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Commentary

© Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos, CC BY 4.0 http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0073.03

The setting for this episode is the Greek city of Thebes, founded by Cadmus (513–14 n.). Cadmus is by now an old man, and has abdicated the throne of his city in favour of his grandson Pentheus. Early in the reign of the young king, a wild new religious cult sweeps in from the East, that of the god Bacchus, son of the supreme god Jupiter and the Theban princess Semele. While all other Thebans welcome the new cult, Pentheus proves to be sceptical and resistant, an attitude that leads to his doom. (For further discussion of setting and mythological background, see Intro. §4). The set text can be divided into the following sections: (i) Tiresias’ Warning to Pentheus (511–26); (ii) Pentheus’ Rejection of Bacchus (527–71); (iii) The Captive Acoetes and His Tale (572–691); (iv) Pentheus’ Gruesome Demise (692–733).

511–26
Tiresias’ Warning to Pentheus

This brief but complex section includes: (i) transition from the previous story, the tale of Narcissus, whose fate the seer Tiresias unerringly foretold; (ii) introduction of the next character destined for doom on Thebes’ killing fields: the young king Pentheus, the only one left to scorn Tiresias; (iii) Tiresias’ anticipation of events to come: the clash between Pentheus and Bacchus (in essence also an encapsulation of Euripides’ tragedy Bacchae).

The narrative speeds along here: Tiresias’ prediction of Bacchus’ arrival and its fulfilment come in quick succession. This initial briskness stands in contrast to the elements of ‘slow-mo’ that Ovid will soon introduce (and which make up the lion’s share of the set text): the speeches of Pentheus and of Acoetes. In Euripides’ Bacchae, the verbal clash between Pentheus and Tiresias does not occur until some way into the drama.

511–12 cognita … ingens. These two lines form the pivot from the tale of Narcissus (just concluded) to the story of Pentheus (about to start). Ovid opts for straightforward syntax: we get two main verbs, attulerat and erat, linked by the -que attached to nomen. The design, revolving around the synonyms famam ~ nomen and vati ~ auguris (on which more below), is intricate: meritam … famam ‹› nomen … ingens form a *chiasmus; and vati attulerat ‹› erat auguris are also arranged chiastically.

A regular Latin idiom is the use of the perfect passive participle to modify a (concrete) noun where English would have, in place of the participle, an abstract noun and the preposition ‘of’. Examples include post transactam fabulam (‘after the play having been performed’ = ‘after the performance of the play’, Plaut. Cas. 84), and nuntiata clades (‘the disaster having been reported’ = ‘the news of the disaster’, Liv. 10.4). In similar fashion here the qualification of the noun res by cognita (perf. pass. part. of cognoscere, ‘get to know’ or, in the perfect, simply ‘know’) yields the sense ‘knowledge of the matter’.

The ‘matter’ referred to is the story of Narcissus and, more specifically, the fulfilment of Tiresias’ prophecy concerning the boy’s fate. As such it harks back to the beginning of that episode: enixa est utero pulcherrima pleno | infantem nymphe, iam tunc qui posset amari, | Narcissumque vocat. de quo consultus, an esset | tempora maturae visurus longa senectae, | fatidicus vates ‘si se non noverit’ inquit. | vana diu visa est vox auguris: exitus illam | resque probat letique genus novitasque furoris. (‘The beautiful nymph [sc. Liriope, mother of Narcissus] brought forth from her full womb an infant loveable even then [sc. at its birth] and named him Narcissus. When consulted about him, as to whether he would live a long time and see a ripe old age, the fate-speaking prophet [sc. Tiresias] replied: “If he shall not know himself”. For a long time the prophet’s utterance seemed an empty one, but the boy’s demise proved it true — the event, the manner of his death, the strangeness of his passion’, 3.344–50). Ovid’s linking of the two episodes in this manner raises an interesting question: ‘Will knowing about (Tiresias knowing about) Narcissus help anyone else (know themselves)? We read on (but will it help … anyone?)’. (John Henderson).

meritam … famam (notice the ‘framing’ arrangement) is the direct object of attulerat; the indirect object is vati, a 3rd declension noun, referring to Tiresias. A vates was originally a divinely inspired prophet (the meaning to the fore here); but the word also came to be used in the Augustan period as the designation of choice for poets (as opposed to the Greek loanword poeta), thereby enhancing the intrinsic metapoetic potential of prophet figures in epic narrative.

John Henderson points to an interesting twist here: ‘with famam Ovid uses this bridge between narrative layers and segments to sound the grand theme that epic poetry confers renown (see Hardie 2012) — usually, upon characters, who make a name for themselves simply by being named in their epic, but here (by surprise: Echo and Narcissus have been headlining, but they just leave backing vox and flower, disembodying into white leaves) instead upon the role of the teller in the story he foretold, and as well upon his role as stand-in mouthpiece for the bard Ovid. By implication, scorning Pentheus is scorning not just Bacchus but the power of epic, and blindly slighting the shape-shifting … Ovid. And reading (this) epic is to enter the laboratory of storytelling’.

The poetic adjective Achais -idos (f.), meaning ‘Greek’, is a Greek loan word (Ἀχαιΐς -ΐδος). It is found in Greek poetry from Homeric epic (Il. 1.254 etc.) onwards, but does not occur in extant Latin literature before Ovid (who has it again at Met. 5.306 and 15.293). Achais imparts a more elevated — and more epic — tone than would a more conventional adjective (such as Graecus, -a, -um). ‘Achaia’ (the Latin spelling, or version, through linguistic metamorphosis) was strictly speaking a region of the Peloponnese, but such synecdochical usage (one region of Greece stands for the whole) is widespread in epic poetry. In Ovid’s day, moreover, ‘Achaia’ had currency as the name of the Roman province that encompassed all of southern Greece (including the entire Peloponnese and regions immediately to the north of the Gulf of Corinth; the remaining areas comprised the province ‘Macedonia’). Such play on linguistic and geopolitical registers occurs throughout the poem and feeds into Ovid’s trans-cultural and imperialist poetics: overall, the Metamorphoses traces the transition of history and empire from Greece to Rome, with Rome (and its empire) hyperbolically conceived as tantamount to the world (see Intro. §3c). Here the geographical specification simultaneously enhances and delimits Tiresias’ fame: it knew no bounds … among the cities of Greece. The phrase per Achaidas urbes should probably be taken *apo koinou with (i) cognita res, (ii) famam … attulerat, and (iii) nomen erat … ingens. It also harks back to the opening of the Narcissus episode: Ille [sc. Tiresias] per Aonias fama celeberrimus urbes | inreprehensa dabat populo responsa petenti [‘He, renowned throughout the cities of Boeotia, gave faultless prophecies to those seeking them’, 3.339–40]. Put differently, Tiresias’ fame grows as Ovid’s narrative unfolds: whereas it was limited to Boeotia at the beginning of the Narcissus episode, at the beginning of the Pentheus episode it has reached all of Greece.

nomen has the pregnant sense of ‘famous name’, ‘renown’, ‘celebrity’; ingens makes clear that Tiresias has become the Ovidian equivalent of a Hollywood A-lister thanks to his unerring soothsaying. The genitive auguris, which depends on nomen, is used loosely as a synonym for vates in the previous verse. In republican and early-imperial Rome, an augur was a special type of religious functionary. Unlike the vates who relied on divine inspiration, an augur divined divine will (and especially their plans for the future) from signs observed in nature, often the flight- and eating-patterns of birds. But poets often used such terms more or less interchangeably in the general sense of ‘soothsayer’ (L-S s.v. augur ii), as here. Technically speaking, vates is the more appropriate label: the blind Tiresias could hardly base his predictions on the inspection of empirical signs; his access to the divine sphere — and hence inspired knowledge of the future, a prerogative of the gods — operates via a metaphysical connection. But with augur Ovid, in addition to introducing variety into his religious nomenclature, invokes a specific priesthood of Roman civic religion. By such subtle effects, Rome’s presence is felt throughout the Metamorphoses, even though the city itself will not materialize until Book 14.

513–16 spernit … obicit. The new story starts rancorously, with the verbs spernit, ridet and obicit sounding a derisive note. The shared subject of these verbs needs to be assembled from bits and pieces littered across lines 513–14: Echionides, (ex omnibus) unus, contemptor superum, and Pentheus. Our understanding of the syntax evolves as we read along. The patronymic Echionides (‘son of Echion’) could be a viable subject and seems to suffice until we reach ex omnibus unus, at which point it becomes preferable to take Echionides as standing in apposition (‘a single individual, the son of Echion …’). Two more appositional expressions follow in the subsequent line: the general attribution contemptor superum and the proper name Pentheus. Ovid thus introduces his new protagonist, the young king of Thebes, through a complex sequence of designations: we first get his lineage (he is the son of Echion), then learn that he stands apart from everyone concerning Tiresias (ex omnibus unus) and that he is a blasphemer (contemptor superum); and finally we get the actual name (Pentheus). Reshuffled, we get: ‘A single individual, Pentheus, the son of Echion, a blasphemer of the gods, still holds him in contempt …’ This build-up has an ominous effect, not merely introducing Pentheus as the principal character (the next to stamp his name on epic, to star in Ovid), but also adumbrating his downfall (the flipside of the fama factory; but infamy’s still a form of fame). Those who challenge the gods tend to meet a sticky end in the Metamorphoses (513–14 n.); the ‘piecemeal’ fashion in which Ovid introduces Pentheus here may subtly anticipate his physical disintegration at the end, where he gets torn limb from limb.

Note the placement of the verbs within a *tricolon arrangement: spernit comes at the beginning of line and clause; ridet comes at the end of line and in the middle of its clause; obicit comes at the beginning of the line and the end of the clause — and is further set off by enjambment and the abrupt *diaeresis after the first foot. The effect is to maintain focus upon Pentheus’ actions with deliberate variation. It should be noted that Narcissus too ‘scorned’ (Echo: 393 spreta) — but Pentheus ups the ante, to make a complete hatchet job of it, and of himself.

513–14 spernit … Pentheus. The conjunction tamen gives the preceding two lines a concessive force (‘Even though the story of Narcissus … Pentheus nevertheless …’). Echionides is a patronymic, which identifies an individual by a male ancestor (often his father). The patronymic is characteristic of ancient epic language, both Greek and Latin (which borrowed it from Greek). It is found from the very first line of Western literature (Hom. Il. 1.1 ‘Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Peleus’ son [Πηληϊάδεω] Achilles …’) onwards. Here the patronymic identifies Pentheus as son of Echion, one of the surviving Spartoi (Σπαρτοί, the ‘Sown-men’); his mother was Agave, one of the four daughters of Cadmus and Harmonia (see Intro. §4). The reference to Echion points back to the beginning of Book 3, where Ovid tells the story of the foundation of Thebes. Cadmus had been ordered by his father Agenor, king of Phoenicia, to search for his sister Europa (who had been abducted by Jupiter in the form of a bull). Since finding Europa proved impossible, and Agenor had forbidden his son to return without her, Cadmus was in effect forced into exile. He thus resolved to found a new city, and at length arrived at the location in Boeotia where the Delphic oracle had indicated he should do so. Thereupon he sent his comrades to fetch water, only to have them slaughtered by the dragon who dwelt in the nearby spring. Cadmus took his revenge by slaying the beast and was thereupon instructed by an anonymous voice from the sky to sow its teeth into the ground. The Spartoi soon rose from the earth in great number, but promptly began to slay each other through bloody fratricide, until only five remained. Cadmus went on to found Thebes with these five survivors, of whom Echion alone is mentioned by name (3.126 quorum fuit unus Echion — ‘one of them was Echion’). With these balancing references to Echion, Ovid imparts a sense of continuity and cohesion, while affirming the importance of lineage and Thebes’ (partial) autochthonous origins for his Theban narrative. At the same time, such references keep in view the peculiar ‘Theban condition’ — its inhabitants’ seemingly genetic predisposition to familial strife, which repeatedly brings the city to disaster. Pentheus will make much of the city’s serpentine ancestry in his upcoming speech. Indeed, ‘Echion’ derives from echis (ἔχις), the Greek term for ‘viper’, so Pentheus is quite literally ‘serpent spawn’ or, taking more liberties, ‘viper-king’ — which goes some way to explaining his bizarre praise of the serpent of Mars later on in the tale (543–48).

In ex omnibus unus the preposition is used partitively: out of all those who heard of Tiresias’ correct prediction of Narcissus’ fate only a single individual (still) holds him in contempt. Speaking more broadly, the play of ‘one versus many’ (and related motifs) recurs throughout the episode: 544 (Pentheus on the dragon of Mars) … qui multos perdidit unus …; 564–65 (Pentheus’ family trying to dissuade him from fighting Bacchus) hunc avus, hunc Athamas, hunc cetera turba suorum | corripiunt dictis frustraque inhibere laborant; 617–20 (Acoetes shouted down by his crew) hoc [probant] omnes alii …; 646 (Acoetes being beset by his crew) increpor a cunctis …; 647–48 (Aethalion mocking Acoetes after his refusal to stay at the helm) ‘te scilicet omnis in uno | nostra salus posita est’; 654–55 (Bacchus in disguise pleading with the sailors) quae gloria vestra est, | si puerum iuvenes, si multi fallitis unum?; 687–88 (Acoetes being the sole member of the crew not turned into a dolphin) de modo viginti … | solus restabam …; 715–16 (the throng of Bacchants attacking Pentheus) ruit omnis in unum | turba furens … The respective merits of the stances of individual and crowd fluctuate over the course of the narrative. At the outset, the individual (Pentheus) is misguided — both in scorning Tiresias and in refusing to permit the worship of Bacchus. In Acoetes’ tale, the opposite case arises: the ship’s crew is manifestly criminal and sacrilegious (an impia turba, 629) in its showdown with Acoetes, who alone manifests religious scruples. The final scene involves a more ambiguous situation: Pentheus, facing imminent dismemberment, at last sees the error of his ways — but too late: the divinely deranged crowd tears him into pieces, though with ‘blasphemous hands’ (manibus … nefandis, 731). John Henderson adds that ‘Ovid, in typical fashion, will show just how wooden his build-up for Pentheus is when he nevertheless adds (i) further unbelievers (batty Theban women, 4.1–4), and then (ii) the “sole” surviving Cadmeid to reject Bacchus’ godhood (Acrisius of Argos, 4.607–10), which kick-starts the next saga via the breathtakingly fake “bridge”, as Acrisius doesn’t believe in Perseus’ claim to be son of Jupiter either…! (see 559–61 n.)’.

The form superum is syncopated gen. pl. of superi, ‘the gods above’; it is an objective genitive, dependent on contemptor. The expression calls to mind the description of Mezentius as contemptor divum at Aen. 7.648, and further reminiscences of this Virgilian figure occur later in the set text (582–83, 623–25 nn.). Speaking more broadly, mortals defying gods is a prominent theme in the early books of the Metamorphoses, where an entire human race with blasphemous proclivities comes into being from the blood of giants slain while hubristically attacking the seat of the gods on Mount Olympus (Met. 1.157–62). The first representative of this particular race treated in the narrative is the vicious tyrant Lycaon, who tests Jupiter’s divinity by serving him a meal of human flesh and then attempting to murder him; it is this conduct that convinces Jupiter to eradicate the entire race of human beings (save the pious couple Deucalion and Pyrrha) in a flood of biblical proportions. It is, moreover, hardly coincidental that the giants, the human race fashioned by the Earth out of their blood, and Pentheus (via his descent from Echion) are all autochthonous, i.e. ‘born from the earth’: they are genetically predisposed (as it were) to challenge the superi (‘gods above’). Indeed, in the choral ode at Eur. Bacch. 538–44, Echion is actually said to be one of the giants who opposed the gods and Pentheus, his son, quite literally ‘born from a dragon’. In any event, contemptores superum almost invariably come to a bad end, so the phrase imparts a sense of foreboding: Pentheus’ fate, it is safe to assume, won’t be a happy one. The fact that Pentheus is a king — and as such acts as a privileged representative of Theban society towards the divine sphere — exacerbates his transgression, while creating a civic crisis (see Additional Information after 531–63 n.); but on the whole, Ovid follows Euripides in presenting Pentheus’ tale as a personal and familial tragedy rather than one of Theban society at large.

514–15 praesagaque … senis. The -que after praesaga links spernit and ridet. senis (gen. sing. of senex, ‘old man’) focalises Tiresias both as Pentheus mis-sees him as an ‘old woffler doom-monger’ and as we are to recognize him, as ‘wizened voice of authority’ (see 516–18 n.). Yes, it’s the old old story, of tradition — don’t fight it! praesaga … verba speaks both to his prophecy regarding Narcissus and to his prophetic powers more generally (on which see Intro. §5b-i).

515–16 tenebrasque … obicit. The -que after tenebras links ridet and obicit, the et links tenebras and cladem. Notice that tenebras and cladem lucis ademptae are virtually synonymous, both referring (in poetic language) to Tiresias’ blindness, and so producing a ‘theme-and-variation’ effect (cf. 646 with n.), which adds emphasis. We also have a mild instance of *hysteron proteron insofar as tenebras indicates the condition or effect, whereas cladem lucis ademptae refers to the moment of deprivation or cause. The circumstances of the blinding were recounted at 3.316–38 (see Intro. §5b-i; the key lines are also cited below). lucis ademptae is genitive of apposition (AG §343d) with cladem: lucis speaks to vision (OLD s.v. 8), ademptae (perf. pass. part. of adimo) to its loss. obicit, here in the sense of ‘to cite (before an opponent as a ground for condemnation)’ (OLD s.v. 10), presupposes an indirect object in the dative such as ei, which is easily supplied, and implies that Tiresias is in the physical presence of Pentheus. This is indeed the case, as the following makes clear, but constitutes a rather sudden and unmediated narrative turn.

516–18 ille … videres. The main clause of this segment outside the direct speech consists of ille (subject) and ait (verb), with movens being a circumstantial participle agreeing with ille and governing the accusative object albentia tempora (Tiresias is shaking his head indignantly as he speaks). albentia is present participle of albeo, modifying tempora, to which it stands in predicative position: ‘the temples white with …’ rather than ‘the white temples’. This distinction is important, as otherwise you’ll be hard put to fit in canis, an instrumental ablative governed by albentia; it comes from cani, -orum (m. pl.), strictly meaning ‘grey hair’, but here used metonymically in the sense ‘old age’. Tiresias’ visible signs of old age call to mind the reverence due to the elderly (in ancient as in modern thought), thereby underscoring Pentheus’ rude conduct. The seer ingeniously reacts to Pentheus’ contempt by reversing the terms of the latter’s mockery. As with his foretelling of Narcissus’ fate (see 511–12 n.), so here Tiresias utters a prima facie counterintuitive statement that reconceives an apparent misfortune (the loss of sight) as a blessing. The sense is that Pentheus would be better off if he too were blind because his decision to spy on the Bacchic rites will prove fatal. In broader thematic terms, Ovid subtly announces here another (fatal) case of illicit gazing, reprising the motif from the tale of Actaeon earlier in Book 3. Naturally the whole passage re-echoes with Narcissus’ brand of dysopia too — and his failure to listen.

Both esses and fieres are 2nd pers. sing. imperfect subjunctives (from sum and fio, respectively), forming a riddling present counterfactual condition (AG §517). We first get the apodosis (the exclamatory quam felix esses), then the protasis (si … fieres). Why Pentheus would be exceedingly fortunate (quam felix) if he, too, were blind is explained above.

The adjective orbus can take either an ablative or a genitive, as here with luminis huius, to indicate the thing of which one is deprived or bereft (cf. AG §349a). In post-classical Latin orbus by itself (i.e. without the genitive attribute luminis vel sim.) came to mean ‘blind’: see OLD s.v. 6, with reference to Apul. Met. 5.9, where Fortuna is called orba et saeva et iniqua (‘blind, savage, and unjust’). lumen signifies ‘eyesight’ here; it has the same sense in the prelude at 3.336–38 at pater omnipotens … pro lumine adempto | scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore (‘But the all-powerful father granted [Tiresias] knowledge of things to come in compensation for his loss of sight and lessened [Juno’s] punishment by this honour’). In essence, we have an exchange of one type of vision (‘eye-sight’) for another (‘fore-sight’), which explains Tiresias’ use of the demonstrative pronoun huius. He may have lost one particular type of lumen (the use of his eyes), but he has gained another kind in recompense, i.e. mental il-lumin-ation/ understanding. See?

Tiresias completes the counterfactual condition with a negative result clause, ne Bacchica sacra videres. The adjective Bacchicus is one of several name-based adjectives derived from Bacchus; others include Baccheus, Bacchius, and Bacheius. The form Bacchicus is found only three times before Ovid in extant Latin, with the first two occurrences coming from fragments of early tragedies (Naevius’ Lycurgus and Ennius’ Athamas). Though a small sample size, this suggests that Ovid may have employed it here as having tragic affiliations. Bacchica sacra refers to rites performed by (usually frenzied and/ or inebriated) worshippers in honour of Bacchus; the particular allusion here is to the trieterica orgia, nocturnal rites held by the Thebans every third year on Mount Cithaeron. The adjective sacer (‘consecrated to a deity’, ‘divine’) and the associated noun sacra (‘religious rites’) are key terms that recur throughout the set text: 530 ignota ad sacra; 558 (Pentheus speaking) commenta … sacra; 574 famulum … sacrorum; 580–81 (Pentheus addressing Acoetes) ede … | morisque novi cur sacra frequentes; 621–22 (Acoetes with reference to Bacchus) non tamen hanc sacro violari pondere pinum | perpetiar; 690–91 (the end of Acoetes’ tale) delatus in illam | accessi sacris Baccheaque sacra frequento; 702 electus facienda ad sacra Cithaeron; 710–11 hic oculis illum cernentem sacra profanis | prima videt …; 732–33 talibus exemplis monitae nova sacra frequentant | turaque dant sanctasque colunt Ismenides aras. The emphasis is on the recognition of the new rites as authentic, on recognizing a divinity in human guise, and on joining up when Bacchus comes along.

Additional Information: Feldherr (1997, 47) points out that the theme of sacrifice pervades Book 3 and links the story of Pentheus with the foundation of the city at the book’s opening: ‘Images of sacrifice feature in the book’s first and last episodes and so provide a thematic frame uniting the death of Pentheus with the foundation of Thebes. After the miraculous cow has led the followers of Cadmus to the site of Thebes, the first act of the settlers is to prepare a sacrifice. It is while collecting water for libations that the colonists encounter the dragon who kills them … At the book’s conclusion not only can the dismemberment of Pentheus be compared to a Bacchic sparagmos, but the poem’s final couplet treats his death as a warning to convince the women of Thebes “to attend the new sacra, to give incense, and to cultivate the sacred altars”. In both cases the sacrifice unites its participants as members of a new community whose existence the rites themselves confirm. Thus the initial sacrifice can be clearly connected with the rituals of founding the city of Thebes itself, while the final lines make clear that it is as members of the Theban state (Ismenides) that the women will participate in Bacchic rites’. Feldherr goes on to link this concern with sacrifice in Ovid’s Theban history to the theories of the French cultural historian René Girard, who sees as the primary purpose of sacrifice not so much, or not only, communication with the gods, as the regulation of cyclical violence arising within any community as a result of competition. Naturally, any variety of human, and therefore corrupted, sacrifice must also taint the foundation it may bless — with tragedy (Zeitlin 1965).

519–23 namque … sorores. Tiresias anticipates the arrival of Bacchus in 519–20 and then goes on to spell out with a conditional sequence what will happen to Pentheus if he fails to honour the new god. The two parts of the sentence are loosely linked by the connecting relative quem (= et eum) at the beginning of line 521. The main verb of the first half is aderit; the main verbs of the second half are spargere and foedabis.

519. The archetype of namque dies aderit is the famous Homeric expression ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ’ ἄν … (‘the day shall come when …’, Hom. Il. 4.164). namque (‘for indeed’, ‘for truly’) is ‘an emphatic confirmative particle, a strengthened nam, closely resembling that particle in its uses, but introducing the reason or explanation with more assurance’ (L-S s.v.). The antecedent of the relative pronoun quam is dies, whose gender can be either masculine or feminine: when used of a fixed or appointed day, as here, it is feminine (AG §97a). In terms of syntax, quam functions both as the accusative object of auguror and as the subject accusative of the indirect statement introduced by auguror (the infinitive being esse). The verb auguror is a deponent version of the more usual auguro, with no difference in sense. The adverb procul is the predicate of quam: ‘… which, I foretell, is not far off’.

520 qua … Liber. The antecedent of qua (an ablative of time) is again dies. Tiresias’ use of the subjunctive veniat could be a modest touch reflecting the seer’s religious scruples (i.e. he opts for a potential subjunctive rather than future indicative), but that would be hard to square with the forcefulness of the preceding namque dies aderit. It may rather be that the present subjunctive (which in any case carries an intrinsic future force) was regular to express a solid future assumption in a temporal clause determining an antecedent, as here: cf. Liv. 8.7.7 dum dies ista venit qua … exercitus moveatis (‘until that day comes on which you move the army’). Some scholars have argued for the existence of a ‘prospective’ or ‘anticipatory’ subjunctive in Latin (as in Greek), though the small number of examples adduced, and the fact that they are restricted to subordinate clauses, leaves the matter uncertain.

The god Bacchus (Greek Dionysus) is variously referred to in Latin epic: Liber is one of his several poetic designations. Originally an Italian fertility god, Liber (the name signifies ‘free’) came to be associated with Bacchus despite the apparent lack of any original association with wine (see Bömer on Ov. Fast. 3.512). novus can mean ‘new’, but also ‘strange’ (OLD s.v. 2). With respect to the former sense, Liber/ Bacchus is the most recent addition to the divine pantheon (see Intro. §5b-iii), as well as ‘the big new thing’ in Book 3. With respect to the latter sense, he is a god with an unusual pedigree: while partially of Theban origin — a little earlier in the poem Ovid recounts his sensational double birth arising from the union of Jupiter and Cadmus’ daughter Semele (3.310–15; see Intro. §5b-iii) — he returns to his native city from the East as a ‘newcomer’. The themes of unfamiliarity, newness, and arrival from foreign parts recur throughout the episode, as Bacchus establishes his new cult against the resistance of his cousin Pentheus (the son of Cadmus’ daughter Agave): 530 ignota … sacra; 558 commentaque sacra; 561 advena; 581 moris … novi … sacra; 732 nova sacra. Speaking more broadly, the adjective novus is a keynote of the whole poem, which begins with in nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas | corpora (‘my mind carries me to tell of forms changed into new bodies, 1.1–2); newness is of course intrinsic to metamorphosis, and there is a strong hint of literary novelty in this declaration as well. In Roman culture more generally, though, ‘newness’ was often seen as threatening venerated tradition, so that the connotations of novus were decidedly ambivalent. res novae meant ‘revolution’, and this is precisely what Ovid’s Pentheus fears (as indeed does Euripides’ Pentheus, who speaks of νεοχμὰ … κακά [literally ‘new evils’, often translated ‘revolution’] at Bacch. 216).

The name-based adjective Semeleius, -a, -um is derived from Semele (Σεμέλη), the mother of Bacchus. The use of a name-based adjective in agreement with its noun rather than noun + genitive, which we would expect in prose, is typical of epic language; the usage with proles is formulaic: earlier in the poem, Ovid has Clymeneia proles (of Phaethon, son of Clymene, 2.19) and proles Stheneleia (of Cycnus, son of Sthenelus, 2.367); later in the set text we will see proles Mavortia (of the Spartoi, 3.531). Note that Semeleia scans ⌣ ⌣ — ⌣ ⌣, with the third ‘e’ long as representing the long Greek vowel ‘êta’ (η).

