Introduction

Home , Acmon, Canens (mythology), Ennius, Iphis, Picus, Vertumnus

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INTRODUCTION

1. BOOK 14 AND THE METAMORPHOSES At Metamorphoses 1.1–4 Ovid announces that his poem will begin from the origins of the world (primaque ab origine mundi) and continue to his own times (ad mea . . . tempora). In book 14 the poem enters for the first time the legendary period of proto-Roman Italian myth and history. The book occupies an important position in the Metamorphoses, continuing and concluding Ovid’s reworking of Virgil’s Aeneid begun in book 13 (13.623–14.573) and introducing Italian and Roman themes. The final erotic tale of the poem appears in this book (Pomona and Vertumnus), as do the first of the many Roman apotheoses (Aeneas, Romulus, and Hersilie), which will close the poem. The tales of book 14 recapitulate many of the central themes of the poem (erotic passion, sex and violence, speech and punishment, the relationship of the human and divine) and chart a pattern of cultural transition from Greece to Rome.1

Chronology and cosmogony The chronological and cosmological framework of the Metamorphoses is initiated by the opening account of the creation of the world from chaos (1.1–75) and concludes with the imperial apotheoses of books 14 and 15,whichbringusupto(andindeed past) Ovid’s own times in the prediction of Augustus’ and Ovid’s future apotheoses (15.807–49, 871–9). These temporal references are supported by prolepses in books one and two looking forward to Rome and Augustus,2 which are not activated again until book 14. Ring composition is further created by the cosmogonic opening of the poem and the cosmogony of Pythagoras’ speech in book 15. Developing the Hellenistic catalogue tradition of metamorphosis,3 and following the mythological trajectory of the pattern of Hesiod’s Theogony and its ‘sequel’ the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Ovid claims to present a uniﬁed and universalizing version of the metamorphosis theme in Greek and Roman mythology in an aetiological perpetuum carmen (Met. 1.4). The complex proem aligns Ovid’s unorthodox epic with two poetic traditions often seen as opposed: perpetuum (1.4) suggests the tradition of grand heroic (Home- ric) epic, while noua (1.1)anddeducite (1.4) evoke Alexandrian poetics of reﬁnement, brevity, and discontinuity.4 The Metamorphoses’ cosmological themes embrace both

1 Barchiesi 1997b: 185. 2 1.175–6, 199–205, 560–3, 2.254–9, 538–9, 642–54. See Feeney 1999: 27. 3 On the earlier literary traditions of metamorphosis poetry,see Myers 1994a: 22–5, Hutchin- son 2006. 4 See Kenney 1976, Hinds 1987a: 18–20, 121,Heyworth1994: 72–6,Myers1994a, Wheeler 1999: 8–33, Feeney 1999,Rosati1999: 247, van Tress 2004: 24–71, Barchiesi 2005: 133–45.

2INTRODUCTION

traditions, while with a light touch the epic incorporates most ancient genres.5 The poem frequently changes style and tone. Unity and continuity are achieved mainly through Ovid’s narrative control and his technique of self-consciously drawing atten- tion to the mechanisms of his narrative.6 Through his ingenious transitions between episodes and books,7 Ovid defers closure, generating a multiplicity of beginnings and endings, and creating continuity, while destabilizing any scheme of structured sequentiality.8 There are strikingly few temporal markers in the Metamorphoses. By book 14 the poem has reached the ‘historical period’, signalled traditionally by the Trojan war (11.194 Troy built, cf. 13.623 Troy falls), a date (traditionally 1184/3bce), which tended to mark the dividing line between myth and history.9 After the mention of Troy the narrative becomes to some extent more linear, following loosely the plot lines of Homer’s and Virgil’s epics, and the fates of the survivors of the Trojan war, Aeneas, Odysseus, and Diomedes. The canonical temporal demarcation of the Olympiads10 (Eratosthenes dated the first Olympiad to 776 bce) is mentioned in the anachronistic context of the Homeric narrator Macareus’ story-telling at 14.324–5, i.e. about four hundred years too early.11 At 14.609 the Alban king list initiates a genealogy of Roman rulers, which will continue until Numa in book 15 and segue eventually into Rome’s new leaders Caesar and Augustus. Near the end of book 14 at lines 774–5 we arrive at the foundation of Rome (traditionally dated to 754/3bce). The establishment of the cult of Aesculapius on the Tiber island (15.622–744) is a piece of Roman history traditionally dated to the year 291 bce. This and the tale of Cipus (also in Book 15)are the only events from the early Republic. Three centuries pass between that event and the imperial apotheoses, which close the poem (Julius Caesar 44/43 bce (15.745–870) and that projected for Augustus at 15.807–39). Ovid’s complex handling of chronology in the Metamorphoses has been explored in a number of recent studies,12 and becomes particularly interesting as the poem enters for the first time the legendary period of proto-Roman Italian myth and history in the final two books. Some scholars have pointed out Ovid’s indebtedness in the structure of his poem to the dominant systems of mythological chronology found in earlier works, especially Varro’s De gente populi romani.13 Varro’s triadic periodization

