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A COMMENTARY ON OVID’S
METAMORPHOSES
Volume 3: Books 13–15 and Indices
Comprising fifteen books and over two hundred and fifty myths,
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is one of the longest extant Latin poems from
the ancient world and one of the most influential works in Western
culture. It is an epic on desire and transgression that became a
gateway to the entire world of pagan mythology and visual imagina-
tion. This, the first complete commentary in English, covers all
aspects of the text – from textual interpretation to poetics, imagina-
tion, and ideology – and will be useful as a teaching aid and an
orientation for those who are interested in the text and its reception.
Historically, the poem’s audience includes readers interested in opera
and ballet, psychology and sexuality, myth and painting, feminism
and posthumanism, vegetarianism and metempsychosis (to name
just a few outside the area of Classical Studies).
alessandro barchiesi is a professor of Classics at New York

University, after teaching at Stanford and the University of Siena.
He has been visiting professor at Berkeley and Harvard, and his
activity as a lecturer includes the Sather Classical Lectures at
Berkeley (2011), the Nellie Wallace Lectures at Oxford (1997), the
Gray Lectures at Cambridge (2001), the Jerome Lectures (AAR/
University of Michigan, 2002), the Housman Lecture at UC
London (2009), and the Martin Lectures at Oberlin (2012). His
work combines close reading of Roman literary texts (poetry and
fiction) with interest in contemporary criticism, literary theory, and
reception history. He is author of inter alia a commentary on Ovid's
Heroides 1–3 (1992) and the Ovidian volumes of essays The Poet and
the Prince (1997) and Speaking Volumes (2001), and co-editor with
W. Scheidel of the Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (2nd ed.
2020). His forthcoming work includes The War for Italia and
Apuleius the Provincial.
p h i l i p h a rd i e is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge;

Honorary Professor Emeritus of Latin Literature in the University of
Cambridge; and Fellow of the British Academy. He has published
Published online by Cambridge University Press

extensively on Latin poetry and its reception, and is widely identi-
fied as one of the world's leading Latinists. His books include Ovid's
Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge 2002); (edited) The Cambridge
Companion to Ovid (Cambridge 2002); and Rumour and Renown:
Representations of Fama in Western Literature (Cambridge 2012): His
2016 Sather Lectures have been published as Classicism and
Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry (2019) and his 2016
Warburg Lectures as Celestial Aspirations: Classical Impulses in British
Poetry and Art (2022).

A COMMENTARY ON OVID’S
METAMORPHOSES
Volume 3
Books 13–15 and Indices
ALES SANDRO BARCH IE SI

New York University
PHI LI P HARDI E
Trinity College, Cambridge

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Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521895811
doi: 10.1017/9781139017213
© Alessandro Barchiesi and Gianpiero Rosati 2024
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2024
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Volume 1 isbn 978-0-521-89579-8 Hardback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
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accurate or appropriate.

Contents
General Editor Alessandro Barchiesi

Volume 1
Books 1–6
Volume 2
Books 7–12
Volume 3
Books 13–15
Index of Proper Names

General Index

Contents of Volume 3
Prefacepage vii
Note on the Latin Text xiv
List of Abbreviations xvii
Commentary on Book 13 3

Philip Hardie
Philip Hardie
Philip Hardie
Bibliography 376
Index of Proper Names (Books 1–15) 403
General Index (to the Commentary on Books 1–15) 421
vi

Preface
Alessandro Barchiesi
This commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a revised version of the

work published in Italian by the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla (5 vols.,
between 2005 and 2013), with five commentators covering three books
each. The original work also included a facing Italian translation by
Ludovica Koch and Gioachino Chiarini and a fascinating essay by
Charles Segal (‘Il corpo e l’io nelle “Metamorfosi” di Ovidio’). We dedi-
cate this publication to him (he did not live to see the publication of the
Italian first volume) and to Ted Kenney, who passed away in December
2019 (the last month before the current plague). They are both, in their
own different ways, examples of resilience and true humanism.
The commentaries have been revised and updated, although one of them
on a limited scale: I did not dare to alter Kenney’s work after his death, but
his notes and introduction on books 7–9 incorporate a number of revisions
he made subsequent to the publication of the Italian volume (2011). The
other four commentators have engaged in a more extensive rewriting.
The Valla project was based on the important OCT critical edition by
Richard Tarrant (2004): the Latin text is not included in this publication
since readers may want to use our work as a companion to that widely
available critical edition. At times the commentators here diverge from
the text printed by Tarrant, and their choices are recorded in a ‘Note on
the Text’ introducing every triad of books.
The goal has not changed: we hope to offer guidance on the poem as a
literary work to many different readers, keeping in mind the exciting
reality that many people today are coming to the Metamorphoses from the
most diverse backgrounds and paths. Whether they are interested in the
history of Latin poetry or in the lush Caribbean myths of Chris Ofili, in
mutations of gender and species or the transmigration of souls, we hope
to have provided some orientation.
I thank my companions on this long journey for their patience and
inspiration.
vii
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139017213.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Preface
Philip Hardie
The last three books of the Metamorphoses move the reader through
legendary and historical time towards the poet’s own day, ad mea
tempora, to conclude with glances into the future beyond, the prospective
apotheosis of Augustus and the poet’s own continuing post-mortem life in
an empire-wide and sky-reaching fame: mea tempora in the further sense
of the survival of the Metamorphoses in an aetas Ovidiana of indefinite
period. This is time as it is charted in the epics of Homer, Virgil and
Ennius. The Trojan War marks the beginning of what was regarded in
antiquity as historical, as opposed to mythological, time.1 In Roman
tradition, the Trojan War has a further importance, as the fall of Troy is
the sine qua non for the eventual foundation of Rome. More particularly,
Ovid’s narrating of the Trojan War, the wanderings and toils of Aeneas,
and Roman history down to the present day represents his response to
Virgil’s scripting of this whole sequence of events in his Aeneid, the epic
which, on Virgil’s death in 19 BC, immediately established itself as the
central poetic text of Latin literature, and an inescapable challenge to any
future long hexameter narrative poem.
This is not to say either that the flow of time in books 13–15 is even and
continuous, or that in these books we finally arrive at a more consistently
epic mode of narration. As in the previous books, time alternately
expands or is concertinaed, internal narrators open out digressions into
the past and into different kinds of subject matter, and ingenious transi-
tions take the place of more mundane segues from one episode to the
next.
Ovid’s ‘little Iliad’ had begun at the beginning of book 12, with brief
summaries of Paris’ rape of Helen and of the gathering of the Greek army
1
See D. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History, Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London, 2007, pp. 81–4.
viii

Preface ix
at Aulis.2 The following set-piece ecphrasis of the House of Fama (12.39–63)
serves as a kind of frontispiece to the ‘little Iliad’, which stretches down
to 13.622. Book 12 contains one of Ovid’s large-scale exercises in epic
battle narrative, but this is the hyper-, or Ur-, epic battle of the Lapiths
and Centaurs, narrated in a ‘flashback’ analepsis in the mouth of the
long-lived Nestor (12.182–535). It is not until book 13 that we are
presented with a detailed reworking of the matter of the Iliad itself, but
in the form of not one, but two re-narratings, in the mouths of two of
the Greek heroes, Ajax and Ulysses. Ajax and Ulysses speak not in the
traditional Homeric and Virgilian setting for internal narrators, the
heroic banquet, but in the setting of a law court established to judge
which hero is the worthier claimant for the arms of the dead Achilles
(13.1–383). Self-evidently, neither hero can be taken as a model for the
ideal of the objective and impartial epic narrator, an ideal that Ovid also
puts under pressure elsewhere.
The remainder of the ‘little Iliad’ moves the spotlight away from
macho male characters to grieving women (already a centrally Homeric
theme). The account of Hecuba’s intolerable grief at the deaths of her last
surviving children, Polyxena and Polydorus, (13.429–575) is Ovid’s closest
adaptation in the Metamorphoses of a single surviving tragic model,
Euripides’ Hecuba.3 It is the last major example in the poem of a generi-
cally tragic episode – a reason, perhaps, for its unusually faithful depend-
ence on a single tragic source. It is also a literary-historical reminder of
the close connection, well recognised already in antiquity, between Iliadic
epic and Attic tragedy. Hecuba’s lengthy tragedy is concluded with a brief
account of the enraged and grief-stricken mother’s metamorphosis into a
rabid dog (13.567–71). The much shorter episode of Aurora’s grief for her
son Memnon leads into a more fantastic and complex metamorphosis
(13.600–19). A colourful example of the titular phenomenon of the
Metamorphoses thus fittingly rounds off the Ovidian ‘Iliad’.
Ovid’s ‘Iliad’ had also begun with a metamorphosis, the petrifaction of
the serpent that attacked the nest of sparrows, in the omen at Aulis (Met.
12.22–3), a metamorphosis authorised by the Iliad itself (2.317–20). In the
‘little Aeneid’ (13.623–14.608) that follows the ‘little Iliad’ – as Virgil’s
2
In fact, true to Ovid’s tendency to multiply boundaries and points of division, the passage to the
matter of Troy had already been marked in the previous book, 11, by Apollo’s crossing of the
geographical boundary of the Hellespont, to view the building of the new city of Troy, 199–201
inde nouae primum moliri moenia Troiae | Laomedonta uidet susceptaque magna labore | crescere
difficili nec opes exposcere paruas; see Barchiesi 1997b, p. 183.
3
In general on tragedy in the Metamorphoses, see Curley 2013.

x Preface
Aeneid presents itself as the successor to the Homeric epics – Ovid high-
lights some of the metamorphic moments in the Aeneid, tendentiously
redefining Virgil’s epic as already an epic of metamorphosis, comparable
to the way in which, in his amatory and exilic poetry, Ovid repeatedly
draws attention to the centrality in the Aeneid of the erotic episode of
Dido and Aeneas.4 Ovid gives detailed accounts of the maiden Scylla’s
transformation into Virgil’s hybrid sea monster (Aen. 3.424–8; Met.
14.59–67), and of Circe’s transformation of Picus into a woodpecker
(Aen. 7.189–91; Met. 14.386–96). Pride of place is given to a retelling of
the most striking of Virgil’s metamorphoses, that of the Trojan ships into
sea nymphs (Aen. 9.107–22; Met. 14.535–65).
The internal narrator Macareus’ account of Circe’s transformation of
Ulysses’ companions into beasts is included within a faithful retelling of a
part of the Homeric narrative of the wanderings of Odysseus (Met.
14.223–307), following on Achaemenides’ retelling of Odyssey 9’s narrative
of the encounter with Polyphemus (Met. 14.165–212). Within Ovid’s
‘little Aeneid’ are thus contained elements of a ‘little Odyssey’. Ovid’s
close replications of Odyssean material within his ‘Aeneid’ are licensed by
Virgil’s own placing of a retelling of the Homeric Polyphemus episode in
the mouth of Achaemenides (Aen. 3.616–38).
Ovid repeatedly derails the teleological thrust of Virgil’s Aeneid with
inset narratives of love and metamorphosis, in particular a massive ‘trio of
love triangles’, the stories of Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus (13.750–897);
Glaucus, Scylla and Circe (13.898–14.74); and Picus, Canens and Circe
(14.320–434). Ovid explores genres other than epic, most notably in the
polyphony of genres in the story of Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus, which
combines pastoral, elegiac and epic elements.5 Yet this generic dialogism
can be read as commentary on the encyclopedic nature of the Aeneid
itself, an epic in which Virgil confronts the challenge of an ancient view
of Homeric epic as the source of all later kinds of literature. But where
the Aeneid contains a proliferation of other genres within a constraining
epic code, the Metamorphoses allows the plurality of genres to blossom in
less controlled ways.
Ovid’s ‘Aeneid’ begins with the briefest of summaries of what is the
chronological beginning of Virgil’s main narrative, narrated in flashback
4
Ovid draws attention to what, even from a less biased point of view, might be seen as the impor-
tance of mutability as a theme in the Aeneid; see P. Hardie, ‘Augustan Poets on the Mutability of
Rome’, in A. Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, Bristol, 1992, pp.
59–82.
5
See the classic discussion of Farrell 1992.

Preface xi
by Aeneas in Aeneid 2 (Met. 13.623–7), and reaches down to the death of
Turnus, narrated even more briefly in just eight words (14.572–3). The
skimpy retelling of key episodes of the Aeneid within Ovid’s ‘little
Aeneid’ is compensated for by major reworkings elsewhere in the
Metamorphoses. For example, Ovid engages at much greater length with
Virgil’s final duel between Aeneas and Turnus in major scenes of fighting
and physical struggle, in the battle between Perseus and the supporters of
Andromeda’s disappointed suitor, Phineus, at the beginning of book 5 of
the Metamorphoses, and in the wrestling match between Hercules and the
river god Achelous at the beginning of book 9. Elements of Virgil’s story
of Dido and Aeneas, summarised, notoriously, in four lines at Met.
14.78–81, find more expanded reflections in erotic and tragic narratives
elsewhere in the poem. These examples of what might be called an
Ovidian ‘intertextual displacement’ betoken the fact that the
Metamorphoses as a whole, not just the ‘little Aeneid’, engages continu-
ously with the Virgilian epic.
Ovid gives his ‘little Aeneid’ a final metamorphic stamp with two
episodes that overstep the chronological limit of the main narrative of
Virgil’s Aeneid: firstly, the emergence of a heron from the ashes of Turnus’
city Ardea (14.573–80), one of the numerous bird metamorphoses in the
poem; and secondly, the circumstantial narrative of the apotheosis of
Aeneas (14.581–608), foreshadowed briefly and proleptically in the
Aeneid. Most metamorphoses of humans in the Metamorphoses are down-
wards in the chain of being, into animal, mineral or vegetable forms. At
the end of book 13, lines 916–63, Glaucus narrates his own metamor-
phosis upwards, from human to divine, albeit a rather bestial form of
divinity, a sea god with a fishy tail. The apotheosis of Aeneas conforms to
a purifying kind of divinisation, which purges the inferior mortal parts of
the human hero, first exemplified in the apotheosis of the archetypal
man-god Hercules five books before (9.239–72), and to be followed, in
accelerated sequence, in the remaining book and a bit by the apotheoses
of Romulus, Julius Caesar and, in prospect, Augustus and the poet
himself.
This is one sign that the poem is reaching its conclusion. Another kind
of transition that indicates that we are coming home is the geographical
passage from east to west, the passage of Aeneas from Troy to Italy, and
also the passage of Homeric epic from the Greek east through its natural-
isation in Virgil’s Roman Aeneid. At the beginning of book 14, Glaucus
travels from Sicily to the house of Circe in Italy, anticipating the Trojans’
own approaches to Italy, thwarted at 14.76–7 when they are driven back

xii Preface
to Carthage by the storm, and successful in their landing at Cumae at
14.101–5. The poem’s gravitation to Italy continues in book 15 with
Myscelos’ journey from Argos to Croton (49–57); Pythagoras’ flight into
exile from Samos to Croton (60–2); the Greek tragic hero Hippolytus’
translation to the grove of Aricia as a minor Italian god (541–6); and
Aesculapius’ journey from Epidaurus to Rome (695–728). Aesculapius is a
god who comes to Rome as an outsider; the subject of the poem’s last
narrative, Julius Caesar, becomes a god in his own city (15.745–6).
The cursory catalogue of the Alban king list (14.609–21, 772–4),
invented to span the gap in time between Aeneas’ arrival in Italy and the
founding of Rome, is interrupted by the story of the Italian divinities
Vertumnus and Pomona (14.623–771), moving us into the area of Italian-
Roman aetiology. It is also the last erotic story in the poem, in the series
that began with Apollo’s attempted rape of Daphne in book 1, and it
brings that series to a satisfying conclusion, as the possibility of yet
another story of rape or attempted rape is averted through the final
success of the lover in achieving the fulfilment of mutual desire, in a
reversal of the pattern of the huntress-nymph impervious to male desire.
The story’s comfortably familiar setting of an Italian orchard is height-
ened by the contrast with the admonitory tale told by Vertumnus to
Pomona, in his attempt at erotic persuasion, the esoteric Greek story of
the suicidal exclusus amator Iphis’ love for the stony-hearted Anaxarete,
set in a geographically and culturally distant Cyprus (14.698–761).
In book 15, Greek and Roman meet in the encounter of Rome’s second
king, Numa, with the exiled Greek philosopher Pythagoras, whose
philosophico-didactic speech takes up almost half of the book (15.75–
478). While the Speech of Pythagoras does not provide a philosophical
‘key’ to a principle of change that could be applied to the metamorphoses
in the poem as a whole, it does yield another element of closure, in that it
forms a ring with the philosophically coloured cosmogony that opens the
Metamorphoses. Both passages provide monumental examples of Ovid’s
engagement with Graeco-Roman philosophy, in the Metamorphoses
and other works, an engagement that is coming to be increasingly
recognised.6
The quirky selection of Roman stories that otherwise punctuate the
temporal distance between Romulus and Augustus includes female
perspectives, in Tarpeia’s attempt to betray the city (14.776–7), and in the
6
See recently the essays in G. Williams and K. Volk (eds.), Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher,
Oxford, 2022.

