- 1 I presented a version of this article at a conference of the Réseau Poésie Augustéenne (‘Powerful S (...)
- 2 As Fletcher and Hanink (2016:7) note, the Greek word βίος can mean both an individual’s life and a (...)
- 3 On the similarities between Vergil and Aeneas, see, for instance, Deremetz (2001); Kofler (2003); Z (...)
- 4 Goldschmidt (2019:3-4) argues that there is something fundamental about Roman poetry that cries out (...)
- 5 On biofiction, see Schabert (1990); Middeke and Huber (1999).
1Scholarship on the biographical traditions of ancient poets points out that they are reflections of a poet’s work, not sources that aspire to document bare facts1. The Lives (βίοι) of Homer or Vergil, for instance, are creative receptions of their poetry.2 In these narratives, Homer is created in the image of Demodocus or Odysseus, Vergil in the image of Tityrus or Aeneas.3 The Hellenistic world is the key for the widespread practice of using a poet’s work as inspiration for biographical tales. In Hellenistic culture, the fascination with the biographies of legendary poets was fundamentally a creative combination of literary history and criticism (see Bing 1993; Graziosi 2016:55-6). Roman poets, fully versed in Hellenistic poetry, were conscious that their works would become the basis of biographical narratives and thus anticipated the reception of their poetry in future tales of their lives.4 Autobiographical passages in Latin poetry (in Horace or Ovid, for instance) are more fascinating as tales that engage with the poetics of ancient biographical traditions and less as documents of historical facts. In Latin poetry, autobiography is autofiction that looks back to the tradition of the Lives of ancient poets and forward to inspiring biofictional narratives.5
- 6 See Kris and Kurz (1979); Fletcher and Hanink (2016:23-4).
- 7 See Clay (2004) for ancient cults of poets; Lefkowitz (2012:125-6); Kimmel-Clauzet (2013). See also (...)
2A poet’s life is thus part of a long tradition of biomythology that operates in accordance with specific cultural, narrative, and structural conventions. These patterns reveal that the Lives of ancient poets have more in common with myth than history.6 Common topoi in tales of a poet’s life include his birth, mystic initiation, conflict with powerful rulers or gods, persecution, exile, death, and afterlife. The poet resembles more a hero from myth, a demigod with a cult, than a mere mortal.7 At the core of these commonplaces lies a deeply rooted identification of a poet’s life with his work. Artist and creation are one, a thematic pattern in the mythology of poets’ biographies that reflects the essence and process of their production.
- 8 Cf. Hardie (2002:178): ‘The demiurge’s power to call the real world into existence, and the poet’s (...)
3It is not difficult to see why Ovid would be fascinated by a tradition that blends the fictional with the factual, myth with reality, the body of the poet with the body of his work (corpus). It is a fundamental aspect of the Metamorphoses that the poet’s fictions shape reality.8 Likewise, the Lives of poets straddle the blurred lines between the fictional and factual (Goldschmidt 2019:7), aligning with one of the main preoccupations of Ovid’s poetry. More specifically, several mythological artists in the Metamorphoses (Arachne, Marsyas, Orpheus) reflect Ovid’s work, career, and life. Art and punishment as a recurring motif of the Metamorphoses invites us to read Ovid’s epic through the lens of his exile (see Johnson 2008). But Ovid also invites us to read his exile poetry through the lens of his Metamorphoses. In the Tristia and Ex Ponto, Ovid mythologizes his life: he is a second Odysseus or a second Medea. His fate is compared to the cruel death of Actaeon. Thus, the Tristia becomes a sequel to the Metamorphoses; the mythical core of Ovid’s epic turns into a version of the poet’s life, while the personal elegiac poetry of exile is elevated to the status of epic legend. The ostensible fictionality of these biographical narratives is not a weakness, but a strength. By actively engaging with the production of biofiction, Ovid highlights myth’s grip on reality. The poet’s unbreakable unity with his work guarantees that his life and biography will exceed the mundane constraints of mortality.
- 9 Interestingly, he also models his autobiography (Tristia 4.10) on the life of Augustus and on Augus (...)
- 10 See Graziosi (2016) on the autobiographical impulse to create the ancient poet in one’s own image. (...)
- 11 On metabiography, see Saunders (2015); Ní Dhúill (2012). As Ní Dhúill (2012:283) notes, the metabio (...)
4Just as Ovid seamlessly weaves his life with the lives of his mythological characters (Teiresias, Arachne, Marsyas, Orpheus, Odysseus, Actaeon, Medea), he models his biography on the lives of legendary poets.9 The effect is twofold: on the one hand, Ovid inscribes himself in the canon of great poets, while, on the other hand, he creates the fabulous poets of yore in his own image.10 My case study for exploring Ovid’s double-edged poetics of biofiction is Orpheus in the Metamorphoses. I argue that Ovid spins a thread that links the life and poetry of Orpheus with the work and biographical traditions of Euripides, Cinna, and ultimately Ovid himself. This poetic lineage bridges the gap between myth (Orpheus), classical Greece (Euripides), Roman Republic (Cinna), and contemporary Rome (Ovid), thus reflecting salient features of biofictional creations that revolve around blurring the boundaries between past and present, myth and reality, the personal and the conventional. By simultaneously engaging with the works and biographical traditions of other poets, Ovid demonstrates a deep understanding of the methods and effects of biofictional constructions. From that perspective, his work is metabiographical in the sense that it is self-aware to life writing and redeploys biographical traditions for raising questions about myth, religion, politics, memorialization, literary reception, and poetic authority.11 More importantly, Ovid’s foray into biofiction is fully integrated into his unique epic universe, in which fiction defines reality.
- 12 On Orpheus in the Metamorphoses and Ovid’s exile poetry, see Johnson (2008:115-16).
- 13 An anonymous reader points out to me Ovid’s etymology of Tomis from τέμνω (‘I cut’), which Ovid lin (...)
5Patricia Johnson (2008:96-114) and Barbara Pavlock (2009:88-9, 106-9) argue convincingly that Orpheus is a surrogate for Ovid himself and that his tales of love and metamorphosis stand as a ‘mise en abyme’ of the Metamorphoses (see also Wagner 2024:20-2). Johnson (2008:104) points out that Orpheus is cast as a poet, like Ovid, of wide range, combining and composing in a variety of genres: elegy, didactic poetry, and epic. Not only his poetic career, but also his life resembles Ovid’s. Orpheus’ illicit sexuality and love poetry offend the staunch supporters of the institution of marriage. As a result of his poetry and life choices, he is killed and dismembered by married women. The myth is old, but Ovid makes it sound like a version of his own life. The poet allegedly undermined marriage and was subsequently relegated to Tomis, a fate that equals death in his exile poetry.12 Ovid famously compares his exile with the fate of the dismembered Actaeon (Tristia 2.103-10), the victim of Diana’s cruelty.13 For Ovid, the pain of exile is similar to the agony of dismemberment. From that perspective, Orpheus’ cruel execution at the hands of enraged matrons recalls Ovid’s unfair punishment.
6Orpheus’ song is suddenly and violently interrupted, but his cast out lyre and severed head are still able to moan in plaintive tunes (11.52-3):
flebile nescioquid queritur lyra, flebile lingua
murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae
Something plaintive laments the lyre, something plaintive murmurs the tongue, something plaintive echo the banks.
- 14 See, e.g., Ovid, Heroides 15.7 elegia flebile carmen ‘elegy is a plaintive song’. See also Sharrock (...)
- 15 An elegiac epigram (AP 7.9) attributed to the Hellenistic poet Demagetus presents Orpheus as the in (...)
- 16 On echo as a trope of mannered repetition, within texts and between texts, see Hinds (1998:5-8). Me (...)
