¹ In general on Ovid's imitation of the Aeneid see Due, O. S., Changing Forms (Copenhagen, 1974), pp. 36ff.Google Scholar; Galinsky, G. K., Ovid's Metamorphoses (Oxford, 1975), pp. 14–25Google Scholar, ch. 5; Döpp, S., Virgilischer Einfluβ im Werk Ovids (Munich, 1968)Google Scholar; Lamacchia, R., ‘Ovidio interprete di Virgilio’, Maia 12 (1960), 310–30.Google Scholar On the Ino episode: Otis, B., Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 131ff., 401ff.Google Scholar; Bernbeck, E. J., Beobachtungen zur Darstellungsart in Ovids Metamorphosen (Munich, 1967), ch. 1.Google Scholar Bernbeck conducts a stylistic analysis of the episode in which, with reference to Virgilian models, he demonstrates the way in which Ovid consistently ruptures the epic texture; this may be set beside my analysis of the thematic and structural inversions that Ovid performs on the models in the Aeneid.

² cf. Ars Am. 3.127–8.

³ cf. Segal, C. P., Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses (Hermes Einzelschrift 23, Wiesbaden, 1969).Google Scholar

⁴ Met. 14.774–5.

⁵ Beginning and end are marked by other linguistic features: at 4.564 the matter of the previous two books is described as ‘luctu serieque malorum’; at 3.138–9 the ‘prima… causa…luctus’ had been Actaeon. profugus occurs at 3.7 and 4.568; Cadmus is a wanderer at 3.6 (‘orbe pererrato’) and 4.567 (‘erroribus actus’ = Aen. 6.532).

⁶ So Vian, F., Les Origines de Thébes. Cadmos et les Spartes (Paris, 1963), p. 231.Google Scholar

⁷ For discussion of the themes sketched out in this paragraph see Segal, C. P., Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae (Princeton, 1982), esp. ch. 4, and pp. 137–40Google Scholar on Cadmus' civilizing activity. The pattern of Cadmus' career, from exile to the height of royal prosperity and back to a bestial existence in exile, is also that of Oedipus; note the version at Sen. Phoen. 12ff.Google Scholar, where Oedipus describes his return to the wilds as entry into the landscape of Actaeon, Zethus, and Ino.

⁸ cf. Vian, , op. cit. (n. 6), pp. 158ff., 171ff.Google Scholar Vian suggests, p. 175, that in the Ovidian version the fratricide of the Sown Men, followed by Echion's pledge of fraternal fides (Met. 3.126–8), may be read in terms of a cathartic sacrifice which gives military furor free rein before the process of socialization can begin. But this is overoptimistic in the light of subsequent Theban history.

⁹ ‘quis furor…?’ are also the first two words addressed by Lucan to the citizens of Rome, Bell. Civ. 1.8; see below for further discussion of analogies between Theban and Roman civil war.

¹⁰ 3.568–71 (Pentheus' anger) ‘sic ego torrentem, qua nil obstabat eunti, / lenius et modico strepitu decurrere vidi; / at quacumque trabes obstructaque saxa tenebant, / spumeus et fervens et ab obice saevior ibat’; 3.79–80 (the serpent) ‘impete nunc vasto ceu concitus imbribus amnis / fertur et obstantes proturbat pectore silvas’.

¹¹ 3.123 ‘mutua vulnera’ is used of the later war at Thebes in Trist. 2.319. That war is alluded to at Met. 9.403ff. Cf. also 7.141–2 (Colchis) ‘terrigenae pereunt per mutua vulnera fratres / civilique cadunt acie’.

¹² Association of Thebes and Rome is also suggested by the ecphrasis of the cup presented to Aeneas by Anius at Met. 13.681–99, with its scenes of the daughters of Orion sacrificed in expiation of the plague devastating Thebes and of their subsequent rebirth, of obvious relevance to the Trojans' own story (pointed out by Galinsky, G. K., Ovid's Metamorphoses [Oxford, 1975], p. 221Google Scholar); but that is not the end of the history of Thebes, any more than Aeneas' foundation in Italy is the end of the history of Rome.