Preface xiii
pious grief of the wives of the first two kings of Rome, rewarded with
apotheosis to match that of her husband, in the case of Romulus’ widow
Hersilia (14.829–51), and impervious to attempted consolation, in the
case of Numa’s widow Egeria (15.487–551). Like Livy, Ovid draws parallels
between remoter and more recent Roman history, in the ‘civil war’
between Romans and Sabines (14.798–804); in the reflections on king-
ship, Republic and principate that glimmer through the story of Cipus
(15.565–621); and in the potential of Aesculapius’ salvation of Rome from
the plague of 292 BC (15.626–744) to figure Augustus’ salvation of Rome
from the ‘plague’ of civil war, a potential also activated by allusions to
Virgil and Georgics 3 and 4 in the parallel narrative of salvation from the
plague on Aegina at Met. 7.523–657. The plague of 292 BC is the first
conclusively datable event in the poem, which then jumps almost 250
years to the Ides of March, 44 BC. That also happens to be the year
before the birth of Ovid – ad mea tempora in another sense.
Self-reference to Ovid’s own times has also been detected in the fact
that the temple built for Aesculapius, almost the last episode in the
Metamorphoses, was dedicated on 1 January, and so naturally appears near
the beginning of the Fasti (1.289–94), whose first word is Tempora, my,
Ovid’s, ‘Tempora’.7 But Ovid’s times were a-changin’, and the boast in the
Epilogue to the Metamorphoses that it is immune to the anger of Jupiter
(15.871–2) is often read as post-exilic defiance. And, post-exile, it would
be easy enough to see Ovid in the figure of Pythagoras, self-exiled to
escape tyranny, yet free to roam the universe in flights of the mind
(15.60–4).
This English version of my commentary on Metamorphoses 13–15 is a light

revision, with bibliographical updating, of the Italian version in P.
Hardie, Ovidio Metamorfosi, Vol. 6: Libri XIII–XV (Fondazione Valla,
2015).
7
See Barchiesi 1997b, p. 188.

Note on the Latin Text
Books 13–15
Divergences from Tarrant’s OCT (including punctuation, as was the case

in the 2015 list of divergences)
locus Tarrant Hardie

13.221 capit, dat … capit? det …
13.264 diduxit deduxit
13.282 timorque dolorque
13.294–5 [deleted] [in the text]
13.294 diuersosque orbes diuersasque urbes
13.312 pretioque praestoque
13.440 pacatum pacatum [in 2015 I read placatum]
13.444 iniusto infesto
13.471 non nunc
13.517 annosa damnosa
13.554 praedaeque + adsuetus + amore praedaeque adsuetus amore
13.560 [in the text] [deleted]
13.561 inuocat inuolat
13.602 natas lentas
13.628 limina litora
13.679 dat munus dat, munus
13.684 Lindius † nileus †
13.693 dare per
13.711 Samonque Samenque
13.913 ignorans ignorat
13.921 deditus debitus
xiv

Note on the Latin Text xv

13.948 sub aequora sub aequore
13.963 pennigero pinnigero
14.131 caput. neu caput, neu
14.145 acta uides; acta; tamen
14.158 per post
14.196 artus, artus.
14.201 [in the text] [deleted]
14.202 ipsa doloris illa malorum
14.212 uomentem, uomentem.
14.262 sollemni sublimi
14.281 toto prono
14.305 illum illis
14.323 ueram uerum
14.339 longa prona
14.394 uestemque … aurum uestisque … oram
14.427 iam longa in gelida
14.428 ipsos … dolores ipso … dolore
14.431 tenues teneras
14.442 marmorea marmoreo
14.467 Ilion Ilios
14.651 [deleted] [in the text]
14.750 mota tamen ‘uideamus mota ‘tamen uideamus
14.817 urbem orbem
15.104 † deorum † leonum
15.293 Achaidas Achaeidas
15.355 ignis ignes
15.361 siue si qua
15.396 ilicis … tremulaeue ilicet … tremulaeque
15.501 frustra patrium … cubile, frustra, patrium … cubile
15.502 finxit uoluisse uoluisse infelix

xvi Note on the Latin Text

15.515 contenta intenta
15.694 pressa estque dei grauitate carina. pressaque dei grauitate carina1
15.715 columbis colubris
15.776 en in me
15.829 barbariam gentesque barbariae gentes
1
And starting a new paragraph at 697, rather than 695.

Abbreviations
Bömer F. B ö m e r, P. O v i d i u s N a s o ,
Metamorphosen, 15 vols., Heidelberg
1969–86.
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin,
1863–.
Davies–Kathirithamby M. Davies and J. Kathirithamby, Greek
Insects, London, 1986.
D–K H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.), Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 17th ed.,
Berlin, 1974.
EAA Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e
orientale, 7 vols., Rome, 1958–66.
FGrH F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der grie-
chischen Historiker, Berlin and Leiden,
1923–58.
GL H. Keil (ed.), Grammatici Latini, 8
vols., Leipzig, 1867–70.
Haupt–Ehwald–von Albrecht M. Haupt and R. Ehwald (eds.), P.
Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosen, rev. M.
von Albrecht, 2 vols., Zürich, 1966.
Hubaux–Leroy J. Hubaux and M. Leroy, Le Mythe du
phénix dans les literatures grecque et
latine, Paris, 1939.
ILLRP A. Degrassi (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae
liberae rei publicae, 2 vols., Göttingen,
1957–63 (vol. 1, 2nd ed. 1965).
ILS H. Dessau (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae
Selectae, 3 vols., 2nd ed., Berlin, 1954–5.
LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae, Zürich and Munich, 1981–.
xvii

xviii List of Abbreviations
LLT-A Library of Latin Texts – Series A
LSJ H. Liddell, R. Scott and H. Jones (ed.),
A Greek–English Lexicon, 9th ed.,
Oxford, 1940.
M–W R. Merkelbach and M. L. West (eds.),
Fragmenta Hesiodea, Oxford, 1967.
NLS E. C. Woodcock, A New Latin Syntax,
London, 1959.
PMG Poetae Melici Graeci, ed. D. L. Page,
Oxford, 1962.
RE G. Wissowa, W. Kroll, K. Mittelhaus
and K. Ziegler (eds.), Real-Encyclopädie
der classischen Altertumswissenschaft,
Stuttgart, 1893–.
RVV Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und
Vorarbeiten.
SH H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons (eds.),
Supplementum Hellenisticum, Berlin and
New York, 1983.
TGF Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta: I, ed.
B. Snell, Göttingen, 1971; II, ed. R.
Kannicht and B. Snell, Göttingen, 1981;
III (Aeschylus) ed. S. Radt, Göttingen,
1985; IV (Sophocles), ed. S. Radt,
Göttingen 1977; V (Euripides, I–II), ed.
R. Kannicht, Göttingen, 2004.
TLL Thesaurus linguae Latinae, Leipzig,
1900–.

Books 13–15

Commentary on Book 13
Philip Hardie
13.1–398 The Debate over the Arms of Achilles (Armorum Iudicium)

In keeping with the poetics of a perpetuum carmen Ovid continues his
reworking of the Iliad into the larger design of an epic cycle (12.1–14.608;
on the epic cycle as the structural framework of Ovid’s Trojan material
see Ludwig 1965, pp. 62–5; on the strategy of a ‘cyclic’ retelling of the
Iliad see Ellsworth 1980). The dispute between Ajax and Ulysses over the
arms of Achilles continues the action of the Trojan War after the death of
Achilles, but compensates for the elision in book 12 of the material of the
Iliad at its proper place in the linear chronology with a twofold retelling
of Iliadic material from the different perspectives of two of the major
heroes. In book 12 Ovid had caught the creation of an epic tradition at
the moment of its formation on the lips of those present in the action,
both in the retellings by the Greeks of their previous military adventures
at 12.159–67 and in Nestor’s recollection of the Ur-epic encounter
between the Lapiths and Centaurs (12.168–535), a garrulous old man’s
reminiscences that allow the main narrator no time for a full-length
Trojan War narrative. In each case the narration is far from disinterested,
whether because of a need to cater to self-esteem or to find a subject suit-
able for the ears of the greatest model of epic uirtus, Achilles (12.159–63),
or because of the wish to avoid opening old wounds (12.536–48: quis
enim laudauerit hostem?). In this respect, then, the construction of epic
fama in book 12 differs little from the selectivity and misrepresentation of
the rhetoric demanded by the agonistic structure of the debate over the
arms in the next book.
The Debate is often viewed as one of Ovid’s most brazenly anachron-
istic exercises, importing the atmosphere of the late first-century BC
declamation hall into the world of Homer, and symbolising the victory of
the newfangled over the traditional in the defeat of Ajax, the man of
action from an older scheme of things, by Ulysses, the type of a

4 philip hardie
q uick-tongued and unprincipled modernity. This is to overlook the sense
of literary history built into the episode. It is true that the ability to retell
old stories with new colores is as typical of the exercises of the rhetorical
schools as it is of Ovid himself, whose whole poetic output might be
regarded as a sustained exercise in a verbal remodelling of reality, the
imposition of uerba on res (on the slippage between words and deeds in
the Debate see Hardie 2007), and it is a legitimate temptation to see in
Ulysses a particularly Ovidian manipulator of words. So Stanford 1963,
p. 138: ‘a tribute from one skilful rhetorician to another’; Otis 1970, p. 285:
‘Ulysses’ facundia and ingenium are … much like Ovid’s own’; Pavlock
2009, p. 12: ‘Ulysses is an imaginative and deconstructive rhetorician
analogous to the poet who thoroughly destabilizes the genre of epic’; Duc
1994 sees the associative structure of Ulysses’ speech as being in the
manner of O.’s own practice as a declaimer, according to Sen. Controv.
2.2.9 hanc … controuersiam … declamauit … longe ingeniosius, excepto eo
quod sine certo ordine per locos discurrebat. But the Ulyssean-Ovidian skill
in referre aliter … idem (Ars am. 2.128) is only a particularly self-conscious
manifestation of the basic law of the Graeco-Roman literary tradition, and
not least of the oldest and most tenacious of genres, epic. Already in the
Odyssey the hero Odysseus appears as a masterful reteller of epic material
in ways more or less devious. Retelling is even more deeply embedded in
the Aeneid, both through the quality of the epic as a whole as an allusive
renarration of the Homeric poems and in the inclusion within the poem
of ‘microcosmic recapitulations’, in ecphrasis, internal narratives and
songs, or even separate books, of earlier epic poems (the Cycle, Ennius)
and of the Aeneid itself. A particularly important model for the Ovidian
debate is the Council of Latins at Aeneid 11.225–444, itself probably
drawing on versions of the Armorum iudicium in its presentation of a
violent verbal debate between a ‘man of action’, Turnus, and a ‘man of
words’, Drances, that already explores the impossibility of neatly separ-
ating the verbal constructions of rhetoric, facundia, from the supposedly
objective narratives of epic, fama (see Hardie 2012, ch. 4; on the paral-
lelism between the tendentious reworkings of fama and facundia see
Dippel 1990, p. 93).
As it happens, the Armorum iudicium is subjected to retelling in the
Epic Cycle itself, as the contest was narrated in both the Aithiopis and the
Ilias Parua, with significant divergences (see conveniently Davies 1989, pp.
60, 63–4; for a full treatment of the traditions see Huyck 1991, pp. 10–68):
in the Aithiopis the jury was composed of Trojan prisoners, and Ajax’s
suicide was probably a direct consequence of the judgement (as in Ovid);

in the Ilias Parua Nestor sent scouts to eavesdrop on the chatter of Trojan
girls in order to reach a decision, and the judgement was followed by the
madness of Ajax. Furthermore, the epic episode comes to Ovid filtered
through a long tradition of tragic and rhetorical rehandlings. A series of
Greek tragedies beginning with Aeschylus’ Ὅπλων Κρίσις ‘Judgement of
Arms’, the first play of an Ajax trilogy, was followed by Latin tragedies by
Pacuvius and Accius. Ovid also had access to plays on other parts of the
legendary material: Sophocles’ Ajax mirrors the earlier debate between
Ajax and Odysseus in the agōn between Teucer and Agamemnon, in
which Agamemnon counters the charge, found in the Pindaric treatments
of the story (Isthm. 4.36–43; Nem. 7.20–30, 8.21–34), that the judgement
represented the unfair victory of guile over courage, with the claim that he
himself had been just as forward in battle as Ajax, and with the assertion
of the superiority of brain over brawn (1250–4). Ovid may also have
drawn on Livius Andronicus’ Aiax Mastigophoros and Ennius’ Aiax. The
disputants’ argument over Ulysses’ role in the matter of Philoctetes also
draws on the Greek and Latin tragedies on that subject (in general see
Lafaye 1971, ch. 8 ‘La tragédie et la rhétorique’, with von Albrecht’s biblio-
graphical notes on pp. xiii–xiv).
This part of Ovid’s Cycle is indeed strongly marked by a tragic, and
specifically Latin tragic, colouring (and so prepares the reader for the
even more tragic material of the following Hecabe episode). Opinions on
the exact extent of Ovid’s borrowings from particular Latin plays depend
on conflicting reconstructions of those plays; the debate has focused
above all on the question of who constituted the jury in the several plays,
but even if it were the case that Ovid agrees with Pacuvius in having a
jury of Greek chiefs, this would hardly preclude borrowings from other
plays. Whether by accident or otherwise, the greater number of visible
parallels are with fragments of Accius’ Armorum iudicium (on parallels
with the Pacuvian and Accian fragments see D’Anna 1959, pp. 226–32).
In general Ovid seems to owe more to Accius than to other Latin trage-
dians: Accius is paired with Ennius at Am. 1.15.19–20; for a review of the
discussion of Ovid’s use of the Latin tragic sources see de Rosalia 1989,
pp. 123–4.
In combining within this episode both epic and tragic models, Ovid,
himself the author of an acclaimed but lost tragedy, the Medea, places
himself in a line of Roman writers who wrote both epics and dramas
(Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius). The combination of the tragic and
the rhetorical is naturally already present in the agōn of Attic tragedy, but
we might also remember the especially close links between early Roman

