Describing the Invisible – Ovid’s Rome

Abstract

Ovid’s poetic descriptions of Rome are not as vivid, as pictorial as one tends to suppose. In the poems from exile the lack of detail and the flat imagery seem to be programmatic. Thus, the reader’s attention is directed to the metapoetic message conveyed, by bringing into focus the role of enargeia/evidentia and the rivalry between literature and the visual arts. Evidence for this hypothesis is furnished by passages from the “Metamorphoses”, the “Tristia” and the “Epistulae ex Ponto” as well as by statements concerning the ancient theory of evidentia.

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