Plautinisches im Ovid: The Amphitruo and the Metamorphoses

M. Hanses

Plautinisches im Ovid:The Amphitruo and the Metamorphoses*

Abstract: Not unlike Plautus’ tragicomic Amphitruo, Ovid’s Metamorphoses inter-sperses genuinely funny passages with unsettling hints at the pains its charac-ters have to endure for the sake of our entertainment. In a sampling of passagesranging from the epic’s Birth–of–Hercules episode to its programmatic proem, Iwill show how Ovid alludes to that original tragicomoedia to achieve this effect.Even as he exploits Plautine humour for comic relief, Ovid recreates the play’stension between comic and tragic elements. The true bleakness of his worldviewcomes into focus if we realise that where his Plautine model (in spite of all dark-ness) preferred a last–minute happy ending, Ovid’s resolutions tend to embracetragedy more fully.

Keywords: Ovid, Plautus, Amphitryon, Alcmene, Mercury, reception, epic, com-edy, tragicomedy, performance, genre

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is tragicomic. As regards genre affiliation, this label maybe misleading, but it does provide an apt descriptive of the epic’s mood. Senecais the earliest critic on record to make this observation. At Q Nat. 3.27.13–4, hemarvels at the grandeur (magnitudo) of Ovid’s oeuvre even as he complainsabout the ‘childish absurdities’ (pueriles ineptiae) that contaminate it.¹ Andyet, Ovidian scholars have not paid much attention to the Metamorphoses’ en-gagement with the first and only surviving work of ancient literature to identify

* This paper grew out of a presentation at the 106th CAMWS Annual Meeting in Oklahoma City,OK (2010). I am deeply grateful for the encouragement and productive feedback I received thenand since from Alessandro Barchiesi, Caleb Dance, Laurel Fulkerson, Julia Hejduk, Ariana Traill,Colin Webster, Gareth Williams, and Evangelos Karakasis, who kindly agreed to include thispiece in the present volume. My warmest and special thanks go to Antony Augoustakis andKatharina Volk, who tirelessly commented on drafts and supported this project from start tofinish. The text of Plautus’ plays is taken from Wolfgang de Melo’s Loeb editions. Ovid’s Meta-morphoses is cited as presented in William S. Anderson’s commentaries (1972 and 1997). Quo-tations of other texts follow the standard editions, usually the OCT or the Teubner. All trans-lations from ancient languages are my own. Compare Anderson 1997, 11–2; Edmunds 2001, 56. A sustained reading of the Metamorphoses’oscillations between the funny and the serious can be found in Tissol 1997.

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itself as a tragicomedy, that is, Plautus’ Amphitruo.² The very term tragicomoediastems from the play’s prologue (Plaut. Amph. 59, 63), and while darker under-tones are far from uncommon in Plautine drama, this palliata takes its twin af-filiation with both comedy and tragedy more seriously than most.³ On the onehand, Jupiter and Mercury impersonate Amphitryon and his slave Sosia togreat comic effect. After fathering Hercules with the Theban general’s already ex-pectant wife, Jupiter continues to take sexual advantage of an unsuspecting andvisibly pregnant Alcmene, but leaves the real husband to deal with the after-math. Much Plautine hilarity and erotic innuendo ensues amid confused identi-ties. To reassure the audience of a fortunate outcome, Mercury promises a happyending early on (474–5, 493–5), and Jupiter himself reaffirms the play’s comicside at Amph. 868. Accordingly, Alcmene delivers the twins speedily and pain-lessly, and in the final lines, the father of the gods resolves all remaining tensionex machina (1131–45).Yet on the other hand, he does so as an enraged Amphitry-on is on the brink of slaying every member of his household, and throughout theplay, Plautus has his duped mortals express their distress in ways that leave abitter aftertaste. In light of an at times quite elevated style, particularly on Alc-mene’s part, scholars have in fact suggested that the playwright may here havebeen adapting a Greek tragedy (like her Euripidean name play) for the Romancomic stage.⁴

Recent examinations of drama in the Metemorphoses include Gildenhard and Zissos 1999 ontragedy; Wiseman 2002 on tragedy, praetexta, togata, and particularly mime; Lada–Richards2013 on pantomime, all with bibliography. The most obvious candidate for comparison is the POW drama Captivi, where the prologuespeaker explicitly points out the seriousness of the subject matter (55–8). Yet unlike in theAmphitruo, ‘true’ tragedy is here banished off stage (nam hoc paene iniquom est, comico choragio/ conari desubito agere nos tragoediam, ‘because this would almost be unfair, to suddenly try tostage a tragedy in our comic get–up,’ 61–2). To mention just two additional, memorably sinisterscenes: the pimp Ballio quite shockingly abuses his slaves and prostitutes in the Pseudolus (133–229), and a canticum in the Mercator bewails the double standards that contribute to femaleoppression (817–29). Of course, happy endings that reaffirm social norms are a generic requi-rement in Roman comedy, but in Plautus, they are sometimes reduced to an afterthought;compare, e.g., Arnott 1975, 36–7; Tatum 1983, 3–5; Lefèvre 1995 on the Mercator; and Andrews2004 on the Casina. For tragic potential not just in Plautus, but also in Terence, see, e.g., Hunter1985, 114–36; Sharrock 2013, 55–61; and Hanses 2013. E.g.: Stewart 1958; Stärk 1982; Lefèvre 1982, esp. 26–33; de Melo 2011, 6–7; Pelliccia 2010/11.For bibliography on the wide range of the Amphitruo’s possible sources (from Rhinthon’sPhlyakes via Middle Comedy or Plato comicus to 5th–century tragedies), see the historiaequaestionis at Lefèvre 1982, 6–8, 21 and Christenson 2000, 45–55. Past scholarly testimonies toAlcmene’s ‘tragic’ quality preface Jane Phillips’ discussion of the character’s humorous side(1984/85, 121). Segal 1987, 171–91 rightly cautions against overlooking the Amphitruo’s humour

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The Metamorphoses shares this interest in physical transformations, illicitsex, and ruthlessly self–indulgent gods, and like the Amphitruo, the epic oscil-lates between compassion and mockery as it investigates questions of selfhoodand identity. In the following pages, I posit that this similarity of content andpresentation is no accidental parallel. Rather, Ovid deliberately employs allu-sions to the Amphitruo to conjure up the comic cosmos’ burlesque qualities ashe sets the tone both for the Metamorphoses as a whole and for some of its con-stituent episodes.⁵ Yet in the process, he also makes clear that his world—whilecertainly funny—is grimmer than Plautus’. Roman theatregoers could indeedcatch glimpses of true tragedy amid Plautine frivolities. Yet Ovid moves this trag-ic element front and centre as he further highlights the sufferings his charactersundergo at the hands of the immortals.

This interpretation emerges from an ongoing trend to re–examine the recep-tion of Plautus in Latin literature of the Republic and Empire. It has been welldocumented that long after the death of Plautus and Terence, the palliata re-mained an intertext to be reckoned with. In the first century B.C.E., amid aboom in Plautine research that made scripts available for private perusal,Varro established the definitive canon of the playwright’s ‘authentic’ dramas(see, e.g., Gell. 3.3).⁶ At least two of the scholar’s acquaintances, Caesar and Cic-ero, wrote poems on the life of Terence (Suet. Vita Ter. 7), and the latter alludedto palliata stock types throughout his oratorical career.⁷ In turn, Catullus’ per-sona in the Lesbia poems constitutes a variation on the Plautine adulescens inlove,⁸ whom Lucretius has to acknowledge even as he voices his disapproval.⁹

amid its tragic resonances. Schmidt 2003 delivers a careful and balanced reading of the play’salternations between tragic and comic effects; he also reports on earlier, similar approaches tothe subject (esp. 98–9, n. 77). Marshall 2006, 192 describes the debate’s current status quo. Onthe Amphitruo’s ‘two’ endings—first several hints at tragedy, then a comic resolution—see alsoSharrock 2009, 255, 288–9. Her study includes the suggestion that, considering the play’s likelystaging at a religious festival, it may have constituted a ‘hymn’ to Hercules (60–3, with furtherbibliography). For proof that Plautus at least knew (of) Euripides’ Alcmene, see Rud. 83–7. For this effect, compare Thomas 1986, 177–82. See Goldberg 2005, esp. 52–86. I do not, however, agree that the wide(r)–spread distributionof Plautine scripts coincided with a marginalisation of stage performance (see below). On the Pro Caelio’s famous palliata–based passages, see Geffcken 1973; Leigh 2004. Cicerobrings up New Comic stock types as early as Rosc. Am. 46 and in speeches as vicious as InPisonem, on which see Damon 1997, esp. 238–44; Hughes 1992 and 1998. Hughes 1997 discussesmany other instances of comic allusion in Cicero. Recent work includes Goldberg 2005, 113; Uden 2006; O’Bryhim 2007, all with bibliography. For discussions of Plautine and Terentian debts throughout book four of the De rerum natura,see Rosivach 1980 on Lucr. 4.1123–40, and Brown 1987, 101–43 along with his detailed com-mentary on Lucretius’ rejection of the adulescens amans. On the connection between the ex-

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The Epicurean poet also provides a memorable account of a Roman comedy inperformance uniting audience members of all social strata in laughter (corrident,4.83).¹⁰ Perhaps more importantly, elegy—a genre well known to have left astrong impression on the Metamorphoses—is heavily indebted to the palliata’scharacter constellations.¹¹ In Amores 1.15, Ovid himself testifies to New Comedy’simmortality,¹² noting that its continued influence parallels that of epic or trage-dy.

