Ovid enacts his own poetic biography in his letters from Tomis, with implications for his ostensibly fawning position towards the princeps . Ovidian seafaring language in Tristia 1 recreates the circumstances under which carmina led to relegatio , while his resurrection of the Hero and Leander myth ( Tr . 3.10 from Heroides 18 and 19) reflects the impossibility of his pre-exilic themes being continued in Tomis. Such a focus on the intersection between poetry and reality necessitates a reconsideration of Ovid’s Augustus, and renders the poet’s encomium at P . 4.13 a condemnation of the emperor as little more than a malus interpres .
This paper will reevaluate Catullus’s venom in poems 41 and 43 (the so-called ‘Ameana Cycle’) to show that his attacks on Ameana are in fact veiled criticisms of Mamurra’s loathsome poetry. Catullus’s descriptions of Ameana substantiate this reading: her physical features are disproportionate and ill suited to Roman conceptions of beauty, she is entirely without wit, and despite her patent imperfections, she has no idea how hideous she really is. The use of a poetic mistress in this manner has parallels within the Catullan corpus, and is also referenced in the work of Martial.
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