Poetic Daughters

Chapter 6 considers the evidence for a tradition of personification that identifies the Iliad and Odyssey as Homer’s daughters. This personification, likely a product of the Hellenistic age, is known from the visual record, as exemplified by the Archelaus relief. It is also expressed in several Hellenistic epigrams that use the conceit that poetry can help to perpetuate its creator’s fame much as children sustain the reputation of their parents. But the basic elements of the idea predate the Hellenistic period: In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima clearly implies a correspondence between Homer’s poems and children: they constitute the offspring that guarantee Homer’s immortal fame. In Tristia 3.7, Ovid addresses a young woman, Perilla, in terms that suggest a father-daughter relationship and uses this poem to encourage the survival of his poetic immortality. Ovid’s Perilla can best be understood not as a historical figure but as a poetic construct—a scripta puella.