Perhaps we might still be tempted to think that Roman Imperial authorswould have solely read the ‘Menandrian’ originals, rather than both read andseen its Latin adaptations. Since we are going to focus on some details of stag-ing, it is therefore important to stress that during the early Principate, actors stilldonned masks and starred in re–performances of Plautine classics.¹³ Suetoniusattests that Augustus himself saw to it that the greats of Latin comedy were in-cluded in dramatic festivals;¹⁴ Horace in fact complains that too many eager fans

clusus amator ridiculed by Lucretius (4.1177) and the paraclausithyron scene in Plautus’ Curculio,see Goldberg 2005, 97–9. Lucretius’main concern in the passage is with the light effects produced by the uela coveringthe performance space. On the play’s likely nature, see Marshall 2006, 45–6. Explicit references to Menander are at Prop. 2.6, 3.21, 4.5 and Ov. Am. 1.15.17–8. See also n.12, as well as James 1997 (esp. the bibliography assembled at 63, n. 12) and 2012; and nowHerrmann 2011. For discussions of elegiac elements in the Metamorphoses, cf. Knox 1986, 1–26;Holzberg 1997, 123–6; and the bibliography assembled at Volk 2010, 134, 137–8. Ov. Am. 1.15.17– 18: dum fallax seruus, durus pater, improba lena / uiuent et meretrix blanda,Menandros erit (‘as long as his deceitful slave, his harsh father, his wicked madam, and hisflattering prostitute will survive, Menander too will live’). For my choice of possessive adjectivesin the translation, compare McKeown 1989, 402–3. See also nn. 16 and 17. Roman comic actors may initially have performed Plautine plays unmasked, but it was at thelatest by the time of the great 2nd/1st–century comoedus Q. Roscius Gallus that this was no longerthe case. See the evidence assembled at Beare 1964, 303–9 and the recent discussion of masksin Roman comedy at Marshall 2006, 126–58. Suet. Aug. 89.1: sed plane poematum quoque non imperitus, delectabatur etiam comoediaueteri et saepe eam exhibuit spectaculis publicis (‘yet [Augustus] was clearly also a connoisseur ofpoetry, he even took delight in Old Comedy and often staged it at public festivals’). Some havetaken comoedia uetus to refer to Greek comedy, others think Suetonius means its Romanadaptations (e.g., Fantham 1984, 303–4). I would like to note that already the Casina prologue,written on the occasion of a later re–performance of the play, conceives of Plautine drama asueteres fabulas (6, 8; also 13: antiquam comoediam) far superior to supposedly worthless nouaecomoediae (9). Compare also Ter. Eun. 25: Plauti ueterem fabulam. Similarly, the term denoting arevived New Comedy in the Greek East is παλαιά (see, e.g., Jones 1993, 43). It is thereforecertainly possible to take Suetonius’ words as referring to performances of classic palliatae. Oncontinued stagings in general, cf. also Duckworth 1952, 68–71; Shero 1956; Christenson 2000, 71and n. 20.

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of Plautus, Terence, and Caecilius cram Rome’s theatres and that he has to keepwatching ‘reruns’;¹⁵ and Ovid himself speaks of Menander in language suggest-ing that it is precisely his stock types’ continued presence on the Roman stagethat ensures the survival of their ‘sources.’¹⁶ Demonstrating a similar interestin palliata performances, Ovid’s contemporary Manilius describes the astrologi-cal influences that ‘will lead a man to compose comic spectacles for the joyfulgames’ (comica componet laetis spectacula ludis, 5.470–6, at 471) like Menanderused to before him.¹⁷ Near the end of the first century C.E., Quintilian still quite

Hor. Epist. 2.1.60–2: hos [= Plautum, Caecilium, Terentium et al.] ediscit et hos arto stipatatheatro / spectat Roma potens; habet hos numeratque poetas / ad nostrum tempus Liui scriptorisab aeuo (‘powerful Rome memorizes these playwrights [= Plautus, Caecilius, Terence, andothers] and gazes at them crowded into a packed theater; she holds them dear and lists them upto our own day from the time of the writer Livius [Andronicus]’). Pace Goldberg 2005, 58–60,who reads these lines differently. Horace’s personal endorsement of Plautus is nowhere near asringing as his contemporaries’, cf. Hor. Ars P. 54–5, 270–4; Epist. 2.1.170–6. On his vocal dislikeof humorous classics that continue to be restaged (iterum atque iterum spectanda theatris), seeSat. 1.10.37–9. Am. 1.15.17– 18 (see n. 12). Fantham 1984, 302–3 observes that both this passage and Ma-nilius 5.470–6 refer to comedic stock types in a way that recalls Roman plays much more than(what we know of) their Greek sources. They ultimately hark back to the Latin comic poets’ owndescription of their genre of choice, compare Ter. Eun. 35–40: quod si personis isdem huic uti nonlicet, / qui magis licet currentem seruom scribere, / bonas matronas facere, meretrices malas, /parasitum edacem, gloriosum militem, / puerum supponi, falli per seruom senem, / amare, odisse,suspicari? (‘If he is not allowed to use the same characters [as previous playwrights], then how isit more permissible to write of a running slave, to make matrons good and prostitutes bad, theparasite hungry, the soldier a braggart, have a child be substituted and the old man be trickedby a slave, love, hate, or be suspicious?’) At Sat. 1.10.40–2, Horace praises a contemporarypalliata playwright in similar words: arguta meretrice potes Dauoque Chremeta / eludente senemcomis garrire libellos / unus viuorum, Fundani (‘you, Fundanius, are the only living being whocan chatter into existence charming little scripts [libellos, cf. Gowers 2012, 325] with a wittyprostitute and Davos tricking old-man Chremes’). See also n. 17. The passage’s wording emphasises the plays’ staging (spectacula) at the Roman ludi, and indoing so in fact makes use of the programmatic vocabulary (laetis…ludis) Latin comic charactersemploy to describe the plots they star in, on which see Segal 1987, 42–69; Leigh 2004, 324–26;Sharrock 2009, 9– 17 with bibliography. It culminates in high praise for Menander (474–6), but italso provides a list of stock types (ardentis iuuenes raptasque in amore puellas / elusosque senesagilisque per omnia seruos, ‘lovesick young men, girls raped out of love, tricked old men andslaves nimble through all of this,’ 472–3) that has more in common with Plautine trickster plotsthan with Greek ‘domestic comedy.’ On this assessment, see n. 16. For the seruus callidus asmarkedly ‘Roman,’ see n. 40. Perhaps Manilius’ thoughts on the man who will compose a play(componet, 471; compare Menander, who did: produxit, 474; ostendit … sacrauit, 476) can evenprovide a hint that new palliatae were still being written in his day. This seems possible in lightof the fact that Cicero’s famous defendant Archias seems to have toyed with the idea of writing a




matter–of–factly treats Terence’s Eunuchus as a staged script (11.3.182),¹⁸ and Sta-tius’ Achilleid relies strongly on both Greek and Roman comedy in performance.¹⁹

Within the comic repertoire, Plautus’ Amphitruo is renowned for its canticaand unique in its use of special effects like the thunderous divine epiphany thatprecedes the birth of Hercules. Considering the Roman theatregoers’ ever–in-creasing appreciation for multimedia spectacle,²⁰ the play could therefore easilyhave been a popular favourite as Ovid was penning the Metamorphoses. Scholarshave also read its Jupiter/Amphitryon as a reflection on power–hungry indivi-duals and families who were on the rise at the time of its original composition.²¹

This theme would certainly have been relevant to Imperial audiences as well.And indeed, there seem to have been re–performances of this specific play atleast as late as the third century C.E.²²

Before we widen our perspective to this palliata’s role as a model for theepic’s overall ‘programme,’ we will begin by establishing the Amphitruo’s pres-ence in a more self–contained passage: Alcmene’s tale of the birth of Herculesat Metamorphoses 9.281–325. Ovid here evokes the Amphitruo amid alternativeversions of the Hercules myth to modulate the narrative’s tone and have his read-ers wonder at his own story’s eventual outcome. Ovid recreates the Amphitruo’stension between comic and tragic components by alluding both to its humourand to the human suffering the play’s characters enact. Yet where Plautus’ Jupi-ter permitted a last–minute ‘easy’ birth and reconciliation, Ovid extends Alc-mene’s birth pangs into a week–long ordeal, at the end of which the gods de-

Latin comedy (Caecilianam fabulam, Cic. Att. 1.16.15) in the late Republic. For the Principate, wehave Horace’s praise of his contemporary Fudanius’ stock–type humour at Sat. 1.10.40–2,quoted in n. 16 (see also Sat. 2.8, and the reference to comic writers of his own day, nostrumtempus, in n. 15). Later on, the younger Pliny would praise the ‘Menandrian’ comedies of hiscontemporary Vergilius Romanus, which ‘you should number among those of Plautus and Te-rence’ (scripsit comoedias Menandrum aliosque aetatis eiusdem aemulatus; licet has inter Plau-tinas Terentianasque numeres, Ep. 6.21.4). Compare Müller 2013, 374. As I myself have sought to show, Hanses, 2015. Another relevant treatment of Plautinecomedy and Latin Imperial epic is Hayden Pelliccia’s recent article 2010/11 on the commonancestry of Amph. 531 (non ego te hic lubens relinquo neque abeo aps te, ‘not willingly do I leaveyou here and go away from you’), Verg. Aen. 4.361 (Italiam non sponte sequor, ‘I do not pursueItaly of my own accord’), and 6.460 (inuitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi, ‘unwillingly, queen, did Idepart from your shore’). Compare most recently Manuwald 2011, 108–21 on ‘Revival Performances,’ with bibliogra-phy. On the play’s ‘Scipionic overtones,’ see Galinsky 1966, esp. 209–35; Hallett 1996 applies KarlGalinsky’s findings to the Casina. Arn. Adv. nat. 7.33 with Segal 1987, 171–91 on the Amphitruo’s enduring popularity.

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prive her of a beloved confidante. By prominently alluding to the Amphitruo, buthaving his story take a turn the play suggested, but did not realise, Ovid managesto foil his readers’ expectations to memorable emotional effect.

Three Births of Hercules

At the beginning of Metamorphoses 6, Ovid ever so briefly touches on Jupiter’smetamorphosis into Amphitryon. The story occurs in a short vignette as Arachneweaves it into her tapestry (110–2):

addidit, ut Satyri celatus imagine pulchram 110Iuppiter inplerit gemino Nycteïda fetu,Amphitryon fuerit, cum te, Tirynthia, cepit.

She added how Jupiter—concealed by the likeness of a satyr—filled Nyteis (= Antiope) upwith twin offspring, and how he was Amphitryon when he seized you, Tirynthia (= Alc-mene).

Perhaps even this concise glimpse at Alcmene and her plight could have broughtthe Amphitruo to the Ovidian reader’s mind. The passage condenses two similarmyths—a shape–shifting Jupiter causes pregnancies with twins—into a merethree lines. On account of this concision, it seems possible to have the languagethat technically speaks of Antiope inform our reading of Alcmene’s story as well.

Treating lines 6.110–2 as a unit, we discover Plautine echoes that go beyondthe obvious parallels of subject matter. For example, Ovid’s choice of metamor-phic vocabulary (celatus imagine, 6.110), while certainly not unique to this pas-sage, is reminiscent of Plautus’ preferred wording: his Mercury describes Jupi-ter’s transformation as in Amphitruonis uortit sese imaginem (‘he changedhimself into the likeness of Amphitryon,’ Amph. 121) and his own as ego seruisumpsi Sosiae mi imaginem (‘I assumed for myself the likeness of his slaveSosia,’ Amph. 124). The word imago used to describe metamorphosis recursthree more times in the Amphitruo,²³ and—as Niall Slater 2000, 187 has noted

Plaut. Amph. 141 (seruos, quoius ego hanc fero imaginem, Mercury: ‘the slave whose likeness Ibear’), 265 (quando imago est huius in me, certum est hominem eludere, Mercury: ‘since I bear hislikeness, it is easy to play tricks on the fellow’), and 458–9 (nam hic quidem omnem imaginemmeam…possidet. / uiuo fit quod numquam quisquam mortuo faciet mihi, Sosia: ‘For that guy bearsmy exact likeness.What no one will ever do for me when I am dead is happening to me while Iam still alive’). Lines 266, 441, 456, 600, and 614 use the term forma instead of imago, cf.Christenson 2000, 129. Schmidt 2003, 81, 92 highlights the use of imago as well and notes that itmay recall funereal wax masks, see also n. 31.




