Stylistique et poétique de l'épigramme latine
| ,The late antique literary epigram between progymnasmatic fictionality and mythopoetic exemplarity: the case study of Ausonius’ Niobe in Epigr., 57 Green
Résumé
L’histoire de Niobé a connu une postérité vaste et durable, mais sa version ovidienne, dans le sixième livre des Métamorphoses (6, 146‑312), est peut-être l’exemple le plus célèbre de tentative d’un auteur latin pour décrire la physionomie de l’héroïne qui, après un mariage très heureux, devient mater dolorosa et donc un symbole de douleur. Ma contribution se concentre sur une pièce courte mais significative de la collection ausonienne d’Epigrammata (Epigr., 57 Green), dont Niobé est la protagoniste. En particulier, je voudrais montrer comment cet exemple de l’influence littéraire ovidienne s’accompagne d’effets poétiques issus de la pratique rhétorique des προγυμνάσματα. Dans cette épigramme, la souffrance de Niobé illustre parfaitement comment Ausone transforme une longue tradition bien connue de lui, afin de manifester sa compétence littéraire, ses talents linguistiques et sa capacité à conférer à l’héroïne une signification nouvelle, qui s’inscrit dans le répertoire culturel de son lectorat d’érudits.
Texte intégral
Ausonius and the literary sensibility of his time: the interpretation of the phrase Nasonis carmina
- 1 I am very grateful to members of the audience (especially Anthony Kaldellis, Victoria E. Pagán and (...)
- 2 For allusions to Ovid in the poetic correspondence of Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola, see Fielding (...)
1The aim of this chapter1 is to identify, on the basis of a short but significant epigram from Ausonius’ collection of Epigrammata, some of the essential compositional techniques and characteristic poetic features of this late antique poet. My case-study is a poem in which the literary effects derived from the rhetorical practice of the προγυμνάσματα are numerous and prominent with regard to the epigram’s subject-matter that comes from myth and concerns the story of Niobe. The portrayal of Niobe constitutes a typical example of how the long literary tradition related to her was exploited and altered by Ausonius, who was familiar with this tradition. The poet creates a “new context” for the story, through which he displays his literary skill, his linguistic knowledge – especially if we consider that the first couplet of the poem in question is a “free” Latin translation of a Greek epigram – as well as his ability to “reconfigure” the mythological plot of Niobe’s story so as to give the heroine a new intertextual meaning. I will focus this section of the chapter on Ovid’s presence2 in the epigrams of the poet of Bordeaux, not only because Ovid’s version of the myth of Niobe is, without a doubt, the most popular version of the story, but also because Ovid’s influence on the Ausonian epigram can be demonstrated through reference to a passage from the Epistulae ex Ponto. I will thus illustrate the significance that Ausonius assigns to the only explicit mention of Ovid in the whole corpus of his epigrams, namely in Epigr., 72. My second section will deal briefly with the literary tradition concerning the myth of Niobe; the aim here is to enable the reader to understand better how Ausonius “Romanized” the myth. I will do this by highlighting the changes Ausonius made in the new literary and historical framework of the epigram. In the final section of the paper I will give my own analysis of the poem; many scholars view it as an ecphrastic epigram – in particular, a suggestive case-study of what is known as ἔκφρασις in uisione – and I agree with them. The poem also contains a short, first-person discourse of Niobe herself. In Ausonius’ typically dense and richly epigrammatic style, Niobe is shown as a marginal character both because she is deprived of the main features that identify her as a woman in late antique mentality – her spousal status and her motherhood – and because as a human being she no longer possesses the essential faculties for her existence in the world as an active participant in her own behaviour and emotions.
- 3 Mattiacci 2017; Mattiacci 2018; Dolveck 2018.
- 4 For a more detailed study of the epigram, see Nolfo 2021.
2In dealing with the Ovidian inspiration of some of Ausonius’ epigrams, it is now customary3 to start from Epigr., 72,4 a narrative epigram dedicated to sex change:
- 5 Hugh G. Evelyn White – see Evelyn White 1921, p. 198 – proposed to fill the gap by supplying the f (...)
- 6 For the text of the epigram, I quote from Green 1999, p. 91.
Vallebanae (noua res et uix credenda poetis,
sed quae de uera promitur historia)
femineam in speciem conuertit masculus ales
pauaque de pauo constitit ante oculos.
cuncti admirantur monstrum, sed mollior agna
……………………………………………..5
“quid stolidi ad speciem notae nouitatis hebetis?
an uos Nasonis carmina non legitis?
Caenida conuertit proles Saturnia Consus
ambiguoque fuit corpore Tiresias.
uidit semiuirum fons Salmacis Hermaphroditum,
uidit nubentem Plinius androgynum.
nec satis antiquum, quod Campana in Beneuento
unus epheborum uirgo repente fuit.
nolo tamen ueteris documenta arcessere famae:
ecce ego sum factus femina de puero”.6
- 7 Transl. in Kay 2001, p. 209.
At Vallebana – a strange matter and one scarcely credible to poets,
but taken from true reports –
a male bird changed to female form
and a peacock became a peahen before the eyes of onlookers.
All wondered at the portent, but one smoother than a lamb [said]:
…………………………………………………………………..
“Why are you uncomprehending in the face of something strange but attested, you blockheads?
Don’t you read Ovid’s poems?
Consus, Saturn’s offspring, changed Caenis’ sex,
and Tiresias had a body of indeterminate sex.
The fount Salmacis experienced Hermaphroditus the half-man,
and Pliny witnessed an androgyne marrying.
Nor is it all that long ago that one of the youths in Campanian Beneventum
suddenly became a girl.
I don’t however want to adduce my proof from old reports;
look at me, I was a boy and have turned female”.7
- 8 Kay 2001, p. 209‑210: Ausonius seems to owe much to paradoxography – the genre of the description (...)
- 9 See Green 1991, p. 406: “This proverbial phrase (Mart., 5, 37, 2; Iuv., 8, 15) here refers to a bo (...)
- 10 Respectively, Caenis (Met., 12, 189‑209 and 470‑476), Tiresias (Met., 3, 316‑338) and Hermaphrodit (...)
- 11 Mattiacci 2017, p. 22; Mattiacci 2018, p. 53.
- 12 Mattiacci 2017, p. 22.
