Notes bibliogr. Bibliogr. p. 27-30

This paper discusses some aspects of a simile in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, III,704 to 707. When Pentheus goes to Mount Cithaeron, he is compared to a horse that is eager to fight at the sound of the tuba. A horse simile has a long tradition in epic literature, but Ovid alludes primarily to the Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus (391–394) and the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (III,1259–1262). Both these texts highlight certain motifs and issues of the Pentheus episode in the Metamorphoses, such as civil war and the misperception of a person’s own role in unfolding events. In his own eyes, the young Theban king is the defender of the city, an epic hero who sets out to fight the invaders. The texts of Aeschylus and Apollonius help to question this self