7The key words flebile and queritur refer to elegy’s traditional origins in lament and, more specifically, to Ovid’s exilic complaints.14 From the most powerful poet, Orpheus is reduced to repetitive murmurs of elegiac lamentations. Ovid is here aware of a tradition according to which Orpheus was the inventor of the elegiac metre, which is associated with grief and epitaphic inscriptions.15 But he also appropriates this tradition to turn Orpheus into a version of himself. The radical impairment of Orpheus’ powerful poetry echoes Ovid’s fate. Ovid repeatedly complains that his exile debilitated his poetic genius (e.g. Tristia 1.1.35-48). Like Orpheus, Ovid’s poetry is both abruptly interrupted and continues in the mournful tunes of exilic elegies. The repetitive complaints of Ovid’s elegies from Tomis echo the repetitive laments of the dismembered Orpheus. The repetition of flebile reproduces the echo of the banks that respond to the dead poet’s lamentations. But as is often the case in Latin poetry, echoes signal intertextual links.16 Orpheus’ lament is an echo of Ovid’s exile poetry and vice versa. Ovid, for instance, opens his fifth book of the Tristia with another sad poem (5.5-6):
flebilis ut noster status est, ita flebile carmen,
materiae scripto conueniente suae.
Just as my state is plaintive, so is my song, for the writing is suited to its subject.
8The mournful repetition of flebilis…flebile echoes and is echoed in Orpheus’ flebile…flebile (both pairs fall into the same metrical position of the hexameter). The exiled poet points out that his mournful poetry reflects his sad life. Ovid spells out the link between a poet’s work and life, a salient feature of Orpheus in the Metamorphoses and in the tradition of the poets’ Lives. At the same time, he presents his downfall as a version of the fate of the legendary bard.
- 17 Conversely, nescioquid (Met. 11.52) may ironically imply that Ovid is not able to decipher the mean (...)
9Ovid’s Orphic lament from Tomis is more than a clever allusion to Metamorphoses 11. Orpheus is very much alive after his death and has the power to speak through the mouths of others. For the initiated, Orphic poetry, which was and is often dismissed as forgery, are the words that the legendary bard utters after his death to those who can decipher them (see Graziosi 2018:188-9). When the exiled Ovid echoes the laments of Orpheus’ severed head, he becomes Orpheus reincarnated, an initiate who records the song of the bard in his poetry.17 Ovid’s exilic lamentations resemble the postmortem dirges of Orpheus’ head. In true Orphic fashion, the boundaries between life and death are unclear. In this case, the poetics of biofiction meets Orphic beliefs of death, poetic afterlife, and rebirth.
10If Ovid sounds like Orpheus in his exile poetry, Orpheus sounds like Ovid in the Metamorphoses. The clearest echo of Ovid’s poetry in Orpheus’ song is the bard’s reprise of the controversial disclaimer of the Ars amatoria:
dira canam; procul hinc natae, procul este parentes. (Met. 10.300)
I shall sing a dreadful song; stay away, daughters, stay away, parents.
uera canam: coeptis, mater Amoris, ades.
este procul, uittae tenues, insigne pudoris,
quaeque tegis medios instita longa pedes:
nos Venerem tutam concessaque furta canemus
inque meo nullum carmine crimen erit. (Ars amatoria, 1.30-4)
Stay away, slender fillets, symbol of modesty, and you, long hem, who cover half the feet: we shall sing of safe sex and permitted cheating and there will be no wrong in my song.
- 18 For the term ‘stichometric intertextuality’, see Hinds (1998:92 n.80). See also O’Rourke (2024:267- (...)
- 19 On the ironies and paradoxes of Orpheus’ disclaimer, see Barchiesi (2001:59); Ziogas (2021:365-6). (...)
11There is a nice case of ‘stichometric intertextuality’ in these passages:18 line 10.300 from the Metamorphoses echoes line 1.30 from the Ars amatoria. If we multiply by ten the elegiac numbers (1.30) we get their epic version (10.300). Epic grandeur, it seems, is ten times bigger than slender elegiac verses. It is also grimmer and, interestingly, less reliable: the praeceptor’s uera (‘true’) becomes Orpheus’ dira (‘dreadful’), while Ovid’s declaration that he is telling the truth contrasts with Orpheus’ advice to his audience not to believe in the myth he is about to tell (Met. 10.302-3).19 More to the point, this is not simply an epic reworking of Ovid’s elegiac work, but a passage that draws a link between the poet’s work and fate. Ovid’s rather disingenuous disclaimer was not enough to protect him from being punished for his Ars amatoria. Orpheus’ similarly disingenuous disclaimer fails to exclude the audience of matrons, who ultimately tear him apart. Mythical bard and historical poet pit the extraordinary powers of their carmina against the sociopolitical forces that aim to repress them.
- 20 See Reed (2024:374). On mysteries and cult terminology as essential to Ovid’s love and didactic ele (...)
- 21 See, for instance, Ziogas (2021:360-83) on Augustus and Augustan legislation in Orpheus’ myth of My (...)
- 22 See Schabert (1983); Goldschmidt (2019:9-10).
- 23 This is similar to Goldschmidt’s interpretation of the reception of Vergil’s Aeneid in Broch’s Der (...)
12The intertextual parallel works in both directions. In the Ars amatoria, Ovid assumes the voice of the legendary bard since the ritual cry (‘stay away’) that seemingly excludes the uninitiated and ritually unclean befits Orpheus, a mythic figure closely associated with mystery cults and their rituals of initiation. As Jay Reed points out, the prohibition ‘begone’ (procul este) was endemic to initiatory poetry attributed to Orpheus ([Orph.] fr. 1, 3, 377.1 Bernabé).20 Speaking in an Orphic voice, Ovid pronounces a lex sacra (‘sacred law’) in a passage that seemingly complies with but essentially challenges Augustus’ moral legislation (see Ziogas 2021:286-95). At the same time, the reiteration of the disclaimer from the Ars amatoria creates Orpheus in the image of Ovid. The bard morphs into a love poet who undermined marriage by composing works inspired by his life and paid with his life for poetry that reflected his biography. Orpheus’ resumption of the initial disclaimer from the Ars amatoria is not a fleeting reference but invites the readers to interpret Ovid’s version against the age of Augustus. Ovid’s myth of Orpheus in the Metamorphoses, not unlike the Ars amatoria, cannot be read without thinking about Augustus’ moral legislation and Ovid’s relegation.21 This dynamic intertextuality between the Ars amatoria and the Metamorphoses is, in Schabert’s terms, an interauthorial encounter.22 We are not dealing simply with Ovid’s appropriation of an Orphic formula, but with the convergence of two biofictional subjects, ‘Orpheus’ and ‘Ovid’.23 The lives and works of these bards inform each other to the point that they become inseparable.
- 24 The myth of Pygmalion also opens a dialogue with the poetics of Latin love elegy (see Sharrock 1991 (...)
- 25 See Goldschmidt (2018) on how Ovid fuses his textual and biographical body (corpus) in his attempt (...)
13Ovid draws close links between the life and death of Orpheus and the production of his poetry. After losing Eurydice for a second time, Orpheus rejects heterosexual love and becomes the founding father of pederasty in Thrace. As a result, he sets out to denounce female perversion and praise the gods’ loves for boys. The agenda of this song is closely linked to his grief and new sexual orientation. The myth of Pygmalion in particular stands out as a sort of grief management for the loss of Eurydice (cf. Hardie 2002:189; Wagner 2024:31-3) and scholars have discussed the similarities between Orpheus and Pygmalion. Rosati (2021:72-3) notes that both are artists, both refuse the company of women and in both cases, the rejection of women is the result of an incapacity to adapt to the real world. For Hardie (2002:188), Pygmalion reflects on the erotic experience and artistic power of Orpheus, who was able once to restore to a living presence an object of desire and who is still able through song to animate trees and rocks (cf. Heath 1996:367-70).24 While we can see how Orpheus’ tales of love and loss are inspired by his life, the main approach of my article is the opposite: I wish to examine to what extent a poet’s work gives rise to biofiction, to see how poetry is projected onto an author’s life and has the power to shape its narrative. As a result, life and work become inseparable.25 To examine this fundamental aspect of the poetics of biofiction, I turn to the presence of Euripides’ works and life in Ovid’s tale of Orpheus.