3Ausonius starts from “a journalistic story”,8 that is, a story that features the sudden sexual metamorphosis of a peacock from male to female, and introduces a character mollior agna9 (line 5), who provides a learned explanation for the phenomenon and who, while everyone expresses admiratio at the prodigy of the peacock, responds almost bitterly: an uos Nasonis carmina non legitis? (line 8). If we consider that the speaker – who only at the end of the poem reveals their own change of sex (line 16: ecce ego sum factus femina de puero) – refers to three transformations of sexual change,10 the explicit reference to Ovid and his work would seem to express, as Silvia Mattiacci11 has well pointed out, Ausonius’ programmatic intention to connect Ovid’s influence with the typology of the mythological epigram. The question an uos Nasonis carmina non legitis? is a rhetorical and metaliterary question, since Ausonius uses the mask of the interlocutor to affirm, in a self-referential way, “you do not read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as I do instead”;12 he does this because he is adapting the mythical repertory and the Ovidian diegesis about Niobe to the concise λέξις and the semantically condensed structure of epigrammatic poetry. The reference to the carmina of the poet of Sulmona emphasizes the sophistication which Ausonius displays as a witness of his time, since he refers to a notable literary subject and to the educated knowledge of his erudite audience.
- 13 See Protr., 45‑65 and Mattiacci 2018, p. 52, n. 9: “Note that of the four authors recommended by A (...)
- 14 Schenkl 1883, p. 267.
- 15 Green 1977, p. 443‑444.
- 16 Mattiacci 2018, p. 53.
- 17 Fielding 2014, p. 100‑101; Fielding 2017, p. 1‑21 and 212‑213.
- 18 Furbetta 2018, p. 315.
4The fact that Ausonius explicitly mentions Ovid only in this epigram (and not in others) does not mean that Ausonius was not greatly interested in Ovid or that he had insufficient knowledge of Ovid’s work. On the contrary, Ovid may be considered one of the few authors who influenced the poet of Bordeaux most heavily – perhaps not as heavily as Vergil, but certainly not less heavily than Horace; Ovid’s verses are not included in the list of useful reading material recommended by Ausonius to his grandson,13 but this is not surprising, because Ovid was not regarded particularly canonical as poet, both because of the erotic interest shown in part of his poetry and with regard to the themes promoted in young people’s education. To realize the great extent of Ovid’s presence in Ausonius, it is instructive to consult the index of loci similes originally prepared by Karl Schenkl14 and subsequently enlarged by Roger P.H. Green.15 From this we can deduce that the whole range of the Ovidian poetic production (from the Metamorphoses to literary echoes of Ovid’s exile poetry, his erotic works, the Fasti, as well as the Ibis and the Halieutica) is fully represented in Ausonius’ works. It is also worth bearing in mind that Martial – whose influence on Ausonius is not at all unimportant – is never mentioned explicitly in the Ausonian Epigrammata, in contrast to what happens, as we have seen, with Ovid. This difference probably illustrates Ausonius’ desire to state unambiguously the significant impact which the Ovidian poetic model has had on the mythological (sometimes “ecphrastic”) “sub-genre” and on the erotic “sub-genre” of the epigrammatic collection transmitted in the Opuscula.16 Ausonius’ reception of Ovid essentially exemplifies a fairly common trait of late antique literary sensibility, because Ovid’s authority is clearly perceptible in the field of poetic composition during Late Antiquity. This is due to the prosodic and lexical devices of Ovid’s language, which Ausonius has adjusted to the demands of the dactylic metre, his “characteristic methods of epigrammatic expression”,17 his discontinuous narrative style, his attention to detail in descriptive passages, and his insightful psychological characterization of the protagonists in his poems; most importantly, though, Ovid’s popularity in late antique literature is due to a semantic reformulation of his poems that increased their use by Christian poets.18
An Ausonian case-study of the afterlife of Niobe: the mythical fabula before, in and after Ovid
- 19 Met., 6, 146‑312.
- 20 See Peiper 1886, p. v‑lxxxix (but also Peiper 1880 and Seeck 1887); Mondin 1993; Mondin 1994, p. 2 (...)
5From the epigrammatic corpus of Ausonius, as reconstructed and arranged by R.P.H. Green in his edition of the Opuscula, I now select an epigram focused on the Niobes fabula, “the tale of Niobe”, that is, Auson. Epigr., 57, p. 88 Green (= Epigr., 63, p. 335 Peiper), which presents obvious points of contact with the Ovidian section19 of the Metamorphoses dedicated to the same story. The poem is handed down to us by the Z20 family of manuscripts. Ausonius reworks the myth of Niobe in two epigrams of his collection – 57 and 58 Green – and gives us a rather suggestive version of the tale.
- 21 Il., 24, 602‑617.
- 22 Lesky 1936.
- 23 See, respectively, TrGF, III, F 154a-167b and TrGF, IV, F 441a-451. Euripides, on the other hand, (...)
- 24 Ar., Ra., 911‑920.
- 25 See Ozbek 2015 (but also Sommerstein 2012, p. 197 and 208‑209).
6Already attested in the Iliad,21 Niobe’s story22 was popular among literary authors: we find it in Hesiod, in the archaic Greek poets, and in early historiography, while some striking fragments attributed to Aeschylus and Sophocles23 demonstrate that her myth was presented also on the tragic stage. According to what we can infer from a parodic reference to the story contained in a scene of Aristophanes’ Frogs,24 in Aeschylus the silence of Niobe is important, because Niobe herself, emotionally distraught, is represented as standing in front of her children’s grave. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the plot of Aeschylus’ tragedy about Niobe was set in Thebes and commenced after the children’s death. On the other hand, Sophocles’ fr. 441a Radt – which represents Apollo advising his sister Artemis how to better hit her target, Niobe’s children – suggests that Sophocles had dramatically shifted back the chronological focus of the story. From the surviving Sophoclean fragments, we may deduce that Niobe represented a “limit case”25 of treating death, as the spectacular effects seem to be built around two blocks of mass killings, one concerning Niobe’s sons and taking place away from the palace (where the action is set), the other concerning Niobe’s daughters and taking place inside the palace.
- 26 FGrHist, 3 F 38. On the basis of what Pherecydes writes, as is already the case in Sophocles (acco (...)
- 27 FGrHist, 4 F 21.
- 28 PMG, p. 786‑787.
- 29 Palaeph., 8.
- 30 FGrHist, 31 F 56.
- 31 Diod. Sic., 4, 74.
