The late antique literary epigram between progymnasmatic fictionality and mythopoetic exemplarity: the case study of Ausonius' Niobe in "Epigr.", 57 Green

The tale of Niobe had a wide-ranging and long-lasting literary afterlife, but Ovid’s version in the sixth book of the ‘Metamorphoses’ (6, 146‑312) is perhaps the most celebrated example in Latin literature of an attempt to describe Niobe’s physiognomy: after a happy marriage, Niobe becomes a ‘mater dolorosa’ and a symbol of pain. My contribution focuses on a short and suggestive epigram from the Ausonian collection of ‘Epigrammata’ (‘Epigr.’, 57 Green) in which Niobe is the protagonist. I demonstrate how this case-study of Ovidian literary influence is associated with the poetic effects derived from the rhetorical practice of the προγυμνάσματα. In this epigram Niobe’s suffering illustrates perfectly how Ausonius changes a long literary tradition that was familiar to him, so as to display his literary skill, his linguistic dexterity and his ability to give the heroine a new meaning that is connected to the literary repertory of his erudite readers.