- 26 See mainly Bruzzone (2012) and Paschalis (2015). On the importance of tragedy in Ovid, see Curley ( (...)
- 27 For a detailed narratological commentary of Metamorphoses 10-11.84, see Wagner (2024).
14Euripides’ Hippolytus and Alcestis feature prominently in Ovid’s version of Orpheus.26 What is yet to be explored is Ovid’s engagement with the biofictional tradition of Euripides’ life. In my view, one of the main points of Ovid’s intertextual engagement with Euripides is to blur the distinction between a poet’s work and art. To interpret Ovid’s intertextuality as a series of interauthorial encounters, we first need to examine the interplay between the main and embedded narratives. The myth of Orpheus in the Metamorphoses has two narrative levels: the first is the story of Orpheus’ life and death (the main story), the second are the songs he sings (embedded narrative).27 These songs are introduced at critical moments of his life: the song he sings in the Underworld after Eurydice dies and the song he sings as grief management for the second loss of his wife and as a reflection of his new sexual orientation (embedded narrative). This second song leads to the attack of the enraged women who kill him brutally (main narrative). As we shall see, Euripides’ Hippolytus and Alcestis are present both in the main and embedded narratives of Ovid’s version of Orpheus. The effect of this is that Ovid uses Euripidean tragedy to weave Orpheus’ life and songs into a seamless whole.
- 28 Curley (2013:138) notes that by Ovid’s day the monologue by itself could evoke the tragic.
15Let me start with the presence of Euripides in Orpheus’ tales. As scholars note, there are compelling parallels between the story of Myrrha and Euripides’ Hippolytus. Larmour (1990:138) briefly comments on Ovid’s incorporation of the Hippolytus into the tale of Myrrha (see also Thomas 1998:100-3). Like Phaedra, Myrrha is torn by a conflict between pudor and amor. An incestuous passion torments both heroines. They both attempt to commit suicide by hanging themselves (Phaedra succeeds, Myrrha fails). Ovid gives us Myrrha’s soliloquy, in which the heroine is torn between filial love and sexual attraction. The monologue of a vacillating heroine is a trademark of Euripidean tragedy (e.g. Medea 1021-80).28 Thus, Ovid both redeploys Euripides’ dramatic art and alludes specifically to the Hippolytus. Euripides’ Phaedra exclaims (239-40):
τί ποτ’ εἰργασάμην;
ποῖ παρεπλάγχθην γνώμης ἀγαθῆς;
what have I done? Where have I wandered from the path of good sense?
So too Myrrha asks herself (Met. 10.320):
quo mente feror? quid molior?
Where am I borne with my mind? What am I planning?
- 29 See Thomas (1998:101-2) for a brief discussion of these passages.
16The self-directed questions highlight the heroines’ conflicted identities. In both cases, a nurse tries to help them to consummate their forbidden love. As Thomas notes (1998:101), with the introduction of the nurse in the story of Myrrha, the Euripidean echoes proliferate. Phaedra’s and Myrrha’s nurses suggest resorting to magic, and both fear that the gods need appeasement. One of the most compelling parallels are Phaedra’s and Myrrha’s reactions when the nurses mention Hippolytus and Cinyras respectively:29
ΤΡΟΦΟΣ μὰ τὴν ἄνασσαν ἱππίαν Ἀμαζόνα,
ἣ σοῖς τέκνοισι δεσπότην ἐγείνατο,
νόθον φρονοῦντα γνήσι᾿, οἶσθά νιν καλῶς,
Ἱππόλυτον . . .ΦΑΙΔΡΑ οἴμοι. ΤΡΟΦΟΣ θιγγάνει σέθεν τόδε; (Hippolytus 307-10)
[Nurse] I tell you in the name of that horse-riding queen of the Amazons who bore a master to rule over your sons, a bastard with thoughts of legitimacy, you know him well, Hippolytus…
[Phaedra] Oh misery! [Nurse] So this touches you? (Loeb trans. Kovacs)
uiuit genetrix paterque’
Myrrha patre audito suspiria duxit ab immo
pectore. nec nutrix etiamnum concipit ullum
mente nefas. (Met. 10.401-4)
‘your mother and father are alive’. When she heard father, Myrrha sighed from the bottom of her heart. And even now the nurse did not suspect any evil.
17In both cases, the women in love break their silence with a nonverbal expression of suffering after the nurse inadvertently mentions the objects of their desires. In both cases, the nurses misinterpret these reactions (Phaedra’s nurse thinks that Phaedra is concerned for her children, Myrrha’s nurse that Myrrha fears that her father will find out that she is in love with someone). Thus, Ovid’s Orpheus reworks a scene with distinctly Euripidean dramatic irony.
18The presence of the Hippolytus is not restricted to the tale of Myrrha. Hippolytus’ celibate misogyny has a lot in common with Orpheus’ Pygmalion (see Bruzzone 2012). Not unlike Pygmalion, Hippolytus denounces the whole female sex and looks for an alternative (616-24, 630-32):
ὦ Ζεῦ, τί δὴ κίβδηλον ἀνθρώποις κακὸν
γυναῖκας ἐς φῶς ἡλίου κατῴκισας;
εἰ γὰρ βρότειον ἤθελες σπεῖραι γένος,
οὐκ ἐκ γυναικῶν χρῆν παρασχέσθαι τόδε,
ἀλλ᾿ ἀντιθέντας σοῖσιν ἐν ναοῖς βροτοὺς
ἢ χαλκὸν ἢ σίδηρον ἢ χρυσοῦ βάρος
παίδων πρίασθαι σπέρμα τοῦ τιμήματος
τῆς ἀξίας ἕκαστον, ἐν δὲ δώμασιν
ναίειν ἐλευθέροισι θηλειῶν ἄτερ.
…
ὁ δ᾿ αὖ λαβὼν ἀτηρὸν ἐς δόμους φυτὸν
γέγηθε κόσμον προστιθεὶς ἀγάλματι
καλὸν κακίστῳ
O Zeus, why have you settled women, this bane to cheat mankind, in the light of the sun? If you wished to propagate the human race, it was not from women that you should have provided this. Rather, men should put down in the temples either bronze or iron or a mass of gold and buy offspring, each for a price appropriate to his means, and then dwell in houses free from the female sex…
But her husband, who has taken this creature of ruin into his house, takes pleasure in adding finery to the statue, lovely finery to worthless statue (Loeb trans. Kovacs).
19Ovid’s Pygmalion materializes Hippolytus’ misogynistic fantasies (Met. 10.244-6):
offensus uitiis, quae plurima menti
femineae natura dedit, sine coniuge caelebs
uiuebat thalamique diu consorte carebat.
disgusted with the faults which in such full measure nature had given the female mind, he lived unmarried and long was without a partner of his couch.
20Ovid’s sine coniuge caelebs / uiuebat…consorte carebat corresponds to Euripides’ ἐν δὲ δώμασιν / ναίειν ἐλευθέροισι θηλειῶν ἄτερ; Hippolytus’ wishful thinking is Pygmalion’s reality. Hippolytus calls women ‘a counterfeit evil’ (κίβδηλον κακόν), while Pygmalion creates the ‘semblance of a girl’ (simulacra puellae 280) with a ‘simulated body’ (simulati corporis 253), literally a counterfeit woman (Bruzzone 2012:73-4). Hippolytus calls wives statues when describing the gifts that husbands give them (γέγηθε κόσμον προστιθεὶς ἀγάλματι). Pygmalion not only literalizes Hippolytus’ metaphors (see Bruzzone 2012:73), but also transforms insults directed at women (‘counterfeit evil’, ‘evil statue’) into his ideal object of desire. The identification of a wife with a statue is Pygmalion’s deepest desire; and Pygmalion famously adorns his ivory maiden (Met. 10.263-5):
ornat quoque uestibus artus,
dat digitis gemmas, dat longa monilia collo,
aure leues bacae, redimicula pectore pendent
He also decorates the body with clothes, puts gems on the fingers and long pendants around the neck, smooth beads hang from the ears and ribbons from the chest.
