Ovid's Arachne, a doubly retrospective passage?

The Arachne episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses has long been identified as metapoetic. Scholars pointed to the ancient association between text and textile. They opposed the classical aesthetics of Athena’s tapestry to the Hellenistic illusionism of Arachne’s, which they related to Ovid’s own poetic program. Sauron suggested that this artistic competition was inspired by Virgil’s Eclogues (3.38-46), and Rosati 1999 by the Georgics (4.333-349). Most specialists agree on the omnipresent references to Callimachean poetics, especially to the Aitia’s proem (e.g. Galand-Hallyn, Hofmann). Surprisingly, none consider the intertext of Catullus’s carmen 64.

Yet, poem 64 features a remarkable tapestry ekphrasis, as well as a description of the Parcae spinning which is extremely close to Ovid’s:

sive rudem primos lanam glomerabat in orbes,

seu digitis subigebat opus repetitaque longo

vellera mollibat nebulas aequantia tractu,

sive levi teretem versabat pollice fusum… (Ov. Met. 6.23-24)

…dextera tum leviter deducens fila supinis

formabat digitis, tum prono in pollice torquens

libratum tereti versabat turbine fusum,

atque ita decerpens aequabat semper opus dens… (Catul. 64.312-316)

Ovid’s line 24 is a clear rewriting of Catullus’s line 315: most words are identical, Ovid replaced turbine by pollice (used in Catullus’s previous line), and displaced the term aequare. Rosati 2009 mentions Catullus’s line 315, but only to clarify spinning techniques. Yet, these similitudes are too numerous and too precise to be explained by the passages’ common topic. Moreover, the influence of Catullus’s epyllion on Ovid is well documented, as exemplified, among others, by Conte’s analysis of Fasti 3.471-476.

I argue that Arachne’s episode repeatedly alludes to Catullus 64, and thus reinforces its programmatic dimension. I have shown in a previous paper that Catullus is the first to use terms like levis, mollis and aequatus in this passage to propose deductus as a new translation of λεπτός, long before Virgil’s carmen deductum from Eclogue 4. How can Catullus 64 shed a new light on Arachne’s episode, and particularly on Ovid’s take on concepts like λεπτότης, carmen perpetuum and deductum?

I will first summarize Catullus’s fertile creation of new translations for Hellenistic metapoetic words. I will demonstrate how intricately he interweaves Callimachean and Atticist concepts such as levis, aridus, mollis, teres, and aequatus in his 64^th poem to inaugurate the use of deductus as a translation of λεπτός. Indeed, intertextuality will show that Virgil was probably alluding to this Catullan passage when he wrote the famous lines from Eclogue 4.

Then, I will show how Ovid’s Arachne episode pays homage to Catullus’s carmen 64, and redevelops the ancient metaphor of text as textile by having Arachne and Athena weave under our eyes, instead of the Catullan Parcae. Ovid’s retrospective understanding of Catullus’s metapoetic allusions enables him to redefine his own poetic program.

Finally, I will go further in Rosati’s 2009 analysis of Manilius’s allusion to the Ovidian passage: the lines nunc glomerare rudis nunc rursus soluere lanas / nunc tenuare leui filo nunc ducere telas (4.130­1) are actually a window-reference to Catullus’s metapoetics, through Ovid, and constitute therefore a double retrospection.