"Happy the Brother, Blessed the Sister" (Met. 4.323–324): Ovid's Gendered Allusiveness in Metamorphoses 4

The purpose of this article is to explore how Ovid shapes his story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (Met. 4.285–388) through a series of allusions to some passages of the Aeneid and the Georgics. Indeed, in the story in question, the transforming of gender roles features as a metaphor for Ovid's processes of aemulatio. The construction of Salmacis as a dominant female relates to the poetic "brotherhood" of Ovid and Vergil, for Ovid creates his character by readapting some aspects of his epic model within a reversal of traditional gender patterns.