Apples for Cydippe and Atalanta: a love gift or a deceit strategy?

Abstract

Ovid uses the apple as a symbolic element to refer to the love stories of Cyddipe and Acontius, in Heroides 20 and 21, and those of Atalanta and Hippomenes, in Metamorphoses 10 (560-707). In both cases the union of the couples is caused by a trick or stratagem, whose trigger –the apple– conditions the representation of the female figures. In this paper we will address the symbolic resignification of the apple in both myths, not only as a plot component, but also as a structural element of the Ovidian narratives. There, it has are an ambiguous value, since although it apparently stands for a love motive, it also becomes an object of deception –and/or submission– for the women who receive it. In this sense, we will consider the lexemes and syntagms through which the poet alludes to this fruit, and we will point out its possible intertextual links with other works of the classical tradition, in order to reveal those uses that are significant to this end.