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This paper explores the extent and significance of “imperial geographies” in Tibullan elegy. I document the contemporary currency of the toponyms of Mediterranean geography in Tibullus’ elegies 1.3, 1.7, 2.2, and 2.3 and argue that Tibullus’ invocation of these sites is intimately correlated with both Roman imperialism and the poet’s own Callimachean commitments. By incorporating non-Latin vocabulary into its artistic matrix, Tibullus’ poetry participates, in its very linguistic texture, in the larger imperial projects of Augustan Rome while simultaneously illustrating its aesthetic engagement with Alexandrian poetics.

This paper explores Ovid's elaboration of the metaphor that associates the female body with the earth in a series of tales at the end of Metamorphoses 4, in which women and landscape are closely linked. I argue that Ovid documents in his Perseus narrative not only woman's "natural" function as plot-space, the ease with which she is assimilated to the topography of epic action, but also the correlation between the male gaze and masculine subjectivity, which come together in the visual objectification of women (Medusa, Andromeda) and landscape (Libya) to confirm the superiority of male over female.

The emotional bond between sisters emerges as a focus of Hellenistic epic, in Apollonios representation of Medea’s sister Chalciope. Roman epic poets thereafter repeatedly explore sororal relations: Ennius describes Ilia’s report of her dream to an unnamed sister (34–50 Sk); Vergil represents Anna as Dido’s confidante; and Ovid includes several myths of sisters’ transformations in the Metamorphoses. It is only in Flavian epic, however, that sisters interact in more than one episode or book. Valerius Flaccus takes Apollonios’ Argonautica as his primary model and further develops the relationship between Medea and Chalciope. Manipulation is a key feature of their relationship as Valerius extends Apollonios’ treatment to represent the goddess Juno impersonating Chalciope, thereby manipulating Medea directly. Statius takes up Valerius’ theme of manipulation but multiplies the number of sororal pairs: the Theban sisters Antigone and Ismene have a mortal analogue in the Argive sisters Argia and Deipyle, and an immortal analogue in the Furies Tisiphone and Megaera. Finally, Silius Italicus reworks Vergil’s portrait of the sisterly bond between Dido and Anna, with Juno appealing to the close emotional bond between the sisters and asking Anna, now the tutelary divinity of Lake Trasimene, to support Hannibal in his campaign against Rome.

After Vergil’s Aeneid, no text so thoroughly informed the early imperial Roman literary imagination as Ovid’s Metamorphoses (published 8 AD). This chapter examines the impact of the literary and imperial programs of the Metamorphoses on Lucan’s civil war poem, for the Bellum Ciuile is the first example of largescale negotiation of the Aeneid through the lens of the Metamorphoses. I argue that Lucan draws on Ovidian subjects, themes and poetic techniques to trace fissures in the optimistic Virgilian epic paradigm.

This chapter testifies to the continuing influence of Heinze's work by taking as its subject Ovid's creative exploitation of sources and genres in the first five books of the Metamorphoses . It has often been suggested that Ovid chose to write the Metamorphoses in dactylic hexameters, the meter in which epic poems were composed in classical antiquity, in response to "the impulse of the Aeneid ". Although by Ovid's day elegy was most closely associated with amatory themes, its genesis was presumed to lie in funerary lament. Since Ovid's only other foray out of elegiac composition was in tragedy, it will prove worthwhile to examine his debt to tragedy in the final section of this inquiry. Ovid's focus on the Dionysian themes and primal subjects of Greek tragedy emerges still more clearly from comparison with the conventional treatment of Thebes in ancient epic. Keywords: Aeneid ; amatory themes; epic poems; Greek tragedy; Heinze; Metamorphoses ; Ovid; Thebes