5 See Hardie 1986: 66–9 on the cosmic tradition of Hesiod and Homer; also Feeney 1991, Hardie 1993,Myers1994a. See Lafaye 1904, Kenney 1986: xviii on the poem as an ‘anthology of genres’, Barchiesi 2005: cxliv. 6 Wheeler 1999, Barchiesi 2001: 49, Kenney 2002: 58,Rosati2002: 304. 7 See Solodow 1988: 41–6 on Ovid’s transitional techniques. 8 Hardie 2004: 165. 9 Coleman 1971: 472n.1, Kenney 1986: 439; Feeney 1999: 15, 19, 2007: 81–3.Onthewhole, however, no authoritative temporal demarcations between fabula and historia were established in the Roman tradition; see Feeney 1991: 257, 2007: 68–137. 10 See Feeney 2007: 81–5. 11 See Feeney 1999: 21. 12 See Feeney 1999, Hinds 1999, Zissos and Gildenhard 1999,Rosati2002. 13 Feeney 1999,Cole2004, who stresses Varro’s dependence on Castor of Rhodes; cf. Cameron 2004: 261–303, who ﬁnds parallels in the mythographers. On the Metamorphoses and universal history, see Ludwig 1965: 74–86, Wheeler 2000,Graf2002: 119.

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of history14 corresponds to a widely accepted structural pattern in the Metamor- phoses of three divisions: gods (1.452–6.420), heroes (6.421–11.193, introduced by the city of Athens), and historical ﬁgures (11.194–15.870, introduced by the city of Troy).15 Thomas Cole has argued that Ovid follows Varro in presenting ‘a continu- ous record of the series of post-diluvian generations that begins with Deucalion and Inachus . . . and ends [in Varro’s case] with Romulus’ (in Ovid’s case with Augustus).16 Ovid can be seen as loosely structuring his narrative according to the royal dynasties of Greek and Roman myth and the generations of great mythological houses (Met. 1–5 Argive, 6–9 Athenian, 12–15 Latino-Trojan), using them as coherent frameworks for metamorphosis stories, many of which are thematically and dramatically related, but which cannot be linked to any ‘datable’ ﬁgure or event.17 Yet, despite these elaborate chronological underpinnings, throughout most of the poem ‘linearity takes second place to patterns of thematic association and contrast’.18 The vast chronological horizon created by the cosmic framework encompasses stories linked by connected themes, characters, places, which tend to nullify an awareness of temporal sequence.19 Individual episodes and thematic cycles (e.g. the contests in books 5 (Muses and Pierides) and 6 (Athena and Arachne), the song of Orpheus in book 10), most of indeterminate chronology, are more prominent than over- arching diachronic structures. The seemingly totalizing frame of the poem (from chaos to Rome) is belied by the majority of tales in which there is no mention of Rome,20 and the repeated regressions, digressions, and anachronisms challenge any attempts to impose a teleological interpretation on the poem.21 Even in the opening books, the cosmogonies have a tendency to collapse again into chaos. To a great extent the chronological and narratological structural order of the Metamorphoses allows for the constant disordering and transformation of Ovid’s narrative.22 ‘The secret was to keep the narrative moving and the reader guessing’.23 The temporal world the Metamorphoses creates is ultimately one internal to the poem, a history of

