For a full discussion of these intertextual complexities (and the full text of the Hymn), see Intro. Moreover, the metamorphic story that Ovid’s Acoetes goes on to tell derives from the tradition represented by the long Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. In Ovid, by contrast, the captive identifies himself as Acoetes (582), which name was evidently taken from Pacuvius’ lost tragedy Pentheus (or Bacchae). This captive, who gives his name as Acoetes, proceeds to explain, in a lengthy inset narrative, how he became a follower of Bacchus.ĢOvid has evidently borrowed the motif of a follower of Bacchus taken prisoner by Pentheus from Euripides’ Bacchae, where the prisoner, who never gives his name, is the god himself in disguise. 1The famuli return, not with Bacchus, as Pentheus had ordered, but with a different prisoner - or so it would seem.
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