Child's Play: Ovid and his Critics

Abstract

It is a familiar observation that Epic puts men first — from ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε to arma uirumque, and on to ‘Man's first disobedience’. Genres are gendered, and the epic genre is emphatically masculine, foregrounding males as protagonists and male preoccupations as its proper concerns, and in general validating and glorifying masculine spheres of activity and masculine values and priorities. Self-conscious commentary on this defining feature of epic is readily found within the genre — when Numanus Remulus advises the effeminate Trojans, ‘sinite arma uiris et cedite ferro’ (Aen. 9.620), the echo of arma uirumque has the effect of implicating the whole epic in his male chauvinism; only real men have a right to feature in the Aeneid, Remulus seems to suggest — but is most familiar from confrontation between epic and lower genres, love elegy in particular.