As the first poem of the last book of Ovid's Amores, 3.1 parallels the programmatic recusatio of the first two books, which present the traditional opposition of elegy to epic.Footnote ² In Amores 3.1, the personified Elegy and Tragedy compete for Ovid's poetic attention, and scholars have accordingly scrutinized the generic tension between elegy and tragedy in this poem.Footnote ³ My study, by contrast, focusses on the import of the metapoetic locus in which Ovid sets his contest between the two genres, by considering the linguistic and allusive play in the opening lines. Ovid exploits the metaphor of literary tradition as an ancient and sacred forest to transform an author's choice of poetic genre into a walk in the woods. Moreover, allusions to Virgil's Aeneid 6.179 and Ennius' Annales 175 (Sk.) in the first line guide Ovid's audience to expect the more traditional opposition of elegy and epic. The less conventional contest between the genres of elegy and tragedy soon overturns this expectation; nevertheless, elegy's customary opposite, epic, maintains a presence in the form of a woodland context for Ovid's innovative generic opposition.

The poem begins with the narrator strolling through an ancient, uncut forest (Am. 3.1.1–6):Footnote ⁴

Hinds has noted that the word silua was used metaphorically in Roman literature (following the figurative use of the Greek ὕλη, ‘matter’, ‘raw material’) to mean rhetorical or poetic material.Footnote ⁵ Hinds points to Cicero's use of the term in this sense at Orat. 3.12: omnis enim ubertas et quasi silua dicendi ducta ab illis est. Footnote ⁶ So Virgil's antiquam siluam at the funeral of Misenus (Aen. 6.179–82) has been read as a reference to the literary materia he reworks, Ennius' Annales and Homer's Iliad, as well to the specific forest, whose literary antecedents can be found in Latin at Ann. 175–9 (Sk.) and, more distantly, in Greek at Il. 23.114–20.Footnote ⁷

Horace and Cicero appear to exploit this metaphor in their own representations of literary composition. Horace represents Albius [Tibullus] walking slowly through the woods while composing poetry: scribere quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula uincat, | an tacitum siluas inter reptare salubris (Epist. 1.4.3–5).Footnote ⁸ Cicero, too, describes himself as ‘hiding in the forest’ during a period of intense philosophical thought and composition: cumque mane me in siluam abstrusi densam et asperam, non exeo inde ante uesperum, Att. 12.15. Footnote ⁹ Like the siluae of Horace and Cicero, Ovid's uetus … silua is both a shady place for a walk (Am. 3.1.5) and the ‘forest’ of work belonging to his literary predecessors. The metaphorical resonance of silua is underlined by the ostensible purpose of his walk, to find poetic inspiration (3.1.6), and by the epiphany there of two personified poetic genres: Elegy (7) and Tragedy (11).Footnote ¹⁰

Ovid characterizes this silua as uetus (3.1.1), a descriptor which echoes Virgil's antiquam siluam (Aen. 6.179) and speaks to the age of the literary tradition and his own sense of belatedness. He also characterizes this forest as multos incaedua … per annos. Its untouched character could indicate the purity and sanctity of his literary inheritance, for groves belonging to gods are commonly uncultivated.Footnote ¹¹ Moreover, Hinds, following Richard Thomas, suggests that Virgil's antiquam siluam may have a divine aspect based on the common conception of archaic literature as sacred.Footnote ¹² The poet-narrator explicitly comments on this possibility: credibile est illi numen inesse loco (3.1.2). As Newlands notes, however, incaedua may have another metapoetic connotation. The singular silua is used to describe ‘a certain randomness and lack of literary refinement’.Footnote ¹³ The forest in which Ovid finds himself has been uncultivated for many years, suggesting a long and sacred tradition, but one which is unsophisticated and in need of improvement.

By strolling through a forest of literary tradition, Ovid's poet-narrator is, in a sense, browsing for a genre: hic ego dum spatior tectus nemoralibus umbris, | quod mea quaerebam Musa moueret opus (Am. 3.1.5–6).Footnote ¹⁴ It is entirely fitting, therefore, that he should find himself confronted by Elegy and Tragedy, appropriately costumed, and advertising their distinct generic codes: uenit odoratos Elegia nexa capillos, | et, puto, pes illi longior alter erat … uenit et ingenti uiolenta Tragoedia passu: | fronte comae torua, palla iacebat humi (3.1.7–8, 11–12).Footnote ¹⁵ In the end the poet-narrator asks Tragedy to be patient while he finishes his breue elegiac opus (68). Tragedy relents but her grandius opus (70) pursues him.

Among the literary predecessors which Am. 3.1 evokes, the most contemporary is Propertius 3.1 and 3.3. Along with its location in the collection, the incipit of Ovid's third book mirrors that of Propertius 3.1 in its context and subject matter.Footnote ¹⁶ In this poem, Propertius begs Callimachus' ghost and Philitas' sacra (Prop. 3.1.1) for permission to enter their grove (nemus, 3.1.2) – a sacred and natural setting. Prop. 3.3, in which Apollo and Calliope turn the poet's attention from dreams of epic back to elegy, has also been identified as a model for Ovid Am. 3.1.Footnote ¹⁷ Ovid's twofold allusion creates an association with Propertius' Callimachean aesthetics which informs 3.1, if not the entire collection.

Ovid's uetus silua, however, adds a third generic dimension to his poem which Propertius' lacks.Footnote ¹⁸ For multos … per annos (Am. 3.1.1) could suggest Ennius' title, Annales, signalled by similar alliteration, assonance and vocabulary in both the Ennian forest (incedunt arbusta per alta, securibus caedunt, Ann. 175 Sk.) and Ovid's own (stat uetus et multos incaedua silua per annos, Am. 3.1.1). As Skutsch has noted, ‘each colon [in Ennius’ passage] is held together by alliteration and assonance’.Footnote ¹⁹ And indeed the opening lines of both passages share a similar unifying acoustical structure. Nor is Virgil forgotten, however, for Ovid has placed the description of the forest's venerable age (uetus) in the first half of the opening line, precisely where it is found in Virgil's passage (antiquam, Aen. 6.179), and Ovid has added the sibilant ‘s’ in the second colon, which connects Virgil's two cola at the caesura (itur in antiquamsiluam, stabula alta ferarum, Aen. 6.179)Footnote ²⁰ while retaining the assonantal ‘a’ also found in Ennius (quoted above): stat uetus et multos incaeduasilua per annos, Am. 3.1.1.

In the first line of the book, and in a programmatic recusatio, allusions to the revered Latin epics of Ennius and Virgil would not be surprising. It would in fact be familiar, for the first line of the first book of Amores begins with an allusion to the first line of Virgil's Aeneid (armauirumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris, Aen. 1.1; armagraui numero uiolentaque bella parabam, Am. 1.1.1). Prop. 3.3.6, moreover, names Ennius as a potential model before the poet's loyalty to the elegiac genre is restored. Such allusion in Am. 3.1 to both epic poems, Annales and Aeneid, introduces direct engagement with the topos of the literary forest that goes back to Homer's Iliad and sets up the expectation of the usual generic opposition of epic to elegy. Although epic has ostensibly been replaced by the other grand genre of tragedy, it maintains a presence, embodied by the forest itself. Far from being superseded, epic, in fact, serves as the context for this new generic rivalry – a reminder, perhaps, that the epic genre provides the material from which all other genres draw.