Epigr. Bob. 51 Sp. e il mito di Scilla: un naufragium elegiaco?

This paper examines a late antique re-elaborated version of the myth of Skylla in Epigr. Bob., 51, a Latin ekphrastic poem concerning a lost sculpture representing the Homeric sea monster, installed in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. According to the common opinion, this poem is a translation of a lost Greek exemplar. However, it seems to independently re-elaborate the tradition on the shipwrecked present in the 7th book of the Anthologia Palatina, adding the overlap between two different variants of the myth of Skylla: the Homeric daughter of Forco, turned into a sea monster, and the daughter of Nisus, turned into a bird. This particular contamination is widely attested from Aeschylus onward, but it is more likely that the auctor of Epigr. Bob., 51 follows the Latin elegiac tradition represented by Ouidius, including the development of the rhetorical theme of libido, also present in Epigr. Bob., 52-54.