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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2018
The identification of the quarrel between Cupid and Apollo at Met. 1. 452–73 as a Callimachean recusatio has become a noted feature of scholarly discussion on this passage. Cupid and Apollo's encounter stands as a favoured starting point for the ongoing analysis of generic interplay within Ovid's sprawling work; this is hardly surprising, given its consideration as a programmatic, exemplary triumph of elegy over epic. Although genre studies on the Metamorphoses have represented an enduring presence in Ovidian discourse since Heinze's pioneering work, genre's evolution into what some deem a pet scholarly obsession within studies of the poet has garnered both admiration and revilement. Given the multiplicity of discussions prominently featuring this very episode, it would not seem unfair to deem any addition superfluous. However, adding to the surfeit of analyses is exactly my intention here, with the view that there are yet a few elements that have gone unremarked or underexplored, and that such elements can illuminate further the complex interplay between epic and elegy here on display. Namely, I will suggest that the dynamic created by the difference in accounts of the Python's slaying (Ov. Met. 1.441–4 versus 1.456–60) has not been appreciated fully for its role in the debasement of epic poetry that leads into and consequently informs the programmatic myth sequence of Apollo and Daphne, and that this dynamic finds an overarching explanation by supplying reference to a passage from Nicander's Theriaca. Using Nicander as a literary source, coupled with recognition of both the fictive touches and the weighted literary critical language that Apollo retrospectively applies to his deed, allows us to reinterpret this passage and provides a further example of Ovid's careful strategies of narrative and tone.
1 Most critically for this vast topic, see Nicoll, W. S. M., ‘Cupid, Apollo and Daphne (Ovid, Met. 1. 452ff.)’, CQ 30 (1980), 174–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, in following, Morgan, L., ‘Child's Play: Ovid and His Critics’, JRS 93 (2003), 74Google Scholar; Knox, P. E., Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Traditions of Augustan Poetry, PCPhS suppl. 11 (Cambridge, 1986), 14–18Google Scholar; Myers, K. S., Ovid's Causes. Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses (Ann Arbor, MI, 1994), 62–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barchiesi, A., ‘Venus’ Masterplot: Ovid and the Homeric Hymns’, in Hardie, P. R., Barchiesi, A., and Hinds, S. E. (eds.), Ovidian Transformations. Essays on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Its Reception, PCPhS suppl. 23 (Cambridge, 1999), 112–26Google Scholar; Hardie, P. R., Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002), 45–50Google Scholar; Armstrong, R., ‘Retiring Apollo: Ovid on the Politics and Poetics of Self-Sufficiency’, CQ 54.2 (2004), 528–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, J., Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets (Cambridge, 2009), 338–49Google Scholar. For the programmatic nature of the episode, see Holzberg, N., ‘Apollos erste Liebe und die Folgen: Ovids Daphne-Erzählung als Programm für Werk und Wirkung’, Gymnasium 106 (1999), 317–26Google Scholar; his discussion of genre is on pp. 323–4 and synthesizes nicely the crossing of epic and elegy in the Metamorphoses.
2 Genre studies also experienced resurgence after Hinds's reappraisal of Heinze, R., Ovids elegische Erzählung, Berichte der Sächsischen Akademie zu Leipzig, Philologisch-historiche Klasse 71.7 (Leipzig, 1919)Google Scholar in Hinds, S. E., The Metamorphosis of Persephone. Ovid and the Self-Conscious Muse (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; for Hinds's review of the literature, see pp. 99–114. Farrell, J., ‘Dialogue of Genres in Ovid's “Lovesong of Polyphemus” (Metamorphoses 13.719–897)’, AJPh 113.2 (1992), 235–40Google Scholar, provides a good introductory discussion and bibliographic review. See also Myers, K. S., ‘The Metamorphosis of a Poet: Recent Work on Ovid’, JRS 89 (1999), 191–4Google Scholar, for an overview of Ovidian scholarship trends; Keith, A., ‘Sources and Genres in Ovid's Metamorphoses 1–5’, in Boyd, B. W. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Ovid (Leiden, 2002), 235–69Google Scholar, on genres and sources for the first third of the poem; Harrison, S. J., ‘Ovid and Genre: Evolutions of an Elegist’, in Hardie, P. R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge, 2002), 79–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Ovidian ‘supergenre’; and Farrell, J., ‘Ovid's Generic Transformations’, in Knox, P. E. (ed.), A Companion to Ovid (Chichester and Malden, MA, 2009), 370–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 See W. S. Anderson's review of Hinds (n. 2) in Gnomon 61 (1989), 356–8, who calls the question of genre's constraints and mechanisms an ‘artificial problem’.