- 32 Lact. Placid., ad Stat. Theb., 3, 191.
- 33 Tz., H., 4, 416.
- 34 Salvo 2009, p. 97‑98.
- 35 Rosati 2009, p. 272. According to the literary tradition, there are variations, for example, in th (...)
- 36 Parth., 33. This information will also be confirmed in the scholia to Homer and to Euripides (Scho (...)
- 37 FGrHist, 765 F 20a.
- 38 Simm., fr., 5 Powell.
- 39 FGrHist, 84 F 6.
- 40 Apollod., 3, 5, 6.
- 41 Hyg., Fab., 9.
- 42 Saltat., 41.
- 43 Paus., 9, 5, 8.
- 44 I quote the text according to Pohlenz 2008, p. 349.
- 45 Transl. in King 1966, p. 301.
- 46 See, for example, Sen., Epist., 63.
7Pherecydes,26 Hellanicus,27 Timotheus of Miletus,28 Palaephatus,29 Herodoros,30 Diodorus Siculus,31 Lactantius Placidus,32 and John Tzetzes33 also include the paradigmatic tale of Niobe in their works.34 Furthermore, the myth is reworked richly and variously in Hellenistic literature, and in particular in epigrammatic poetry, in connection with its vast representation in material culture and the visual arts. There are also further variations of the tale,35 such as the fictionalized version of Parthenius of Nicaea36 – who refers to the testimony of Xanthus of Lydia,37 Simmias of Rhodes38 and Neanthes of Cyzicus39 – or the versions, enriched with new details, of Apollodorus,40 Hyginus,41 Lucian,42 and Pausanias.43 In his Tusculan Disputations (3, 63), Cicero reminds his readers that Nioba fingitur lapidea propter aeternum [...] in luctu silentium44 (“Niobe is imagined in stone to represent, …, everlasting silence in sorrow”45), thus firmly establishing the tale of Niobe as the quintessential representation of maternal pain. This symbolism occurs also within the material of consolatory (especially Senecan) literature,46 which reworks it and presents it as a sign of unbearable suffering compared to which even the most serious human grief should by necessity be endured and tolerated.
- 47 Rosati 2009, p. 273.
8Ovid’s narrative in the sixth book of the Metamorphoses (6, 146‑312) is perhaps the most well-known version of Niobe’s tragic story. According to Ovid, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and wife of the king of Thebes Amphion, boasts of being superior to Latona because she had fourteen children from her husband, while Latona gave birth only to the twins Apollo and Diana. The two children of Latona will kill all the children of Niobe, who then becomes a stone from which perennial tears flow. As Gianpiero Rosati47 has remarked in his commentary on Ovid’s text, the poet articulates Niobe’s episode in the following stages: 1) presentation of the character-protagonist (lines 146‑164); 2) the challenge that Niobe launches against Latona (lines 165‑203); 3) the help asked by Latona to her two children (lines 204‑217); 4) the killing of Latona’s seven sons by Apollo (lines 218‑266); 5) the reaction of Niobe (and of Amphion) and the new challenge against Latona (lines 267‑285); 6) the killing of Latona’s seven daughters by Diana (lines 286‑301); and 7) Niobe’s metamorphosis (lines 301‑312). In Ovid the tale is set in Thebes – the tragic city par excellence –, while the marriage of Niobe with Amphion, who kills himself after the slaughter of all his children, makes his misfortune a sort of continuation of the Theban myth and of the troubles of Cadmus’ family. Niobe pays the penalty because of her guilt on account of her ὕβρις and her boastful claim to assimilate herself to the gods and to render herself superior to Latona. Her marginalization in human terms and her loss of social identity take place through her transition from the status of a happy mother to an inanimate piece of stone that has the ability to weep permanently, and this highlights her paradigmatic condition of mourning without measure.
- 48 Lesky 1936, p. 657; Bergmann 1999, p. 93; Salvo 2009, p. 98. In AP, 11, 254 the target of the epig (...)
9Finally, it is worth remembering how, already in the second century AD and spanning a long life on the stage until about the fifth century AD, the fabula of Niobe was frequently represented also by the skilful and highly popular pantomime-actors, who thus had the opportunity to display their skill in portraying the dramatic suffering of Niobe as a mortal woman and her fragility as compared to and contrasted with the divine power of Apollo and Diana; this representation constituted an exercise of tragic pathos for the trained actors and a source of great entertainment for the audience.48
Analysis and interpretation of Epigr., 57 Green
- 49 I discuss the Ovidian intermediality of the Ausonian epigram in Nolfo 2020, p. 213‑218.
- 50 Green 1999, p. 88.
10I cite here the text,49 without apparatus criticus, according to the edition of Green 1999,50 and its translation:
Viuebam; sum facta silex, qua deinde polita
Praxiteli manibus uiuo iterum Niobe.
reddidit artificis manus omnia, sed sine sensu:
hunc ego, cum laesi numina, non habui.
- 51 Transl. in Kay 2001, p. 188.
I used to be alive; I was turned into stone, then it was polished
by Praxiteles’ hands and I, Niobe, live for a second time.
The artist’s skill restored everything except sense;
that is what I didn’t have when I offended the gods.51
- 52 Kay 2001, p. 188.
- 53 The absence of these faculties dramatizes the fault of the mythical heroine and signifies that the (...)
11The poem was constructed rhetorically on the basis of the typical motif of the animated statue, and it belongs, along with Epigr., 58, to the cycle of Ausonian poems on famous statues.52 The speaker is Niobe herself, that is, her statue, which is now a silex polita: she has a new appearance but also a second life, thanks to the artist’s work, to whom the persona loquens attributes and acknowledges every merit with one exception, namely that he has not given her the use of reason and common understanding.53
- 54 Schenkl 1883, p. 210; Peiper 1886, p. 335; Green 1991, p. 402; Kay 2001, p. 188.
- 55 Aubreton, Buffière 1980, p. 129.
12The opening two lines evoke54 the elegiac couplet of Anth. Plan., 129, which is an adespoton, and which I quote below according to the text of Aubreton, Buffière 1980:55
Ἐκ ζωῆς με θεοὶ τεῦξαν λίθον, ἐκ δὲ λίθοιο
ζωὴν Πραξιτέλης ἔμπαλιν εἰργάσατο.
- 56 Transl. in Paton 1918, p. 233.
From a living being the gods made me a stone,
but Praxiteles from a stone made me alive again.56
- 57 There are examples of faithful translations: see, for example, Epigr., 22, based on the adespoton (...)