—it is this central term that first introduces the ‘theme of appearance and reality,so essential to the meaning of this play.’

To this similarity we can add that in the Amphitruo’s prologue, Plautus’ Mer-cury describes Jupiter’s seduction of Alcmene as usuram…eius corporis cepit sibi(‘he seized her body for his enjoyment,’ Amph. 108). Jupiter’s own words, deliv-ered in closing, pick up this wording in ring composition: primum omnium Alcu-menae usuram corporis / cepi (‘first of all, I seized Alcmene’s body for my pleas-ure,’ Amph. 1135–6). The most important word here is, of course, usuram,variations of which occur twice more in the play.²⁴ This, Ovid does not repeat.However, the verb capere too bears significance, in that the Plautine divinitiestwice more use it without the addition of usuram to refer to Jupiter’s rape ofAlcmene.²⁵ Ovid’s te cepit (Met. 6.112) could therefore have suggested to the read-er that, in a passage involving Jupiter and Alcmene, usuram needs to be sup-plied.

Much more importantly, both the passage’s emotional resonances and thevisuals it evokes could have reminded the Roman theatregoer of Plautus.WilliamS. Anderson, in discussing the tone of the relevant lines, notes that ‘Ovid’s effortto incline sympathy for [Alcmene] in the apostrophe is not unusual; Plautus’comedy accomplishes the same’ (1972, 166). The Plautine Alcmene in fact ach-ieves this emotional effect through a notably multimedia expression of her sor-rows: at Amph. 633–53, for example, she voices her distress in a famous musicalsolo to pipe accompaniment. Timothy Moore has recently demonstrated howeven this aria’s metre (Bacchiacs)—along with its structural separation fromthe ongoing comic plot—would ‘encourage spectators to receive the scene as se-rious rather than parodic.’²⁶ As regards this canticum’s visual side, the actor whoplayed Alcmene seems to have worn a body suit that made the advanced stage ofthe character’s pregnancy more than obvious. After all, the exaggerated size ofAlcmene’s belly, to which we will return below, is a theme of the Amphitruo.²⁷Ovid’s own inplerit gemino…fetu (Met. 6.611) specifically emphasises this visualside of the pregnancy by focusing on the women’s ‘filled–up’ state. Not insignif-

At Amph. 497–8 (Amphitruo subditiuos eccum exit foras / cum Alcumena, uxore usuraria,Mercury: ‘Behold, the fake Amphitryon is leaving the house with Alcmene, his pleasure wife’)and Amph. 980–1 (uolo deludi illunc, dum cum hac usuraria / uxore nunc mi morigero, Jupiter: ‘Iwant him to be distracted while I have my way with my pleasure wife’). Amph. 114: <cum> illa quacum uolt uoluptatem capit (‘he [= Jupiter] is having his way with theone he wants’); Amph. 472–3: adeo usque satietatem dum capiet pater / illius quam amat (‘…untilmy father [= Mercury’s father, Jupiter] has had enough of the one he loves’). Moore 2012, 280. See also n. 42. So first Phillips 1984/85.

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icantly, Plautus’ Amphitryon had also repeatedly described his wife as ‘filled up’(te pulchre plenam aspicio, ‘I see you nicely filled up,’ Amph. 681; corpus suomstupri compleuerit, ‘she filled her body with adultery,’ Amph. 1016).

Ovid’s brief description of the rape of Alcmene thus seems to be evoking vis-uals that are reminiscent of the Amphitruo’s performative side within an apostro-phe whose tone and vocabulary also recall the Plautine play. In this context, per-haps even the noun imago (celatus imagine, Met. 6.110) could take on theatricalconnotations and be seen as describing an actor’s mask²⁸—maybe this is how weare supposed to visualise the story’s inclusion in Arachne’s tapestry, where thedetail that Jupiter is impersonating other characters must somehow have beendetectable. And in fact, to a first–century audience,²⁹ this sense of imagowould have been in tune with the noun’s earlier usage in the Amphitruo. Afterall, the gods here envision their costumed impersonation of various mortals asa ‘play within a play.’³⁰ Accordingly, their tricks are repeatedly described as fa-cere histrioniam (‘to assume a role,’ Amph. 89–90, 151–2; compare also 86–7and 91–2). If Plautus’ characters perceive their deceits as self–consciously meta-theatrical ‘play acting,’ then such statements as sumpsi…imaginem (Amph. 124)may point to the masks the actors were in fact using to stage these masquerades.In support of this theory, we can adduce especially lines 458–9, where Sosiajokes that by assuming the slave’s likeness (imaginem…possidet), Mercury doeshim the same honour that freeborn Romans receive when their descendantswear their funereal wax masks.³¹

These allusions to Plautus in performance, visible in nuce at Met. 6.110–2,are more fully developed in Alcmene’s own account of the ensuing events inbook nine of the Metamorphoses (9.281–325).³² Here, the evocation of the Amphi-truo is more clearly marked, even as Ovid ultimately departs from the Plautineaccount. Plautus had Alcmene’s aptly–named slave Bromia recall how her mis-tress was delivered of twin sons in a matter of minutes and without any pain tothe sound of a thunder clap. She did so first in a canticum (Amph. 1061–71), thenin a more straightforward report that also includes the new–born Hercules’ fight

Gildenhard and Zissos 1999, 172–4 discuss a similar instance of imago recalling a theatricalmask. On the use of masks perhaps not in Plautus’ own day, but certainly in Ovid’s, see n. 13. Slater 2000, 181–202. Compare also Schmidt 2003 as paraphrased in n. 23, where I cite the relevant lines in full. While the gap between the two passages is significant, there may be a brief reminder thatmore Plautine allusion is forthcoming contained in the Philemon–and–Baucis episode ofMet. 8.611–724. Here, the two gods Jupiter and Mercury wander the earth together, and unre-cognised, much as they do in the Amphitruo, cf. Green 2003, 46–7.




against two giant snakes (Amph. 1088– 124). Addressing a pregnant Iole in an ac-count similarly reminiscent of a (tragic) messenger speech,³³ Ovid’s Alcmene re-members the event quite differently (Met. 9.281–96):

incipit Alcmene: faueant tibi numina saltemcorripiantque moras tum, cum matura uocabispraepositam timidis parientibus Ilithyiam,quam mihi difficilem Iunonis gratia fecit.namque laboriferi cum iam natalis adesset 285Herculis et decimum premeretur sidere signum,tendebat grauitas uterum mihi, quodque ferebam,tantum erat, ut posses auctorem dicere tectiponderis esse Iouem, nec iam tolerare laboresulterius poteram: quin nunc quoque frigidus artus, 290dum loquor, horror habet, parsque est meminisse doloris.septem ego per noctes, totidem cruciata diebus,fessa malis tendensque ad caelum bracchia magnoLucinam Nixasque pares clamore uocabam.illa quidem uenit, sed praecorrupta meumque 295quae donare caput Iunoni uellet iniquae.

Alcmene begins: ‘May the divinities favour you, at least, and may they cut short your con-tractions when—at the end of your pregnancy—you will call out to Ilithyia, who is entrustedwith the care for those who give birth in fear; Ilithyia, whom Juno’s ‘gratitude’ made fickletowards me. For when the birthday of labour–bearing Hercules was already near and thetenth zodiac sign was touched by the sun (= nine months had passed), the pregnancystretched out my stomach, and what I was bearing was so huge that you could easilytell that Jupiter was the creator of the load that was covered up inside me, and I couldnot bear the birth pangs any longer. Truly, even now cold terror seizes my limbs as I amtelling this, and it is part of the pain to remember it. Tortured through seven nights andjust as many days, tired from the pains and extending my arms to the great sky, I keptscreaming at the same time for Lucina and the goddesses of birth. Indeed, she came,but she had been corrupted and wanted to dedicate my head to hostile Juno.’

Lucina continues to delay the birth until Galanthis—one of Alcmene’s servantswho resembles, but is not identical to, Plautus’ Bromia—tricks her into allowingit. The girl tells Lucina that Hercules has already been born, so the goddess letsdown her guard, and Alcmene can actually deliver. To punish the servant forlaughing at this feat, the goddess then seizes her violently and transforms herinto a weasel. At this memory, Ovid’s Alcmene is reduced to tears (9.324–5).

Although a number of possible ‘sources’ for this episode have been identi-fied, Plautus has so far not played a role in its interpretation. That the reader

In Bromia’s case, the speech’s paratragic nature is discussed at Christenson 2000, 15, 304–5.

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is, however, expected to interpret the passage with, inter alia, Plautus’ Amphitruoin mind, is indicated by a number of unambiguous markers. First, we shouldturn to Alcmene’s exclamation that it is ‘part of the pain to remember it’ (parsqueest meminisse doloris, 9.291). Memory is a particularly frequent trope for intertex-tuality in Ovid’s works. His characters often ‘recall’ events as they were descri-bed by other poets.³⁴ If Alcmene, like many others of Ovid’s characters, ‘remem-bers’ an older version of her story, whose rendition is she supposed to have inmind?

The immediate answer is not Plautus. Rather, a remark in Antoninus Liber-alis’ Metamorphoses (29) suggests that Ovid’s account is modelled onNicander’s.³⁵ In Nicander, however, Galanthis at least receives post–transforma-tional honours from Hercules and the Thebans.³⁶ Ovid deprives her of these. Hisversion of the birth of Hercules, then, is slightly darker even than its Hellenisticpredecessor. As such, it is indeed quite different from the demigod’s painlessand speedy delivery in Plautus’ Amphitruo. Nor should this divergence fromthe Plautine plot surprise us in light of the greater sensitivity toward women’ssufferings evinced in the Augustan poet’s work.³⁷ What Iole seems to be listeningto, then, is Alcmene’s memory (meminisse) of how her Nicandrian, not her Plau-tine, altera ego went through seven painful days and seven nights of contrac-tions.

