Ovidio, Virgilio e i Troiani nel Lazio

In this paper we follow Ovid’s treatment of the second half of the Aeneid in Met. 14, 445-608. The first account of the war in Latium (14, 449-451) juxtaposes echoes of the prophecy of Jupiter in Aen. 1 with echoes of antagonistic voices from the Aeneid, in a sort of parody of the fragmentation of points of view characteristic of Virgil’s poem. At 452-453 Ovid reproduces Virgil’s ‘mistakes’ in his announcement of the war in Aen. 7, 441-44. At 566-572 the war in Latium is presented by Ovid as a war between specular formations with a specular motivation, namely the search for victory per se; a ‘Mezentian’ attitude towards the gods characterizes them both. In occasion of the apotheosis of Aeneas, Ovid ironically multiplies the reconciliations of Juno (581-582; 592-593), as a comment on the plurality of Juno’s reconciliations in the Aeneid and the epic tradition. In contrast with the remarkable memory of Mars in the later scene of the apotheosis of Romulus, both Venus and Juno are here presented as completely forgetful of Jupiter’s promises of immortality for Aeneas in the Aeneid. On the other hand, Venus all too well remembers the ‘awkward’ words of the Sibyl in Aen. 6, 133-134, and ‘corrects’ them at 14, 590-591.