521–23 quem … sorores. The relative pronoun quem (referring back to Liber, the last word of the previous line) is a ‘connecting relative’ (equivalent to et eum; cf. AG §303) and accusative object of the verb of the nisi-clause, i.e. fueris dignatus. Tiresias here uses a ‘future more vivid’ conditional sequence (AG §516.1), with future perfect in the protasis (fueris dignatus) and future in the apodosis: spargêre (= spargêris, i.e. 2nd pers. sing. fut. indic. pass.: ‘you will be scattered’) and foedabis.

The protasis of the condition, i.e. the nisi-clause, is less complicated than it might seem at first glance. Its verb is the future perfect periphrastic fueris dignatus, from the deponent dignor. (The regular form for the future perfect as given in grammars would be dignatus eris, i.e. perf. pass. part. + a future form of sum; alternatively, Latin writers could use the future perfect form of sum, as Ovid does here). dignor, a transitive verb, is constructed with its own object in the accusative and an objective ablative (connected with the adjective dignus that the verb implies): ‘to deem x (acc.) worthy of y (abl.)’. templorum is a genitive of definition with honore: ‘the honour of temples’ is concrete advice; Tiresias is suggesting the building of such to honour Bacchus.

The indeclinable mille modifies locis (ablative of place). lacer, which prefigures 722: lacerata est [sc. manus], stands in predicative position to the subject of the sentence (i.e. you): ‘torn to pieces, you will be scattered …’ Several stylistic touches turn this into a particularly macabre visualization of Pentheus’ gruesome end. The *hyperbaton mille … locis underscores the shocking hyperbole of mille, which anticipates the ‘vehicle’ of the simile used by Ovid to cap the account of Pentheus being ripped to pieces: a tree shedding its leaves in autumn (729–31). As Keith (2002, 267) points out, the sound of the Latin spargere recalls the Greek technical term for ritual dismemberment of the Bacchic kind, i.e. sparagmos. Listen. Can you already hear the serpent spawn (513–14 n.) being torn to bits and sprayed across mille locis s-anguine s-ilvas?

Gore (sanguine) is a recurrent motif of the Pentheus episode. In fact, the set text is among the most ‘gore-nographic’ portions of the Metamorphoses, offering the ancient epic equivalent of a Hollywood splatter-film. The verb foedabis (‘you shall defile/ pollute’), made conspicuous by enjambment, contributes to the effect: it rhetorically turns the victim of dismemberment into the perpetrator of a religious offence, a prospect that Tiresias seems to dwell on with a measure of spondaic foreboding (foedabis scans — — —). After silvas, we get two more alarming accusative objects of foedabis: his mother Agave (matrem) and maternal aunts Autonoe and Ino (matris sorores), who, as the unwitting perpetrators of his dismemberment, will be splattered with their proles’ blood; his grim death will thus not only befoul the natural world, it will also pollute — both metaphorically and literally — kinship relations. The recurrence of the same word in different cases (here mater, which occurs first in the accusative, matrem, then the genitive, matris) is called *polyptoton. Here it underscores the primal horror of Pentheus’ fate: he is going to be torn apart by relatives normally associated with love, tenderness and nurturing: his mother and maternal aunts.

Note that, in addition to polyptoton, matrem and matris sorores are linked by correlating -que … -que. This correlating usage (in which the first -que is, strictly speaking, redundant) is a mannerism of elevated epic language that is not found in normal prose usage. It is generally used to connect a pair of words or expressions that are parallel in form and/ or sense, often terms designating family relations, as here. The device goes back to Ennius, who probably introduced -que … -que in imitation of Homeric τε … τε. It is metrically convenient, since the particle -que scans short (AG §604a.1), and so is particularly frequent at the close of the verse. Further occurrences of correlating -que … -que in the set text can be found at 529, 550, 558, 609, 618, 645.

524. Tiresias’ solemn one-word declaration eveniet (‘It shall come to pass!’) is abrupt and unequivocal, dispensing with the conditionality of his earlier formulation. Metre underscores the dramatic exclamation: eveniet scans as a choriamb (— ⌣ ⌣ —), and is marked off by a sharp trithemimeral *caesura, which pause enables the force of the utterance fully to sink in. eveniet is followed by additional future indicatives (dignabere, quereris) that reinforce the sense of certainty.

Hard on the heels of spargere (522), we have another alternative 2nd pers. sing. fut. indic. pass. form in dignabere (i.e. equivalent to dignaberis). The word numen is etymologically connected to nuto (‘nod’), and speaks to divine will (so, for example Cicero speaks of numen et vim deorum, ‘the will and power of the gods’, Nat. D. 2.95). Over time, however, it came to be used as a virtual synonym of deus (‘god’), and that is the sense of the term here, as again at 560.

525. The verb quereris (2nd pers. sing. fut. indic. pass. of the deponent queror, ‘to lament’) governs an indirect statement with me as subject accusative and vidisse as infinitive. With sub his tenebris (‘in this darkness’, referring to blindness), Tiresias picks up (echoes) the idiom of Pentheus’ taunt in 515–16 (tenebrasque et cladem lucis ademptae | obicit): the deictic adjective his is an explicit gesture back to it. The ability to see (vidisse) that Tiresias mentions here is his prophetic vision: he ominously declares that Pentheus will lament that he, the seer, has seen ‘only too well’ (nimium, literally ‘excessively, too much’).

526 talia … natus. The subject of the clause is Pentheus, designated Echione natus, a poeticism combining the past participle of nascor and an ablative of origin without a preposition (AG §403a): ‘born of (i.e. son of) Echion’. It is equivalent to the patronymic Echionides used earlier (513 with n.). The two references to Pentheus by way of his father’s name (and hence his chthonic origins as a descendant of the serpent of Mars) provide a fitting frame for the opening encounter between the prophet and the king.

The present tense of the circumstantial participle dicentem, which modifies an implied eum (sc. Tiresias), indicates that the action of the participle and the main verb proturbat are contemporaneous. Put differently, Pentheus rudely pushes Tiresias away while he is still speaking, thereby supplementing the verbal taunts of 514–16 with physical abuse.

Additional Information: Ovid uses the verb proturbat only twice in the entire poem, here and at 3.80 with reference to the dragon of Mars (obstantis proturbat pectore silvas, ‘he sweeps down with his breast the trees in his path’). This is part of a broader strategy of using lexical and thematic reminiscences, along with other effects, subtly to remind the reader of Pentheus’ serpentine lineage. You might look for sibilant hissing in his diction (e.g. 543–45 with n.); an inclination towards meteoric anger (cf. 3.72 where solitas … iras identifies anger as a hallmark of the dragon’s mental disposition); fearful, flashing eyes that express that anger (577–78 with n.). More subtly, Ovid unleashes a pair of similes in which the serpent and Pentheus are likened to rivers (568–71 n.).

527–71
Pentheus’ Rejection of Bacchus

527–30 dicta … feruntur. After the opening confrontation between Pentheus and Tiresias, designed to set the scene, these four transitional verses are all action. The syntax is paratactic throughout, with barely a whiff of subordination: sequitur, aguntur, adest, fremunt, ruit, feruntur — all are (indicative) verbs of main clauses; the whiff is the participle mixtae. Ovid manages to generate a sense of the spirit of the Bacchic revelry he is depicting by such touches as the polysyndetic profusion of -que and the matching choriambic openings of 528 (Liber adest) and 529 (turba ruit).

527. The initial dicta fides sequitur is a variation on verba fides sequitur at Fast. 1.359. In both cases fides means ‘proof, confirmation’ (OLD s.v. 4a). dicta is n. pl. acc. of the perf. pass. part. of dicere: ‘the things that have been said’, or ‘the pronouncement’ (the English noun ‘dictum’ has the same derivation). Note the playful word order: from a formal point of view, fides does what Ovid says it does: it ‘follows’ dicta in the verse. Derived from the perfect participle of respondere (‘answer’), the noun responsum can, as here, have the technical sense of ‘an answer given by an oracle or soothsayer’ (OLD s.v. 2a). Allow yourself a little leeway in translating aguntur: ‘actually happen’ or even ‘come true’.

As at 511, the diction echoes the beginning of the Narcissus episode: Ille [sc. Tiresias] per Aonias fama celeberrimus urbes | inreprehensa dabat populo responsa petenti; | prima fide vocisque ratae temptamina sumpsit | caerula Liriope (‘he, of stellar renown through all the Boeotian towns, gave unerring responses to the people who sought them; the first to put his trustworthiness and truthful utterance to the test was the river-nymph Liriope’, 3.339–42). Tiresias, then, has an impressive ‘track record’ in prophecy. Ovid is telling you, he should be listened to.

How much time has elapsed from Pentheus thrusting away of the prophesying Tiresias in 526 and the realization of the latter’s prophecy as announced in the following verse? Not much, judging from the present tense of sequitur and aguntur. Likewise, the emphatic Liber adest in 528 suggests the arrival of Bacchus is almost instantaneous, as sudden as an epiphany. The ‘prologue’ has come to an end; hey presto! The action starts.

528. The compact declaration Liber adest scans as a choriamb (— ⌣ ⌣ —), thus corresponding metrically to and recalling (as well, of course, as beginning to fulfil) the pithy opening of 524 eveniet! For Liber, designating Bacchus, see 520 n.

The -que displaced onto festis links the verbs adest and fremunt. festis speaks to the festive, even joyful, atmosphere of the proceedings at this point. Onomatopoeic ululatibus is used here of ritual howling: when on earth, the god Bacchus was said to be accompanied by bands of women called Maenads (Greek μαινάδες or ‘raving ones’) who danced riotously and emitted frenzied cries (ululatus) in his honour. Add to this the clashing of cymbals and the beating of drums (532–34 n.), and it is safe to say that the region is abuzz with the arrival of Bacchus and his raucous entourage. The *alliteration festis… fremunt (continued by feruntur in 530) nicely reinforces this impression. As Weber (2002, 329) points out, the ‘verb fremere is something of a vox propria for the Bacchic roar; [it] is probably cognate with Greek βρέμειν and, hence, with Dionysus’ epithet Bromius’. Note that agri is meant ‘locally’ here, i.e. the land in the vicinity of Thebes (as opposed to the city itself), but also more broadly the countryside as the characteristic location of Bacchic revelry and the scene for the showdown smithereens.

529 turba ruit. The Theban population rushes out of the city en masse, to welcome the new deity and join in the riotous cult activity. Note that the mood-setting verse opening is again choriambic (— ⌣ ⌣ —), rhythmically echoing the start of the previous line and reinforcing the relationship of cause (Liber adest) and effect (turba ruit). John Henderson adds: ‘Ovid adapts the epic hexameter to mood-set “release inhibitions” — and join (have us one and all join in with) the Bacchic choir (530). Pentheus is to become a text for worshippers to hymn the power of their awesome god for ever after, amen’.

529–30 mixtaeque … feruntur. The -que after mixtae links ruit and feruntur. Ovid creates something of a polysyndetic onslaught here, with the following two instances of correlating -que … -que linking, in the first instance, matres and nurus (‘mothers and young married women’ or, more specifically, ‘mothers and daughters-in-law’ being a poetic combination, tantamount to specifying ‘women’) and, in the second, vulgus and proceres. The keynote of the sentence is mixtae: under the influence of Bacchus social distinctions collapse. Ovid first focuses on gender (viris, matres, nurus), then on socio-economic status (vulgus, proceres). Note that the -que after vulgus scans long by position before the two consonants of the following word.

The life- and culture-changing arrival of the new god inaugurates a hitherto unknown cult, whence the ignota … sacra to which the Thebans flock (in this sense, ignota harks back to 520 and Bacchus/ Liber’s attribute novus). Passive forms of fero frequently have the ‘middle’ sense ‘carry oneself on’ (i.e. ‘proceed’), as here with feruntur; but there is often a hint of an external as well as internal impetus. Hence, in contrast to the active ruit of the previous line, the passive form suggests that the revellers are carried along in their ecstasy, i.e. have shed part of their rational agency. This is a subtle reminder that Bacchus, like few other divinities, will infiltrate the mind and induce altered states of consciousness — a quasi-metamorphic point that bears on the grim conclusion of the episode.

531–63
Pentheus’ Speech

Pentheus attempts to stem the Bacchic ‘invasion’ of his city — or, rather, the mass exodus of the Theban citizenry to the countryside to partake in the new rites. He launches into a passionate speech that rings the changes on various rhetorical registers. It falls into five parts: (i) Three rhetorical questions, addressed to the citizens of Thebes (531–32 Quis furor, anguigenae … attonuit mentes?; 532–37 aerane tantum … tympana vincant?; 538–42 vosne, senes, mirer … vosne, acrior aetas …?); (ii) Promotion of the dragon of Mars as exemplum, interspersed with imperatives (543 este, precor, memores; 545 sumite; 546 vincite; 547–48 pellite … et … retinete); (iii) A series of conditions, (counterfactual) wishes, (self-)exhortations, and normative statements (548 si … vetabant; 549–50 utinam … diruerent … sonarent; 551–52 essemus … querenda, non celanda foret, … carerent); (iv) Anticipation of the events to come in the indicative, with reference to Bacchus and himself, with a parenthetical imperative dismissing his audience (553 a puero Thebae capientur inermi …; 557 quem … ego … (modo vos absistite) cogam); (v) A final rhetorical question, which Pentheus addresses to himself, in the 3rd person, above all (561 Penthea terrebit cum totis advena Thebis?).

Within the literary universe of the Metamorphoses the speech clearly fails to achieve its objective. The parenthetical imperative in 557 (modo vos absistite) all but admits defeat, as Pentheus has started to realize that he will be in this fight more or less on his own. The speech, then, indirectly chronicles Pentheus’ growing isolation from the rest of the citizen body and his desperate and delusional identification with Thebes, culminating in the final Caesarian gesture of speaking of himself in the 3rd person. Not only does Pentheus fail to win over his internal audience, but members of the latter actually endeavour to dissuade him from his intended course of action (as indicated at 564–65). The speech is thus not directly pertinent to the action; Ovid uses it rather to elucidate aspects of Pentheus’ character. The literary inspiration for the speech comes from the opening of Euripides’ Bacchae, in which Pentheus, likewise without success, rebukes Cadmus (accompanied by Tiresias) as he leaves the city to join in the Bacchic rites (everyone else has evidently already left): ‘I see … my own grandfather — what a ridiculous sight! — playing the Bacchant, complete with wand! Sir, I am embarrassed by the very sight of you — you old fool. Shake off that ivy! Rid your hands of the thyrsus, grandfather!’ (Eur. Bacch. 248–54).

Ovid’s Pentheus addresses a much larger group: the male citizens of Thebes. The exclusion of women from this expanded group is noteworthy, for two reasons. As Ovid has just pointed out, the followers of Bacchus flooding out of the city are an indiscriminate mixture of all age groups and of both genders, across class boundaries (529–30); if anything, the spotlight is on the women. And in Euripides’ Bacchae, though the women have already left the city, Pentheus singles out the female population of his city for special attention (215–32, 260–63). As McNamara (2010, 180) notes, the switch in focus contributes to Ovid’s re-characterization of Pentheus and introduces a whiff of tragic irony: ‘Pentheus’ disregard of the female members of his audience parallels his argument … which urges the men to reject femininity in favour of masculinity. He dismisses women at his peril, of course; it is at their hands that he will meet his death (3.708–31)’.

Additional Information: To understand the extent of the civic crisis created by Pentheus’ rift with his fellow Thebans, we must bear in mind that the human world described by Ovid at this point (and found in ancient myth more broadly) consisted of independent city-states, such as Thebes, whose members were bound by shared laws and religious practices. Individual religious activity and differentiated belief were less significant than they are today: it was primarily collectively, as a socio-political unit, that members of city-states interacted with the divine sphere, with leading figures often ‘performing’ the interaction through collective ritual acts. Hence a major rift between a ruler and the broader citizen body in this domain would constitute a grievous problem — none more grave.

531–32 Quis … mentes? As an interrogative quis is usually substantival, but is sometimes found as a m. adjective, as here and again at 632 (quis clamor?). So quis modifies furor (on which more below), the subject of the sentence (cf. 3.641). The verb attonuit is present perfect (‘has thunderstruck’ your minds) rather than simple past (‘did thunderstrike’): the inhabitants are in the thrall of Bacchic possession while Pentheus attempts to reason with them. quis furor is a question that, as Hardie (1990, 225) points out, Pentheus ‘might with more propriety address to himself’ (cf. 577–78 with n.). The dramatic query has an epic antecedent at Virg. Aen. 5.670, where the young prince Ascanius addresses the flipped-out Trojan women who are trying to set fire to their own fleet with quis furor iste novus? (‘What strange madness is this?’).

References to madness or insanity recur throughout the Pentheus episode, as here with furor (again at 641). Other signifiers belonging to the semantic field of madness include amens (628), demens (641), furor/ furens (623, 716), and insania/ insanus (536, 670, 711). The various attributions, however, show that madness is in the eyes of the beholder: the terms are applied indiscriminately by Pentheus to describe the conduct of the Maenads (as here), and by the narrator to describe Pentheus. The same is true of the inset tale that follows: the crew accuses Acoetes of madness (641–42), Acoetes the crew. This split reality poses a challenge for readers: we have to make up our own minds as to which of these attributions to accept. Ovid uses additional means to suggest that a given individual is out of his or her mind. In Pentheus’ case, he highlights the fact that the Theban king is in thrall to violent emotions, in particular anger (ira: 577, 693, 707; rabies: 567). In terms of genre, furor originally belongs to the world of tragedy — there is no equivalent to the ‘constitutional insanity’ so characteristic of the tragic stage in the Homeric epics (though Homeric heroes are of course emotionally incontinent, especially when their honour is at stake, and do ‘lose it’ at times). From 5th-century Athenian tragedy, the phenomenon or theme of ‘madness’ migrated into epic, not least Aeneid 4, which features the tragedy of Dido deranged.

The two vocatives belong to lofty epic diction: anguigenae is a compound adjective (a composite of anguis, ‘snake’ and -gena, ‘born from’) and proles Mavortia a poetic formula (520 n.). Taken together they make for a highly evocative address to the citizenry, and one that recalls its legendary origins. The compound anguigenae refers back to the dragon of Mars that dwelled at the site of the future city, and speaks to the birth of the Thebans from the serpent’s teeth (513–14 n.); an equally appropriate compound is terrigenae, ‘earth-born’ (a composite of terra, ‘earth’ and -gena, ‘born from’), which Ovid uses at 3.118, when he recounts the birth of the Spartoi. As for proles Mavortia, it should probably be taken as roughly synonymous with anguigenae (‘the offspring of [the dragon of] Mars’), particularly as earlier accounts have Mars sire the dragon: Ovid would then be alluding to such traditions in the manner of a doctus poeta (‘learned poet’). An alternative might be to understand a reference to the fact that Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, married Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus (Met. 3.132–33). For a Roman reader, such references to ‘Martian’ lineage would call to mind other founding figures who descended from Mars (and, not unlike the Spartoi, also perpetrated fratricide in the course of laying the foundation of a new city): the twins Romulus and Remus, with the former founding Rome after slaying the latter. According to hoary legend, their sire was Mars, who impregnated the Vestal Virgin Ilia. If it is hard to repress Roman analogies here, it will soon become well-nigh impossible (538–40 n.).

532–37 aerane … vincant? Pentheus here launches into a long rhetorical question to rally his Thebans. The main verb is valent, which takes three subjects: aera (in the participial phrase aere repulsa), tibia (with the further specification adunco … cornu), and fraudes (qualified by the adjective magicae). Then follows a consecutive ut-clause (set up by tantum). Its main verb is vincant; it takes four subjects: voces (qualified by the adjective femineae), insania (which comes with the participle phrase mota … vino), greges (qualified by the adjective obsceni), and tympana (qualified by the adjective inania). The accusative object of vincant is an implied vos, which functions as the antecedent of the relative pronoun quos. The verb of the relative clause is terruerit; it takes three subjects: ensis (qualified by the adjective bellicus), tuba, and agmina (with the further specification strictis … telis).

For Pentheus, the situation is tantamount to an invasion, and his language sets conventional terminology of warfare, in which he reckons his Thebans to excel, against the perverse and effeminate (from his point of view) Bacchic incursion:

	Regular warfare	Bacchants
Weaponry	bellicus ensis, strictis … telis	magicae fraudes, insania
Musical instruments	tuba	aera, tibia, tympana, femineae voces
Military Formation	agmina	obsceni greges

Pentheus insists that the martial vigour of his compatriots (expressed with the resounding triple *anaphora of non in 534–35) ought to dispatch the effeminate and unwarlike Bacchic ‘invaders’. By his obsessive military logic, ensis and tela ought easily to rout magicae fraudes and insania, the tuba should easily drown out the cacophonous racket produced by Bacchic instruments (on which more below) and female shrieking, and a properly drawn-up army (agmina) ought to make short shrift of a disorganized effeminate hord (obsceni greges).

532–34 aerane … ut. The adverb tantum goes with valent and sets up the ut-clause: ‘Are x, y, and z so powerful that …’

The formulation aerane … aere repulsa is very similar to Lucr. 2.636 pulsarent aeribus aera (‘they clashed bronze upon bronze’), which may have been Ovid’s inspiration (if this isn’t Ennius’ epic resounding through both of them). Here, as often, aes (‘copper or bronze’) is used by metonymy for ‘a musical instrument made of bronze’ (cf. 586 calamus, 621 pinus with nn.). Since aera is nom. pl. and aere abl. sing., we have ‘bronze (instruments) struck by bronze (instruments)’. The instruments in question (fig. 5) are cymbals, which were used in the worship of Bacchus, along with the Phrygian flute (tibia, also mentioned here) and kettledrum (tympanum, mentioned at 537). The participle repulsa (‘beaten back’) neatly captures the action of the cymbals clashing. The *polyptoton, the enjambment, and the ‘echo’ in ae-re re-pulsa help to join in the rhythmic beat of the percussion.

Fig. 5 Musical instruments.

The musical instrument indicated by adunco tibia cornu is the so-called Phrygian (or Berecynthian) flute, used in the cult of Bacchus/ Dionysus as well as that of the goddess Cybele. adunco … cornu is ablative of description, a frequent construction in Ovid (we see it again at 607): the tibia was a straight wind instrument that ended in an upwards-bending horn (which magnified the sound produced).

Literally rendered, magicae fraudes would yield ‘magical frauds’, but since fraudes cancels out the claim to supernatural power implied by magicae, a better rendering might be ‘charlatanry’. Pentheus regards any pretension to efficacious magic on the part of Bacchus as fraudulent — hardly surprising given his conviction that the latter is an impostor. The charge recalls a passage in Euripides’ Bacchae, where Pentheus comments scornfully on reports that a ‘wizard conjurer’ (γόης ἐπωιδὸς, 234) has arrived from Lydia. The Greek formulation is slightly more ambiguous since it leaves open the possibility that the alleged wizardry is genuine — an ambiguity reinforced by the equivocal focalization (the people whose report Pentheus is reporting most likely believe in the supernatural powers of the stranger, whereas Pentheus clearly does not). Charlatanry was no doubt a common charge levelled against various mystery cults in historical times (as Livy’s account of followers of Bacchus in early 2nd century BCE Italy illustrates: see Intro. §6). The sense of secrecy and, of course, mystery with which these cults shrouded their rites naturally suggested the idea of magic to outside observers.

534–35 quos … telis. In the middle of the long rhetorical question we get, buried in a relative clause, an evocation of the martial spirit of the Thebans, the overpowering of which by Bacchus is the immediate cause of Pentheus’ dismay. Ovid plays with the assonance of t (tuba — terruerit — strictis — telis), to recreate the sound of the tuba. This device is in the tradition of Ennius’ Annals, where it was used to more extravagant effect: at tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit (‘and the trumpet in terrible tones blared “taratantara”’, Ann. 140 Sk); Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu (‘Africa, a rough land, trembled with a terrible tumult’, Ann. 310 Sk).

Note the progression from equipment (ensis) to the signal to attack (tuba) to the actual onslaught of the enemy in rank and file (agmina) with weapons drawn (strictis … telis). Pentheus here seems to refer to an occasion in which the Thebans faced an enemy army in regular battle without fear. It is difficult to match this occasion with any event in Thebes’ very young history: ancient myth records no such encounter, and Cadmus’ battle with the dragon or the civil war among the Spartoi (the military scenarios that defined the foundation of the city) do not fit the bill. terruerit is perfect subjunctive, an instance of ‘subjunctive by attraction’ arising from the fact that the relative clause containing terruerit is dependent on the subjunctive vincant in 537. Relative clauses that depend upon subjunctives and constitute an integral part of the thought will themselves take the subjunctive (AG §593).

536–37 femineae … vincant? Despite the fact that Pentheus blames Bacchus for upsetting the strict separation of male and female, the dominant group participating in Bacchic rites are women. As he makes clear later in his speech (esp. 553–56), Pentheus regards Bacchus as deficient in masculinity: the emphatic use of femineae calls into question the virility of any man in his entourage.

We might translate mota insania vino as ‘wine-induced madness’. The participle mota has the sense ‘occasioned’ or ‘excited’ (OLD s.v. moveo, 16). Bacchus, god of the vine, was of course well known for inducing states of inebriation and ecstasy in his worshippers; Pentheus acknowledges the phenomenon, but deprives it of any religious significance by characterizing it as what we might now term ‘substance abuse’. In his view, Bacchus’ followers are intoxicated miscreants who conceal their sozzled antics under a veneer of ritual piety.

Pentheus’ contempt is clearly expressed in obsceni… greges: the word grex, like English ‘herd’ is often disparaging when used of human beings. The original sense of obscenus seems to have been ‘ill omened’ (so Ovid has obscena puppis at Her. 5.119, of the ship that conveyed Helen to Troy), whence it came to mean ‘detestable, repulsive’, and eventually something like ‘obscene’ in the modern sense. Sexual license and like transgressions were widely attributed to Bacchic cult practice (see e.g. Eur. Bacch. 215–23; Liv. 39.8.7 stupra promiscua, ‘widespread adultery’ with Intro. §6).

The tympanum is a kettledrum (fig. 5), basically a hollow circular frame with parchment stretched over it, held in one hand and struck with the other. The mention of this instrument, for which inanis (‘hollow’) is clearly an appropriate epithet (but perhaps a double entendre), completes the list of musical instruments associated with the cult (532–33 n.). As McNamara (2010, 179) observes, Pentheus ‘begins and ends his list with the actual musical paraphernalia of Bacchic worship (aera … tibia … tympana), while he places the more abstract Bacchic associations (fraudes … femineae voces … insania … obscenique greges) between these. He thus “buries” his less tangible concerns within the brackets of these “real” items. For these concerns (magic, insanity, obscenity, femininity) are the standard accusations levelled at Dionysiac/ Bacchic rites by those who often represent more traditional authoritative religion’.

The force of vincant is — for the reader at any rate — metaphoric. The reference in context must be to religious conversion vel sim., but here and elsewhere the use of military language and martial imagery exemplifies Pentheus’ martial obsession. Rather more subtly, it could also involve mythographic play with an older version of the tale, predating Euripides’ Bacchae, in which Pentheus responds to the arrival of Dionysus by leading an army into the mountains, only to be defeated in battle by a troop of Maenads.

538–42 vosne … decebat? The main verb is mirer, a deliberative subjunctive (‘should I not wonder at … ?’) taking a matched pair of accusative objects in *anaphora: vosne (538) and vosne (540). The interrogative particles -ne … -ne are attached to the words Pentheus wishes to emphasize: the two occurrences of vos. Taken literally, Pentheus is pondering which of the two age groups he should marvel at; but, as the alternatives are clearly not mutually exclusive, it is best to understand an implicit adverb such as magis: ‘should I be [more] bewildered at you … or at you?’ Note that each vos is followed by a vocative (senes; acrior aetas, o iuvenes, propriorque meae) and a relative clause (qui … posuistis, sinitis …; quos … decebat).

