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Unread 02-10-2018, 12:41 PM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Location: Boston, MA
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Ah, but we disagree there. Ovid is better. Not just better, but the master of the elegiac couplet.

It seems reasonable in a matter of taste to turn to precedent: who did better poets and readers than you or I most cherish? When they turned to users of the elegiac couplets, which of the four classical models did they look to? Catullus? Tibullus? Propertius? Ovid?

Naso wins. He wins because it is more fluid in the couplet, snaps the trap shut best, if you will, and speaks with more facility and on a greater range of topics in the form.

Long live Naso, the poor exile.
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