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Frederick Ahl, Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and other Classical Poets. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985. Pp. 352. ISBN 0-8014-1762-7.

185—6 and 577—8 (directly echoed in this elegy at line 51). But now his request is stronger and more forceful. He even distinguishes between what are long-range goals, a pardon and return to Rome, . . . and his immediate desire, another place of relegation' (p. 80). The development credited by E. to Tristia 5, then, has already been credited by him to Tristia 4. And, if we look at the last four lines of Tristia 2, to which E. has drawn our attention in the passage just quoted, we will find that the goals which Ovid 'even distinguishes between' in Tristia 4 are in fact already fully distinguished back in that earlier book: the twice-told story of development is an illusion. However, as I said at the beginning of the paragraph, there are many places where E.'s interest in changes from collection to collection yields happier results. A considerable proportion of E.'s discussion of each elegy is taken up with the kind of paraphrase which we are accustomed to meet at the head of a standard classical commentary; and this despite E.'s avowed intention 'to avoid lengthy paraphrasing' (p. 9). There is nothing wrong with paraphrase per se; but a couple of reservations are in order. First, to the unwary eye, and especially to the eye of the reader envisaged by E., viz. the student 'relatively unfamiliar' (p. 9) with the exile poetry, such paraphrases may look like a quick and convenient way of finding out what is 'in' each elegy. However, to paraphrase is inevitably to select, to condense, to expand, to privilege one item over another: it is important for E.'s student not to lose sight of the fact that E. is interpreting when he paraphrases, just as much as at other times. Second, in the poetry of Ovid's exile the 'heresy of paraphrase' (Cleanth Brooks's term in the enduring Well Wrought Urn) may be even more likely to lead us astray than elsewhere. The delicacy of the case which Ovid has to argue makes this in some sense a literature of unease, of indirection, of concealment. Our poet, exiled for 'carmen et error', notoriously fails to tell us half his story; and the disingenuousness of his selfpresentation does not end there. In the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, what Ovid hints at in passing may sometimes be as important as what he expatiates on; and it is the passing hint which is most apt to be tuned out when a poem becomes a paraphrase. But away with invidia: E.'s book has much to offer, and will be a valuable vade-mecum for future travellers to Tomis.