14 First ‘unclear’ from the beginning of humankind to the flood, second ‘mythical’ from the flood to first Olympiad, third ‘historical’ from the first Olympiad to the present, see Censorinus DN 20.12–21.2. 15 Crump 1931: 204–14, 274–8.Cf.Ludwig1965 on the tripartite division of the Met. into three ‘epochs’: early (1.5–451), mythological (1.452–11.193) and historical (11.194–15.870). Others emphasize the division of the poem into pentads; see Galinsky 1975: 85,Rieks1980: 95,Holzberg 1998.Otis1970: 77–8, 83–6 saw instead four thematic sections (Divine Comedy 1–2, Avenging Gods (3–6.400), Pathos of Love (6.401–11), Rome and the Deified Ruler (12–15). 16 Cole 2004: 562, 2008: 63–79. 17 See Cameron 2004: 279. 18 Hinds 2003: 1085. 19 See Rosati 2002: 277, on Ovid’s double structural principle, combining chronological order with analogic order. 20 Rome is first mentioned during the reign of Romulus at 14.800,also809, 837, 849. 21 See Due 1974: 120, Galinsky 1975: 3, 251–61, Solodow 1988: 162–8, Feeney 1999, Hinds 1999, Zissos and Gildenhard 1999, Wheeler 2000: 109,Rosati2002: 280–1, Andrae 2003.See Granobs 1997: 26–31, and Tissol 2002 on the chronology of the final books. 22 Barchiesi 2005: cxxxiii `l’annalisi della struttura delle Metamorfosi diventa allora l’analisi di un disfare, di un trasformare l’ordine in dissonanza.’ 23 Kenney (forthcoming).

4INTRODUCTION

the world in a ‘narrative order’, unfolding within the time of the narration.24 The stories take place in relation to the other myths of the poem25 and references to recent and future time usually refer to the internal time sequence of the narrative.26 Ovid’s play with different temporal realms (time of narration, mythological /cosmological time, temporal frame of earlier literary tradition) becomes especially complex in his treatment of his epic models in Metamorphoses 11–15 (see below on his ‘Aeneid’).

Narrative structures in Metamorphoses 14 Metamorphoses 14 opens within the ‘Aeneid’ frame of the poem, begun in the previous book (13.623) and continued until 14.573 (see further below). The apotheosis of Aeneas follows (581–608), which performs a pivotal function in creating continuity with the ‘Aeneid’ section of the book and initiating the second ‘Italo-Roman’ portion. The catalogue of Alban kings at 609–22 brings the poem swiftly forward chronologically to the time of Romulus (772–851). The Italian focus and landscape of book 14 unite the two sections, as do a number of themes, most obviously metamorphosis and eros. Venus figures prominently in the book, first appearing in her vengeful guise at its opening (27), and then in the stories of Diomedes (476–9) and Vertumnus and Pomona (622–771). Venus’ other role as protectress of Rome and the Caesars is first displayed in her association with Aeneas’ victory over Turnus (572–3)andthenin her active participation in the deification of Aeneas at 581–608, and the defence of Janus’ Gate at 775–804, which prefigures her later role in the deification of Julius Caesar at 15.760–851.27 Venus’ prominence at the end of the poem forms a frame with Cupid’s introduction of eros in book 1 (452–73) and suggests a fulfilment of her imperialist ambitions expressed to Cupid in book 5.371–2 cur non matrisque tuumque | imperium profers?28 As the final section or pentad of the Metamorphoses enters ‘historical’ time with Troy, it also deals directly with the material of Ovid’s epic predecessors Homer, Virgil, and Ennius. Ovid’s narration of the Trojan war is prefaced by his description of the house of Fama at 12.39–55, which, with its emphasis on poetic authority and the transmission of stories (12.58 auditis aliquid nouus adicit auctor), serves as an introduction to his direct confrontation with his epic predecessors.29 The frequent use of internal narrators and audiences in this section of the poem allows Ovid to refashion his models through

