Audes/fatidicum verbis fallere velle deum? (Ov. Fast. 2, 261-2): l'ironia del logos nei Fasti di Ovidio

Recent scholarship on Ovid’s elegiac calendar-poem has drawn attention to the political significance of the poet’s equivocal approach to the controversial topic of the libertas linguae. This paper reads the poet’s playful manipulation of the multiple, contradictory aspects of logos in literary terms, focusing on the sophisticated irony inherent in the creation of figures of skilled speakers (Numa, Egeria, Anna Perenna, the merchant), able to overcome superior opponents through fallacious, ambiguous words, and emphasizing the role played by a modern, exuberant use of lingua in the civilization process of the Augustan Rome.