See Haupt 1876, 2.71–2; Conte 1986, 57–63; Solodow 1988, 227–8; Hinds 1987 and 1998, 1–16, who describes this phenomenon as a sub form of the ‘Alexandrian footnote’; and Miller 1993.Ariadne’s ‘remembering’ (at Fast. 3.473–5) what happened to her in Catul. 64, and Mars’ quo-tation (at Met. 14.812– 15) of a promise Jupiter made in Ennius’ Annales (fr. 54 Sk.), are the mostfamous examples. For ways of signaling allusion through similar narrative devices, cf. Barchiesi2001, 129–40. Notes of uncertain provenance that were placed at the chapter headings of this later my-thographer’s work point either to the author’s sources or at least to similar renditions of themyths he covers. Chapter 29 features a tale of Galinthias (= Galanthis) that resembles Ovid’s. Itsintroduction states that ‘Nicander tells this story in book 4 of the Heteroioumena’ (ἹστορεῖΝίκανδρος Ἑτεροιουμένων δ’). Antoninus Liberalis concludes chapter 29 by saying Ἡρακλῆς δ’, ἐπεὶ ηὐξήθη, τὴν χάρινἐμνημόνευσε καὶ αὐτῆς ἐποίησεν ἀφίδρυμα παρὰ τὸν οἶκον καὶ ἱερὰ προσήνεγκε. ταῦτα νῦν ἔτιτὰ ἱερὰ Θηβαῖοι φυλάττουσι καὶ πρὸ Ἡρακλέους ἑορτῆς θύουσι Γαλινθιάδι πρώτῃ (‘But whenHercules grew up, he remembered her favour and set up a shrine for her next to the house andmade offerings. The Thebans observe these rights to this day and before the festival in honour ofHercules they first make sacrifices to Galanthias’). Cf. Bömer 1977, 360–4 and Anderson 1972,436–7. Note also other earlier versions of the myth at Hom. Il. 19.119 and Theoc. Id. 24.22. Within the Ovidian corpus, the Metamorphoses has been found to be less androcentric thanthe poet’s elegiac works, cf. the literature assembled at n. 11.




Ovid does not, however, simply ignore the alternative, Plautine account, butalludes to it right before the birth scene proper. The allusion is contained in Alc-mene’s at–length description of her pregnant belly toward the beginning of herspeech (9.287–9):

tendebat grauitas uterum mihi, quodque ferebamtantum erat, ut posses auctorem dicere tectiponderis esse Iouem.

The pregnancy stretched out my stomach, and what I was bearing was so huge that youcould easily tell that Jupiter was the creator of the load that was covered up inside me.

Taken by themselves, these lines are already not devoid of humour.³⁸ Yet it is im-portant to note that this absurdly elaborate description of Alcmene’s abundantbelly is indebted specifically to Plautine (tragi)comedy. The Metamorphoses’many other divinely–‘induced’–pregnancies do not tend to remark on the moth-er’s ‘circumference.’ Rather, the description’s notably visual quality triggersmemories of Alcmene’s unusual portrayal in the Amphitruo, where Hercules’mother features as ‘the only character in extant Greek and Roman drama to ap-pear pregnant on stage.’³⁹ As regards such ‘non–extant’ Greek and Roman dramaas the Amphitruo’s source play, Eckard Lefèvre and others have pointed out thatthe most explicit (and disrespectful) references to the voluminousness of Alc-mene’s pregnancy are assigned to Amphitryon’s slave Sosia, who numbersamong the likely Plautine additions to whatever the lost–‘original’–may havebeen.⁴⁰ Plautus’ Amphitruo, then, was exceptional and therefore memorable inits taboo–breaking inclusion of a pregnant woman in the cast who is, foronce, not restricted to crying out to Lucina as she gives birth off–stage.⁴¹

Cf. Anderson 1972, 438. Christenson 2000, 38. Lefèvre 1982, 15, building on Eduard Fraenkel’s seminal discussion of Plautine expansions tothe slave’s role, see Fraenkel 1922, esp. 231–50, and its translation in Fraenkel 1960 and 2007. Inthe Amphitruo’s prologue, Mercury could in fact be alerting us to the fact that the slave Sosia is aPlautine addition to what may have originally been a tragedy (Amph. 62–3, cited below, in thediscussion of Met. 1). As regards other pregnant women in Greco–Roman drama, Phillips 1984/85, 123, n. 5 points to ‘one terracotta of a New Comedy young woman with a padded appearancethat suggests she is pregnant’ (illustration in Bieber 1961, 97, fig. 355). If that is, in fact, thesuggestion, then a pregnant woman on the stage would still be directly connected to comedy,albeit no longer exclusively to Plautus. That said, the fact that it is difficult to discern if the‘padded’ woman is indeed pregnant provides further evidence that the enormousness of Alc-mene’s pregnancy is markedly ‘Plautine.’ Christenson 2000, 16, 37–9.

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The words this pregnant woman speaks or sings may, as we noted above,have stirred the audience to pity. Her extravagant costume, however, did notprompt coy and respectful comments from the Plautine characters. That itsmain effect was humorous becomes apparent from the plethora of lines thatmention or, in Sosia’s case, poke fun at the dimensions of Alcmene’s stomach.⁴²At Amph. 499–500, the disguised Jupiter is first to remark directly on her looks:bene uale, Alcumena, cura rem communem, quod facis, / atque imperce quaeso:menses iam tibi esse actos uides (‘farewell, Alcmene, keep taking good care ofour common interest, and please, take it easy: you see that the months ofyour pregnancy are completed’). At Amphitruo 664–8, Sosia jokes that hemust have arrived too late for dinner, considering the roundness of his mistress’stomach. This extended reference to the visibility of her belly continues throughline 670, picks back up at 681, and culminates in another joke at 718–9:

SOS. Amphitruo, redire ad nauem meliust nos. AMPH. qua gratia?SOS. quia domi daturus nemo est prandium aduenientibus. 665AMPH. qui tibi nunc istuc in mentem est? SOS. quia enim sero aduenimus.AMPH. qui? SOS. quia Alcumenam ante aedis stare saturam intellego.AMPH. grauidam ego illanc hic reliqui quom abeo. SOS. ei perii miser.AMPH. quid tibi est? SOS. ad aquam praebendam commodum adueni domum,decumo post mense,⁴³ ut rationem te ductare intellego … 670AMPH. et quom [te] grauidam et quom te pulchre plenam aspicio, gaudeo …SOS. Amphitruo, speraui ego istam tibi parituram filium;uerum non est puero grauida. AMPH. quid igitur? SOS. insania.

SOS. ‘Amphitryon, we had better return to the ship.’ AMPH. ‘Why?’ SOS. ‘Because no one isgoing to serve us a meal at home when we get there.’ AMPH. ‘Why (do you say that)?’ SOS.‘Because I take it Alcmene is standing before the house all stuffed.’ AMPH. ‘She was preg-nant when I went away and left her here!’ SOS. ‘Oh my, I am done for.’ AMPH. ‘What iswrong with you?’ SOS. ‘I came home just in time to bring her hot water, after nine months,if I understand your calculation correctly.’… AMPH. (to Alcmene): ‘It is a pleasure to see youhere, pregnant and nicely filled up.’ … SOS. ‘Amphitryon, I used to hope that she would

For my reading of Alcmene’s heart–rending song as having a very different effect on theaudience than the actor’s costume, compare Moore 2012, 275–80, at 275–6: ‘There is a decidedcontrast between the verbal and the visual in this scene. Alcumena sings of virtus and the gloryof serving the state, sentiments that are at the heart of mid–Republican ideology.Yet as she singsshe is, as Sosia will later point out (667), conspicuously pregnant. Her large belly would both behumorous in itself and would add spicy double–entendres to her frequent references to voluptas(pleasure), and perhaps even to the word virtus… . The song’s metre, however, would encouragea serious rather than farcical effect. If there is parody, it must rely entirely on the visual.’ The similarity between Ovid’s ‘dating’ of the birth to cum…decimum premeretur sidere si-gnum (9.285–6) and Plautus’ decumo post mense adds to his allusion to the earlier play, but maybe too obviously related to the theme of pregnancy to bear much significance.




give birth to your son, but she is not pregnant with a boy.’ AMPH. ‘What is she pregnantwith?’ SOS. ‘Insanity.’

There are more related gags throughout,⁴⁴ and it is this comically exaggeratedversion of a pregnant Alcmene that her markedly visual Ovidian descriptionmust have recalled.

In this context of a joke shared between Plautus and Ovid, the noun auctor—used to describe Jupiter as the ‘instigator’ of Alcmene’s pregnancy atMet. 9.288—gains added significance. First and foremost, its literal meaning of ‘increaser’adds to the scene’s emphasis on the size of Alcmene’s belly. Yet secondly, wecan also read auctor as ‘author’ and understand it as another signpost ofintertextuality:⁴⁵ Ovid’s protagonist alerts us that her pregnancy was a literaryevent ‘written’ by Jupiter and thereby sends us looking for textual parallels. Infact, the word auctor might even be directing us to the specific model Ovidhad in mind. As David Christenson has pointed out, Plautus himself likelyplayed the role of Jupiter in the Amphitruo’s original staging.⁴⁶ If that is true,then Ovid might be capping his intertextual invocation of Plautine humour bynaming Jupiter/Plautus as the ‘creator’ of Alcmene’s pregnancy. Jupiter/Plautus,after all, ‘created’ the pregnancy both as the author who wrote the play and asthe licentious character he portrays.

If we accept that the Ovidian Alcmene’s self–description is based on hermuch–ridiculed Plautine incarnation, then the relevant lines’ immediate effectwithin this grim tale must have been comic relief. Yet as we have alreadynoted, the Amphitruo is not all comic. As part of the play’s tragic side, there is

Alcmene’s double pregnancy is referred to at Amph. 103, 109– 11, 479–90, 876–9, 1015– 16,and 1135–8. For its funny effect, compare especially Phillips 1984/85. I am grateful to Julie Hejduk for pointing out the possible existence of an ‘Alexandrianfootnote’ in the word auctorem. Christenson 2000, 1–2, n. 5: ‘[Friedrich Leo] suggested that Plautus’ career as an actor inAtellan farce is what originally brought him to Rome. If he continued to act in his own plays inRoman theatre—as Livy (7.2.8) asserts playwrights universally did in the time of Livius An-dronicus—one supposes that he played the role of Jupiter in [the Amphitruo]. This hypothesiswould explain why Amphitryon at the play’s end asks the audience to applaud for Jupiter inparticular and also gives additional point to Mercury’s designation of Jupiter as an architectus inthe prologue (45).’ On Plautus as an actor, as well as his very name as an allusion to charactershe may have played on the stage, see also Leo 1912, 63–86; and Gratwick 1973. Following up onWright 1975, Slater 2000, 97– 120 argues that the playwright’s other roles included Pseudolus(see also Hallett 1993). Hallett 1996, 423–4 discusses the possibility that Plautus played thefemale lead in his Casina. Since this particular matriarch is described as the family’s ‘Juno,’ thisrole would be an interesting counterpoint to his stint as Jupiter in the Amphitruo.

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also a sense of foreboding that Alcmene might incur precisely the kind of divinewrath we witness in the Metamorphoses. Consider, for example, Amph. 831–5,where she unwittingly perjures herself, swearing by Juno that she is innocentof adultery.⁴⁷ Ovid’s allusion to Plautus’ Alcmene would have activated thesegrim associations as well. What we witness at Met. 9.281–9, then, is how Ovidbriefly—and humorously—raises expectations that his story, like Plautus’,could take a turn for the better. Then, he immediately foils these expectationsby fully endorsing (and expanding upon) the tragicomedy’s darker undertones.