24 See Rosati 2002: 279–80, Hinds 2003: 1085; also Feeney 1999: 24, Wheeler 1999: 117. 25 Barchiesi 2001: 15. 26 Rosati 2002: 279;cf.157n. on nondum.At7.232–3 the tale of Glaucus (13.900–14.74)is anticipated: gramen | nondum mutato uulgatum corpore Glauci. 27 See Dopp¨ 1968: 121, von Albrecht 1982, Barchiesi 1999. 28 On Venus’ imperialism in Met. 5.363–79, see Johnson 1996. On Ovid’s association of the amatory and Augustan Venus, cf. AA 1.60 mater in Aeneae constitit urbe sui, Am. 1.8.42 at Venus Aeneae regnat in urbe sui. 29 Feeney 1991: 247–9, Tissol 2002: 307–9, Barchiesi 2002b: 195–6.

1. BOOK 14 AND THE METAMORPHOSES 5

new perspectives and reflect on the very processes of storytelling, which has been rightly seen as one of the most important concerns of the poem.30 The literary models of Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Odyssey, which dominate the material of the first part of book 14, give way in the remainder to such diverse models as Propertius, Livy, and, finally, Ennius. Ovid’s indebtedness to Ennius is famously signalled by the verbatim quotation by Mars at 14.814 of a line spoken to him by Jupiter in the earlier poem (Ann. 54 Sk., cf. F. 2.487). Ennius’ original fifteen-book Annales, which began from Aeneas and continued to 187 bce, offered an important structural model for the Metamorphoses.31 Met. 14, like Annales 1, ends with Romulus’ apotheosis, and Met. 15, like Annales 2, begins with Numa. The last book of the Met. also opens with the Speech of Pythagoras, which reworks the speech of Homer with which Ennius began the first book of his epic. The Ennian allusions are important signals preparing for the epic elevation of the cosmogony, apotheosis, and panegyric of the final book. At the same time, the preponderance of amatory tales in Met. 14 (five, occupying just under half of the lines of the book (around 375)) signals a continuity with the rest of the poem, and can also be seen to challenge Ovid’s epic models in this section of the poem by activating again the generic tensions between elegiac and erotic themes on the one hand and the traditional national, historical, and philosophical themes of epic on the other, which are reintroduced emphatically at the poem’s end. In Met. 14, as at the beginning of the poem in the episodes of Daphne and Syrinx (1.452–567), neoteric and elegiac themes are juxtaposed with those of lofty epic.32 The linearity of Ovid’s narrative has been seen to take a more coherent form in his last five books, yet Ovid’s treatment of Homer’s and Virgil’s epics and Roman ‘history’ in this section is marked by the same chronological complexity and irreverence as the rest of his poem. ‘Ovidian imperialism’33 integrates the Trojan and Roman material into the metamorphic world of the poem. Met. 14 begins in the middle of a 300-line amatory digression in the ‘Aeneid’ framework of the poem, and the plot of the Aeneid and the Roman history of the last 250 or so lines function essentially as frameworks for the expanded tales of metamorphosis.34 This is typical of Ovid’s procedure and is found also at the beginning of book 11, where the foundation of Troy serves essentially as a narrative introduction to the long amatory tale of Ceyx and Alcyone,35 while in book 15 the reign of Numa becomes the frame for the foundation of Croton and Pythagoras’ long philosophical discourse. After the end of the ‘Aeneid’ section of the book (573) Aeneas’ death/deification and Ascanius’ subsequent accession initiate the chronological sequence of Alban kings (609–22), which leads to Romulus and Rome. Virgil had offered only an abbreviated

30 Hinds 2003: 1085; Wheeler 2000,Rosati2002: 274, Barchiesi 2002b: 181. Edmunds 2001: 76–7 charts the levels of narrative in Ovid’s ‘Aeneid’(685 of 964 lines (72%) are embedded narratives). 31 Knox 1986a: 69–71, Hardie 1993: 13, 2002d: 106. 32 See most recently on genre in Met. 1,Keith2002. 33 Barchiesi 2005: cxi. 34 Tissol 2002: 306–10. 35 Feeney 1999: 19.