538–40 vosne … capi? The first group Pentheus singles out from the citizen body is that of the older men who arrived with Cadmus from Tyre (Ovid may have had his eye on Pentheus’ address to Cadmus and Tiresias at Eur. Bacch. 248–54: see 531–63 n.). This group cannot have been very large — in fact, it comes as something of a surprise that, excepting Cadmus, it exists at all. At the opening of Book 3, Ovid gave the impression that all of Cadmus’ companions were killed (3.46–59), before he went on to found an entirely autochthonous community by means of the dragon’s teeth. For the same reason, they are difficult to include among the anguigenae or a proles Mavortia that Pentheus addresses at the outset of his speech. These inconsistencies begin to make sense if we see them as a deliberate attempt on Ovid’s part to align the founding of Thebes with the founding of Rome, which also has a discrepant ‘double origin’: arrivals from elsewhere (Aeneas and his fellow Trojan refugees) and a founding hero descending from Mars (Romulus). Reminiscences of the Aeneid reinforce the parallel: (i) longa per aequora vecti: thematically Aen. 1.3 multum ille et terris iactatus et alto; lexically 1.375–76 diversa per aequora vectos, 1.379 (cited below); (ii) profugos … penates: Aen. 1.2 fato profugus; 1.68 (cited below); 1.378–79 sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste penates | classe veho mecum; 3.86–88; penatibus et magnis dis; (iii) Tyron … posuistis: the notion of translatio imperii.

The verses are rhetorically wrought: there is the emotional gemination hac … hac (both modifying sede), further reinforced by *hyperbaton; the powerful *alliteration profugos posuistis … penates; along with some subsidiary alliterative touches (vosne … vecti; sinitis sine).

The participial phrase longa per aequora vecti is a variant on Cat. 101.1 multa per aequora vectus. The past participle vecti agrees with qui; Cadmus’ original companions, initially forming a search party, had sailed with him from Phoenicia (513–14 n.); but as just noted, none of these should still be alive at this point.

With hac Tyron, hac profugos posuistis sede penates, Ovid evokes in particular Virgil’s description of Aeneas at Aen. 1.68 Ilium in Italiam portans victosque penates (‘bringing Ilium and his defeated household gods to Italy’), where Ilium is an alternate name for his native Troy. Tyre (Latin Tyrus; Tyron is the accusative form) was a city of Phoenicia, the original homeland of Cadmus and his followers. Pentheus’ meaning is that they have in this location founded a ‘new Tyre’ (i.e. Thebes). The penates were, properly speaking, the guardian deities of a Roman household, closely associated with Vesta, goddess of the hearth, and worshipped in the home; there was a corresponding cult of public penates as well. Note that profugos (much like victos in Aen. 1.68) is a transferred epithet: it is not the penates who were exiled (or defeated) but their human wards. All in all, Pentheus’ statement is decidedly odd: not only are penates a Roman rather than Greek religious notion, but there would have been little reason for Cadmus and his followers to bring their penates (in the form of statues, which stood in the penetralia, or central point of a Roman home) with them because they originally left Phoenicia to search for Europa, not to found a new homeland (for the ‘backstory’ to this episode, see Intro. §5). Ovid has clearly worked against the grain, then, to have his mythical founding of Thebes evoke that of Rome. Speaking more broadly, it is worth noting that elements of Roman culture show up in the strangest places in the Metamorphoses: early in Book 1, for example, Ovid rather audaciously ascribes penates or household gods to the domiciles of the Olympian gods (1.173–74) — one of his strategies for insinuating the Roman telos of his poem in the early stages of his narrative (see Intro. §3d, and, for Ovid’s ‘triangulation’ of Thebes-Troy-Rome, Intro. §5 n. 46).

The (accusative) subjects of capi are Tyron and penates. Pentheus laments not merely the fact of capitulation, but that it comes sine Marte — without a violent struggle. Here, as often, Mars stands by metonymy for ‘war’, ‘battle’. This particular form of metonymy, in which a god stands for an activity or item with which he or she is associated (e.g. Bacchus = ‘wine’; Ceres = ‘bread’) is also known as denominatio.

540–42 vosne … decebat? The main verb continues to be mirer (538). Pentheus now turns to the younger generation of Theban men, and ratchets up the rhetorical effects. In poetry the interjection o (again in the set text at 579, 613, 641 and 713) inserted before a vocative — as here with iuvenes — creates a loftier form of address than the vocative by itself. The term iuvenis is a rather vague indicator of age, and one to which the English expression ‘young man’ does not exactly correspond. Roman thought generally divided a man’s life into four stages (ranges are approximate): infantia (0–2 years), pueritia (3–16), iuventus (17–45), senectus (46 +). Hence iuvenes can be thought of as designating men of fighting age. Both acrior and proprior (which takes a dative) contrast the younger men with the elderly; the former term (here in the comparative form) means something akin to ‘(more) warlike’. As acrior aetas stands in apposition to vos and o iuvenes, it must be abstract-for-concrete, a figure whereby a quality is abstracted from the concrete form in which it exists (similarly 617 tutela with n.). In English this can be rendered with the genitive: ‘young men of a more warlike age’. With meae supply aetati (a form of *ellipse common in Latin and English). With this fleeting personal aside, Pentheus bears out that he has come to the throne at a young age, but Ovid provides no further indications of his age (beyond what can be surmised from the mention that his grandfather Cadmus is still alive, and the fact that his mother and aunts are still sufficiently vigorous to tear him limb from limb with their bare hands). Euripides seems to make him a young man of about 20, or perhaps a bit less (see Bacch. 974, 1185–87, 1254).

The relative pronoun quos (whose antecedent is iuvenes) functions both as accusative object of decebat and subject accusative of the indirect statement introduced by it (with tenere and tegi as infinitives; they are linked by the -que after galea and by alliteration). This construction can be retained in English translation: ‘whom it used to befit to …’ (note the reproachful force of the imperfect tense: ‘it used to befit …’). The indirect statement combines parallelism with variation: we get two antitheses along the pattern: alternative 1 (arma + galea) — verb (tenere + tegi) — negation (non + non) — alternative 2 (thyrsos + fronde). But the first is active (tenere) with accusative objects (arma, thyrsos), the second passive (tegi) with instrumental ablatives (galea, fronde).

A thyrsus (fig. 6) is a wand twined with ivy and/ or vine branches (both plants were sacred to Bacchus) carried by the god, as well as by his followers during the god’s rites. It was one of the most recognizable accoutrements of Bacchus and his cult. Along with carrying the thyrsus, the god and his worshippers would crown their heads (whence tegi, a pres. pass. infinitive) with wreaths of ivy leaves, or a combination of vine and ivy leaves (whence fronde, a ‘collective’ singular) during the god’s rites. Bacchus himself is later described as ‘wreathed with clustering grapes’ (666–67 with n.).

Fig. 6 A thyrsus (‘A staff tipped by a pine cone’).

543–48 este … decus. Pentheus continues to address the younger generation(s) — those, who, like himself, are descendants of the dragon’s teeth. He begins with an elaborate reminder of their serpentine ancestry (543–45); the overall design of the verses is chiastic: (a) imperative (este … memores) + (b) relative clause (qua … creati) ‹› (b) relative clause (qui … unus) + (a) imperative (sumite). Then he draws two contrasts to underscore the triviality of dealing with Bacchus by comparison with the high stakes faced by the serpent and the heroic feats required of it:

	Serpent	Thebans
Contrast 1	pro fontibus ille lacuque interiit	at vos pro fama vincite vestra
Contrast 2	ille dedit leto fortes	vos pellite molles et patrium retinete decus

Again *alliteration (in particular of ‘s’: sitis, stirpe, sumite, serpentis — reinforced by the endings in the same letter of memores, illius, animos, multos, unus, serpentis) generates formal coherence. McNamara (2010, 181) detects in the highly sibilant diction an evocation of the heroic serpent. Pentheus holds up the primordial monster as a civic role model for the Thebans to emulate. The appreciation of the monster that on its own (unus) slaughtered many (multos) companions of Cadmus illustrates Pentheus’ mindset: he values martial prowess and merciless butchery wherever and however they manifest themselves. Why does he not praise Cadmus? The killer of the serpent is still alive — indeed, he is present (564–65 n.). See Hardie (1990, 225 and 229–30) discussing the comparison with Rome, James (1991, 87–89), Feldherr (1997, 50).

543. The plea precor is ‘parenthetical’ and so does not affect the syntax of the clause, which is a command (este is 2nd pers. pl. pres. imperative of sum): ‘Be mindful!’ Note the interlaced word order of the indirect question (more regular would be qua stirpe creati sitis). The compound verb form sitis … creati is in the subjunctive (2nd pers. pl. perf. pass.) because of the indirect question, which is introduced by the interrogative adjective qua, modifying stirpe, an ablative of origin. Phaethon uses a like formulation at 1.760 si modo sum caelesti stirpe creatus (‘if I am indeed born of heavenly stock …’).

544–45 illiusque … serpentis! The -que after illius links the imperatives este and sumite. illius modifies serpentis in a striking instance of *hyperbaton: the ‘framing’ genitive encloses the noun on which it depends (i.e. animos, the object of the clause), the relative clause for which it is the antecedent, and the main verb (sumite).

Variations on the theme of one against many (multos perdidit unus) recur throughout the set text, starting with Pentheus opposing the Bacchus-worship of the citizens of Thebes (513 ex omnibus unus with n.). Here the contrast between multos and unus subtly prepares the isolated position Pentheus finds himself in at the end of his speech.

545–48 pro fontibus … decus! After appealing to the Theban citizens’ serpentine genealogy, Pentheus develops an elegant *antithesis, reinforced by *anaphora, contrasting the heroics of the dragon (ille … ille, also picking up illius … serpentis) with the lesser feats he asks of the Theban men (at vos … vos). The -que after lacu links fontibus and lacu. For lower stakes (pro fontibus … lacuque vs. pro fama vestra), the dragon undertook a more daunting task: he killed brave men (ille dedit leto fortes), whereas the Thebans merely have to drive away weaklings (vos pellite molles). Moreover, the dragon perished in defence of his realm (interiit), whereas the Thebans can expect to emerge victorious (vincite) and unscathed. Pentheus ends the sentence with an appeal to ancestral honour: patrium retinete decus. This is, as it were, Pentheus’ variation on Horace’s well-known line dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (‘sweet and honourable it is to die for one’s country’, Carm. 3.2.13): the ancestral dragon died in defence of his realm, a point made emphatic by enjambment of the crucial verb interiit and the trithemimeral *caesura that follows it.

The declaration ille dedit leto fortes has an elevated, epic ring arising partly from the use of letum, an archaic and poetic synonym for mors (‘death’), and partly from the periphrastic formulation itself (‘gave over to death’ rather than simply ‘killed’). With fortes supply viros (referring to Cadmus’ companions): this is the direct object of dedit; leto is the indirect object. The account of the serpent’s slaughter of Cadmus’ companions was narrated earlier at 3.46–49.

Like fortes, molles is used substantively: ‘weaklings’ or ‘softies’; Pentheus will apply the adjective to the cult again at 555. Speaking more generally, mollitia, a hallmark of Bacchic revellers and associated with Eastern culture more broadly, was a quality that Greeks, and the Romans after them, regarded with suspicion: see further 555–56 n. Pentheus’ language is, in effect, attempting to appeal to a kind of ethnic boundary. For patrium … decus, see 591–92 n.

548–51 si fata … sonarent. Pentheus here utters a somewhat unusual conditional statement, featuring an imperfect indicative in the protasis (si fata vetabant stare diu Thebas), followed by a counterfactual wish for the present (utinam + imperf. subjunct.: diruerent, sonarent) as the apodosis. The imperfect indicative vetabant almost seems to endow Pentheus with tragic foreknowledge of Thebes’ fated destruction (cf. Met. 15.429 Oedipodioniae quid sunt, nisi nomina, Thebae? ‘What is the Thebes of Oedipus now except a name?’), and, in entertaining the possibility that Thebes might be doomed, he momentarily adopts a more reflective stance. This is a striking moment in Ovid’s text, but it must be remembered that Pentheus himself is merely engaging in an extravagant metaphor that equates the spread of Bacchic cult in Thebes with the city’s physical eradication by warfare. The latter scenario is, in Pentheus’ view, clearly more wholesome and honourable, and hence more desirable, than falling under the sway of Bacchus and his worshippers.

The acc. + infin. combination stare diu Thebas is governed by vetabant. Note that, like ‘Athens’ (Athenae), ‘Thebes’ is a plural noun in Latin (Thebae) as in Greek (Θῆβαι), and so always has plural forms. The -que after viri connects the two subjects (tormenta and viri) of diruerent, the -que after ferrum connects the two verbs of the utinam-clause, i.e. diruerent and sonarent, and the -que after ignis connects the two subjects (ferrum and ignis) of sonarent. Overall, the picture is one of martial activity and clamour. tormenta are siege-engines; the choice of viri (here in the sense of ‘soldiers’) is loaded: Pentheus implies a contrast with the effeminate followers of Bacchus, whom he considers semiviri (‘half-men’) at best; ferrum and ignis seem to form a *zeugma with sonarent — only the clash of iron on iron generates a martial soundtrack, unless ignis refers to the collapse of buildings set on fire.

551–52 essemus … carerent. This is, in effect, the compound apodosis of a present contrary-to-fact condition, whose protasis is unstated but implied from what precedes: si viri moenia diruerent (‘if men were tearing down our walls …’) etc. As noted above, Pentheus would be less perturbed if Thebes were being sacked and razed to the ground by an invading army. The sense of sine crimine is sine culpa, i.e. if the city were duly sacked by superior forces, the Thebans would be wretched, but free from the imputation of cowardice for shamefully submitting to an unworthy adversary (a puer inermis, ‘an unarmed boy’, as Pentheus goes on to say in 553).

Pentheus here evokes a thematic nexus typical of tragic discourse: ‘modes of guilt/ transgression’ + ‘an emotional state of wretchedness’. Ovid explores variants thereof throughout his Theban history. Thus he introduces the tale of Actaeon (Pentheus’ cousin), who accidentally stumbled upon the goddess Diana at her bath, only to be turned into a stag by the enraged divinity and torn apart by his own hounds, as follows: at bene si quaeras, Fortunae crimen in illo, | non scelus invenies; quod enim scelus error habebat? (‘But if you seek the truth, you will find in this a fault of Fortune, not a crime; for what crime was there in a misstep?’, 3.141–42).

The passive periphrastic sorsque querenda, non celanda foret elaborates on what preceded: a military defeat, since honourable, would not have to be hushed up in shame (a notion spelled out explicitly in the subsequent clause), it could be bewailed openly. foret is an alternate form of esset, so imperfect subjunctive (as befits a present contrary-to-fact condition). lacrimae are the tears to be shed over the downfall of the city: they could pour forth without any sense of shame. pudore is an ablative of separation with carerent.

553–58 at nunc … fateri. The subject and verb of the main clause are Thebae capientur, with a puero … inermi an ablative of agent. puero is the antecedent of the two relative clauses that follow: (i) quem … aurum, with iuvant as verb and two antithetical sequences of nouns as subjects: first the things Bacchus does not like (bella, tela, usus equorum); then those he does (madidus … crinis, molles coronae, purpura, intextum … aurum). Pentheus dwells on the latter, devoting two lines to Bacchus’ ‘likes’ (some of which he pads out with graphic attributes) and only one to his ‘dislikes’; (ii) quem … fateri, with cogam as verb, quem as accusative object, and fateri as complementary infinitive. It is probably best to understand adsumptum (with patrem) and commenta (with sacra) as predicative, with esse as the infinitive to be supplied. (Alternatively fateri could be seen as introducing an indirect statement, with patrem and sacra as subject accusatives and adsumptum (sc. esse) and commenta (sc. esse) as infinitives.)

553. After the contrary-to-fact flight of fancy, at nunc (‘but as it is’) marks Pentheus’ return to present reality. For Thebae (nom. pl.), see 548–51 n. The verb capientur is 3rd pers. pl. fut. indic. pass. Note the iconic word order, with noun (puero) and attribute (inermi) ‘enclosing’ the city as if putting it under siege. The phrase conveys a twofold indignity: not only is Bacchus a mere boy (puero), he is also unarmed (inermi), a fact underscored by the hyperbaton, the double verbal paradoxes in the juxtaposed puero — Thebae and capientur — inermi, and the position of the attribute at the end of the line. For Bacchus’ youthfulness and boyish appearance, see Intro. §5b-iii.

554 quem … equorum. Bacchus’ lack of bellicosity — which Pentheus here expresses with a scathing *tricolon — was a conventional attribute: cf. Eur. Bacch. 416 ὁ δαίμων … φιλεῖ δ᾽ ὀλβοδότειραν Εἰρήναν, κουροτρόφον θεάν (‘The god [sc. Dionysus/ Bacchus] … loves Peace, giver of riches, goddess who nourishes youths’).

555–56 sed madidus … aurum. The combination madidus murra crinis is quasi-formulaic: Ovid has madidos murra … capillos (of Athis) at 5.53. Here crinis is a so-called ‘collective singular’. murra (myrrh) is a fragrant gum resin obtained from trees found predominantly in Arabia, used in unguents to produce a kind of scented hair oil (nicely conveyed here by the ‘dripping’ m-alliteration). Its use by men was unproblematic on festive occasions (see Gibson 2003, 280–81 on Ars 3.443–44); but habitual use was a sign of effeminacy, which the Romans associated with the Near East, in particular the regions of Phrygia (where Troy was situated) and Lydia. In the Aeneid, the titular hero is regarded as an effeminate dandy by both the African Iarbas and the Italian Turnus, with the latter speaking derisively of Aeneas’ hair ‘curled with heated iron and drenched in myrrh’ (crinis | vibratos calido ferro murraque madentis, Aen. 12.99–100). In the Western cultural imaginary, ‘effeminacy’ and ‘eastern’ often go together in what Edward Said has labelled the discourse of ‘Orientalism’ (the nexus of preconceptions and prejudices that Western authors and thinkers have tended to project onto Eastern cultures).

mollesque coronae speaks to the crowns of ivy (or ivy and vine) leaves worn by Bacchus and his followers (for which see 540–42 n.). Pentheus scathingly attributes the same quality of mollitia (‘softness’) to the leafy crowns that he earlier attributed to those who wear them (547 with n.). For a Roman reader the epithet molles might have been particularly striking, as the Romans awarded a range of coronae for exceptional military service, including the corona civica (made of oak-leaves) awarded for saving the life of a fellow-citizen and killing an enemy in the process, and the corona triumphalis (a small golden crown in the shape of a laurel wreath with dangling ribbons) that emperors awarded in imperial times to victorious generals (in lieu of a full-blown triumph).

The purpura was a shellfish that yielded a purple dye, and the word came to be used both of the purple dye itself, and, as here, of purple-dyed cloth. The dye was expensive to make, and the colour purple therefore came to signify wealth and power, often in extravagant quantities. Kings and emperors used it; and, like myrrh, it carried connotations of Eastern decadence. The sense of pictis intextum vestibus aurum is ‘gold (i.e golden thread) woven into embroidered/ painted garments’. Note that pictis … vestibus is dat. pl. The assertion of Henderson (1979, 98) that pictis (perf. pass. part. of pingo, ‘adorn with colours, paint, embroider’) is ‘proleptic’ in sense is certainly correct if pictis is understood as speaking to embroidery (and so anticipating the result of intextum … aurum), but less clearly so otherwise, since the gold thread could merely be adding further colour to already dyed garments.

An alert Roman reader might have caught in verse 556 a veiled reference to the so-called toga picta, a garment dyed entirely in purple and embroidered with gold, which was worn (so legend has it) by the original kings of Rome and also by triumphant generals and high magistrates on special occasions (including the emperor in imperial times). See Liv. 10.7.9 and 30.15.11–12 for generals wearing the toga picta during their triumph and Liv. 28.4.11, 30.15.11, and 31.11.12 for kings clad in purple. From the (anachronistic) perspective of Ovid’s contemporary readers, then, allusion to such a garment would subtly — and ironically — reinforce Pentheus’ framing of the advent of Bacchus in terms of military conquest and enhance the status of Thebes as a failed prefiguration of Rome.

557–58 quem … fateri. The archaic adverb actutum (‘forthwith, immediately, without delay’) is frequently found in comedy and the fragments of Republican tragedy, but is very rare in epic, found only once in Virgil’s Aeneid (9.255), and only here in the Metamorphoses. As Currie (1981, 2717) observes, ‘Ovid’s handling of the Pentheus story owes something to Pacuvius … and the use of actutum … in the context of Pentheus and his misfortunes is possibly meant as a hint of color tragicus, perhaps recalling for the alert and informed reader Pacuvius, and maybe even an actual line or phrase from the dramatist’s treatment of this particular myth’. The alacrity Pentheus has in mind is neatly evoked by means of two elisions: quid(em) eg(o) actutum. This metrical peculiarity may also have specific generic evocations: as Henderson (1979, 98) points out, ‘nowhere else does Ovid construct an initial dactyl of three words which before elision amount to five syllables. The scansion smacks not of epic, but of dramatic poetry’. In short, there is a reasonable chance that Ovid here echoes a now lost Roman drama, such as Pacuvius’ Pentheus.

The relative pronoun quem again takes puero … inermi (553), i.e. Bacchus, as its antecedent. The imperative clause modo vos absistite in parenthesis is more vivid than a subordinate conditional clause implied by modo (~ dum modo absistatis: ‘only provided that/ so long as …’: see OLD s.v. modo 3c). It is probably best to take adsumptum (from assumo, ‘lay false claim to’) and commenta (from comminiscor, ‘contrive, fabricate’) as predicative (see 553–58 n.). Pentheus dismisses Bacchus’ claim to Jovian paternity as false (as he does more expansively at Eur. Bacch. 242–45, identifying Semele, Bacchus’ mother, as the source of the ‘falsehood’) and the rites devised for his followers a religious sham, and intends to use force to compel a confession (cogam … fateri). Such ruinous scepticism regarding the authenticity of the new god recurs in the following book, where one of the daughters of Minyas makes the same charge in similar language: ‘dum cessant aliae commentaque sacra frequentant …’ (‘While other women shun work and participate in the fraudulent rites …’, Met. 4.37).

559–61 an satis … Thebis? Here an introduces a direct question and expresses indignation: ‘Can it really be that …?’ The question falls into two adversative parts, which are (yet again) juxtaposed asyndetically: satis … portas (with est as verb and contemnere and claudere as epexegetic infinitives, as explained below), Penthea … Thebis (with advena as subject and terrebit as verb).

Acrisius is a mythical king of Argos, father of Danaë and grandfather of Perseus (whose adventures are narrated in Book 4). According to legend he was initially, like Pentheus, resistant to Bacchus’ advent, shutting his gates and refusing to admit the god or his worship. In the transition from the Theban narrative to the Perseus episode Ovid offers what amounts to a gloss on Pentheus’ mention of Acrisius here, describing the latter as qui moenibus arceat urbis | Argolicae contraque deum ferat arma genusque | non putet esse Iovis (‘who forbade the entrance of the god [sc. Bacchus] within the walls of his city, Argos, who violently opposed the god, and did not admit that he was born of Jupiter’, 4.608–10). In having Pentheus adduce the case of Argos, Ovid unusually denies to Thebes the status of first Greek city visited on his return from Asia. This is in direct contradiction to the prologue of Euripides’ Bacchae, spoken by Dionysus himself, where the god identifies his mother-city Thebes as his first port of call in Greece (ἐς τήνδε πρώτην ἦλθον Ἑλλήνων πόλιν, ‘this is the first city of Greece I have come to’, Bacch. 20). Another version, reported at Apollod. 3.5.2, has Acrisius’ twin brother Proetus behind the Argive resistance to and sacrilegious exclusion of Bacchus — but again this happens right after, rather than (as here in Ovid) before, events in Thebes.

The subject of the first clause is satis (here used as a noun), with animi a partitive genitive dependent on it: one way to translate would be ‘sufficient courage’; Acrisio is dative of possession. contemnere and claudere are so-called ‘epexegetic’ infinitives (i.e. infinitives that ‘explain’ what Acrisius’ courage, according to Pentheus, consisted in), linked by alliteration and position in the verse. It should be noted that contemnere is the verb-equivalent to the noun contemptor, used earlier of Pentheus (514 with n.). For vanum numen we would say ‘false god’ (OLD s.v. vanus 3, though our passage is listed s.v. 2, ‘containing no real significance or force’, ‘empty’, ‘hollow’, ‘illusory’); for numen see 524 n. The participle venienti is dative (of disadvantage) with claudere portas; it refers to Bacchus and agrees with an implied ei.

Note that Penthea is acc. sing., the appropriate form for a Greek 3rd declension noun, as again at 706 and 712; like other Roman poets, Ovid regularly retains the Greek declension for Greek names and loanwords (again at 595 Taygeten, Hyadas, Arcton; 636 Naxon). Pentheus’ scathing rhetorical question is made more forceful by reference to himself in the 3rd person, a device of emphasis: Penthea is more compelling here than me. The expression cum totis … Thebis is an alternative, and more striking, way of saying et [totas] Thebas. If the overall expression fleetingly constellates a vision of unity — of the king and his city as one — the verb terrebit attributes this imagined unity to shared fear, which Pentheus dubiously imputes to his fellow Thebans, who have in fact been swept away by genuine religious enthusiasm (527–30). advena picks up etymologically (~ ad-venio) on venienti in the previous line. Pentheus’ use of the term (‘visitor from abroad’, ‘newcomer’, ‘stranger’) may have been inspired by Euripides, where Pentheus refers to Dionysus/ Bacchus as ξένος (Bacch. 233 etc.), which has much the same sense. The scathing anonymity of advena stands in sharp contrast to the respectful cult name Liber used earlier by Tiresias and Ovid as narrator (519–20, 528).

562–63 ite … vinctum. Pentheus orders his servants to put ‘the leader’ (ducem) of the commotion in chains (vinctum is perf. pass. part. of vincio, ‘bind’). The same figure issues much the same command at Eur. Bacch. 352–55 οἳ δ᾽ ἀνὰ πόλιν στείχοντες ἐξιχνεύσατε τὸν θηλύμορφον | ξένον … κἄνπερ λάβητε, δέσμιον πορεύσατε 
δεῦρ᾽ αὐτόν (‘Go through the town and track down the woman-like stranger … and once he is caught, bind him and bring him here …’). As with advena in the previous sentence, ducem is used scathingly here, suggesting a mortal rabble-rouser rather than a divinity. By avoiding the god’s names and cult titles, Pentheus implicitly rejects Bacchus’ claim to divinity.

The parenthetical aside famulis hoc imperat (‘he gives this order to his attendants’) on the part of the poet reads almost like a stage direction (and perhaps enhances the dramatic-tragic qualities of the episode). The adjective citi (nom. m. pl. of citus, ‘fast’) is used here in lieu of an adverb (cite, celeriter). The -que after ducem connects the imperatives ite (second occurrence) and attrahite.

