Callimachean Tradition and the Muse’s Hymn to Ceres (Ov. Met. 5.341–661)

This paper supplements the work of Hinds 1987 by arguing thatthe Sicilian setting for the abduction of Proserpina inMetamorphoses5 marks Ovid’s engagement with Callimachean style and poetic tradition, and that the influence of Hellenistic works (especially the Aetia) on this passage is richer and more complex than has been acknowledged. I aim to show in particular how Ovid manipulates the poetic and intellectual background on which he draws, to which end I take recourse to a new Ptolemaic-era papyrus, as well as a reanalysis of the hymn’s structural and thematic cohesion.