6 philip hardie
drama and rhetoric (Jocelyn 1967, p. 42; Argenio 1961). Specifically rhet-
orical treatments of the debate start with Antisthenes’ pair of speeches by
Aias and Odysseus, which shows marked parallelisms with the Ovidian
treatment, both in the overall shape of a short speech by Aias followed by
a longer one by Odysseus, and in many details, some of which may be
the result of shared sources, or mediated to Ovid through fourth-century
tragedies on the subject by Carcinus, Theodectes and perhaps Astydamas.
Ovid makes no attempt to disguise the affinities of the speeches of his
epic heroes with the performances of the rhetorical schools in which he
had been trained as a youth. On literary-historical grounds there was
nothing wrong in this, since Homer was generally regarded as the
inventor of rhetoric, and Odysseus as an exemplar of the elevated style,
Nestor with Menelaus being the exemplars of the other two styles (see
Radermacher 1951, pp. 6–10); at 12.178 Achilles addresses Nestor as o
facunde senex. The Armorum iudicium is indeed attested as a subject in
both the Roman and Greek rhetorical schools (e.g. Sen. Controv. 2.2.8;
Theon, Progymn. 9 Spengel p. 112), although most of the references
provided by Bömer on 12.620–13.398 (p. 197) are to another subject of
the controuersia, whether Ulysses, having been found near the body of
Ajax, should be judged to have killed him. But Ovid’s Armorum iudicium
cannot be classified neatly as either a controuersia or a suasoria; although
this is clearly a judicial forum, and not a deliberative council (like the
Virgilian debate between Drances and Turnus): ‘the debate cannot be
classed as a Controversia, for no general principle is in dispute; it is rather
a tragic agōn extended till it resembles a pair of opposing Suasoriae’
(Wilkinson 1955, p. 230; on the problem of definition see Dippel 1990,
p. 74 nn. 14–15. Bonner 1949, p. 151 takes the speeches to be suasoriae,
citing Sen. Controv. 2.2.12 declamabat autem Naso raro controuersias et non
nisi ethicas; de Sarno 1986 analyses the debate as a controuersia).
The most pointed allusion to the declamation schools comes at the end
of the speech not of Ulysses but of Ajax (120–2), reworking a conceit
used by Ovid’s favourite rhetorician Porcius Latro in a debate on the
subject of the Armorum iudicium (Sen. Controv. 2.2.8). This is a problem
for those who see a simple contrast between a doltish Ajax, unskilled in
speaking, and the consummate rhetorician Ulysses. Inevitably the debate
within the text (which is unequivocally decided in Ulysses’ favour) is
projected into a critical debate on the relative skills and moral qualities of
the two speakers. Unlike the contest between Beckmesser and Walther in
Die Meistersinger, it is not the practice of ancient poets to characterise a
defeated performance through obvious incompetence (witness the

roblems in trying to decide why Thyrsis is defeated in Eclogue 7). Ajax is
p
by no means an unskilled speaker; his opening outburst, dispensing with
a formal exordium, can be read as a skilful exploitation of an emotion
truly experienced, and has famous parallels in the orators. This casting-
aside of the rulebook in favour of an abrupt and emotional manner was
indeed a fashion of the late first century BC, most notably in the case of
the trend-setting Cassius Severus, who spoke better in a temper, and who
even shared the large stature of Ajax and was said to look like a gladiator
(Huyck 1991, pp. 58 ff., citing Sen. Controv. 3 praef. 3–4; Quint. Inst.
10.1.117; Plin. HN 7.55). However, Casamento 2003 judges the two
speeches by the standards of Ciceronian doctrine on ethos and pathos, and
finds Ulysses to be much more in control of rhetorical technique.
Since the jury is made up of the Greek leaders, Ajax does seem to err in
appealing to the people, although to label it an oratio plebeia in contrast
to Ulysses’ more senatorial performance also exaggerates. Furthermore, at
one point Ulysses turns to his own ends a privileging of uirtus over inher-
ited nobilitas that is especially associated with, although not restricted to,
Marian rhetoric and the ideology of the nouus homo (see 150–3 n.).
The debate speaks to other matters of interest to a Roman audience. The
contrast between the blunt-spoken doer Ajax and the wily manipulator of
words Ulysses has its roots in archaic Greek culture, but corresponds easily
to a Roman perception of their own cultural development from a primi-
tive and militaristic simplicity to a sophistication indebted to the civilising
or corrupting (depending on the point of view) influence of the Greeks: in
a historical sketch of the development of cultus at Ars am. 3.101–28, Ajax is
used as an analogy for the simplicitas rudis of early Rome (111–12). In the
Roman mind Ulysses came to symbolise the intelligence or cunning of the
Greeks; one Virgilian model for the Ovidian debate is offered by the
contrasting interventions in the debate in Aeneid 2 over whether to bring
the Wooden Horse into Troy, firstly by Laocoon, who delivers a brief and
impassioned speech followed by a token display of direct physical aggres-
sion, and secondly by Sinon, the consummate master of feigned words and
agent of Ulyssean trickery; their two speaking manners have been taken as
models, respectively, of an upright Catonian oratory and a sophistic Greek
rhetoric (Lynch 1980). Casanova-Robin 2003, p. 421 discerns antithetical
aesthetics in the speeches of Ajax, monolithic and archaising, and of
Ulysses, representative of a Hellenistic art nouveau.
The debate also has affinities with suits over hereditas, of which Ovid
had direct experience in his youth as a member of the court of the
centumuiri. But at issue here is the inheritance of the arms of the greatest

8 philip hardie
of epic heroes, Achilles, foreshadowing the problems of succession that
will figure largely in book 15, firstly the succession to the first king of
Rome and then the succession to the first Caesar, in each case calling for
a man adequate to the shouldering of a burden as onerous and honorific
as the armour of Achilles, and in the second case a man who is capable of
realising the uniqueness of the epic hero (the claim that Ulysses makes
sophistically for himself ) in the imperial fiction of the one man who
embodies the state.
1–122 The Speech of Ajax

1 consedere duces: obeying Agamemnon’s command at 12.627–8 duces
… considere … | … iussit. For ‘preludes’ at book end cf. 1.776–9,
13.966–9; at Aen. 1.753–6 Dido requests Aeneas’ tale; Aen. 2.1 describes
the audience, conticuere omnes, followed by a line introducing the speaker
Aeneas. Repetition of a word or name bridges book division at 6.720–7.1,
7.864–8.4, 8.884–9.1 (gemitus), 9.796–10.2. O. may follow Pacuvius in
making the jury the Greek chiefs. consido (OLD 1b, ‘(of judges) to sit to
try a case’; cf. 11.157), surgo (OLD 1b ‘get up to speak’) and corona (OLD
4a ‘a circle of bystanders …; the crowd present at a judicial sitting’) lend
Roman colouring (although this is also a corona of soldiers: OLD 4b).
Ajax is supported by the uulgus (123–4), but Ulysses persuades the proceres
(126, 370, 382), whom he reminds of his punishment of the upstart
Thersites (232–3). Juvenal exploits O.’s declamatio in epic fancy dress for
his own ‘epic satire’, 7.115–17 consedere duces, surgis tu pallidus Aiax |
dicturus dubia pro libertate bubulco | iudice.
2 clipei dominus septemplicis Aiax = Am. 1.7.7 (an exemplum of
furor); the Homeric σάκος ἑπταβόειον ‘shield of seven oxhides’ (Il. 7.219–
23); cf. Aen. 12.925 clipei … septemplicis (of Turnus). The Ovidian use of
dominus ‘owner’ (also at 138, 389, 402; see McKeown 1989 on Am.
1.7.7–8; Haege 1976, pp. 55–6) anticipates the sustained play on mastery
and possession in the episode; Ajax’s failure to become the ‘master’ of
Achilles’ shield (the most important item of the armour: cf. 12.621) leads
to his final assertion of his ownership of his sword by using it against its
dominus (387–90).
3 utque erat impatiens irae: ‘unable to endure his anger, as was his
nature’: a prose use of ut favoured by O. (OLD s.v. ut 20b). impatiens with
gen. (usually of an external obstacle) is used here in the sense impotens
‘unable to control’; cf. Apul. Met. 4.29 impatiens indignationis. Ajax’s
emotion, unlike Ulysses’ (132–3), is genuine; the model of patient endurance

in battle in the Iliad, at 385 Ajax will succumb to his anger. Sigeia: Sigeum
(11.197, 12.71), a promontory facing Tenedos, famous as the burial place of
Achilles (Plin. HN 5.124–5). For the rhetorical exploitation of setting cf.
Livy 6.20.9 (Manlius during his self-defence) Capitolium spectans ‘looking at
the Capitol’, the site of his greatest achievement (see Vasaly 1993, ch. 1).
Sight and memory are repeatedly used in the debate to conjure up the pres-
ence of the past.
3–4 toruo … uultu: cf. 6.34–5 toruis … uultibus (Arachne, also with
marked hyperbaton), 13.542 (Hecuba), 9.27–8 (Hercules and Achelous)
talia dicentem iamdudum lumine toruo | spectat et accensae non fortiter
imperat irae (an episode having other parallels with this: see 9–12, 19–20
nn.). For Ajax’s wild glare cf. Il. 7.212 βλοσυροῖσι προσώπασι ‘shaggy
face’; Iliupersis fr. 1.8 Davies ὄμματά τ᾽ ἀστράπτοντα ‘flashing eyes’;
Pacuvius, Arm. iud. 43 Warmington (Ajax) feroci ingenio, toruus, prae-
grandi gradu; it was famously depicted in the painting of Ajax in despair
after his madness by Timomachus (Tr. 2.525 uultu fassus Telamonius iram),
a work placed by Julius Caesar in the temple of Venus Genetrix.
5 intendensque manus = 8.107 (Scylla enraged).
5–20 Ajax’s indignatio dispenses with a formal exordium; cf. e.g. Cic.
Cat. 1.1.
5–6 agimus … causam: a juristic phrase (OLD s.v. causa 3a), signalling
a controuersia. The juxtaposition of agimus with manus, formerly the
instruments of Ajax’s physical heroics (cf. 205 manu, opposed to consilio)
but now employed in a rhetorical gesture, reminds us that the man of
action is now involved in a verbal actio. agimus may also have a theatrical
overtone: Ajax (and Ulysses) are ‘acting’ (OLD ago 25) roles. pro Iuppiter!:
this forceful oath, at home in drama, is used in the Aeneid only at 4.590,
by Dido as she gazes on the Trojan fleet leaving her shore; Dido’s self-
destructive anger echoes that of Ajax. ante rates: cited by Quintilian (Inst.
5.10.41) as an example of the power of place to arouse an audience’s favour
or hostility. mecum confertur Vlixes: cf. Accius, Arm. iud. 98
Warmington quid est cur componere ausis mihi te aut me tibi? The two
heroes match their respective services to the Greeks against each other (cf.
98 conferat); critics read the debate as a synkrisis of two types of heroism or
world views, and also attempt to adjudicate on the relative rhetorical skills
of the two men. confero, like comparo (338), can also be used of ‘matching’
combatants; O.’s verbal duel replaces the Homeric armed duels; at
Controv. 4 praef. 1 the elder Seneca likens himself to a gladiatorial
producer. Vlixes: emphatically and scornfully placed at line end, as often
in the speech.

10 philip hardie
7–8 at non … fugaui: as at 82–97, Ajax appeals to his part in the
battle at the ships in Iliad 12–16 (cf. esp. 13.701–25; 15.501 ff., 674 ff.), but
fugaui is an exaggeration. cedere can mean both ‘retreat before’, and ‘to
admit defeat, be inferior to’ (as 9.16 turpe deum mortali cedere ‘it is
disgraceful for a god to yield to a mortal’), continuing the equivocation
between military and judicial confrontation.
9–12 tutius … loquendo: the opposition of dicere/facere, uerba/manus
structures the whole debate, as it does the speech of Antisthenes’ Ajax
(see Höistad 1948, p. 98). The contrast goes back to Il. 16.630–1 ‘the goal
of war lies in hands, but of words in council; therefore there is need not
of further words, but of fighting’, 18.252; Aen. 9.634, 11.378–91 (Drances
and Turnus); Met. 9.29–30 uerbaque tot reddit: ‘melior mihi dextera lingua.
| dummodo pugnando superem, tu uince loquendo’. In Rome the military
man was conventionally characterised as blunt of speech and uninterested
in eloquence: e.g. Sall. Iug. 63.3 (Marius); Tac. Agr. 9.2. In 10 Ajax neatly
uses the contrast as a cue for the exordial apology for the inability to
speak well (Volkmann 1963, p. 130). For Ajax as a ‘doer’ cf. trag. inc. inc.
53–5 Warmington facinus fecit maximum, cum Danais inclinantibus |
summam perfecit rem, manu sua restituit proelium insaniens, lines quoted
by Cicero (Tusc. 4.52) in a discussion of the self-destructive effects of
anger on fortitudo. tutius: but for Ajax the outcome of this verbal contest
will be his fatal self-wounding. fictis … uerbis: fingo is particularly asso-
ciated with the inventive and deceptive powers of Ulysses, fandi fictor
(Aen. 9.602; see Stanford 1963, pp. 94, 110); cf. 59. loquendo: a less digni-
fied word than dicendo (von Albrecht 1961, p. 271), emphatic and
dismissive at line end.
13–15 nec memoranda … sola est: Ajax introduces a further set of
contrasts, between telling and seeing in person (cf. 73, 223; at
Antisthenes, Aias 1 Aias complains that the jury (of Trojan prisoners)
were not present at the events), between acting in the open (the way of
the true hero) and in concealment or darkness (cf. 100, 103–6; cf.
Antisthenes, Aias 5 ‘there is nothing that he would do in the open, but
I would not dare to do anything in secret’). memoro and narro hint at
the function of epic poetry (the process of memorialisation is caught at
its inception at 12.159–62 sed noctem sermone trahunt, uirtusque loquendi
| materia est; pugnam referunt hostisque suamque, | inque uices adita
atque exhausta pericula saepe | commemorare iuuat. In the Odyssey
Odysseus narrates his own adventures (of which no other witnesses
survive); Ovid makes of him a fictional narrator of the Iliad. With
Ajax’s particular argument cf. Quint. Inst. 5.13.16 id quoque (quod

obscurum uocant), quod secreto et sine teste … dicitur factum, satis natura
sua infirmum est.
16–18 praemia … Vlixes: Ajax is a hero obsessed with honour, esp. in
Sophocles’ Ajax; cf. 41 nos inhonorati, 95–7. Ajax emphasises his point
with a pause after the first-foot dactyl aemulus, and by framing the next
sentence with the names Aiaci … Vlixes (better than punctuating after
Aiaci). superbum: ‘a source of pride’.
19–20 iste … feretur: cf. Accius, Arm. iud. 99–100 Warmington
(Ulysses, possibly speaking before the debate itself ) nam tropaeum ferre
me a forti uiro | pulcrum est; si autem uincar, uinci a tali nullum mi est
probrum. The consolation is more commonly offered to a dead or
defeated fighter, as at 9.5–7 (Achelous) nec tam | turpe fuit uinci quam
contendisse decorum est, | magnaque dat nobis tantus solacia uictor,
10.602–4 (Hippomenes), 5.191–2 magna feres tacitas solacia mortis ad
umbras, | a tanto cecidisse uiro; Aen. 10.830 Aeneae magni dextra cadis,
11.688–9. For Ajax’s perspective cf. Pacuvius, Arm. iud. 32 Warmington an
quis est qui te esse dignum quicum certetur putet? temptaminis: ‘attempt’
(to win the arms) is the lectio difficilior, but certaminis may be right; the
repetition in certasse does not tell against it, since the emphasis falls on
mecum (for nouns resumed as verbs see Wills 1996, pp. 327–8). mecum
certasse feretur: forming a ring with 6 mecum confertur Vlixes. tulit and
feretur may interact, given the density of plays on parts of fero throughout
the debate.
21–33 Atque ego … gentis: on this genealogy see Gaßner 1972,
pp. 97–8. Homeric heroes typically boast of their pedigrees (see Edwards
1991 on Il. 20.200–58); Ajax also follows the rules of rhetoric, as genus is
the first of the argumenta a persona (Quint. Inst. 5.10.23–4), and the first
topic of panegyric (Volkmann 1963, pp. 326–7). In the agōn at Soph.
Aj. 1291–1303 Teucer vilifies Agamemnon’s ancestry before exalting his
own. Huyck 1991 suggests that the division of the argument in nobilitatem
et uirtutem (cf. Her. 8.49 nec uirtute cares, after Hermione reminds Orestes
of his noble ancestry) is an epic equivalent of the use in inheritance cases
of a division in ius et aequitatem (Bonner 1949, p. 47). Ajax ironically calls
into doubt his (self-evident) uirtus in order to develop the argument from
nobilitas; Ulysses ignores the irony to mount a morally superior reply at
140–1. The two arguments are paired in Accius, Arm. iud. 106–8
Warmington me est aecum frui | fraternis armis mihique adiudicarier | uel
quod propinquus uel quod uirtuti aemulus, cited at Rhet. Her. 2.42 as an
example of the fault of not developing a central argument at length; the
Ovidian Ajax’s lengthy development of these points perhaps ‘corrects’ the

12 philip hardie
Accian Ajax. For other self-advertising genealogies cf. 10.605–7
(Hippomenes, working backwards to Neptune and concluding nec uirtus
citra genus est); 6.172–6 (Niobe working back to Atlas and Jupiter).
22 Telamone creatus = 12.624, 13.346, a high epic locution.
23–4 moenia … carina: Telamon is linked with the greatest of epic
subjects, the capture of Troy (this capture is briefly narrated at 11.215–17)
and the voyage of the Argo; and with the greatest of heroes (in myth-
ology he is the constant companion of Hercules).
25–6 silentibus: cf. the similar context at Aen. 6.432–3 quaesitor Minos
urnam mouet; ille silentum | consiliumque uocat uitasque et crimina discit.
illic … ubi: euphemistically avoiding the name of Hades. Cf. Catull.
3.11–12 iter … illud, unde negant redire quemquam ‘that journey from which
they say none return’; cf. the use of ἐκεῖ to refer to the Underworld;
McKeown 1998 on Am. 2.6.53–4. saxum … urget: reversing the subject and
object at 4.460 aut petis aut urges rediturum, Sisyphe, saxum, and echoing the
personification of Sisyphus’ ‘shameless rock’ at Od. 11.598. Aeoliden …
Sisyphon: cf. Hor. Carm. 2.14.19–20 damnatusque longi | Sisyphus Aeolides
laboris (with Nisbet–Hubbard 1978 ad loc.). The detail of infernal topog-
raphy anticipates the slur on Ulysses’ birth at 31–2; the patronymic is used
of the grandson Ulysses at Aen. 6.529 hortator scelerum Aeolides, and the
name Aeolus itself punningly suggests tricksiness (Soph. TGF fr. 912 μηδ᾽
αἰολίζε ταῦτα ‘do not use tricky words’). In the Underworld justice is seen
to be done.
27 agnoscit: OLD s.v. 2a of acknowledging children, chiefly a prose
usage (also Met. 4.613), and at home in the family romances of the
controuersia (Sen. Controv. 2.4.2, 2.4.4, 2.4.6, 10.4.1; Suas. 4.4).
28 a Ioue tertius Aiax: cf. Her. 8.48 a Ioue quintus eris.
29 in causam prosit: better taken as jussive subjunctive rather than,
with Bömer, as a subjunctive in the apodosis of an unreal conditional.
30 mihi … communis: Ajax uses the rhetoric of solidarity; cf. 271.
31 frater = frater patruelis ‘cousin’ (OLD s.v. 2; Her. 8.28, 14.130);
Telamon was Peleus’ brother. Cf. Accius, Arm. iud. 106–7 Warmington
me est aecum frui | fraternis armis. O. reproduces the alliteration in frui
fraternis in frater … fraternis, with the repetition cf. 8.441–2 uolentem |
ulcisci fratrem fraternaque fata timentem (Wills 1996, p. 206). peto is
juristic (OLD s.v. 11a).
32 Sisyphio: the charge that Ulysses was the bastard of Anticleia by
Sisyphus (Aesch. Ὅπλων κρίσις TGF fr. 189; Soph. Aj. 190, Phil. 417) is
proved by the family resemblance. For Ulysses’ furta cf. 104, 111.

