HESIOD IN OVID: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE CATALOGUE OF WOMEN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Ioannis V. Ziogas February 2010 © 2010 Ioannis V. Ziogas HESIOD IN OVID: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE CATALOGUE OF WOMEN Ioannis V. Ziogas, Ph.D. Cornell University, 2010 The subject of my dissertation is Ovid's intertextual engagement with the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (aka the Ehoiai). I examine the Hesiodic character of Ovid’s work, focusing mainly on the Metamorphoses and Heroides 16-17. The Metamorphoses begins with Chaos and moves on to the loves of the gods, reiterating the transition from the Theogony to the Catalogue. Divine passions for beautiful maidens constitute a recurring motif in the Metamorphoses, establishing the importance of the erotic element in Ovid’s hexameter poem and referring to the main topic of the Ehoiai (fr. 1.1-5 M-W). The first five books of Ovid’s epic follow the descendants of the river-god Inachus, beginning with Jupiter’s rape of Io and reaching forward to Perseus, and the stemma of the Inachids features prominently in the Hesiodic Catalogue (fr. 122-59 M-W). As a whole, the Metamorphoses delineates the genealogies of the major Greek tribes (Inachids, Thebans, Athenians), and includes the Trojans, the only non-Greek genealogies of the Catalogue, which were dealt with in the last part of Hesiod’s work. Ovid’s foray into the Hesiodic corpus gives us a new perspective to interpreting his aemulatio of Vergil. While the Aeneid marks Vergil’s literary ascent- within the Homeric epics- from the Odyssey to the Iliad, the Metamorphoses draws a trajectory from the Theogony to the Catalogue of Women. Ovid’s hexameter poem is the response to Vergil’s Aeneid, and the Metamorphoses pits Vergil’s Homeric epic against the Hesiodic character of Ovid’s work. Thus, the ancient competition between Homer and Hesiod is revived and recast for a Roman readership. By employing the interpretive tools of intertextuality, narratology, as well as genre and gender theory, I read a number of episodes from Ovid’s corpus against the backdrop of Hesiod’s Ehoiai. It is my contention that the Hesiodic character of Ovid’s work invites the readers to trace and interpret intertextual references to the Catalogue. Although the main focus of this study is Ovid, I also examine what Ovid’s use of Hesiod can tell us about the Catalogue. Focusing mainly on the intergeneric discourse between Hesiodic and Homeric epic, I reassess the use of epic diction in the Catalogue and the juxtaposition between the male-oriented arena of Homeric epic and the female-oriented program of the Ehoiai. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ioannis Ziogas was born in Thessaloniki (Greece) and has a B.A. (Ptychio 2001) and an M.A. (Metaptychiako 2004) from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. He has been the recipient of numerous research and teaching fellowships at Cornell University. He has written articles on Homer, Vergil, and Ovid, and presented papers in numerous international conferences. He also holds a Diploma in violin from the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki (2002). iii For Erica iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee, Frederick Ahl, Mike Fontaine, and Jeffrey Rusten, both for their help on this project and guidance as teachers and scholarly examples throughout my studies at Cornell. I would also like to thank the Classics Department at Cornell for its ongoing support. I especially thank Charles Brittain and Eric Rebillard for their support as Directors of Graduate Studies and the Administrative Assistants of the Department, Katrina Neff and Sue Payne. The idea of my dissertation was conceived in the summer of 2007, while I was working on a conference paper with Marios Skempis. This dissertation owes a lot to Marios’ scholarship and friendship. I am also grateful to my colleges and friends at Cornell, especially Todd Clary, Roman Ivanov, and Ann Hubert. I dedicate my dissertation to Erica, puellae doctae et iocosae. