Discordant Muses

Abstract

Quaeritis unde is a good opening for a book of the Fasti (5.1). The question and answer form here exemplified is basic to the poem, even if in the classic Callimachean form from which Ovid draws his inspiration it is the poet who asks the questions – and this in fact happens with the exhortation dicite in line 7. But this quaeritis unde has also, I believe, an allusive value: it opens another book of elegiac poetry, Propertius' second book, where it is the more remarkable as an opening in that as far as we know it is the earliest example of a direct address to the reader in Roman poetry.The purpose of this allusion becomes clear if we take a wider look at the two contexts. In the first elegy of his second book Propertius inserts a celebrated negation of the Musenweihe:non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo (2.1.3)while Ovid, on the contrary, is just about to consult Calliope and her sisters. The allusion offers other points of interest if we consider the subsequent development of Propertius' poetics.