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(ADHVC) VIRGINEVSQVE HELICON: A SUBTEXTUAL RAPE IN OVID'S CATALOGUE OF MOUNTAINS (MET. 2.219)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2019

Brian D. McPhee
Brian D. McPhee*
Affiliation:
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
*
[email protected]
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Extract

In his lengthy survey of the cosmic devastation wrought by Phaethon's disastrous chariot ride, Ovid includes two catalogues detailing the scorching of the world's mountains (Met. 2.217–26) and rivers (2.241–59). Ovid enlivens these lists through his usual play with sound patterns and revels in the opportunity to adapt so many Greek names to Latin prosody; for instance the opening line of the catalogue of mountains (ardet Athos Taurusque Cilix et Tmolus et Oete, 2.217) masterfully illustrates both of these features. The lists are also brimming with playful erudition. To take but a few examples: a dried-up Ida belies its standard epithet πολυπῖδαξ, ‘many-fountained’ (2.218); the sun's heat doubles the flames of volcanic Etna (2.220); burning Xanthus is destined to burn again (2.245; cf. Hom. Il. 21.330–82); and the famous gold-bearing sands of the Tagus are melting (2.251). These features not only ‘relieve monotony’; they warrant the catalogues’ inclusion in the category of Ovid's most entertaining.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 769 - 775
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019

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Footnotes

For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer and to the journal's editor, Bruce Gibson, as well as to Hannah Sorscher, Patricia Rosenmeyer, Stephen Hinds, Alison Keith and especially Sharon James. Any remaining errors are mine alone.

References

1 Famous springs also receive a brief catalogue (2.238–40).

2 ‘Athos burns, and Cilician Taurus and Tmolus and Oeta’. Cf. Ferguson, J., ‘Some verbal effects in Ovid's Metamorphoses’, MusAfr 4 (1975), 17–26Google Scholar, at 23–4. The text of Ovid's Metamorphoses is taken from Anderson, W.S., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphoses (Leipzig, 1977)Google Scholar. All translations are my own.

3 Wilkinson, L.P., Ovid Recalled (Cambridge, 1955), 236Google Scholar.

4 See Davies, M. and Finglass, P.J., Stesichorus: The Poems (Cambridge, 2014), 332Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Barchiesi, A. (ed.), Ovidio Metamorfosi: Volume I (Libri I–II) (Milan, 2005)Google Scholar, on 2.219.

6 According to Steph. Byz. 50.7, Haemus is the son of Boreas.

7 Lycoph. Alex. 733 with Tzetz. Chil. ad loc. Rather than a mortal king, Serv. G. 4.524 asserts that Oeagrus is a Thracian river-god, a notion popularized in modern scholarship by the endorsement of Robert, C., Die griechische Heldensage, vol. 2.1 (Berlin, 1920)Google Scholar, 410 with n. 5. The idea is, however, probably based on Servius’ misinterpretation of the Virgilian passage; see Wüst, E., ‘Oiagros (1)’, RE 17.2 (1937), 2082–5Google Scholar, at 2083–4.

8 Melville, A.D. (transl.) and Kenney, E.J. (intro. and notes), Ovid: Metamorphoses (Oxford, 1986), 40Google Scholar. Knox, P.E., ‘Phaethon in Ovid and Nonnus’, CQ 38 (1988), 536–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 549 notes the ‘identical rhythm and articulation’ of Ovid's Oeagrius Haemus and Virgil's Oeagrius Hebrus. In this connection Hijmans, B.L., , Jr., ‘Apuleiana Groningana V: Haemus, the bloody brigand (or: what's in an alias?)’, Mnemosyne 31 (1978), 407–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 410 n. 13 points out that Hebrus is sometimes identified as Haemus’ son (Serv. Aen. 1.317).

9 Cf. 2.245, 2.259. Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen: Buch I–III, vol. 1 (Heidelberg, 1969)Google Scholar, on 2.219 collects examples of comparable uses of nondum elsewhere in the poem. Cf. Keith, A.M., The Play of Fictions: Studies in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 2 (Ann Arbor, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 45 n. 11.

10 Melville and Kenney (n. 8), 40.

11 This pedantry is further ironized, however, by the narrator's glaring chronological problems elsewhere in the poem. On chronological issues in Book 2 alone, see Zissos, A. and Gildenhard, I., ‘Problems of time in Metamorphoses 2’, in Hardie, P., Barchiesi, A. and Hinds, S. (edd.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on the Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge, 1999), 31–47Google Scholar.