The contrast between the easier, Plautine birth that could have happened,and the Nicandrian pains that Ovid’s Alcmene does suffer, is perhaps most clear-ly developed in lines 9.292–4. Here, Ovid shocks his readers by having Alcmeneendure seven excruciating days of contractions even as she behaves most clearlylike a character of Roman comedy, that is, she calls out to ‘Lucina and the god-desses of birth’ (Lucinam Nixasque pares clamore uocabam, 9.294). The parturientwoman’s cry to Lucina, of course, is a stock scene of Roman comedy (e. g.: Plaut.Aulularia 692–3, Truculentus 476; Ter. Ad. 487, An. 473). If we compare this line toMet. 9.283, where the goddess is called ‘Ilithyia,’ we find an additional hint thatOvid’s choice of the name ‘Lucina’ in the birth scene proper bears significance.By using the goddess’ Latin name where he could have used her Greek alias (asNicander would have), Ovid reminds us of Plautus’ conflicting account.

The resulting contrast between comic vocabulary and tragic events is stark.Its extent becomes more apparent if we consider a structural correspondence be-tween Plautus’ and Ovid’s accounts. In Bromia’s report, the Plautine Alcmenehad cried to the gods (nam ubi parturit, deos [sibi] inuocat, ‘for when she wentinto labour, she invoked the gods,’ Amph. 1061), and the divine epiphany fol-lowed immediately (Amph. 1062–7, also 1093– 100). As regards the sequenceof events, this is true of the Metamorphoses as well. Yet in the Amphitruo, thegod who responds to the call is a benevolent Jupiter now eager to help his un-knowing lover. His ultimately benign intentions are stressed repeatedly, bothin Bromia’s accounts of the birth and elsewhere.⁴⁸ In Ovid, a malicious goddessappears and Alcmene’s agony is only beginning.

It is at this point of intersection between the two works, then, that Ovidseems to be hinting at the deliberate nature of his departure from Plautine tragi-comedy. In the Plautine cosmos, the birth of Hercules had been an event to bothlaugh at and cry about. Ovid quite straightforwardly adopts Plautus’ pregnancyjokes, but when it comes to the birth itself, he decides to abandon the comic side

Cf. also Amph. 931–2 with Christenson 2000, 284. Amph. 479–90, 861–81.




and expand upon a darker potential not fully realised in the tragicomedy. Appro-priately, Alcmene suffers through her birth pangs accompanied by a group ofgrieving Theban women whose lamentations perhaps not accidentally resemblea tragic chorus (matres Cadmeïdes adsunt, / uotaque suscipiunt exhortanturquedolentem, ‘Cadmeian women are present, swear oaths, and encourage me as Isuffer,’ 9.304–5).

As the narrative now turns to Galanthis,we can note an additional nod to thestory’s suspension between the comic and the tragic sides of its tragicomic inter-text. Upon Galanthis’ first appearance, she is busily exiting and reentering abuilding, then notices Lucina seated on an altar (dumque exit et intrat / saepefores, diuam residentem uidit in ara, Met. 9.309– 10). This recalls the goings–onin the Plautine theatre, where many entries and exits occur through doorsnear the back of the stage onto a street equipped, as here, with an altar. Inboth the Amphitruo and this Ovidian episode, there is only one door, and it be-longs to Alcmene’s and Amphitryon’s house. Nor is the door an unimportantprop, in that the play’s plot essentially revolves around the cuckolded Amphitry-on’s attempts at reentering his house, and closure is only achieved when hedoes.⁴⁹

Of course, the single door leading to a stage–like arrangement could recalltragedy just as easily as comedy. This is particularly true since we have alreadynoted the presence of a chorus, which Roman comedy had dispensed with. It hasbeen convincingly argued, however, that tragedies like Euripides’ Alcmene werecentred around the nyx makra that resulted in Alcmene’s pregnancy. The confla-tion of this elongated night with the birth of Hercules is not Euripidean, but Plau-tus’ contribution.⁵⁰

That we are in fact dealing with lines that have tragicomic—as opposed toexclusively tragic—associations becomes clearer as the Ovidian Galanthis nowtricks Lucina into allowing the birth. The servant tells the goddess that she istoo late: leuata est / Argolis Alcmene potiturque puerpera uoto (‘Argive Alcmeneis (already) relieved of her burden and the woman in labour has had her prayerfulfilled,’ Met. 9.312–3). This is essentially the tale of an easy birth familiar fromthe Amphitruo. There, Bromia first acknowledges the conventionality of comedy’scries to Lucina, then marvels at the ease with which Alcmene gave birth (e. g.,Amph. 1092– 100):

Lowe 2000, 195 and Sharrock 2009, 255, n. 14. See Stärk 1982, esp. 289–303; Collard and Cropp 2008, 100–3. The most recent examinationof the Amphitruo’s relationship to Euripides’ Alcmene (and other plays, esp. his Protesilaos) isPelliccia 2010/11.

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ubi utero exorti dolores, ut solent puerperae,inuocat deos immortalis ut sibi auxilium ferant…

dum haec aguntur, interea uxorem tuamnec gementem nec plorantem nostrum quisquam audiuimus.ita profecto sine dolore⁵¹ peperit.

When the contractions started in her belly, she—as is common for a woman in labour—called upon the immortal gods to assist her … While this was going on, not one of usheard your [Amphitryon’s] wife moan or cry. In fact, she gave birth like this, without pain.

Similarly, Galanthis claims that Hercules’ birth occurred almost immediatelyafter her mistress called out to the birth goddesses. In more ways than one,Ovid has thus turned Galanthis into a Plautine character. First and foremost,she essentially paraphrases the Amphitruo’s nurse. But what is more, she doesso with the same motivations as Plautine trickster slaves, who are wont to con-coct elaborate fictions in the service of their masters’ pursuits. Within thisscheme, Lucina has come to serve as, quite literally, a ‘blocking’ characterwhose resistance to the plot’s happy resolutions the trickster has to overcome.

Yet we need also note that Ovid has already begun to turn these Plautineresonances on their head: Galanthis’ ‘Plautine’ tale is marked as a lie necessitat-ed not by the spirit of frivolity that pervades many of Plautus’ comedies, but byharsh ‘Nicandrian’ realities (mendaci parientem iuuerat ore, ‘she had helped theparturient woman with lying mouth,’ Met. 9.322). This implicitly reduces Plautus’account to an all–too–benevolent fiction. The metapoetic language that de-scribes Galanthis’ ensuing metamorphosis then makes Ovid’s turn away fromthe laughs of comedy and to the tears of tragedy explicit (Met. 9.316–9):

numine decepto risisse Galanthida fama est;ridentem prensamque ipsis dea saeua capillistraxit et e terra corpus releuare uolentemarcuit inque pedes mutauit bracchia primos.

They tell me that Galanthis laughed after she deceived the deity, and as she laughed, thesavage goddess grabbed her by her very hair, tore her down, kept her from lifting herbody off the ground again, and turned her arms into forefeet.

Befitting the ‘comedic’ nature of Galanthis’ trickery, the girl’s first response islaughter. And we might in fact expect that she, like the Plautine trickster slaves,

Note the significant focus on the presence or absence of dolor in the differing accounts atAmph. 1092/1100 and Met. 9.291, which both connects the two versions and distinguishes themfrom one another.




will be rewarded for her loyalty and intelligence. Yet Juno/Lucina and, by asso-ciation, Ovid do not appreciate such mirth. Galanthis’ transformation into a wea-sel is notable for its brutality, and it is described as a response not only to hertrickery, but also to her laughter (note the repetition of risisse, ridentem at9.316–7). In turn, our narrator, Alcmene, cannot help but moan and cry at thereminder of the servant’s metamorphosis (admonitu ueteris commota ministrae/ ingemuit, Met. 9.324–5; also dolentem, 9.325). Plautus had spared her this re-sponse, at least in the end. In an overt instance of metapoetry, Ovid thus com-pletes his embrace of the Amphitruo’s tragic side at the expense of some—thoughnot all—of the tragicomedy’s humour. His grim gods openly punish misplaced‘comic’ laughter in favour of ‘tragic’ groans and tears.⁵²

Two Metapoetic Prologues

If we can now safely assume that Plautine (tragi)comedy numbers among the in-tertexts to which Ovid alludes in his epic, then we may be ready to take in awider view. Even if we were unaware (or remain unconvinced) of a specificallyPlautine presence, the Birth–of–Hercules passage’s interplay of humorous andsad elements (with a slight preference for the latter) would in some respectsstill seem representative of the work as a whole. I therefore propose that wenow apply our observations to the Metamorphoses’ ‘programme’ in order to ar-rive at insights on how Ovid’s balancing act between the tragic and the comicplays out in the poem at large. Over the course of this inquiry, we will notethat the Amphitruo shines even through the very first lines of the Metamorphoses(1.1–4):

in noua fert animus mutatas dicere formascorpora: di, coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa⁵³)

For a further hint that Lucina’s behaviour constitutes a turn toward tragedy, we can note thatthe goddess’ behaviour is outright contradictory. After all, a deity in charge of facilitating birthhere goes out of her way to obstruct it (see esp. Met. 9.281–4). While they do not touch onAlcmene and Lucina in their discussion of tragedy in theMetamorphoses, Gildenhard and Zissos1999 do posit that precisely such ‘paradox is a vital aspect of the tragic theme–park’ and that‘some of the most impressive paradoxical fireworks in the Metamorphoses do in fact occur in…episodes deeply implicated in the tragic imagination’ (168). Part of my interpretation hinges on accepting the variant nam uos mutastis et illa instead ofthe majority reading nam uos mutastis et illas. Bömer 1969, 13 notes the reading, but prefers illas.William Anderson accepts illa in his Teubner edition of the Metamorphoses, cf. also Anderson1997, 9, 150–1. Richard Tarrant has it in his OCT. Kenney 1976 covers most of the relevant

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adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundiad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen.

My mind strives to tell of shapes transformed into new bodies. Gods, favour my new under-takings (since you have transformed these as well) and craft one continuous poem from thefirst beginning of the world down to my own times.