¹³ The ‘longa retro series’ of Stat. Theb. 1.4–16 is virtually a summary of Ovid's Theban books (cf. Met. 4.564 ‘serieque malorum’).

¹⁴ The origin of the people of Thebes is illustrated with the famous simile comparing the Sown-Men rising from the ground to figures on the aulaea rising in the theatre (Met. 3.111–14). In the Roman theatre at this time the curtain rose at the end of a play (Beare, W., The Roman Stage [London, 1964], pp. 267f.Google Scholar), but may it still be that with this simile introducing the men of Thebes Ovid signposts entry into a stagey, tragic world? Here too there would be Virgilian precedent: the stage for the tragedy of Dido and of Carthage in Aeneid 1 is set with the sylvan scaena behind the harbour at Carthage at 164; the prologue to the tragedy is given by Venus cothurnata (1.337): cf. Harrison, E. L., PVS 12 (1972–1973), 10–25.Google Scholar It is perhaps not coincidental either that the setting for the last catastrophe in the house of Cadmus, the rock from which Ino throws herself into the sea, seems to echo Virgil's Carthaginian harbour: Met. 4.525–7 ‘imminet aequoribus scopulus; pars ima cavatur / fluctibus et tectas defendit ab imbribus undas, / summa riget frontemque in apertum porrigit aequor’; Aen. 1.162–6 ‘hinc atque hinc vastae rupes geminique minantur / in caelum scopuli, quorum sub vertice late / aequora tuta silent; tum silvis scaena coruscis / desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra. / fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum’ (where frons [scaenae] continues the theatrical image). Other examples of figurative ‘staging’ in the Metamorphoses: 11.22ff. (Orpheus in the amphitheatre); Hinds, S., The Metamorphosis of Persephone (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 33ff.Google Scholar, on Met. 5.388f. (‘amphitheatre’ setting for rape of Persephone).

¹⁵ For example Aeneas' first words in the epic, Aen. 1.94, are a virtual translation of Od. 5.306.

¹⁶ Both stories of course conform to common patterns of foundation legends (Vian, , op. cit. [n. 6], pp. 76ff.Google Scholar on the Theban legend with many parallels; Rykwert, J., The Idea of a Town [Princeton, 1976’, p. 44Google Scholar; Cornell, T. J., ‘Gründer’, RAC 12 [1983], 1129–32Google Scholar); the verbal parallels between Ovid and Virgil therefore bear a greater weight of proof: exile: Met. 3.5; Aen. 2.780, 798 etc. Wandering over the world: Met. 3.6 ‘orbe pererrato’; Aen. 1.756 ‘omnibus errantem terris et fluctibus’. Cf. also Aen. 2.294–5 ‘his moenia quaere / magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto’. Animal omen: Met. 3.10ff. (bos); Aen. 3.389ff., 8.42ff. (sus); recumbent: Met. 3.23 procubuit = Aen. 8.83, in same sedes. Thanksgiving to new-found land: Met. 3.24–5; Aen. 7.135–8; Met. 3.25 ignotos, Aen. 7.137 ignota. Ovid sets a fashion in his structural imitation of the opening of the third book of the Aeneid: Lucan 3 opens with Pompey fleeing from Italy, in a pointed inversion of Aeneas' departure from Troy; Silius 3 like Aeneid 3 begins with the word postquam, continuing the narrative after the destruction of a city (Saguntum).

