Fama proditrix: Rumor in Ovid, Statius, and Prudentius
This project examines the personification of Fama in the authors Ovid, Statius, and Prudentius.These Latin authors were deeply influenced by Virgil’s famous personification of Fama in Aeneid 4, and their indebtedness to Virgil is expressed variously through their references to Fama in their own works. Chapter one examines Ovid’s personification of Fama, and especially the ecphrasis of the House of Fama in Metamorphoses 12.39–63. It argues that Fama is central to Ovid’s conception of his relationship to previous epic authors and to his own poetic immortality. The second chapter turns to an investigation of Statius’ personification of Fama in the Thebaid, and argues that the Thebaid has a particularly strong focus on the meta-poetic overtones of Fama. This is demonstrated through a study of poetic invocations in the Thebaid which employ the word Fama, as well as a close reading of Fama’s importance for the Hypsipyle narrative. The final chapter contains an examination of Fama in the corpus of Prudentius, and argues that the conspicuous paucity of references to Fama in the Psychomachia is due to a conception of immortality that differs from his classical predecessors. The brief reference to Fama within the battle of Mens Humilis and Superbia contributes to subsuming epic warfare and its memorialization in poetry into the Psychomachia’s poetic project.
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