33 inseris … gentis: the language is legal in tone, suggesting that
Ulysses, son of a father who subverts families, is tampering with the
terms of the will by ‘grafting in’ (cf. OLD s.v. insitiuus 2b of children
introduced into a family by adultery, false pretences, etc.) the name of an
heir not related by blood (OLD alienus 5a; cf. Met. 9.326 alienae sanguine
uestro). In his youth O. had been a member of the court of centumuiri
(Tr. 2.93–6), which had jurisdiction in cases of disputed inheritance; on
O.’s use of legal language in general see Kenney 1969. alienae makes a
contrast with 30 communis. Aeacidis: it helps Aiax’s case that the Latin
form of his name is close in sound to Aeac-ides.
34–5 An quod … ille: for the play on two senses of arma (‘warfare/
weapons’) cf. 12.621 deque armis arma feruntur. The tradition that Ajax
responded first to the call to arms is preserved in Dictys 1.13 primus
omnium ingenti nomine uirtutis atque corporis Aiax Telamonius aduenit;
Antisthenes’ Ajax boasts that he is always the first in the battle line (Aias 9).
35 potiorque uidebitur: more legal language: OLD potior2 1b ‘better
entitled’; uideo(r) 22 ‘to appear after due consideration’.
36–7 detrectauitque … militiam: a technical phrase in the historians
for ‘refusing military service’ (TLL s.v. militia 835.26 ff.). The story that
Ulysses feigned madness to avoid going to Troy goes back to the Cypria;
Ajax’s madness was all too real. sollertior: Palamedes beats Ulysses on his
own ground (sollers of Ulysses at Ars am. 2.355, Pont. 4.14.35).
38 sibi inutilior: ‘with greater injury to himself ’ (explained in 56–60),
a prose use of inutilis; the comparative is perhaps determined by the wish
to create a formal parallelism with sollertior isto. timidi: a charge repeated
at 111 and 115. Statius imitates 38 at Achil. 1.624–5 (Achilles to himself )
quonam timidae commenta parentis | usque feres?, an allusive recognition
of the parallel in Achilles’ career exploited by Ulysses at Met. 13.301.
retexit perhaps puns on the name Palam-edes, ‘in the sight of everyone’;
if so, Ulysses turns it to his own advantage at 311–12 patens … patebant.
40 optima … ulla: chiastically structured so that the significant adjec-
tives frame the line, with play on two senses of sumo, ‘take up’ (arms) and
‘take possession of ’ (Schawaller 1987, p. 201). num: in favour of the
variant nunc is the resulting contrast between Ulysses’ cowardly reluc-
tance to take up arms in the past and his undeserved claim in the present
to the finest arms.
41 donis patruelibus: Bömer ad loc., comparing Il. 1.118–19
(Agamemnon) ‘but prepare the prize (γέρας) for me immediately, so that
I am not the only Greek to go without a prize’ suggests that donum

14 philip hardie
reproduces γέρας; cf. OLD donum 2b ‘a prize awarded to a soldier for
distinguished service’. But the epithet patruelibus may suggest that the
arms are his by right as the ‘gift’ of his cousin.
43 aut uerus … aut creditus: a typical Ovidian twist. Am. 3.14
explores the profitability for the lover of believing that which is not the
case, 29–30 sine nescius errem | et liceat stulta credulitate frui; cf. also Am.
2.11.53, Pont. 3.4.106 fictaque res uero more putetur agi.
44–5 nec comes … scelerum: an echo of Aen. 6.528–9 inrumpunt
thalamo, comes additus una | hortator scelerum Aeolides (cf. 25–6 n.).
45 non te … proles: the apostrophe and the formal periphrasis
Poeantia proles introduce an emotional climax with the picture of
Philoctetes on Lemnos, exploited for its pathos in the tragedies on
Philoctetes by Sophocles and Accius. In the most common version of the
story, on the way to Troy, Ulysses prompted the Greeks to abandon
Philoctetes on Lemnos because of the stench of the wound from a snake
bite on his foot. After ten years of war the Greeks learned from a
prophecy that Troy could not be taken without the bow of Hercules, in
Philoctetes’ possession, and he was brought from Lemnos to Troy. Ulysses
apostrophises Philoctetes to different effect at 328–34.
47 ut memorant: hinting at a literary ‘memory’ of Philoctetes’ exile
(for such signals of allusion cf. 14.812–15 n.; Conte 1986, pp. 57–62); at
Tr. 4.4.65 ut memorant introduces a retelling of Iphigenia at Tauris.
48–9 saxa … precaris: saxa moues gemitu is a proverbial type of expres-
sion (e.g. 9.303–4 moturaque duros | uerba queror silices; see Bömer on
6.547); for nature’s sympathy to Philoctetes’ laments cf. Accius, Philocteta
549–51 Warmington in tecto umido | quod eiulatu questu gemitu fremitibus
| resonando mutum flebilis uoces refert. Ajax’s audience would be stones not
to be moved by Philoctetes’ plight. O. compares his own need for
self-expression in exile to that of Philoctetes at Tr. 5.1.61–2 hoc erat, in
gelido quare Poeantius antro | uoce fatigaret Lemnia saxa sua. On the
importance of Philoctetes in Cicero and his imagery of exile see Tandoi
1984. Laertiadaeque: Ajax (or Philoctetes) reverts to Ulysses’ traditional
paternity. … precaris | … precaris: on line-final repetition see Wills
1996, pp. 418–23. For the content of these curses see e.g. Soph. Phil.
315–6, 791–2, 1019–20, 1035–6 ὀλεῖσθ᾽ … θεοῖσιν εἰ δίκης μέλει ‘you will
perish … if the gods care for justice’, 1040–2. si di sunt: cf. 6.542–4 si
tamen haec superi cernunt, si numina diuum | sunt aliquid … | quan-
documque mihi poenas dabis. The question of the existence of the gods is a
favourite device of the declaimers (e.g. Sen. Controv. 1.2.8; Bonner, 1949,
pp. 151–2); at 70 Ajax asserts the existence of divine justice.

50–2 et nunc … utuntur: Ajax emphasises the solidarity between
Philoctetes and his audience of duces (1), all members of the expedition
launched to fulfil the oath made to Tyndareus by the suitors of Helen
(12.7–8 coniuratae … rates), and suggests a parallel between himself and
Philoctetes, inheritor of a famed item of weaponry (9.232–3). pars una is
found x5 elsewhere in the Met. and needs no emendation. quo …
sagittae … utuntur: the hypallage lightly personifies the bow which will
be the agent of Troy’s capture: Soph. Phil. 113 ‘This bow alone takes Troy’.
52 morboque fameque = Verg. G. 4.318.
53 uelaturque aliturque auibus: the feather clothing and the
improper use of the bow are Accian: Phil. fr. 543 Warmington pro ueste
pinnis membra textis contegit ; fr. 555–6 pinnigero, non armigero in corpore |
tela exercentur haec. In the context of the Met., uelatur suggests transfor-
mation into a bird-man: cf. 2.376 (Cygnus) penna latus uelat, 15.356–7 esse
uiros … | qui soleant leuibus uelari corpora plumis. On Philoctetes’ desert
island, birds provide food and clothing, like sheep (15.117–19).
54 is a golden line, here with a climactic function (see Kenney 2002, p. 60
n. 60). The arrows are ‘owed to the doom of Troy’ in that they are necessary
for the capture of the city.
55–7 ille tamen … haberet: the mors indigna Palamedis was a stock
theme in Roman rhetorical schools (Rhet. Her. 2.28). 57 is omitted in
some MSS; the alternative fate of an honourable death distracts from the
force of Ajax’s indignation: aut certe is used much less pointedly than at
14.176.
58 male conuicti: ‘proved false, to his disadvantage’.
60 iam: the sense is repeated in the prefix of the following verb prae-
foderat, and Burman’s conjecture clam is attractive: cf. Hyg. Fab. 105.2
Vlysses autem clam noctu solus magnum pondus auri, ubi tabernaculum
Palamedis fuerat, obruit.
61–2 exilio … | aut nece: cf. 10.232–3 exilio poenam potius gens impia
pendat | uel nece. sic pugnat: spoken with biting sarcasm, the proverbial
Αἰάντειος γέλως ‘laughter of Ajax’ (Zen. 1.43, from Carcinus’ Aias); in
conjunction with 63 eloquio it reintroduces the pugnare/dicere opposition
(10) as a transition to the episode with Nestor, beginning Ajax’s resumé of
Iliadic material.
62 sic est metuendus Vlixes: cf. 502 non est metuendus Achilles. A preg-
nant sneer: as a true warrior Ulysses is not to be feared, as a monster of
ruthless deception he is. The phrase echoes Aen. 2.44 sic notus Vlixes?
63–9 Qui licet … amico: a tendentious retelling of Il. 8.78–98:
fessusque senilibus annis amplifies Il. 8.87 γέρων; in Homer Diomedes,

16 philip hardie
not Nestor, appeals to Odysseus, just once (ancient critics debated
whether 97 οὐδ᾽ ἐσάκουσε means (Odysseus) ‘did not hear’ or ‘did not
listen’; see Kirk 1990 on Il. 8.97–8). Ajax omits to mention that the two
Aiantes also fled (Il. 8.79).
63 eloquio fidum … Nestora: for Nestor’s eloquence see Il. 1.247–9;
Cic. Brut. 40; Gell. 6.14.7. At Met. 12.178 Achilles addresses Nestor o
facunde senex. The juxtaposition eloquio fidum suggests by contrast the
perfidy of Ulysses’ eloquence; Ajax’s eloquence exploits the contrast
between fidum … Nestora and desertum … Nestora in the same sedes in
consecutive lines.
66 uulnere … annis: cf. Aen. 2.435–6 quorum Iphitus aeuo | iam
grauior, Pelias et uulnere tardus Vlixi.
67 non haec mihi crimina fingi: Ajax seeks to distance his rhetoric
from Ulyssean duplicity (59–60 fictum … crimen).
69 trepidoque … amico: Ajax repeats the charge of cowardice at 73–4,
78, 111, 115. Cf. Accius, Arm. iud. 115–17 Warmington (cited by Charisius
as an example of mycterismos, sarcasm) uidi [cf. 73 uideoque] te, Vlixes,
saxo sternentem Hectora, | uidi tegentem clipeo classem Doricam; | ego tunc
pudendam trepidus hortabar fugam. Bömer regards Ajax’s appeal to a close
companion of Ulysses as a sign of his lack of rhetorical skill; one may
equally take it as a calculated ploy. Ulysses will make his own rhetorical
use of the friendship at 239–42.
70–2 aspiciunt … dixerat ipse: sententiously expressed. For the
thought in 70 cf. e.g. Aen. 9.209 Iuppiter aut quicumque oculis haec aspicit
aequis. O. phrases his version of the proverbial rule ab alio expectes, alteri
quod feceris ‘expect from another what you do to another’ (Otto 1890, no.
68) with a characteristic combination of active and passive forms of the
verb (re)linquo (see Wills 1996, pp. 296, 441; Haege 1976, pp. 166–8).
Huyck 1991 compares Sen. Controv. 10 praef. 6 sunt di immortales lenti
quidem sed certi uindices generis humani, et magna exempla in caput
inuenientium regerunt, ac iustissima patiendi uice quod quisque alieno
excogitauit supplicio saepe expiat suo. legem sibi dixerat ipse: cf. Her. 5.134
et poteras falli legibus ipse tuis, 6.154; Ars am. 1.655–6 iustus uterque fuit,
neque enim lex aequior ulla est | quam necis artifices arte perire sua; Val.
Flacc. 4.753–4 (Amycus) lege … occidit ultus | ipse sua. legem dicere is
common in prose.
73–6 conclamat … inertem: an almost unrecognisable retelling of Il.
11.434–88 where the wounded but defiant Odysseus shouts for aid to his
companions, after vaunting that if he dies, he at least will receive a burial
unlike his victim Sokos, and is then rescued by Ajax, who stands by him

with his shield, aided by Menelaus, who actually leads him out of the
press. Ajax’s claim to be an eyewitness, 73 adsum uideoque, betrays itself
to readers who remember their Homer as a rhetorical device; cf. 15.160–2
for another ‘eyewitness’ distortion of Homeric narrative.
73–4 trementem … morte futura: similar expressions are elsewhere
used of women: 9.111 (Deianira) pallentemque metu fluuiumque ipsumque
timentem; Aen. 4.644 (Dido) pallida morte futura, 8.709 (Cleopatra)
pallentem morte futura. In 74 trepidantem is preferable to metuentem,
which pointlessly repeats metu.
75–6 opposui … inertem: the three participles in 73–4 describing
Ulysses’ craven inertia are balanced by three verbs describing Ajax’s
actions. molem clipei: Aias’ ‘shield like a tower’ (Il. 11.485). inertem
‘unwarlike’ is a strong term of abuse (see Mankin on Hor. Epod. 1.14.1).
77–9 si perstas … sub illo: Ajax equivocates between the physical and
the verbal: perstas ‘continue standing under arms’ (cf. 80 standi) or
‘persist’; certare and contende can be used of both military and rhetorical
contention; locus ‘place on the battlefield’ or ‘rhetorical topos’, a topos
paralleled at Aen. 11.389 imus in aduersos – quid cessas? ‘let us confront the
enemy – why do you tarry?’ solitumque timorem: with the distortion cf.
Aen. 9.128–9 his Iuppiter ipse | auxilium solitum eripuit. mecum contende
sub illo: either ‘argue with me under my shield’ (where your claims will
be self-evidently ridiculous) or ‘fight together with me under my shield’
(if you dare; as Teucros does at Il. 8.266–72).
80–1 at postquam … fugit: even the wound was fictum. Ulysses
responds at 262–7.
82–4 Hector … timoris: Hector’s attack on the Greek ships in Iliad
15. Hector adest: rhetorical enargeia, vividly conjuring up Hector’s pres-
ence. For the dramatic pause after the second foot cf. Aen. 9.38 hostis
adest, heia!; Met. 12.66 hostis adest (the effect of Fama). secumque deos in
proelia ducit: at Il. 15.306–27 Hector is preceded into battle by Apollo,
and is aided by Zeus, 15.610–11 ‘for Zeus himself went as his helper from
the aither’, 636–7 ‘so then all the Achaeans were thrown into a dreadful
panic by Hector and father Zeus’. Cf. Aen. 8.678–9 hinc Augustus agens
Italos in proelia Caesar | cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis.
83–4 non tu … timoris: there is pronounced alliteration of t, here of
the chattering of teeth? Cf. the similar alliteration at 115–16. trahit:
‘brings in his train’ (OLD s.v. 14b).
85–6 hunc ego … fugi: at Il. 14.409–20 Aias fells Hector with a rock,
as the latter withdraws to his troops (eminus is therefore preferable to the
variant comminus) disgusted that his spear did not wound Aias; cf.

