Presented as part of the Centre for Classical Studies Seminar Series

The Centre for Classical Studies warmly invites you to attend the next talk in our Seminar Series for Semester 2. After the talk in the Milgate Room, we shall continue discussion in the ANU Classics Museum over light refreshments.

The traditionally harmonious Muses disagree on the etymology of the month May at the beginning of Fasti 5. This scene has attracted scholarly attention, following the reappraisal of the Fasti, with critics focusing on the implications of the Muses’ disharmony for Ovid’s poetic authority. Building on previous discussions of discourse discrepancy, I argue that each of Ovid’s Muses employs a different type of Hesiodic poetry. Polyhymnia gives a version of the Theogony, Urania’s speech recalls the myth of the ages from the Works and Days, and Calliope evokes the diction, motifs, and structure of the Catalog of Women. The speeches of the Muses are framed with a version of Hesiod’s poetic initiation, the Dichterweihe of the Theogony. In an inversion of the initiation scene, the Muses leave the poet of the Fasti dumbstruck instead of instructing him. Ovid’s silence is related to Augustus’ politics of intolerance– the presentation aims to highlight not only the literary but also the political repercussions of Hesiodic appropriation.

Image: Hesiod and the Muses: Gustave Moreau, 1860