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version of this regal catalogue (Aen. 6.760–70), which was a creation and traditional feature in early Roman historians and appears in Livy 1.3.1–11.36 However, even as Ovid’s catalogue begins to fast-forward the poem to Rome’s foundation, it is interrupted by the amatory tale of Pomona and Vertumnus, the first episode presented in ‘Italian’ time, which takes place during the reign of the legendary Italian king Proca. The leisurely erotic story (with its Cypriot inset tale of Iphis and Anaxarete) interrupts and delays (by 150 lines) the Roman chronology and the poem’s historical and teleological move towards Rome,37 reducing the king list to a mere narrative framework.38 The episode of Pomona and Vertumnus (622–771) draws heavily on erotic models of elegiac poetry,creating a sort of ‘super-episode’ representing the genre so central to the themes and poetics of the Met.39 Vertumnus himself is the narrator of the erotic and aetiological inset tale of Iphis and Anaxarete, about a statue on Cyprus, which reflects his literary pedigree as a speaking statue in Propertius’ elegy 4.2.40 The episode of Pomona and Vertumnus is the final erotic tale of the poem and functions programmatically in providing a closural frame with the first erotic tale of the poem, Apollo and Daphne (1.452 primus amor). This ring-composition is thematized in Vertumnus’ speech to Pomona at 682–3 tu primus et ultimus illi | ardor eris.41 Closural signals are evident throughout book 14, as the poem ‘begins to gloss its own closure.’42 Apotheosis dominates the Italian section of the Met. and serves as a final version of metamorphosis (see further below).43 The apotheoses of Aeneas and Romulus in book 14 anticipate the imperial deifications of Caesar and Augustus in the following book and represent a return at the end of the poem to the Augustan themes of its opening. Elsewhere, in the only episode from Romulus’ reign, the flooding of Janus’ gate by Venus and Ausonian naiads to block Tatius and the Sabines (14.778– 99),44 Juno opens (what will be) Janus’ gates of war (as she did in Virg. Aen. 7.621–2), but Venus’ swift blocking of these gates constitutes another closural gesture, as war (and epic martial narrative) is prevented from commencing.

Italian and Roman myth in Metamorphoses 14 The Metamorphoses arrives in Italy at the beginning of book 14 with Glaucus’ arrival at Circei, a location with Homeric as well as Italian associations. It is Circe who dominates as the poem ﬁrst moves into Italian realms, signalling the metamorphic focus of Ovid’s narrative and, perhaps, the transformative proclivities of Italy,as Virgil had also suggested by his placement of Circe at the beginning of Aeneid 7.45 Circe

36 Cf. the almost identical version at Fasti 4.39–56. 37 See Johnson 1997: 373–4, Kyriakidis 2002. 38 Hardie 2002d: 192, where he cites Callimachus’ Acontius and Cydippe as a parallel. 39 See Rosati 2002: 287, on internal narratives as genre paradigms. 40 Myers 1994b. 41 See Myers 1994b, Davis 1983: 67. 42 Barchiesi 1997b: 187, Wheeler 2000: 110–14. 43 See Theodorakopoulos 1999: 148. 44 An obscure story also in Fasti 1.259–74, where Janus’ closing of the gates of war has similarly been seen as a programmatic exclusion of martial themes from his elegiac work. 45 See Segal 1968, Hardie 1992, Tissol 1997: 210.

