Aeneid 12.391–2: Iamque Aderat Phoebo Ante Alios Dilectus Iapyx/Iasides

While Venus prophecy appears completely optimistic, that of Celaeno sounds relentlessly pessimistic as she concocts a causal link between the killing of her cattle and Aeneas subsequent hunger in Italy. Ovids source(s) cannot be identified2 and the simile applied to Pyramus death agonies ruptures the sentimental tone of the narrative (4.1214).3 In classical Greek literature, Pyramus is the name of a Cilician river mentioned by geographical writers and historians in geographical contexts,4 while Thisbe is the name of a famous Boeotian city5 and an obscure Cilician spring.6 Late antique Greek mythographers give these names to human figures, young lovers who die tragically and are metamorphosed into the Cilician river and spring.7 No extant Latin versions of the tale are earlier than Ovid, and all later Latin accounts are clearly derived from Met. 4.55166.8 Scholars have suggested that Ovid found the tale in a Hellenistic collection of Babyloniaka,9 but, given the state of our evidence, that must remain speculative. The second difficulty critics have had with the episode is different in kind from the first, and is related to scholarly discomfort with Ovids general tendency to shift tone in mid-narrative.10 * I am grateful to Niklas Holzberg, Jim OHara, Stephen Rupp, and the anonymous referee of CQ for their helpful suggestions. 1 See P. Perdrizet, Lgendes babyloniennes dans les Mtamorphoses dOvide, RHR 105 (1932), 2212; C. Martindale (ed.), Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1988), index s.v. Pyramus and Thisbe. 2 On the sources, see Perdrizet (n. 1), 193ff.; T. T. Duke, Ovids Pyramus and Thisbe, CJ 66 (1971), 3207; F. Bmer, P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen: Kommentar, Buch IVV (Heidelberg, 1976), 336; P. E. Knox, Pyramus and Thisbe in Cyprus, HSCPh 92 (1989), 31528.