Lowe, Dunstan (2010) Snakes on the Beach: Ovid’s Orpheus and Medusa. Materiali e Discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, 65 (2). pp. 183-186. ISSN 1724-1693. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:33784)
| The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided. |
Abstract
Why, in Ovid's account, is Orpheus' severed head attacked by a snake as it lies on the beach, and why is that snake turned to stone? I argue that this incident, instead of deriving from a lost episode in the Thracian bard's mythic cycle, is invented by Ovid as a rearrangement of elements from the Medusa myth told earlier in the poem. Both heads retain supernatural powers after death, and in Ovid each one provides a coda to a longer story by causing a petrifaction while deposited on a sandy beach.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology |
| Divisions: | Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies |
| Depositing User: | Dunstan Lowe |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Jun 2013 16:03 UTC |
| Last Modified: | 05 Nov 2024 10:17 UTC |
| Resource URI: | https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/33784 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) |
University of Kent Author Information
Lowe, Dunstan.
| Creator's ORCID: |
 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7664-4027
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