Two Exempla of Militia amoris Ovidius Amores 1.9 and 2.12

This is an attempt to re-examine the function of the exempla in Am.1.9 and 2.12, which appears to have been unjustly ignored or not rightly appreciated by critics, who focus on only the metaphors and motifs of militia amoris. Besides them, however, both poems have a common construction, in which each series of the exempla takes the important position of following the propositio and its development, in preparation for the brief conclusion. In the first half of Am.2.12, imitating Prop.2.14, Ovid proudly claims a triumph for his great victory won by a one-man army over the invincible enemies with no blood shed. From the romantic view, we expect this supreme joy of triumph, which, in Rome, implied apotheosis of generals, to be followed by a reference to the woman's rare beauty he deservingly acquired. In fact, the following is an anaphora of femina (19, 21, 23) , not facies or forma. The first three exempla put stress on the physical aspects of love, i.e. libido inflamed by wine, marriage of convenience and rape of brides for procreation, and in the last we find the phrase niuea coniuge (25) , but it turns out at the end of the line to be of a cow who watches oxen struggling for herself, a ridiculous picture. Here is no such admiration for the woman's beauty and its charms as in Prop.2.3, but a common woman as a general cause of war : nec belli noua causa (17) . Then, the exempla shift the point from the rare to the common, so that we feel as if cast down from the heaven to the earth. The first half of Am.1.9 compares the lover to the soldier in terms of labor. Through this comparison, Ovid pretends to protest, against the world's general view of love, that they should not call it idleness. To follow the protest, such heroes as embody at once the labores of the soldier and of the lover, e.g. Coroebus who jumped into the Greeks to rescue Cassandra when she was pulled out from the temple of Athena, would have been more to the point as an exemplum. What we see are heroes and a god just in love, a point which has been criticized. The exempla of Achilles and Hector imitate Prop.2.22.29-32, with the difference that, while Prop.2.22 uses similar phrases for both heroes (they went to the battle from their love) , Am.1.9 puts Achilles in his sadness to give the Trojans a chance to attack, and of Hector uses almost the same phrase as used of Achilles in Prop.2.22, with a reference to his helmet. So that Am.1.9 recalls more closely the very theme and the scene in Bk.6 of the Iliad. On that setting, missed Briseis apears to prevent Achilles from fighting, though in the Iliad the loss of her was not the real cause of his retiring, for Agamemnon's offer to restore her was rejected by Achilles, who did not make the decision to fight until Patroclus' death. Andromache's embrace is expressed as if it were the resources of Hector's martial power (the symbol of which was his helmet in I1.6) , though there is no such passage that she had him put it on. The point, then, seems to be that martial strength depends on the presence of love. Agamemnon's exemplum puts emphasis on his falling in love with Cassandra at a glance because of her beauty : uisa (37) , obstipuisse, effusis comis (38) (disheveled hair is a motif often used, esp. by Propertius, for expressing natural beauty) . And the words Atrides and Priameide (37) allude to the Trojan War, and to Agamemnon's victory. If we see the love-motif of a girl gained as a victory working here, then the acquisition of the beautiful virgin seems to be equated with the capture of Troy. Mars' exemplum makes a scarce allusion, only in the hexameter, to the story in Od.8, so, more significant is, it seems, the pentameter : no story is more famous in heaven. Probably it is Ovid's favourite motif, for similar verses appear also in A.A.2.592 and Met.4.189, two other passages dealing with the story. Why or in what sense is it the most famous? The account in A.A.2.561ff. includes all the motifs found in Od.8, and differs only in the responses of the gods called in. The moral, expressed in Od. in their talking with each other, disappears in A.A., where only the great joy of adultery is emphasized, using the phrase, hic aliquis ridens ait (A.A.2.585) , the correspondentof hôde de tis eipesken idôn, which was used for the gods' general view in Od. Now we can see in the four exempla a double Steigerung; a love missed : reluctance to fight - wife's embrace : taking the field - a virgin gained : the greatest victory - the heavenly joy of adultery with the goddess of love : the god of war. The exempla shift the point from labor of love to joy of love. In the following passage, Ovid contrasts his laziness and activity, dividing them into the past and the present (plpf., 41, 42, : pf., 43, 44, : pres., 45; in this respect Am.1.9 differs from A.P.12.18., where the present sight of Xeinophilos is the matter) . Once he had been softened by lectus et umbra (42) , a phrase standing for poetry, to Ovid for love p ...