21We can read Orpheus’ take on the Hippolytus as the fulfilment of the unfulfilled desires of Euripides’ heroes. Myrrha, unlike Phaedra, has sex with the forbidden object of her desire. Pygmalion, unlike Hippolytus, succeeds in finding an alternative to women. From that perspective, Orpheus’ engagement with the Hippolytus is in tune with the creation of his poetry as a way of dealing with his personal failures. His Pygmalion turns Hippolytus’ fantasy into reality but also succeeds in bringing the object of his desire to life, unlike Orpheus who failed to resurrect Eurydice. Thus, Orpheus’ intertextual engagement with Euripides suggests a subtle link between the bard’s life and the therapeutic function of his songs.
- 30 See Hippolytus: σποδούμενος μὲν πρὸς πέτραις φίλον κάρα / θραύων τε σάρκας ‘his head being smashed (...)
- 31 See Bernabé (2016:184-91) for a discussion of the Orphic elements in this passage.
- 32 Euripidean tragedy features prominently in the death of Orpheus. Paschalis (2015:135-58) argues con (...)
22Pygmalion’s misogyny further reflects Orpheus’ rejection of women altogether. And Euripides’ Hippolytus provides a crucial link between the main and embedded narrative, between Orpheus’ song and the end of his life. We hear nothing about the death of Pygmalion, who marries his ivory girl, has a daughter with her and, presumably, lives happily ever after. Hippolytus’ denunciation of women, by contrast, ends in disaster. His rejection of Phaedra, in particular, leads to his death. Theseus wrongly believes that his son raped Phaedra and curses him. Poseidon fulfils Theseus’ curse by sending a bull to scare the horses of his chariot. The young hero is torn apart by his horses, a grim fulfilment of his name (from ἵππος and λύω). His body is dismembered and disfigured before he dies.30 In a sneering address, Theseus mocks Hippolytus’ lifestyle, describing him as a follower of Orpheus (Ὀρφέα τ᾽ ἄνακτ᾽ ἔχων / βάκχευε πολλῶν γραμμάτων τιμῶν καπνούς, Hippolytus 953-4 ‘and having Orpheus as lord play the bacchant, honouring the smoke of lots of scribblings’).31 The reference to Orpheus is particularly pointed here; it foreshadows Hippolytus’ gruesome death, implying a parallel between Hippolytus’ Orphic lifestyle and Orpheus’ cruel execution. Hippolytus’ and Orpheus’ shunning of women and marriage led to gruesome deaths. Orpheus and Hippolytus pay dearly and similarly for their misogyny. But a major god appears in both cases to defend the heroes and highlight the unjust nature of their brutal punishments. In the case of Hippolytus, Artemis appears to rebuke Theseus for his rush and unfair curse on his innocent son (Hippolytus 1281-1341). In the case of Orpheus, Bacchus appears to defend the bard and punish the crime of the Thracian women (Met. 11.67-84). In sum, to understand the effect of Ovid’s engagement with Euripides in the myth of Orpheus, we need to join the main with the embedded narrative. Ovid’s Orpheus first reworks the myth of Hippolytus in his tales (Pygmalion, Myrrha) and then suffers a death similar to that of Euripides’ hero. This is an intertextual engagement that combines two different narrative levels and is thus based on the poetics of biofiction.32
- 33 This is not a fleeting reference but makes explicit the Orphic aspects of Euripides’ Alcestis (see, (...)
23We can identify a similar effect if we examine the presence of Euripides’ Alcestis in the main and embedded narrative. Paschalis (2015:394-406) points out several parallels between Admetus from Euripides’ Alcestis and Ovid’s Orpheus. In the Alcestis, Admetus wishes he had Orpheus’ powers to bring his wife back to life (357-64):33
εἰ δ᾿ Ὀρφέως μοι γλῶσσα καὶ μέλος παρῆν,
ὥστ᾿ ἢ κόρην Δήμητρος ἢ κείνης πόσιν
ὕμνοισι κηλήσαντά σ᾿ ἐξ Ἅιδου λαβεῖν,
κατῆλθον ἄν, καί μ᾿ οὔθ᾿ ὁ Πλούτωνος κύων
οὔθ᾿ οὑπὶ κώπῃ ψυχοπομπὸς ἂν Χάρων
ἔσχ᾿ ἄν, πρὶν ἐς φῶς σὸν καταστῆσαι βίον.
ἀλλ᾿ οὖν ἐκεῖσε προσδόκα μ᾿, ὅταν θάνω,
καὶ δῶμ᾿ ἑτοίμαζ᾿, ὡς συνοικήσουσά μοι.
If I had the voice and music of Orpheus so that I could charm Demeter’s daughter or her husband with song and fetch you from Hades, I would have gone down to the Underworld, and neither Pluto’s hound nor Charon the ferryman of souls standing at the oar would have kept me from bringing you back to the light alive. But now wait for me to arrive there when I die and prepare a home where you may dwell with me. (Loeb trans. Kovacs)
- 34 For Apollo’s love for Admetus, see Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 49; Ovid, Ars amatoria 2.239-40; Tib (...)
24Ovid capitalizes on Euripides’ comparison between Admetus and Orpheus. Metamorphoses 10 opens with the ominous wedding of Orpheus and Eurydice, which soon turns into a funeral. True, interplays between weddings and funerals are typical of Greek tragedy and even Roman love elegy. Still, the conflation of wedding parties and funereal processions may specifically point to the similarities between Admetus-Alcestis and Orpheus-Eurydice. In Metamorphoses 10 and the Alcestis, wedding songs suddenly become mournful dirges. Admetus promises his wife to remain celibate after her death and flee the company of all women because of his grief (Alcestis 328-31, 950-3) and Orpheus similarly shuns women either because he was unfortunate with them or because he gave a promise to his wife (cf. Paschalis 2015:400-1). Orpheus’ homosexuality may even recall Admetus’ love affair with Apollo, the reason why he can let his wife die in his place.34
25The fantasies of Euripides’ Admetus become reality in Ovid’s tale of Orpheus. As Paschalis (2015:404-5) points out, Ovid’s happy reunion of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Underworld (Metamorphoses 11.64-6) realizes Admetus’ vision of a posthumous reunification with his wife in Hades (Alcestis 363-4). While I argued that in the case of the Hippolytus the fantasies of the Euripidean hero are fulfilled in Orpheus’ songs, here Admetus’ wishful thinking becomes Orpheus’ happy afterlife.
26Orpheus and Admetus have parallel lives and desires, but, as it was the case in Ovid’s reworking of the Hippolytus, the Alcestis informs both the main and embedded narrative. Orpheus’ myth of Pygmalion fulfils another crucial fantasy of Admetus. After her death, Admetus plans to replace Alcestis with a statue of her (348-54):
σοφῇ δὲ χειρὶ τεκτόνων δέμας τὸ σὸν
εἰκασθὲν ἐν λέκτροισιν ἐκταθήσεται,
ᾧ προσπεσοῦμαι καὶ περιπτύσσων χέρας
ὄνομα καλῶν σὸν τὴν φίλην ἐν ἀγκάλαις
δόξω γυναῖκα καίπερ οὐκ ἔχων ἔχειν·
ψυχρὰν μέν, οἶμαι, τέρψιν, ἀλλ᾿ ὅμως βάρος
ψυχῆς ἀπαντλοίην ἄν
An image of you shaped by the hand of skilled craftsmen shall be laid out in my bed. I shall fall into its arms, and as I embrace it and call your name I shall imagine, though I have her not, that I hold my dear wife in my arms, a cold pleasure, to be sure, but thus I shall lighten my soul’s heaviness. (Loeb trans. Kovacs)
27Ovid’s Orpheus turns Admetus’ fantasy into the embedded narrative of Pygmalion (cf. Paschalis 2015:401-2). To some extent, Orpheus’ myth of Pygmalion is an artful creation, an image or a simulacrum of the lost Eurydice, an attempt to replace his late wife with his immortal art. Orpheus’ composition of the myth of Pygmalion corresponds to Pygmalion’s creation of the ivory statue. Admetus, like Orpheus, imagines an artificial and artful surrogate for his wife to deal with his grief. Mutatis mutandis, Pygmalion creates and sleeps with his ivory maiden, just as Admetus imagines his future after the death of his wife (10.267-9):
conlocat hanc stratis concha Sidonide tinctis
appellatque tori sociam adclinataque colla
mollibus in plumis tamquam sensura reponit.
