Anagrams and syllabic wordplay of the kind championed by Frederick Ahl in his Metaformations have not always been favourably received by scholars of Latin poetry;Footnote ¹ I would hesitate to propose the following instance, were it not for the fact that its occurrence seems peculiarly apposite to the context in which it appears. That Roman poets were prepared to use such techniques to enhance the presentation of an argument by exemplifying its operation at a verbal level is demonstrated by the famous passage of Lucretius (DRN 1.907–14; also 1.891–2) in which the poet seeks to illustrate the tendency of semina … ardoris to create fire in wood by the literal presence of elements from the word for ‘fires’ (IGNes) in that denoting wood (lIGNum).Footnote ² A similar conception may underlie the association insinuated by the love elegists between amor and mors, suggesting that death is somehow ‘written into’ love:Footnote ³ so Propertius declares laus in amore mori (2.1.47),Footnote ⁴ while Tibullus appears to point to the lurking presence of death in the pursuit of love in the lines interea, dum fata sinunt, iungamus amores: | iam ueniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput (1.1.69–70) – so swift and unexpected is death's approach that it is already present in aMOReS in the preceding line.Footnote ⁵ Ovid's awareness of the poetic potential of this kind of play (if that is the right word for it) is fully exhibited in his celebrated account of Echo and Narcissus in Metamorphoses 3, where the subject matter gives the poet ample scope to exploit the humorous and pathetic possibilities afforded by Echo's fragmented repetitions of the frustrated entreaties of her beloved.Footnote ⁶

The first prescription issued by the speaker of the Remedia to his lovelorn patient is to make sure that love's progress is checked at the outset, before it can establish itself and put down roots: opprime, dum noua sunt, subiti mala semina morbi (Rem. am. 81). Ovid's use of the Lucretian term semina might alert us to the fact that – like the semina ardoris in Lucretius' wood – the elements that make up amor have crept in so suddenly (hence subiti … morbi) that they are already present, even before we have reached the end of the line, lurking concealed within the expression seminA MORbi. The patient must act immediately: delay will only aggravate the lover's condition, and will make the cure more arduous if it has to be effected at a later stage, when the disease of love has had time to acquire strength (Rem. am. 91–6):

It is through delay, then, that love sneaks in – as it does verbally in line 95, between the final two words of the line: alimentA MORando.Footnote ⁷ Ovid has provided his reader here with a graphic illustration of how love (amor) works its way in through the interstices of delay (mora),Footnote ⁸ a triumphant vindication (for the second time in this section of the poem) of his argument about the importance of acting before amor achieves its surreptitious effect. That the metrical discrepancy between amor, in which the o is long, and morando, where the first syllable is short, need not have troubled a Roman reader in this respect is clear from Propertius' play on amor and mori cited above.Footnote ⁹

Such a suggestion is plausible enough, I think, from the context, and from the exact fit between the verbal play and the argument which the lines are being used to advance. It derives further support from what might be seen as comparable examples earlier in Ovid's erotic work: at Ars amatoria 1.133–4, after his retelling of the rape of the Sabine women at the hands of Romulus' Romans (introduced as an illustration of the particular value of the theatre as an erotic hunting ground: 1.89–90), the narrator concludes scilicet ex illo sollemniA MORe theatra | nunc quoque formosis insidiosa manent. Just how insidious the theatre can be as a den of defloration is apparent from the furtive appearance of amor as an integral part of the time-honoured custom (mos: more, 1.133).Footnote ¹⁰ At Ars amatoria 2.717–18, meanwhile, the praeceptor amoris advises his pupil crede mihi, non est Veneris properanda uoluptas | sed sensim tarda proliciendA MORa – the protracted gratification of the lover's passion recommended by the Ovidian instructor is encapsulated in the splitting of the word amor between the two words prolicienda and mora, thereby reflecting the desired prolongation in the course of lovemaking. Finally, delay is the course of action counselled by the praeceptor for his female charges in Ars amatoria 3, and as at Remedia 95 it proves devastatingly effective in conjuring up the presence of amor – this time with twice the result, reinforcing Ovid's observation that procrastination is the most proficient procuress:Footnote ¹¹gratA MORa uenies, maxima lenA MORa est (Ars am. 3.752).Footnote ¹²

In the case of Remedia 95, however, we can perhaps go further. Ovid's line begins uerba dat omnis amor:Footnote ¹³ the expression uerbum dare is commonly employed with the meaning ‘to dupe’ or ‘to deceive’,Footnote ¹⁴ and it is precisely love's stealth and duplicity that are at issue here. But on the most literal reading of the expression, Ovid's phrase means ‘every love supplies words’ – which is exactly what amor is doing here, providing an element in the composition of each of the two words alimenta and morando. It is perhaps not too fanciful, then, to suggest that through his choice of this particular expression, the poet may be consciously drawing attention here to the illustrative wordplay in which he indulges later in the line, focussing the reader's attention on the verbal texture of the passage.

The revival of interest in Ovid over the last few decades has meant that the poet's amatory works have been thoroughly analysed in recent scholarship, though admittedly less so than the Metamorphoses and Fasti;Footnote ¹⁵ but if the argument of this note is accepted, it would appear that even these relentlessly dissected texts might still benefit from A MORe intensive scrutiny.