4 Syed, Y., ‘Ovid's Use of the Hymnic Genre in the Metamorphoses’, in Barchiesi, A., Rüpke, J., and Stephens, S. (eds.), Rituals in Ink. A Conference on Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome (Munich, 2004), 100–2Google Scholar, provides a clear summary of the relevant poetic mechanisms at hand, with the additional point of Apollo's appropriateness as a participant given his presence in the majority of the Callimachean-style recusatione in Augustan poetry, stemming naturally from his role in Aetia 1.
5 Text is from Tarrant's OCT; unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine, and are meant to be loose rather than rigidly literal.
6 For discussion of the two passages see Morgan (n. 1), 75–6. Miller (n. 1), 156–7, reads the speech of the Virgilian Apollo to Ascanius at Aen. 9.953–6 as a god possibly remembering his own first martial exploit, which further connects the two passages. For his remarks on the passage's relevance to Ovid, see Miller (n. 1), 342.
7 See also Hardie, P. R., Virgil. Aeneid. Book IX (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar, ad 654–5.
8 Ziogas, I., ‘The Permanence of Cupid's Metamorphosis in the Aeneid’, Trends in Classics 2 (2010), 168–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Barchiesi, A., Ovidio. Metamorfosi. Vol. I, Libri I–II (traduzione di L. Koch) (Rome and Milan, 2005)Google Scholar ad 459 notes Nicander as a potential source to account for the description of Python as pestifero…uentre: ‘la descrizione, come non di rado per immagini di serpenti nella poesia latina, richiama Nicandro, Theriaca 296’. Even though the Nicandrian description that I argue Ovid is alluding to is of a viper, as opposed to specifically about a/the python, this need not be a rate-limiting factor in determining potential source material or poetic inspiration; likewise, the snake described at 296 that Barchiesi references is the haemorrhoos. However, Nicander has also been identified as a possible source of inspiration for some of the connective textual material between the death of the Python and the beginning of the Apollo and Daphne narrative: Hollis, A. S., ‘Ovid, Metamorphoses 1,455ff: Apollo, Daphne, and the Pythian Crown’, ZPE 112 (1996), 69–73Google Scholar, references the lines of the Alexipharmaca descriptive of laurel (198–200) and its mention of one variety as the first plant to garland the Delphian locks of Apollo as potentially inspirational for Met. 1.450–1, nondum laurus erat, longoque decentia crine / tempora cingebat de qualibet arbore Phoebus (‘not yet was there the laurel, and Phoebus used to garland his temples, flowing with long locks, from whichever tree pleased’). The overlap of material with another Nicandrian work further strengthens cause to be thinking of this specific Hellenistic poet at this juncture of Ovid's epic.
10 Text and translation from Gow, A. S. F. and Scholfield, A. F., Nicander. The Poems and Poetical Fragments (Cambridge, 1953)Google Scholar. For other passages citing this relationship, see the sources collected by Overduin, F., Nicander of Colophon's Theriaca. A Literary Commentary (Leiden, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc., with the addition of Lucr. DRN 6.756–66.
