In Servius' commentary, there are two elusive statements concerning the ending of the Georgics. Both of these statements seem to imply that Vergil changed the ending of the Georgics and that the Orpheus epyllion as it now stands was a later edition to the poem. The question of whether or not Servius is correct in this assertion is a central question in Vergilian studies. By focusing on the reception of Orpheus prior to Vergil, the Roman Orpheus of Vergil's time, and Vergil's own use of the Orpheus figure, a potential answer emerges to the Servian question. In order to answer this question, the primary inquiry of this paper seeks to find from where Vergil received his Orpheus story. A comprehensive analysis of references to Orpheus in ancient literature leads to the conclusion that before the first-century B.C.E. the primary narrative of Orpheus is not one of failure. Rather, Orpheus appears to successfully retrieve his wife from the underworld. Orpheus does not appear as an important figure in Roman literature until the second half of the first-century when nearly at the same time as Vergil is writing the Georgics Orpheus' popularity explodes in Roman art and literature. Yet, Vergil does not seem to be the source of Orpheus' popularity in Rome, nor does Vergil seem to be inventing a new narrative in which Orpheus fails. The missing source for Vergil's Orpheus figure appears to belong to the first-century. Orpheus appears as a central figure in the Georgics, the Eclogues, the poems of Propertius, and the Culex. Each of these works is rife with references to the poetry of Cornelius Gallus. Given Gallus' prominence in first-century Roman poetry, his close association with Orpheus, the Servian claims of a laudes Galli in the fourth Georgic, and the rise of Orpheus' popularity in the second half of the first-century, Gallus seems a likely source for Vergil's Orpheus.

This thesis explores the generic interaction between Virgilian pastoral and Ovidian epic. My primary goal is to bring pastoral, substantially enriched by important critical work thereupon in recent decades, more energetically into the scholarly discussion of the Metamorphoses, whose multifaceted generic interplay is often limited to the study of its interaction with elegy. Secondarily, I hope to show how the Metamorphoses plays a pivotal role in the re-reading of the Eclogues. The fact that both epic and pastoral are written in hexameters facilitates the interaction between the two and enables the Metamorphoses’ repeated short-term transformations into pastoral poetry, which often end abruptly. I will try to show that although the engagement with pastoral occasionally appears to threaten the epic code of the poem, pastoral is ultimately integrated in the Metamorphoses’ generic self-definition as epic and partakes in Ovid’s dynamic recreation of the genre. My primary method is that of intertextuality, resting on the premise that all readings of textual relationships, as the one suggested here, are acts of interpretation. I also explore pastoral in the Metamorphoses intratextually by joining together various pastoral episodes of the Metamorphoses and arguing how similar thematics are replayed and rewritten throughout the poem. The main perspectives from which I examine pastoral in the Ovidian epic are those of fiction and the development of the thematics of the Golden Age. In the first part, I explore instances of song performances in the Metamorphoses, i) musical contests, ii) solo performances and iii) laments, in which I argue that pastoral is extensively at work. I suggest that the Metamorphoses employs pastoral’s overriding generic self-obsession and its tendency to create its own fiction internally, significantly through the means of singing performance and repetition. I argue that the mythopoetic means of pastoral are applied and reworked in the Metamorphoses for the creation of its epic world and heroes. In the second part, I explore the repeated occurrences of the Golden Age theme in the Metamorphoses and suggest that the remarkable engagement with pastoral is employed both to invite a political reading of the Golden Age, as set by Eclogue 4 and its post-Eclogues occurrences, and to recap the introversion of the pastoral enclosure and its seclusion from politics.

This study explores the relationship between poetry and politics in Books 1 and 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Vergil had refashioned the concept of the golden age to better resonate with Roman values, and Ovid in turn responds to Vergil by making his own golden age free from law, seafaring, and warfare (Met. 1.89-112). Ovid’s golden age clearly foils his ‘praise’ of Augustus in Book 15 (819-70), and thus challenges Vergil’s innovations. Ovid closely connects his demiurge (opifex, 1.79), who created the conditions necessary for the existence of the golden age, to himself (15.871-9); they together display the potency of poetic power. Poesis is different than the power of empire, which is inherently destructive: Jupiter terminates the golden age (1.113), and Augustus’ accomplishments are only ostensibly ‘peaceful’ (15.823, 833). Ovid suggests that the power of poesis remains beyond the destructive reach of Augustus, since Rome’s power is limited to the post-golden, chaotic world, and that poesis enjoys the status of eternality which Rome and Augustus claimed to possess themselves.