¹⁷ The parallels with the Cacus story are noted by Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphoses I–III (Heidelberg, 1969), pp. 464f.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Vian, , op. cit. (n. 6), pp. 101f.Google Scholar: e.g. Apollo's slaying of Python at the same time that he built the temple at Delphi (cf. Fontenrose, J., Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins [Berkeley, etc., 1959],. p. 592Google Scholar s.vv. ‘Building of temple or palace after god's victory’); Trumpf, J., ‘Stadtgründung und Drachenkampf (Exkurse zu Pindar, Pythien 1)’, Hermes 86 (1958), 129–57Google Scholar; Rabinowitz, N. S., ‘From Force to Persuasion: Aeschylus' Oresteia as Cosmogonic Myth’, Ramas 10 (1981), 159–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ The parallels are noted by Bömer, , p. 458.Google Scholar

²⁰ Aen. 7.389, Met. 4.523. Cf. also Met. 4.521 exululat with Aen. 7.395 ululatibus.

²¹ A city that has some distinctly Roman features: see Camps, W. A., CQ 53 (1959), 54.Google Scholar

²² In her dream she suffers the fate literally undergone by Cadmus, cast back into exile, Met. 4.567, ‘longisque erroribus actus’. The theme of exile renewed occurs in another context at Aen. 4.545–6 ‘quos Sidonia vix urbe revelli, / rursus agam pelago’.

²³ Agenor: Aen. 1.338 ‘Agenoris urbem’; Met. 3.51, 97 etc. Ovid does not in fact use Tyrii = ‘Thebans’ in Met. 3 and 4, but he alludes to the Tyrian origin at 3.35, 258, 539. With Virgil/s Sidonia Dido cf. Met. 3.129 Sidonius hospes (Cadmus), and see also 4.543, 572; at Met. 14.80 Dido is Sidonis.

²⁴ The temptation to this fusion will have been increased by the fact that Virgil sandwiches his books 3 and 4 between visions of a fire-ravaged city: 3.3 ‘omnis humo fumat Neptunia Troia’; 5.3–4 ‘moenia respiciens, quae iam infelicis Elissae / conlucent flammis’. The Carthage books are also the story of Aeneas' attempt to help found an alternative city to Troy (cf. esp. Aen. 4.260) and his enforced return into exile, ‘rursus harenosae fugiens nova moenia terrae’, as Ovid puts it, Met. 14.82.

²⁵ This is of course a very common reading; in formulating it in this way I think of the older fashion of seeing an ‘anti-Lucrèce’ in Lucretius.

²⁶ Zeitlin, F., ‘Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama’, in Euben, J. P. (ed.), Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley, etc., 1986), pp. 101–41.Google Scholar

²⁷ Met. 3.132. In the Aeneid this joint parentage is focused in the description of the Shield of Aeneas, the gift of his mother Venus, displaying a pageant of Roman history that begins with the sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus.

²⁸ Augustan poets raise similar doubts about the Italian character: the phrase genus acre occurs twice in the Georgics, once in the laudes Italiae of the peoples of Italy (2.167), and once of wolves (3.264).

²⁹ Aen. 8.632 matrem, a striking usage. Cf. Sil. 5.143–4 ‘umentique sub antro, / ceu fetum, lupa permulcens puerilia membra’ (the shield of Flaminius, a Roman certainly not in control). Note also Tarpeia's disparagement of Romulus at Prop. 4.4.53f. ‘quem sine matris honore / nutrit inhumanae dura papilla lupae’; and Prop. 2.6.19–20 ‘tu criminis auctor, / nutritus duro, Romule, lacte lupae’. Nurse's milk appears in Dido's outburst against Aeneas at Aen. 4.367 ‘Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres’, on which Favorinus, ap. Aul. Gell. 12.1.20, comments ‘quoniam videlicet in moribus inolescendis magnam fere partem ingenium altricis et natura lactis tenet’; cf. also Ovid, , Ibis 229–31Google Scholar ‘gutturaque imbuerunt infantia lacte canino: / hic primus pueri venit in ore cibus. / prohibit inde suae rabiem nutrias alumnus’; Bömer on Ov. Met. 7.32–3; Luck on Ov. Trist. 1.8.43f. There will be further analogies between the she-wolf and the Virgilian Cacus if it is correct that the Lupercal was an entry to the Underworld and the lupa an infernal animal (Alföldi, A., Die Struktur des voretruskischen Römerstaates [Heidelberg, 1974], p. 98).Google Scholar