11 See also n. 9 above for the supposition of Nicandrian knowledge applied descriptively to the Python.
12 Hollis, A. S., ‘Aemilius Macer, Alexipharmica?’, CR 23.1 (1973), 11Google Scholar.
13 For the poetic effects of this learned variation, see Overduin (n. 10), ad 142.
14 See Overduin (n. 10), ad 144, quoting Karanika, A., ‘Medicine and Cure in Posidippus’ Iamatika’, in Harder, M. A., Regtuit, R. F., and Wakker, G. C. (eds.), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry (Leuven, 2009), 44Google Scholar, and Overduin (n. 10), 96; Sistakou, E., The Aesthetics of Darkness. A Study of Hellenistic Romanticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander, Hellenistica Groningana 17 (Leuven, 2012), 209Google Scholar.
15 Nethercut, W. R., ‘Daphne and Apollo: A Dynamic Encounter’, CJ 47.4 (1979), 339Google Scholar, illustrates this move as ‘usurp[ing] Phoebus’ position of eminence’. His analysis also looks at the difference between the narrator's account of events versus those presented by the figures involved, but on the completely different basis of metricality and the use of heterodynes and homodynes: see esp. pp. 337–8.
16 For the background to the myth of Python and its collected sources, see Ogden, D., Drakon. Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford, 2013), 40–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. esp. Callim. Hymn 4. 90–4, whose use of περιστέφει (93) to describe the Python's nine coils enwreathing the mountain may lurk imaginatively (beyond the evidence of Aet. fr. 89 Pf., describing Apollo's crowning with Tempean laurel after the Python's death) in the background of Ovid's transition to speaking of what foliage Apollo was accustomed to garlanding himself with after his institution of the Pythian games to commemorate his deed (nondum laurus erat, longoque decentia crine / tempora cingebat de qualibet arbore Phoebus, Ov. Met. 1.450–1). It might be contextually relevant to note Callimachus’ use of θήρ (‘beast, monster’) twice to further qualify descriptions of the Python. In the Hymn to Delos, it is first a ὄφις μέγας (‘giant snake’, 91), and then a θηρίον αἰνογένειον (‘beast with dreadful jaws’, 92), while, in the Hymn to Apollo, it is a δαιμόνιος θήρ / αἰνὸς ὄφις (‘miraculous beast / a dread snake’, 100–1). Both descriptions have the adjective αἰνός in common, which stands as the Greek equivalent of Ovid's terror (1. 440). Overduin (n. 10), notes the indebtedness of Ther. 141 and 143 to Callimachus, which gives further weight to Ovid combining influences and reading the Python as a Nicandrian θήρ. On the poem's title and the sense of θήρ, see also Sistakou (n. 14), 211.
17 On Apollo's characterization in the Metamorphoses, see Fulkerson, L., ‘Apollo, Paenitentia, and Ovid's “Metamorphoses”’, Mnemosyne 59.3 (2006), 388–402Google Scholar, and the collected bibliography there.
18 Also a tale briefly narrated by Nicander at Ther. 902–6, and cross-referenced at Nic. Georg. fr.74. 31–32 G-S, on which see Sistakou (n. 14), 205, and Overduin (n. 10), ad loc.
19 On the similarities between Apollo's slaying of the Python and Coronis, see Miller (n. 1), 352–3.
20 Myers (n. 1), 44.
21 See the commentaries of Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso Metamorphosen. Kommentar (Heidelberg, 1969–86)Google Scholar, and Barchiesi (n. 9), ad loc.
22 See Overduin (n. 10), 29–30.
23 On which in the context of the Theriaca, see Overduin (n. 10), 36–44, whose introductory discussion of didactic shaped my overall thinking on these features in the Ovidian passage.
