FROM SHIPS TO NYMPHS: CYBELE'S MATERNAL METAMORPHOSIS IN AENEID 9.77-122 AND METAMORPHOSES 14.530-565.

This article reexamines what has often been called one of the most incongruous episodes in the Aeneid: Cybele's transformation of Aeneas's burning fleet into nymphs at Aen. 9.77-122. While previous scholarship has largely interpreted this scene as a sign of Trojan-Roman divine favor, the completion of the wandering of the first half of the Aeneid, or a contrast between Turnus's hybris and Aeneas's pietas, such readings predominantly approach the episode from a masculine perspective. This article shifts the perspective by turning to the maternal role of Cybele and the suffering of the trees/ships/nymphs themselves. This reading reveals Vergil's attention not only to Cybele's emotional suffering, but also to that of her daughters. As is made apparent during their brief reappearance in Aen. 10.215-259, the trees/ships/nymphs already experienced suffering in their inanimate state. This feature of Vergil's narrative becomes even more apparent when read next to Ovidian reworkings, most notably in the socalled Little Aeneid in Met. 14.530-565, where Cybele's maternal agency and the nymphs' emotional state become central through the nymphs' "upward" metamorphosis. By comparing these Vergilian and Ovidian readings, the article thus reconsiders this contested episode and sheds light on the authors' different approaches to the feminine and emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]