- 58 Stahl 1886; Munari 1956; Benedetti 1980; Traina 1982; Kay 2001, p. 13‑19; Floridi 2013; Floridi 20 (...)
- 59 See Stahl 1886, p. 28: Etiam integra epigrammata uertit haud pauca [...] liberius exemplar exprime (...)
- 60 Benedetti 1980, p. 19‑20. We should not ignore, as evidence of Ausonius’ familiarity with Greek, t (...)
- 61 Green 1990, p. 319.
- 62 Green 1991, p. 402.
- 63 I quote the text according to Conte 2019, p. 1.
- 64 Transl. in Ahl, Fantham 2007, p. 3.
13Having read Anth. Plan., 129, it is possible to appreciate Ausonius’ remarkable skill in free adaptation, a skill he displays frequently57 in at least thirty poems of his Liber Epigrammaton; these poems are essentially “re-creations” or “original translations” of poems from the Anthologia Graeca.58 The relationship of creative imitation with the Greek models, which prompts the poet of Bordeaux to consider them as a starting point for the construction of autonomous literary variations,59 is reflected in a typical feature of Ausonius’ poetry which we frequently observe in his epigrammatic compositions, namely that his Latin epigrams are longer than a couplet when compared to his Greek models. This allows him more space for adding details and for displaying his erudition.60 Ausonius maintains a “playful”61 relationship with his Greek models and he seems to signal it when he augments the Greek original he has translated. Evidence for this is the learned reminiscence in the second elegiac couplet, suggested by R.P.H. Green,62 to Verg., Aen., 1, 8, Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso63 (“Muse, let the memories spill through me. What divine will was wounded”64).
- 65 LSJ, s.v. ζωή.
- 66 DELG, s.v. ζώω.
- 67 About the possible Latin translations of the word, see Hederich 1827, s.v. λίθος: lapis, saxum […]
- 68 LSJ, s.v. λίθος.
- 69 Moreover, we find often in dactylic poetry the abl. silicī, so as to avoid the tribrach (see DELL, (...)
- 70 See Kay 2001, p. 188: “the noun suits both the rock on Mt. Sipylus into which Niobe was thought to (...)
- 71 OLD, s.v. silex: “[…] 3 (typifying lack of feeling or emotion)”.
- 72 LEW, s.v. uīuō/uīuus.
- 73 Berschin, Becht 1984, p. 17: the adjective is more directly related to the verb uiuifico, modelled (...)
- 74 See comm. ad loc. in Kay 2001, p. 189: “ambiguous, both with the meaning ‘consciousness’, which do (...)
- 75 OLD, s.v. sensus.
- 76 DELL, s.v. sentiō.
- 77 Green 1991, p. 402.
14As is clear from the English translation of the Greek epigram, in Anth. Plan., 129 the couplet is ingeniously focused on the two terms that are in polyptoton, ζωή (feminine form of the adjective ζωός, “alive, living”) and λίθος (“stone”), which, within this fabula of transformation, mark the two phases of the existence of Niobe, that is, the phase which precedes the tragic peripeteia and the phase which immediately follows it. If the adjective ζωός, ή, όν is semantically connected to the noun ζωή, which designates in ancient Greek the “substance” or “existence” of a person,65 the faculty of perception which every human being has, “life” in opposition to “death” – distinguishing itself from βίος, a term frequently used to mean “duration of life” or “way of living”66 –, the word λίθος67 firmly establishes the materiality of a condition which does not have any vital or intellectual function, so as to indicate a “stupid person” (a blockhead) or also the “gravestone”.68 To “translate” the word λίθος into Latin, Ausonius uses, partly for metrical reasons,69 the term silex,70 a refined lexical choice, which in Latine loqui refers precisely to the lack of any feeling and emotion.71 At the same time, Ausonius completes the three opening elementa longa of the first hexameter by rendering the Greek expression ἐκ ζωῆς with the imperfect tense uiuebam, which dramatically underlines the awareness of the speaker that she has lost her earlier prerogatives, namely the properties which are intrinsically connected with a person’s survival needs, and which are related to the same semantic value of uiuo,72 such as uiuidus (“full of life”), uiuatus (“animate”), uiuificus73 (“bearer of life”). But lines 3‑4 of the Ausonian epigram, seemingly conceived as an additamentum to the Greek couplet, illustrate the most striking aspects of the Niobes fabula as Ausonius has devised it: they contain both the reason which caused the dramatic change of Niobe’s fortune, that is, the crimen laesi numinis (line 4: hunc ego, cum laesi numina, non habui), and the explicit admission of an existence now relegated to the margins, an existence which does not avoid divine punishment, since the artist’s hand has restored every faculty to our heroine, sed sine sensu (line 3). The possession of sensus74 ensures to the human being the “perception of what is appropriate”, therefore the “consciousness”, “the faculty of feeling emotions” and the “intelligence”,75 the ability to make a judgement, which allows a person the opportunity “to express a feeling, to decide, to vote”,76 to exercise, in other words, the deliberative will in the public and private contexts in which it is legitimate to express it. Interestingly, R.P.H. Green believes that Ausonius might have been inspired by a Greek epigrammatic model which contained within it the term νοῦς.77
- 78 Dinter 2019, p. 148‑149.
- 79 AP, 7, 386.
- 80 AP, 7, 530.
- 81 AP, 7, 549.
- 82 See n. 48 above.
- 83 AP, 11, 246.
- 84 Anth. Plan., 129‑134.
- 85 Anth. Plan., 130.
- 86 Aubreton, Buffière 1980, p. 129.