24 Ogden (n. 16), 151 n. 17. The literary tradition for seeing verbal wordplay in the Python episode probably goes back to its first named appearance, where Simonides plays upon Apollo's well-known epithet (Ἕκατος, ‘the far-shooting’) with the number of arrows used to kill the Python (ἑκατόν, ‘one hundred’): see ibid., 43. Likewise, Miller (n. 1), 340, notes the play on Apollo and ἀπόλλυμι (‘to kill, destroy utterly’) with Ovid's perdidit (‘to ruin, destroy completely’). This feature is also observed in the Virgilian episode which provided further inspiration for Ovid's narrated account of the Python's death, where Ascanius’ becoming Iulus is etymologically connected to iobolos; his killing of Numanus with an arrow can indicate a possible reading of tum primum…celerem intendisse sagittam / dicitur…Ascanius (9.590–2) as describing that Ascanius was at that time first called ‘the one who shot the quick arrow’, or, in short, ‘the bow-shooter’ (iobolos/Iulus); see Nelsestuen, G. A., ‘Numanus Remulus, Ascanius, and Cato's Origines: The Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Aeneid 9’, Vergilius 62 (2016), 84–5Google Scholar n. 19, following Hara, J. O’, True Names. Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor, MI, 1996), 220–1Google Scholar. The names or epithets of Apollo and Ascanius are therefore both sites of etymological wordplay; it is possible that Ovid is inspired to reverse this direction of interest to the Python himself, making his name (not Apollo's) the locus of learned wordplay. Genovese, E. N., ‘Serpent Leitmotif in the Metamorphoses’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History III (Leuven, 1983), 152Google Scholar and n. 29, notes the overarching symbolism of snakes in the Metamorphoses, especially bracketed by the Python and Aesculapius, but also mentions the possibility of seeing Pythagoras’ name as ‘Python-speaker’ (especially in verbalizing rite deum Delphosque meos ipsumque recludam, ‘accordingly, I will disclose my own Delphi and the god himself’, 15.144), in the context of seeing his speech as a poetic reprisal of Ovid's opening of creations in Book 1. Such etymological play further deepens an appropriate focus on Python's name as it first appears.
25 See Overduin (n. 10), ad loc. and p. 84.
26 The injunction for the incognita serpens to learn also represents a witticism upon the Delphic maxim Γνῶθι σαυτόν (‘know thyself’), appropriate here for the connection of the Python to the seat of the Delphian oracle.
27 On the textual crux at 121, Stephens, S., Callimachus. The Hymns (Oxford, 2015)Google Scholar, ad loc., notes that the missing word should be a verb, and suggests ἔπαισας ‘did you sport’. This idea of sporting/playing like a child would further link it to the context of Apollo's first exploit.
28 See Bömer (n. 21), ad 441: ‘Der Bogen Apollos ist also nicht die Jagdwaffe’.
29 Elsewhere in the Ovidian corpus capreae are juxtaposed with ferae: when asking Flora about her festivities, the final inquiry of the poet is cur tibi pro Libycis clauduntur rete leaenis / inbelles capreae sollicitusque lepus? (‘why instead of Libyan lionesses are unwarlike roe deer and trembling hares enclosed in your nets?’, Ov. Fas. 5.371–2), to which the goddess responds that the places where beasts roam lie outside the purview of her protection: non sibi respondit siluas cessisse, sed hortos / aruaque pugnaci non adeunda ferae (‘she answered that woods did not fall to her care, but gardens and fields not under the visitation of warlike beasts’, Fas. 5.373–4). Here, capreae and ferae stand as mutually exclusive designations. Virgil also attests to the ‘unwarlike’ nature of deer, which is dangerously unsettled by love, with quid quae imbelles dant proelia cerui? (‘what about the battles fought by unwarlike stags?’, Verg. G. 3.265); in later Latin poets, one also finds inbelles…dammas (‘unwarlike red deer’) at Stat. Ach. 2.121 and inbelles dammae twice in Martial, at 4.74.1 and 13.94.2. Isidore quotes Martial while noting of the deer that it is timidum animal et inbelle (‘an animal timid and unwarlike’), and etymologizes dammula from de manu (dammula vocata, quod de manu effugiat, ‘called a dammula because it flees from one's hand’), Isid. Etym. 12.22; Achilles further charges Menelaus with having the ‘heart of a deer’ (κραδίην δ᾽ ἐλάφοιο, Hom. Il. 1.225), an indication of cowardice. Collectively, then, the deer that Apollo hunts are decidedly not epic prey. However, perhaps the best argument for seeing a strict division in the narrative accounts of the poet of the Metamorphoses and of Apollo on this point is in Apuleius: die quadam uenatum Tlepolemus assumpto Thrasyllo petebat indagaturus feras, quod tamen in capreis feritatis est; nec enim Charite maritum suum quaerere patiebatur bestias armaras dente uel cornu (‘on a certain day Tlepolemus with Thrasyllus in tow went out for the purpose of hunting, seeking to hunt down wild beasts, so far as to say if there is anything of the beast in roe deer, for Charite was unenduring of her husband tracking down beasts armed with either fang or horn’, Apul. Met. 8.4.1–4). Inevitably, when the pair do encounter a proper fera, a boar, it is introduced first by saying what it is not: nec ulla caprea / nec pauens dammula nec prae ceteris feris mitior / cerua (‘not any wild goat, nor tremulous little deer nor a doe, more gentle than the rest of beasts’, 8.4.12–14). If Apuleius is alluding to the prey of the Ovidian Apollo here, as the combination of caprea and dammula would indicate, it reveals his recognition that the quarry of Apollo is not one of a true, epic-style hunter, but rather harmless, and implies that the god is learning to master his bow in a lighter, more humorous fashion.