He lays her on a bed spread with coverlets of Sidonian hue, calls it the consort of his couch, and rests its reclining head upon soft, downy pillows, as if it could enjoy them.
28The similarities between Ovid’s and Euripides’ texts are compelling. The effigy of Alcestis (δέμας τὸ σὸν εἰκασθέν) is reflected in Pygmalion’s desire for the simulated body of his artefact (Met. 10.253 simulati corporis, 280 simulacra puellae). Alcestis’ statue will be stretched out on the bed (ἐν λέκτροισιν ἐκταθήσεται), while Pygmalion lays his ivory girl on the bed and kisses the statue (Met. 10.267 conlocat hanc stratis, 281 incumbensque toro dedit oscula: uisa tepere est ‘and bending over the couch he gave kisses; she seemed to warm up’). Admetus imagines the cold pleasure of the statue of his dead wife, while Pygmalion’s future wife warms to his touch. Admetus will call the statue Alcestis and imagine that it is his wife (351-2), while Pygmalion calls his statue wife (Met. 10.267).
- 35 See Stieber (1998:70-4), who argues convincingly that Admetus couches sexual thoughts in formal fun (...)
- 36 See also Blanco (2024:127): ‘The cold contact with the statue evokes both the materiality of the ar (...)
29The desire for a wife’s lifeless body involves a disconcerting hint of necrophilia. In Euripides, ἐκταθήσεται (‘will be stretched out’) is a verb used elsewhere (Hippolytus 786, Alcestis 365-6) not for stretching out a statue, but a corpse.35 Bassi (2018:46-7) argues that the likeness Admetus imagines is rendered ambiguous by the fact that δέμας can refer both to living and dead bodies and that both ἐκτείνω (‘stretch out’) and ψυχρός (‘cold’) can be used of corpses.36 In this context, Ovid’s Sidonide is telling since it puns on σινδών, a shroud for dead bodies. Pygmalion’s statue, unique in that it is not modelled on any woman, evokes the absent presence of two deceased wives: Alcestis and Eurydice. When the ivory maiden comes to life, this miracle suggests not only the creation of a woman by a divine artist, but also the resurrection of Alcestis at the end of Euripides’ tragedy and, more poignantly, Orpheus’ failed attempt to bring Eurydice back to life.
- 37 Pygmalion’s statue literalizes the metaphorical hardness of the elegiac dura puella. See Wagner (20 (...)
- 38 In another version, Pygmalion had sex with a statue of Aphrodite. See Clement of Alexandria (Protre (...)
30Pygmalion notoriously adorns the lifeless body of his statue in a scene that, in elegiac terms, is a version of the lover/poet offering sweet words (blanditiae) and gifts to the object of his desire, a dura puella (Metamorphoses 10.259-65).37 Pygmalion’s adornment of a statue he adores further resembles the ritual decoration of a cult statue (the elegiac puella, after all, is often treated like a goddess). More specifically, it evokes and contrasts with Hippolytus’ hymnic address and ritual adornment of Artemis’ statue with a garland (Hippolytus 72-87). Hippolytus’ adornment of Artemis’ statue is a hymn to chastity in contrast with Pygmalion’s sexual desire for his ivory maiden, which is more in tune with Hippolytus’ criticism of husbands who add finery to women they treat like statues (discussed above). Pygmalion treats his statue not as lifeless ivory but as the embodiment of the divine, the cult statue of a goddess.38
31But there is another, darker, aspect in Pygmalion’s gestures. His ritual adornment of a lifeless statue resembles the adornment of a dead body before the funeral. More specifically, it evokes the adornment of the dead Alcestis. In Euripides, Pheres, Admetus’ father, brings finery for Alcestis’ dead body (611-13):
καὶ μὴν ὁρῶ σὸν πατέρα γηραιῷ ποδὶ
στείχοντ᾿, ὀπαδούς τ᾿ ἐν χεροῖν δάμαρτι σῇ
κόσμον φέροντας, νερτέρων ἀγάλματα.
But look! I see your father approaching with aged step and his servants carrying finery for your wife, pleasing gifts for the dead. (Loeb trans. Kovacs modified)
Pygmalion’s adornment of the statue closely resembles this passage (10.259-60, 263):
modo grata puellis
munera fert illi…
ornat quoque uestibus artus.
now he brings her gifts pleasing to girls… He also decorates the body with clothes
32Note how κόσμον φέροντας corresponds to munera fert. The intriguing word ἀγάλματα (‘pleasing gifts’, see LSJ s.v. 2) in Euripides corresponds to the Latin grata, an ingenious bilingual pun on ἄγαλμα (‘pleasing gifts’ and ‘statue’). But while the gifts are pleasing to the dead in Euripides, Pygmalion’s gifts are pleasing to girls. Ovid’s allusion to Euripides comes with a surprise: Pygmalion’s maiden corresponds to the dead Alcestis. That Orpheus figures Pygmalion’s statue as a dead woman is not surprising, if we bear in mind that the ivory maiden reflects the deceased Eurydice.
- 39 On Alcestis’ silence, see Martin (2024) with further bibliography.
- 40 Ahl (1997:22, 24) also points out the similarities between the statue Admetus imagines and the woma (...)
- 41 See also Blanco (2024), who argues that at the end of the play, Admetus clasps hands with the statu (...)
- 42 From that perspective, the end of Euripides’ Alcestis is very similar to the end of Shakespeare’s T (...)
33Pygmalion’s statue comes to life like the dead Alcestis who is presumably brought back to life at the end of the play. I say presumably, because, contrary to the prevailing view, it is far from clear whether Hercules brings Alcestis back from the dead. In the final scene (Alcestis 1006-1163), Hercules leads a woman on stage. Admetus first resists but eventually agrees to take the woman that Hercules brought. He first notices an uncanny similarity with his late wife and then realizes that she is Alcestis. The woman is silent and is supposed to remain silent for three days, as we are told.39 The scholarly consensus is that Hercules really brings Alcestis back to life, but the woman’s identity is deliberately uncertain. Stieber (1998), for instance, argues that Hercules offers Admetus a statue.40 She maintains that at the end of the play Admetus gets his wish to have a statue that resembles Alcestis laid out on his bed. She draws compelling parallels between Admetus’ wish (Alcestis 347-54) and the end of the play (1061-9) to argue that Admetus takes the statue as his wife.41 From that perspective, the end of the Alcestis is similar to the myth of Pygmalion. Admetus is deluded into thinking that the statue that resembles his wife is actually his wife. Not unlike Ovid’s myth with its emphasis on Pygmalion’s gaze (see Elsner 2007:113-31) and delusion, the end of Euripides’ play makes Admetus’ gaze the key to recognizing the ‘woman’ Hercules brings as his wife. Ovid’s Pygmalion and the end of Euripides’ Alcestis make a man’s desire the catalyst of a miraculous transformation. Both poets stage metamorphosis as the collapse of the difference between similarity and identity: Pygmalion’s statue is like a virgin and then morphs into a virgin. The ‘woman’ (or statue of a woman) that Hercules brings to Admetus is like Alcestis but turns out to be Alcestis.42
34The silence of the revived Alcestis is also telling: it suggests the silence of the dead, the silence of an obedient wife, and a mute statue. On the one hand, we may read the end of the play as Admetus’ power to animate a statue of his dead wife through sheer delusion. On the other hand, we may interpret it as Admetus’ objectification of his revived wife; his powerful gaze works both ways. Similarly, Pygmalion’s bride remains silent, even after she is brought to life. Even as a living woman, she is still like a statue. Like most of Ovid’s transformations, the change is incomplete and something from the old form lingers in the new body. In that case, silence is the common denominator in the transformation from inanimate ivory maiden to living wife. But the silent in Latin (silentes) can mean the dead, and Pygmalion’s wife is still to some extent lifeless, even after she comes to life.