12 However, Barchiesi (n. 5), ad loc. argues that both mountains, associated with the Muses and with Orpheus respectively, are especially beloved of poets. In this connection, cf. Hor. Carm. 1.12.5–12 with Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book 1 (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar, on 1.12.5 and 1.12.6.

13 Kyriakidis, S., Catalogues of Proper Names in Latin Epic Poetry: Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid (Newcastle, 2007), 46–9Google Scholar.

14 Barchiesi (n. 5), on 2.217–26.

15 Though initial h following elision, as in uirgineusque Helicon, seems not to have been pronounced; see Soubiran, J., L’élision dans la poésie latine (Paris, 1966), 110Google Scholar.

16 Marked elision in each half of the line (uirgineusque Helicon et nondum Oeagrius Haemus) further strengthens its internal balance.

17 For the authenticity of line 2.226, see Barchiesi (n. 5), on 2.217–26.

18 Johnson, P.J., ‘Constructions of Venus in Ovid's Metamorphoses V’, Arethusa 29 (1996), 125–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 140 n. 39; for further children of the Muses, see Gantz, T., Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore, 1993), 55Google Scholar.

19 For Orpheus’ genealogy, see Frazer, J.G., Apollodorus: The Library, vol. 1 (London, 1921), 16 n. 6Google Scholar; Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen: Buch X–XI, vol. 5 (Heidelberg, 1980)Google Scholar, on 10.89; Gantz (n. 18), 725; Reed, J.D. (ed.), Ovidio Metamorfosi: Volume V (Libri X–XII) (Milan, 2013)Google Scholar, on 10.167. The other major candidate for Orpheus’ paternity is, naturally enough, Apollo, but this tradition was the minority view in antiquity (Gantz [n. 18]).

20 Surprisingly, I have not been able to find any other scholar making this connection, even though commentators regularly refer Oeagrius to Orpheus’ parentage (for example Anderson, W.S., Ovid's Metamorphoses Books 1–5 [Norman, OK, 1997]Google Scholar, on 2.217–26).

21 In the Metamorphoses itself, however, Ovid follows the alternate tradition that makes Orpheus Calliope's son by Apollo (10.89, 10.167; 11.8; cf. 11.58–60 with Reed [n. 19], ad loc.; cf. Griffin, A.H.F., ‘A commentary on Ovid Metamorphoses Book XI’, Hermathena 162–3 [1997], 1–290Google Scholar, at 61). Even so, Ovid tacitly acknowledges Orpheus’ more usual Oeagrian paternity by representing him as a Thracian (10.11, 10.50, 10.305; 11.2, 11.92), since in the mainstream tradition Orpheus is Thracian by virtue of his royal father's extraction (Robert [n. 7], 410). Cf. Ovid's treatment of Meleager's paternity (8.414, 8.437, 8.486, with Hollis, A.S., Metamorphoses Book VIII [Oxford, 1970]Google Scholar, on 8.437). In any event, in a linear reading of the poem, the reader has not yet learned by Book 2 that Apollo will be regarded as Orpheus’ father.

22 For Ovid's propensity to call attention to inconsistencies in this way, see O'Hara, J.J., Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Cambridge, 2007), 121CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with bibliography in n. 51.

23 The Orphic Argonautica stages a similar response to an ascription of virginity to Calliope; see Hardie, A., ‘Empedocles and the Muse of the agathos logos’, AJPh 134 (2013), 209–46Google Scholar, at 232 n. 93.

24 The text of Propertius is taken from Fedeli, P., Sexti Properti Elegiarum libri IV (Stuttgart, 1984)Google Scholar. For Propertius’ strange phrase Oeagri … figura (35), see Richardson, L., , Jr., Propertius: Elegies I–IV (Norman, OK, 1977)Google Scholar, ad loc.