Wills (1996, 101), in a discussion of the iteration of ite in sacral contexts, points to a possible irony in Pentheus employing ritual language (if it be such) in ordering an assault on a divinity. He also points out that Ovid has here reassigned to Pentheus words uttered by the Euripidean chorus at Bacch. 83–87 ἴτε βάκχαι, ἴτε βάκχαι, | Βρόμιον παῖδα θεὸν θεοῦ | Διόνυσον κατάγουσαι | Φρυγίων ἐξ ὀρέων Ἑλλάδος εἰς εὐ- | ρυχόρους ἀγυιάς, τὸν Βρόμιον (‘Go, bacchants, go bacchants, bring the roaring son of a god, Dionysus, from the Phrygian mountains to the streets of Greece, broad for dancing! Bring Bromios!’). All told, then, Wills sees Pentheus inadvertently slipping into a religious register, while ventriloquizing the god’s female worshippers (Euripides’ chorus consisted of Asian bacchants). The boundary Pentheus erects between himself and the ‘other’ he seeks to annihilate seems already to be dissolving.

563 iussis … abesto. In Latin the future imperative is normally used when there is a distinct reference to future time (AG §449); here, however, the future imperative abesto (of absum, ‘be absent’) merely imparts a heightened authoritative tone. This supplementary command brings out Pentheus’ irritation and impatience, and perhaps hints at reluctance on the part of the famuli.

564–65. The two verses are elegantly constructed. In the first we have a *tricolon abundans of nominative subjects structured around the triple *anaphora of the pronoun hunc (= Pentheus) as recurring accusative object. This tricolon is arranged climactically in terms of length, but anti-climactically in terms of familial authority, as we move from grandfather (avus = Cadmus) to the maternal uncle (Athamas is the husband of Agave’s sister Ino) to an unspecified assortment of relatives (turba suorum). Line 565 is dominated by the two finite verbs that enclose it, and which operate on the subjects and objects of the preceding verse. The use of the present tense adds vividness and imparts a sense of urgency.

The sense of corripiunt is ‘rebuke’ (OLD s.v. 6), a common poetic usage, also found in prose; the ablative dictis clarifies the discursive application of the verb (cf. Suet. Aug. 53 correptus voce magistri), but is not strictly necessary: Ovid has Acmona corripimus at Met. 14.497. The verb laborant is construed with the infinitive (inhibere).

In terms of familial attempts at dissuasion, Ovid has here ‘upped the ante’ vis-à-vis Euripides, who records only the efforts of Cadmus from among Pentheus’ relatives to overcome the young king’s opposition to Dionysus/ Bacchus (Bacch. 329–41). The elaboration of kinship terms and names in 564 calls to mind the genealogical structure of Ovid’s Theban History (see Intro. §4): Cadmus stands at the beginning and the end; the destruction of Ino and Athamas concludes the series of fatalities that hit his daughters and grandchildren. Note, finally, the subtle proleptic force of turba suorum: it is precisely a crowd of (female) relatives turned maenads — a turba furens (716) — that will tear Pentheus apart at the conclusion of the episode.

566–67. A rather unusual sequence, in which three verbs in the present (est, inritatur, crescit) are followed by an imperfect (nocebant) that sums up the series. The subject of est, inritatur, and crescit is rabies, which is modified by the attribute acrior and the past participle retenta. The -que after inritatur links est and inritatur, the -que after moderamina links crescit and nocebant (which takes moderamina ipsa as subject).

admonitu is ablative of cause with acrior est: the very attempts to restrain Pentheus fuel his anger: as often, Ovid proves himself a keen student of human nature. The *alliteration acrior admonitu underscores the thematic nexus stylistically. retenta is perf. pass. part. of retineo, modifying rabies. Just like the ablative admonitu, the participle has causal force, operating on both inritatur and crescit rabies: the efforts to make Pentheus see reason only worsen his condition: ‘his fury, because it has been detained, is roused and grows’. After admonitu and retenta, moderaminaque ipsa nocebant constitutes Ovid’s third and culminating articulation of the consequences of trying to constrain Pentheus.

568–71 sic ego … ibat. Ovid now proceeds to illustrate the psychological phenomenon by way of a simile drawn from the observation of nature. Comparing the irascible king to a river creates another subtle connection (526 n.) with the ancestral dragon, which was earlier likened to a river swollen with rain (3.79–80 inpete nunc vasto ceu concitus imbribus amnis | fertur: ‘now he moves on with huge rush like a river in flood’). The present simile features two scenarios, introduced by, respectively, qua and quacumque: (i) the river is unobstructed and flows freely; (ii) the river is obstructed and becomes fiercer as a result. The second scenario corresponds to the case of Pentheus, with his relatives’ attempt at dissuasion corresponding to the obstruction. The two halves of the simile are balanced across the adversative particle at, which functions as pivot. Each half reflects, with variation, the elements of its counterpart (qua nil obstabat eunti ~ quacumque trabes obstructaque saxa tenebant; qua ~ quacumque; nil ~ trabes obstructaque saxa; obstabat ~ tenebant; eunti ~ [implied object of tenebant]; lenius et modico strepitu ~ spumeus et fervens et ab obice saevior; lenius ~ saevior; modico strepitu ~ spumeus et fervens; decurrere ~ ibat). Note also that obstabat is also taken up by ab obice, and ibat harks back to eunti.

Additional Information: Shakespeare evidently felt great admiration for Ovid’s river simile, for he offers a beautiful, if less symmetrical, reworking of it in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, put in the mouth of Julia: ‘The current that with gentle murmur glides, | Thou know’st being stopped impatiently doth rage; | But when his fair course is not hindered, | He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones, | Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge | He overtaketh in his pilgrimage | And so by many winding nooks he strays | With willing sport to the wild ocean’ (Two Gentlemen of Verona ii. vii. 25–34).

568–69 sic … vidi. Here ego is, technically speaking, superfluous and so emphatic: Ovid injects the authorial ‘personal voice’ into his narrative at an unusual moment (on which more below). vidi (in final position) introduces an indirect statement, with torrentem as subject accusative and decurrere as infinitive. Note that torrens, which functions here as a substantive, can mean ‘a rushing stream’ or ‘torrent’ or, as here, ‘the current (of a river)’; it is a graphic image that well captures Pentheus’ youthful rashness and lack of emotional self-control, an effect reinforced by strepitu. qua here means ‘where’; the subject of the relative clause is nil. With eunti (pres. act. dat. part. of eo, and indirect object of obstabat), supply torrenti.

The intrusion of the narrator in the first person (ego … vidi) is highly unusual for the epic genre, which tends to avoid the authorial ‘personal voice’, outside of invocations, or apostrophes. In the Metamorphoses, however, such authorial intrusions, which take various forms, are relatively frequent, and some critics have seen them as imparting a sense of unity to the disparate narrative content of the poem. For Solodow (1988, 37) it is Ovid’s distinctive narrative voice that ‘we learn to recognize as we read the poem; we feel him present everywhere mediating the transmission of the stories, we rely on him as a kind of guide through the vast confusion of the world’ (see also Solodow 1988, 55 for discussion of the present passage). This approach yields valuable insights, but it is misguided to see these scattered authorial intrusions as the chief — or in Solodow’s insistent formulation the only — unifying feature of the poem (see further Intro. §3d).

Looking beyond narrative epic, parallels for the present authorial intrusion can be found in Virgil’s didactic poem, the Georgics, in the first book of which, for instance, the narrator remarks that he has often seen a clash of winds at harvest time (saepe ego … omnia ventorum concurrere proelia vidi, G. 1.316–18).

570–71 at … ibat. Ovid is describing a dam constructed from timber and stone: obstructa (perf. pass. part. of obstruo, ‘build in the way of, obstruct’) modifies saxa, but bears on trabes as well by implication (the -que attached to the participle connects the two nouns). Classical Latin poetry, and epic in particular, frequently employs simplex verb forms that had been replaced by compounds in general usage, as here with tenebant (we would expect retinebant); later in the set text we have ducere for educere (587), mittere for omittere (614), ponere for deponere (634). With tenebant supply an accusative object, such as torrentem. In the *tricolon spumeus et fervens et … saevior all adjectives are used adverbially to qualify ibat, and all are deftly chosen to enhance the analogy between the natural and the psychological that underpins the simile. ab obice could be an ablative of cause (equivalent to propter obicem) or, perhaps less likely, an ablative of source (i.e. the preposition speaking to an origin or starting point).

572–691
The Captive Acoetes and his Tale

The famuli return, not with Bacchus, as Pentheus had ordered, but with a different prisoner — or so it would seem. This captive, who gives his name as Acoetes, proceeds to explain, in a lengthy inset narrative, how he became a follower of Bacchus.

Ovid has evidently borrowed the motif of a follower of Bacchus taken prisoner by Pentheus from Euripides’ Bacchae, where the prisoner, who never gives his name, is the god himself in disguise. In Ovid, by contrast, the captive identifies himself as Acoetes (582), which name was evidently taken from Pacuvius’ lost tragedy Pentheus (or Bacchae). Moreover, the metamorphic story that Ovid’s Acoetes goes on to tell derives from the tradition represented by the long Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. For a full discussion of these intertextual complexities (and the full text of the Hymn), see Intro. §5a. Irrespective of the compound literary genealogy of the prisoner Acoetes, the fact that in Euripides the (unnamed) prisoner was the god in disguise suffices to raise the question: is the Ovidian Acoetes Bacchus in disguise? For a detailed discussion of this intriguing possibility, see Intro. §5b-iv. It is certainly true that various details (e.g. 582–83, 658–59, 699–700 with nn.) offer support for an affirmative answer, but the fact remains that Ovid never explicitly resolves the riddle of Acoetes’ identity. At a minimum, though, it must be granted that the text gains in richness, irony, and complexity if we recognize the likelihood that Bacchus and Acoetes are one and the same. In this shifting and slippery narrative about Bacchus, the god never appears in his own guise, but his presence is felt throughout, and equating him with Acoetes yields the culminating stroke of his metamorphic ubiquity. No matter how one reads the captive’s identity, Ovid follows Euripides in constructing a striking contrast between this cool, calm and collected figure and his enraged captor Pentheus, whose impatience and agitation mount as the interview unfolds (577–78, 692–93 with nn.). The resulting contrast in verbal style between the two antagonists could hardly be greater: whereas the restive, no-nonsense Pentheus manifests terseness and alacrity, Acoetes becomes ponderous and long-winded — irritatingly so, as a fuming Pentheus will later declare (692–93).

572–73. The interjection ecce marks a sudden and surprising development. Pertinent here is the observation of Austin (on Virg. Aen. 2.57) that this interjection often ‘marks a sudden disruption, in a manner familiar from Comedy, when a character unexpectedly appears, or when there is some disconcerting development’. That the elided subject of redeunt is famuli (‘servants’) — i.e. those to whom Pentheus earlier issued the arrest order (cf. 562 famulis hoc imperat) — is made clear by domino.

The overall syntax is a little convoluted: quaerenti modifies domino and governs the indirect question (hence the subjunctive) Bacchus ubi esset; at the same time, (quaerenti) domino serves as the indirect object of negarunt, which introduces an indirect statement, with subject accusative (se) elided and vidisse as infinitive, with Bacchum the internal accusative object of vidisse.

Note the unusual switch in tense from present redeunt to perfect negarunt (a syncopated 3rd pers. pl. perf. form = nega-ve-runt). With regard to the latter, a present participle (here quaerenti) would normally denote incomplete action contemporaneous with that of the verb, which does not match the normal progression of question-and-answer. This could imply that the servants interrupt Pentheus or that he keeps pressing them while they try to answer. But it might have no such implication: the stress on contemporaneity in the use of the present participle is not as pronounced for the oblique cases (as here with dative quaerenti).

If the indirect report represents Pentheus’ actual query, this would be the first time that he mentions the god by name. That name, in any event, registers emphatically here thanks to the *hyperbaton that places Bacchus in front of the ubi-clause to which it belongs, and the reiteration with *polyptoton (Bacchus … Bacchum). The text registers the god’s presence even as Pentheus’ henchmen report his absence.

That the servants return ‘blood-stained’ (cruentati is the perf. pass. part. of cruento, ‘stain with blood’), would seem to imply some manner of struggle with Bacchus’ worshippers. Ovid does not elaborate on this encounter, but may have been thinking of Eur. Bacch. 760–63, where a messenger reports on a skirmish between armed (male) villagers and (female) Bacchants, in which the latter rout the former, inflicting serious wounds while themselves remaining unscathed. In any event, the graphic detail is an ominous sign that contributes to the ‘gore-nographic’ build-up of the set text (521–23 n.).

574–76 hunc … secutum. Ovid here switches from indirect to direct speech. In an inversion of the sequence at 572–73, the verbs now progress from perfect (dixere is an alternate 3rd pers. pl. perf. form) to present (tradunt). The concessive particle tamen is an apologetic touch on the part of the servants: although they did not see, let alone capture Bacchus, they nevertheless do not come back empty-handed. hunc … comitem famulumque sacrorum designates the same individual, their captive, in a mildly pleonastic fashion (Ovid will promptly ratchet up the *pleonasm with sacra dei quendam …secutum — note the *polyptoton of sacra — which supplies no new information). The term comes here designates a follower in Bacchus’ retinue, whereas famulus is used in the religious sphere of functionaries charged with carrying out parts of the sacred rites. Presumably all famuli are comites, but not every comes is a famulus. It is difficult to judge where to situate famuli within the hierarchy of Bacchus’ entourage: are they subservient factota or privileged religious ministrants? It is at any rate suggestive that Ovid uses the same term of both the henchmen that Pentheus sent out to capture Bacchus (562 famulis hoc imperat) and the religious functionary of Bacchus whom they bring back. The ablative absolute manibus post terga ligatis indicates attendant circumstances; terga (‘back’) is a ‘poetic’ plural. To place a follower of Bacchus/ Liber (‘the Freer’) in chains is not without a measure of irony — all the more so if we understand the captive to be the god himself in disguise (see Intro. §5b-iv).

quendam is the accusative object of tradunt; it is modified by secutum (perf. pass. part. of the deponent sequor, ‘follow’), which takes sacra dei as internal accusative object: ‘someone who followed the rites of the god’. This tells us nothing that we didn’t already know, but the throwaway designation quendam (‘someone or other’) is a wonderfully arch metaliterary touch given Ovid’s elusive play on the identity of this figure (see Intro. §5b-iv). Tyrrhena gente is ablative of origin, qualifying quendam. The adjective Tyrrhenus, used of Acoetes again at 696, means ‘Etruscan’ or ‘Lydian’. Why? According to Hdt. 1.94, the Tyrrhenians were a ‘Pelasgic’ race, one of the pre-historic people inhabiting the Aegean, which originally settled on the coast of Lydia but later migrated to Italy to become the ancestors of the Etruscans. The Greeks continued to designate them ‘Tyrrhenian’, and Roman authors frequently followed suit, as here. Other terms for ‘Etruscan’ include Etruscus (Met. 15.557), Tuscus (found later in the set text at 624) and the poeticism Maeonius (cf. 583 Maeonia with n.). The double Lydian/ Etruscan geographical identity of Acoetes enables Ovid subtly to link Euripides’ Bacchae (in which Dionysus twice declares his Lydian origins: see 582–83 n.), Pacuvius’ Pentheus (with the character Acoetes), and the second Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, where the helmsman remains anonymous, but the crew is collectively designated ‘Tyrrhenian’ (Τυρσηνοί, Hymn. Hom. 7.8).

577–78 adspicit … differt. The placement of the verb (adspicit) in initial position, both within its verse and its sentence, neatly marks the incipit of Pentheus’ interview with the captive, which occupies lines 577–700 (including the long inset narrative). The et after fecerat links adspicit (577) and ait (580), the two main verbs of the sentence.

hunc, repeated from 574, designates the captive, who will identify himself as Acoetes in 582, but, as already observed, may well be Bacchus in disguise (see Intro. §5b-iv). Pentheus’ meteoric anger already features in Euripides (e.g. Bacch. 670); Ovid here imagines its manifestation in his gaze: his eyes are, literally, ‘to be feared’ (tremendos, gerundive of tremo). Epic heroes are sometimes described as having blazing or shining eyes, particularly in the heat of battle, where they are prone to manifest what Lovatt (2013, 311) terms an ‘assaultive gaze’, the essence of which is ‘looking at someone with the intention of committing violence against them’. The belligerent Theban king seems to be following the generic paradigm here. But it should not be forgotten that this is also a genetic paradigm: cf. the description of his serpentine ancestor at 3.33 igne micant oculi: ‘[the dragon’s] eyes flashed with fire’ (on Pentheus’ ‘genetic’ connection to the dragon, see 526 n.). As Hardie (1990, 225) observes, ‘Pentheus’ rage is as elemental in its fury as the violence of the serpent’. The implication of poenae vix tempora differt is that Pentheus is torn between the desire immediately to execute the prisoner and the more rational course of acquiring some intelligence about the cult of Bacchus and its followers first; vix indicates that he just barely musters the necessary self-control to follow the latter course.

579–80 o periture … morte. Pentheus begins with a characteristically nasty vocative address: the lofty tone of the opening interjection o (on which see 540–42 n.) is promptly dispelled by a redoubled ‘promise’ of execution, which he expects to set an example for other perceived miscreants. periture and dature are future active participles in the vocative. They are linked by -que (which has migrated to tua). documenta, the accusative object of dature, has the sense ‘example, warning’, with tua… morte an ablative of means (‘by your death’; note that the verse position of tua requires that it scan as an iamb [∪ —], so it must be abl. sing., agreeing with morte, rather than acc. pl., agreeing with documenta).

580–81 ede … frequentes. The imperative ede (‘declare’) governs three accusative objects (nomen, nomen parentum, patriam), as well as the indirect question (whence the pres. subjunct. frequentes) introduced by cur, which is appended to the list by the -que after moris. In the corresponding scene, Euripides’ Pentheus starts the interrogation with a rather less elaborate question (πρῶτον μὲν οὖν μοι λέξον ὅστις εἶ γένος, ‘But first tell me of your origins’, Bacch. 460). The sense of morisque novi sacra is ‘new fashioned rites’: moris… novi is genitive of quality qualifying sacra.

582–83 ille … parentes. The unruffled prisoner — metu is an ablative of separation dependent on vacuus (‘free from’) — begins his lengthy narrative, which occupies more than one hundred verses, by obliging Pentheus with a response to his multi-faceted query. He is asyndetically brief and to the point, with both the pronoun (mihi, dative of possession) and the verb (est) operating *apo koinou over the three clauses (notwithstanding the plural subject of the final clause: sunt is strictly needed, but the license is a common one).

The name ‘Acoetes’ is Greek in form (Ἀκοίτης), but occurs nowhere in extant Greek literature. Etymologically, it might suggest ‘husband’, ‘bedfellow’ (ἀκοίτης) or ‘unresting’ (ἄκοιτος), neither of which shed much light on Ovid’s figure; if it is a ‘speaking name’, its significance may have been clarified in Pacuvius’ lost Pentheus (on which see Intro. §5b-iv). Maeonia is properly a district of Lydia, in the neighbourhood of Mount Tmolus, where, according to some mythic accounts, Bacchus/ Dionysus spent his childhood; the term was also used by poets as a synecdoche for Lydia, and here it almost certainly means, by a further poetic extension, ‘Tyrrhenian’ or ‘Etruscan’: cf. Virgil’s reference to the Etruscan Mezentius’ troops as Maeoniae delecta iuventus (Aen. 8.499). For the array of terms for ‘Etruscan’ used by Ovid, see 574–76 n. By the choice of this term Acoetes emphasizes ‘historical’ Lydian origins as against Etrurian habitation, a suggestive self-characterization in the intertextual context. Euripides’ Dionysus twice states that he hails from Lydia: in the prologue (Bacch. 13), and in the scene to which the present passage corresponds when, disguised, he declares to Pentheus Λυδία δέ μοι πατρίς (‘Lydia is my fatherland’, Bacch. 464); Acoetes here offers a close Latin equivalent to the second statement — and one that might even be deemed more ‘Dionysian’. His declaration of Lydian origins would thus seem to connect him to both Euripidean instantiations of the god, thereby fuelling the suspicion that he is indeed Bacchus in disguise (see Intro. §5b-iv).

humili … plebe amounts to a mild *tautology in the context. Acoetes’ emphasis on his humble origins is somewhat unusual for ancient epic; of course if this self-characterization is a ‘front’, then the archetype would be Odysseus assuming the guise of a beggar upon his return to Ithaca. In a Bacchic context, moreover, the low social rank of the internal narrator is appropriate, recalling the mixing of ‘commoners’ and princes in the religious festivities (vulgusque proceresque ignota ad sacra feruntur, 530); there is also perhaps a moral dimension to a plebeian figure speaking enigmatic truth to tyrannical power. Note that plebs is a technical term of Rome’s political culture, referring to the body of Roman citizens who were not patricians. Ovid uses such Roman idiom throughout the Metamorphoses in both the human and divine realms (so Jupiter in his attempted seduction of Callisto promises her safety praeside … deo, … nec de plebe deo (‘under a god’s protection — and no plebeian god at that’, Met. 1.594–95). Such terrestrial and cosmic analogies subtly prepare Ovid’s narrative culmination, in which the city of Rome has subsumed and become coextensive with the world (see Intro. §3c).

584–87 non … pisces. Acoetes specifies the profession he ‘inherited’ from his father in a roundabout fashion, first mentioning two livelihoods — farming and pasturing — that were not his father’s and then identifying fishing as the case at hand. These were, in fact, the three principal ways by which a rural inhabitant of ancient Italy might earn a living. Once again, the point is to underscore Acoetes’ humble station: land and cattle were the essential constituents of rural wealth; the fisherman’s condition was regarded as one of pauperdom.

584–85 non mihi … reliquit. The pronounced *hyperbaton presents something of a challenge; a more natural word order for the essential sequence would be non mihi arva, quae duri iuvenci colerent, … pater reliquit. In other words, pater is the subject of the main clause; the principal verb reliquit takes three accusative objects: arva (the antecedent of quae, though coming after it), lanigeros… greges, and ulla armenta. Note also that quae duri colerent … iuvenci is a relative clause of purpose (AG §530.2), whence the subjunctive verb. The sense of jerkiness and imbalance is further increased by the double (rather than triple) *anaphora of non, and the fact that the first and the second accusative objects (arva and lanigeros greges) are linked by -ve, whereas the second and third (lanigeros greges and ulla armenta) follow each other *asyndetically.

lanigeros… greges, literally ‘wool-bearing flocks’, speaks to sheep. laniger is a compound epithet (from lana + ger) of a type quite frequent in epic, which likes constructing adjectives by adding either -fer or -ger (both contributing the sense ‘bearing’) to a noun; later in the set text Ovid has racemifer (‘cluster-bearing’, 666).

586–87 pauper … pisces. The key to sorting out this sentence is untangling the connectives. The -que after lino links the two main verbs fuit and solebat. Then we have two complementary infinitive phrases dependent on solebat, both taking salientis pisces as accusative object (an *apo koinou construction): lino et hamis decipere and calamo ducere. The et between solebat and hamis thus links lino and hamis, the et between decipere and calamo links decipere and ducere.

Henderson (1979, 102) understands et ipse in the conventional manner as setting up a comparison: ‘he too’, i.e. ‘like me’. But this seems pointless, even inept on Ovid’s part, in the wake of the previous three lines. Bömer’s solution seems preferable: he assumes that we are dealing with yet another transposition and should understand et pauper ipse fuit et solebat etc. (‘he himself was poor and was accustomed to …’). Rather than using a verb for ‘fishing’ (piscari vel sim.), Acoetes provides a circumlocution elaborating the two stages of that activity: catching the fish with a hook on a line (lino … et hamis decipere), and then drawing the struggling creatures out of the water with the fishing rod (calamo … ducere). calamus (= κάλαμος) is a reed, but can stand by metonymy for an object made thereof (cf. 532 aera, 621 pinus with nn.). The sense ‘fishing rod’ is common in both Greek (e.g. Theoc. Id. 21.43) and Latin. ducere is a simplex form (570–71 n.), standing for educere (‘to draw out’). Note that salientis is acc. pl. of the pres. act. part. (AG §118; most modern readers would expect salientes, because the -es termination had largely supplanted the original -is by the Augustan Age); it modifies pisces: the image is that of fish on the hook struggling to free themselves. The mini-vignette of a fisherman in his moment of triumph could reflect authorial zeal: there is extant a fragment of some 130 lines of a Halieutica (a handbook on the art of fishing) ascribed to Ovid (on which see Richmond 1962). At the same time, the reader might catch a whiff of allegory here: anglers practise their proverbial craft of baiting hooks then tricking and landing prey by paying out plenty of line. If we sense something fishy about Acoetes’ autobiography, Pentheus seems to fall for it — hook, line, and sinker.

588 ars … erat. Strictly speaking, the census was a registration of the property of every Roman citizen, performed every five years by the censors, in order to classify citizens according to wealth. From this technical sense, the term came to be used in a broader metonymic sense for ‘property in general, wealth, substance’ (OLD s.v. 3), as here. Since his father has no material property — if he were actually assessed in a Roman census he would be placed in the lowest category, the capite censi, those ‘registered by their head’ because they owned nothing — Acoetes applies the term to his technical skill as a fisherman as part of an elaborate metaphor that is further developed by the terms traderet, successor, heres, reliquit and paternum. Use of the term census at this point in Ovid’s cosmic history is of course anachronistic, but such anachronisms are part of Ovid’s broader strategy of anticipating Rome’s eventual global dominance (see Intro. §3c). illi is dative of possession. sua is, as Bömer (1969, 591) puts it, ‘indirectly reflexive’ (i.e. referring to illi, rather than the subject of the sentence); or as Henderson (1979, 103) puts it, ‘sua refers to the “logical”, not the grammatical, subject of the sentence, as often’.

588–90 cum … opes. We have a quotation (dixit, with which supply pater as subject from 584) within Acoetes’ direct speech. The quotation is anchored chronologically by cum traderet artem (with which understand mihi), but the verb traderet is playfully inept. Acoetes refers to his father teaching him how to fish, but this could not occur as a single process as the coordination of the cum-clause with dixit requires (traderet is imperfect subjunctive with circumstantial cum, so expressing contemporaneous action). Thus we are caught between trado in the sense ‘teach’ and its more common meaning ‘hand over, bequeath’. Ovid may be having a bit of fun with the traditions of didactic poetry in the spirit of his own Ars Amatoria (ars meaning a codified body of teachable knowledge), as well, perhaps, as the Halieutica ascribed to him (on which see 586–87 n.). The (postponed) antecedent of the relative pronoun quas is opes, which is also accusative object of accipe. The grand, pretentious-sounding vocative studii successor et heres ironically evokes notions of intellectual accomplishment, social rank, material wealth, or political power being handed down from one generation to the next; but the studium bequeathed in this case is the lowly art of fishing.

591–92 moriensque … paternum. This restatement of Acoetes’ ‘inheritance’ maintains the ironic pose: where others inherit land, his father left him nothing but the waters he fished in (which were of course available to all). The non-specificity of aquas subtly prepares for Acoetes career change from fisherman to navigator. Notice that the adjective paternum is in predicative position, correlated with unum hoc by appellare: it can be translated substantively as ‘inheritance’. L-S s.v. paternus notes that it is used ‘of the property, possessions, external relations, etc. of a father’, whereas its near synonym patrius ‘is used of that which belongs to his nature, dignity, or duty’ — much as we saw earlier with patrium … decus (548).

592–96 mox … aptos. There are two main verbs in this sentence, linked by the et between flectere and Oleniae: addidici (593) and notavi (595). The latter governs the following accusative objects, all linked by -que save the last, for which Ovid uses et: (i) sidus pluviale, (ii) Taygeten; (iii) Hyadas; (iv) Arcton; (v) domos; (vi) portus. If Acoetes has to this point used banalities to raise Pentheus’ blood pressure, he now switches modes and taxes the king’s patience with recherché learning, set out in excruciating detail.