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is a liminal figure, a remnant of the Greek (Homeric) literary past, but also firmly rooted to the Italian landscape (cf. 348 nomine dicta suo Circaea reliquerat arua); as such she represents the movement of the poem from Greece to Rome, but also blurs the boundaries between the two.46 The first tale involving native Italian characters in the poem is the erotic tale of Circe, Picus, and Canens, which occurs within the ‘Aeneid’ (and ‘Odyssey’) frame of the epic (14.308–434). A number of commencement strategies are employed in this episode to signal the poem’s movement into this new geographic and poetic territory. Reminders of the story’s new Italian locale are frequent, (e.g. 14.320 in Ausoniis . . . terris, 326 Latiis in montibus, 390 Latiis . . . siluis, 422 Latios . . . per agros). A catalogue of Italian rivers introduces Picus’ Naiad admirers and performs an initiatory function (326–32). Numerous native nymphs in these Italian tales,47 especially Canens, who seems to be a muse-like figure (see 433–4n.), signal the new movement of the poem towards Italian landscape and myth. Continuity with the rest of the poem is confirmed in the tale’s erotic focus, which shares its structure especially with the two preceding love-triangles (Galatea, Acis, Polyphemus 13.750– 897, Scylla, Glaucus, Circe 13.898–14.74). The tale, which explains a statue of Picus and an Italian (invented) toponym, programmatically introduces Ovid’s aetiological and Callimachean treatment of much of his Italian material. Picus’ venerated statue also prefigures the upcoming statue tales of the Vertumnus and Pomona episode and the apotheoses of Aeneas and Romulus, both of whom will be represented by statues in Augustus’ forum. It is well known that when Ovid approaches Italian themes in the final two books of the Met. his treatment of Roman myth differs in some respects from his earlier treatment of Greek myths.48 Most notably, the Italian myths for the most part share with the Fasti the theme of religious aetiology.49 The characters in Ovid’s Italian stories of the Met. include relatively obscure, but ancient, native Italian agricultural and rustic deities, such as Picus, Vertumnus, Pomona, (in book 15 Virbius and Tages), some of whom have a rather more sophisticated literary background (Picus, Ver- tumnus, Virbius). They are mixed with a number of Ovidian inventions (Canens, Hersilie/Hora), Greek gods (Aesculapius, Hippolytus/Virbius), as well as the deified heroes and emperors of Roman cult (Aeneas and Romulus, in book 15 Caesar and Augustus). Other religious aetia include the Cumaean Sibyl (14.101–53), the Cypriot cult statue of Anaxarete/ Venus Prospiciens (14.753–61), Janus’ gate (14.778–99), Egeria’s spring (15.547–51), Etruscan rites of haruspicy (15.558–9), and Cipus (15.565–621). Italian tales in book 14 also include the brief geographical and aetiological episodes of

46 Segal 2003: 21 instead attempts to distinguish two registers of myth in Ovid’s Italian section, the Greek/Odyssean register of fantastic creatures and the Roman/Virgilian register of origins and history. 47 Fantham 1990. Cf. Italian nymphs (14.512–26), the nymphs transformed from the Trojan ships who now patriotically never assist Greek ships (14.561), and the nymphs who assist in defending Rome from the Sabines at 14.785,andEgeria(15.482–551). 48 See Feeney 1998: 71, on Ovid’s ‘regular amputation of the religious aetiological elements from his Greek myths in the Metamorphoses’; also Graf 2002: 118–19. 49 See Knox 1986a: 65–83;Graf1988,Myers1994a: 95–132, 2004, Tissol 1997: 177–91.

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the Cercopians turned into apes on the island of Pithecusae (90–100, really a Greek tale), the Apulian shepherd turned into a wild olive tree (512–26), and the creation of the heron from the ashes of Ardea (573–80). The Italian tales of books 14 and 15 are interspersed with Greek tales and narratives (see the Homeric narratives at 14.158–307, Iphis and Anaxarete 14.698–761), which threaten at times to overshadow the Roman element (see especially Pythagoras’ long philosophical narrative at 15.75– 478). The only tales in book 14 that feature rustic Italian ﬁgures are those of Picus and Canens, the Apulian shepherd, and Pomona and Vertumnus. All three tales also include ‘foreign’ characters such as Circe, Pan, and Iphis and Anaxarete. The Apulian shepherd’s tale, in appearance a genuinely ‘rustic’ Italian tale, is probably from the Alexandrian poet Nicander (fr. 47 Gow-Scholﬁeld). In book 15 the major themes of book 14 are continued in the (repeated) movement from Greece to Rome (Hercules, Myscelos, and Croton, Pythagoras, Hippolytus/Virbius, Aesculapius) and in the apotheoses of Hippolytus/Virbius, Aesculapius, Caesar, Augustus, and Ovid.