30 See Overduin (n. 10), ad 141–4: ‘These lines…seem to describe an enduring state of hostility between the two, not based on individual encounters, but almost presented as a historical enmity of two peoples at war.’
31 The Python's designation as such additionally strengthens the ties between the Cupid–Apollo altercation and the Ascanius–Apollo episode of Aeneid 9, as Numanus Remulus, the first enemy to fall to Ascanius, is described as tumidus (Aen. 9.596); see Ziogas (n. 8) 169–71, for further discussion. See also Prop. 4.6.35–6 for its epic tone in accounting Apollo's slaying of the Python, with the discussion of Miller (n. 1), 340–1.
32 See esp. Quint. Inst. 10.2.16, 12.10.12, 17, 73, and 80. For the type of ‘literary madness’ exhibited by Ovid's Apollo as found in Statius, see Leigh, M., ‘Statius and the Sublimity of Capaneus’, in Clarke, M. J., Currie, B. G. F., and Lyne, R. O. A. M. (eds.), Epic Interactions. Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the Epic Tradition Presented to Jasper Griffin by His Former Students (Oxford, 2006), 236–9Google Scholar, esp. 237 and n. 91. For literary bombast and its failure to reach the sublime, see Longinus Subl. 3 and the notes of Russell, D. A., Longinus. On Sublimity (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar, ad loc. For similar instances to the ‘tumidity of arrogance’ exhibited by the tumida…ira of Apollo at Met. 2.600 or Epaphus’ judgement of Phaethon as tumidus (Met. 1.747), see Leigh, M., Lucan. Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford, 1997), 273Google Scholar n. 102.
33 See also the similarly inclined passage of Plin. Ep. 7.12.4, including the phrase ut tumidius uideretur (‘as it might seem too pompous’).
34 See OLD, s.v. tumidus 3; examples in Verg. Aen. 1.142, 3.156, 3.356, 5.819, 8.671.
35 E.g. Prop. 3.9.35–6: non ego uelifera tumidum mare findo carina: / tuta sub exiguo flumina nostra morast (‘I do not split the swollen sea in sail-bearing craft, but bob amongst safety in a paltry current’). See Ingleheart, J., ‘Ovid, Tristia 1.2: High Drama on the High Seas’, G&R 53.1 (2006), 87–8Google Scholar and nn. 46 and 47, for Ovid's use of tumidus at Trist. 1.2.24 and the reference to epic summoned by tumidus. For arma as an epic tag, see Barchiesi, A., The Poet and the Prince. Ovid and Augustan Discourse (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London, 1997), 16Google Scholar f.; Conte, G. B., Genres and Readers, trans. Most, G. (Baltimore, MD, and London, 1994), 108Google Scholar f. Despite its evolution into an epic tag, tumidus is also applied to tragedy: see Gell. NA 2.23.21, Euan. de fabula 3.5, and Hor. Ars P. 93–8 with the gloss of ps.-Acro's note on ampullas with Brink, C. O., Horace on Poetry. The Ars Poetica (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar, ad loc. The Telchines, the croaking literary rivals of Callimachus, are sea-dwellers (Diod. 5.55.1), the same environment that Callimachus assigns to tragedians (Iamb 2.12–31), who speak with the voice of sea creatures; for discussion see Poliakoff, M., ‘Nectar, Springs, and the Sea: Critical Terminology in Pindar and Callimachus’, ZPE 39 (1980), 44Google Scholar; Bing, P., ‘The Voice of Those Who Live in the Sea: Empedocles and Callimachus’, ZPE 41 (1981), 33–6Google Scholar, esp. n. 3. For tumor and tragedy see also Quint. Inst. 9.4.140.