592–94 ne scopulis … flectere. The negative purpose clause marks Acoetes’ decision not to follow in his father’s footsteps. With scopulis … isdem understand where my father had fished before me (vel sim.). The prefix of addidici (from addisco = ad + disco, ‘learn besides’) indicates skills in addition to fishing, which he had learned from his father. The skills in question belong to the métier of helmsman or navigator. regimen (‘guiding, steering’) is used concretely by Ovid here (and again at Met. 11.552), by an unusual poetic metonymy, to designate the component by which one does the steering, i.e. the rudder (or, more precisely ‘steering-oar’; moderamen will have the same sense at 644); it is the accusative object of flectere. dextra moderante is an ablative absolute, here taking the place of a clause of accompanying circumstance (AG §420.5), but in truth adding nothing of significance: Acoetes is becoming annoyingly (or amusingly) prolix. The termination of the present participle in -e (rather than -i) indicates verbal (rather than adjectival) force, and so is the usual form in an ablative absolute construction.

Latin epicists tend to avoid the ‘obvious’ prosaic word navis for ‘ship’, using instead a wide range of more elevated terms, as here with the synecdoche carina (literally ‘keel’; again at 604 and 639), which is widespread in poetry from Enn. Ann. 376 Sk onwards. Other poetic synonyms for ‘ship’ found in the set text are pinus (621 with n.), puppis (596 with n.) and ratis (687 with n.).

594–96 et Oleniae … aptos. Here Acoetes enumerates in indirect and learned fashion the various cognitive skills, all essential for navigation in the ancient world, that he acquired: (i) observation of stars or constellations (Capella, the Pleiades, the Hyades) whose rising or setting marked the beginning of the rainy season when sailing was dangerous and so should be avoided; (ii) use of the Great Bear constellation to chart one’s course; (iii) anticipation of wind patterns and other meteorological activity; (iv) recognition and/ or knowledge of good harbours. The importance of these particular stars and constellation to sailing is evident from Virgil’s statement that it was sailors who gave them their names: navita tum stellis numeros et nomina fecit, | Pleiades, Hyadas, claramque Lycaonis Arcton (‘the sailor then counted the stars and gave them names, the Pleiades, the Hyades and Lycaon’s Arctos’, G. 1.137–38).

594–95 Oleniae … notavi. Henderson (1979, 103) draws attention to Oleniae sidus pluviale Capellae, calling it ‘an enclosing appositional structure’, the genitive Oleniae … capellae being in apposition to (or defining) sidus pluviale. Ovid employs a very similar expression with the same structure at Fast. 5.113 Oleniae signum pluviale Capellae.

Oleniae … Capellae designates the goat star, so named from the creature, usually called Amalthea, that, according to legend, suckled the infant Jupiter. The goat was afterwards rewarded by being changed into a star called Capella (sometimes Capra) in the constellation Auriga. The epithet Olenius is variously explained as arising (i) from the fact that Amalthea was born near the town of Olenos (Ὤλενος), or (ii) from the fact that the owner of the goat, a nymph sometimes herself identified as Amalthea, was the daughter of Olenos, or (iii) from the fact that the goat, when translated to heaven, was placed in the elbow (ὠλένη) of the constellation Auriga. The star rises at the beginning of the rainy season (October), whence the label sidus pluviale. From the point of view of sea navigation, the rising of this constellation signalled dangerous sailing conditions. Virgil mentions the importance of the observation of this sign by mariners at G. 1.204–07.

Taygeten designates one of the Pleiads, a cluster of seven stars located in the sign Taurus. Ovid here uses a single star synecdochically of the whole constellation, the setting of which (around the beginning of November) caused it to be associated with autumn storms (e.g. Arat. Phaen. 1064–66; Luc. 8. 852; Stat. Theb. 4.120, 9.460–61; Silv. 1.6.22). Already Hesiod uses the morning setting of this constellation to mark the end of the (safe) sailing season (Op. 618–23), and this remained the rule in the Roman period. Taygete is a Greek loanword (Τηϋγέτη) which scans as quadrisyllabic (— ⌣ ⌣ —), with both the initial a and the final e standing in for the long Greek vowel ‘êta’ (η). Notice that Taygeten is a Greek accusative form (559–61 n.), the first of three in the verse.

The Hyades (f. pl.; gen. Hyadum; the acc. pl. Hyadas follows the Greek declension, as with Taygeten) were a group of seven stars in the head of the constellation Taurus, whose morning rising and setting were associated with rainy weather (hence their name: huein is Greek for ‘to rain’). Like the Peliades, the Hyades were thought to be daughters of Atlas.

Arctos is Greek for ‘bear’ (Arcton is yet another Greek accusative form), and is the name of the two northern constellations, the Great and Little Bear (Ursa Maior and Ursa Minor). These constellations were crucial for seafaring, as ancient navigators steered by them, using either one or the other to determine orientation, as well as approximate geographic position (Luc. 8. 174–81 elaborates on the technique). Ursa Maior is mentioned in the context of navigation as early as Hom. Od. 5. 270–73.

596. The verb continues to be (oculis) notavi, though it may suit its penultimate object, ventorum… domos, less well than the preceding celestial bodies (which would be a mild case of *zeugma). This expression does not refer to the mythological conception of the wind gods as incarcerated in a mountain cave under the supervision of Aeolus, king of the winds (as we find, e.g., in Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid). Ovid seems rather to be thinking of the geographical or celestial region from which each wind blows as its individual ‘abode’ (the plural domos indicates separate ‘houses’); in the cosmogony at the start of the epic, the domains of the individual winds were treated in such a geographical manner (Met. 1.61–66). An important precedent for the present expression is Virgil’s Eurique Zephyrique … domus (G. 1.371), with use of the verb tonat (‘thunders’) indicating that each wind’s ‘abode’ is the part of the heavens from which it blows.

puppibus is dative with aptos, a predicative adjective modifying portus. The term puppis (literally ‘stern’ or ‘poop’) is a frequent poetic synecdoche (pars pro toto) for ‘ship’, found again in the set passage at 651 and 660. For other poetic terms used to avoid the ‘obvious’ prosaic word navis for ‘ship’, see 592–94 n. The alliteration and assonance of p and t in portus puppibus aptos provide a resonant flourish to bring this segment of Acoetes’ speech to a close.

597–99 forte … harenae. With a striking ellipse, Acoetes’ autobiography abruptly transitions from his acquisition of navigational skills and knowledge to their concrete application. What is missing is his securing gainful employment as a helmsman: perhaps the marine transportation sector was awash with job opportunities; then again, as we’ll see, Acoetes wasn’t especially fussy about the kind of outfit he signed on with. In any event, he now proceeds to tell of a particular voyage — the one, indeed, that brought his seafaring career to an end and made him a devotee of Bacchus. Though this sentence exhibits Acoetes’ stylized prolixity — he takes three full verses to say ‘on the way to Delos, I made landfall at Chios’ — it maintains the momentary impulse towards narrative compression by omitting both the point of departure and the reason for the journey, evidently details of no consequence for his tale.

The adverb forte is often used in narrative to introduce a chance event or circumstance: ‘as it happened’ or ‘as luck would have it’ (see OLD s.v. 2). Notice that the participle petens is used here to indicate final destination (‘on my way to …’, ‘as I was heading towards …’), while the finite verbs indicate an event en route (in this case a stopover); for this convenient syntactical structure cf. Val. Max. 2.6.8 Asiam petens Iulidem oppidum intravi (‘on the way to Asia I stopped in at the town of Iulis’). Delos is a Greek noun of the 2nd declension (Δῆλος; see AG §52), which admits two accusative forms in Latin: Delon, (as here), and the Latinized Delum (as at, e.g., Virg. Aen. 4.144). Delos is an important Aegean island, nearly in the centre of the Cyclades, celebrated as the birthplace of the gods Apollo and Diana. Its significance here, if any, is unclear; in the long Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (see Intro. §5a), the island where the pirates make landfall and come upon the god is not identified. In the Aeneid, the Trojans sail to Delos and obtain a riddling oracle that sends them circling around the Aegean … Ever been had?

Henderson (1979, 104) rightly calls Chiae telluris ad oras a ‘grandiose circumlocution’: Acoetes does not simply say ‘Chios’, but ‘the coast of the land of Chios’. The verb applico is a nautical technical term (‘direct, steer, or bring to land’) which takes an accusative object (navem vel sim.) in the active voice, but is used absolutely in the passive voice (as here with applicor) when it is ‘middle’ in sense (see further L-S s.v. applico). adducor is likewise middle in force: ‘I sail (my ship) to’ (OLD s.v. adduco, 1c). The use of litora as a simple accusative of the end of motion (i.e. without a preposition) is an unusual license (L-S s.v. adduco, 2; TLL 1.596.71). dextris … remis probably means ‘with the right hand oars’, i.e. those on the starboard side of the ship, and speaks to manoeuvring to make landfall on Chios. Henderson (1979, 104) voices suspicion over the ‘technical and precise’ nature of this specification, but Roman epic is strongly inclined to technical terminology and precise detail in its treatment of seafaring — and the internal narrator Acoetes has already demonstrated the same propensity. Con artists work with the ‘reality effect’ guaranteed to accrue from circumstantiality. But let’s just notice that the wine of Chios was the best Greece had to offer …

The -que after do links it with adducor. The combination do + noun (in place of a verb) is a mild periphrasis of a familiar poetic kind, though do … saltus, equivalent to salio, which occurs again in the set text at 683, is not common before Ovid: Virgil has it only once (Aen. 12.681 saltum dedit). levis is best rendered ‘nimble’ (OLD s.v. 2). Note that levis saltus is acc. pl. (levis = leves); since one leap would presumably suffice, we should understand a ‘poetic’ plural. This nautical leap might strike some readers as a bit fishy: fish ‘leap’ (cf. 587 salientis … pisces) and so, especially, do acrobatic dolphins (as we shall soon see, 683). The -que attached to udae links do and inmittor. After applicor and adducor, inmittor is yet another passive form used in a reflexive or middle sense (‘I jump onto’), here taking the dative (udae … harenae).

600–04. After an indication of a night’s rest and a new day dawning, Acoetes describes preparations for resuming the voyage: he orders his companions to fetch water and then climbs a hill to get a sense of which way the wind is likely to blow. The reference to crewmen — first implied by the verbs admoneo and monstro and then explicitly mentioned with comitesque voco — brings these individuals into the narrative picture at precisely the moment when their conduct will bear on the course of events. Not until verse 687 are we told their number: viginti (20).

The syntax is arranged *chiastically: we get three main verbs in paratactic sequence linked by -que (exsurgo, admoneo, monstro), followed by a subordinate clause (quae ducat ad undas); then we get a subordinate clause (quid aura mihi tumulo promittat ab alto), followed by three main verbs in paratactic sequence linked by -que (prospicio, voco, repeto).

600–01 nox … coeperat. Acoetes emerges as something of an ‘Odyssean’ internal narrator here, telling the tale of his sea voyage in a manner reminiscent of Homer’s very own ‘sole survivor’ yarn-spinning seafarer Odysseus. His account of the events of the fateful day begins with the breaking of dawn, aurora rubescere primo | coeperat, which is reminiscent of the standard Odyssean incipit ἦμος δ᾽ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς (‘when rosy-fingered dawn appeared …’). The adverb primo usually indicates the first stage in a sequence (and is often followed by deinde vel sim.), i.e. ‘at first’, ‘firstly’, which is clearly not the case here: it is perhaps best translated ‘as soon as’.

601–02 laticesque … undas. The -que after latices links exsurgo and admoneo, here with the sense ‘exhort’, governing the infinitive inferre. This infinitive construction is a license largely confined to poetry through the Augustan period: like hortor and its compounds, moneo and admoneo are normally followed by an ut/ ne clause. latices … recentis (= recentes) is the accusative object of inferre. The word latex (pl. latices), which can be used of any liquid, is almost exclusively poetic, often occurring in contexts of drinking and libations. Here it serves as an elevated synonym for ‘water’; the adjective recentis indicates that ‘fresh’ or ‘drinking’ water is meant, for use on the voyage. undas is probably best translated ‘spring’ (OLD s.v. 2), which would be a preferred source of drinking water. From monstro… viam etc. it is clear that Acoetes knows his way around the island.

603–04. The pronoun ipse underscores the distinction between Acoetes, who concerns himself with the ‘technical’ task of reading the weather conditions, and the rest of the crew, to whom he assigns more mundane tasks. The main verb prospicio introduces the indirect question quid aura mihi … promittat (‘what the breeze promises to me’, i.e. what sort of weather I might anticipate). Virgil describes Aeneas’ helmsman Palinurus assessing sailing conditions in much the same fashion: surgit Palinurus et omnes | explorat ventos et auribus aera captat (‘Palinurus arose to test the winds, his ears taking in their first stirrings‘, Aen. 3.513). Such forecasting, which was an important part of the navigator’s repertoire (594–96 n.), was best undertaken at or before dawn, ideally from an elevated position, whence tumulo … ab alto. The straightforwardly paratactic follow-up comitesque voco repetoque carinam again imparts a sense of Acoetes’ authority over the crew and his firm control of events — a perfect set-up for the anarchic disruptions that follow as Acoetes’ crewmembers decide to take matters into their own hands — a recipe for disaster, as readers familiar with the Odyssey will recognize. For the poetic synecdoche carina, see 592–94 n.

605–07. Ovid, with what appears to be mock scrupulousness, will end up naming about a dozen of the 20-man crew. In strict narrative terms there is no need for the nomenclatural profusion — no crewmembers are named in the Homeric Hymn — but epic likes catalogues and similar effects, and Ovid evidently could not resist the temptation here (see esp. 617–20 and n.). There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the drawn-out enumeration, and John Henderson is surely right to see it as ‘typical Ovidian bait for academics with the Oxford Classical Dictionary to hand, and the rest of us can enjoy imagining the quest to “authenticate” this profusion of smallest fry. Here is an epic trait that this epic means to send up. Obsessively’.

In these lines we are introduced to Opheltes, who is represented as the ringleader throughout — whence primus sociorum. The designation socii (‘companions’) for these characters creates a suggestive parallel with Odysseus and his companions (ἑταῖροι) — not least since Homer instantly qualifies Odysseus’ companions as fools (νήπιοι) who lost their lives because of their foolish conduct vis-à-vis the gods (Od. 1.6–9 ‘Yet even so Odysseus could not save his companions, even though he greatly desired to, for through their own blind folly they perished — fools, who consumed the cattle of Helios’). At the end of his tale, Acoetes, like Odysseus, will be the last man standing. Only more so: Acoetes will be the last man (the only crewmember not transformed into a dolphin) standing (the only crewmember still possessing legs).

The word order is somewhat jumbled, starting with Opheltes’ pronouncement adsumus en: the interjection would normally precede the verb (as famously with the declaration of the goddess Isis at Apul. Met. 11.4 en adsum tuis commota, Luci, precibus); the inversion here is metri gratia. The -que after ut links the two main verbs of the sentence, i.e. inquit and ducit. Note that ut putat (‘as he believes’) glosses praedam: Acoetes signals at once that his comrades have badly misjudged the situation. To modern sensibilities, the conduct of the crew in abducting a seemingly defenceless youth and regarding him as ‘booty’ seems loathsome; in antiquity, such activity was quite widespread (as the opening pages of Herodotus’ Histories attest; cf. also Hom. Od. 14.297, 15.427 and, for a Roman example, Plut. Caes. 2), as well as extremely lucrative: the kidnapping victim could be sold on the slave-market or (if from a wealthy family) ransomed. Notice that Acoetes does not criticize the abduction as such; it is rather the choice of victim that he finds fault with. In a poetic universe in which the gods (still) mingle with humans, if it looks too easy … well, suffice it to say that right now, Acoetes has his very own ‘prize beauty’ well and truly hooked.

The circumstances of Bacchus’ capture are surprising: he was wandering about in a deserted field (deserto … in agro) when the sailors abducted him; in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus he is said to be wandering on the shore (Hymn. Hom. 7.2). virginea … forma is an ablative of description, qualifying puerum. Barchiesi (2007, 227) points out that the attribute virginea (‘referring to a girl of marriageable age’) introduces an element of gender-ambiguity into the portrayal that is absent from the Hymn, where the god appears ‘in the likeness of a youth in first manhood’ (νεηνίῃ ἀνδρὶ ἐοικὼς | πρωθήβῃ, Hymn. Hom. 7.3–4), but chimes well with the decidedly androgynous Dionysus of Euripides’ Bacchae. Indeed, one might add that virginea … forma looks very much like a Latin gloss on θηλύμορφος (‘woman shaped’), used of Dionysus/ Bacchus at Eur. Bacch. 353. ‘Acoetes’ thus casts Bacchus in Euripidean terms that resonate powerfully with the frame-narrative in the Metamorphoses, while feeding Pentheus’ prejudices — almost a captatio benevolentiae.

In terms of versification, notice that an adjective and its corresponding noun (virginea … forma) ‘frame’ verse 607, which is designed symmetrically around a central verb in a quasi-‘golden’ arrangement. The attractive forma of the verse reflects that of the boy it describes.

608–09 ille … sequi. The pronoun ille designates the as yet unidentified Bacchus, with mero somnoque gravis standing in apposition. The weight metaphors with wine and sleep(iness) are longstanding, in Greek (e.g. Hom. Od. 3.139 οἴνῳ βεβαρηότες) as well as Latin. Elsewhere in the poem Ovid has somno gravis (1.224) and vino gravis (10.438); the combination of the two here (mero being equivalent to vino) suggests (the appearance of) an advanced state of inebriation. The -que after vix links titubare and sequi; both infinitives depend on videtur. The first infinitive, implying a loss of motor control, prepares the second (vixque sequi: he seems ‘to follow with difficulty’). In the Homeric Hymn account, the sailors attempt to put the god in chains (Hymn. Hom. 7.13–15); in Acoetes’ account, by contrast, Bacchus is evidently too drunk for the sailors to bother with physical restraints. But of course videtur here and veluti at 630 imply that the god is merely feigning a state of inebriation, making this a case of divine testing of mortal goodness, whereby wicked behaviour is induced in order to be punished promptly thereafter. We call that entrapment, but it’s hard to mount an affirmative defence when you’ve been transformed into a dolphin.

609–10 specto … videbam. Once again (cf. 572–73 n.) we have a change of tense in mid-sentence, this time from vivid present (videtur, specto) to the more reflective imperfect (videbam). Acoetes discerns three aspects of the stranger that manifest a more than human nature: the elegance or refinement of his overall physical appearance (cultum is perhaps best taken as a reference to the stranger’s body, i.e. cultus corporis, rather than the adornment of his attire), his countenance (faciem), and his gait (gradum). The individual elements of the *tricolon add up to an impressive whole, which is further enhanced by the absence of attributes: it is left to the audience to visualize the appearance of, say, a (perfectly elegant and beautiful) body, a (translucent) face, and a (divine) gait — even though the last attribute sits oddly with the earlier description of the youth staggering along (titubare) in a drunken stupor.

Verse 610 constitutes a relative clause of characteristic (AG §535), with nil the antecedent of quod; the overall statement is similar in form to Cic. Fam. 9.16.3 nihil video quod timeam (‘I see nothing to fear’). ibi, an adverb of place (‘there’) refers to the stranger, or more specifically his cultus, facies, and gradus. These, along with the voice, are ‘standard’ epic ways of spotting a deity in disguise: cf. Virg. Aen. 5.647–49, identifying vultus vocisque sonus vel gressus eunti as divini signa decoris. The use of a passive form of credo (here credi, pres. pass. infinitive) suggests the common-sense validity of Acoetes’ observations, thereby underscoring the obtuseness of Opheltes and the rest of the crew, evidently blinded by greed — as blind as Pentheus, at this moment, who can’t see that he is right in this story, facing a sight that shouldn’t look like ‘anything mortal’ (610).

611–12. The simple paratactic statement et sensi et dixi conveys the rapidity of Acoetes’ reaction: ‘I no sooner felt than said …’ The interrogative adjective quod (modifying numen) begins an indirect question (hence the subjunctive sit) dependent on dubito (here: ‘I am uncertain’). Acoetes drives his point home with a *chiasmus (numen … corpore … corpore … numen). The anastrophe corpore … in isto in the second half ensures that numen resides within ‘that body’ also on the formal level. Acoetes does not know which divine power dwells in the youth, but, unlike his comrades, he is dead sure that one does. The anonymous protagonist of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus is similarly sure of the stranger’s divine nature, but uncertain of the precise identity of the god before him, speculating that he might be Zeus, Apollo, or Poseidon (Hymn. Hom. 7.19–20).

613–14 quisquis … veniam. Acoetes now addresses the stranger, whose divinity he has recognized, in prayer. As Bömer (1969, 598) points out, the all-encompassing quisquis es (‘whoever you are’) both accords with Roman practice — such precautionary language avoids a misrecognition that might offend the deity in question (cf. e.g. Virg. Aen. 4.576–77 sequimur te, sancte deorum, | quisquis es) — and suits the narrative situation. The interjection o (for which see 540–42 n.) creates an elevated tone, appropriate for an address to a god. The -que after nostris links faveas and adsis, which are instances of the ‘polite’ 2nd pers. sing. subjunctive, sometimes referred to as the ‘precative’ subjunctive because typical of prayer-language (cf. e.g. Virg. Aen. 4.578 adsis o placidusque iuves): Acoetes prays for the divinity’s benevolent disposition and help. nostris… laboribus, which has an epic ring — labores are what heroes such as Hercules undertake — should probably be understood in reference to Acoetes alone, since the immediately following his quoque refers to the case of his crew as a separate matter, with veniam acknowledging a transgression on their part. Come on Pentheus, take the hint.

614–16 pro nobis … relabi. Ovid now introduces a second member of the crew, Dictys. The name is Greek (Δίκτυς), and found of various figures in myth, including a centaur appearing much later in the Metamorphoses (12.327), and a fisherman who caught in his nets the babe set adrift in the box, i.e. Perseus. Ovid is surely indulging in (false) etymological play with δίκτῠον/ diktyon ‘fishing net’. mitte precari is a poetic form of prohibition, much like parce + infinitive (the prose equivalent would be noli + infinitive). Here simplex mittere stands for omittere (cf. Hor. Epod. 13.7 cetera mitte loqui); on the use of simplex for compound verb forms, see 570–71 n.

For good measure, if somewhat inconsequentially, Acoetes specifies the skill at which the blasphemous Dictys excelled, thereby individuating his role on the vessel. Put simply, Dictys’ allotted task while at sea is taking care of the rigging of the sail yard, for which he would need to be agile at scampering up the mast, making the required adjustment, and then sliding back down again. The ship will prove to be the ‘net’ that catches the crew, including this expert ‘Netski’ who knows all the ropes. Then, there’ll be no more of these acrobatics … (664).

The combination quo non alius + comparative adjective is a convenient hexametric formula found earlier in Virgil (G. 4.372–73 Eridanus, quo non alius … violentior amnis) that continues to find favour with post-classical writers (including the Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus). In this formula, the antecedent of the relative pronoun quo (ablative of comparison with the comparative adjective) is the immediately preceding name (here Dictys). Note that conscendere and relabi are epexegetical (explanatory) infinitives dependent upon ocior. Such dependence of infinitives upon adjectives is largely confined to poetry in Ovid’s day, a syntactic form found in early Latin that was displaced in prose by gerundive constructions. It is widespread in Augustan poetry, and its preservation is at least partly attributable to Greek influence. antemnas refers to the ‘yard’, or long crossbeam at the top of the mast from which the sail was hung. It usually consisted of two spars lashed together, whence the interchangeability of singular and plural forms (the sense here is singular). rudens can designate a rope of any kind; in a nautical context, it could refer to any of the ship’s tackle, including ropes attached to the yard. The sense of prenso rudente relabi is ‘in sliding down again (while) grasping a rope’; prenso rudente is an ablative absolute, here merely instrumental in force.

617–20. Acoetes now devotes four verses to listing, in a kind of mini-catalogue, four members of the crew who voice approval of Dictys’ scornful riposte — before wrapping up with the catch-all omnes alii. The main verb throughout is probat (though with the concluding subject omnes alii we need mentally to switch to plural probant). There is an interlacing pattern for the named sailors: for the first (Libys) and the third (Alcimedon) we get the name only; for the second (Melanthus) and the fourth (Epopeus), we also get physical characteristics and their sphere of nautical competence. Those whose role is not mentioned will be rowers (both the most common and the humblest occupation on an ancient ship). The fourfold *anaphora of hoc (throughout the accusative object of probat) works slightly differently: the third hoc goes with two of the named sailors (Alcimedon and Epopeus), the fourth with omnes alii. The catalogue effect, the intricate word order, the insistent anaphora, the concluding generalizing sententia — all contribute to the creation of a compelling picture of the many, spurred on by vocal ring-leaders, turning into a mob and overpowering a lone voice of reason (for the leitmotif one-versus-many in the set text, see 513–14 n.).

617–18 hoc Libys … Alcimedon. The pronoun hoc refers to Dictys’ brief utterance at 614. The name Libys (Λίβυς) means ‘Libyan’, which ought to raise an eyebrow or two. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, to which Acoetes’ inset narrative broadly conforms (see Intro. §5a), bluntly declares the company to be ‘Tyrrhenian [i.e. Etruscan] pirates’ (ληισταὶ … Τυρσηνοί, Hymn. Hom. 7.7–8), thereby conforming to an ancient ethnographic stereotype that associated the Etruscans in particular with piracy (not that any one nationality held a monopoly on such activity!). Other than himself (583 with n.), Acoetes explicitly identifies Lycabas as Etruscan (624 with n.), so that the name Libys raises a scruple as to how far we should pursue the analogy of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. But we have already noted a penchant for geographical mystification in this episode (582–83 n.), and will soon see that speaking names have a tendency to misspeak.

flavus … Melanthus appears to entail a bilingual witticism: the Latin epithet (equivalent to Greek ξανθός), here speaking to blond hair, ill-suits the Greek name Melanthus (Μέλανθος, ‘the Black one’). The poet may also have had in mind a nominal/ zoological connection to Melantho, daughter of Deucalion, who is mentioned later by Ovid as seduced by Neptune in the form of a dolphin (the very species into which Melanthus will soon be transformed): sensit delphina Melantho (Met. 6.120). In any event prorae tutela stands in apposition to Melanthus, designating him as the ‘lookout’ or bow officer (proreta, Greek πρῳράτης), stationed on the small foredeck of the ship, whose job was to be on the lookout for hazards and sound the depths — both crucial for a vessel sailing among the islands and reefs of the Aegean — as well as to report changes in wind direction. Notice that tutela is an instance of abstract for concrete (540–42 n.), with the abstracted quality (‘guardianship’) standing for the concrete form — in this case tutor (‘guardian’) vel sim.

618–19 hoc probat … Epopeus. The Greek name Alcimedon is compounded from ἀλκή (alkê), meaning ‘strength, might, power’ and μέδων (medôn) meaning ‘lord, ruler’. It is the name of several characters in Greek mythology, and affords an ironic epic ring to this inconsequential figure, probably a lowly rower on Acoetes’ nondescript vessel.