Apotheosis Aeneas’ apotheosis into a Deus Indiges (14.581–608) introduces the theme that dominates the Roman/Italian remainder of the poem in books 14 and 15.50 This new transformative tendency was prefigured in the tales of Acis and Glaucus, both turned into water deities (13.885–97, 920–65). The divinizations of Aeneas, Romulus, and Hersilie in book 14 anticipate those of Caesar and Augustus in the final book and have been seen as reflecting on contemporary imperial dynastic politics concerning ruler cult.51 Aeneas and Romulus, with whom Julius Caesar and Augustus of course also claimed family ties,52 provided important models for the early development of the imperial ruler cult in Roman state religion53 and recall Augustus’ juxtaposition of the two heroes in his new Forum.54 The idea that mortal benefactors of mankind might be divinized is found in Hellenistic philosophy and had been a commonplace of praise poetry since the courts of Alexandria.55 Aeneas’ deification, however, like those of Hippolytus and Aesculapius in book 15, is not that of a native Roman, as Ovid stresses in Caesar’s case (15.746 Caesar in urbe sua deus est). Romulus provided the primary precedent for a Roman ruler attaining divinity and his apotheosis is a much treated theme in Latin literature (see 805–28n.).56 After the assassination of

50 Earlier deiﬁcations in the poem include Callisto and Arcas (2.505–7), Ino and her son (4.539–42), Hercules (9.242–72), Acis (13.885–87), Glaucus (13.920–63); see Lieberg 1970, Peters- mann 1976, Schmidt 1991: 133–8, Salzman 1998, Tissol 2002: 322–7. 51 Feeney 1991: 207–24, Tissol 2002: 321, Hardie 2002d: 208. 52 Gee 2000: 164–73 emphasizes the dynastic aspect of Caesar’s catasterism. 53 On the development of Roman ruler cult, see Scott 1925,Weinstock1971,Price1987, Galinsky 1996: 288–331, Gradel 2002,Scheid2003. 54 Zanker 1988: 201–3, Barchiesi 2002a, Tissol 2002: 311–12. 55 Knox 1986a: 75–83,Cameron2004: 278. 56 See Herbert-Brown 1994: 49–52, Barchiesi 1997a: 112–23, 154–64, 166–77. On the episode in the Metamorphoses see Feeney 1991: 122–3, 208, Granobs 1997: 58–61, Tissol 2002: 328–32.

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Julius Caesar Romulus’ death and deification were inevitably linked with his fate (cf. Appian, BC 2.114) and Augustus’ identification with Romulus was closely related to the question of his own apotheosis (see 772–851n.). Ovid’s depiction of Roman deifications in the Met. shares an epic emphasis on divine action rather than on panegyrical enumeration of exploits, which seemed to have formed the basis of the earlier Roman tradition, initiated probably by Ennius’ euhemeristic account of Romulus’ apotheosis, and important also to Varro’s mythological chronography.57 Venus’ canvassing of the gods for Aeneas (14.585 ambieratque Venus superos) on the other hand reflects Roman political realities,58 and strikes an overly explicit and comic note in the world of mythological epic. Her diffident request for the bestowal of at least a paruum numen (589) further deflates the tone of the episode. Earlier in the poem the deification of Hercules, who provided an important paradigm for human apotheosis in the Greek and Roman world,59 is achieved through similar divine dynastic politicking (9.251–5).60 Ovid’s narrative crowds out an enumeration of the hero’s great deeds and ‘we hear more about the labours of Hercules’ mother than we do about those of Hercules himself ’ (9.134–5,cf.182–98).61 Romulus’ deification in Met. 14 is motivated solely by divine intervention, while in the Fasti version there is brief mention of his achievements (2.481–2 postquam noua moenia uidit | multaque Romulea bella peracta manu). His father Mars declares that it is time (808 tempus adest) for Romulus to receive his rewards and calls upon Jupiter to fulfill his earlier (in Ennius’ Annales) promise. Ovid’s use of the technological comparison of a slingshot simile to describe the physical process of Romulus’ apotheosis (824–6) conflicts with and undermines the supernatural gravity of the event.62 His wife Hersilie’s apotheosis also springs solely from Juno’s divine initiative – or rather, Ovid’s own imagination (it is only attested here), a bold move amidst this escalation of political divinizations. Her apotheosis looks forward both to the similar catasterism of Caesar and the future apotheosis of Ovid, which will close book 15. Ovid’s apotheoses are indebted to Alexandrian models, such as Callimachus and Theocritus, who exhibit a similar strategy of treating panegyric in a frequently off- beat and witty manner.63 The confrontation of Ovidian myth with contemporary Roman political discourses in Met. 14 and 15 blurs the traditional distinctions between history (historia) and myth, which was considered fiction (fabula). This juxtaposition of myth and history, combined in book 15 with Pythagoras’ philosophical discourse, reveals Ovid’s consistent interest in the Met. in exploring the creation of authority, both poetic and political, through different narrative modes.64 His mythologizing of the apotheoses of Roman leaders may be understood as celebrating a new age of

