represents Tomis as an Iron Age locale, on a sea first entered by Jason (Pont.3.1.1): for
Ovid ’s Tomis as an Iron Age locale, see G. Williams 2002, 346. For collections of
material relating to the motif of the “first ship,” see K. F. Smith 1913, 246 – 47 (on Tib.
1.3.37 – 40); Pease 1955 – 58, 770 (on Cic. Nat. D.2.89); McKeown 1998, 224 – 26 (on
Ov. Am.2.11.1 – 6).
See the material collected by Jacoby (1904, 41 – 42); cf. Jackson 1997, 251 – 52;
Pliny also reports the Danaus version (HN7.206).
See Jocelyn 1967, 353, on “the pleonastic gerund inchoandi,” and also for the
reading cepisset,rather than the usually quoted coepisset,which would be even more
deliciously pleonastic (signaled as such in OLD,s.v. coepi§4a [“pleon.”]; but I cannot
construe coepisset in the sentence). On Ennius’s stress on the “initiatory moment,” and
on his exploitation of “associations with the end of the Golden Age,” see Theodor-
akopoulos 2000, 124.
O’Hara (forthcoming), chap. 3, emphasizes the importance of Catullus’s stress
on the Argo as “first”; I have benefited very much from his discussion of this difficult
poem. As he says, commenting on line 11, “even the most recent proponent of remov-
ing prima(in favor ofproram) thinks we are still dealing with the first ship” (referring
to Heyworth in Harrison and Heyworth 1998, 105 – 6). The point is well made by
Bramble (1970, 35 – 37).
For such gradualist views, see Most 1997, 105 – 6; cf. Watson 2003, 529, on the
model according to which “one age shades in to the next without a sharp break.” The
Stoic view of the corruption of natural rationality by civilized arts is another gradual-
ist model of this kind: Boys-Stones 2001, 42 – 43.
Maltby 2002, 194 (on Tib. 1.3.35 – 48).
Bramble 1970, 36: “Two elements which were previously distinct have now
been mixed together.” On Catullus’s Argo as harbinger of culture, see Konstan 1977,
23 – 30.
59.OLDs.v. proscindo§1; see Fordyce 1961, ad loc., citing Varro Rust.1.29.2, ter-
ram cum primum arant, proscindere appellant;cf. R. F. Thomas 1988, 200 (on Virg. G.
2.237). On the metaphor of “plowing” the sea, see McKeown 1998, 218 (on Ov. Am.
2.10.33 – 34); as he remarks, “Sailing the sea, like ploughing the land, signalled the end
of the Golden Age.” As Chris Kraus reminds me, in Virg. Ecl.4.32 – 33 agriculture and
sailing are intertwined.
Following the supplement and correction of Bergk: see Fordyce 1961, ad loc.,
for the text. As we shall see shortly, the stress on “thatday” is a “correction” of the ver-
sion of Apollonius, now being superseded, which marked the departure of the Argo
with the phrase “on that day” (h[mati keivnw/, 1.547).
Fitzgerald 1995, 150; cf. Munich 2003, 48.
62.The Corrupting Sea is the title of Horden and Purcell 2000, a book to which I
am much indebted in this section.
notes to pages 119 – 120