Chronology and Anachrony in Ovid's Story of Scylla (Metamorphoses 13.730-14.74)

Abstract

The tale of Scylla in Metamorphoses Books 13 and 14 and the stories which branch off from it are a well-known case of Ovid's tendency to digress from his so-called main storyünes. As Aeneas approaches the region of Scylla and Charybdis, Ovid tells the readers about Scylla's history, and within this history tells several other episodes.1 The problem of die relationship between frame and inset stories is complicated by Ovid's wide use of internal narrators, sometimes on several levels of subordination,2 and by his habit of interrupting one story with a seemingly unrelated one, especially during long continuous episodes, such as that of Aeneas. The Scylla story raises questions about Ovid's pacing of his episodes and of his shrinking of some of his inherited material, questions of what G. Genette calls narrative "duration."3