Ovid, Varro, and Castor of Rhodes: the chronological architecture of the Metamorphoses

Abstract

N his 1887 Gittingen dissertation Erich Bethe proved conclusively, through close comparison of nearly two hundred passages in Hyginus, Apollodorus, and the fourth book of Diodorus Siculus, that all three authors must have drawn, whether directly or indirectly, on the same non-extant source or group of sources for significant portions of their accounts of mythological prehistory.' Bethe himself believed that the source was a single, comprehensive handbook, and in this form his thesis has had a mixed reception among Apollodorus specialists.2 The audience they provided was inevitably a small one, however. The main impact of the dissertation was felt elsewhere-as a result of the prospect its final pages offered of things rather more interesting to come: proof-to be provided at a later date ("alio loco de eo mihi erit latius disserendum")-that the same handbook source, or one very much like it, had been used extensively by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, and a more accurate general picture of the ancient mythographical tradition and the nature of Ovid's borrowings from it.3