25 Daphne (1.487, 1.539), Io (1.588), Syrinx (1.694), Callisto (2.409, 2.426, 2.427), Herse (2.555, 2.724), Cornix (2.570, 2.579), Europa (2.845, 2.867, 2.868), Leucothoe (4.196), the Muses (5.254, 5.274), Proserpina (5.376, 5.401, 5.534), Canace (6.116), Philomela (6.455, 6.524, 6.536), Perimele (8.592), Mestra (8.851), Deianeira (9.9), Dryope (9.331), Thetis (11.260), Chione (11.308), Caenis (12.190), Hippodame (12.216, 12.220), Scylla (13.734, 13.740, 13.746, 13.917) and Cassandra (14.468). Cf. further the experiences of Andromeda (4.682, 4.691, 4.739, with James, S.L., ‘Rape and repetition in Ovid's Metamorphoses: myth, history, structure, Rome’, in Fulkerson, L. and Stover, T. [edd.], Repeat Performances: Ovidian Repetition and the Metamorphoses [Madison, 2016], 154–75Google Scholar, at 172 n. 12), Pygmalion's ivory maiden (10.275, 10.292) and the Sybil (14.133, 14.135).

26 Astraea (1.149), Diana (2.431, 2.451, 3.164, 3.253, 12.28), Minerva (2.579, 4.754, 14.468), the Harpies (7.4) and Iris (11.616, 14.845).

27 Niobe (6.149), Medea (7.17, 7.21), Iphis (9.725, 9.743), Ianthe (9.717, 9.725, 9.764) and Lavinia (14.570). Cf. Atalanta (8.323, 10.587, 10.601, 10.660, 10.666, 10.676, 10.680), who initially flees marriage but does ultimately desire Hippomenes (10.610, 10.633–5). Ariadne (8.172) presents an ambiguous case (cf. Ars am. 1.549–64).

28 Arachne (6.45), the daughters of Pelias (7.304), Iphigenia (12.28), Polyxena (13.451, 13.467, 13.483, 13.523), Orion's daughters (13.697) and the water-nymphs metamorphosed from the Trojan fleet (14.556).

29 Scylla (8.29, 8.35, 8.39) and Myrrha (10.345, 10.367, 10.369, 10.389, 10.427, 10.444, 10.466).

30 For the story pattern repetitively established in the first five books of the poem especially (repeated and summarized in Arachne's tapestry in Book 6), see James (n. 25), 154–5.

31 However, cf. certain stray references in Nonnus, who imagines Calliope as Oeagrus’ wife (Dion. 13.430, 19.101, 22.189–90, 22.322–3; cf. 24.92, Orphic Argonautica 1376). On the ambiguity of Propertius’ compressa (2.30.35, quoted above), see Scafuro, A., ‘Discourses of sexual violation in mythic accounts and dramatic versions of “The girl's tragedy”’, differences 2 (1990), 126–59Google Scholar, at 128 with 152 n. 6. Some sources do clearly represent other Muses as victims of rape; for example the unnamed Muse of the Rhesus attributed to Euripides is raped by another Thracian, the river god Strymon (915–28).

32 E.g. Callim. Hymn 4.63–4. Nonnus makes Oeagrus himself a son of Ares (Dion. 13.428–9).

33 By way of etymological play on αἷμα; e.g. Verg. G. 1.491–2, Apollod. Bibl. 1.6.3. On Haemus’ various literary associations, see Hijmans (n. 8), 408–11.

34 Pyreneus and the Pierides are explicitly linked as a pair of recent opponents of the Muses (5.300). Taken together, they embody different aspects of the myth of Thamyris, the Thracian bard who challenges the Muses in song, in some versions on the condition that he get to sleep with them all if he wins; see Gantz (n. 18), 55. He represents yet another of the Muses’ (would-be) Thracian rapists.

35 See Johnson (n. 18), 141; cf. Zissos, A., ‘The rape of Proserpina in Ovid Met. 5.341–661: internal audience and narrative distortion’, Phoenix 53 (1999), 97–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 NB, however, that it was thought that Pieria had once been inhabited by Thracians, and Orpheus, Oeagrus’ son, is closely associated with both regions. For references, see R.B. Egan, ‘The Diegeseis of Konon: a commentary with an English translation’ (Diss., University of Southern California, 1971), 305–7 n. 3 and, more briefly, Brown, M.K., The Narratives of Konon (Munich, 2002)Google Scholar, on 45.2.

37 Contest of Homer and Hesiod 4, Charax 103 F 62; cf. Paus. 9.30.4. In another version, Oeagrus is the son of a certain Charops (Diod. Sic. 3.65.6); cf. n. 32 above.

38 Richlin, A., ‘Reading Ovid's rapes’, in Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women (Ann Arbor, 2014), 130–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 138.