Homer in Love

Chapter 7 considers a second central theme in Ovid’s Homeric reception, desire, and its evocation through repetition. The erotic tradition of Homeric reception that Ovid inherited can be seen in the longest extant fragment of the elegiac poem Leontion, in which the Hellenistic poet Hermesianax offers a catalogue of ancient poets and the women they loved. In Tristia 1.6, Ovid expands upon the central trope of this catalogue, in which poetry is personified as the beloved object of a poet’s desire. The love-poet, suggests Ovid, strives continually to renew his love by recreating the great loves of past poetry, aspiring always to surpass them. Discussions of Ovid’s treatment of Penelope in Heroides 1, Calypso in Ars amatoria Book 2, and Circe in the Remedia amoris explore Ovid’s continuing interest in figuring himself as a second Homer by imagining Homer as an elegiac poet.