57 Skutsch 1985: 260–1; on Varro, see Cole 2004: 365. 58 Feeney 1991: 207;cf.15.760–1. 59 For his presence in the traditional canon of deiﬁed human benefactors, see 581–608n. 60 Due 1974: 82–3. 61 Feeney 1991: 206. 62 Due 1974: 86. 63 Knox 1986a: 77–8, Barchiesi 1997a: 82 ‘political laudes and playfulness are [not] mutually incompatible’, Gee 2000: 188. 64 See Feeney 1991: 188–249,Myers1994a, Hardie 1997b, Graf 2002: 119, Schiesaro 2002.

10 INTRODUCTION

imperial demi-gods, in line with Augustus’ own political mythologizing,65 butitmay simultaneously invite the reader to explore the implications this may have against the background of the violent world of the Met.66 The prominence of these Italian apotheoses has led some to argue that Ovid’s Italo-Roman stories represent an amelioration of myth and thus that Italy is presented as a place of restoration.67 However, not all metamorphoses in the ﬁnal two books are ‘upward’. Violence and grief, important themes in the poem as a whole, are not entirely absent from Italy, and are indeed present at the beginning of book 14 in the menacing ﬁgure of Circe. Denis Feeney has argued that we should resist one line of interpretation of the Fasti which constructs a progress in the poem from Greek frivolity to Roman seriousness, and the same might be said for the Met.68 Sur- rounding the apotheoses of Italo-Roman leaders are some less edifying mythological transformations into divine or quasi-divine forms, which explore some of the possible ambiguities of the translation from human to god. Transformed into a sea deity, Glaucus assures Scylla that he is not a sea monster (13.917 nec sum fera belua), which is precisely what his attentions will cause Scylla herself to become. The Sibyl is given by Apollo a debased form of immortality (1000 years) of a particularly unpleasant variety,69 while Picus’ transformation into a woodpecker is hardly a positive one from his perspective. The commemoration of mourning is mapped onto the Italian landscape in the mournful evanescence of Canens (cf. the similar liquefaction of Egeria at 15.482–55),70 the death of Caieta, and the destruction of the city of Ardea.71 The abuses and punishments of the Cercopians, Acmon, and the Apulian shepherd seem to challenge further the notion of a dramatic change in the tone and content of the poem upon arrival in Italy.

Italian myth and the Fasti The Italian themes of the Metamorphoses and their aetiological treatment overlap with the poetic territory of the Fasti, Ovid’s poem on the Roman calendar, which shares similar tensions between myth and politics. As Philip Hardie has argued, the two poems ‘represent Ovid’s typically indirect answer to the challenge of Virgil’s epic, on the one hand a Callimachean elegy on the central subjects of the Aeneid and on the other a hexameter epic on themes for the most part not Roman’.72 A number of the myths and characters in the ﬁnal two books of the Met. also appear in

65 Feeney 2007: 83, cf. Galinsky 1999. 66 See Hinds 1988: 25–6, Feeney 1991: 224. 67 Porte 1985, Theodorakopoulos 1999, Hardie 2002d: 198,Cole2008: 146–52, 167–9;cf. Parker 1997. 68 Feeney 1998: 132, see Myers 2004–5. 69 Cf. her dismissal of divine honors at 130–1 ‘nec sacri turis honore | humanum dignare caput’. 70 Of the three mourning Italian widows, only Hersilie is deiﬁed and reunited with her husband. 71 Cf. the suicide of the Cypriot Iphis for love. 72 Hardie 1991: 47.