In contrast to Alcimedon, about whom we are given no explicit information, Epopeus’ role on the vessel is fleshed out via the relative clause qui requiemque modumque | voce dabat remis, which precedes its antecedent Epopeus. The clause identifies him as the boatswain, that is, the officer who gives time to the rowers, to ensure synchronized rowing strokes. This could be done by a musical instrument or a small hammer called a portisiculus, or simply by the sound of the boatswain’s voice — as the ablative voce indicates here. requiemque modumque (‘rest and rhythm’; for the correlating -que … -que, see 521–23 n.) neatly expresses the cadence Epopeus’ voice imparts: requies corresponding to the retraction of the oar above the water, and modus to the ‘measured stroke’ of the submerged oar-blade that propels the vessel. Note that Epopeus is said to give (dabat) time to the oars (remis) rather than the rowers, but the former stand for the latter by an easy metonymy. After the descriptive relative clause, animorum hortator, which stands in apposition to Epopeus, provides a technical specification: the boatswain was called κελευστής (keleustês) by the Greeks and pausarius or hortator by the Romans. Note that the objective genitive animorum activates the verbal root of the technical term — cf. Plaut. Merc. 4.2.5 solet hortator remiges hortarier (‘the boatswain is accustomed to urge on the rowers’) — as well as creating a more lofty epic expression.

The name Epopeus is again Greek (ἐπωπεύς — note that the o, corresponding to ω, is long), meaning something like ‘watcher’. It is somewhat incongruous for a boatswain — one would expect a figure so named to be the lookout (cognate ἐπωπή actually means ‘look-out place, observation post’) rather than Melanthus, whereas the name Alcimedon seems more suited to a hortator animorum. Ovid seems playfully to be developing verbal incongruities — speaking names that misspeak, as it were — as he enumerates members of the crew. All is not as it sounds; improper names abound: ‘Pentheus’ works (see Intro. §5b-ii) in the frame narrative, but does anything in Acoetes’ inset tale — ‘Acoetes’ included?

620 praedae … est. The objective genitive praedae depends on cupido, with tam caeca a predicative complement. Blindness, both literal and metaphorical, is a prominent theme of the Pentheus-episode from the outset (515–16, 516–18, 525 with nn.) and, more generally, of Ovid’s Theban narrative, complementing the focus on sight, vision, and the gaze. The phrasing here harks back to an earlier Theban episode: at 3.225, right after listing many of the names of the hounds of Actaeon (who had just been transformed into a stag), Ovid says that ea turba (‘this pack’) pursues its metamorphosed master cupidine praedae (‘in lust for prey’): they desire to tear him to pieces. A frenzied crowd eager to commit outrage is a recurring motif of Ovid’s Theban History; in Acoetes’ tale, though, the apparent victim(s) will ultimately emerge unscathed.

621–22. The adversative particle tamen and the prepositionally ‘strengthened’ main verb (perpetior = per + patior), here rendered even more forceful by enjambment and scansion (a choriamb followed by a strong trithemimeral *caesura), underscore Acoetes’ determined opposition to the crew’s scheme. A prohibitive tone is also imparted by the staccato effect of the rapid-fire alliteration on p (pondere pinum perpetiar … pars).

non … perpetiar (‘I will not suffer’, i.e. ‘I will not permit’) introduces an indirect statement with pinum as subject accusative and violari as infinitive (the regular construction: OLD s.v. 2; cf. AG §563c). The implication of violari is that the (coerced) presence of the god would render the ship religiously impure — and Acoetes will have none of it. Note that hanc agrees with pinum (trees are almost invariably feminine nouns in Latin, just as rivers are almost exclusively masculine). pinus, the pine-tree, can stand metonymically for objects made out of pine-wood (cf. 532 aera, 586 calamo with nn.); since that material was much used in shipbuilding, pinus is a common poetic term for ‘ship’ (cf. 592–94 n.). sacro … pondere refers to the captured youth, whom Acoetes has correctly identified as a god. Note the use of an adjective (here a transferred epithet: it is not the weight that is ‘holy’, but the deity) instead of an attributive genitive (e.g. pondere dei). Great weight was a traditional attribute of gods that frequently features in epic; so, for instance, when Juno visits the underworld in Book 4 the threshold groans under her weight (4.449–50 sacro… a corpore pressum | ingemuit limen, ‘the threshold groaned beneath [the weight of] her sacred body’).

pars … maxima takes the partitive genitive iuris; supply the verb est with mihi (dative of possession). Note that hic is not the pronoun, but the adverb (with long vowel) meaning ‘here’ — i.e. on the ship. Hence: ‘the greatest part of authority here belongs to me’. Acoetes invokes his superior rank as helmsman or captain of the ship — an office that afforded him broad authority for averting dangers to the vessel and its crew.

623–28. The situation escalates to physical confrontation, when, with the crew evidently about to bring Bacchus on board, Acoetes follows up his verbal rebuke by attempting to block access to the ship — in this context aditu (‘entrance’) would be the ‘gangplank’. Acoetes is promptly and violently cast aside by Lycabas, a particularly felonious member of the crew. The juxtaposition in 623 of the verbs obsisto and furit, representing the two antagonists, separated by a strong penthemimeral caesura neatly enacts on the level of verse the initial confrontation. In addition, the consecutive elisions in inque aditu obsisto may be meant to evoke Acoetes’ unsuccessful attempt to block access to the vessel. After a two-verse elaboration on Lycabas’ murderous past, Acoetes proceeds to recount the physical assault he suffered at his hands. The language and verse design are highly dramatic: we get the brutal verb rupit in enjambment (627); and in the conditional sequence, the apodosis (excussum misisset in aequora) comes first, summoning up the shocking picture of the helmsman hurled overboard, before the negated protasis (si non = nisi; the two monosyllables at the end of the verse are a sign of unsettled discourse and set up the enjambment of haesissem).

John Henderson observes that the attempt of Acoetes, champion of righteousness, to quell mob violence ‘must insinuate a bogus parallel with Pentheus’ attempted stand to stop the stampede into perceived fanaticism. Throughout, the stock metaphor analogizing ship to state underpins the story’s function as parable, captain to king. Just like the Odyssey, like the “Odyssean Aeneid”’. What we get in Ovid’s ‘Thebaid’, in other words, is the shipwreck of state.

623–25 furit … luebat. Acoetes ominously supplements the main clause (furit … Lycabas) in two ways. First, the appositional phrase audacissimus omni | de numero foregrounds Lycabas’ particular notoriety within Acoetes’ miscreant crew (the partitive use of the preposition de after the superlative is an unusual construction, highlighted by enjambment, which puts the emphasis on omni). More sinister still is the relative clause documenting Lycabas’ homicidal past: the initial Tusca pulsus ab urbe speaks to Lycabas’ banishment (OLD s.v. pello 4) while affirming his Etruscan origins (a nod to the Homeric Hymn: cf. 617–18 n.); this is fleshed out by exilium … poenam … luebat, which amounts to ‘was suffering exile as punishment’ (exilium is best taken in apposition to poenam); finally, dira … pro caede explains what prompted the banishment: Lycabas committed some manner of homicide. All this, as Anderson (1997, 400) points out, is reminiscent of Virgil’s villain Mezentius, a vicious Etruscan exile and murderer.

Exile is a recurring theme and motif in the Metamorphoses: from Io in the first book to Pythagoras in the last, the epic repeatedly features the travails of protagonists banished from their homeland (in the context of Ovid’s Theban narrative, of course, it should be recalled that Cadmus founded Thebes as a Phoenician exile). In most cases the exiles are innocent victims suffering unjustly; Lycabas is a rare instance in which the banishment was merited. Exile was a common punishment in the ancient world for various forms of homicide, though premeditated murder was not usually included among them, so we should perhaps imagine Lycabas ‘flying off the handle’ in the earlier offence, just as he does here — and with nearly the same result.

626–27 is … rupit. The high-stakes showdown between the two adversaries is nicely developed by the initial juxtaposition of pronouns and the verb resto (‘hold one’s ground’, OLD s.v. 2; for the combination with dum, cf. Prop. 3.8.31 dum restat barbarus Hector). But the thuggish Lycabas dispatches Acoetes without breaking a sweat. The precise sense of guttura … rupit is difficult to pin down. Ovid has the expression again at Met. 15.464, where it means ‘throttle to death’, a sense clearly inadmissible here. Bömer (1969, 601–02) suggests taking rupit as counterfactual, with indicative used in lieu of subjunctive (rupit ~ rupisset); but excussum and amens would stand awkwardly without a preceding factual (i.e. indicative) report of a forceful blow sustained by Acoetes, e.g., ‘dealt (me) a crushing blow to the throat’ (Henderson 1979, 107) or, more colloquially, ‘smashed (me) in the throat’ (Anderson 1997, 401). Note that guttura is poetic plural, which, like pectora in 631, provides a convenient dactyl in the fifth foot. iuvenali pugno is ablative of instrument; iuvenalis is best understood in a derived sense as speaking to physical power; cf. Met. 10.674 (of Hippomenes) iecit … nitidum iuvenaliter aurum.

627–28 et excussum … retentus. A past contrary-to-fact condition (whence the pluperfect subjunctives) with the apodosis (misisset) coming before the negated protasis (si non = nisi). Lycabas would have sent Acoetes tumbling into the water, had the latter not managed to cling to the ropes (sc. of the ship’s tackle). The mildly tautological participle excussum (from excutio) modifies an implied me, the object of misisset: ‘he would have sent me, having been knocked off (sc. the gangplank), into the sea …’ The sense of quamvis amens is probably ‘though stunned by the blow’. The implication of in fune retentus is that Acoetes, after being sent flying by his adversary, manages to grab hold of a rope or more likely he gets ‘caught in the ropes’.

629 inpia … factum. Earlier the crowd expressed its approval (probat, 618) at the blasphemous words of Dictys, here they approve the phyal outrage committed by Lycabas: we move from dicta to facta, from words to deeds.

629–31 tum denique … sensus. The sprawling main clause tum denique Bacchus … ait (extending through 632) sets up the direct speech at 632–33. Bacchus enim fuerat is a parenthetical gloss on the part of the internal narrator Acoetes. Bömer suggests that pluperfect fuerat is here used in lieu of the imperfect erat, but Henderson (1979, 107) rightly insists on the point of the pluperfect here: ‘for it had been Bacchus all along’ (our italics). The stranger, now positively identified as Bacchus, acts as if the noise of the brawl is returning him to his senses. veluti (= velut + si, ‘as if’) introduces a so-called ‘clause of comparison’ (AG §524), which normally takes present and/ or perfect subjunctive verbs — as here with solutus sit and redeant (linked by the -que attached to the preposition a/ ab). Notice that the clause of comparison expresses an interpretation of Bacchus’ behaviour: Acoetes, maintaining his guise of pious devotee, modestly refrains from claiming to know for a fact what the god was up to, but, as earlier with videtur (608 with n.), his language implies the suspicion that Bacchus’ inebriation is feigned (see also OLD s.v. veluti 5, for use in the context of pretence). The subject of redeant is the long-delayed sensus (nom. pl.): Bacchus’ senses seem to return a mero (‘from drunkenness’, by metonymy) in pectora (translate ‘to him’: in ancient thought the breast was regarded as the seat of reason and of the feelings). As with guttura in 626, pectora is a stock ‘poetic’ plural that conveniently supplies the requisite dactyl in the fifth foot of the verse.

So ‘it had been Bacchus all along’ … and probably is right now, talking! It’s déjà bu all over again: Bacchus is the wine (mero), he is frenzied yelling (clamore), he is release (solutus). Time to come to our senses.

632–33 quid … paratis? Bacchus stays ‘in character’, playing to perfection the part of a bewildered youth awakening from a drunken stupor to find himself in unfamiliar surroundings. Befuddlement is conveyed through four rapid-fire questions, each introduced by a different interrogative pronoun, adjective, or adverb: quid …? quis …? qua … ope? quo …? In the midst of this sequence of queries the parenthetical command dicite, nautae (in which the vocative reinforces the imperative) heightens the sense of urgency, as deeds and noise (factum … facitis; clamore … clamor) prompt their correlative, words (dictis). The question quis clamor? is equivalent to qui clamor est?; for the interrogative quis, see 531–32 n. The noise in question is the crews’ shouts of approval for the violence visited on Acoetes by Lycabas (629). qua … ope amounts to ‘by what means’ — a common sense.

634–35 pone … petita. There is some uncertainty here about the individual speaking: most modern editions capitalize Proreus, taking it as a proper name. The alternative would be to understand proreus as an occupational designation, rendering the Greek technical term πρῳρεύς, used of a ship’s ‘lookout’ or bow officer (i.e. synonymous with πρῳράτης, discussed at 617–18 n.; this is the view of OLD s.v. proreus). Understood this way, proreus would amount to a second mention of Melanthus, who featured earlier at 617 (see 617–18 n.). But it seems more in keeping with what proceeds to take Proreus as a proper name individuating a new member of the crew via a ‘speaking name’ that misspeaks, by referring to a different figure’s nautical role (cf. 618–19 n.). At any rate, this figure endeavours to conceal the crew’s malicious intentions from Bacchus, assuring him that he will be dropped off wherever he wishes. In this tricksy story, the dunces think to trick the master who holds all the tricks.

et links the two imperatives pone and ede. The former is a simplex poetic form for depone (570–71 n.): pone metum/ metus is a frequent command in epic (elsewhere in Met. at 1.735, 5.256, 15.658). The latter (‘tell us’) governs the indirect question quos contingere portus velis (cf. 580–81 n.). In the closing reassurance sistêre is an alternative form of sistêris, i.e. 2nd pers. sing. fut. indic. pass. of sisto (this form occurred earlier at 522 spargêre) in the sense ‘put ashore’. terra … petita is ablative of place.

636–37 Naxon … tellus. For Liber as a designation of Bacchus, see 520 n. The god continues to play along, instructing the crew to direct its course to Naxos (cursus … vestros is ‘poetic’ plural). Note the Greek accusative form Naxon (559–61 n.), here an accusative of direction without a preposition (as we are dealing with a relatively small island: AG §427). Naxos is one of the Cycladic islands, celebrated in antiquity for its vineyards; it was as such sacred to Bacchus (cf. Stat. Ach. 1.678 Bacchica Naxos), and a key centre of his cult. In terms of mythology, it was the island where he rescued Ariadne after her abandonment by Theseus, and, according to some sources, it was Bacchus’ birthplace (Hymn. Hom. 1.2). The strong associations of the god with the island afford his statement illa mihi domus an underlying appropriateness.

638–39 per mare … carinae. The -que attached to me links iurant and iubent. It is probably best to construe the adjective fallaces, referring to Acoetes’ crew members, substantivally here (‘the liars’) rather than predicatively (‘they swear, lying’). The miscreants swear per mare and, with dramatic irony, per omnia numina, unwittingly invoking their addressee, that they will do his bidding. iurant introduces the indirect statement sic fore (= sic futurum esse), which is missing a subject accusative (supply id). iubent governs an accusative (me) + infinitive (dare), as often. With vela dare supply ventis as indirect object (Ovid has the full expression at Met. 1.132 vela dabant ventis), with pictae … carinae a genitive of possession: i.e. ‘give the sails of the painted ship to the winds’. For the poetic synecdoche carina, see 592–94 n. pictus is a stock epithet for ships (Ovid has it again at Met. 6.511), usually referring to the encaustic paint that was applied during the waterproofing stage of a vessel’s construction (for details see Zissos 2008. 152). Notice the power inversion achieved through the mutiny: the crew is now issuing orders to the helmsman. Just like Thebes? Not in Pentheus’ Thebes — if he had anything to do with it.

640–43 dextera Naxos … susurro. An amusing mime is acted out on board, as the crew endeavours to indicate to Acoetes that he is to steer the opposite course from that just promised to Bacchus, without tipping off the latter. Acoetes, meanwhile, seeks to fulfil Bacchus’ wish and ignore the wicked plot hatched by his crew. The use of the present tense throughout these verses adds to the ‘dramatic’ effect.

Additional Information: In Tarrant’s Oxford Classical Text of the Metamorphoses, these lines look very different: ‘Dextera Naxos erat; dextra mihi lintea danti | ‘quid facis, o demens? quis te furor’ inquit Opheltes | ‘persequitur?’ retinens ‘laevam pete!’ maxima nutu | pars mihi significat, pars quid uelit aure susurrat. (Naxos was on the right; as I was trying to give sail to the right, Opheltes held me back and said: ‘what are you doing, madman? What frenzy addles your brain? Go to the left!’ The greater part signals with nods, the rest whisper into my ear what they want.).

640–42 dextera Naxos … pete. Notice that dextera is an adjective (nom. f. sing.), the predicative complement of Naxos, whereas the syncopated form dextra in the following sentence is a noun (‘the right hand side’). The unsettled word order of the second sentence reflects the agitation of the crewmembers, who evidently assume that Acoetes is slow on the uptake rather than still daring to resist their plan. To construe the Latin, it might be helpful mentally to reorder as follows: dextra mihi lintea danti pro se quisque dixit: ‘quid facis, o demens? quis te furor, Acoete, tenet? laevam pete! The pronoun mihi serves as the indirect object of inquit in the following verse; agreeing with it is the participle danti, which takes lintea (a stock metonymy for vela) as its object; dextra is ablative of place (a regular usage without a preposition), here qualifying the participial phrase. An English rendering might be something like: ‘As I was setting sail to the right …’ Acoetes explicates his action in rational terms: Naxos was on the right: ergo he tried to sail to starboard. The formula pro se quisque (literally ‘each for himself’) often has the weakened sense ‘everyone’, as here. The verb of speaking, inquit, introduces the pair of rhetorical questions and the abrupt command with which the crew members assail Acoetes. For the interjection o before a vocative address, see 540–42 n. Their imputations of insanity (demens, furor) are of course, freighted with irony; quis … furor recalls Pentheus’ query to his fellow-citizens at 531, thereby reinforcing the analogy between his imperception and that of Acoetes’ crew. The command laevam pete, literally ‘seek the left’, means of course ‘steer to the left’ (cf. 597–99 n.).

642–43 maxima nutu … susurro. Like pars … alii, the combination pars … pars is a standard formula of distribution, meaning ‘some … others’. Here the distribution is made asymmetrical by the adjective maxima modifying the first pars: in effect, we have a pars maior and a pars minor. Each group is assigned its own verb and ablative of means, while quid velit, an indirect question (AG §573–75; hence the subjunctive velit) is the shared (*apo koinou) object of both verbs.

Additional Information: Although the manuscript reading ore creates a neat balance of ablative complements (nutu … ore), it is otherwise somewhat lacking in point, and many editors prefer the variant aure (a poetic shortening of in aure; in prose we would expect in aurem).

644–45 obstipui … removi. The -que after capiat (in the original Latin, the quotation marks would of course have been absent) connects obstipui and dixi. The -que after me connects dixi and removi. To construe the initial sentence, reorder as follows: obstipui et dixi: ‘aliquis moderamina capiat’. The indefinite pronoun aliquis (‘someone’) here has the emphatic implication ‘someone else’ — i.e. ‘someone other than me’. Having already suffered physical assault, Acoetes now opts for passive resistance. capiat is a hortatory subjunctive (AG §439); its object moderamina (‘poetic’ plural) is probably used concretely here of the rudder (as again at 15.756), much as regimen was earlier (593 with n.). In English we would say ‘take the helm’.

me is the accusative object of removi, with ministerio an ablative of separation (AG §401). For the correlating -que … -que, coordinating the two genitive attributes of ministerio, see 521–23 n.; this pair of genitives produces a mildly zeugmatic and hendiadic effect: ‘(I removed myself) from service of their crime and the exercise of my skill (sc. as helmsman)’ — that is, from helping them in their crime with my skill. The versification reflects Acoetes’ brisk, punctilious response: lines 644 and 645 are almost entirely dactylic, with just a single spondee in the fourth foot of the second verse.

646 increpor … agmen. The -que after totum links increpor and inmurmurat. Notice that this verse constitutes a so-called ‘theme-and-variation’, with the second clause essentially reformulating the first (cf. 515 with n.): increpor is synonymous with inmurmurat, a cunctis with totum … agmen. This is a device of emphasis; in addition, the switch from Acoetes as passive subject to the crew as active subject subtly prepares for the emergence of a ringleader from the group, who takes charge of matters with Caesarean vigour and decisiveness.

647–48 e quibus … ait. The relative pronoun is ‘connecting’: e quibus is equivalent to ex iis, and depends on unus understood. As with the previous instances, the name Aethalion is Greek; αἰθαλίων (aithaliôn) means ‘burning, blazing’. His utterance is dripping with sarcasm, rendered explicit by the particle scilicet and underscored by the hyperbaton of te … in uno (giving mocking prominence to the 2nd person pronoun) and of omnis … nostra salus (giving mocking prominence to the hyperbolic omnis).

648–49 et subit … relicta. The -que after meum links subit and explet; the -que after Naxo links explet and petit. The sense of subit is ‘succeeds me, takes my place’ (cf. Met. 1.114 subiit argentea proles, of the silver race succeeding the gold); explet can be rendered ‘performs’. Naxo… relicta is an ablative absolute (the Greek proper noun Naxos is f., as is the rule for islands). As earlier at 642, petit has the sense ‘direct one’s course’; diversa, its object, can be understood as modifying an implied loca, or as neuter adjective used as a noun, in which case it could be rendered in English with an adverbial clause: ‘in the opposite direction’.

650–52 tum deus … similis. The primary verb for this sequence is ait in 653. In the elaborate build-up, the circumstantial participle inludens governs a clause of comparison (AG §524) introduced by the comparative particle tamquam (‘as if’), which takes a subjunctive verb (senserit); the sense of modo denique is ‘only then’ (i.e. ‘then for the first time’). Here puppe is meant literally rather than synecdochically: Bacchus is standing at the stern. The epithet adunca arises from the fact that on the ancient ship the keel was raised up at the stern (just as it was at the front; cf. Met. 1.298 curvae carinae).

The dative participle flenti (from fleo) is dependent on similis: as he proceeds to address the crew, Bacchus is ‘akin to someone crying’. It was generally held by the ancients that the gods were incapable of crying; but of course Bacchus is acting here. Indeed, the god, who was the divine patron of the theatre, does that patronage proud by continuing persuasively to play the part of the defenceless youth, on whom the criminal intent of the crew is only now beginning to dawn. Notice the pronounced alliteration on p in 651.

653–55 tum … unum. Bacchus’ brief speech is direct, with repetition and ‘doubling’ used to powerful rhetorical effect (1a: non haec mihi litora … promisistis — 1b: non haec mihi terra rogata est; 2a: quo merui poenam facto? — 2b: quae gloria vestra est …?; 3a: si puerum iuvenes [sc. fallitis] — 3b: si multi fallitis unum).

The first mihi (652) is the indirect object of promisistis; the second mihi is dative of agent (‘by me’) with perfect passive rogata est (AG §375). In Bacchus’ first query, quo is an interrogative adjective modifying facto, forming a causal ablative (‘on account of what deed …?’). In the second, quae is an interrogative adjective, modifying gloria, with vestra in predicative position (‘what glory is yours if …?’). Bacchus emphasizes the shamefulness of the crew members’ exploit by means of subject-object pairs, arranged *chiastically, that underscore their superiority in age (iuvenes … puerum) and number (multi … unum).

Additional Information: The differentiation between the Latin terms puer and iuvenis is starker than it might appear to modern readers (thanks in no small part to modern cognates like ‘juvenile’). Roman thought generally divided a man’s life into four stages (ranges are approximate): infantia (0–2 years), pueritia (3–16), iuventus (17–45), senectus (46 +). Hence the age range of the iuvenis (someone in the stage of iuventus) extends into what we would classify as ‘middle-age’, and we should imagine Acoetes’ crewmembers surpassing the apparent age of their captive by a considerable margin.

656–57 iamdudum … remis. Whereas Bacchus only simulates weeping (flenti similis), the pious Acoetes has long since dissolved into genuine tears of despair (for the tense of flebam, see AG §277b); notice the appropriate metrical articulation of Acoetes’ sobbing: all of the syllables in iamdudum flebam scan long. True to type, the crew, ominously characterized as a manus inpia (‘blasphemous band’), makes fun of his tears (nostras is ‘poetic’ plural, hence: ‘my’). The sense of impellit is ‘strikes’ or perhaps ‘sets in motion’, speaking to the ‘shovelling’ of the sea by the oars (properantibus … remis).

658–60 per … fide. The inset tale has reached its pivotal moment, with Bacchus about to cast off the victim’s role to exact miraculous metamorphic punishment on the crew (for the formal requirement that every episode of the poem include a metamorphosis, see Intro. §3b). Acoetes portentously introduces this new narrative phase with an affirmation of veracity in the form of an oath sworn by the avenging god himself, delivered to his internal audience (tibi is addressed to Pentheus), but naturally aimed at the reader as well. Challenges to the reader to overcome (steep) thresholds of disbelief in the face of the marvellous are a key feature of the Metamorphoses, an epic poem that insists on making prima facie incredible forms of (divinely induced) transformative change part of the record of universal history. Anticipation of incredulity on the part of the audience is one of the strategies by which Ovid tries, tongue-in-cheek, to endow his narrative with credibility.

The separation of the preposition from the noun it governs is a peculiarity of Latin poetry. Within this broad phenomenon, the separation of per from its case (here ipsum, with which understand deum) is particularly frequent in adjurations: Bömer (1969, 608) provides a list of parallels. In the parenthetical aside, illo, referring to Bacchus, is ablative of comparison after praesentior. In supernatural contexts, praesens has a quasi-technical sense, speaking to a deity making its power manifest (cf. OLD s.v. 3); hence the implication would be ‘no god is more powerful than he’. But for those recognizing Bacchus in Acoetes, this declaration can be taken literally: ‘no god is more present than he’, an arch double-entendre that clearly — and fatally — sails over Pentheus’ head.

Acoetes insists on the truth of the marvel he is about to recount in a decidedly counterintuitive fashion. The indirect statement tam me tibi vera referre | quam veri maiora fide is dependent on adiuro; the subject accusative is me, the infinitive referre. The latter takes two accusative objects, vera and maiora (both are n. pl. adjectives used substantivally), which are coordinated by tam… quam. Finally, fide is ablative of comparison after maiora, and veri an objective genitive dependent on fide. Taken altogether, we have ‘I swear that the things I tell you are just as (tam) true as (quam) they are greater than belief in the truth’, i.e. beyond belief.

660–61 stetit … teneret. The miraculous developments begin with the ship (for the synecdoche puppis, see 596 n.) suddenly standing still (stetit) on the open sea as if it were resting in dry dock (siccum navale). This eerie prelude appears to be Ovid’s invention (cf. Hymn. Hom. 7.32–34). The imperfect subjunctive teneret is the usual form for this kind of conditional (or ‘hypothetical’) comparison; the general rule is that quasi and tamquam are followed by the present and perfect subjunctive, while quam si (as well as ut si, etc.) is followed by the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive, as here (cf. Met. 15.331 haud aliter titubat quam si mera vina bibisset, ‘he staggered as if he had drunk unmixed wine’). Since Latin idiom has the vessel ‘holding’ dry dock rather than the reverse, the subject of the clause remains puppis, with siccum navale the accusative object.

662–63 illi admirantes … temptant. Acoetes now describes the unavailing efforts of the astonished crew (admirantes is a circumstantial participle) to restore the ship’s motion. This report takes the form of a *tricolon, structured around the verbs perstant — deducunt — temptant. The -que after vela links perstant and deducunt, the -que after gemina links deducunt and temptant. The first colon captures the attempt at rowing; the second the unfurling of the sails; the third sums up the first two: they try to overcome the eerie standstill through this twofold effort (gemina ope).

