Seeing Double: Ovid’s Diomedes

Chapter 2 focuses on the Homeric character Diomedes and his appearances in Ovid’s poetry. It begins with a detailed discussion of the scene in Iliad Book 4 in which Agamemnon chastises Diomedes for not being quicker to join the fighting, comparing him to his detriment with his father, Tydeus. The discussion focuses on a small but significant ambiguity in this episode regarding Diomedes’s response to Agamemnon, and then proceeds to a more general consideration of the centrality of paternity to Homeric values. A reading informed by the poetics of metatextuality suggests the relevance of this scene to Ovid’s relationship with Homer. The remainder of the chapter offers a detailed analysis of two episodes in the Ovidian corpus featuring Diomedes, Amores 1.7 and an episode in Metamorphoses Book 14, and suggests how Ovid uses them as opportunities to position himself as the poetic “son” of Homer.