may be coincidence that prudens produces with audacis a pleasing iunctura that is worthy of our poet, bringing together the distinctive and contrasting traits of husband and wife that helped to make possible their reunion.8 But that both of these coincidences should occur within the metrical space () occupied by the corruption timidi [End Page 91] aut is one coincidence too many, especially in a context where Penelope ' s prudentia and Ulysses' audacia are relevant to the situation of Pomona and Vertumnus. There is more to these epithets than the clever collocation of contrasting traits. When a lover in disguise (Vertumnus), speaking to his beloved (Pomona), cites Penelope as an example of a woman much sought after by suitors, the poet achieves a heightening of the erotic tension through the Penelope exemplum because the meeting between Pomona and the disguised Vertumnus recalls the meetings between Ulysses, disguised as a beggar, and his wife, Penelope, in the Odyssey. In its present context the exemplum suggests that the revelation of identity, though long delayed (Odysseus' by his taking revenge on the suitors and Vertumnus' by his telling of the Iphis-Anaxarete tale), will bring the two...