36 The flood that precedes the birth of Python is, however, depicted as a sea (Met. 1.292, see also 1.355, 360–1), and Thessaly, the site of Ovid's Apollo–Daphne myth, was once an inland sea, before Tempe was made an outlet for its waters. For the creation of Tempe and the draining of the Thessalian ‘sea’, see Strab. 9.5.2, Herod. 7.129.3, Sen. Q Nat. 6.25.2. A scholion of Pindar (ad Pyth. 4.138a) reveals that Poseidon's role in the creation of Tempe is linked to specifically Thessalian cult epithets. Callimachus uses not the sea but a river in flood to convey a statement of literary polemics (Hymn 2.105–12), an illustration of literary intent that Ovid similarly employs with the narrative conceit of the flooding Achelous in Metamorphoses 8–9; it is possible that the Python, in its swollen state, conjures up this sense of literary polemic through connection not to a storm-swollen sea but to a river in flood. This may be the connective tissue between the Python and another tumidus snake of the Metamorphoses, the snake that Cadmus slays (corpus tumet omne uenenis, ‘all his body swells with venom’, Met. 3.33), which is discovered during a hunt for water. Ovid's depiction of the snake and the subsequent battle is highly reminiscent of the account of the Bagradas river serpent, a snake intimately connected with its river environment. Silius Italicus includes an embedded account of this serpent fight in Punica 6, which, as J. Soerink, ‘Statius, Silius Italicus, and the Snake Pit of Intertextuality’, in G. Manuwald and A. Voigt (eds.), Flavian Epic Interactions (Leiden, 2013), 363–5, has shown, is greatly indebted to the Ovidian episode of Metamorphoses 3. However, given the fact that Livy apparently handled this very subject in Book 18, it is possible that Silius is merely closing the intertextual loop, knowing Ovid's poetic use of the historical episode for his mythological construction of the snake of Mars. If Cadmus’ tumidus snake does in fact evoke the Libyan river serpent, then the idea of the tumidus snake and rivers in flood may be a shared imaginative resource for both Ovidian episodes, and mutually reinforce this idea. On the Bagradas serpent, see Ogden (n. 16), esp. 66–7: on the relationship between springs and serpents he notes that ‘there is…a tendency for the drakon to be itself fully identified with the spring’, pointing to Nicander's account of Lamia-Sybaris as the most extreme case, in which the snake, thrown off Mount Parnassus, becomes the very spring which holds her name (166). As such, we can from this angle consider a Nicandrian Python as tumidus because of connections with water sources.
37 Bömer (n. 21), ad loc. See also Ov. Met. 4.457–8; Tib. 1.3.73–4; Prop. 3.5.44; Verg. Aen. 6.595–7; also Lucr. DRN 3.988 ff. and Stat. Theb. 5.550. Horace's hymn to Apollo (4.6.2) mentions Tityos but not Python.