Persisting in a given activity is regularly expressed by perstare in + abl. (OLD s.v. 3), as here with remorum in verbere perstant. Here, though, the sense is ‘persist in the attempt at rowing’, since Acoetes promptly reveals that the oars are held fast by ivy (664). The metaphoric use of verber, verberare etc. in reference to rowing strokes, figured as a kind of ‘lashing’ of the sea, is quite common in Latin poetry (Görler 1999, 273); Ovid uses the same conceit of swimming strokes at Her. 18 dare verbera ponto. In addition to rowing, the crew makes an equally futile attempt to harness the winds: vela deducunt speaks to the unfurling (or letting down) of the main sail, which was tied to the yard (the horizontal beam attached to the top of the mast). That this measure is supplementary to the rowing is underscored by gemina ope (‘with double aid’, i.e. with the aid of both oars and sail). Acoetes sets the crew’s double effort in relief because it was not normal ancient seafaring practice simultaneously to resort to both means of propulsion. The application of currere to the progress of a ship through water is a standard poeticism (OLD s.v. 3a), attested as early as Naevius but enjoying particular currency in the Augustan and later periods. It belongs to a set of nautical metaphors systematized by Virgil, including ‘flying’, used of rapid sailing (on which see further Zissos 2008, 226–27).

664–65 inpediunt … corymbis. Bacchus’ power is now made manifest through a miraculous botanical metamorphosis, the onset of fast-spreading ivy (a plant associated with the god: see 540–42, 555–56 nn.). Here Ovid has simplified the account of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, which begins with a miraculous geyser of wine (Hymn. Hom. 7.35–37), and then features a combined incursion of ivy and vines: ‘All at once a vine spread out in both directions along the top of the sail, with many clusters hanging down from it, and a dark ivy-plant twined about the mast, blossoming with flowers, and with rich berries growing on it’ (αὐτίκα δ᾽ ἀκρότατον παρὰ ἱστίον ἐξετανύσθη | 
ἄμπελος ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα, κατεκρημνῶντο δὲ πολλοὶ | βότρυες: ἀμφ᾽ ἱστὸν δὲ μέλας εἱλίσσετο κισσός, | ἄνθεσι τηλεθάων, χαρίεις δ᾽ ἐπὶ καρπὸς ὀρώρει, Hymn. Hom. 7.39–42).

Notice that hederae is the subject of all three verbs, whose sequence produces a *tricolon structure (the -que after nexu linking inpediunt and serpunt). The rapidly spreading ivy ‘obstructs’ (impediunt) the oars — without, it would seem, growing out of them, as we find in other accounts (e.g. Sen. Oed. 452–56, quoted below). In the second colon, the enjambment of serpunt neatly reflects what is being described: the ivy is crawling all over the place; the instrumental ablative nexu recurvo speaks to the ‘intertwined formation’ of the ivy. In the final colon, the sense of distinguunt vela corymbis is ‘deck the sails with clusters of ivy berries’ (for distinguo in this sense, cf. Hor. Carm. 2.5.11 distinguet Autumnus racemos purpureo varius colore). The Greek loanword corymbus (κόρυμβος) designates a cluster of ivy-berries. The basic meaning of gravidus is ‘pregnant’ and then, metaphorically, ‘laden, swollen, teeming with’, ‘rich, abundant’.

Additional Information: Writing in the later Neronian Age, Seneca offers a ramped-up version of this scene: hinc verno platanus folio viret | et Phoebo laurus carum nemus; | garrula per ramos avis obstrepit. | vivaces hederas ramus tenet, | summa ligat vitis carchesia (‘so there were plane trees green with spring foliage, and laurels whose groves are dear to Phoebus; birds chattered among the branches, the oars were covered with vigorous ivy, grapevines twined at the mastheads’, Oed. 452–56). His twofold elaboration of the initial miracles — ivy on the oars and a vine at the top of the mast — makes for an attractive botanical ‘division of labour’. Notice that vivaces hederas remus tenet is a neat variation on Ovid’s inpediunt hederae remos, which emphasizes the metamorphic without insisting on the sudden immobility of the vessel (a detail also absent from the Homeric Hymn).

666–67 ipse racemiferis … hastam. As the epiphany continues, the god himself — ipse refers to Bacchus — acquires a couple of his familiar accessories: a garland and the thyrsus. The elaborate formulation can be stripped down to a simple core: ipse (subject) agitat (verb) hastam (object). The participle circumdatus agrees with ipse and governs frontem, which is a synecdochical or ‘Greek’ accusative used to denote the part affected (AG §397b, so named as a construction thought to have entered Latin in imitation of Greek practice), and the instrumental ablative racemiferis … uvis. The latter defies literal translation: a racemus is a cluster of grapes (or other fruits); the compound adjective racemifer (from racemus + fer; for such epithets in -fer and -ger, see 584–85 n.) means ‘bearing clusters (of grapes)’. Its application to the noun uva is decidedly odd; perhaps translate ‘(with) clustering grapes’.

As already indicated, hastam does not designate a real spear but rather the thyrsus (on which see 540–42 n.), a metaphoric usage found earlier in Virgil (Ecl. 5.31; Aen. 7.396) and later in Statius (Theb. 9.796; Ach. 1.261). The participle velatam, agreeing with hastam, governs pampineis … frondibus, another instrumental ablative: ‘… a spear veiled in vine-leaves’ is an attractive indirect formulation for the thyrsus. The trope is freighted with foreboding for Pentheus, as his mother Agave will begin the murderous onslaught on her son by hurling her thyrsus at him as if it were a spear (712 with n.). But here as elsewhere, Acoetes’ imperious interlocutor misses the point.

668–69 quem circa … pantherarum. The god’s bestial entourage is now added to the epiphany; Ovid opts for more theologically ‘appropriate’ — if less concrete — species than the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, which states that the god metamorphosed into a lion and a bear materialized at his side (Hymn. Hom. 7.45–46). The creatures in question here — tigers, lynxes, panthers — became associated with Bacchus (and were added to his train) as a result of a body of legends attributing the conquest of India to the god (on which see Intro. §5b-iii n. 76; although Ovid does not develop this alternate, ‘martial’ version of the god, these oblique allusions could be yet another hint that Bacchus isn’t the pushover Pentheus has assumed: cf. 553–58 with nn.). The lynx in particular came to be seen as the Bacchic animal par excellence. In a retrospective section of the ‘Hymn to Bacchus’ with which he opens Book 4, Ovid mentions a chariot drawn by lynxes as one of the divinity’s preferred means of transportation, right after his punishment of the Etruscan sailors: Tyrrhenaque mittis in aequor | corpora, tu biiugum pictis insignia frenis | colla premis lyncum (‘you send the Tyrrhenian bodies into the sea, you press the necks of lynxes yoked in pairs with multi-coloured reins’, Met. 4.23–25).

The verb iacent has three subjects — tigres, simulacra, corpora — linked, respectively, by the -que after simulacra and pictarum. The pronoun quem is a so-called connecting relative, equivalent to et eum. It occupies emphatic initial position (of both verse and clause) by virtue of the *anastrophe of its preposition circa.

Whereas tigres are mentioned without qualification, the expression simulacra… inania lyncum raises the possibility that all these creatures are apparitions — which would not be inappropriate to Bacchus, as a god of illusion. A simulacrum is an image formed in the likeness of something else. Depending on the context this could be a work of art (such as a portrait or statue), a mirror-image, something seen in a dream (shade, phantom) or in one’s imagination, or, when the emphasis is the opposition to what is real or substantial, something flimsy or insubstantial (shadow, semblance, appearance). The attribute inania (‘empty’) reinforces the sense that the lynxes in question are mere apparitions. But one might justly wonder about focalisation: did the lynxes appear as simulacra inania to Acoetes at the time? Or is it Acoetes the narrator who retrospectively clarifies that what at the time seemed to him (as surely to the sailors) to be real lynxes were in fact phantom beasts. The sense of pictarum is ‘spotted’.

Verse 669 exhibits some noteworthy stylistic features, starting with the attractive ‘enclosing’ arrangement of the alliterative epithet-noun pair pictarum… pantherarum. In addition, the four long syllables of pantherarum occupying the last two feet of the hexameter, produce something of a metrical monstrosity, turning verse 669 into a so-called spondaic verse (i.e. one in which the 5th foot consists of a spondee rather than the expected dactyl).

670–72 exsiluere … flecti. In construing exsiluere (an alternate 3rd pers. pl. perf. form) the prefix should be afforded its full force: the men jump out of the vessel, i.e. overboard. After this dramatic declaration, Acoetes momentarily suspends the action to speculate on its motivation, entertaining two possibilities (sive … sive): a fit of insanity or fear. This of course reminds us that Acoetes is (posing as) a non-omniscient narrator. On the metaliterary level, this equivocation could also be marking Ovid’s departure from the tradition of the Homeric Hymn, in which the creatures that appear are only too real, and it is the lion’s apparent assault on the helmsman — Acoetes’ counterpart! — that prompts the fearful crew to jump overboard (Hymn. Hom. 7.51–52).

The -que after primus links exsiluere and coepit, which governs the two infinitives nigrescere and flecti (linked by et). primus is an adjective, agreeing with Medon (a Greek nominative form), used in lieu of an adverb: he is the first to exhibit symptoms of the metamorphosis subjected upon the entire crew; corpore is a somewhat otiose ablative of respect with nigrescere. The sense of expresso spinae curvamine (ablative absolute) is ‘with the curve of his spine arching outwards’ — an initial manifestation of his metamorphosis into a dolphin. Strictly speaking, this curve is not an anatomical feature of the species, but is dramatically in evidence when dolphins leap out of the water, and this captivating sight prompted many ancient artists and poets to conceive of — or at least represent — the dolphin as hog-backed: cf. Ovid’s earlier reference to curvi delphines (Met. 2.265, which appears to be the inspiration for Christopher Marlowe’s ‘crooked dolphin’ at Hero and Leander 2.234).

673–75 incipit … trahebat. The text may well be corrupt here: see Additional Information below. If retained as transmitted, it will be necessary to supply dicere with incipit: ‘he begins to speak’. This is an easy *ellipse in English as well as Latin, but here it sits very oddly with dixit at the end of the verse. huic refers to Medon, Lycabas’ addressee. The sense of in quae miracula is ‘into what strange shape …?’ rictus (nom. m. pl.) and naris (nom. f. sing.) are both subjects of erat (which is singular in correspondence with the nearer of the pair); they take lati and panda respectively as predicative complements. loquenti is a circumstantial present participle, agreeing with an implied demonstrative pronoun in the dative of possession. Taken together, we have ‘as he was speaking his mouth became broad and his nose curved’. The sense of squamam… trahebat is ‘took on scales, became scaly’ (squamam is a collective singular). Here again — cf. 670–72 n. — we reach the limits of the poet’s zoological competence: dolphins are mammals and, unlike fish, do not have scales. Ovid is evidently not speaking from personal observation. The compact combination of perfect participle (durata) + ‘ingressive’ imperfect (trahebat) neatly expresses a two-fold process: the skin hardens and then takes on scales. In describing metamorphoses Ovid regularly uses the verbs traho (OLD s.v. 13, ‘take on, acquire (properties, attributes, etc.)’), as here: cf. Met. 1.412 saxa … faciem traxere virorum (‘the stones took on the form of men’). Another stock verb of transformation is duco, which is used in much the same way (cf. Met. 1.163 ducere formam, ‘take shape’).

Additional Information: The juxtaposition of two main verbs in different tenses without any connectives in 673 (incipit — dixit) is difficult to parallel and make sense of. It may well be that the transmitted text is corrupt and some editors have put forward conjectures (as well as proposing alternative punctuation). Here is the text as printed by Tarrant in his Oxford Classical Texts edition: exsiluere viri, sive hoc insania fecit | sive timor, primusque Medon nigrescere toto | corpore et expresso spinae curvamine flecti | incipit; huic Lycabas ‘in quae miracula’ dixit | ‘verteris?’ et lati rictus et panda loquenti | naris erat, squamamque cutis durata trahebat (670–75). The differences are underlined: (i) toto, in lieu of the manuscript reading coepit, at the end of line 671 is a conjecture of Shackleton Bailey adopted by Tarrant; (ii) this conjecture entails changes in punctuation: Tarrant has no full stop after flecti, but puts a colon after incipit, with no punctuation after Lycabas. The conjecture and re-punctuation results in syntactical differences: (i) the -que after primus links exsiluere (670) and incipit (673), rather than exsiluere (670) and coepit (671); (ii) incipit governs the preceding infinitives nigrescere and flecti rather than being used in an absolute, elliptical sense (‘he begins to speak’).

676–78 at Libys … vocari. The conjunction at does not have its usual adversative force here, merely signalling a transition to the next victim of transformation, Libys, who featured earlier at 617. The main verb vidit governs an indirect statement that falls into two parts, linked by et and arranged chiastically: resilire (verb) — manus (subject accusative) and illas (subject accusative) — posse … posse (verb), with vocari a supplementary infinitive dependent on (both instances of) posse. This sequence is focalized through the metamorphic victim: Libys witnesses as he experiences the transformation of his own hands into fins. As Henderson (1979, 111) observes, ‘Ovid gets inside the mind of Libys, whose rapidly changing definition of his own extremities is subtly brought out by the asyndetic *anaphora iam (non) … iam …’ Notice how the line break helps to capture the eerie moment in which Libys’ extremities have ceased to be recognizable as hands and have become recognizable as fins.

The verb of the dum-clause is vult, which takes obvertere as supplementary infinitive. Libys wishes to ply (obvertere) the oars (i.e. turn them against the water), but they are resisting the attempt (obstantes), i.e. they are immovable. The sense of in spatium resilire … breve (literally ‘to jump back into a small space’) is ‘to contract’ or ‘to shrink’. The use of pinna in the sense ‘fin’ (OLD s.v. 3) though not attested before Ovid in extant Latin literature, would appear to have been the regular term in both poetry and prose; cf. Plin. NH 9.7 pinnarum … quae pedum vice sunt datae piscibus (‘fins … which are given to fish in place of feet’).

679–82 alter … lunae. Acoetes subtly generalizes the metamorphic phenomenon by describing the experience of an unnamed victim (alter). The first main clause is alter … bracchia non habuit, with the present participle cupiens (which agrees with the subject alter) governing an infinitive construction that specifies what this individual wished to do with the arms he no longer has. The verb of the second main clause is desiluit, which is linked to non habuit by the -que after trunco. Ovid here underscores the quick sequence of events by interweaving description of the transformation (trunco repandus … corpore) with portrayal of the behaviour it entails: in undas … desiluit, across a line break, which enacts his jumping down from the ship into the waters.

intortos (‘twisted’) is a conventional attribute of ropes and cables, speaking to the braiding of individual strands during the manufacturing process (cf. Cat. 64.235 intorti … rudentes; Virg. Aen. 4.575 tortos… funis). The sense of dare bracchia is tendere bracchia: this fellow wishes to reach out towards the braided ropes (ad intortos … funes) — to what end is not altogether clear; perhaps to trim the sail or to perform some other nautical task. trunco … corpore (speaking to the metamorphic loss of limbs) is ablative of respect with repandus (‘curved backward’). novissima cauda denotes the extremity (or tip) of the tail; novus can bear a spatial as well as a temporal implication. qualia introduces a comparison; it agrees with cornua, the subject of the sentence, on which the genitive dimiduae … lunae (‘half-moon’) depends: ‘just as the horns of the crescent moon are bent’.

Fig. 7 Nautical terms.

683–86 undique … efflant. These four verses constitute an extended paratactic sequence describing the newly formed dolphins — the subject is implied by the plural verb forms — frolicking in the sea. There are fully seven verbs, all in the vivid present: dant, rorant, emergunt, redeunt, ludunt, iactant, efflant. The initial five are linked by -que (after multa, emergunt, redeunt, in, and lasciva), the last two by et (this switch nicely ‘closes out’ the sequence). The sportive dolphins are in many ways the polar opposite of the vicious and depraved humans from whom they have been transformed. Ovid provides no indication that they have retained any vestige of their former human consciousness (as is explicitly affirmed in many of the transformations recounted in the Metamorphoses).

For the expression dant saltus (note that saltus is acc. pl.), see 597–99 n. The sense of multa… aspergine rorant is ‘they shed moisture in a great spray’. The phrase captures the initial moment when a dolphin emerges above the surface of the sea in order to breathe, as a preliminary to which it vigorously ‘chuffs’ or exhales in order to clear its blowhole and the area around it of water. Acoetes well captures the repetitive character of the dolphins’ disappearance beneath the water (redeuntque) and reappearance above it (emerguntque) through the adverbs iterum and rursus (the latter technically redundant after redeunt) — a dynamic in fact dictated by the need to breathe. Here aequora retains its primary connotation of the surface of the sea (L-S s.v.): Acoetes observes (and reports) from a vantage point above sea level. The expression in chori … speciem constitutes a very brief comparison: the dolphins’ activity resembles that of a band of dancers. The Greek loanword chorus (χορός) refers to the performance of group dancing (usually with musical accompaniment). The use of in speciem + genitive with the sense ‘in the guise of/ giving the impression of’ is widespread in Classical Latin (OLD s.v. species, 6b). A certain intricacy of expression is achieved by the separation of the preposition from its case (on which see 658–60 n.). The sense of iactant corpora is that the dolphins ‘throw their own bodies about’ in a playful manner (speaking to their leaping above the water); Ovid here uses an adjective (lasciva) in lieu of an adverb (lasciviter). Though a frisky and highly intelligent species, the dolphin’s apparently playful activity is in this instance dictated by its need to breathe, as mentioned above. The statement acceptum patulis mare naribus efflant returns to the action of ‘chuffing’ briefly treated in 683 (as discussed above). mare is an instance of whole for part (a less common form of synecdoche), designating the seawater taken in (acceptum) while the dolphins are submerged; it is the accusative object of efflant: they blow it out again through a gaping nose (patulis … naribus). The ‘gaping nose’ is an anatomically imprecise reference to the dolphin’s blowhole (which, as a result of evolution, has migrated from its snout to the top of its head, facilitating breathing when partly submerged).

687–91. In the closing section of his account, Acoetes returns to his own situation: as the sole survivor, he is in a state of holy horror, almost beside himself — but is promptly reassured by the now benevolent divinity, whose follower he thereupon becomes.

687–88 de modo … solus. The preposition de governs the indeclinable numeral viginti and has partitive force; modo is a temporal adverb here meaning ‘just a moment ago’: taken together we have ‘out of twenty who were there just a moment ago …’. Of the various poetic synonyms for ‘ship’ (592–94 n.), ratis is perhaps the least grandiose: it originally designated a raft (cf. Varr. Ling. 7.23), but from Enn. Ann. 515 Sk onwards serves as a poetic term for a sea-going ship (OLD s.v. 2), as here. Overall, the parenthesis glosses viginti: with tot supply viros as the accusative object of ferebat. Acoetes is once again being a stickler for precision. Twenty might be on the high side for such a vessel; Hyg. Fab. 134 reports a total crew of twelve. In any event, the contrasting numerical specifications (de) viginti … solus neatly frame the sentence. The import of restabam solus is ‘I alone remained in unaltered form’ and/ or ‘I alone remained onboard’ — an effective encapsulation of Bacchus’ transformative intervention.

688–90 pavidum … Dianque tene. The subject of the sentence is the long-delayed and climactic deus; the verb is firmat. What precedes is a long and complex accusative object: the adjective pavidum and present participle trementem (linked by the -que after gelido) agree with an implied me: ‘the god reassures me, fearful and trembling as I am …’. gelido … corpore vixque meo is an ablative of description, with the noun corpore modified by two attributes (gelido and vix meo) linked by the -que after vix: ‘with my body chilled and hardly my own’. Acoetes is obviously scared out of his wits — and almost out of his body as well: the phrasing here is poignant given what has just happened to the sailors and their bodies.

Bacchus proceeds to give two orders (linked by -que after Dian), in chiastic sequence: imperative (excute) — accusative object (metum) ‹› accusative object (Dian) — imperative (tene). corde is ablative of separation. Dian tene is short for cursum tene ad Dian, i.e. make for the island of Naxos (of which Dia is an old designation). Sol uses this abbreviated imperative in advising his son Phaethon at 2.140 inter utrumque tene (‘steer a course between the two [sc. constellations]’). Notice that Dian is a Greek accusative form (the Latin equivalent, found in some manuscripts and retained in some modern editions, is Diam).

Additional Information: In his Oxford Classical Text, Tarrant prints pavidum gelidumque trementem | corpore vixque meum. On this reading, pavidum, gelidum, and (vix) meum (linked by the two -que after gelidum and vix) are the complements to the implied me. They are further qualified by the ablative of description trementi corpore, which stands *apo koinou with all three: ‘The god reassures me, fearful, chilled, and hardly myself as I was, with my body trembling all over’. (We added ‘all over’ to bring out the extra formal stress on this phrase achieved by the enjambment.)

690–91 delatus … frequento. A curious feature of the closing statement of the inset narrative is the abrupt switch in subject (from Bacchus to Acoetes) and in voice (from active to passive). Indeed, in the wake of Bacchus’ command to Acoetes to head for Naxos, it is natural to assume that the god continues to be the subject and it is only after accessi (1st pers. sing. perf. act.) that one grasps that delatus in illam (‘having been brought to Naxos’; illam refers back to Dian) is in reference to Acoetes and involves an abrogation of agency. It is tempting to see this odd effect as a further conflation of Bacchus and Acoetes, and a final clue to Acoetes’ true identity (see Intro. §5b-iv).

The -que after Bacchea links accessi and frequento. The switch from perfect (accessi) to present (frequento) distinguishes between a singular moment in the past when Acoetes first joined in the rites and his continuing participation, i.e. accessi sacris: ‘I joined the rites’; frequento: ‘I (still) attend’. The repetition of sacra frequentare indicates that Acoetes has at last managed to answer the question Pentheus posed at the end of his speech at 581 morisque novi cur sacra frequentes?

Additional Information. Some editors have suspected a corruption in the transmitted text on the grounds that accedere sacris is an unusual idiom and the repetition sacris … sacra has struck some readers as a trifle clumsy. Hence some editions have substituted the conjecture accensis aris for accedere sacris. Alternatively, one could interpret the *polyptoton as indicative of Acoetes’ devotion to the cult as well as a subtle pun on frequento, which implies repetition, thus rendering the reiteration of sacra thematically appropriate.

692–733
Pentheus’ Gruesome Demise

With the completion of Acoetes’ lengthy embedded tale, the narrative reverts to the ‘frame’ level, and proceeds at a quicker pace and in a terse — almost fragmentary — manner to its conclusion. Pentheus orders the captive to be taken away for torture and execution; but despite being chained and incarcerated, the stranger — so rumour has it — miraculously and effortlessly extricates himself. Pentheus then hastens to Mount Cithaeron, where he is assailed by a troupe of Bacchants led by his mother and aunts, and literally torn limb from limb. In Euripides’ more detailed version, the build-up to the sparagmos is treated with ingenious psychological twists that Ovid has not explicitly included: Pentheus is persuaded by Dionysus/ Bacchus to dress up as a Bacchant before proceeding to Mount Cithaeron, and experiences hallucinations induced by the god (so that he famously sees two suns and two Thebes). After setting Pentheus in a tree on Cithaeron, ostensibly to afford him a better view of the rites, the god abruptly disappears, after signalling to the Bacchants that their prey is at hand. (For detailed comparison of the Euripidean and Ovidian versions, see Intro. §5a).

692–93 praebuimus … posset. Ovid’s separate embedding of subject (Pentheus) and verb (inquit) of the main clause within the direct speech they introduce is an intricate effect that visually encircles and ensnares the Theban king in longis … ambagibus (explained below).

The mild circumlocution praebuimus … aures is rather like the English idiom ‘lend an ear’; the lofty tone is enhanced by the ‘poetic’ plural of the verb. The indirect object (that to which Pentheus lent his ears) is longis … ambagibus (‘your long winding account’). The figurative use of ambages (literally ‘a circuitous path’) extends to all forms of discourse (OLD s.v. 2): in the following book the Fury Tisiphone cuts off Juno when she needlessly adds justifications to her commands: non longis opus est ambagibus; … facta puta quaecumque iubes (‘No need for long explanations; consider done whatever you command’, Met. 4.476–77). ut introduces a purpose clause whereby Pentheus explains why he sat through Acoetes’ longwinded account: in case his wrath might have lessened through the delay (mora is ablative of means) — i.e. if Acoetes’ (perceived) guilt had not been so great as to make that impossible. Ovid is clearly attempting to account for — or, perhaps better, archly to signal — the implausibility of Pentheus’ impetuous anger allowing him patiently to sit through Acoetes’ lengthy account.

694–95 praecipitem … nocti. The -que after cruciata links the two imperatives rapite and demittite. praecipitem (modifying hunc) is used in lieu of an adverb, which would go with rapite. The insistent and unsettled syntax and the dactylic rhythm (verse 694 is metrically ‘praeceps’) reflect Pentheus’ agitated frame of mind. The famuli addressed here are no doubt the same attendants who were earlier ordered to arrest Bacchus (562–63, 572–73 nn.). In the second main clause we have interlaced word order reinforced by enjambment: attribute 1 (cruciata) — attribute 2 (diris) — noun 1 (corpora) — noun 2 (tormentis). diris … tormentis is instrumental ablative dependent on the participle cruciata, which modifies the ‘poetic’ plural corpora. Much like dare leto (545–48 n.), Stygiae demittite nocti constitutes an elevated periphrasis for ‘kill’ (the prosaic term would be interficere). The adjective Stygius is formed from Styx, the Greek name — ‘loathsome’, from στυγέω — for one of the main rivers of the Underworld, the realm inhabited by the dead (or more precisely, by their ‘shades’ or ghosts); and nox is in itself a conventional metaphor for death in Latin poetry (e.g. Cat. 5.6; Hor. Carm. 1.28.15; Virg. Aen. 6.390). Pentheus’ murderous commands are freighted with tragic irony, inasmuch as he is the one who will presently undergo bodily mutilation and death.

696–700 protinus … catenas. Ovid creates an intriguing rift in his account of what happens next. Acoetes’ initial experience, which is in conformity with Pentheus’ orders, is reported in the vivid present (clauditur, parantur). But in proceeding to the miraculous liberation that follows, the poet seems to distance himself from the factuality of his account with fama est (‘there is a story’). In fact, Ovid may be ‘quoting’ earlier literary versions here (on the probable literary implications of fama est, see Additional Information below). The statement introduced by fama est (i.e. 699–700) is strikingly similar to Euripides’ account at Bacch. 447–48 ‘Of their own accord, the chains were loosed from their feet and keys opened the doors without human hand’ (αὐτόματα δ᾽ αὐταῖς δεσμὰ διελύθη ποδῶν | κλῇδές τ᾽ ἀνῆκαν θύρετρ᾽ ἄνευ θνητῆς χερός), even if the situation is slightly different: see Additional Information below.

Notice the ‘iconic’ word order in 696–97, with solidis … in tectis ‘enclosing’ the prisoner Tyrrhenus Acoetes and thereby illustrating the verb clauditur. For the epithet Tyrrhenus, see 574–76 n. The conjunction et (after tectis) is adversative in force. Although crudelia instrumenta, ferrum, and ignes are all subjects of parantur (all linked by -que), the last two explicate the first: the instruments of torture are iron and fire. iussae … necis depends on instrumenta: ‘of the death that had been ordered’ (referring to Pentheus’ command Stygiae demittite nocti at 695). fama est introduces an indirect statement that falls into two parts, linked by the -que after lapsas: infinitive (patuisse) + subject accusative (fores); infinitive (lapsas, sc. esse) + subjective accusative (catenas). lacertis is ablative of separation (the simple ablative without a preposition is a feature of poetic language: in prose de or ex would be used). The ablative absolute nullo solvente is concessive in force (‘even though no one, i.e. no human, freed him’); it is semantically redundant after the emphatic *anaphora of sponte sua (equivalent to Euripides’ αὐτόματα) at the beginning of verses 699 and 700, but contributes to the sense of wonder (or disbelief).

