24 KATHLEEN M. COLEMAN
phoses too, the replication of phrasing from the epigraphic register
overlaying the mythology with a veneer of Roman modernity, both
witty and poignant.^13 The epitaph for Phaethon, for example, embeds
the same formula that Lucan incorporated in rendering Pompey’s epi-
taph:
HIC SITVS EST PHAETHON CVRRVS AVRIGA PATERNI
QVEM SI NON TENVIT MAGNIS TAMEN EXCIDIT AVSIS.
(Met. 2.327–8)
Here lies Phaethon, driver of his father’s chariot. Even if he couldn’t
handle it, nevertheless he came to an end performing a mighty act of
daring.The formality of the epigraphic formula is deliciously at odds with the
concessive clause that follows; Ovid exploits the epigraphic register as
deftly as he manipulates the epic genre itself.
Out of ten embedded epitaphs in Ovid’s poetry, eight come at the
end of a poem or a story, or very near it;^14 the lapidary nature of an
epitaph is frequently exploited to supply the “last word”, especially in
the Heroides, where the same pathos and self-positioning exemplified
in Marcia’s epitaph is ascribed to Ovid’s tragic heroines.^15 An instance
where Ovid shares a heroine’s obiter dicta with a literary predecessor
affords a rare opportunity to see him positioning himself vis-à-vis an
earlier allusion to the epigraphic register; the allusion comes in Dido’s
final speech in the Aeneid, which has been noted for its “epigraphic
terseness”, and for displaying the characteristic funerary tropes of the
completion of life’s journey, the achievements of the deceased, and
the role of Fortune:^16
13 The inclusion of epigrammatic motifs and “inscribed” epigrams in the Meta-
morphoses is analyzed as a technique of generic variation by Lausberg 1981 (1983).
14 Except for the example from the Fasti (Fast. 3.549–50), all the elegiac examples
give closure (Am. 2.6.61–2, 2.13.25, Her. 2.147–8, 7.195–6, 14.129–30, Tr. 3.3.73–6).
Two examples from the Metamorphoses conclude a story (Met. 9.794–5, 14.443–4);
one does not (Met. 2.327–8).
15 For the epitaphs as an instrument empowering the female voices of the protago-
nists, see Ramsby 2005 and 2007, 113–29.
16 Pease 1935, 506, citing a comparison with the elogia of the Scipios by Penquitt
1910, 64. For the associations of uixi with the opening of sepulchral epigram, see
Thomas 1998, 221 and, on Hor. Odes 3.26.1 Vixi puellis nuper idoneus, Nisbet-Rudd
2004, 309. Among many versions of the metaphor of life as a road, Virgil’s formula-
tion is repeated at CLE 385.4, 814: see Tolman 1910, 42. Direct epigraphic “quota-
tion” in the Aeneid, with explicit reference to the act of inscription in the phrase car-
men signare, comes at A. 3.286–8, where the inscription on the shield that Aeneas