- 43 See Kott (1974:103-4) for a concise and perceptive discussion of the significance of two different (...)
- 44 See Ahl (1997).
- 45 Ahl (1997:24-5) is important. He notes: ‘An ancient audience, however, would have known that Alcest (...)
- 46 The emphasis on Admetus’ gaze in the final scene of recognition construes him as a spectator, thus (...)
35There is also a crucial metatheatrical aspect to the silence of the rescued Alcestis that further complicates this fascinating scene of recognition. Euripides’ Alcestis requires two speaking actors and at the end of the play both are on stage (playing Hercules and Admetus). This means that a mute actor played the woman Hercules brings to Admetus (just as a mute actor suffices to play Pheres’ wife).43 Parker (2007:251) contends that the audience would at once recognize the woman Hercules leads as Alcestis by her costume, but the fact that the audience would also be aware that a different person plays this woman complicates the situation. Parker is right in the sense that whoever is cast as Alcestis is Alcestis, even if different actors embody this character during a single performance. There is no original Alcestis with a human body, only actors that play her role. While Pygmalion’s statue is a unique creation without a model in body and flesh, Alcestis is an incorporeal archetype that comes to life via numerous replicas in theatre and art. Importantly, theatrical conventions can be exploited for metatheatrical effects.44 The mute actor may wear Alcestis’ costume and mask, but the audience knows that even though the clothes and face may be the same, the bodies are different.45 The mute actor must have a body similar to the body of the speaking actor who played Alcestis, but the point of similarity is that it is not identity. Thus, Admetus’ shift from seeing the woman as resembling Alcestis to recognizing her as Alcestis dramatizes the spectators’ dilemma.46 The audience has two options in this intriguing scene of recognition: first, to take the metatheatrical clue and see that Hercules brings a woman who resembles Alcestis, but is not Alcestis; second, to accept the theatrical convention, suspend disbelief and, not unlike Admetus, admit that Hercules brought Alcestis back to life. The end of the play creates a fascinating interplay between the real world of the theatrical performance and the fictional world of the performed play. We have the choice to opt for a rational interpretation of the play’s end (Hercules convinces Admetus to move on and marry another woman) or accept the supernatural truth of the myth (Hercules brings Alcestis back from the dead).
36In Ovid and Euripides, the audience are constantly confronted with different levels of truth, reality, and fiction. They are invited not only to separate the rational from the irrational, the past from the present, but also to combine them. This conceptual blending of myth and reality is not only fundamental to Euripides’ theatre and Ovid’s poetry but also defines the poetics of biofiction. In Metamorphoses 10-11, the tale of Orpheus’ life and the tales that Orpheus tells engage with Euripidean drama. By bridging the gap between the plot of Euripidean tragedies and Orpheus’ Euripidean life, Ovid gives us a metabiographical perspective on the production of biofiction.
- 47 For the Lives of Euripides, see Scullion (2003); Hanink (2008); Lefkowitz (2012:113-31); Tyrrell (2 (...)
37But there is more to it: I argue that Ovid is aware of the tradition of the Lives of Euripides in his version of the myth of Orpheus.47 The biographical tradition of Euripides’ life draws a direct link between his Hippolytus and his alleged misogyny (Genos III.2):
αὐστηρὸς ἐφαίνετο καὶ μισόγελως καὶ μισογύνης… λέγουσι δὲ αὐτὸν γήμαντα τὴν Μνησιλόχου θυγατέρα Χοιρίλην καὶ νοήσαντα τὴν ἀκολασίαν αὐτῆς γράψαι πρῶτον τὸ δρᾶμα τὸν Ἱππόλυτον, ἐν ὧι τὴν ἀναισχυντίαν θριαμβεύει τῶν γυναικῶν, ἔπειτα δὲ αὐτὴν ἀποπέμψασθαι….ἐπιγῆμαι δὲ αὐτὸν δευτέραν, ἣν εὐρὼν ἀκολαστοτέραν προχειροτέρως εἰς τὴν κατὰ τῶν γυναικῶν βλασφημίαν ἐθρασύνετο. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἐβουλήθησαν αὐτὸν κτεῖναι εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ σπήλαιον, ἐν ὧι γράφων διετέλει.
He seemed bitter as well as laughter-hating and misogynistic… They say that, after marrying Choirile the daughter of Mnesilochus, when he realized that she was licentious, he first wrote the play Hippolytus, in which he proclaims the impudence of women, and then divorced her… They say that he married a second woman, and when he discovered that she was even more licentious than the first he readily became bolder in his slander of women. The women wanted to kill him, going into the cave in which he spent his time writing. (trans. from ‘Living Poets’ online.)
- 48 As Lefkowitz (2012:122) notes: ‘The idea that Euripides hated women and that women wanted to kill h (...)
38The tradition of Euripides’ misogyny is at least as old as Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae and most likely inspired by this play.48 In Aristophanes’ comedy, the women conspire to kill Euripides for slandering them. This play is not only a source of a key element in the tradition of Euripides’ Lives but is also composed in accordance with the poetics of biofiction. The Thesmophoriazusae is built on the plots of several of Euripides’ tragedies (the Telephus, Bacchae, and Andromeda). Thus, Aristophanes construes the life of Euripides as a parody of his tragedies, and this is exactly how the Lives of ancient poets were created.
39The biofictional creations of Euripides’ Lives correspond to the life and work of Ovid’s Orpheus. The bard denounces female perversion, because of his traumatic experience with marriage. His tales reflect his life. Pygmalion, for instance, is disgusted with the many vices which nature had given the female mind (offensus uitiis, quae plurima menti / femineae natura dedit, Met. 10.244-5). The relative clause looks like Orpheus’ addition, an endorsement of Pygmalion’s misogyny. The link between Orpheus’ and Pygmalion’s misogyny further reflects the biofictional narratives of Euripides’ life. In both cases, the production of allegedly misogynistic poetry enrages married women. In the Lives of Euripides, the women try to kill the poet while he is composing his poems. In the case of Orpheus, the women attack and kill him while he is singing his songs.
40The deaths of Orpheus and Euripides are based on the deaths of mythical heroes: Pentheus from the Bacchae or Actaeon. Interestingly, the Suda gives a version in which Euripides is dismembered by women on his way to a lover (Suda, s.v. Euripides 4):
οἱ δὲ ἱστόρησαν οὐχ ὑπὸ κυνῶν ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ γυναικῶν νύκτωρ διασπασθῆναι πορευόμενον ἀωρὶ πρὸς Κρατερὸν τον ἐρώμενον Ἀρχελάου (καὶ γὰρ σχεῖν αὐτὸν καὶ <περιπαθῶς> περὶ τοὺς τοιούτους ἔρωτας)
Others say that it was not by hounds but by women that he was torn apart at night as he was going at a late hour to see Craterus, Archelaus’ boy-love (for he was, they say, <passionately> disposed toward this kind of love) (trans. Kovacs 1994)
41Women replace the dogs that, in a better-known tradition, killed Euripides. This replacement is intriguing, given that κύων (‘bitch’) can be a sexist slur for shameless women. What is more, the link between hounds and women features prominently in the Bacchae. Agave calls the bacchants ‘coursing hounds’ (δρομάδες κύνες, Bacchae 731) and the parallel between the deaths of Actaeon and Pentheus (Bacchae 1290-1; cf. Ovid, Met. 3.721-2) suggests a correspondence between mad dogs and maenads. From that perspective, the death of Euripides in the biographical tradition is inspired by his Bacchae. But the Suda attests an intriguing detail. Euripides was torn apart by women on his way to a boyfriend. If we take this into account, the death of Euripides is even more similar to the fate of Orpheus. Both poets were in love with boys, and both were lynched by women.
