Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.476

Abstract

In these lines Ovid introduces Althaea's debate whether or not to kill her son Meleager by burning the brand which was his life, because he had killed her two brothers during the Calydonian boar hunt. A. S. Hollis (Oxford, 1970) says of line 476 that it contains ‘a forced and almost pointless word-play’. If sanguis is taken in its primary meaning, ‘blood’, this condemnation is quite justified. However, if one takes into account a secondary sense, the word-play acquires more strength. This sense is that of ‘offspring’ or ‘descendant’. Examples of this usage (see Lewis and Short s.v. Bib and Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. 10) include Virgil, Aeneid 6.835 ‘sanguis meus’ (Julius Caesar), Horace, Carmen Saeculare 50 ‘clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis’ (Aeneas), Odes 3.27.65 ‘regius sanguis’ (Europa), and, in the Metamorphoses itself (5.514–15) ‘pro…meo veni supplex tibi, Iuppiter, …sanguine’. It may well be that Ovid was intending implications of both meanings in his choice of the word.