15We cannot be sure that Ausonius read the Niobe of Aeschylus or of Sophocles in their entirety or even in parts, although the connections between tragedy and epigram have been, in some cases, established, and Martin Dinter78 has forcefully argued how the tragic genre has sometimes drawn inspiration from epigraphical verses, even to the point of incorporating them in the text of a play, thus paving the way for the evolution of the literary epigram. Moreover, it is likely that Ausonius wanted to draw material or inspiration from part of the cycle of epigrams of the Anthologia Graeca which mention Tantalus’ daughter or in which she is the speaker or the undisputed protagonist: here I have in mind the “Niobe” – emblem of misfortune, eternal suffering or boast – of three epigraphic funeral carmina by Lollius Bassus,79 Antipater of Thessalonica,80 and Leonidas of Alexandria;81 or the Niobe who acts as a mythological exemplum, targeting the evil arts of the bad poet Melito82 in a scoptic epigram83 of Lucillius; or the “Niobe” of the section84 of ecphrastic epigrams, attributed to different authors, of the Anthologia Planudea. As demonstrated above, Ausonius was clearly inspired by a poem from this group of epigrams; among them stands out an epigram85 by Iulianus Aegyptus – I cite its text according to the edition of Aubreton, Buffière 1980.86 Ausonius did not know this epigram, since it was composed after his death, but it is an important poem for my discussion because it refers to a marble representation of Niobe, whose appearance is παναληθής (“all true”), although it does not have a ψυχή:
Δυστήνου Νιόβης ὁράᾳς παναληθέα μορφήν,
ὡς ἔτι μυρομένης πότμον ἑῶν τεκέων.
Εἰ δ᾽ ἄρα καὶ ψυχὴν οὐκ ἔλλαχε, μὴ τόδε τέχνῃ
μέμφεο· θηλυτέρην εἴκασε λαϊνέην.
- 87 Transl. in Paton 1918, p. 233.
Thou seest the veritable shape of unhappy Niobe
as if she were still bewailing the fate of her children.
But if it is not given to her to have a soul, blame not
the artist for this: he portrayed a woman of stone.87
- 88 Ov., Am., 3, 12, 31.
- 89 Ov., Epist., 20, 105‑106, in which the transformation into stone of the superba parens proves, in (...)
- 90 Ov., Trist., 5, 1, 57‑58 and 5, 12, 8.
- 91 Ov., Ib., 583.
- 92 Ov., Pont., 1, 2, 27‑30.
16Ausonius’ knowledge of the Greek language and the relationship of his epigrams with the Greek epigrammatic models clearly offer the foundation for his inspiration of the Latin epigram on Niobe, which forms part of the literary and iconographic “afterlife” of the myth in Rome. In Epigr., 57, Ausonius gives a Latin color to the second couplet through the addition of recognizable fontes of Roman literary tradition. For reasons which seem to be clearly programmatic in Ausonius’ work, Ovid is now evoked in order to lend his authority to the late antique reworking of the epigrammatic fabula. By this I mean not only the influence which the poet of Sulmona has exerted on Ausonius through the character-portrayal of the Ovidian heroine in the digressio about this mythical tale of transformation contained in the Metamorphoses, but also the few verses in which Ovid occasionally refers to Niobe in the whole of his literary production, from the Amores88 and the Heroides89 to the exile poetry, that is, the Tristia,90 the Ibis,91 and a passage of the Epistulae ex Ponto,92 from which Ausonius’ epigram seems to derive part of the interpretation of the myth:
- 93 I quote the text according to Richmond 1990, p. 5.
fine carent lacrimae, nisi cum stupor obstitit illis,
et similis morti pectora torpor habet.
felicem Nioben, quamuis tot funera uidit,
quae posuit sensum saxea facta mali.93
- 94 Transl. in Gaertner 2005, p. 55.
My tears do not come to an end except when stupor blocks them
and deathlike numbness holds my breast.
Lucky Niobe, despite the many deaths she saw,
for she put to rest all feeling of her misfortune when she was turned into stone.94
- 95 I would like to thank Costas Panayotakis for discussing this point with me.
- 96 See n. 84 above.
17In this passage Ovid – who addressed the epistle to Paullus Fabius Maximus, pontifex and husband of Marcia, cousin of Augustus – describes the difficulties of his life as a man unworthily condemned to exile, and his aim seems to have been to plead, through Maximus, for the clemency of the princeps. It is plausible that Ausonius was inspired by Ovid’s verses in assimilating the misfortune of the poet with the story of Niobe, since the marginalization of the woman who was deprived of the constitutive elements of a conscious life corresponds to the condition about which Ovid complains and for the representation of which Ovid uses the word sensus, a significant word that Ausonius chose to borrow for the composition of Epigr., 57, 3. Moreover, it is noteworthy that in the Ovidian passage the poet envies Niobe, because she, unlike Ovid, does not feel her own misfortune once she is turned into stone. In Ausonius’ Epigr., 57, however, Niobe, the speaker, is already a statue that should be unable to have feelings, and yet in a paradoxical manner not uncommon in late antique poetry Niobe shows that she possesses the ability to understand that she has lost her intellectual faculties.95 Sensus thus becomes a technical term forming a part of the breuitas captans – or “raffende Kürze”, according to the definition of Marion Lausberg – of epigrammatic “discourse”, emphasized by the metrical position of the word at the end of the line. Sensus is made dramatic because of the preposition sine which has negative connotations and which applies to all the possible meanings of the word sensus. Ausonius has thus adapted for the Roman literary tradition the plot which he drew, at least, from one epigram of the cycle of epigrams of the Planudea96 focused on the Niobes fabula.
- 97 Bruss 2010; Squire 2013a; Squire 2013b; Squire 2013c; Nolfo 2015, p. 298‑301; Floridi 2018a; Nobil (...)
18Furthermore, Epigr., 57 Green might be seen to belong to the rhetorical category of the so-called ἔκφρασις in uisione, which is detached from material detail and from description, and is oriented, instead, toward the production of mental images97 that, through the emotional construction of the story, make the reader view with their mind’s eyes the internal suffering of our protagonist Niobe.
- 98 Quint., Inst., 6, 2, 29‑30.
19A passage98 from the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian allows us to better understand the theoretical assumptions of such an argument:
- 99 I quote the text according to Winterbottom 1970, p. 335.
Quas φαντασίας Graeci uocant (nos sane uisiones appellemus), per quas imagines rerum absentium ita repraesentantur animo ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere uideamur, has quisquis bene ceperit is erit in adfectibus potentissimus.99
- 100 Transl. in Butler 1953, p. 433 and p. 435.
There are certain experiences which the Greeks call φαντασίαι, and the Romans visions, whereby things absent are presented to our imagination with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our very eyes.100
- 101 Bernt 1968, p. 30‑31.
- 102 Lubian 2013, p. 220.
- 103 See, e.g., Mart., 4, 47.
- 104 Epigr., 45‑47 and 51‑52.
- 105 See Floridi 2013, p. 97‑102.