- 49 See Paschalis (2015:145-50). The parallel between Orpheus and Pentheus may actually be suggested in (...)
42Ovid draws a link between the deaths of Orpheus and Pentheus, reworking both Euripides’ Bacchae and his own version of Pentheus’ sparagmos in Metamorphoses 3.49 But he further draws links between the deaths of Orpheus and Euripides. Ovid compares the enraged women with a pack of dogs, thus recalling the better-known tradition of Euripides’ death (11.23-7):
inde cruentatis uertuntur in Orphea dextris
et coeunt ut aues, si quando luce uagantem
noctis auem cernunt, structoque utrimque theatro
ceu matutina ceruus periturus harena
praeda canum est
then the women turned bloody hands against Orpheus and flocked around like birds when in the day they see the bird of night wandering in the daylight; and as when in the amphitheatre in the early morning of the spectacle the doomed stag in the arena is the prey of dogs. (Loeb translation modified)
- 50 On the death of Actaeon as a uenatio in Metamorphoses 3, see Feldherr (1997).
- 51 On the death of Euripides and Pentheus, see Lefkowitz (2012:118-22).
43The simile here is not only a window to Roman reality (the uenationes in the amphitheatre in this case) and a reference to Ovid’s version of the death of Actaeon,50 but also a window to a biofictional tradition that blends the myth of Pentheus and Actaeon with the death of Euripides.51 Dogs and enraged women converge by means of a simile, recalling Euripides’ Bacchae and versions of Euripides’ death from the biographical tradition.
- 52 On Ovid’s intertextual engagement with Hermesianax in Tristia 1.6, see Hinds (1999).
44There is no doubt that Ovid was aware of these biofictional narratives. Euripides’ misogyny as a motivation for women to kill him is as old as Aristophanes. And the Hellenistic poet Hermesianax mentions in his biofictional poetry (Leontion 61-8) Euripides’ misogyny as well as his passion for Archelaus’ housekeeper, whom the poet pursued till he was killed by grim hounds.52 Ovid clearly knew the story of dogs killing Euripides, since he mentions it in the Ibis (595-6):
utque cothurnatum uatem tutela Dianae,
dilaniet uigilum te quoque turba canum
And just as Diana’s guard tore apart the tragic bard, may a pack of watchful dogs also tear you apart.
- 53 Salvatori (forthcoming) argues that many examples from the Ibis would better describe Ovid than his (...)
45Ovid curses Ibis to die the gruesome death of Euripides. It is significant that the death of Hippolytus was mentioned before the death of Euripides (Ibis 577-8). Besides the obvious reference to the biographical tradition, Ovid’s curses recall the curse of Theseus in the Hippolytus; the exiled poet hopes that his words would be as powerful as Theseus’s injurious speech. Importantly, the deaths of the poet’s character (Hippolytus) and of the poet himself (Euripides) are seamlessly integrated into Ovid’s catalogue of curses. Myth and history merge together in biographical traditions. The reference to Diana in the passage quoted above further implies the similarities between the deaths of Euripides and Actaeon– and the myth of Diana and Actaeon is also part of Ovid’s dizzying catalogue (Ibis 479). Interestingly, the curse that Ovid hurls at Ibis would more appropriately describe himself.53 Elsewhere in his poetry, he compares his fate with Actaeon’s death (Tristia 2.103-10). And Euripides, who died in self-imposed exile, is not only a bard (uates) like Ovid, but also a major influence in Ovid’s works. Ovid’s curses construe Ibis as an uncanny reflection of the exiled poet.
- 54 See, for instance, Assaël (2004); (2016); Bernabé (2016); Plichon (2016).
- 55 Cf. Plichon (2016:293) ‘He [i.e. Euripides] uses the stage to examine the relationship between life (...)
- 56 The servant describes Alcestis as both dead and alive (Alcestis 141). For Euripides’ Alcestis as a (...)
46In the Ibis, the death of Orpheus (599-600) is mentioned one couplet after the death of Euripides. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid stages interauthorial encounters between Orpheus, Euripides, and himself. The parallel lives and deaths of Orpheus and Euripides may not be an Ovidian innovation. Orpheus appears as an exemplum in the Alcestis, the Bacchae, and the Hippolytus, while the tradition of Euripides’ death is inspired by the deaths of Pentheus and Hippolytus. Legendary bard and tragic poet met a similar death, similarly inspired by Greek myth and tragedy. Recent scholarship has also explored the fundamental role of Orpheus and Orphism in Euripidean tragedy.54 In Euripides, the blurred and permeable boundaries between life and death, a core aspect of Orphic mysteries, acquire a powerful theatricality.55 Like Orphism, theatre brings dead heroes back to life. Like Alcestis, the characters on the stage are and are not alive;56 living actors lend their bodies to resurrect heroes from a bygone era. Thus, the parallel lives of Orpheus and Euripides revolve around the close connections between Greek tragedy and mystery cults.
- 57 In view of this version, Orpheus’ ritual exclusion of daughters and parents in Ovid (Met. 10.300) t (...)
- 58 Scullion (2003) argues that Euripides’ exile in Macedonia is fiction. Fitton Brown (1985) argued th (...)
- 59 Gazis (forthcoming) argues that this story is inspired by Euripides’ Hecuba.
47Geography further supports a link between the deaths of Orpheus and Euripides. Conon (FGrH 26 F1 XLV=Photios, Bibliotheca 186.45), who lived in the Augustan age, reports that Orpheus ruled in Macedonia and Thrace. According to Conon, Macedonian and Thracian women killed him, because he did not give them a part in his secret rites or because he came to hate all the female race.57 According to Pausanias, ‘the Macedonians who dwell in the district below Mount Pieria and the city of Dion say that it was here that Orpheus met his end at the hands of the women’ (9.30.7; Loeb translation modified). There is a tradition of Orpheus dying in Macedonia, the place of Euripides’ death and exile.58 In Euripides’ Lives, Euripides ends up in the court of King Archelaus of Macedon. In one version, a Thracian town in Macedonia (Vita Eur. I.42-53) is linked with Euripides’ death. The story goes that the Thracians of this town sacrificed a dog (in accordance with their customs) and Archelaus fined them. Euripides convinced the king to waive the fine but paid with his life for his intervention: the dogs that killed the poet were the descendants of the sacrificed dog.59 Orpheus’ association with Macedonia is as peculiar as the mysterious Thracian town in the vita of Euripides. The combination of Thracian and Macedonian elements suggests a geographical link between the deaths of Orpheus and Euripides.
- 60 See Hollis (2007:33-4): ‘The indebtedness of Ovid, Met. 10.298 ff. to Cinna’s Smyrna would be overw (...)
48Euripides is not the only poet Ovid uses to explore the poetics of biofiction. The Roman poet Cinna is another one. There is little doubt that Cinna’s epyllion Zmyrna [fr. 6–8 Courtney = 7-10 Hollis 2007 (see pp. 29-35)] was one of the most important sources for Ovid’s Myrrha, a myth that features prominently in Orpheus’ embedded narrative (Metamorphoses 10.298-514). Unfortunately, only three lines and a word survive from Cinna’s much-celebrated poem. The fragments are scanty, but Hollis still managed to draw some specific links between Cinna’s Zmyrna and Ovid’s Myrrha.60 This is all we can do with Cinna’s influential but non-extant text. But we can do more with Cinna’s presence in Ovid’s narrative, if we consider not only Cinna’s work, but also his life– or actually his death. The poet Helvius Cinna was lynched by the Roman mob at Julius Caesar’s funeral, because he was mistaken for Caesar’s enemy Cornelius Cinna. The most important source of this story is Ovid’s Ibis (539-40):
conditor ut tardae, laesus cognomine, Myrrhae,
urbis in innumeris inueniare locis.
And like the author of tardy Myrrha, whose surname wrought him harm, may you be found in countless parts of the city.
- 61 See Tissol (1997:53): ‘That insubstantial names should be able to act violently upon a living being (...)