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Table of Contents vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Helen: The Intertext of Illusion 22 Chapter 2: From Chaos to Divine Loves: Ovid as a Hesiodic Poet 73 Chapter 3: From Callimachus to Hesiod: Coronis (Met. 2.542-632) and Mestra (Met. 8.738-878) 148 Chapter 4: Orpheus as a Hesiodic Poet: Ovid’s Ehoie of Atalanta (Met. 10.560-707) 193 Chapter 5: Hesiod at Achilles’ Party: Nestor’s Digression in Ovid’s Trojan War (Met. 12.168-576) 240 Conclusion 299 Bibliography 301 vi Introduction While Paris is in Sparta enjoying the hospitality of king Menelaus, he attempts to seduce Helen by sending her a love letter. This letter is Ovid’s Heroides 16, in which Paris features as a passionate elegiac lover who uses his looks and wits in order to win the object of his desire. Having been appropriated in the discourse of Roman elegy, Paris, a summa cum laude graduate from Ovid’s school of love, lures Menelaus’ trophy wife with his physical and literary talents, combining persuasion with the alliance of mighty Aphrodite. In a rhetorical tour de force, the Trojan hero confesses that his passion for Helen was born before he even saw her: te peto, quam pepigit lecto Venus aurea nostro; te prius optaui quam mihi nota fores; ante tuos animo uidi quam lumine uultus; prima tulit uulnus nuntia fama mihi. Her. 16.35-8 I woo you, whom golden Venus promised for my bed. I desired you before you were known to me; I saw your features with my mind before I saw them with my eyes; rumor, bearer of news, was the first to wound me. From an elegiac perspective, Paris’ statement is peculiar. Instead of the Hellenistic and elegiac topos of ‘love at first sight’, we have here a case of ‘love at no sight’. Notwithstanding Paris’ unconventional statement, nuntia fama is a gesture towards the intertextual dimension of Heroides 16. Helen, Menelaus, and Paris are cast as a typical love triangle of Roman elegy, but they actually belong to the world of archaic Greek epic, signaled in part by Venus aurea, the 1 Latin translation of the unmistakably epic formula χρυσῆ Ἀφροδίτη. Ovid’s Paris is in fact referring to an archaic hexameter poem, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (aka the Ehoiai): ἱμείρων Ἑλένης πόσις ἔμμεναι ἠυκόμοιο, εἶδος οὔ τι ἰδών, ἀλλ᾽ ἄλλων μῦθον ἀκούων. fr. 199.2-3 M-W desiring to be the husband of the lovely-haired Helen, although he did not see her beauty, but hearing the story of others. In his commentary, Edward Kenney notes the parallel between Heroides 16.37-8 and this fragment of the Catalogue,1 but parallels cited in commentaries do little justice to Ovid’s intertextual engagement with his sources. The passage cited above belongs to the long episode of the wooing of Helen and describes one of her suitors (his name does not survive in the fragments). Likewise, Ovid’s Paris presents himself as a suitor of Helen (the problem is Helen is already married). And just as Helen’s suitors are a part of Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women,2 Paris features in the Heroides, Ovid’s own catalogue of women. Helen’s nuntia fama is to be identified with the program of the Hesiodic Ehoiai, an epic thematically centered on female renown (κλέος). Paris appears to have read the Catalogue, in which the fame of Helen’s beauty attracts the major Greek heroes. Helen’s poetic renown makes him, like the suitors, desire her. The Hesiodic tradition absorbs Ovid’s Paris into its world, so that the Trojan hero acts as if he were a suitor from the Catalogue. Contrary to the aspirations 1 See Kenney 1996, ad 16.37-8. 2 Most scholars consider the Catalogue of Women pseudo-Hesiodic (see West 1985), although Janko 1982 and Dräger 1997, challenge this view. Since the problem of the Catalogue’s authorship does not concern my thesis, I call its author Hesiod without, however, taking any position on the authorship of the work. What is important for my approach is that the Catalogue and the Megalai Ehoiai were ascribed to Hesiod in antiquity. 2 of an elegiac lover, Paris does not simply seek an illicit affair with a married woman. He wants and he will become Helen’s husband. Kenney’s note of the parallel between Ovid and Hesiod’s Catalogue is exceptional. More often than not, critics do not notice Latin poets’ allusions to the Catalogue3 at all; or, if they encounter a story that has verbal and structural similarities with an ehoie, they prefer to postulate a lost Hellenistic poem or a mythographic handbook as Ovid’s source.4 As this is only an argument from silence, I wish to challenge this thesis. In my view, the works of the mythographers were the Wikipedia of ancient Rome. These handbooks were used as a crib and had little to do with the intricate poetics of literary reference, which are essential to understanding Latin poetry.5 And even if we assume that some of Ovid’s Hellenistic sources have not come down to us, this does not rule out Ovid’s direct knowledge of the Ehoiai. Ovid is capable of engaging with multiple sources at the same time and, as we shall see, he can use Callimachus and Vergil as a lens to Hesiod’s Catalogue. Far from shedding doubt on Ovid’s allusions to the Catalogue, intermediate sources contribute to the polyphony of Ovid’s art of reference, making the intertextual dialogue between Ovid and Hesiod all the more intriguing.