18 philip hardie
Accius, Arm. iud. 115 Warmington (quoted at 69 n.). successu caedis
ouantem = 12.298.
87–9 hunc ego … preces: based on Il. 7.44–312: during the taking of
lots the Greeks pray that the duel fall to the lot of Aias, Diomedes or
Agamemnon; at 182–3 ‘the lot of Aias, which they themselves wanted,
leapt out of the helmet’.
87 unus: emphatic, at line end after fifth-foot pause. Ajax claims to be
the epic ‘one man’ (Hardie 1993, pp. 3–10); cf. Soph. Aj. 1283–4 ‘and
again when, through the lot and unbidden, he went to face Hector, one
against one (μόνος μόνου)’; Antisthenes, Aias 9 ‘I who always take up
position at the front, alone, without the protection of a wall’. In 88–9
Ajax appeals to the community’s dependence on his egotistic heroism
(Achiui, uestrae); but the tragic Ajax’s martial individualism leads to his
eventual social alienation and death.
88 sustinui: also at 8, and in the ironic denouement at 384–5 Hectora
qui solus, qui ferrum ignesque Iouemque | sustinuit totiens, unam non
sustinet iram.
89 et uestrae ualuere preces reminds the audience of their preference
in another competition of heroic worth.
89–90 si quaeritis … ab illo: uncharacteristically understated: at Il.
7.273–312 the heralds interrupt the duel at the approach of night after
Ajax has had the best of the encounter; he is led to Agamemnon
‘rejoicing in his victory’ (312). si quaeritis: usually a narrative formula
addressed to an audience not present at the events narrated.
91–4 ecce ferunt … arma: Ajax concludes the account of his services
as he began at 5–8, with his defence of the ships. pro tot nauibus might
mean ‘in front of so many ships’ (cf. 6 ante rates) as well as ‘in exchange
for’. ferrumque ignesque Iouemque = 384. ferrum ignesque is a formu-
laic pairing (although ferrum flamma is more usual to express extreme
danger: Otto 1890, no. 666; cf. no. 842 ferrum et ignis of desperate medi-
cines), expanded with Iouemque (cf. 82, 269). These are the destructive
forces to which O.’s own ship of poetry is immune: 15.871–2 iamque opus
exegi, quod nec Iouis ira nec ignes | nec poterit ferrum … abolere. facundus
Vlixes: cf. Ars am. 2.123, Her. 3.129. For the man of action’s rhetoric cf.
Aen. 11.378–80 (Turnus) ‘larga quidem semper, Drance, tibi copia fandi |
tum cum bella manus poscunt, patribusque uocatis | primus ades’. mille …
puppes: the traditional number (12.7, 37; 13.182; Austin 1964 on Aen.
2.198), here put to use in a one/many opposition (see 115–16, 352–3 nn.).
Following alliteration of m there is emphatic triple alliteration of p. spem

uestri reditus: cf. Aen. 5.672 uestras spes uritis (the ships), 9.129–31
auxilium solitum eripuit … | nec spes ulla fugae.
95–7 quod si … petuntur: cf. the inversion of the power relation
between poet and puella in Am. 1.3, ending (26) iunctaque semper erunt
nomina nostra tuis. In 97 Ajax concludes with a triumphant antimetabole,
the repetition of a preceding clause, using the same words but exchanging
their relationships (also at 133–4, 304–5), a favourite device of Ovid and of
the declaimers (Bonner 1949, p. 154; note esp. Sen. Controv. 4.4.1 ille uiro
arma, ego armis uirum); Wills 1996, pp. 272–7. Cf. Fast. 5.394 (Chiron of
Hercules) ‘uir’que ait ‘his armis, armaque digna uiro’. A consequence here
is the personification of the arms through the exchange of dative of agent
from Aiaci to armis; cf. 50–2 n.; Fast. 5.590 agnorunt signa recepta suos: on
the personification of weapons see Hardie 2009d, pp. 102–3.
95 si uera licet mihi dicere: cf. 10.19–20 (Orpheus to Persephone) si
licet et … uera loqui sinitis, 7.704–5.
98–102 Conferat his … in illis: an argument from merita (Ulysses
will counter at 150–3, 372): Ulysses operates at night (Antisthenes, Aias 6;
brave men fight luce palam, Aen. 9.153) and he needs a helper. 98 alludes
to the events of the Doloneia (Iliad 10), 99 to an event narrated in the
Ilias Parua after the death of Ajax, when Helenus was forced to reveal the
secret of the Palladium (Apollod. Epit. 5.9–10). Ulysses gives his own
version of the Doloneia at 241–54 and at Ars am. 2.135–8; at Her. 1.39–46
it is related by Telemachus to Penelope, who reads reckless audacia into
Ulysses’ exploits and finds cause for alarm in the fact that he was adiutus
… uno; the episode was also dramatised in Accius’ Nyctegresia.
99 Priamidenque Helenum: cf. Il. 6.76 Πριαμίδης Ἕλενος; Aen. 3.295
Priamiden Helenum; Met. 13.723, 15.438. Pallade for Palladio suggests that
Ulysses has ‘raped’ the virgin goddess (as Cassandra was to be raped in
her temple: 14.468).
101 si semel ‘if ever’ (colloquial).
103–6 quo tamen … latentem: an argument from utile (from Ulysses’
perspective): not only does Ulysses’ mode of warfare do without arms
(inermis), they would be a positive hindrance to his sneakiness. Cf.
Antisthenes, Aias 3 ‘he would not dare to use them; for no coward would
use distinguished arms, knowing that they show up his cowardice’. quo
tamen haec Ithaco: sc. detis. inermis | rem gerit verges on the oxymo-
ronic, in a context of war (res gerere spec. of military affairs: cf. Am.
2.18.12 resque domi gestas et mea bella cano). inermis was not true of
Ulysses in the Doloneia, at least (Il. 10.260–71).

20 philip hardie
105–6 ipse nitor … latentem: Ulysses will suffer the fate of Euryalus,
Aen. 9.373–4 et galea Euryalum sublustri noctis in umbra | prodidit
immemorem radiisque aduersa refulsit; at Aen. 9.457–8 the Rutulians
recover galeamque nitentem | Messapi. Labate 1980 argues that Ulysses is
in danger of literary forgetfulness if he chooses to follow the example of
the Virgilian Euryalus rather than that of the Homeric Odysseus; but the
joke may be on Ajax, who fails to remember the difference between
Euryalus and his Homeric model. At Il. 10.257–8 Diomedes is given a
helmet without metal plates or crest, ‘to escape detection’ according to
the scholiast. auro: cf. Il. 18.612, 19.382–3 the golden crest of Achilles’
helmet; Pind. Nem. 8.27 ‘Ajax deprived of the golden armour [of
Achilles]’; Eur. Hec. 110.
107–11 sed neque … sinistrae: a tricolon abundans, reaching a climax
with the most important item of the armour, the shield (12.621). The
terms of Ajax’s rebuke have points in common with the recusatio: imbellis
occurs in explicit or implicit poetic contexts at 5.114; Am. 3.15.19; Fast.
3.578 [Battus] nos sumus imbelles.
109 Pelias hasta: the Πηλιὰς μελίη of Il. 16.140–4 (141–4 = 19.388–91),
‘heavy, large and strong, which no other of the Achaeans was able to
wield’; described at 12.82 as grauis hasta.
110–11 nec clipeus … sinistrae: cf. Accius, Phil. 562–3 Warmington
heu Mulciber! | arma ergo ignauo inuicta es fabricatus manu. caelatus:
picked up at 291 clipei caelamina, and perhaps punning on an etymology
of caelum from caelare (Maltby 1991 s.v. caelum (2)). For arguments
supporting the variant concretus, with reference to the shield as image of
the cosmos, see Hardie 1985, p. 16. imagine mundi: the divisions of the
universe are represented on the shield at Il. 18.483–9. By contrast,
Hannibal’s pretensions to world conquest are well matched to the simile
comparing him to Achilles at Sil. 7.120–2 clipeo amplexus terramque
polumque | maternumque fretum totumque in imagine mundi. conueniet:
cf. Am. 2.3.7–8 non tu natus equo, non fortibus utilis armis, | bellica non
dextrae conuenit hasta tuae (parodying Prop. 1.6.29–30). Ulysses makes a
more pointed use of the scenes on the shield at 288–95. sinistrae: the
shield hand, but after nataeque ad furta (cf. Fast. 6.433 furtis aptus Vlixes)
it is difficult to exclude a pejorative sense of the sinister (OLD s.v. 5) that
carries the shield; commentators argue over whether sinistra carries a
connotation of ‘thieving’ at Catull. 12.1–2 Marrucine Asini, manu sinistra
| non belle uteris; cf. Catull. 47.1. Innuendo about the dishonest left hand
may be present at Am. 3.8.15–16 laeua manus, cui nunc serum male conu-
enit aurum, | scuta tulit.

112 debilitaturum weightily fills the first half of the line. At Il. 10.400–4
Odysseus mocks Dolon’s ambition of winning the horses of Achilles, ‘diffi-
cult for any mortal man other than Achilles to tame and drive’. munus:
donauerit in the next line suggests the sense ‘gift’, but given the image of
the shield as cosmos O. may be influenced by Cicero’s use of munus to
refer to the fabric of the universe (Cic. Tim. 4; Nat. D. 1.19; 2.90: an archi-
tectural image).
114 cur spolieris … ab hoste: for the idea that richly decorated
armour is the mark of an effeminate enemy, easily despoiled, cf. Oakley
2005a on Livy 9.17.16 praedam uerius quam hostem; Curt. 3.10.10 aciem
hostium auro purpuraque fulgentem …, praedam non arma gestantem.
115–16 et fuga … trahenti: cf. Aen. 9.384–5 Euryalum tenebrae
ramorum onerosaque [cf. Met. 13.108 onerosa] praeda | impediunt. qua sola
cunctos, timidissime, uincis: a paradoxical use of the motif of ‘one
against all’ or ‘one and only’ as applied to the hero, a particular instance of
the one/all, one/many contrast (see Bömer on 12.377; Hardie 1993,
pp. 3–10; Kraus 1994, index s.vv. ‘one and only’): e.g. 5.149–50; 11.528, 646;
12.404, 499, 533; 13.181 ut dolor unius Danaos peruenit ad omnes; 13.241–2,
353; examples cluster in the pendant episodes of Lapiths and Centaurs and
Armorum iudicium. uincis ‘surpass’, with an undertone of ‘conquer’
producing an oxymoron with timidissime. With the alliteration of t in
115–16 cf. 83–4 n.
116 gestamina … trahenti: Ulysses will be able only to drag, not bear
(gero, gesto) the Shield. He will have to throw away his own shield and
become a ῥίψασπις (see Nisbet–Hubbard 1978 on Hor. Carm. 2.7.10); his
swift feet would be useless in the hoplite race, an event at the great Greek
games in which competitors ran with a shield. gestamina (found first in
Virgil, and used of a shield at Aen. 3.286: see 15.160–4 n.) occurs in
another debate about arms, between Apollo and Cupid, at 1.456–7
‘quid’que ‘tibi, lasciue puer, cum fortibus armis?’ | dixerat; ‘ista decent
umeros gestamina nostros’.
117–19 adde quod … habendus: an argument from utile (from Ajax’s
perspective). The language tends to personify the shields: proelia passus; tela
ferendo suggests momentarily that the shield ‘bears arms’ (OLD s.v. fero 8b,
arma ferre, a phrase prominent in the Armorum iudicium: 12.621; 13.269,
285, 383), rather than ‘enduring weapon blows’ (the Trojans keep on stab-
bing at Ajax’s shield at Il. 11.565). The hint at a personification continues
with patet plagis (like a wounded body) and successor, applied to the
weapon rather than its owner (as at 51); see also 95–7 n. At 266–7 Ulysses
asserts that the absence of scars from the body of (the invulnerable) Ajax is

22 philip hardie
proof of his cowardice. The emphatic assonance of the three gerund(ive)s
at successive line endings in 118–20 has a closural effect: cf. Austin 1955 on
Aen. 4.55; Thomas 1988 on G. 2.61–2 (gerundives in tricola). adde quod: a
rhetorical transition-formula, common in Ovid.
120–2 denique … relatis: after a long speech, the man of action
rejects words in favour of deeds (uerbis/agendo, with the additional
punning contrast of uerbis/opus; agendo forms a ring with 5 agimus).
Direct ocular proof is to replace rhetorical enargeia (spectemur is both ‘let
us be watched’ and ‘be tested’), as Ajax proposes a literalisation of 12.621
deque armis arma feruntur. quid uerbis opus est? is a formulaic phrase
(esp. in Plaut. and Ter.), revitalised by the context. Cf. Accius, Arm. iud.
101 Warmington huius me diuidia cogit plus quam est par loqui; for brevity
in speech as a heroic ideal see Harrison 1991 on Aen. 10.16–17; Hardie
1994 on Aen. 9.634. The proposal to convert rhetorical debate into epic
action triggers the allusion to Aen. 1.1 in 121 arma uiri, echoed at 383
fortisque uiri tulit arma disertus. For the climax of the speech of Ajax O.
borrows a conceit from his favourite declaimer Porcius Latro: Sen.
Controv. 2.2.8 adeo autem studiose Latronem audit ut multas illius senten-
tias in uersus suos transtulerit. in armorum iudicio dixerat Latro ‘mittamus
arma in hostis et petamus’. Naso dixit (Met. 13.121–2). O.’s echo in peti of
Latro’s petamus is given extra point by the use earlier of peto in a juristic
sense (16, 97). According to Florus, Epit. 1.5[11].2 at the battle of Lake
Regillus the dictator Postumius hurled the standard into the enemy to
spur his men to recover it (uti repeteretur); Livy 6.8.1–4 with Oakley
1997a ad loc., 34.46.12 rem in asperis proeliis saepe temptatam. Cf. Met.
5.25–6 praemiaque eripies? quae si tibi magna uidentur, | ex illis scopulis ubi
erant adfixa petisses! The speech ends with a characteristically Ovidian
participial resumption, referentem … relatis. ornate: both ‘equip (esp.
with arms)’ (OLD 2a) and ‘honour (with)’ (OLD 6), as Hor. Epist. 2.2.32
clarus ob id factum donis ornatur honestis.
123–7 Finierat … dictis: the uulgus (1) second Ajax’s stirring final
words with their usual indistinct mutterings, until silenced by the
authoritative presence of Ulysses, who addresses the audience that
counts, the proceres (370, 382), i.e. the jury of duces (1). For Odysseus’
observation of class distinctions in his dealings with aristocrats and
commoners cf. Il. 2.188–206. At Il. 3.216–24 Antenor remembers when
Odysseus came with Menelaus to Troy: ‘he looked up from under his
brow fixing his eyes on the ground, moving his staff neither backwards
nor forwards, but he held it motionless, like an ignorant man. You would
have said that he was an irate and witless man – until he began to speak’.

Here, by contrast, his eloquence meets expectation (and as Ajax has
warned, 92; cf. 137, 382), both because he is speaking before his own
people, and because we have read our Homer and know that Ulysses is
traditionally facundus (92) – and also because this pause for thought
before speaking had become one of the rhetorical prescriptions for gestus
(Quint. Inst. 11.3.157–8, citing the example of Odysseus); contrast the
thoughtless Niobe’s prelude to speech at 6.169 utque oculos circumtulit
alta superbos. For a similar fusion of the expectations of internal and
external audiences cf. 12.65 neque inexspectatus in armis | hostis adest. At
4.790 Perseus ante exspectatum tacuit tamen, cheating the expectations of
Ovid’s readers who expect the hero at his host’s dinner table to deliver an
account of his adventures as long as the two books narrated by Aeneas at
Dido’s banquet in the Aeneid.
125 paulum: an artfully judged interval; contrast 14.106–7 (the Sibyl,
awaiting possession) illa diu uultum tellure moratum | erexit.
128–381 The Speech of Ulysses

128–39 Exordium. An extended captatio beneuolentiae, in contrast to
Ajax’s opening outburst. Ajax focuses on his quarrel with Ulysses; Ulysses
appeals to a solidarity of grief with his audience. Ajax claimed to be an
inexpert speaker (10–12); Ulysses modestly defends his rhetorical skill: cf.
Cic. Arch. 1 si quid est in me ingenii, iudices, quod sentio quam sit exiguum,
aut si qua exercitatio dicendi, in qua me non infitior mediocriter esse
uersatum.
128–30 Si mea … Achille: the play of pronouns and personal adjec-
tives defines (i) a community between Ulysses and the Greeks (mea cum
uestris; reinforced at 131 mihi uobisque, 136–8 uobis … mea … uobis); (ii) a
proper singularity for Achilles (tuque tuis; with the impassioned apos-
trophe cf. those to Philoctetes at 45, 328–34); (iii) the ideal relationship
between the Greeks as a collective (including Ulysses) and the unique
Achilles (nos te). Antisthenes, Odysseus 1–2 sets up contrasts between the
single opponent Aias, ‘all of you’ (the other Greeks) and the single
Odysseus, to assert Odysseus’ unique services – potentially alienating his
audience. Pelasgi and Achille are emphatically placed at line ends (cf.
13–14 Pelasgi and Vlixes at line ends at the beginning of Ajax’s speech).
The alliterating cum uestris ualuissent uota invidiously echoes Ajax’s appeal
at 88–9 sortemque meam uouistis, Achiui, | et uestrae ualuere preces.
129 tanti certaminis heres: ‘the heir (to the prize of ) so great a
contest’; Huyck 1991 sees in this unusual use of certamen an allusion to

