OMNIA MUTANTUR, NIHIL INTERIT?

VIRGIL’S KATABASIS AND THE IDEAS OF THE

HEREAFTER IN OVID’S METAMORPHOSES

Meinolf Vielberg

In Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil describes the descent of Aeneas to the

underworld. The katabasis begins with the episode of the Golden Bough
(cf. Aen. 6:136–48), through the possession of which the underworld
becomes accessible. Aeneas takes hold of the bough in a grove near Lake
Avernus (cf. Aen. 6:187–8; 201), where it grows like a mistletoe on an
oak (cf. Aen. 6:205–9). With it, the hero soothes the anger of Charon
(cf. Aen. 6:405–7), before he “plants it at the front of the threshold of
the palace of Persephone (630ff.), for whom it is meant as a present.”1
The Golden Bough also enables the son of Venus to eventually return
from Hades. Seen from the end of his journey, the descent of Aeneas
to the underworld is a detour. The epic hero is not nearing his final
destination. Already Macrobius therefore tried to motivate the kataba-
sis by supposing that it implies a gemina doctrina;2 later interpreters,
too, have pointed out the amalgamation of a literary and a philosophi-
cal track of explanation involved in it.3 Taking Homer’s Nekyia for
example, Virgil, on the one hand, gave the underworld in the outskirts
of Hades on both banks of the Acheron, in Tartarus and Elysium, and
in the grove of Lethe a rich topography, which authors as late as Dante
used as a literary model.4 On the other hand, he explained the fate of
the deceased in the different places of the underworld as a cyclical
journey of the souls, consisting of their purification in Hades, their
later rebirth and return to the underworld and their possibly perma-
nent abidance in Elysium. To motivate the doctrine of metempsychosis,

1
E. Norden, P. Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI (4th ed.; Darmstadt: WBG, 1957),
164.
2
Cf. Macr. Somn. 1:9:8: “[. . .] hoc et Vergilius non ignorat, qui, licet argumento suo
serviens heroas in inferos relegaverit, non tamen eos abducit a caelo, sed aethera his
deputat largiorem, et nosse eos solem suum ac sua sidera profitetur, ut geminae doctri-
nae observatione praestiterit et poeticae figmentum et philosophiae veritatem.”
3
Norden, Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI, 4, 15.
4
Norden, Vergilius Maro Aeneis Buch VI, 13–4.
170 meinolf vielberg

Virgil drew on Orphean and Pythagorean ideas which had been part
of the archaic and classic Greek literature ever since they were given
literary form by Pindar, Empedocles, and Plato.5 He might have come
by these ideas through representatives of the second period of Stoicism
such as Poseidonius. The katabasis includes a comprehensive, yet far
from uniform, explanation of the world that culminates in a historical
prophecy. In a magnificent vaticinium ex eventu, Anchises announces
to his son Aeneas the fate of the Aeneads until Augustus.6 This “vision
of heroes”7 is modelled on Homer’s Teichoscopy and facilitates, just as
Jupiter’s prophecy in Book I and the description of the shield in Book
VIII, a historical perspective crucial to the understanding of both the
mytho-historical epic as a whole and the Augustan principate as the
specific goal of Roman history.
If the notion is correct that all epic-writing after Virgil is first and
foremost writing in Virgil’s manner,8 then one would expect to find
in Ovid’s main work, the Metamorphoses, the development of an
eschatology that corresponds with Virgil’s. It seems, however, that
nothing in it resembles the katabasis in any way. Neither is there an
eschatological panorama of similar ambition nor a single episode of
central importance whose power of explanation stands comparison.
The speech of Pythagoras, although comparable to a certain extent,
only maintains with regard to the world process as a whole that every-
thing is (merely) changing and nothing ever comes to an end (Met.
15.165: omnia mutantur, nihil interit).9 Dying and individual death

5
W. Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stutt-
gart: Kohlhammer, 1977), 440–7.
6
Cf. H.J. Tschiedel, “Anchises und Aeneas. Die Vater-Sohn-Beziehung im Epos des
Vergil,” in Exempla Classica (ed. P. Neukam; Dialog Schule & Wissenschaft. Klassische
Sprachen und Literaturen 21; Munich: Bayerischer Schulbuchverlag, 1987), 141–67.
7
Cf. S. Grebe, Die vergilische Heldenschau. Tradition und Fortwirken (Studien zur
klassischen Philologie 47; Frankfurt: Lang, 1989).
8
The claim that Ovid’s use of the mantuan’s works is more comprehensive, versa-
tile and original than that of any other Roman author, speaks for itself and corrobo-
rates our thesis. It is, however, difficult to verify (for further literature, see V. Buchheit,
“Numa-Pythagoras in der Deutung Ovids,” in Hermes 121 (1993): 77–99, here 89; for
the reception of Virgil in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see S. Döpp, “Vergilrezeption in der
ovidischen ,Aeneis‘,” RhM 134 (1991): 327–46, here: 329, n. 6.
9
The much-cited word of Pythagoras has elicited many different interpretations. It
is quoted from P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoses (ed. W.S. Anderson; 5th ed.; Stutt-
gart & Leipzig: Teubner, 1991). The English translations are from Ovid, Metamorpho-
ses Books I–VIII. With an English translation by F.J. Miller, revised by G.P. Goold.
(Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1986) and Ovid, Metamor-
phoses Books IX–XV. With an English translation by F.J. Miller, revised by G.P. Goold