³⁰ Hardie, P. R., Virgil/s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), pp. 360ff.Google Scholar

³¹ See Detienne, M. and Svenbro, J., ‘Les loups au festin ou la cité impossible’, in Detienne, M. and Vernant, J.-P. (edd.), La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec (Paris, 1979), pp. 215–37, esp. 228ff.Google Scholar; Alföldi, A., op. cit. (n. 29), chs. 1 and 4Google Scholar; Buxton, R. G., ‘Wolves and Werewolves in Greek Thought’, in Bremmer, J. (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London and Sydney, 1987), pp. 60–79Google Scholar. On furor see Dumézil, G., Horace et les Curiaces (Paris, 1942), ch. 1Google Scholar. Enemies of Rome sometimes used the lupa as index of the city's bestial rapacity: Livy 3.66.4; Vell. 2.27.2; Justin 38.6 (Mithridates). On possible connections between ‘wolf-man’ Arruns in Aeneid 11.759ff. and the hero Aeneas see Kepple, L. R., ‘Arruns and the Death of Aeneas’, AJPh 97 (1976), 344–60Google Scholar. The neoclassicist painter David exploits the dark side of the lupa in his ‘The Lictors bringing Brutus the Bodies of his Sons’, discussed by Bryson, N., Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge, 1981), p. 234.Google Scholar

³² The complaint of Lucan, , Bell. Civ. 1.8ffGoogle Scholar. On warrior-classes and their dangers see Vian, , op. cit. (n. 6), chs. 7, 11.Google Scholar

³³ Zeitlin, , art. cit. (n. 26 above), p. 126Google Scholar, characterizes the tragic Thebes as the city ‘where the past inevitably rules, continually repeating and renewing itself so that each new generation, each new episode in the story, looks back to its ruin even as it oners a new variation on the theme’.

³⁴ Met. 3.111–14 ‘sic ubi tolluntur festis aulaea theatris, / surgere signa solent primumque ostendere vultus, / cetera paulatim, placidoque educta tenore / tota patent imoque pedes in margine ponunt’; Aen. 7.528–30 ‘fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento, / paulatim sese tollit mare et altius undas / erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo.’

³⁵ Lucan, , 1.549–52, 4.549–51Google Scholar. See Narducci, E., Maia 26 (1974), 103ff.Google Scholar

³⁶ What might Propertius' friend Ponticus have done in his Thebaid (Prop. 1.7.1)?

³⁷ The coherence of book 3 as a unit is ensured by the ring formed by the allusions in the last story, the death of Pentheus, to the first in the series of Cadmus' woes, the death of Actaeon.

³⁸ Otis, B., Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge, 1970), ch. 5Google Scholar; ibid. pp. 131–3 on imitation of Virgil in the Ovidian interventions of Juno.

³⁹ This ‘combinatorial imitation’ of Virgil becomes part of the stock-in-trade of Latin epicists after Ovid: see my article ‘Flavian Epicists on Virgil's Epic Technique’, forthcoming in Boyle, A. J. (ed.), The Imperial Muse: Ramus Essays on Roman Literature of the Empire, vol. ii.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ e.g. Heinze, , Virgils epische Technik (Leipzig and Berlin, 1915), pp. 182f.Google Scholar; Pöschl, V., The Art of Vergil (Ann Arbor, 1962), pp. 24ff.Google Scholar

⁴¹ But note that Virgil also uses Dionysiac imagery in the context of the destruction or disintegration of the city: see n. 49 below. On the night of the sack of Troy Helen led a band of ‘Maenads’ inside the walls, Aen. 6.517f. ‘illa chorum simulans euhantis orgia circum / ducebat Phrygias.’ Furthermore Ovid's Acoetes, devotee of Bacchus, owes a little to Virgil's deceptive stranger Sinon (cf. Met. 3.575Google Scholar with Aen. 2.57Google Scholar, Met. 3.586Google Scholar with Aen. 2.87Google Scholar); was Euripides' insidious Dionysiac stranger already one of the models for the insinuations of Virgil's Greek?

