In his magisterial new commentary on the Amores J. C. McKeown alleges an ‘inconsistency’ or ‘flaw in the dramatic continuity’ between Amores 1.1 and 1.2: ‘whereas Ovid is fully aware in 1.1 that he is under Cupid's domination, he shows no such awareness in the opening lines of 1.2.’ Previously A. Cameron had used this ‘inconsistency’, together with the evident programmatic character of 1.2, as an indication that the second poem must in fact have been the first poem of one (...) of the original five books of Amores; then when Ovid decided to reduce the number of books from five to three, he wanted to keep Esse quid hoc dicam and had no choice but to put it as near as possible the front of the first book, immediately after that book's own introductory poem. This reconstruction McKeown rightly rejects on the ground that 1.2's emphasis on Ovid's newness to love makes it out of place in any book other than the first. (shrink)

Despite increasingly sophisticated theoretical debate, scholars concerned with ancient historiography effectively still divide into two camps: historians, who want to use the texts as sources and assess them by criteria of accuracy, reliability, completeness of record and presence or absence of prejudice according to their presumed relationship to the facts which they purport to represent; and literary scholars, who want to interpret the texts as texts, with their own internal logic.

In his magisterial new commentary on the Amores J. C. McKeown alleges an ‘inconsistency’ or ‘flaw in the dramatic continuity’ between Amores 1.1 and 1.2: ‘whereas Ovid is fully aware in 1.1 that he is under Cupid's domination, he shows no such awareness in the opening lines of 1.2.’ Previously A. Cameron had used this ‘inconsistency’, together with the evident programmatic character of 1.2, as an indication that the second poem must in fact have been the first poem of one (...) of the original five books of Amores; then when Ovid decided to reduce the number of books from five to three, he wanted to keep Esse quid hoc dicam and had no choice but to put it as near as possible the front of the first book, immediately after that book's own introductory poem. This reconstruction McKeown rightly rejects on the ground that 1.2's emphasis on Ovid's newness to love makes it out of place in any book other than the first. (shrink)