20Günter Bernt101 has appropriately discussed, with regard to the production of ecphrastic epigrams that have lost their original inscriptional function, the relationships they have with the mental image of the object to which they refer, so as to reveal an indivisible unity of text-object medium,102 while, if we examine, for example, some of the epigrams of Martial103 or those of Ausonius104 which have as their object works of art, often their greater interest is not directed to the work by which they are inspired, but may focus on the Witz for which artistic creation worked only as a pretext.105 Further evidence we find in Longin., subl., 15, 1:
- 106 I quote the text according to Russell 1964, p. 21; see also Nocchi 2016.
καλεῖται μὲν γὰρ κοινῶς φαντασία πᾶν τὸ ὁπωσοῦν ἐννόημα γεννητικὸν λόγου παριστάμενον· ἤδη δ’ἐπὶ τούτων κεκράτηκε τοὔνομα ὅταν ἃ λέγεις ὑπ’ἐνθουσιασμοῦ καὶ πάθους βλέπειν δοκῇς καὶ ὑπ’ὄψιν τιθῇς τοῖς ἀκούουσιν.106
- 107 Transl. in Fyfe, Russell 1995, p. 215 and p. 217.
For the term phantasia is applied in general to an idea which enters the mind from any source and engenders speech, but the word has now come to be used predominantly of passages where, inspired by strong emotion, you seem to see what you describe and bring it vividly before the eyes of your audience.107
- 108 See Quint., Inst., 10, 7, 15; Gutzwiller 2002, p. 87 and 110; Nolfo 2018, p. 306.
- 109 Agosti 2006, p. 355.
21This induced awakening of emotions is a condition that creates a sympathetic relationship with the reader and allows them to unite imagination with memory. If epigram Anth. Plan., 129 and its Ausonian adaptations are to be attributed to the ecphrastic genre, we have in our epigram all the circumstances which stimulate in the readers the production of mental images and the inclination to look at Niobe’s interiority.108 The intention to highlight what the physical eye cannot see is one of the special functions of ἔκφρασις, which does not explain what the viewer can grasp on their own, but especially helps them to interpret and to see with an “intellectual” eye.109
- 110 See, for example, Lesky 1936, p. 673‑706; Geominy 1992 (but see also LIMC VI/ 2, p. 612‑618); Schm (...)
- 111 Kay 2001, p. 188: it is worth bearing in mind that Scopas and Praxiteles were often confused in an (...)
- 112 I quote the text according to Mayhoff 2002, p. 316.
- 113 Transl. in Eichholz 1971, p. 21 and p. 23.
- 114 See, for example, Epigr., 33, in which Ausonius assigns to Phidias the Καιρός of Lysippus, a statu (...)
- 115 See Salvo 2009, p. 103, but also DNO, III, p. 188 and Pafumi 2016, p. 259.
- 116 See Prop., 2, 31, 14; Rosati 2009, p. 274‑275.
22Likewise, for Epigr., 57 (and Epigr., 58), as well as for some of the poems contained in the Epigrammata Bobiensia, we could think about figurative epigrams which we could connect to works of art that are not there (in absentia), having as reference, together with the Niobe of Praxiteles or of Scopas, the rich artistic tradition110 produced in relation to the myth of Pelops’ sister. According to Nigel M. Kay,111 the identity of the sculptor, despite the explicit reference to Praxiteles, raises doubts (as frequently with the sculptures which Ausonius chose to describe), if we consider the testimony of Pliny the Elder in Nat., 36, 28, [...] par haesitatio est in templo Apollinis Sosiani, Niobae liberos morientes Scopas an Praxiteles fecerit112 (“Equally there is doubt as to whether the Dying Children of Niobe in the temple of the Sosian Apollo was the work of Scopas or of Praxiteles”113). Moreover, it is not unusual to find in Ausonius an erroneous piece of information about the authorship of famous works of art, contrary to what we instead read in the Greek epigram that has been taken as model.114 In any case, the circulation of the sculpture representing the dying children of Niobe is practically certain, and Pliny the Elder says that such a sculpture was taken to Rome from Asia Minor and dedicated between 30 and 25 BC by C. Sosius in the Temple of Apollo Medicus in the Campus Martius;115 we also know that the Niobes fabula was represented on one of the two doors of the temple dedicated in 28 BC to Apollo on the Palatine Hill.116
- 117 Nocchi 2013, p. 385.
23Therefore, the mythological exemplum of Niobe would have been placed – in harmony with the rhetorical use observed in the προγυμνάσματα and in accordance with the school lessons of the grammaticus117 – on a new fictional level, in which the tragic story of our heroine has been readjusted not only because of the new literary genre within which it has been incorporated but also because of the new significance which Ausonius gives it in the realization of his sophisticated poem.
Bibliographie
List of Abbreviations
DELG: P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots, Paris, Klincksieck, 1999 (1st ed. 1968).
DELL: A. Ernout, A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Histoire des mots, Paris, Klincksieck, 1951 (3rd ed.).
DNO: S. Kansteiner, K. Hallof, L. Lehmann, B. Seidensticker, K. Stemmer (dir.), Der Neue Overbeck. Die antiken Schriftquellen zu den bildenden Künsten der Griechen, I-V, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2014.
FGrHist: F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, I-III, Berlin/Leiden, Weidmann/Brill, 1923-1958.
GLK: H. Keil (ed.), Grammatici latini ex recensione, I-VII, Leipzig, Teubner, 1855-1880; VIII (Suppl. H. Hagen), Leipzig, Teubner, 1870.
LEW: A. Walde, J.B. Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, I-III, Heidelberg, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1965-1982.
LIMC: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zürich/München/Düsseldorf, Artemis Verlag, 1981-1999.
LSJ: H.G. Liddell, R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996.
OLD: P.G.W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982.
PMG: D.L. Page (ed.), Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962.
RE: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissensschaft. Neue Bearbeitung begonnen von G. Wissowa, fortgeführt von W. Kroll und K. Mittelhaus, unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Fachgenossen herausgegeben von K. Ziegler (†), abgeschlossen von H. Gärtner, Stuttgart (postea München), Metzler, 1893-1978.
TrGF: Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, I (R. Kannicht, B. Snell), II (R. Kannicht, B. Snell), III (S. Radt), IV (S. Radt), V/1-2 (R. Kannicht), Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981 (2nd ed.)-2004 (2nd ed.).