24 philip hardie
the interchangeability of ἆθλος and ἆθλον in Greek. The awkwardness of
the phrase leads Rivero 2018, p. 102 to prefer gestaminis, but the singular
would more naturally be taken of a single item of armour (as at Aen.
3.286), rather than a set of armour.
132–3 manuque … lumina: simulated tears are a common topic of
Ovidian erotodidaxis: see McKeown 1989 on Am. 1.8.79–86, 83–4; add
Met. 3.652 (Bacchus) flenti similis, 6.565–6, 11.672–3 (Morpheus) fletus
quoque fundere ueros | uisus erat; they are also part of the orator’s armoury
(Cic. De or. 2.196 hoc uos doceo … ut in dicendo irasci, ut dolere, ut flere
possitis), of the poet’s (Hor. Ars P. 102–3, with Brink 1971 ad loc.) and of
Ulysses’ agent Sinon at Aen. 2.196 lacrimisque coactis. Ulysses economises
on his effort by merely giving the appearance of weeping. In the Odyssey
he is given to frequent, real, weeping fits; at Od. 8.85–8 he wipes away his
tears in order not to be seen weeping.
133–4 quis magno … Achilles? Ulysses opens his case by presenting
the propositio in an antimetabole (95–7 n.); the effect would be spoiled by
emending successit to accessit (proposed by Faber, and supported by
Rivero 2018, pp. 103–5), even though there is no exact parallel for the
required sense ‘came to give military support to’ (see Schawaller 1987,
pp. 201–2). succedat turns the debate over the arms into a legal dispute
over inheritance. per quem: Ulysses’ case will rest on the claim that
through the use of his intelligence and cunning to enable or enforce the
heroic exploits of others, he is the true man of action: 170–8, 236–7,
348–9, 374; thus, in order to counter Ajax’s claim to be the unus homo,
Ulysses constructs himself as the ‘synecdochic hero’ (Hardie 1993, p. 4).
135 hebes esse uidetur suggests that Ajax rhetorically exploits the
appearance of being dim (cf. 10), ut est damns him for really being dim.
ut est (etc.) is sometimes used just to emphasise that something is of a
certain kind (e.g. Tr. 1.11.36 si spe sunt, ut sunt, inferiora tua, 4.1.1; Cic.
Phil. 2.68 quamuis enim sine mente sine sensu sis, ut es, …); here it makes a
point about appearance and reality: cf. 12.204–5 poteratque uiri uox illa
uideri, | sicut erat, 7.14–15 nam cur iussa patris nimium mihi dura
uidentur? | (sunt quoque dura nimis!), 7.698–9 felix dicebar eramque. | (non
ita dis uisum est, aut nunc quoque forsitan essem); Cic. Brut. 38 suauis, sicut
fuit, uideri maluit quam grauis; Mart. 8.19 pauper uideri Cinna uult; et est
pauper.
136–7 neue mihi … ingenium: prodesse/nocere is a common Ovidian
opposition. From the examples given by Bömer ad loc. note esp. Tr. 1.9.54–8
gratulor, ingenium non latuisse tuum. | at nostrum tenebris utinam latuisset in
imis! … | utque tibi prosunt artes, facunde, seuerae, | dissimiles illis sic nocuere

mihi; Pont. 1.5.27–8 tempus ad hoc nobis, repetas licet omnia, nullum | profuit
(atque utinam non nocuisset!) opus. Ulysses here comes close to being a
mouthpiece for the poet. Ulysses uses his ingenium as a positive argument at
305, 362.
138 domino: see 2 n. Cf. 1.524 nec prosunt domino quae prosunt
omnibus artes!
139 inuidia: at 2.795 the ingenia of Athens are one of the stimuli to
Inuidia. This is the converse of the proemial topic of bringing inuidia on
one’s opponent (Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.22). bona … sua: another pointed use of
a personal adjective, rounding off the exordium, and also providing a
transition to the next argument (141 uix ea nostra uoco).
140–7 Nam genus … parente: Ulysses follows Ajax in starting the
main part of his speech with genus (21–33 n.).
140 proauos: ‘remote ancestors’ (OLD s.v. 2); cf. Manil. 5.201 genus a
proauis … numerare; Tr. 4.10.7–8 si quid id est, usque a proauis uetus
ordinis heres | non modo fortunae munere factus eques. Ulysses’ comparison
of his own genealogy with Ajax’s is comparable to Helen’s reply to Paris at
Her. 17.51–60, beginning quod genus et proauos et regia nomina iactas; |
clara satis domus haec nobilitate sua est.
141–2 quae non fecimus ipsi, | uix ea nostra uoco: Ulysses’ case in
fact rests on exactly the opposite argument (133–4 n.). For the argument
that one cannot claim credit for one’s birth cf. Sen. HF 340–1 qui genus
iactat suum, | aliena laudat; Boethius, Consol. 3 pr. 6. Iouis pronepos: cf.
10.606 (Hippomenes) pronepos ego regis aquarum.
145 damnatus et exul: Telamon and Peleus were exiled for the murder
of their half-brother Phocus (11.267–70). Ulysses omits the fact that
Laertes went into self-imposed exile.
147 altera nobilitas trumps Ajax’s claim to be (22) nobilitate potens.
Anticleia’s father Autolycus, furtum ingeniosus ad omne, was the son of
Mercury (11.312–13). deus est in utroque parente: for the expression cf.
Fast. 2.397–9 si genus arguitur uultu … | nescio quem in uobis suspicor esse
deum – | at si quis uestrae deus esset originis auctor … (cf. 142 sanguinis
auctor).
148–50 sed neque … peto: cf. Hor. Sat. 1.6.1–6 non quia, Maecenas,
Lydorum quidquid Etruscos | incoluit finis nemo generosior est te, | nec quod
auus tibi maternus fuit atque paternus | olim qui magnis legionibus imperi-
tarent, | ut plerique solent, naso suspendis adunco | ignotos, ut me libertino
patre natum; 58–60 non ego me claro natum patre, non ego circum | me
Satureiano uectari rura caballo, | sed quod eram narro. Horace’s mention of
Maecenas’ maternus auus is pertinent, since Etruscan epitaphs emphasise

26 philip hardie
the maternal line (see Gowers 2012 on Hor. Sat. 1.6.3); Drances’ maternal
line is highlighted for a different reason at Aen. 11.340–1 genus huic
materna superbum | nobilitas dabat, incertum de patre ferebat.
149 fraterni sanguinis insons: cf. 11.268 (Peleus) fraterno sanguine
sontem.
150–3 meritis … in istis: the opposition between uirtus and nobilitas is
familiar from the rhetoric of the populares and the nouus homo: cf. e.g.
Sall. Iug. 85.37 (Marius speaks) quis nobilitas freta … nos illorum aemulos
contemnit et omnis honores non ex merito, sed quasi debitos a nobis repetit,
Hist. 1 fr. 12 bonique et mali ciues appellati non ob merita in rem publicam;
Cic. Verr. II 5.180–2, Rep. 2.24 nostri illi etiam tum agrestes uiderunt
uirtutem et sapientiam regalem, non progeniem, quaeri oportere. It is also a
topos of philosophical moralising: cf. e.g. Sen. Ep. 44; Juv. 8. For a full
discussion of the topic see Braund 1988, ch. 3; see also Giordano 1990.
Ulysses’ own noble antecedents disallow a pointed formulation such as
Juv. 8.20 nobilitas sola est atque unica uirtus. The language of this passage
is echoed at Pont. 4.7.15–18 tenditur ad primum per densa pericula pilum, |
contigit ex merito qui tibi nuper honor. | sit licet hic titulus plenus tibi fruct-
ibus, ingens | ipsa tamen uirtus ordine maior erit. sanguinis ordo: both
‘line of descent’ (29 series; OLD s.v. ordo 7c: cf. 11.755) and ‘rank (OLD
5a) based on blood’. uirtutis honor: cf. 8.387 et ‘meritum’ dixisse ‘feres
uirtutis honorem’, Meleager’s promise leading to another fatal dispute over
spoils (8.426 ‘sume mei spolium, Nonacria, iuris’).
154 aut si … heres: the language is legal. For proximitas (otherwise in
Met. only at 10.340) cf. e.g. Quint. Inst. 3.6.95 ut cum hic testamento, ille
proximitate nitetur; Javolenus, Dig. 36.1.48 (46) proximitatis nomine haec
bona petit. primus heres: cf. e.g. Cic. Verr. II 3.16 a liberis ad alienos, a
primis heredibus ad secundos.
156 Pthiam … ferantur: Peleus is spending his old age in Pthia;
Pyrrhus is being brought up by Deidameia on Scyrus, whence Ulysses
will bring him to Troy (Od. 11.508–9).
157 patruelis answers 31, 41.
158 num … ille: the variation ille … illa is distracting; Bentley
corrected to illa … illa, but ille … ille is marginally more punchy.
159–61 Ergo … ducar: Ulysses now appropriates Ajax’s opening
contrast between facta and dicta (9–12), and also the ‘inability to speak’
topos, because of the sheer number of his facta (with 161 in promptu cf. 10
nec mihi dicere promptum). nudum certamen has overtones of the morally
straightforward, undisguised (cf. Hor. Carm. 1.24.7 nuda Veritas). rerum
… ordine ducar suggests the old-fashioned simplicity of Cato the Elder’s

