A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 6 (review)

Littlewood is well known to students of the Fasti, having published between 1975 and 1981, at a time when this work was only seldom an object of literary criticism, excellent analyses of the artistry (structure, narrative technique, variatio of style, intertextuality, and humor) displayed by Ovid in three longish passages from books 2, 4, and 5. This approach, favored in Fasti studies since the mid-eighties and most notably taken by Barchiesi, Hinds, Miller, and Newlands, is combined here in Littlewood's commentary on book 6 with penetrating discussions of two other aspects: religious history (Littlewood's follows the trail, e.g., of Bömer, Frazer, Le Bonniec, Porte, and Schilling) and the Augustan backdrop, an insightful picture of which was first drawn by Herbert-Brown. Her explications are as complex as we could wish them to be, and their place beside those of Fantham for book 4 and Green for book 1 is assured. Littlewood lays the foundation for her commentary with an exhaustive introduction, addressing there the aspects that will be central to her interpretation. She begins by discussing the political situation in Rome during the composition of the Fasti, focusing in particular on the reorganization of religion by Augustus reflected in the text. Littlewood characterizes the work as a mixture of "Greco-Roman literary tradition with contemporary antiquarian knowledge and personal experience" (xli); she names the principal motifs within its unmistakably thematic structure, describes the narrative technique (paying particular attention to Ovid's adaptation of narratives from Livy), and closes with a short chapter on the text (Littlewood uses, with few deviations, the Alton/Wormell/Courtney edition, 4th ed. [Leipzig 1997]).

In the headnotes for the separate sections, and passim in entries on specific verses, the aspects introduced in Littlewood's preliminaries are then considered in greater depth or supplemented with further information (Littlewood refers, for example, only ad loc. to the influence of didactic poetry). On the whole, her entries read more like portions of a continuous interpretation than typical commentary notes, which tend to drift into not strictly pertinent areas. Littlewood never forgets the priorities defined at the outset. She thus demonstrates convincingly that in book 6, which Ovid drafted in exile as clearly the last (for now? for ever?) within a structural unit, he creates an antithesis between the theme "war" introduced in the proem (by Juno and Iuventas) and that of "peace" in book 1. And she highlights again and again the elegist's humorous handling of his material, doubtless correct in her assumption that, when Ovid slips an erotic double entendre or two into a Roman myth (in 436–460, for instance, Vesta is "on fire" and so Metellus "penetrates" the sanctuary: see pp. 137–40), he is not being subversive, but simply offering a contemporary audience, Augustus included, something as funny as it is clever.

One minor quibble: Littlewood skirts round knotty language problems. Should a commentary not steer readers through difficult, not immediately comprehensible passages (and there are some in Ovid, too), presenting a carefully reasoned translation? Littlewood heads the various sections of Fasti 6 with paraphrases which stick closely to the Latin wording, but good, literal translations might have been the wiser choice. She does occasionally render a verse into English, but not always very well (or does she really think that 15f. quas Priamides . . . contulit, for example, means "whom the son of Priam . . . encountered?"), and in rare glances at the meaning of a word or phrase, she invariably refers us not to the TLL, but to the OLD. But Littlewood more than compensates with countless brilliant observations on Ovid's consummate style, particularly where he himself dazzles with sound-play and nifty word-order (cf. esp. 110–11 on 341–342). These contributions alone will make Littlewood's commentary an indispensable tool for readers of the Fasti. If they can afford it, that is. A paperback edition soon please, publisher!