SOURCE: Johnson, Patricia J. “Constructions of Venus in Ovid's Metamorphosis V.” Arethusa 29, no. 1 (winter 1996): 125-49.

In the following essay, Johnson examines the significance of Venus' role in the rape of Prosperine as it is related in the Metamorphoses.

The fifth book, and with it the first third, of Ovid's Metamorphoses ends with a friendly visit of the goddess Minerva to Mt. Helicon, in the course of which one of the Muses recounts the events of a poetic contest which had recently taken place between her learned sisters and a group of nine mortal challengers called the Emathides. The Muse narrator briefly summarizes the song of these women, an idiosyncratic and highly irreverent version of the revolt of the monster Typhoeus against the Olympians,¹ then repeats verbatim the responding entry of Calliope (Meta. V 341-661), which documents the famous rape of Proserpina by Pluto and the wanderings of her...