MYRRHA'S CATABASIS s it possible that Ovid could be so perverse as to associate the incestuous lust of Myrrha with the filial pietas of Virgil's Aeneas? Procul, o procul este: I shall argue that Myrrha's visit to Cinyras' bedroom is modeled ironically on Aeneas' visit to Anchises in the Underworld. Ovid prepares us for this grotesque parallel by scattering clues throughout the Myrrha episode (Met. 10.298-502) with varying degrees of subtlety. No one could miss the echo in Orpheus' prologue to her story (300), procul hinc natae, procul este parentes, of the words of the Sibyl as she and Aeneas are about to enter the Underworld (Aen. 6.258): procul, o procul este, profani. This religious formula has rightly been interpreted as establishing Orpheus' vatic credentials,1 and it is not necessary to think specifically of the goal of Aeneas' catabasis (to see his father). When Myrrha at the opening of her soliloquy expounds upon the nature of Pietas (320-4), it is not necessary to think of Aeneas (even if he is the paragon of that virtue).2 But when she goes on to say that in the animal kingdom it is acceptable for a cow "to carry her father on her back," ferre patrem tergo (326), we may begin to feel that the paradigm of Aeneas and Anchises is drawing uncomfortably near. Keeping Anchises in mind would reveal a clever twist in the falling tree simile that precedes her capitulation to lust. The image of course anticipates her final transformation into a tree (369-75): at virgo Cinyreia pervigil igni carpitur indomito furiosaque vota retractat et modo desperat, modo vult temptare, pudetque et cupit, et, quid agat, non invenit, utque securi 1 See Lowrie (1993) 52, Knox (1986) 54-5, B6mer (1969-86) on 300, Anderson (1972) on 300-303. Ovid reworksthis formula, always ironically, in several different poems: see Barchiesi (1989) 69-70. 2 The Myrrha episode has been called "pietas perverted": see Nagle (1983) 301. THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL 94.2 (1999) 163-67