38 The pairing of an unnamed hostis and use of iugera may not be satisfactory evidence for all to conjure suggestively the presence of Tityos but, if we look to the poet of the Aetna, we may see him picking up on this hybridized description, coupled with Ovid's own use of the Tityos myth to illustrate the power of the poet (idem per spatium Tityon porreximus ingens, ‘we too stretched out Tityos along a massive expanse’, Am. 3.12.25). In talking about the poetic fallacy as he writes hi Tityon poena strauere in iugera foedum (‘these ones have stretched out Tityos over many acres in cruel punishment’, Aet. 80); the use of strauere could indicate an awareness of Apollo's attempt to allude to Tityos in his epicizing account in Met. 1.459–60. Beyond this, Servius’ commentary on Verg. Aen. 9.655 that links Ascanius’ exploit to the young Apollo conflates the mythology of the Python and Tityos, citing the Python's sexual offence against Leto, an act more often applied to the giant: nam ut Apollo puer occiso Pythone ultus est matris iniuriam (‘for when Apollo was a boy he avenged the offence against his mother by slaying the Python’). If we want to see subtle continuity between the account of the narrator and Apollo, with Apollo catapulting the foundational narrative into the realm of hyperbolic bombast in his recap, we can also look back to the notation of Apollo as arquitenens; we find Apollo as pius arquitenens at Aen. 3.75, on which Servius notes, qui ultus est matrem de Tityo, de Niobe, de Pythone (‘who avenged his mother in the case of Tityos, Niobe, and the Python’).
39 Ephor. 31b.2.535; Men. Rhet. 441sp.
40 Apollod. 1.4.1. Cf. also Hom. Od. 11.576 ff..; Ap. Rhod. Argon 1.60 ff; Quint. Smyrn. 3.390 ff.
41 See Verg. Aen. 6.595; Stat. Theb. 1.697; Hom. Od. 7.342 (also quoted at Strab. 9.3.14); Hom. Od. 11.756; Ap. Rhod. Argon. 1. 762–3.
42 As D. C. Innes, ‘Gigantomachy and Natural Philosophy’, CQ 29.1 (1979), 166, summarizes, ‘The Gigantomachy is…high epic, the most extreme example of the “thundering” style opposed to the slender style of Callimachus.’
43 As especially outlined by Nicoll (n. 1); see also Myers (n. 1), 61–2. There is a literary parallel to be found in Nicander for this correlation between works which would bring the poetic agendas and positioning of Nicander and Ovid further together: we have an extant fragment of Nicander's Ophiaca, a poem whose title suggests that it was about snakes, but focused on mythology and folklore, rather than didactic material. What further differentiates this work from the Theriaca is that it was composed in elegiacs. The fragment of secure attribution (fr. 31, G-S) describes how Apollo rid the glades of Clarus of snakes, spiders, and scorpions:
Nicander was known to be a priest of the Clarian sanctuary of Apollo, and connects himself overtly to Clarus in both the opening of the Alexipharmaka (9–11) and the sphragis of the Theriaca (957–958). What we can perceive in this elegiac fragment is a similar cross-referencing to his other poetic work, the Theriaca, which similarly rids the fear and danger of this same set of poisonous creatures through its didactic teachings. In other words, in the elegiac Ophiaca, Apollo plays the role that Nicander does in the hexameter Theriaca. It seems to me that this self-referential interplay of epic metre and elegy and the use of Apollo to reference or occupy a previous posturing by the poet common to both Nicander and Ovid deserves attention for further threads of connectivity. On Nicander and Clarus, see Overduin (n. 10), ad 957–8 and pp. 5–6. Ovid's Apollo also directly mentions Clarus in his self-hymn at Met. 1.516.
44 As Bömer (n. 21), ad 441, notes: ‘Der Bogen Apollos ist also nicht die Jagdwaffe – Artemis jagte mit dem Bogen’. The visual arts often illustrate the death of Tityos at the hand of both twins, as described at e.g. Paus. 3.18.15 and 10.11.1; for a poetic reference to such a tradition, see Nonn. Dion. 48.395.
45 Ziogas, I., Ovid and Hesiod. The Metamorphosis of the Catalogue of Women (Cambridge, 2013), 66–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 On which see Ogden (n. 16), 151–2; Ziogas (n. 45), 66, notes the anagrammatic possibilities between ‘PYTHOn’ and ‘TYPHOeus’.
47 For this reading, see Overduin (n. 10), ad loc.
48 And yet we can observe Nicander's use of μορφάς in the opening line of the Theriaca.