⁴² I do not know what to make of the fact that Juno's redoubled anger is paralleled by that of the serpent at Met. 3.72–3 ‘postquam solitas accessit ad iras / causa recens’.

⁴³ There are verbal echoes of Juno's speech at Aen. 1.37–49 in Juno's monologues at Met. 3.262–72 and 4.422–31Google Scholar. See Otis, , pp. 131f., 137ffGoogle Scholar. Döpp, , op. cit. (n. 1 above), p. 121Google Scholar observes that Juno is not prominent in Ovid's version of the story of Aeneas in books 13–14, and that her Virgilian role is displaced onto the Ino episode.

⁴⁴ 275 anum: Aen. 7.419 anus. 276 rugis: Aen. 7.417.

⁴⁵ Perret, J., Virgile (Paris, 1965), pp. 113f.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ There are further echoes of Aen. 6 at 4.436 (Aen. 6.462), 439 (cf. 127), 446 (642), 453 (555), 484ff. (273ff.).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ovid, apparently without substantial precedent (Bömer, , p. 146Google Scholar), elaborates a picture of the city of Dis, Met. 4.437–46Google Scholar; indeed it is one of the most detailed cityscapes in the poem. Is there a point about the real urbs aeterna in the context of a story of failed ktisis?

⁴⁸ carceris of the Underworld at 453 may echo the carcer of the winds at Aen. 1.54; cf. Met. 4.663Google Scholar. Is there point in the use of Athamas' patronymic in ‘postes Aeolii’ at 486f.? In Virgil the winds break out of the gates of (another) Aeolus.

⁴⁹ Aen. 7.385ff.Google Scholar; note esp. 389 ‘euhoe Bacche’ = Met. 4.523. Maenad and Erinys are often virtually interchangeable in the language of Attic tragedy: Guépin, J.-P., The Tragic Paradox (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 21–2Google Scholar; Whallon, W., ‘Maenadism in the Oresteia’, HSCPh 68 (1964), 321–2.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ This version is previously unattested: see Bömer, on Met. 4.531.Google Scholar

⁵¹ ‘at Venus’ also occurs at line beginning at Aen. 1.411, 691Google Scholar; 8.370, 608. In each case, with the exception of 1.691, it marks a fresh intervention by the goddess on behalf of her son.

⁵² Ino-Leucothoe rescues Odysseus from the storm on which the storm in Aen. 1 is based (Od. 5.333ff.); with Od. 5.336 ⋯λέησεν cf. Met. 3.531 miserata.

⁵³ iactari, Met. 4.535, is almost a vox propria for the trials of Aeneas: Aen. 1.3, 29, 332, 668, 3.197,4.14, 6.693, 10.48.

⁵⁴ With Met. 4.539–40 ‘adnuit oranti Neptunus et abstulit illis / quod mortale fuit’ compare 14.603 (the apotheosis of Aeneas by Venus in the waters of the Numicus) ‘quidquid in Aenea fuerat mortale repurgat’.

⁵⁵ 564 ‘aequoris esse deos’: cf. Aen. 9.102 ‘aequoris esse deas’, the ships of Aeneas saved from Turnus' attempt to fire them, indirectly another assault on the Trojans by Juno, (Aen. 9.2–3)Google Scholar. Unlike Cadmus, Aeneas comes to know all about these sea-deities at Aen. 10.215ff.

⁵⁶ For advice and encouragement I am grateful to Richard Buxton, John Henderson, and Jamie Masters.