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ABSTRACT: This article reexamines the interactions of Martial's epigram 11.104 with Ovidian poetry. While previous interpretations have been primarily concerned with Martial's manifest allusion to the Ars amatoria in this epigram, its hitherto neglected relations to Ovid's Remedia amoris are here taken into consideration. The case is made that Martial systematically alludes to motifs from Ars amatoria as well as Amores in order to confront them with their respective reworkings in the Remedia amoris. Thus, Martial's epigram gives an exemplary reading of the Remedia amoris as an inversion of Ovid's former works. Ultimately, this engagement with Ovid's Remedia amoris stands in the service of Martial's Saturnalian poetics.
A number of scholarly publications have been devoted to Martial's po- etic affinities to Ovid,1 and epigram 11.104-"presumably Martial's most 'Ovidian' piece"-2 has always been cited as a prime example. At times Ovid's presence in 11.104 seemed too obvious to deserve discus- sion. In his 1877 work Martial's Ovid-Studien, Anton Zingerle pointed to the fact that in this epigram Martial was engaging with Ovid's Ars am- atoria and lapidarily stated that Martial's "open allusion" was "already registered in commentaries."3
It was not until 1997 that the complexity of Martial's Ovidianness in 11.104 was recognized, when Stephen Hinds showed that the allu- sion stood in the service of a deliberately tendentious reading of Ovid's Ars amatoria.4 Hinds's analysis, however, together with all subsequent interpretations of 11.104, has centered on the epigram's relation to the Ars amatoria. Parting from this exegetical koine, I will argue for the co- presence of at least three Ovidian works in 11.104: the Amores, the Ars amatoria and, above all, the Remedia amoris.5 The epigrammatist sys- tematically confronts motifs from the Amores and the Ars amatoria with their reuses and reversals in Remedia amoris 357-450. This engagement with Ovidian poetry can be interpreted as both an epitome of Martial's Saturnalian poetics and as a Saturnalian appropriation of Ovid's poetry.
I. Ovid on Ovid's Obscene Precepts6
At the center of his Remedia amoris (357-450), Ovid enters into a del- icate field of teaching: how can a pupil who is convalescent from amo- rous suffering, but is not yet cured, sleep with his domina without being, once more, entangled in Amor's net? The lesson's concern...