Apoll Als Elegischer Liebhaber
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Thomas Gärtner
Apollo's failure to give oracles in P. Oxy. 3723 has its closest parallel in Tibullus' elegy 2, 3, where the god is described as completely helpless and bereft of all his divine attributes as a result of his servitium amoris. The seeming parallel in Ovid's narration of the story of Apollo and Daphne in the first book of the Metamorphoses exhibits a more complicated concept: Apollo presents himself in command of all divine powers, but mourns the failure of these powers to archieve the love of Daphne. He does not humiliate himself as in Tib. 2, 3, but the comic element in his appearance consists in the self-reflected discrepancy between his divine self-confidence and his erotic failure. The haughtiness of Ovid's Apollo is in line with the broader context of met. 1, especially his defeat of Pytho and his quarrel with Cupido. Ovid regularly contrasts in the early books of the Metamorphoses ‘epic’ and ‘elegiac’ structural sections. In book one he programmatically contrasts his modified concept of divine love not absorbing completely the god's personality with the exhausting and uncompromising divine servitium amoris in Tib. 2, 3.
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- Gellius, Ein Stoischer Nebulo und Das Zitat. Zu Gellius 1, 2
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- Wilamowitz-Bildnisse
Articles in the same Issue
- Aeschylus, Supplices 86–95, 843–910, and the Early Transmission of Antistrophic Lyrical Texts*
- Bitinna and the Tyrant: Some Remarks on Herondas 5.74-77*
- Apoll Als Elegischer Liebhaber
- Statius' Roman Penelope: Exemplarity, Praise and Gender in Silvae 3.5
- Gellius, Ein Stoischer Nebulo und Das Zitat. Zu Gellius 1, 2
- The Poet from Egypt? Reconsidering Claudian's Eastern Origin
- Herrschaft und Geschlechterhierarchie. Zur Funktionalisierung der Zenobiagestalt und Anderer Usurpatoren in den Viten der Historia Augusta
- Wilamowitz-Bildnisse