Additional Information. fama est is a stock phrase, often used by Roman authors to signal awareness of earlier literary treatments: it functions as the poetic equivalent of a footnote. In a sense, then, Ovid is here outsourcing responsibility for the truth-value of his account, saying that he is covering material he has found elsewhere, without necessarily vouching for its veracity. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure which text (or texts) he is referencing here, not least since we do not have Pacuvius’ play from which he took the name Acoetes (see Intro. §5b-iv). There is a similar scene of liberation in Euripides’ Bacchae, though it features captured and imprisoned bacchants who are set free the moment that Pentheus’ servants bring the bound Dionysus onto the stage: ‘the Bacchae whom you shut up, whom you carried off and bound in the chains of the public prison, are set loose and gone, and are gambolling in the meadows, invoking Bromius as their god. Of their own accord, the chains were loosed from their feet and keys opened the doors without human hand’ (Eur. Bacch. 443–48). At which point, Pentheus himself orders Dionysus’ bonds to be loosened, reckoning him to have no means of escape, and in what follows he is fooled into thinking that he has the stranger imprisoned.

701–03 perstat … sonabat. The sense of perstat is that, Acoetes’ cautionary tale and his miraculous release from bondage notwithstanding, Pentheus persists in his obtuse and impious rejection of Bacchus. The powerful simplicity of the verb is enhanced by its emphatic initial position in both verse and clause. For the patronymic Echionides, identifying Pentheus, see 513–14 n. nec iam in combination with sed ipse signals the fateful transition: Pentheus no longer orders his attendants about, but opts rather to venture out in person and look into matters himself. iubet introduces an indirect statement with infinitive ire and a subject accusative (famulos vel sim.) implied from what precedes; cf. Pentheus’ earlier command to his attendants at 562 ‘ite citi’ (famulis hoc imperat), ‘ite …’

Cithaeron, the subject of the ubi-clause, is a mountain range in the vicinity of Thebes associated with the worship of Bacchus, for which its wild character was well suited. The construction electus with ad + gerundive expressing purpose is prosaic: Bömer (1969, 619) detects hints of religious language here, which would be appropriate for what amounts to an oblique religious aetiology. bacchantum = bacchantium (from bacchantes, a substantive derived from the present participle of bacchor): the gen. pl. in -um is a common poetic licence for participles (AG §121b.2). Here the genitive stands *apo koinou with both cantibus and clara … voce, which are causal ablatives with sonabat. Notice how the repetition of the letter c in the ubi-clause (electus, facienda, sacra, bacchantum, voce) serves to enhances the already striking alliteration Cithaeron cantibus et clara.

704–07 ut fremit … ira. Ovid now rolls out a simile, likening the impact of the ritual Bacchic shrieking on Pentheus to that of a military trumpet on a spirited war horse: in both cases, sound quickens the emotions, inducing an (automatic, unthinking) eagerness for hostilities. This reprises, on an abstract and figurative level, Pentheus’ misconception of Bacchus’ advent as a military incursion (531–63 passim), a culminating assertion of the mentality that proves to be the king’s undoing. Ovid’s protagonist is in this respect starkly different from his Euripidean counterpart, who goes up the mountain as a cross-dressing voyeur (see Intro. §5b-ii).

The formulation of the simile is conventional, with ut introducing the ‘vehicle’ (the war horse responding to the battle trumpet), and sic the ‘tenor’ (Pentheus reacting to Bacchic howling). In the first part, the -que after pugnae links fremit and adsumit; acer equus is the subject of both. The conjunction cum meaning ‘when’ takes an indicative verb to indicate a general case rather than a specific occurrence; the verb is frequently, but not always, in the present tense (AG §547). fremo is used of various animal noises occasioned by excitement or anger (OLD s.v. 1b), most often growling; in the case of horses, of course, it speaks to neighing. The sense of acer is ‘spirited’; the application of this adjective to horses is found earlier at Lucr. 4.420. The military scenario, which the epithet bellicus promptly announces, is fleshed out in Roman terms (for such ‘Romanizing’ tendencies, see 538–40 n.). A tubicen is a trumpeter, i.e. one who sounds the tuba, a straight trumpet, which was one of the principal signalling instruments used in the Roman army (others include the cornu and the bucina, sounded respectively by the cornicen and bucinator). By additionally deploying the metonymic expression aere canoro (‘tuneful/ melodious bronze’) for the trumpet (quite literally an ablative of instrument!), Ovid etymologically connects the musician — tubicen is a compound derivative from tuba + cano — and his instrument. The signal (signa is ‘poetic’ plural) in question here is of course the battle signal. pugnae is an objective genitive dependent on amorem.

The ‘tenor’ of the simile is formulated with hyperbolic poetic indirection. Instead of saying that the Bacchic cries incite Pentheus (for the accusative form Penthea, see 559–61 n.), Ovid says that it is the sky, reverberating with the cries, that moves him (audito clamore in the following clause expresses the notion more mundanely). aether is a stock poeticism for ‘the heavens’ or ‘the sky’; the idea of its reverberation is conveyed by the metaphor of it being ‘struck’ (ictus is the perf. pass. part. of icio), by the long-continued howls of the Bacchants. For ululatibus applied to the ritual howling, see 528 n.; notice that longis is temporal in force. The prolonged sound-track moved Pentheus into action and his wrath flared up again. The simile concludes with an apt metaphor: recanduit (‘grew white with heat again, rekindled’) equates Pentheus’ anger with fire. Ira (‘wrath’) is of course a quintessentially epic emotion — it provides the keynote to the Iliad.

Additional Information. The epic simile is a conservative literary element that exhibits a high degree of continuity over time. The present example is a case in point, for the comparison of a hero to a horse is widespread in Greek and Latin poetry. Important precedents include Hom. Il. 6.506–11 (Paris) = 15.263–68 (Hector), Ap. Rhod. 3.1259–62 (Jason), Enn. Ann. 535–39 Sk (of an unidentifiable hero), Virg. Aen. 11.491–97 (Turnus). Ennius clearly follows Homer and Virgil both Homer and Ennius. All compare the war-like spirit of their heroes to a horse that has broken its tether and runs exultantly across the plain. Notice how Ovid has reversed the terms of the comparison vis-à-vis these predecessors: his hero is not going to war, whereas his horse is. Ovid refuses to engage in the explicit rewriting process that so conspicuously links Homer, Ennius, and Virgil; and in so doing he also refuses to insert Pentheus into a line of epic heroes that includes Paris, Hector, and Turnus.

With the respect to the ‘vehicle’ of the simile, Ovid’s conception of the spirited war horse has suggestive parallels elsewhere in ancient literature, including a passage in the Georgics discussing various breeds in which Virgil suggests that the superior horse will rise to the sound of arms: tum, si qua sonum procul arma dedere, | stare loco nescit, micat auribus et tremit artus, | collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem (‘Again, should he but hear afar the clash of arms, he cannot keep his place; he pricks up his ears, quivers in his limbs, and snorting rolls beneath his nostrils the gathered fire’, Virg. G. 3.83–85). Another noteworthy treatment is found in the Bible at Job 39.20–25 ‘[the horse] paws in the valley and rejoices in his strength — he goes forth to meet armed men. He mocks at fear and is not affrighted. The quiver rattles against him, as do the glittering shield and the spear. He swallows up the ground with fierceness and rage; nor does he believe that it is the sound of the trumpet. He says “ha!” among the trumpets and he smells the battle far off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting’.

708–09 monte … campus. Ovid prepares the grim denouement with a description of the setting in which Pentheus’ dismemberment will occur. Such ‘topographical introductions’ (a type of ekphrasis), are stock elements of epic narrative, which serve, inter alia, to focus attention on what follows. They almost invariably open with est, which critics have dubbed the ‘timeless’ present, followed by either locus (the ‘generic’ formula, already attested at Enn. Ann. 20 Sk, reprised by Virgil at Aen. 1.530) or a particular landscape element, such as nemus, specus, etc. — as here with the long-delayed campus. Ovid brings the setting of the final showdown gradually into focus. monte fere medio (ablative of place) situates it about half-way up the mountain. cingentibus ultima silvis, an ablative absolute, indicates that it is fringed with trees: ultima is n. acc. pl. with the sense ‘edges’, serving as object of cingentibus. Finally, the slightly odd-looking purus ab arboribus (the preposition is redundant) informs us that the field is itself free from trees. These characteristics turn the clearing into a natural theatre, perfectly suited for the performance of religious rites — or the denouement of a tragedy.

710–13 hic oculis … sorores. The breathless, asyndetic sequence videt, est … concita, violavit, punctuated by the powerful triple *anaphora of prima, reaches its climax with the postponed subject mater, surely one of the most devastating enjambments in Latin epic (for Pentheus’ mother Agave, see 513–14 n.). Ovid seems here to have had his eyes on Eur. Bacch. 1114–15 πρώτη δὲ μήτηρ ἦρξεν ἱερέα φόνου | καὶ προσπίτνει νιν (‘his mother was the first, as priestess of the rites, to begin the slaughter, and fell upon him …’), the basic elements of which he has subjected to rhetorical intensification. Not to be overlooked here is the broader pattern of repetition initiated in these lines whereby successive verses open with the same word: just as verses 711 and 712 begin with prima, so 714 and 715 begin with ille, and 718 and 719 begin with iam. This is a very striking, and clearly deliberate, *anaphoric sequence, reminiscent of hymnic language.

hic is the adverb (‘here’), rather than the demonstrative pronoun, connecting the narrative to the just completed description of the setting. Notice that the participle cernentem, itself the accusative object of videt, has its own internal object sacra (n. acc. pl.): ‘she sees (Pentheus) observing the rites’. oculis … profanis, an instrumental ablative, refers to the eyes (pars pro toto) of Pentheus, who is uninitiated in the Bacchic rites, and therefore not permitted to be present (pro = ‘before/ outside’; fanum = ‘holy space’; cf. the Sibyl’s ritual warning at Virg. Aen. 6.258 procul, o procul este, profani!). Euripides uses the more precise ἀβακχεύτοισιν (‘uninitiated in the Bacchic rites’, Bacch. 472) in a scene of enticement motivating Pentheus’ spying that Ovid has excluded from his account (see Intro. §5b-ii). This compressed sequence nonetheless constitutes the realization of Tiresias’ ominous prognostication at 517–18. The use of the reflexive adjective suum (‘her own’), which modifies Penthea (for the ‘Greek’ accusative form, see 559–61 n.), sets up the aforementioned enjambed shocker mater, and is fraught with pathos. The import of misso … thyrso, which functions instrumentally with violavit, is that Agave hurled her thyrsus as if a javelin — a (mis)application of the cult object prefigured at 666–67; at 542 Pentheus himself dismissed the thyrsus as a weapon: his contempt is now coming back to haunt him. For the interjection o, see 540–42 n. Agave calls upon her two sisters Autonoe and Ino (named at 720 and 722 respectively) to join in the attack: geminae here simply means ‘twofold’ (OLD s.v. 5; cf. 662 gemina… ope with n.), without implying a shared birth; none of Cadmus’ daughters were twins. Notice that the kinship terms mater and sorores ‘frame’ verse 713.

In line with his cursory treatment of the denouement (692–733 n.), Ovid does not elaborate on why Bacchus selects Pentheus’ mother and aunts (i.e. Agave, Ino, Autonoe) as executioners. Euripides motivates this detail by making Semele’s sisters (i.e. the same trio) responsible for the calumny that Zeus/ Jupiter was not her lover, for which Dionysus/ Bacchus exacts revenge via the unwitting kin murder (Bacch. 26–31). Ovid’s redeployment of the calumny as a ‘suspicion’ voiced by Juno (in disguise) to lure Semele to her doom (3.279–86) and his attribution to Ino of a secret role in the upbringing of the infant god (3.313–14) would seem to weigh against assuming that he is implicitly following the Euripidean version on this matter.

714–15 ille aper … aper. Agave in her delusional condition misrecognizes her son, in effect ‘transforming’ him into a boar, and thereby making him a legitimate target for violence. It was entirely appropriate — indeed, it was regarded as a manifestation of divine inspiration — for Maenads to tear to pieces any wild animals they came across during ritual bouts of Bacchic frenzy. This becomes a popular theme in art: perhaps most famously, the Derveni Krater (4th century BCE) includes an image of Maenads tearing apart a deer. In Euripides Bacchae, Agave likens the maenads to hunting dogs and hunters (Bacch. 1189–90, 1202–04).

Although not an ‘actual’ metamorphosis in the fictional universe of Ovid’s epic, Agave’s ‘delusional transformation’ of Pentheus into a boar is only too ‘real’ in its consequences. Indeed, a few verses down Pentheus will respond to this perceptual metamorphosis by invoking the case of Actaeon, thereby comparing the Bacchants (turning them into) the hounds that tore apart their master. The Pentheus frame narrative thus crosses ontological lines via delusion and hallucination: both perpetrators and victim reduce each other to a sub-human level in their discourse and imagination.

The connections to the Actaeon episode are subtly reinforced by Agave’s use of errat of the boar/ Pentheus: the creature has unwittingly wandered into the ritual space (nostris … agris). Very much like Actaeon, who stumbled across Diana and her nymphs in the nude and paid for it with a canine sparagmos, the ‘boar’ is in the wrong place at the wrong time. As we already had occasion to note, Ovid insists at the outset of the tale that Actaeon did not mean to commit a crime: quod enim scelus error habebat? (‘what crime was there in a mistake?’, 3.142) And he reinforces the point later on in the narrative: ecce nepos Cadmi dilata parte laborum | per nemus ignotum non certis passibus errans | pervenit in lucum: sic illum fata ferebant (‘lo! Cadmus’ grandson, his day’s toil deferred, comes wandering through the unfamiliar woods with unsure footsteps, and enters Diana’s grove; for so fate guided him …’, 3.174–76).

From the point of view of word order, these one-and-a-half verses ingeniously convey the deranged condition of Agave’s mind. Note (i) the migration of the attribute maximus into the relative clause; (ii) the repetition of ille aper and shift in stress from aper (714) to apér (715); (iii) the postpositive location of the relative pronoun qui; (iv) the hyperbaton in nostris … agris; (v) the *ellipse of est. Rejigged in standard prose, the sentence would read: ille maximus aper, qui in agris nostris errat, mihi feriendus est. The effective use of *anaphora in the initial position of successive verses (see 710–13 n.) continues here with ille. The repetition of aper also helps to underscore the deviation from Euripides’ account, in which Agave and her companions mistake Pentheus for a lion (additional variations are found in later Roman poets, with Valerius Flaccus opting for a bull at Arg. 3.264–66, and Martial a calf at Ep. 11.84.11).

maximus is a so-called superlative ‘of eminence’ (AG §291b), with no implication of a distinct comparison: ‘this very great boar’. The gerundive feriendus is part of a passive periphrastic structure with est suppressed (as noted earlier), and mihi a dative of agent.

715–18 ruit … fatentem. On the motif of many versus one, see 513–14 n. Deranged, murderous crowds are standard fare in mythic Thebes — indeed they are part and parcel of the city’s very foundation, in the form of the mutual slaughter of the Spartoi (described earlier at 3.122–23 exemploque pari furit omnis turba, suoque | Marte cadunt subiti per mutua vulnera fratres, ‘The same dire madness raged in them all, and in mutual strife by mutual wounds these brothers of an hour perished’).

Notice how the word order mirrors the action in 715–16: omnis … turba furens encircles in unum, an effect reinforced by the two attributes of turba (omnis, furens). The pattern of *anaphora at the beginning of successive verses (710–13 n.) continues with iam in 717 and 718, reinforced by a pair of additional mid-verse repetitions. The relentless, ‘hammering’ effect of the sequence iam trepidum, … iam … loquentem | iam … damnantem, … iam fatentem generates a sense of panic as it builds to a *climax. Adding to the effect is the repetition of trepidum, which contrasts pointedly with Pentheus’ earlier scorn.

The -que after trepidum links coeunt and sequuntur; the accusative object of the second verb is an implied eum or Penthea with which trepidum agrees in predicative position: ‘they follow him alarmed as he is now’. The implication of sequuntur is, of course, that the panicked Pentheus has taken to flight. The accusatives trepidum, loquentem, damnantem, and fatentem all stand in apposition to the implied eum just mentioned. All are linked by the *anaphora of iam, but Ovid varies the construction: first the lone adjective trepidum (picking up on the trepidum of the previous line if the text is sound), then two participles (loquentem, damnantem) with accusative objects (verba minus violenta, se), and finally a participle (fatentem) that governs an indirect statement (se peccasse) — all in another breathless asyndetic sequence. The three participial phrases brilliantly capture the progression in Pentheus’ change of sentiment, culminating in a moment of ‘recognition’ (or to use Aristotle’s term: anagnorisis). After his belligerent rejection of the new god and his rites, Pentheus at the moment of his demise acquires (and articulates) insight into his fatal blindness: cognita res (511)... Too late!

719–20 saucius … umbrae. Whereas the first explicit plea of Euripides’ Pentheus is addressed to his mother (Bacch. 1120–21, quoted below), here he demonstrates superior ‘mythographic competence’ by making his initial appeal to his aunt Autonoe, mother of Actaeon. This prima facie counterintuitive shift from his mother, who is leading the attack, enables Ovid to link the fate Pentheus is about to experience (gruesome dismemberment) to the fate of his cousin Actaeon, recounted earlier in Book 3: he was torn limb from limb by his own hounds after his transformation into a stag. The invocation emphasizes repetition: in Thebes, such horrific events not only occur, they re-cur. Only, this time, out in the wilds beyond the city, it’s the big one, the king’s turn, ultimately one more mother’s son out of his league.

tamen should be understood with what precedes: although acknowledging his guilt, Pentheus nonetheless cries out for mercy. The vocatives matertera and Autonoe go together: Pentheus first specifies the kinship-relation, then adds the personal name of his addressee. moveant is a jussive subjunctive, taking umbrae (a ‘poetic’ plural), on which the genitive Actaeonis depends, as its subject and animos (supply tuos) as accusative object.

721–22 illa quis … raptu. The -que after dextram links nescit and abstulit. illa refers back to Autonoe; nescit introduces the indirect question quis Actaeon (with sit omitted): she is so crazed that she does not recognize the name of her own son. precantis (a present participle) is dependent on dextram and indicates that Pentheus is holding out his right hand in entreaty, a pathetic gesture that compounds the horror. The shocking verb abstulit, the effect of which is (again) enhanced by enjambment, implies an immediately prior act of dismemberment; after ripping it out of its socket, Autonoe carries off the imploring limb. The subject of lacerata est is altera (sc. manus), i.e. the left arm. The adjective Inoo (from the name-based adjective Inous, -a, -um) modifies raptu, an instrumental ablative: translate ‘by a wrenching heave from Ino’. The assonance lacerata altera evokes the mangling of Pentheus as his arm is torn from its socket.

723–25 non habet … ait. The climactic encounter with his mother unfolds over six gut-wrenching verses, beginning here with Pentheus, now armless, making a final, futile appeal to his mother. Actaeon likewise found his gesture of supplication thwarted by a want of limbs (3.241), as did Io (1.635–36). Notice also the similarity to the metamorphic experience of the Tyrrhenian sailor described earlier at 3.679–81 alter ad intortos cupiens dare bracchia funes | bracchia non habuit truncoque repandus in undas | corpore desiluit. He, too, lost his arms (and experienced the wish of using these appendages no longer there) and was reduced to a ‘trunk’ — though of course retaining his life.

The two main verbs are (non) habet and ait, linked by sed (724). bracchia is the accusative object of habet, as well as the antecedent of the relative pronoun quae, which, together with the subjunctive tendat, forms a relative clause of purpose (AG §531.2). Since no later than Virgil’s Dido episode, infelix is the stock epithet of a tragic protagonist turned victim.

The ablative absolute dereptis … membris refers back to the sundered arms, informing the somewhat odd trunca … vulnera (‘mutilated wounds’), a bold instance of transferred epithet involving an elided noun (trunca properly applies to corpora vel sim.), which serves as accusative object of ostendens. The participle presents its own conceptual difficulties: how exactly does the armless Pentheus gesticulate? His speech is, at any rate, short and to the point: ‘Look, mother!’ Euripides’ Pentheus makes a more fulsome plea to Agave: οἴκτιρε δ’ ὦ μῆτέρ με μηδὲ ταῖς ἐμαῖς | ἁμαρτίαισι παῖδα σὸν κατακτάνηις (‘Have mercy, mother, and do not slay your son on account of his faults’, Bacch. 1120–21).

725–28 visis … nostra est. Following Pentheus’ very brief appeal, the focus switches to Agave, with a sequence of four paratactic clauses linked by -que after colla, movit, and avulsum: ululavit (725) — iactavit (726) — movit (726) — clamat (728). The verbs focus very much on her — and none concerns her beheading of her son. Indeed, this act is elided: it has already happened when the reader gets to 727, where Agave is holding (conplexa) the torn-off head (avulsum caput) in her bloody fingers. This curious omission is certainly not due to squeamishness on Ovid’s part — see above 521–23 n. — and could be meant as an ingenious metageneric nod to tragic performance, in which the decapitation would occur off-stage, so that the audience would be witness only to the aftermath. Notice the shift from perfect (ululavit, iactavit, movit) to present (clamat) just as the narrative skips over the moment when Pentheus loses his head.

With visis supply vulneribus from what precedes, and construe as an ablative absolute. colla… iactavit is unsettlingly ambiguous: whose neck is in agitated movement here? It could be Agave’s neck as a manifestation of Bacchic frenzy (collum iactare = ‘toss one’s head about in ecstasy’); or the reference might be to her brandishing of Pentheus’ head (though colla as a synecdoche or metonymy would be a bit unusual). If the plural colla is not ‘poetic’, then both necks could be understood. The next phrase is similarly equivocal: movitque per aera crinem indicates that Agave makes hair stream or flutter (in the air). The ‘natural’ reading (but what is natural here?) is that Agave does this to her own hair — and Bacchants did go about with hair unbound, as we are informed just a few lines later in the next episode (crinales solvere vittas, 4.6). But we are also free to imagine that, in brandishing her son’s head, she makes his hair flutter in the air. The punchline that reinforces the ambiguity as an anticipation of the climax comes in the following verse: Pentheus’ head is off (avulsum caput).

The exclamation io (Greek ἰώ) is used in various contexts in Latin. Fundamentally, it is a call to attract attention (so used earlier by Narcissus at 3.442 io silvae!, and later by Athamas at 4.513 io, comites, his retia tendite silvis!). Its specific use to express jubilation, as here, is seen in the quintessential Roman cry io triumphe (Hor. Carm. 4.2.49). victoria nostra is predicative complement to opus hoc: ‘this deed is our victory’. Agave’s exultant declaration is an aggravation, very much in the Euripidean manner, of the catastrophe.

729–31 non citius … nefandis. Ovid sums up the sparagmos of Pentheus with a simile likening the dispersal of leaves from a wind-blown tree in autumn to the disintegration of his body. The simile harks back to Tiresias’ prophecy at the beginning of the set text that Pentheus would be scattered into a thousand pieces (521–23 and n.). Regarding the startling ease with which the women achieve the dismemberment, it is worth noting that Euripides describes a more strenuous act (Bacch. 1125–27) and offers an explanation absent from Ovid’s account: Agave rips off one of her sons limbs ‘not by her own strength, but the god gave facility to her hands’ (οὐχ ὑπὸ σθένους | ἀλλ’ ὁ θεὸς εὐμάρειαν ἐπεδίδου χεροῖν, Bacch. 1127–28).

The simile is structured around (non) citius and quam, introducing, respectively, its ‘vehicle’ and ‘tenor’. The subject of the initial clause is the long-delayed ventus; the verb is rapit. It takes as accusative object frondes, which is modified by two participles (linked by the -que after iam): tactas (with autumni frigore an ablative of agency without a/ ab) and (male) haerentes, with the latter expressing the consequences of the former (the sense of male is ‘barely’). alta … arbore is ablative of separation — prose usage would require ab or ex. The topsy-turvy word order of the second clause evokes the disorderly multitude of hands grabbing and ripping off Pentheus’ body parts. The clause is formulated in the passive voice, with membra the subject, viri (referring to Pentheus) genitive of possession, and manibus nefandis ablative of agent. Notice that the attribute nefandus (literally ‘unspeakable’, hence ‘blasphemous’) signals a switch from Pentheus committing a religious outrage to the unwitting women doing so. In tragic Thebes, everyone gets stained, the audience/reader, too.

Additional Information: Many readers and critics have found fault with this simile, and in particular the stark disjunction, both in terms of ease and number, arising from the equation of the scattering of autumn leaves and the dismembering and dispersal of the parts of a single human body. Whatever its merits, the peculiarity of the simile is enhanced by the fact that Ovid has deployed a ‘vehicle’ belonging to an established tradition of anthropological reflection via similes that reaches back to Homeric epic (Il. 6.144–49, generations of men likened to leaves) and includes lyric poetry (Mimnermus fragment 2 West). (If ‘Autumn Leaves’ makes you think of the unforgettable song of romantic regret, take note that its original, the Jacques Prévert poem ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’, was written in 1945, when fighting to forget could only bring back a worldscape of tragic carnage.) Ovid’s most immediate model is Virg. Aen. 6.305–14 huc [ad cumbam] omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat | matres atque viri, defunctaque corpora vita | maganimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae, | impositisque rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum; | quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo | lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto | quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus | trans pontum fugat, et terris inmittit apricis (‘Hither rushed all the throng, streaming to the banks; mothers and men and bodies of high-souled heroes, their life now done, boys and unwedded girls, and sons placed on the pyre before their fathers’ eyes; thick as the leaves of the forest that at autumn’s first frost drop and fall, and thick as the birds that from the seething deep flock shoreward, when the chill of the year drives them overseas and sends them into sunny lands’). In comparison with the countless multitudes forming the ‘tenor’ of his predecessors’ similes, Ovid’s application of the image of numberless leaves to one man’s sparagmos is indeed bizarre — just how many body parts can be generated by even the most conscientious dismemberment? But the rift between human horror show and vindication of divine power is the stake of the myth: the points of view (awful <=> aweful) can’t be reconciled, there is in the end only submission. So, now he’s made us retch, the poet-priest-hymnodist is here finally to tell us wretches that we’ve been watching, and acting out, ‘the natural order’ all along. That, however much gentle commentators would like to go easy on you and spare you, bleak ‘winter’ is where the Ovid set-text ‘leaves’ us. What it turns out, hereabouts, to be like. In Thebes and ...

732–33 talibus … aras. The subject of all three clauses, which form a *tricolon, is Ismenides, ‘the daughters of Ismenus’, a poeticism for ‘the Theban women’ (Ismenus being a river in the vicinity of Thebes). monitae, which modifies Ismenides, takes talibus exemplis (referring, in ‘poetic’ plural, to Pentheus’ gruesome demise) as ablative of means. The three main verbs frequentant — dant — colunt are linked by -que after tura and after sanctas). The sense of tura dant is ‘offer incense’; this forms a *hendiadys with sanctas… colunt aras: i.e. the women offer incense on the sacred altars.

In the Bacchae, Euripides has Agave return to Thebes proudly bearing Pentheus’ severed head, calling for him so that he might nail her trophy — his own head — to the palace doors. Ovid does not attempt to replicate this culminating stroke of tragic irony. He proceeds instead to a moralizing ending which in truth is weird, given that Pentheus was said to be the only one who had not yet joined in the Bacchic revels (513 ex omnibus unus with n.). Put differently, the other inhabitants should not really need his ghastly exemplum to worship the divinity: they were said to do so joyfully and voluntarily at the outset. But these closing verses serve to set up the opening of Book 4 (rather than conclude Book 3), where the story of reckless defiance continues …