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megállni, hogy legalább hozzá ne érjen, csupa véletlenségből. A
gyerek felé fordította fejét és elégedetlenül mérte végig az ügyetlen
járó-kelőt. Parentnak a szívébe hatolt a tekintet s megrettenve
futásnak eredt, mint a tolvaj, hogy felesége és szeretője tetten ne
érjék. Megállás nélkül rohant rendes kocsmájába és lihegve rogyott
székére.
Ez este három abszintot ivott.
A véletlen találkozás sebe négy hónapig sajgott szívén. Minden
éjszaka maga előtt látta őket. Boldogan és nyugodtan mentek, az
apa, az anya és a gyermek. Végigsétálnak a boulevardon, aztán
hazamennek az édes otthonba vacsorázni. Ez az új látomás
elfeledtette a régi képeket. Ez más volt. Más kísértés, más
gyötrelem. A kis György, régi kis Gyurikája, akit valaha oly nagyon
szeretett, akit annyiszor csókolt, eltűnt egy messzi mult távlatán s
helyét elfoglalta az új gyermekkép. Rövidharisnyás, komoly kis fiú,
aki mintha bátyja lenne a másiknak és aki őt nem ismeri!…
Rettenetesen szenvedett ettől a gondolattól. Kis gyermeke egykori
szeretete örökre meghalt. Közöttük most már semmi kapocs sem
volt. Ez a gyermek karját biztosan nem tárná elé, ha meglátná… Ó,
nem, hiszen oly hidegen és gonoszul nézett rá!
Azután, lassan-lassan, lelkének háborgása újra elült; a kínzó
gondolatok éle tompult; a kísértő kép mind homályosabbá vált s
mind ritkábban jelentkezett. Visszabódult megint rendes életébe,
abba az életbe, amelyet majd mindenki él s amelyet élnek főleg a
nagyvárosi tétlenek, akik sört isznak kerek kis márványasztalok
mellett és kávéházi díványok foszlott bársonyán nadrágjukat
koptatják.
Dohányfüstben öregedett meg, haja gázlángok fénye alatt hullt ki
és élete nagy eseményeinek a hetenkénti fürdést, a félhónaponkénti
hajvágást, egy-egy új ruha vagy kalap vásárlását tekintette. Ha a
sörcsarnokban új föveggel jelent meg, mielőtt leült volna, a tükörben
hosszasan nézte magát. Kalapját többször fölvette és letette,
kitanulmányozta minden állásban s végül is régi barátnőjéhez, a
pénztár kisasszonyához fordult, aki őt nagy érdeklődéssel nézte és
tőle kért véleményt: »Milyennek találja, kisasszony, új kalapomat?«
Évenként kétszer-háromszor színházba is ment. Nyaranta estéit
néha a Champs-Elysées egy-egy zenéskávéházában töltötte.
Dallamokat hozott innen, amelyek emlékezete mélyéről heteken át
föl-fölcsendültek s amelyeket a söröskancsó előtt ülve s lábával az
ütemet verve kedvteléssel dudorászott.
A hosszú, szürke évek egymásután teltek és múlásukat alig vette
észre, mert semmi tartalmuk sem volt. Mozdulatlan megadással,
ellenállás nélkül robogott a halál felé, kezében a söröskorsóval,
rákönyökölve magányos vendéglői asztalára. Rajta az idő
pusztítását, amely futva fut és a szegény emberkéket magával
sodorja, egyesegyedül a nagy tükör verte vissza, amelynek
mindinkább kopaszodó fejét támasztani szokta.
A szörnyű drámára, amely életét földúlta, alig gondolt már, mert a
borzalmas este óta húsz év pergett le. De az élet, amelyet folytatott,
elpuhította, kimerítette és elnyűtte; a sörcsarnok tulajdonosa –
hatodik már, mióta ide járt – fejét rázva mondta a kassziroslánynak:
– Hallja csak, ezzel a szegény Parent-nal sehogy sincs rendben
a dolog. Még se jó az, ha valaki mindig csak a nagyváros falai közt
él. Beszéljen a fejével, magára talán hallgat. Bírja rá, hogy ránduljon
ki néha a zöldbe. Nemsokára itt a nyár. Egy kis levegőváltoztatás
helyrehozná az egészségét.
E naptól fogva a kasszíroslány, aki jóakaró szánalommal
viseltetett a kitartó és hű vendéggel szemben, nem hagyott békét
Parentnak:
– Ugyan, ugyan, Parent úr, határozza már el magát egy kis
kiruccanásra. Olyan szép a vidék, ha jó idő van! Ha tehetném,
mindig csak vidéken élnék!
És a kisasszony hosszasan beszélt neki álmairól, a boltokba zárt
robotoló lányok egyszerű, bűvös álmairól, akik egész éven át csak a
kirakaton túli mesterséges, uccai életet szemlélhetvén, vágyakozó
merengéssel gondolnak a nyugodt és szelíd vidéki életre. Ott
tündökő napfény aranyozza be a mezőket, a hűvös erdőket, az üde
patakpartokat, a fűben heverésző jószágot s a mező minden virágát:
a kék, a piros, a sárga, a lila és a fehér virágokat, amelyek oly
törékenyek, puhahúsúak és illatosak s oly pompásan mutatnak, ha
csokorba szedi őket az ember.
Maga a lány is kedvet kapott, hogy el nem ért és örökké
elérhetetlen vágyáról beszéljen a szomorú, öregedő vendégnek, aki
kedvteléssel hallgatta. A vendég ezentúl már a kassza közelébe ült
és itt csevegett Zoë kisasszonnyal a vidéki élet gyönyöreiről. Így
aztán lassanként homályos vágy támadt benne, hogy megnézze,
vajjon valóban oly elragadó-e az élet Párizs falain túl.
Egy reggel a következő kérdéssel fordult a kisasszonyhoz:
– Mondja csak, hol lehet Párizs környékén jól ebédelni?
– Menjen ki Saint-Germainbe. Ott olyan szép!
Régen, jegyes korában, megfordult ott Parent úr. Elhatározta,
hogy oda megy.
Egy vasárnapot választott ki, minden különösebb ok nélkül,
csupán azért, mert kirándulni vasárnap szokás, még ha egész nap
semmit sem csinál is az ember.
A következő vasárnap reggelén tehát kiutazott Saint-Germainbe.
Ragyogó és meleg júliuseleji nap volt. A vasúti kocsi ablakán
kibámulva, közömbösen nézte, miként iramodnak szembe vele a fák,
távíróoszlopok s a párizskörnyéki furcsa kis házak. Szomorú volt s
nagyon únta magát. Sajnálta, hogy szokásaival szakítva, engedett
az ujdonság ingerének. A mindig változó s mégis mindig ugyanazon
tájék fárasztotta. Szomjas volt; szeretett volna minden állomáson
leszállni s az épületen túl megpillantott kocsmába beülni s egy-két
pohár sör elfogyasztása után az első vonattal visszautazni Párizsba.
Az utat rettenetesen hosszúnak találta. Elült volna napokig
nyugodtan, ha maga előtt ugyanazokat a dolgokat látja, de ülni s
mégis folyton helyet változtatni, nem mozdulni s maga körül az
egész világot bomlott száguldásban látni, szerfölött fárasztónak és
idegesítőnek találta.
A Szajnát mégis bizonyos érdeklődéssel nézte, valahányszor
átrobogtak rajta. A chatoui híd alatt meztelenkarú evezősök ütemes
csapására hosszú, könnyű csónakok hasították a hullámokat.
– Ezek a fickók bizonyára nem unatkoznak, – gondolta magában
Parent.
A pecqi híd két oldalán föltűnő kies partvidék szíve mélyén
homályos, bátortalan vágyat ébresztett folyóparti barangolások után.
De a hivogató kép eltűnt, a vonat sötét alagútba fúrta magát, amely
után mingyárt a saint-germaini állomás következett.
Parent leszállt s fáradtságtól kimerülve, hátratett kezekkel
ballagott a fákkal, virágokkal díszített terasz felé. A vaskorláthoz
érve megállt, hogy végignézzen a látóhatáron. Hatalmas síkság
tárult ki szeme előtt, végtelen, mint a tenger, mindenütt zöld és
telehintve városoknak beillő falvakkal. A széles térséget fehér utak
szelték át, összefolyó erdőszigetek élénkítették; Vésinet tavai
csillogtak, mint öntött ezüst és Sannois és Argenteuil messzi dombjai
könnyű, kékes ködfátyol alatt ellégiesítve rajzolódtak ki. A nap
bőséges, meleg fényben fürösztötte az egész óriási tájat, amelyet
még kissé elfátyoloztak a reggeli párák, a hirtelen fölmelegített
földnek kigőzölgése és nedves lehellete a Szajnának, amely mint
végtelen kígyó, mezőket szelt át, falvakat került meg, s
engedelmesen húzódott végig dombok lábánál.
Langyos, fák nedvétől és virágtól illatos szellő cirógatta a bőrt,
ömlött be a kebelbe és a vért megpezsdítette, az elmét felvidította s
a szívet megfiatalította.
Parent mohón szívta be a levegőt és a nagy fénnyel elöntött
távlatba belevakulva, megelégedéssel morogta:
– Ejnye no, hiszen egészen jó itt!
Néhány lépést tett előre; majd újra megállt. Egészen új és
ismeretlen dolgokat fedezett fel; nem szemmel látható dolgokat,
hanem olyanokat, amelyet csupán a lélek tud előre megsejteni: a
boldogságnak lehető, megcsillogó igézetét, egy egészen új, soha
nem is gyanított életet, amely most szinte megnyilatkozásként tárult
föl előtte, amint e végtelen táj látóhatárával szemben állt.
A földet elöntő fénytenger láttára nyilván érezte eddigi életének
kicsinyes, sivár szomorúságát. Látta kávéházban eltöltött komor,
egyhangú, gyötrelmes húsz esztendejét. Utazhatott volna, mint
mások, mehetett volna messze tájakra, idegen népek közé,
tengerentúli, csodálatos világokba; érdeklődhetett volna
tudományok, művészetek iránt és szerethette volna ezt az ezerarcú,
csodálatos életet, amely lehet vidám, lehet megindító, de mindig
változik, mindig kiismerhetetlen és roppant érdekes!
Most már késő. Az élete még néhány pohár sör, amelyet ki kell
innia; azonkívül semmi: sem család, sem barátok, sem remény, sem
érdeklődés akármi iránt is. Végtelen szomorúság fogta el: szeretett
volna elszaladni innen, visszamenni, elbújni Párizsban: a kocsmai
élet butító egyhangúságába. Mindazt a gondolatot, álmot és vágyat,
ami a fáradt szívek mélyén aludni szokott, fölébresztette,
megmozgatta a mezőkön csillogó napsugár.
Érezte, hogyha tovább marad itt ezen a helyen, őrültségbe
szédül és ezért gyorsan a Henri IV vendéglőbe ment, hogy
ebédeljen, fejét borral, pálinkával elkábítsa és legalább
beszélgessen valakivel.
Egyik lugas asztalánál ült le, ahonnan az egész vidéket be
lehetett látni; összeállította étrendjét s kérte, hogy azonnal szolgálják
ki.
Más kirándulók is érkeztek és szomszédságában telepedtek le.
Mihelyt nem volt egyedül, mingyárt jobban érezte magát.
Nem messze tőle egyik virágos fülkében hárman ebédeltek.
Többször rájuk esett már tekintete anélkül, hogy megállapodott volna
rajtuk.
Egyszerre csak egy asszonyi hang ütötte meg fülét, amely
megrázta gerince velőjéig.
– György, vágd fel a csirkét, – mondta a hang.
És egy másik felelt:
– Igen, mama.
Parent rájuk emelte szemét. Most már tisztán megértette,
kitalálta, kik lehetnek ezek az emberek. Bizonyára sohasem ismerte
volna fel őket! Felesége egészen ősz volt, s nagyon elhízott; komoly,
tiszteletreméltó idős hölgynek látszott. Előrenyujtott fejjel evett, hogy
ruhájára folt ne essék, bár az asztalkendőt magára tűzte. György
férfivá serdült. Arcát egyenlőtlenül nőtt, színtelen szakáll fedte,
amilyen a fiatalemberek állán pelyhedzik. Cilinder, fehér divatmellény
volt rajta és csupa előkelőségből monoklit is hordott. Parent
elképedve nézte őket. Fia lenne ez a fiatalember? Nem, az ő
Gyurikája s e között a fiatalember közt semmi rokonvonás nem
lehet.
Limousin háttal ült és evett; válla kissé meggörbült.
Ez a három teremtés boldognak és megelégedettnek látszik.
Ismert, előkelő kirándulóhelyekre jönnek ebédelni. Megelégedett,
kellemes életet élnek meleg családi fészkükben, amelyet az életet
édesítő semmiségekkel, a vonzalomnak százféle
megnyilatkozásával, a kiterebélyesedett szerelemnek gyöngéd
szavaival díszítettek fel és tettek a maguk külön világává. Így élnek a
tőle lopott pénzen már régesrégen, őt kifosztva, megcsalva és
elveszejtve! Igen, ők voltak azok, akik őt, a hiszékeny, ártatlan,
jámbor embert, a magányosság minden gyötrelmére, uccák és
kocsmák hontalan életére, mindenféle testi és lelki nyomorúságra
kárhoztatták! Haszontalan, züllött csavargót csináltak belőle,
eltévedt, szerencsétlen öreg fiút, akinek semmi remélni-, várnivalója
nincs már ez örömtelen világban. Az ő számára a világ üres volt,
mert senkit sem szeretett már! Mehet, ahová akar, bejárhatja Párizs
minden uccáját, benyithat minden házába s nem talál egyetlen ajtó
mögött sem rámosolygó, édes asszonyarcot, lelkendező gyermeket,
aki jöttét lesi. Ez fájt különösen neki, az ajtó hiánya, amelynek
kilincsére fölragyogó arccal tehetné kezét, tudván, hogy mögötte
várják…
És ez ennek a három nyomorultnak a bűne. Az aljas asszonyé, a
gonosz baráté és ezé a szőke ifjoncé, aki hetyke arccal ül itt.
Rá most épúgy haragudott, mint a másik kettőre. Nem Limousin
fia volt-e? Magának tartotta volna, szerette volna oly hosszú ideig,
ha nem az övé? Ó, az ember mások gyermekeit nem neveli föl!
Limousin rég otthagyta volna az anyját is, fiát is, ha nem tudta volna
biztosan, hogy a gyermek az övé!
Itt ült hát egészen közel hozzá a három gonosztevő, aki életét
megmérgezte.
Parent nem tudta róluk szemét levenni s amily mértékben
emlékébe tolultak a keserűségek, szenvedések, melyekért őket
vádolta, oly mértékben nőtt haragja, elkeseredése ellenük.
Különösen békés, megelégedett arckifejezésük bántotta. Szerette
volna megölni őket, fejükhöz vágni a szódásüveget, behasítani
Limousinnak bárgyu fejét, amely minden pillanatban a tányér fölé
hajolt s megint fölegyenesedett.
És így fognak ezek továbbra is élni: gond, nyugtalanság nélkül!
Nem, nem! Ez igazán sok lenne! Megbosszulja magát! Megbosszulja
magát most rögtön, amíg a keze közt vannak. De hogyan? Kéjjel
válogatott a kivitel regényes módozataiban, de ezek egyikét sem
lehetett itt alkalmazni. Egyik poharat a másik után hajtotta föl, hogy
dühét tüzelje, hogy bátorságát megnövessze és el ne szalassza a
kedvező alkalmat, amelyhez hasonlót sohasem talál.
Hirtelen egy ötlete, iszonyú ötlete támadt. Az ivást is abbahagyta,
hogy annál nyugodtabban végiggondolja. Ajka mosolyra rándult,
amíg magában mormogta: »Kezemben vannak. Kezemben vannak.
Mingyárt meglátjuk. Mingyárt meglátjuk.«
– Parancsol még valamit? – kérdezte a pincér.
– Semmit; csupán kávét és konyakot; a legfinomabbat.
Amíg a konyakos poharakat egymásután szürcsölgette,
folytonosan őket nézte. Itt nem csinálhatott velük semmit, sokan
voltak körülöttük; majd ha sétálni mennek, akkor követi őket. Mert
bizonyára, vagy az erdőbe, vagy valamelyik teraszra mennek sétálni.
Amikor majd mindenkitől távol lesznek, hozzájuk szegődik és
megbosszulja magát. Igen, megbosszulja magát! Huszonhárom év
szenvedésével váltotta meg ezt a pillanatot! Ah, ők nem is sejtik, mi
vár rájuk!
Éppen most fejezték be ebédjüket és békésen társalognak.
Parent nem hallotta, amit mondtak, de látta nyugodt
kézmozdulataikat. Különösen volt felesége arckifejezése bőszítette
fel. Gőgös modort vett föl; elvekkel páncélozott, erénnyel övedzett,
elhízott, szenteskedő teremtésnek látszott, aki még lényegesnek
merte tartani, hogy megközelíthetetlen.
Nemsokára fizettek és fölálltak. Ekkor látta szemtől-szembe
Limousint. Nyugalomba vonult diplomatának hihette volna az ember,
annyi méltósággal hordta sárga arcát az ősz pofaszakállak között,
amelyeknek hegye redingoteja gallérját súrolta.
Kifelé mentek. Gyuri szivarozott és cilinderét nyeglén félrecsapva
viselte. Parent tüstént követte őket.
Először a teraszon keringtek s jóllakott emberek módjára meg-
megálltak a kilátásban gyönyörködni, azután az erdőbe mentek.
Parent örömében a kezét dörzsölte és távolról, bujkálva ment
nyomukban, hogy figyelmüket túlságosan korán ne vonja magára.
Kis, kényelmes léptekkel mentek, mintha langyos fenyőillat- és
légfürdőt vettek volna. Henriette férje karjára támaszkodott és magát
kihúzva ment jobbján, mint ahogy magában bízó, büszke feleséghez
illik. Gyuri sétapálcájával a faágakat csapdosta és az árkokat
könnyedén ugorta át, mint türelmetlen csikó, amely vágtatni
szeretne.
Parent lassanként közeledett feléjük, lihegve az izgalomtól és
fáradtságtól, mert a gyaloglástól már egészen elszokott. Nemsokára
utolérte őket. De megmagyarázhatatlan, zavaros félelem fogta el és
eléjük került, hogy visszafordulva, szembetalálkozzék velük.
Hevesen dobogó szívvel ment előre, maga mögött érezvén őket
és többször mondta magában: »Rajta, itt a pillanat; bátorság,
bátorság! Itt a döntő pillanat!«
Hirtelen visszafordult. Nagy fa tövében telepedtek le mind a
hárman és kedélyesen társalogtak.
Parent összeszedte minden erejét és gyors léptekkel ment
feléjük. Mikor hozzájuk ért, megállt az úton és szembefordulva velük,
töredező, felindultságtól remegő hangon dadogta:
– Itt vagyok. Én vagyok az! Úgy-e nem vártatok?
Mind a hárman vizsgálgatva mérték végig, mert bolondnak
tartották.
– Talán meg sem ismertek? – folytatta. – Nézzetek csak jól meg!
Parent vagyok, Parent Henrik vagyok. Úgyebár nem vártatok rám?
Azt hittétek, hogy minden rendben van, hogy többé soha, de
sohasem láttok engem. Tévedés, tévedés! Ím itt vagyok! És most
leszámolunk.
Henriette rémült sikoltással rejté keze mögé arcát és
kétségbeesetten nyögte: »Ó, Istenem!«
György az ismeretlen láttára, aki anyját fenyegetni látszott,
fölugrott s ütésre készen állt elébe.
Limousin megsemmisülve meredt a kísértetre, amely pár
pillanatig kipihegve magát, így folytatta:
– Eljött a számadás órája! Végezzünk egymással! Megcsaltatok,
fegyencéletre kárhoztattatok és azt hittétek, hogy sohasem kerültök
a kezembe?
György vállon ragadta és félrelökte a fenyegetőző embert.
– Mit akar? Megbolondult? Takarodjék, különben ellátom a baját.
– Mit akarok? Meg akarom neked mondani, hogy kik ezek az
emberek.
György mind nagyobb indulattal rázta és már meg akarta ütni,
mikor a másik rekedten kiabálta:
– Ne bánts! Apád vagyok!… Nézd csak, nézd, vajjon még mindig
nem ismernek rám ezek a nyomorultak?
Az elképedt fiatalember kieresztette kezéből és anyjára nézett.
Parent, kiszabadulva, az asszonyhoz közeledett:
– Hát mondd meg neki te, hogy ki vagyok! Mondd meg, hogy
Parent Henriknek hívnak s az ő apja vagyok, minthogy őt Parent
Györgynek hívják. Mondd meg, hogy te a feleségem vagy s hogy
mind a hárman a pénzemből, abból a tízezer frankból éltek, amit én
tartásdíjul fizetek, amióta téged kirúgtalak. Mondd meg azt is, miért
rúgtalak ki? Kirúgtalak, mert rajtacsíptelek ezzel a hitvány, aljas
csirkefogóval, aki a szeretőd! Mondd meg neki, hogy tisztességes,
becsületes ember vagyok s te csak a pénzemért jöttél hozzám és
már az első naptól fogva megcsaltál. Mondd meg, kik vagytok és ki
vagyok én…
Az utolsó szavakat már hebegve, fulladozva mondta a düh miatt,
amely mindinkább úrrá lett rajta.
Az asszony kétségbeesve visította:
– Pál, Pál, hallgattasd el! Ne engedd, hogy fiam előtt így
beszéljen!
Limousin is fölkelt György után s halkan mormogta:
– Hallgass! Hallgass! Gondold meg, hogy mit teszel.
Parent magából kikelve válaszolt:
– Nagyon jól tudom, hogy mit csinálok. És ez még nem minden.
Van valami, amit tudni akarok, ami már húsz év óta gyötör.
És Györgyhöz fordult, aki kábultan fához támaszkodott:
– Hallgass meg! Most hozzád beszélek: Mikor elment tőlem ez az
asszony, nem tartotta elegendőnek, hogy megcsal; még a kétségbe
is akart taszítani. Te voltál mindenem, egyetlen vigaszom a világon.
Ő magával hurcolt téged és esküdözött, hogy nem én vagyok apád,
hanem ez itt ni. Hazudott? Nem tudom. Húsz esztendeje töprengek
rajta.
Odament az asszonyhoz végzetszerű, rettenetes lépéssel és
kezét, amely mögé bújt, arcáról lerántotta:
– Aljas teremtés, felhívlak Isten és felnőtt gyermeked színe előtt,
mondd meg, melyikünk az apa: ő-e vagy én; szeretőd-e vagy férjed?
Csak ki vele! Mondd meg! Mondd meg!
Limousin ráugrott. Parent visszalökte és rikácsoló hangon
üvöltötte:
– De bátor vagy ma! Sokkal bátrabb vagy, mint akkor, amikor a
lépcsőházba menekültél, hogy le ne üsselek. Nos, ha a szeretőd
nem felel, felelj te! Te éppen úgy tudhatod, mint ő. Mondd, te vagy az
apja ennek a fiúnak?… Csak rajta! Felelj! Felelj!
Visszament a feleségéhez:
– Ha nekem nem akarod megmondani, mondd meg legalább a
fiadnak. Férfi már. Joga van tudni, hogy ki az apja. Én nem
mondhatom meg, mert nem tudom és nem tudtam soha, de soha!
Én nem tudom megmondani neked, gyermekem.
Őrjöngött, hangja visítássá élesült. Karjával értelmetlenül
hadonászott a levegőben, mint nyavalyatörős.
– No… no… Felelj hát… Nem tudja… Fogadok, hogy nem
tudja… Ha, ha!… Nem tudja, mert mind a kettővel szeretkezett…
Nem tudja senki… Senki sem tudja a világon… Lehet az ilyesmit
tudni? Te sem tudod meg, gyermekem; soha, de sohasem tudod
meg, épúgy, mint én… Kíséreld meg… Na… kérdezd… Meglátod,
nem tudja… Én sem… ez sem itt ni… te sem… senki… senki…
Tehát választhatsz… Igen… Válassz!… Én vagyok az?… Jó estét!…
Vége… Ha netán mégis megmondaná neked, fiacskám, jöjj el a
Continent-szállóba és közöld velem… Úgy-e eljössz?… Égek a
kíváncsiságtól… Jó éjt, urak, jó éjt, hölgyem… Jó mulatást!…
Azután elment, heves kézmozdulatokat írva le s tovább beszélve
magában, a nagy fák alatt, a kristálytiszta, nedvek illatától terhes
levegőben. Vissza sem fordult, hogy lássa őket. Csak ment, mintha
dühe és szenvedélye vakon taszítaná előre, ment és közben elméjét
folyton rögeszméjével kínozta.
Egyszerre csak a pályaudvar előtt volt. Vonat indult. Fölszállt.
Utazás közben haragja lassan lecsillapodott és eszméletét
visszanyerte. Mikor Párizsban kiszállt, maga csodálkozott legjobban
vakmerőségén.
Olyan fáradtnak érezte magát, mintha csontjait összetörték volna.
Mégis pohár sörre benézett megszokott kocsmájába.
Zoë kisasszony csodálkozva fogadta:
– Már visszajött? Nagyon fáradt?
– Igen… igen… nagyon fáradt vagyok, – felelte szórakozottan. –
Tudja… a szabad levegőtől elszoktam. Már nem is nekem való.
Többet nem megyek vidékre. Jobban tettem volna, ha itt maradok.
Ezentúl nem mozdulok innét.
A kisasszony szerette volna, ha elmondja, miként folyt le a
kirándulás, de nem tudott belőle semmit sem kiszedni.
Ez este, életében először, holtrészegre itta magát, úgyhogy haza
kellett vezetni.
Borigó gazda fülbaja.
A haveri »gyorsparaszt« indulni készült Kriktóból. Az utasok

