Inscribing Orpheus: Ovid and the Invention of a Greco-Roman Corpus

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Orpheus episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses as a site that investigates the widespread Augustan ambition of constructing a synthetic literary corpus encompassing both Archaic Greece and contemporary Rome. The tale's ongoing manipulations of form (Orpheus's bodily form, generic form, narrative form) expose the paradoxes riddling this emerging—and enduring—notion of an organic Greco-Romanism.