49Once more, Ovid curses Ibis to die like a poet (Cinna) who has more similarities with Ovid than his enemy. Cinna’s Zmyrna, after all, was a model for Ovid’s Myrrha. While the historical accuracy of Cinna’s cruel killing may be debated, the death of Cinna clearly belongs to ancient traditions of the Lives of poets; an extraordinary poet meets an extraordinary death. The story further aligns with important aspects of Ovid’s poetics of transformation. More specifically, the idea that a name has the power to tear someone to pieces (cf. cognomine laesus) is a distinctly Ovidian concept. Althaea, for instance, is torn apart by two different names (Met. 8.463-4 pugnant materque sororque / et diuersa trahunt unum duo nomina pectus ‘Mother and sister strove in her, and the two names tore one heart this way and that’).61 In the last tale of Metamorphoses 7, Procris fears the empty name aura and this empty fear for an insubstantial name leads to her death, when her husband erroneously thinks that she is a wild animal. Names can be misunderstood and the consequences of such misunderstandings can be lethal. The place of the story of Cinna’s death in history books may be unclear, but it should be clear that it can be easily read as a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
- 62 A post-exilic reading of the Metamorphoses implies a link between Ovid and Teiresias. For important (...)
50The tale also belongs to the tragic stage. Cinna’s death involves a scene of misrecognition and a sparagmos, trademarks of Euripides’ theatre and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid curses Ibis to die like Pentheus (cf. in innumeris inueniare locis for Ibis with Met. 3.522 mille lacer spargere locis ‘mangled you will be scattered in a thousand places’ for Pentheus). The allusion to Metamorphoses 3.522 is significant, because these are the words that the prophet (uates) Teiresias utters in an accurate prediction of Pentheus’ fate. Thus, in the Ibis, Ovid casts his curse as a powerful speech act, not unlike the accurate prophecies of Teiresias. The exiled poet identifies with a powerful prophet who was unjustly punished.62 We may then come back to Cinna via this intertextual thread, a poet who was unjustly killed by fanatical supporters of Augustus’ father. Ovid curses Ibis to be killed not only gruesomely but also unfairly, so that he may feel in full the pain of Ovid’s unjust and disproportionate punishment.
51While Ovid’s comparisons of his relegation with tragic scenes of dismemberments (e.g. Actaeon) may be over the top, the similarities between the tragic deaths of Cinna and Orpheus are more compelling. The authors of Myrrha, Cinna in real life and Orpheus in Ovid’s myth, are cruelly and unjustly torn apart by a mob. Thus, Ovid stages a multilayered interauthorial encounter in his version of the death of Orpheus. This is how the exiled poet is initiated into a dead poets society, prominent members of which are Orpheus, Euripides, and Cinna, all outstanding poets who were unjustly punished.
- 63 ‘Here there is a hint that Ovid’s poetic soul will be reincarnated in the bodies of his readers.’ H (...)
52Epic poetry traditionally suppresses subjectivity, but this is hardly the case in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The transformations of Ovid the narrator are a fundamental part of the work. The proem (1.1-4) comments on Ovid’s career and his metamorphosis from an elegiac to an epic poet and also defines the poem’s trajectory from the beginning of the world to Ovid’s times (ad mea…tempora 1.4), from the universal to the personal. The final word of Ovid’s epic is an emphatic first person uiuam (‘I shall live’). Ovid’s life is the beginning and the end. But readers will revive Ovid by reading his poetry (Metamorphoses 15.878 ore legar populi).63 Thus, the reception of Ovid’s work guarantees life after death. While these are well-known aspects of Ovid’s poetry, this article explored the identification of work and life in Ovid from a new perspective, approaching the topic from the tradition of the poets’ Lives. Ovid the poet is the main hero of the Metamorphoses; in my view, it is not accurate to say that the Metamorphoses lacks a main hero. The epic hero is ‘Ovid’, an autofictional subject in line with ancient biographical traditions that construe poets in the image of legendary heroes.
- 64 On reincarnation and metempsychosis in the epilogue to the Metamorphoses as well as to Ovid’s inter (...)
53The Metamorphoses ends with a densely intertextual and distinctly autobiographical epilogue (15.871-9), which casts ‘Ovid’ as a reincarnation of previous poets (Ennius, himself a reincarnated Homer, Horace, and Cicero).64 Thus, the autofictional subject ‘Ovid’ becomes the product of multiple layers of Lives in reception, a biographical tradition that, not unlike Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is a bridge between myth and reality. Biographical and autofictional subjects in the Metamorphoses are made up of layers of previous biographies in dialogue with the multiple other Lives they succeed and subsume (cf. Goldschmidt 2019:22). Thus, ‘Ovid’ comes to life as a palimpsest of mythological heroes and historical poets.
54My case study in this article was Orpheus, because Ovid’s treatment of the myth exemplifies key aspects of biofiction and metabiography. Saunders (2015:326) points out that metabiographies formally combine ontologies that are traditionally kept separate, a compelling idea that lies at the heart of Ovid’s poetry. Ovid employs the power of biofiction to merge together the myths of Hippolytus, Pentheus, Orpheus, Euripides, Cinna, and ultimately the story of his life. This combination of separate ontologies brings the dead back to life or at least blurs the boundaries between life and death. As Ní Dhúill (2012:280-1) points out, the encounter with a dead or otherwise absent subject is a fundamental biographical promise. But, like the woman Hercules brings on stage at the end of the Alcestis, biography brings back not a speaking self, but a silent or absent other. Like Orpheus, biofiction conjures up discursive traces of absent subjects (cf. Ní Dhúill 2012:286), striving to bridge the gap between similarity and identity, life and death. The bard’s desire to bring Eurydice back to life meets the readers’ desire to revive Ovid as they read his work. In myth and religion, Orpheus is associated with the power to animate the inanimate. Ovid, as I argue in this article, turns this important aspect of mythological narratives and religious beliefs about Orpheus into a mise en abyme of biofictional creations.
- 65 Goldschmidt (2025) is important. She notes: ‘But while the thorough‑going infiltration of the ficti (...)
55Biofiction as the revival of a dead author is not a fancy argument of modern literary theory but is at least as old as Aristophanes’ Frogs.65 In this comedy, Dionysus’ desire for the deceased Euripides takes him to the Underworld. The god wants to bring the dead poet back to life. In fact, what brings Euripides and Aeschylus back to life is Aristophanes’ comedy, in which the deceased poets appear on stage and fiercely compete to control the reception of their works and the narratives about their lives. Dionysus is closely associated both with katabasis (‘descent to the underworld’) and the theatre. These are not two separate things: the theatre of Dionysus engineers a religious and performative revival of dead heroes and poets. The god resurrects Euripides in his theatre and by means of theatre. The performance of biofiction, or in Aristophanes’ Frogs we may more accurately call it thanatofiction, breathes life into dead poets. Thus, biofiction as the revival of late authors is intricately enmeshed with ancient myth and religion. We need to read Ovid’s engagement with the poetics of biofiction against this background. The revival of Euripides in Ovid is part of an Orphic song that has the power to resurrect the dead. Not unlike Dionysus in the Frogs, Ovid’s Orpheus tries to bring Euripides back to life by means of an art closely related to mystery cults.
56In Ovid, different narrative and ontological layers are conceptually blended. The myth of Pygmalion reflects the life of Orpheus and the plots of Euripides’ Alcestis and Hippolytus, while the death of the bard is a version of Euripides’ tragedies but also of Euripides’ tragic death and Ovid’s poetry and exile. What is more, the contents of the tales with their emphasis on bringing the dead back to life and animating the inanimate can be interpreted as a metapoetic comment on biofiction. The poets’ identification with their work, a central aspect of ancient biographical traditions, guarantees that poets live as long as their works are read or performed. But this identification is neither straightforward nor unproblematic. Like Euripides’ Alcestis or Ovid’s Pygmalion, biofictional narratives invite the readers to see identity in otherness, life in art, truth in illusion. Yet, in the end, it may not be easy to unite the immaterial tales of a poet’s life with the body of an absent author. The desire for the author is always there but is endlessly deferred and never fully fulfilled.