Trying Not To Cheat: Responses to Inconsistencies in Roman Epic

This paper discusses some of the arguments and methods of a forthcoming study of inconsistencies in Roman epic. After description of the shape of that book, the paper moves through some passages and problems in Catullus 64, Lucretius' De rerum natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Pharsalia. My central claim is that not all inconsistencies need to be explained or amended away, or faulted, and that some need to be interpreted. Some types of "cheating," or of avoiding reading and interpreting the words in the text in the order in which they appear, are discussed.