Arms and the Man: Wordplay and the Catasterism of Chiron in Ovid, Fasti 5

In a recent essay, Ian Brookes has drawn attention to the way in which Ovid's description of the catasterism of Chiron in Fasti 5 "suppresses Chiron's hybrid nature" as centaur "in order to allow us to sympathize with him as a fellow human."¹ Brookes also directs us to the ironic ambiguity used by Ovid to portray the episode's three main characters, Chiron, Achilles, and Hercules, each of whose histories, as alluded to by Ovid, shares with or borrows from the mythical histories of the other two characters.² Thus, the wordplay associating Chiron's name with the Latin manus (as if derived from ), an etymological link already discussed by Santini (1976, 49-56), is demonstrated by Brookes to point instead here to the character of Achilles, whose "man-slaying hands" () are known from Iliad 18.317 and 24.478-79; the arrow wound in the left foot here fatal to Chiron is suggestive of Achilles' vulnerable heel; and the poison here responsible for Chiron's death is the same poison that Deianira will one day use to kill Hercules.³

I want in the following discussion to extend the line of argument begun by Brookes through a fuller consideration of Ovid's exploitation of shared motifs in the mythical histories of each of these characters, and to focus in particular on the important role of wordplay, of a sort not previously observed, in the episode. My reading, while demonstrating that Brookes has made a valuable start on the literary analysis of the passage as a whole, will reach a somewhat different conclusion and suggest that Ovid's narrative intentionally subverts the superficial solemnity of the story told.

It will be useful to begin with a full quotation of the episode (Fast. 5.379-414):

        Nocte minus quarta promet sua sidera Chiron380     semivir et flavi corpore mixtus equi.        Pelion Haemoniae mons est obversus in Austros:            summa virent pinu, cetera quercus habet.        Phillyrides tenuit: saxo stant antra vetusto,            quae iustum memorant incoluisse senem.385   ille manus olim missuras Hectora leto            creditur in lyricis detinuisse modis.        venerat Alcides exhausta parte laborum,            iussaque restabant ultima paene viro.        stare simul casu Troiae duo fata videres:390     hinc puer Aeacides, hinc Iove natus erat.        excipit hospitio iuvenem Philyreius heros,            et causam adventus hic rogat, ille docet.        respicit interea clavam spoliumque leonis,            'vir' que ait 'his armis, armaque digna viro!'395   nec se, quin horrens auderent tangere saetis            vellus, Achilleae continuere manus.        dumque senex tractat squalentia tela venenis,            excidit et laevo fixa sagitta pede est.        ingemuit Chiron, traxitque e corpore ferrum:400     adgemit Alcides Haemoniusque puer.        ipse tamen lectas Pagasaeis collibus herbas            temperat et varia volnera mulcet ope;        virus edax superabat opem, penitusque recepta            ossibus et toto corpore pestis erat:405   sanguine Centauri Lernaeae sanguis echidnae            mixtus ad auxilium tempora nulla dabat.        stabat, ut ante patrem, lacrimis perfusus Achilles:            sic flendus Peleus, si moreretur, erat.        saepe manus aegras manibus fingebat amicis:410     morum, quos fecit, praemia doctor habet.        oscula saepe dedit, dixit quoque saepe iacenti            'vive, precor, nec me, care, relinque, pater.'        nona dies aderat, cum tu, iustissime Chiron,            bis septem stellis corpora cinctus eras.

I have discussed elsewhere⁴ Ovid's effective use of second-person address to the reader at Fasti 5.389 to draw attention to the novelty of his narrative: this is the only extended narrative in the extant literary tradition in which Achilles and Hercules actually meet as a result of their mutual acquaintance with Chiron. This meeting is, as Brookes (1994, 496) has observed, "something of a coup": only the most elastic of relative mythological chronologies could permit this meeting to occur. I propose that in fact we take Ovid's videres, appearing immediately after Ovid has set the scene by describing the landscape (379-82) and by introducing each of his three protagonists in three successive couplets (383-88), as an invitation to scrutinize carefully the play with characterization thus made possible, a play signaled first and foremost in this episode through Ovid's use of the epithet semivir (380) to describe...