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Notes
1 I am very grateful to members of the audience (especially Anthony Kaldellis, Victoria E. Pagán and Costas Panayotakis) at the conferences held at the British School at Rome and at the Münchner Zentrum für Antike Welten (MZAW), who heard and gave me valuable feedback on some of the issues I discuss in this paper. I also profited greatly from discussing this topic at a research seminar I gave in the Department of Classics in Zurich, mostly with Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann, Ulrich Eigler, Markus Kersten, Cornelia Ritter-Schmalz and Raphael Schwitter. Finally, I remain indebted to Florence Garambois-Vasquez and to Daniel Vallat for the invitation to participate in the international conference at Lyon on the topic of “Stylistique de l’épigramme à Rome”, and to the audience of that conference for their useful comments.
2 For allusions to Ovid in the poetic correspondence of Ausonius and Paulinus of Nola, see Fielding 2017, p. 22‑51.
3 Mattiacci 2017; Mattiacci 2018; Dolveck 2018.
4 For a more detailed study of the epigram, see Nolfo 2021.
5 Hugh G. Evelyn White – see Evelyn White 1921, p. 198 – proposed to fill the gap by supplying the following words: talia uirginea uoce puella refert (“a girl with a maiden’s voice replied in the following way”).
6 For the text of the epigram, I quote from Green 1999, p. 91.
7 Transl. in Kay 2001, p. 209.
8 Kay 2001, p. 209‑210: Ausonius seems to owe much to paradoxography – the genre of the description of marvels – and, especially, to the treatise Περὶ θαυμασίων by Hadrian’s freedman Phlegon of Tralles, because many of the marvels which Phlegon collects are about sex reversal and hermaphroditism, for the description of which he often uses mythical exempla.
9 See Green 1991, p. 406: “This proverbial phrase (Mart., 5, 37, 2; Iuv., 8, 15) here refers to a boy (see l, 16), or perhaps a girl who looked like a boy (see Epigr., 53, 3)”.
10 Respectively, Caenis (Met., 12, 189‑209 and 470‑476), Tiresias (Met., 3, 316‑338) and Hermaphroditus (Met., 4, 285‑388).
11 Mattiacci 2017, p. 22; Mattiacci 2018, p. 53.
12 Mattiacci 2017, p. 22.
13 See Protr., 45‑65 and Mattiacci 2018, p. 52, n. 9: “Note that of the four authors recommended by Ausonius to his grandson (Virgil, Horace, Terence, Sallust), three appear in the quadriga Messii (Virgil, Sallust, Terence, Cicero, see GLK, VII, 449); what is remarkable is rather the imbalance towards poetry and Cicero’s absence”.
14 Schenkl 1883, p. 267.
15 Green 1977, p. 443‑444.
16 Mattiacci 2018, p. 53.
17 Fielding 2014, p. 100‑101; Fielding 2017, p. 1‑21 and 212‑213.
18 Furbetta 2018, p. 315.
19 Met., 6, 146‑312.
20 See Peiper 1886, p. v‑lxxxix (but also Peiper 1880 and Seeck 1887); Mondin 1993; Mondin 1994, p. 206-212; Green 1999, p. vii‑xxiv (but also Green 1982 and Green 1991, p. xli‑xlix); Kay 2001, p. 25‑27.
21 Il., 24, 602‑617.
22 Lesky 1936.
23 See, respectively, TrGF, III, F 154a-167b and TrGF, IV, F 441a-451. Euripides, on the other hand, mentions Niobe in Ph., 159‑161.
24 Ar., Ra., 911‑920.
25 See Ozbek 2015 (but also Sommerstein 2012, p. 197 and 208‑209).
26 FGrHist, 3 F 38. On the basis of what Pherecydes writes, as is already the case in Sophocles (according to what we read in a scholium to Il., 24, 614 ff.), Niobe would eventually return to her homeland in Lydia.
27 FGrHist, 4 F 21.
28 PMG, p. 786‑787.
29 Palaeph., 8.
30 FGrHist, 31 F 56.
31 Diod. Sic., 4, 74.
32 Lact. Placid., ad Stat. Theb., 3, 191.
33 Tz., H., 4, 416.
34 Salvo 2009, p. 97‑98.
35 Rosati 2009, p. 272. According to the literary tradition, there are variations, for example, in the number and the names of the children, and in the setting of the myth, which is situated either in Asia Minor – a place that can be traced back to the non-Greek name of Niobe, to the mention of Homer and especially to her connection with Mount Sipylus – or in Thebes, to which Niobe is associated through her husband Amphion, the name of some of her sons, and, above all, the tragic tradition (which will make Thebes the usual setting of the myth).
36 Parth., 33. This information will also be confirmed in the scholia to Homer and to Euripides (Schol. ad Hom., Il., 24, 616, F 20b and Schol. ad Eur., Ph., 159, F 20c): according to the version of Parthenius, Niobe is the daughter of Assaon (and not of Tantalus), and the offence towards Leto would cause the death of Niobe’s husband – slain by a boar during the hunt – and Niobe’s father falling in love with her. When he is rejected by Niobe, he burns her sons alive inside the palace, and as a result of this, Niobe, out of pain, throws herself from a rock, while her father kills himself because of remorse.
37 FGrHist, 765 F 20a.
38 Simm., fr., 5 Powell.
39 FGrHist, 84 F 6.
40 Apollod., 3, 5, 6.
41 Hyg., Fab., 9.
42 Saltat., 41.
43 Paus., 9, 5, 8.
44 I quote the text according to Pohlenz 2008, p. 349.
45 Transl. in King 1966, p. 301.
46 See, for example, Sen., Epist., 63.
47 Rosati 2009, p. 273.
48 Lesky 1936, p. 657; Bergmann 1999, p. 93; Salvo 2009, p. 98. In AP, 11, 254 the target of the epigrammatic verses is a pantomime-actor, because, whenever he had to represent Niobe, he was as rigid as a stone, while in AP, 11, 246 the poet says that the story of Tantalus’ daughter could have provided the subject-matter for a “putid drama of Melito”, that is, could have inspired a modest dramatic representation.
49 I discuss the Ovidian intermediality of the Ausonian epigram in Nolfo 2020, p. 213‑218.
50 Green 1999, p. 88.
51 Transl. in Kay 2001, p. 188.
52 Kay 2001, p. 188.
53 The absence of these faculties dramatizes the fault of the mythical heroine and signifies that the divine revenge will be unavoidable.