In what follows, we will see how in this notoriously concise proem allusion toPlautus’ Amphitruo blends with resonances of traditional epic, Callimachus’Aetia, and Ovid’s previous works as the author of the Metamorphoses hints athis poetic programme. He does so while staging the poem’s first⁵⁴ transforma-tion. Ovid had previously been renowned as an elegiac poet, yet it is onlyonce the readers venture beyond the central caesura of the second line thatthey realise that nam uos mutastis et illa does not scan as the pentameter thatconstitutes the later half of an elegiac couplet.⁵⁵ Ovid thus embraces the metreof Homer by transforming his poetry into ‘straight–up’ hexameters in whatfeels like mid sentence.⁵⁶

Yet Ovid immediately calls this new commitment to the Homeric ideal intoquestion. The parenthesis nam uos mutastis et illa (Met. 1.2) recalls the poet’sprior endeavours, even as we realise that we are now reading hexameters.⁵⁷After all, the half line’s artful combination of metrics and content links backto various metapoetic passages in Ovid’s love poetry. In the opening lines ofthe Amores, for example, he claims that Cupid stole away a metrical foot fromhis hexameters and thereby ‘forced’ him to write elegies.⁵⁸ Even as the poetremedies this theft, he thus reminds us that epic is not his only area of interest.⁵⁹

bibliography and refutes all arguments in favour of illas. For more bibliography, cf. also Knox1986, 23, n. 1 and especially Heath 2011/12. Heath 2011/12, 191–2 in fact reads the words mutatas…formas (Met. 1.1) as a transformationof the Greek noun metamorphosis into Latin. Ovid’s own conversion from elegist to epic poetwould then be the poem’s second. Compare also Wheeler 1999, 11–2. So first Tarrant 1982, 351, n. 35. On the concept of ‘poetic simultaneity’ that underlies this reading—i. e., ‘the illusion that apoem is really only coming into being as it evolves before the readers’ eyes’ (Volk 2002, 13)—, seeparticularly Volk 1997. Cf. also the narratological approach of Wheeler 1999, 8–33. For poeticsimultaneity in the Metamorphoses’ proem, cf. Heath 2011/12. Cf. Gildenhard and Zissos 2000, 69–70. Am. 1.1.1–4: arma graui numero uiolentaque bella parabam / edere, materia conuenientemodis. / par erat inferior uersus: risisse Cupido / dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem (‘I waspreparing to compose in the heroic mode about weapons and violent wars, and the subject fitmy metrics. The second verse was as long [as the first]. Cupid is said to have laughed at this andto have stolen away a [metrical] foot’).




To this developing tension between two of the Metamorphoses’ constituentgenres, we can add Ovid’s similarly ambiguous evocation of another intertext,that is, Callimachus’ programmatic Aetia prologue (fr. 1 Pf.). Before the epic’sopening prepositional phrase in noua is completed at Met. 1.2 by corpora, Ovidseems to be stressing that his endeavour is unprecedented (in noua fert animustranslates to ‘my mind strives toward new things’). This can be considered aprominently placed endorsement of Hellenistic poetics. In line four, Ovid thenasks the gods to make his work deductum, which strengthens his Callimacheanallegiances. After all, the verb deducere (Met. 1.4) had by Ovid’s time become thetechnical term to describe the composition of ‘fine–spun’ episodic poetry in theHellenistic mode.⁶⁰ However, in what may seem a contradictory move, Ovid alsoweaves in an apparent refusal to follow in the Alexandrian’s footsteps. Callima-chus had portrayed his opponents as faulting him for spurning the ἓν ἄεισμα διη-νεκές (‘one continuous song,’ fr. 1.3) of traditional epic.⁶¹ The perpetuum carmenOvid embraces at Met. 1.4 is a literal translation of this critical term. By askingthe gods to turn his work into an overtly un–Callimachean kind of poem, heputs himself in opposition to his Hellenistic predecessor.⁶² Over the course ofthe Metamorphoses, this rejection–cum–endorsement of the Alexandrian’s poet-ics is usually seen to play out as a series of carefully crafted ‘Callimachean’ epi-sodes linked by the broad strokes of epic ‘continuity.’⁶³

For elegiac elements in theMetamorphoses, cf. n. 11. Gildenhard and Zissos 2000 treat Ovid’sreferences back to his earlier metapoetical passages. Pace Heath 2011/12, 198, who argues thatthe opening of the Amores ‘presents us with a quite different scenario.’ For bibliography on the at–times contested significance of λεπτότης (‘fineness’) to Hellen-istic poetics, see Hanses 2014, nn. 3 and 4. For a relatively recent reading of ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκές as referring to an outdated, Homericmode of composition, cf. Asper 1997, 217–24. Alan Cameron understands the term ἓν ἄεισμαδιηνεκές as part of an internal debate among elegists about the nature of their poetry, not as aslander against the external genre of Homeric epic. If anything, it faults the cyclic poets’mode ofcomposition, not the structural choices of the Iliad and Odyssey, cf. Cameron 1995, 339–61. Thefact remains that Ovid simultaneously embraces two contradictory poetological positions con-trasted in the prologue to the Aetia. On the supposed incompatibility of epic with Callimachus and elegiac metre, see also Ovid’smore explicit comment at Rem. am. 381: Callimachi numeris non est dicendus Achilles (‘Achillesshould not be told of in the metre of Callimachus [= elegiac distich]’). For a similar usage of carmen perpetuum, cf. Hor. Carm. 1.7.6; for a Callimachean call to writea deductum carmen, cf. Verg. Ecl. 6.4–5, a particularly important intertext since Virgil’s Silenusanswers the challenge by singing a song not unlike the Metamorphoses; deducta poemata are atHor. Epist. 2.1.225; Propertius also uses the words deducta and carmina in the same line at2.33b.38, although the adjective there does not modify the noun; he does say at tibi saepe nouodeduxi carmina uersu (‘but I often spun songs for you in innovative verse’) at 1.16.41. For this

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Into this mix, I would now like to introduce the Amphitruo. Let us begin byfocusing on one Ovidian word that no specific intertext has so far laid incontest-able claim to.⁶⁴ Who—we may ask—are the di Ovid apostrophises at Met. 1.2?⁶⁵They could be Homeric or Virgilian Muses, or the same Amor who originallystole the metrical foot and is now returning it. In the Ars amatoria, Ovid hadturned the tables on this winged god and become Cupid’s teacher with somehelp from Venus.⁶⁶ That goddess too may therefore be a candidate, especiallysince she reportedly also inspired the composition of Lucretius’ De rerum natura(1.1–49; right after the proem, Ovid writes of creation, and his language is quitereminiscent of the earlier didact’s discourse). Because of the opening lines’ con-nection to Callimachus, a prominent position among Ovid’s di has also been as-cribed to Apollo, the Alexandrian’s divine interlocutor of preference.⁶⁷ The inclu-sive plural form of the noun allows for all of these proposals to be true. In fact, areading that allows for this whole variety of metapoetic deities to be invoked si-multaneously would reflect well the multiplicity of genres that are seen to be atplay as the Metamorphoses unfolds.⁶⁸

We are therefore hopefully within our rights to suggest that Ovid’s readerscould easily have recalled additional gods alongside these other intertextual pre-sences. The divinities of Plautus’ Amphitruo will seem worthy of special consid-eration once we realise that the metapoetic gods of epic, Hellenistic, and elegiacpoetry ‘lag’ in one significant area.While they are all experts at textual metamor-phosis, none of them specialises in physical transformation. Yet it is precisely

whole paragraph on (anti–)Callimachean poetics, cf. Bömer 1969, 14– 15; Kenney 1976 = Knox(ed.), 2006, 271–3; Hopkinson 1988, 91–2; Anderson 1997, 151; Holzberg 1997, 123–6; Barchiesiand Koch 2005, 133–45. Cf. Kenney 1976 = Knox (ed.), 2006, 265: ‘This is an astonishingly brief introduction to anepos over 12,000 lines long; and that very brevity ought to put us on our guard… . We shouldexpect that not a word will be wasted… .’ On the di at Met. 1.2, see most recently Heath 2011/12, with bibliography. Ov. Ars am. 1.7:me Venus artificem tenero praefecit Amori (‘Venus appointed me the master oftender Amor’), cf. Gildenhard and Zissos 2000, 73. Note also Ov. Ars am. 1.30: coeptis, materAmoris, ades (‘mother of Amor, assist my undertakings’). The appearance of coeptis here and inthe proem of the Metamorphoses supports a connection between the two passages, compareBarchiesi and Koch 2005, 138, but contrast Heath 2011/12, esp. 197–202. Callim. Aet. 22; compare Hymn to Apollo 105– 12. Apollo’s candidacy is also supported byVirgil’s Sixth Eclogue, in which the god pioneers some of the metapoetical vocabulary used inOvid’s proem and goes on to inspire a ‘metamorphic’ poem, cf. n. 63 and Kenney 1976 = Knox(ed.), 2006, 270: ‘Just as Apollo had intervened to turn Callimachus and Virgil from epic to adifferent kind of poetry, so the gods—not only Apollo on this occasion but the whole ofOlympus… —have saved Ovid from setting his hand to some less auspicious plan.’ See especially Heath 2011/12.




this dual requirement that the di of the Metamorphoses proem have to meet.After all, Ovid’s concern here is both with the form of his ‘new (poetical) under-takings’ (coeptis, Met. 1.2) and with their subject matter, that is, ‘shapes trans-formed into new bodies’ (in noua…mutatas dicere formas / corpora, 1.1–2). Wehave already seen that the Amphitruo’s gods are experts in the latter, and for pre-cisely the same amorous reasons that will motivate many Ovidian divinities aswell. Furthermore, whenever the noun imago (on which see above) is not usedto describe their impersonations, forma—present also in the very first line ofthe Metamorphoses—replaces it, as in Mercury’s explanatory formam cepihuius in med (‘I have assumed his (= Sosia’s) shape,’ Amph. 266, cf. also 441,456, 600, and 614). An association between the two texts may therefore have sug-gested itself to readers of theMetamorphoses even from the poem’s very first line.

Yet perhaps just as significantly, the Amphitruo not only meets the require-ment of featuring ‘physically’ transformative gods. Its divinities also engagewith the kind of metapoetic concerns—or ‘textual’ transformations—that arethe second ‘requirement’ set by the Metamorphoses’ proem. Like many a comedy,the play opens with a divine speaker who provides the audience with the re-quired contexts. Other Roman examples include the star Arcturus in the Rudensor a Lar familiaris in the Aulularia. The Amphitruo’s Mercury is particularly out-spoken about the metapoetic nature of his divine intervention, as he activelyconverts the play from a tragedy into a comedy and finally into a tragicomedy,much as Ovid notes that his own coepta (Met. 1.2) have been transformed.

Before we now turn to the Amphitruo’s prologue and the precise nature of itsconnection to the Metamorphoses, it is worth noting that the openings of pallia-tae make for particularly appropriate intertexts amid Ovid’s Callimachean allu-sions. Alison Sharrock has already pointed out the Ovidian proem’s indebted-ness to the language of Terentian prologues. She notes that the comicplaywright’s metaphor for beginning a poetic composition, animum…adpulit(‘he dedicated his mind,’ Ter. An. 1), resembles Ovid’s own fert animus(Met. 1.1).⁶⁹ She has also shown how Terence locates himself within the Callima-chean tradition, casting himself as the ‘new’ poet to Luscius of Lanuvium’s uetuspoeta and describing his compositions as tenuis (‘fine’) and leuis (‘light’), termsthat ‘will become significatory motifs of the Roman–‘Callimachean’ poeticprogramme.’⁷⁰

Comic plays may thus have been the first texts in which Romans engaged ina meaningful manner with Hellenistic poetics. Not unlike the Terentian pro-

Sharrock 2009, 80. Sharrock 2009, 75–83 (quote at 81) and 2013, 52–5.

