Catullan Influence on Ovid

Janice F. Siegel (Hampden-Sydney College)

Philomela’s diatribe against Tereus for abducting and raping her (Ovid Met. 6.531-54.) has often been compared to Ariadne’s similar response to Theseus’s abandonment of her as related in Cat. 64.132-201. But the two poems have much more in common than just this one scene of female recrimination. Cat. 64 is the only extant example of Neoteric epyllion. It has been suggested that Ovid’s tale of Procne, Philomela and Tereus is also an epyllion embedded in Ovid’s larger epic. I argue that Ovid’s Procne, unlike the many other episodes of the Metamorphoses also identified as epyllia, is specifically modeled on Cat. 64. Close examination will reveal similar framing technique, structure, theme, wordplay, imagery, and other poetic elements. The transition from divine characters and circumstances in the model poem to mortal characters and circumstances in his Procne  proves to be typical of Ovid’s adaptation of a host of models (of diverse genres) for this most central episode in his Metamorphoses.