A Lesson from the East: A New Pattern of Virility in Ovid’s Fasti

This paper will focus in particular on the myth of Hercules’ enslavement to Omphale which features as the national aetiology of the nakedness of the Luperci in Book 2 of the Fasti. The protagonists of this amusing example of “sexual comedy” are Hercules, Omphale, and a salacious outsider: Faunus- Lupercus. As it happens in didactic love elegy (where Hercules plays the role of the foundational hero of the seruitium amoris), the Fasti, too, do not seem to look at this myth under a negative perspective. Despite the comic allure of the whole context, Hercules still adheres to the cliché of the strong, muscular hero, but also proves to be a champion of modern and cultivated virility. The Ovidian remake of the Hercules-Omphale myth also constitutes an interesting chapter of the early reception of Ovid’s Fasti, as is well documented by some passages from Statius’ Thebaid and Achilleid.