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logues Sharrock discusses, Plautine plays also address their own ‘newness.’ Themost relevant example comes from the Amphitruo, where Mercury highlights theunprecedented way in which Plautus has Jupiter appear on stage (i. e., as farmore than just a deus ex machina). He then ‘eases[s] the audience into accept-ance of [this] novelty’⁷¹ by pointing out that it is certainly an innovation, butnot a complete departure from prior theatrical norms (Amph. 89–93):

quid? ammirati estis? quasi uero nouomnunc proferatur Iouem facere histrioniam;etiam, histriones anno quom in proscaenio hicIouem inuocarunt, uenit, auxilio is fuit.praeterea certo prodit in tragoedia.

What? You are stunned? As though something entirely new were being produced now thatJupiter is assuming a role. Last year, when actors called on him here on stage, he came tooand helped them. Furthermore, he certainly appears in tragedy.

Surely, a palliata prologue then has to be taken seriously as a possible metapoet-ic intertext amid Ovid’s Callimachean echoes. What singles out the Amphitruo’sprologus is not only the play’s concern with enamoured and shape–shifting godsor with ‘Hellenistic’ novelty. Rather, let us take a look at exactly how Plautus’Mercury performs the kind of generic change that Ovid also describes in theMetamorphoses’ proem. We encounter Mercury as he is about to outline theplot of a play he has just called a ‘tragedy’ (Amph. 52–63):

quid? contraxistis frontem, quia tragoediamdixi futuram hanc? deus sum, commutauero.eandem hanc, si uoltis, faciam <iam> ex tragoediacomoedia ut sit omnibus isdem uorsibus. 55utrum sit an non? uoltis? sed ego stultior,quasi nesciam uos uelle, qui diuos siem.teneo quid animi uostri super hac re siet:faciam ut commixta sit; <sit> tragico[co]moedia,nam me perpetuo facere ut sit comoedia 60reges quo ueniant et di, non par arbitror.quid igitur? quoniam hic seruos quoque partis habet,faciam sit, proinde ut dixi, tragico[co]moedia.

What? You are frowning because I said this would be a ‘tragedy?’ I am a god, I will trans-form it. This same play I will turn from a tragedy into a comedy, without even changing themetre. Is that alright or not? But I am being rather foolish, as though I did not know whatyou want, although I am a god. I get what is on your mind about this matter. I will turn itinto a mixed play, into a tragicomedy. After all, I do not consider it fair to have a play that

Christenson 2000, 156.




stars kings and gods be a comedy all the way through.What then? Because a slave here alsoplays a role I will turn it, as I said before, into a tragicomedy.

The two opening passages are connected by both content and word choice. Aswe have already noted, both the proem of the Metamorphoses and the prologusof the Amphitruo enact a ‘generic’ metamorphosis (from elegy to epic and fromtragedy to comedy to tragicomedy, respectively). But what is more, Callimachus’Apollo only advises such a transformation, while Plautus’ Mercury actively per-forms it. John Heath has recently argued that it is precisely this active kind ofintervention into his poetic endeavour that Ovid highlights with nam uos muta-stis et illa, employing as he does ‘an almost accusatorily unnecessary (and thusemphatic) nominative pronoun’ ((2011/12) 200).

Matching this initial observation, Plautus’ Mercury and Ovid’s persona em-ploy the same verb to describe the shift in genre, only the later poet suppliesthe simplex (mutastis, Met. 1.2) for Mercury’s compositum (commutauero,Amph. 53). They also both address the metrical concerns linked to the transfor-mation. Ovid does so via the afore–mentioned strategic placement of nam uosmutastis et illa, Plautus through the ablative absolute omnibus isdem uorsibus(55), also located at line end. And while many other gods may still be includedin the group of di addressed at Met. 1.2, we should note that the noun’s presencein the Ovidian line could echo its earlier occurrence at Amph. 61. In both works,the word calls attention to the gods’ double role as enactors of textual and phys-ical metamorphosis and also as actors in the upcoming plot. Readers attuned tocomplex allusivity could have easily noticed these similarities, particularly ifPlautine associations had already been stirred by their memory of Ovid’s priorsojourns in the elegiac genre (which takes its starting point from the NewComic young man unhappily in love) as well as by the Metamorphoses’ overlapin subject matter with the Amphitruo.

At this point, we should note that the prominent placement of meis in linethree of Ovid’s proem—like the emphatic use of uos—can also factor into a dis-cussion of possible intertexts. There are various, well–established opinionsabout how the syntax of Met. 1.2b–3a (di coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa) / ad-spirate meis) should be construed.⁷² We may take the et of line two as connectingmutastis to adspirate, meaning ‘favour my new beginnings, for you have alsotransformed them.’ Some prefer to take this et with illa, which would lead usto translate the passage as ‘favour my new beginnings, since you have trans-formed these as well,’ that is, not just the changed shapes of line one. Or, we

Cf. Bömer 1969, 13; Barchiesi and Koch 2005, 138–40.

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could understand ‘since you have transformed these as well’ to mean ‘not justthe opening of the Amores.’ This latter reading would grant particular promi-nence to the elegiac Amor who enacted prior transformations in Ovidian poetry.

Yet none of these options accounts for the special emphasis the possessiveadjective meis gains through its enjambment into the next verse and its place-ment in hyperbaton at the end of its clause. It should be possible to have theet of line two colour our translation of this final word as well. This adjustmentwould create a contrast between Ovid’s own work and that of another author.Et…meis would then constitute a marker of intertextuality that alerts the readerto an allusion to a text that a) deals with a transformation of genres and b) isexternal to Ovid’s oeuvre. We would translate ‘favour my new beginnings,since you have transformed these as well,’ that is, ‘not just those of, for example,the Amphitruo.’ Plautus’ ‘active’ Mercury would then not only come close to Cal-limachus’ ‘inactive’ Apollo in importance, but also to Ovid’s own Amor, who per-sonally enacts transformations, but does so within the Ovidian corpus.

As regards its effect, Ovid’s allusion to the Plautine prologue activates thevarious associations his readership has with the Amphitruo. It thereby helpsthe poet define the tone of the Metamorphoses. We are made aware that weare entering the world of Plautine mythological farce on top of the realms of Cal-limachean literary sophistication, Ovidian love stories, and Homeric epic. Ovidevokes the tragicomedy’s ambiguous atmosphere likely to indicate that his sto-ries, too, could turn out either hilarious or sad.

Yet at the same time, the poet signposts that, as with any literary model, hisendorsement is not complete. The reservations Ovid’s programmatic lines ex-press toward elegy or a Callimachean string of unconnected episodes alsoapply to Plautine tragicomedy. It is here that we return to verbal parallels be-tween Plautus and Ovid. It turns out that the partial recusatio of Hellenistic po-etics expressed in perpetuum deducite…carmen might be as inclusive as the plu-ral di standing in for several gods, or the endorsement of novelty that harks backboth to Callimachus and to comic prologues. A rejection of overly strict continu-ity, after all, plays an important role not only in the Aetia, but in the Amphitruoas well. Accordingly, Ovid’s endorsement of consistency in ad mea perpetuum de-ducite tempora carmen (Met. 1.4) also contrasts with Plautus’ nam me perpetuofacere ut sit comoedia…non par arbitror (Amph. 61–2). It is particularly the recur-rence of Plautus’metapoetic adverb perpetuo in Ovid’s perpetuum that suggests aconnection between the two passages. Yet the Plautine god does not want theAmphitruo to be a comedy or tragedy perpetuo. He implies that the play, whileretaining conspicuous comic features, will oscillate between the two genres be-fore it reaches a supposedly ‘un–tragic’ ending, and he is indeed going to deliver




on the promise. Ovid, on the other hand, announces that his approach will bemore stringent and his tone more consistent throughout.

Of course, Ovid does not immediately make clear wherein this greater con-sistency consists. Readers since Seneca have not been sure whether to laughor cry at the Metamorphoses. Judging from the intentional ambiguity of theproem, Ovid probably planned to keep us wondering. As is the case with thepresence of elegy in the epic, however, the image does sharpen as we venturefurther into book one. When they evaluate the precise role love poetry plays inthe poetics of the Metamorphoses, scholars often focus on Apollo’s infatuationwith Daphne. This seems appropriate, since Apollo—like other divinities—is like-ly included amid the di that populate the proem. And indeed, their comparisonsof the primus amor Phoebi (Met. 1.452) to elegy have established that the Ovid ofthe Metamorphoses pays closer attention to women’s hardships than the author-ial persona of his other poems.⁷³ For the influence of tragicomedy, we must alsoconsult a god’s first reappearance. If we accept Mercury’s presence amid Apollo’stransformational ‘colleagues,’ then his return near the end of the first book con-stitutes a moment of ring composition (Met. 1.668–723). We may turn here forgreater clarity on the nature of Ovidian tragicomedy.

At the point of Mercury’s return, a jealous Juno has dispatched hundred–eyed Argus to prevent all further contact between Jupiter and Io, who hasbeen turned into a cow. Amid several other cases of genre–based intertextualitythat inform this passage, Ovid now evokes the Amphitruo to recreate the play’suneasy balance between comic and tragic components. As regards the tragicside, Ovid has already made us pity Io. In fact, her sorrows have been describedas so unbearable as to stir Jupiter into action: nec superum rector mala tantaPhoronidos ultra / ferre potest, (‘and the leader of the gods could not bear thegreat evils of Io any longer,’ Met. 1.668–9). To alleviate the situation, he sendsMercury down from Olympus to liberate the girl (letoque det imperat Argum,‘and [Jupiter] ordered [Mercury] to kill Argus,’ Met. 1.670).

It is Jupiter’s wavering between taking sexual advantage of a mortal lover,recognising the tragic quality of her plight, and, ultimately, involving Mercuryin her rescue, that first recalls his sojourn on the Plautine stage. There, Plautus’Jupiter assured the audience that—as we have noted before—he is aware of Alc-mene’s plight and would not allow events to turn out too ‘uncomic,’ even thoughhe sets out to exploit her once again (Amph. 867–72):⁷⁴

See n. 11 above, as well as the nuanced discussion of women in Ovid at Volk 2010, 81–94. Compare also Amph. 88, 96, 486–95.

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nunc huc honoris uostri uenio gratia,ne hanc incohatam transigam comoediam.simul Alcumenae, quam uir insontem probriAmphitruo accusat, ueni ut auxilium feram: 870nam mea sit culpa, quod egomet contraxerim,si id Alcumenae in innocentiam expetat.

I have now come here out of respect for you, lest I leave this comedy unfinished. I have alsocome to help Alcmene, whom her husband Amphitryon accuses of adultery, even thoughshe is innocent; for it would be my fault—since I have engineered this—if it shouldhaunt innocent Alcmene.

