New Observations on Vergilian Parody in Ovid’s Perseus Episode
Met. 4.604-5.251

Sean E. Lake (Fordham University)

A number of scholars have commented on Ovid’s parody of Vergil’s Aeneid in the Perseus episode of the Metamorphoses, often dismissing it or failing to note its significance.[1] This paper will show that Ovid’s parody should be taken more seriously and specifically argue that some of it should also be read as criticism, critique or comical slight against Augustus and his regime. Perseus, a blundering, unimpressive, even unheroic hero, is linked to Augustus in a number of ways, a humorous, and arguably offensive, inversion of Vergil’s Aeneas.

The first means by which Ovid effects his parodic swipes at Vergil and Augustus is through his repeated emphasis on Perseus’s genealogy. Ovid’s linking of Perseus to Augustus is a reversal of the Aeneid’s genealogical construct in which Perseus’s ancestors, the Inachides, are depicted as the ancestral enemies of Rome.[2] Furthermore, Ovid frequently mentions Perseus’s descent from Jupiter, notable in consideration of other unfavorable comparisons Ovid draws throughout the epic between Augustus and Jupiter.[3]

Closely related to this is Ovid’s depiction of Pentheus in Book Three as a defender of Augustan values, obviously not a flattering comparison to Augustus.[4] In this same episode at Met. 3.559-60, Ovid makes Perseus’s grandfather Acrisius the one who inspired Pentheus’s hostility to Bacchus, thereby making Acrisius another negative representative of the Augustan regime.

Twice Ovid evokes divinities specifically associated with Augustus. First, Ovid incorporates Ammon into his telling of the myth, a god recently appropriated by Augustus and featured in the porticus of his forum (dedicated in 2 B.C.).[5] Ammon is called iniustus at Met. 4.671 and also blamed for Cassiope’s sacrifice at Met. 5.17-19. Shortly after this second reference to Ammon, Ovid makes Ammon a mortal character slaughtered by Phineus at Met. 5.107. The second divinity is Bellona, a goddess unattested in any other versions of the myth. In fact, Bellona very rarely appears in myth at all, but appears in the Aeneid twice at 7.319 and 8.703; Ovid’s use of her is clearly traceable to Vergil’s epic. More importantly, however, Bellona was a goddess involved in the declaration of a war by the Fetiales, an office revived by Augustus.[6] The use of Bellona in this episode as Perseus’s helper is, therefore, yet another link Ovid makes between his weak and comical hero and the Emperor.