satires and iambics to the classical lyric.' ( Otis 1966: 43.)
The didactic Ars bears the same relationship to the Amores
(and Heroides) and to the Metamorphoses (and Fasti) as
Virgil's didactic Georgics does to the Eclogues and to the
Aeneid. Even if the triadic career in Virgil's case can only
be seen with hindsight, a possibility which would itself not
stop such a perception forming part of poet's reception, in
Ovid's case the comparison with his great predecessor
allows the development greater visibility. It is a not uncom-
mon evaluation of the mythological episodes in the Ars that
one of their most important functions is as a practice run
for the Metamorphoses ( Krokowski 1963: 147). This judge-
ment reflects the extent to which many classical scholars
judge poetry by the canons laid down by classical authority.
Epic is the best, the only important subject for a mature
poet, and the value of earlier poetry consists in the extent to
which it furthers the epic goal.

Book 2, in particular, provides a challenge highlighted by
its pivotal nature. It is, as we have it and must, albeit
carefully, read it, the middle poem in a three-book collec-
tion, in which the attractions of reading ahead and re-read-
ing retrospectively are maximized. The book presents the
problems of continuation, which in this case is a matter of
repeating with a difference, since much of the material is
notionally the same, the conventions of elegy. Ovid's com-
ment on Ulysses' rhetorical skills could almost be a program-
matic statement of his own ( Ars 2. 128):

ille referre aliter saepe solebat idem

He used often to relate the same thing in different ways.

The Daedalus episode, in particular, can be paradigmatic of
this problematic opportunity, being a story well known
from the great authors, and one which Ovid will treat
again. Middle books in Latin texts often lend themselves to
reflection--in the manner of Aeneid 6--and this is certainly
the case with Ars 2.

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