54 Schenkl 1883, p. 210; Peiper 1886, p. 335; Green 1991, p. 402; Kay 2001, p. 188.
55 Aubreton, Buffière 1980, p. 129.
56 Transl. in Paton 1918, p. 233.
57 There are examples of faithful translations: see, for example, Epigr., 22, based on the adespoton text of Anth. Plan., 263, in which the persona loquens is the animated statue of Nemesis, with direct reference to the sculpture placed by the Athenians, after the victory of Marathon, in the temple of Rhamnous. These translations – without being uerbatim translations or, more technically, ad uerbum exprimentes – maintain an element of competition with the original.
58 Stahl 1886; Munari 1956; Benedetti 1980; Traina 1982; Kay 2001, p. 13‑19; Floridi 2013; Floridi 2015; Cazzuffi 2017, p. 9‑10; Floridi 2018b. About the literary culture of Ausonius, see Green 1990; Rochette 2007, p. 178‑182; Goldlust 2010.
59 See Stahl 1886, p. 28: Etiam integra epigrammata uertit haud pauca [...] liberius exemplar exprimens. Sed etiam his uersionibus non raro sua addit.
60 Benedetti 1980, p. 19‑20. We should not ignore, as evidence of Ausonius’ familiarity with Greek, the cases of “intrasentential code-switching”, that is, when Greek words are syntactically integrated in Latin sentences: see Rochette 2007, p. 177; Pelttari 2011; Floridi 2015, p. 119, n. 3.
61 Green 1990, p. 319.
62 Green 1991, p. 402.
63 I quote the text according to Conte 2019, p. 1.
64 Transl. in Ahl, Fantham 2007, p. 3.
65 LSJ, s.v. ζωή.
66 DELG, s.v. ζώω.
67 About the possible Latin translations of the word, see Hederich 1827, s.v. λίθος: lapis, saxum […].
68 LSJ, s.v. λίθος.
69 Moreover, we find often in dactylic poetry the abl. silicī, so as to avoid the tribrach (see DELL, s.v. silex).
70 See Kay 2001, p. 188: “the noun suits both the rock on Mt. Sipylus into which Niobe was thought to have turned, and the piece of marble which was turned into Scopas’ sculpture (for silex of marble, see Stat., Silu., 1, 2, 148); Ausonius may also have used the word for its assonance with sileo, and there is a rationalisation of the Niobe myth at Cic., Tusc., 3, 63 [see above] which lends support: Nioba fingitur lapidea propter aeternum, credo, in luctu silentium”.
71 OLD, s.v. silex: “[…] 3 (typifying lack of feeling or emotion)”.
72 LEW, s.v. uīuō/uīuus.
73 Berschin, Becht 1984, p. 17: the adjective is more directly related to the verb uiuifico, modelled on the Greek ζωοποιέω.
74 See comm. ad loc. in Kay 2001, p. 189: “ambiguous, both with the meaning ‘consciousness’, which dominates in line 3, and with the meaning ‘intelligence’, which dominates in line 4”.
75 OLD, s.v. sensus.
76 DELL, s.v. sentiō.
77 Green 1991, p. 402.
78 Dinter 2019, p. 148‑149.
79 AP, 7, 386.
80 AP, 7, 530.
81 AP, 7, 549.
82 See n. 48 above.
83 AP, 11, 246.
84 Anth. Plan., 129‑134.
85 Anth. Plan., 130.
86 Aubreton, Buffière 1980, p. 129.
87 Transl. in Paton 1918, p. 233.
88 Ov., Am., 3, 12, 31.
89 Ov., Epist., 20, 105‑106, in which the transformation into stone of the superba parens proves, in Acontius’ speech to Cydippe, the violence of Diana toward those who offend her.
90 Ov., Trist., 5, 1, 57‑58 and 5, 12, 8.
91 Ov., Ib., 583.
92 Ov., Pont., 1, 2, 27‑30.
93 I quote the text according to Richmond 1990, p. 5.
94 Transl. in Gaertner 2005, p. 55.
95 I would like to thank Costas Panayotakis for discussing this point with me.
96 See n. 84 above.
97 Bruss 2010; Squire 2013a; Squire 2013b; Squire 2013c; Nolfo 2015, p. 298‑301; Floridi 2018a; Nobili 2018.
98 Quint., Inst., 6, 2, 29‑30.
99 I quote the text according to Winterbottom 1970, p. 335.
100 Transl. in Butler 1953, p. 433 and p. 435.
101 Bernt 1968, p. 30‑31.
102 Lubian 2013, p. 220.
103 See, e.g., Mart., 4, 47.
104 Epigr., 45‑47 and 51‑52.
105 See Floridi 2013, p. 97‑102.
106 I quote the text according to Russell 1964, p. 21; see also Nocchi 2016.
107 Transl. in Fyfe, Russell 1995, p. 215 and p. 217.
108 See Quint., Inst., 10, 7, 15; Gutzwiller 2002, p. 87 and 110; Nolfo 2018, p. 306.
109 Agosti 2006, p. 355.
110 See, for example, Lesky 1936, p. 673‑706; Geominy 1992 (but see also LIMC VI/ 2, p. 612‑618); Schmidt 1992 (but see also LIMC VI/2, p. 609‑612); Gaunt 2002; Diacciati 2005; Jastrzębowska 2007; Neils 2008; Salvo 2009, p. 99‑112; Rebaudo 2013; Salvo 2015, p. 219‑230; Bejor 2016.
111 Kay 2001, p. 188: it is worth bearing in mind that Scopas and Praxiteles were often confused in ancient sources. N.M. Kay states that “the modern consensus is that the Niobe with her children, copies of parts of which group survive, is the work of Scopas”, but then he comments, with relation to the participle polita of Epigr., 57, 1, that it “refers to the process of finishing a statue by smoothing areas of flesh in particular, and Praxiteles was noted for his prowess in that technique”.
112 I quote the text according to Mayhoff 2002, p. 316.
113 Transl. in Eichholz 1971, p. 21 and p. 23.
114 See, for example, Epigr., 33, in which Ausonius assigns to Phidias the Καιρός of Lysippus, a statue which is in the corresponding Greek model (that is, in Anth. Plan., 275) an explicit object of an allegorical ἔκφρασις.
115 See Salvo 2009, p. 103, but also DNO, III, p. 188 and Pafumi 2016, p. 259.
116 See Prop., 2, 31, 14; Rosati 2009, p. 274‑275.
117 Nocchi 2013, p. 385.
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