Jackie MURRAY Ovid's Erysichthon: Callimachus and Apollonius

It has long been observed that the story of Erysichthon in Met. 8.738-878 is not an Ovidian invention; many of its elements are as early as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Hollis, 1970,129; Mackay, 1962, 8 ff.). Callimachus' Erysichthon story (h.6.17-133), the first version to introduce tree-violation as Erysichthon's crime (Mackay, 1962, 15-19), is usually identified as Ovid's primary model (Hollis, 1970,129). There are, however, significant divergences between the Ovidian and the Callimachean stories; those of interest here are: (1) the tone; (2) the narrative focus; (3) the presentation of the crime; (4) the source of the punishment; and (5) the species of tree involved. Several of these divergences have been attributed to Ovidian innovation or reliance on sources now lost (Hollis, 1970, 130-132). These conclusions, however, overlook a surviving tree-violation story that was available to Ovid: Apollonius Rhodius presents a tree-violation story in Book 2 of the Argonautica (Arg. 2. 468-89), which accounts for all of these divergences. By providing a comparison highlighting the verbal and thematic allusions between the Callimachean and the Apollonian tree-violation stories, this paper shows the indebtedness of the Apollonian story to the Callimachean (M.P. Cuypers, Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica Book II: A Commentary [forthcoming] introductory remarks on 2. 455-490; Vian, 1974, 270-271), and in light of this indebtedness, treats the Apollonian story as a response to the Callimachean that problematizes the central issue in both: divine justice. The connections between the Apollonian and the Ovidian tree-violation stories reveal that Ovid has fused of both his Hellenistic sources, and that this fusion joins the conversation between Callimachus and Apollonius about divine justice, adding yet another perspective.