These Plautine echoes intensify as Ovid’s Mercury, like his Doppelgänger on thestage, now dons a costume in service of his father’s interests. While he initiallystill wears his winged sandals and hat and carries the ‘sleep–inducing’ caduceus(uirgam…somniferam, Met. 1.671–2), Mercury sheds this traditional dress soArgus will not recognise him. He retains only one identifying feature: tantummo-do uirga retenta est (‘he only held on to the wand,’ 1.675). This is reminiscent ofhis attire in the Amphitruo, where he is disguised to look just like the slave Sosia.Plautus’ Mercury retains only his ability to induce sleep,⁷⁵ as well as some smallfeathers in his hat that help the audience tell the two characters apart (ego hashabebo usque in petaso pinnulas, Amph. 143). Both in Plautus and in Ovid, Mer-cury’s return in disguise follows upon a prior appearance in an overtly metapoet-ic opening and is motivated by violence: Plautus’ costumed Mercury spends theplay’s first scene elaborately confusing Sosia, beating him up, and ultimatelychasing him away.⁷⁶ Similarly, Ovid’s Mercury has put on a costume to commitmurder. The resemblances between the two passages may well have been

Some instances of his putting Sosia (and others) to ‘sleep’ are at Amph. 298 (hic pugnis faciethodie ut dormiam, Sosia: ‘he will make sure with his fists that I sleep tonight’), Amph. 303–4(iam pridem uidetur factum heri quod homines quattuor / in soporem collocastis nudos, Mercury:‘it seems to have been a while since yesterday when you robbed four men naked and put them tosleep’), and Amph. 313 (quid si ego illum tractim tangam, ut dormiat? Mercury: ‘What if I work onhim for a while until he falls asleep?’). As regards ‘visual’ resemblances between the twoMercuries, Anderson 1997, 214 notes that Ovid favours tegumen over the Plautine petasus whenspeaking of Mercury’s winged hat. This observation could lead us to assume that Ovid is goingout of his way not to evoke comic intertexts in this scene. However, Plautus’ Mercury wears apetasus not as part of his traditional attire, but because it makes him resemble the slave Sosia(see Amph. 140–5, 443; note that Amphitryon and Jupiter also wear petasi [Amph. 144–5]; theword recurs at Plaut. Pseud. 735). At the very least, we should note that the Ovidian and Plautinepassages were similar enough to suggest a comparison to W. Anderson, even if he ultimatelydismissed any similarities. On the petasus, see also Marshall 2006, 58–9. Amph. 153–463. See also Amph. 606, 608, and the quotations in n. 75.




close enough to suggest Plautine contexts to the Ovidian reader. In particular, Isuspect that Ovid’s hexameters activated visual memories of recent re–perform-ances of the Amphitruo, where Augustan audiences could have seen a similarlydressed Mercury star in a tragicomic play.

To support our thesis that such an allusion to the Amphitruo could have re-created the play’s tension between tragic and comic components, we can turn toan additional intertext evoked in the relevant lines. Ovid’s costumed Mercurygoes on to impersonate a shepherd in ways that recall pastoral poetry in general,and Virgil’s Eclogues in particular. Aside from tending to goats, Mercury notablyplays the reed flute (structis cantat auenis, Met. 1.677) familiar from Tityrus’ per-formance at Ecl. 1.2 (siluestrem tenui Musam meditaris auena, ‘you play a pastor-al tune on a slender reed’) and elsewhere in the bucolic poems.⁷⁷ The first Ec-logue of course mourns the losers of Rome’s recent civil strife even as itcelebrates the city’s brighter future. The result is a suspension between melan-choly and optimism that is not incompatible with what we posit is the tragicomictone that colours both the Amphitruo and this Ovidian episode. Plautine and bu-colic echoes could, then, be mutually reinforcing.

Befitting his tragicomic intertext, Ovid—who has already elaborated on hisstory’s sadder side—now moves away from Io’s plight and delivers on hiscomic promise. The tale of Mercury–in–disguise starts out quite humorous andcontinues to be metapoetically self–referential. The god assumes the role ofthe poet and begins an Ovidian tale of a nymph’s metamorphosis. Ironically,he thereby succeeds in putting the monster to sleep (1.689–716).⁷⁸ Of course,a trickster’s usurpation of the poet’s role is a standard element of Plautinecomedy.⁷⁹ Appropriately, the atmosphere, to this point, is light–hearted, eventongue–in–cheek.We might expect that this particular tragicomedy, like its Plau-tine predecessor, will now lead to a perhaps still slightly sour, but ultimately ac-ceptable ending. The switch back to the tale’s tragic side is therefore quite sud-den and surprising (Met. 1.717–9):

nec mora, falcato nutantem uulnerat ensequa collo est confine caput, saxoque cruentumdeicit et maculat praeruptam sanguine rupem.

See Barchiesi 2006, esp. 410. See Barchiesi 2006, 411–3, especially for sleep as a marker of bucolic poetry. The most famous example of this very common comic feature is in Plautus’ Pseudolus; seeWright 1975; Slater 2000, esp. 97–120, 139–47; Jenkins 2005; and Sharrock 2009, 116–62.

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When [Argus] was nodding off, [Mercury] immediately slashed him with his hooked sword,right where the head is attached to the neck, and as [Argus] bled out, [Mercury] pushed himoff the rock, and he smeared the steep cliff with blood.

This scene’s brutality contrasts quite strongly with the humour that, in the pre-ceding lines, recalled comedic and bucolic intertexts. Accordingly, the Ovidiannarrator goes on to clarify his gloomier perspective with an apostrophe toArgus that again borders on the metapoetic (Met. 1.720– 1):

Arge, iaces, quodque in tot lumina lumen habebas, 720exstinctum est, centumque oculos nox occupat una.

Argus, there you lie, and what light you had in so many eyes is extinguished, and the dark-ness of one night covers a hundred eyes.

The comic element that ultimately overcame the darker side of Plautus’ tragico-moedia is here upstaged by an authorial call to recognise the greater sadness ofOvid’s poetic world. Of course, the tragic tone of this instructive two liner has attimes been questioned. For example, Anderson comments that the narrator ‘doesnot express any particular grief, but displays funereal wit with an epigram.’⁸⁰While the passage certainly does not lack intellectual depth, Anderson has omit-ted that we are dealing with another allusive conflation of source passages. Afterdisappointing our Plautine expectations with the murder of Argos, Ovid casts theend of the episode in Catullan tones. He does so by alluding to the famous uiua-mus atque amemus passage of Catullus 5 (4–6):⁸¹

soles occidere et redire possunt:nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux, 5nox est perpetua una dormienda.

Suns can set and rise again, but once our brief light has gone out, there is just one night,and we have to sleep it out forever.

The two passages share a concern with the suddenness of death, prominent lightimagery, and a point of direct intertextual contact in the expression nox una. TheCatullan call to enjoy even questionable affairs before they are ended by death

Anderson 1997, 218. Barchiesi and Koch 2005, 227 also focus on the funny side of ‘un giocoetimologico greco.’ The passage’s multivalent phrasing—note, e.g., the various plays on light/eye(sight) vs. darkness/blindness that are triggered by the opening vocative’s (Arge) etymolo-gical connection to the adjective ἀργός (‘bright[–eyed]’)—to my mind manages to alert us to theauthor’s sophistication without undermining the lines’ rueful tone. Barchiesi and Koch 2005, 227 also notice an ‘eco distorta di Catullo.’




thus carries over into Met. 1.721 and comes to serve as a sobering motto for theOvidian poem.

Of course, we might object that Ovid could instead be giving a lighter senseto the Neoteric poet’s gloomy lines by applying them to an inappropriately amus-ing situation. However, Juno considers the slaughter of Argos gruesome enoughto warrant sending a Fury after Io (obiecit Erinyn, 1.725). There is darkness inOvid’s apostrophe to Argus, then, and the episode as a whole had perhapsbest be described as tragicomic.

Io’s story does eventually take a turn for the better. She is transferred backinto her original form and receives divine honours, as does her father. However,as in the Amphitruo, a bitter aftertaste here most definitely remains.While Plau-tine allusion contributed to this effect, we do have to note that the sad side of thestory has asserted a more consistent (perpetuo / perpetuum) hold on the Ovidiannarrative than was the case in the original tragicomoedia: Ovid’s characters haveto descend much deeper into tragedy than Plautus’. At the beginning of thispaper, we made similar observations concerning Ovid’s Birth of Hercules.

We have, then, been able to observe Ovid’s Metamorphoses engage the Am-phitruo in a manner both varied and consistent. The poet repeatedly alludes tothe drama as he plays a sophisticated (and sustained) game with his readers’ ex-pectations. Starting with his poem’s first lines, Ovid creates a tragicomic tensionbetween his cosmos’ funny and serious elements that sometimes resolves intotrue humour, sometimes into tragedy. As our expectations are foiled time andtime again (and we are entertained), we note that in spite of all similarities oftone between the two tragicomedies, Ovid deliberately outdoes Plautus on thetragic side. If a pregnant Alcmene faces accusations of adultery and outright rid-icule from her fellow Plautine characters, then this may, in fact, be quite distress-ing for her. It does not, however, compare to the ordeal she has to undergo inbook nine of the Metamorphoses or such disproportionate violence as theslaughter of Argos.

This interplay between sad and humorous elements is, of course, not limitedto the lines we have examined here, but representative of the Metamorphoses asa whole. I hope to have shown how Ovid at times relies on allusion to Plautus(amid a multitude of other authors) to effect his epic’s countless shifts inmood, tone, and generic allegiances. In closing, we may therefore wonder ifthe Amphitruo’s continued popularity and relevance into Ovid’s day could sug-gest that the play served as more than merely a convenient mine for intertextualallusions. Instead, it could have even been one of the epic’s main sources of orig-inal inspiration. Its prominent presence in the Metamorphoses’ proem wouldsupport this theory. Ovid could have appreciated the Amphitruo’s distinctive con-cern with sex and mythological transformations, genre, personhood and identity,

254 M. Hanses



laughter and tears, and expanded it to ‘epic’ proportions. His own emphases, ofcourse, were slightly different from Plautus’ (perhaps in part because he isan–‘epic’–poet, not a comic playwright), so Ovid made sure to highlight thathis poetics more fully embraced the model’s tragic side. As Seneca noticed,this does not mean that Ovid abandoned such Plautine humour as Alcmene’svoluminous pregnancy altogether: significantly, the noun ineptiae that Senecauses to describe the Metamorphoses’ ‘absurdities’ numbers among the metathea-trical terms that palliata characters use to describe the comic plots they star in.Ancient literature’s first tragicomedy may thus join earlier epic, elegy, and Hel-lenistic poetry as a text that influenced the Metamorphoses both as a frequentobject of allusion and as a model for its general tone and subject matter.

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Plautinisches im Ovid: The Amphitruo and the Metamorphoses

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