Malandain és fia Zöld kulacshoz címzett vendéglőjének udvarán
várakoztak nevük szólítására.
A gyorsparaszt sárga, viharverte láda volt, amelynek kerekei is
egykor sárgák voltak, de most már a rájuk rakódott sártól szürkévé
voltak átmázolva.
Az első kerekek egészen kicsinyek voltak, a hátsók magasak és
bizonytalanul roskadozók a föléjük illesztett csomagszállító ládától,
amely duzzadozott, mint állapotos tehénnek a hasa.
Három fehér gebe volt az alkotmány elé fogva libasorban. Nekik
kell a megviselt bárkát, amelynek a kinézésében volt valami
szörnyetegszerű, mozgásba hozni. A lovaknak aránytalanul nagy
fejük volt s vékony lábszáraik kerek, idomtalan térdekbe bogozódtak.
A fáradtságtól már most is álomba szenderültek.
Horlavil Cézár, a kocsis, bajuszát kezefejével törölve, megjelent a
szálló kapujában. Kicsi, nagyhasú ember volt, mégis elég fürgén
mozgott, mert a bakra való fel- és lemászás nem kis testi éberséget
kívánt. Arcát a mezők éles levegője, az esők, viharok és az útközben
kiürített pálinkáspoharak pirosra festették. Szemével állandóan
pislákolt, mintha szelek és jégesők csapkodásaitól védekeznék.
A mozdulatlanul álló parasztasszonyok előtt széles kerek
kosarakban ijedt majorság repdesett. Horlavil egymás után kapkodta
fel a kosarakat és a kocsi tetejére lendítette. Azután már nagy
óvatossággal helyezte melléjük a tojásoskosarakat. Végül
következtek a búzával, kukoricával tömött zsákocskák, kis
zsebkendőbe, vászondarabba vagy ujságpapírba csomagolt holmik,
amelyeket hármasával-négyesével hajigált föl. Mikor ezzel készen
volt, kinyitotta a kocsi hátsó ajtaját, zsebéből előhúzta az utasok
listáját és egymás után böngészte ki a neveket:
– A gorzsvilli főtisztelendő plébános úr.
A hatalmas termetű, kövér, széles, kékvörös arcszínű és
barátságos tekintetű pap előlépett; fölhúzta reverendáját, mint
szoknyájukat az asszonyok, hogy lábát a lépcsőre emelhesse és
fölmászott a bárkába.
– A rollboszk-grineti tanító úr?
A hosszú, sovány, félénk és térdig érő redingotba öltözött ember
nagy lépésekkel szelte át az udvart és csakhamar eltűnt a kocsi
nyitott ajtaján.
– Billegor gazda. Két hely.
A nyurga és a sok szántástól meggörbült hátú Billegor gazda
földresütött szemmel baktatott elő. A sok koplalástól lefogyott arcán,
amelyen pergamenné keményedett a mosdatlan bőr, konok és
érthetetlen szomorúság honolt. Felesége is olyan búskomor,
bizalmatlan és sovány volt, mint ő, csakhogy egészen kicsi. Kezében
óriási zöld esernyőt tartott s ura mellett óvatosan lépdelt, kis fejét
minduntalan megbiccentve, mint magot kereső tyúk.
– Campo gazda. Két hely.
Campo habozva állt meg, minthogy gyanakvó természetű volt.
Meg is kérdezte a kocsistól:
– Má’ mint én vónék az, akit kend szólít?
A kocsis, akinek »vicces-spriccer« volt a gúnyneve, már éppen
egy jó tréfával akart válaszolni, mikor Campo gazda hirtelen előre
billent a hatalmas lökéstől, amelyet hátára ölestermetű, hangos
kedvű felesége irányított, akinek hasa domború volt és kerek, mint a
hordó s kezei szélességben malomkerekek lapátjaival versenyeztek.
Campo gazda fejjel előre siklott be a kocsiajtón, mint patkány a
lyukba.
– Pampus gazda.
Kövér és nehézkes paraszt lépett elő, aki fejét bánatosan
nyujtotta előre, mint az ökör. Az egész sárga kaszli nyikorgott,
amikor ajtaján valahogy begyömöszölte magát.
– Borigo gazda.
A vézna, hórihorgas Borigo gazda fájdalmas arckifejezéssel,
nyakát oldalra fordítva lépett elő s tarka zsebkendőjét fülére nyomta,
mintha rettenetesen fájna a foga.
Fekete vagy zöldes színű posztóból készült különös és őskeletű
ünnepi ruhájukon mindnyájan kék blúzt hordtak, amelyet csak Havre
uccáin szándékoztak levetni. Fejükön fekete selyemből készült
kürtőskalap díszelgett, amely magas volt, mint a torony. Ez a
normandi divatnak elengedhetetlen kelléke volt.
Horlavil becsapta az ajtót, fölmászott trónusára s ostorát
megpattogtatta.
A három ló felijedt álmából s megmozdította nyakát, amire a rajta
levő csengők halk és gyorsan megszűnő csilingelésbe kezdtek.
A kocsis erre teljes tüdőből üvöltötte: »Gyí te Pici, gyí te Nyalka,
gyí te Álmos, a teremburádat!« S a nevükön szólított lovakon két
kézre fogott ostornyéllel vágott végig. A lovak húzásba feszültek,
meglódították a kocsit és sántító, lassú ügetésben útnak indultak.
Mögöttük haladt zörögve és csörömpölve a sárga kocsi.
Nyikorgó rúgói, meglazult ablaküvegei kifogyhatatlanok voltak az
üvegneműek és vasszerszámok válogatott zenebonájának
rendezésében. A bentülők kettős vonala a zökkenések természete
szerint hol előrebukott, hol hátralendült, híven követve az apadó és
dagadó tengeri hullámok váltakozó mozdulatát.
Kezdetben hallgattak, mert a plébános jelenléte feszélyezte a
kedélyek megnyilvánulását. A tisztelendő úr azonban csevegő és
kedélyes természettel bírván, maga kezdte el a diskurzust.
– Hogy szolgál az egészsége, Pampus uram?
A paraszt-góliát, aki a paphoz testi méreteik hasonló túltengése
folytán természetes rokonszenvvel vonzódott, mosolyogva válaszolt:
– Csak megvónánk, köszönöm kérdését. És a tisztelendő úr?
– Nekem semmi bajom, hál’ Istennek!
– És kend, Billegor gazd’uram? – érdeklődék tovább a plébános.
– Hát bizony, jobban is mehetne! Ne vóna a repce oly nyomorék
ezidétt! Avval szereztem mindig a garast.
– Hja, nehéz időket élünk.
– Úgy a’, egye meg a fene, – szólalt meg egy vezénylő őrmester
hangján Campo uram harcias felesége.
Minthogy az asszony a szomszéd faluból való volt, a plébános
csak névleg ismerte.
– Ifjasszony a Blondelék lánya?
– Én biz’ a, tisztelendő úr. Campo uram hites felesége.
A félénk, vézna Campo arcán elégedett mosoly terpeszkedett.
Fejét üdvözlő bókolással hajtotta meg, mintha azt akarta volna
mondani:
– Úgy ám! Én vettem bizony el a Blondelék lányát!
Borigo uram, aki nem szűnt meg zsebkendőjével fülét
tapasztgatni, hirtelen keserves nyögésben tört ki:
– Jujj-jujj… jujj-jujj, – nyöszörögte siralmasan s közben a lábával
topogott, hogy rettenetes fájdalmának kifejezést adjon.
– A foga fáj talán? – kérdezte a plébános.
A paraszt egy pillanatig abbahagyta a nyöszörgést és síró
hangon válaszolt:
– Á, nem… nem a fogam, tisztelendő úr… a fülből gyün… a
fülnek a legislegmélyirül…
– Mi van a fülében? Talán valami üledék?
– Ó, dehogy is ül az, tisztelendő úr!… Éppeg, hogy futkos, a fene
bestiája… Egy nagy féreg, ami az éjjel mászott a fülembe a
szénáról, ahun aluttam…
– Nagy féreg? Biztos benne kend?
– Olyan biztos vagyok benne, mint a paradicsomban, tisztelendő
úr… Iszen ott kapirgál szüntelen a fülem pincéjében… Még megeszi
a fejemet, hogy a rosszseb rágja ki!… Jujj… jujj… jujj… Most mászik
a fejembe!…
És a lábával újra elkezdett keservesen topogni. Az utasok között
nagy érdeklődés ébredt. Mindenki véleményt nyilvánított. Billegor
szerint a kérdéses állat pók volt, a tanító szerint hernyó. Hasonló
esetet látott is már Campmueretban, ahol hat évig nevelte az
ifjúságot. A hernyó bemászott az illetőnek fejébe s az orrán jött ki.
Természetesen egyik fülére megsiketült, mert a dobhártyája
átlyukadt.
– Én azt hiszem, hogy valami bogárka, – nyilatkozott a plébános.
Borigo gazda oldalra billentette fejét s az ajtó kilincsének
támasztva folyton csak jajongott.
– Ó, jaj!… ó, jujj!… szentséges jó Isten!… attól félek, hogy
hangya!… úgy harap, mint a veszett kutya!… nagy, fekte hangya!…
Boldogságos szűz Mária, most meg galoppírozni kezd!… Jujj, jujj!…
Átlikasztja a fejemet!…
– Vót a doktornál kend? – kérdé Pampus gazda.
– Dehogy is vótam!
– Há má mér nem?
A doktortól való félelem egyszerre elmulasztotta Borigo uram
fájdalmait.
Kiegyenesedett, de azért a zsebkendőjét továbbra is a fülén
tartotta.
– Mér nem? Tán kendnek telik a pénzből ilyen naplopókat
hízlalni? Gyütt vóna eccer, kéccer, háromszor… tízszer! Minden
vizitér’ egy forint… Az kitesz tíz pengő forintot! És csinált vón’
valamit? Fészkesfenét a füledbe! Csak a píz kell neki!… Hát nem?
Pampus uram fölkacagott:
– Tudom is én!… Most meg hová megy kend?
– Mék Haverba a Csambérlénhöz.
– Ki vóna az?
– Hát a felcser!
– Micsoda felcser?
– A felcser, aki apámat is helyrehozta.
– Mi baja vót a kend apjának?
– Szél vót a hátába, oszt nem tudta se lábát, se combját
mozdítani.
– Oszt mit csinált vele a kend Csambérlénje?
– Meggyúrta mind a két kezével a hátát, mint az asszony a
kenyeret. El is múlt a baja tőle rövidesen!
Borigónak eszébe jutott, hogy a felcser bizonyosan a szükséges
varázsigéket is hozzámondta, de ezt nem merte a plébános előtt
említeni.
Pampus uramnak valami eszébe jutott s jóízűen fölnevetett:
– Mondja csak, kend, Borigo uram, nem valami nyúl kotorász a
fülében? Tán meglátta a retket s azt hitte, hogy az ő lukába fut? No,
várjon csak, mingyárt kibillegetem én őkelmét!
És Pampus uram, tölcsért alkotván kezéből, elkezdte a
vadászkutyák ugatását utánozni. Csaholt, vakkantott, üvöltött és
vonított. Mindenki nevetésben tört ki, még a tanító-mester is, aki
pedig sohasem szokott nevetni.
Minthogy Borigo uram neheztelni látszott a dolog miatt, a
plébános más irányba akarta a társalgást terelni. Campo uram
harcias kinézésű feleségéhez fordult:
– Vannak-e gyerekei, ifjasszony?
– Van egynéhány, plébános úr… Sok gond jár az apró cseléddel!
Campo uram fejével bólintott, jelezni akarván:
– Bizony, sok gond jár az apró cseléddel!
– Hát aztán hány van?
Az asszony büszke önteltséggel válaszolt:
– Tizenhat, plébános úr! Tizenöt belőle az uramtól!
Campo arcán erre a mosoly még szélesebbé vált. Fejével
helyeslőleg, megerősítőleg bólogatott. Biz’ úgy van: tizenöt gyerek s
mindez csakis tőle, egyesegyedül tőle! Hiszen a felesége maga
bevallja! Kétség hát nem fér hozzá. Büszke is lehet rá az ember, aki
áldóját!
Kitől volt a tizenhatodik? Az asszony erről hallgatott. Bizonyára
az első volt? Lehet, hogy az emberek tudtak róla, mert senki sem
csodálkozott. Maga Campo gazda mit sem árult el.
Egyszerre csak Borigo gazda újra kezdte a nyögést.
– Ó, jujji jujj, hujijujji jujj!… Má megint bolondját járja… Bent
kotorász a fejemben!…
A gyorsparaszt éppen megállt a Pollux-kávéháznál. A plébános
Borigóhoz fordult:
– Ha egy kis vizet csöpögtetnénk fülébe, talán kibujna. Mit szól
hozzá kend?
– Hátha a tisztelendő úr gondolja!… Talán segít rajtam.
Mindenki leszállt, hogy a műtétnél segédkezzék.
A plébános lavórt, törülközőt s egy pohár vizet kért. A tanítót
megbízta, hogy a páciens fejét jó mélyen hajtsa le s ha a víz a fülbe
hatolt, hirtelen fordítsa vissza.
De Pampus gazda, aki már Borigo uram fülébe kémlelt, hátha a
férget puszta szemmel felfedezi, elképedve kiáltott föl:
– Hú, a teremtésit a fülének, mennyi a kulimáz benne! Előbb ki
kéne pucolni. Soha itt teremtett állat ki nem hatol, mert mind a négy
lába beleragad a lekvárba.
A plébános maga is szemügyre vette a kijáratot és
megállapította, hogy Pampus uram aggodalmai nem alaptalanok. Az
eltorlaszolt kijáratot a tanítónak kellett szabaddá tenni gyufaszálra
csavart rongyocska segítségével.
Ekkor általános és feszült figyelem közepette a tisztelendő úr
félpohárnyi vizet öntött a megtisztított csatornába. A fölös víz
végigcsurgott Borigo gazda haján és nyakán. A tanító az adott jelre
hirtelen a mosdóedény felé fordította Borigo fejét, mintha ki akarta
volna üríteni. Néhány csepp víz visszahullt a lavórba. A körülállók
nagy érdeklődéssel hajoltak az edény felé. Állatnak, vagy féregnek
azonban nyoma sem volt.
Borigo mindazáltal elégedetten jelentette ki:
– Nem érzek már semmit.
A plébános diadalmasan kiáltott föl:
– Bizonyára megfulladt!

A Commentary On Ovids Metamorphoses Volume 3 Books 13 15 and Indices 1St Edition Alessandro Barchiesi Full Chapter PDF

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A Commentary on Ovid's

Metamorphoses. Volume 3. Books

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A Commentary on Virgil's Eclogues Andrea Cucchiarelli

The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (Vol.

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Volume 13 1st

The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights: A

Philosophy in Ovid, Ovid as Philosopher Gareth D.

The Contributory Revolution, Volume 13 Pierre Giorgini

alessandro barchiesi is a professor of Classics at New York

p h i l i p h a rd i e is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge;

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ALES SANDRO BARCH IE SI

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General Editor Alessandro Barchiesi

Index of Proper Names

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Commentary on Book 13 3

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This commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a revised version of the

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139017213.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

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This English version of my commentary on Metamorphoses 13–15 is a light

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Divergences from Tarrant’s OCT (including punctuation, as was the case

locus Tarrant Hardie

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13.1–398 The Debate over the Arms of Achilles (Armorum Iudicium)

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1–122 The Speech of Ajax

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Commentary on Book 13 3