The Forging of a God: Venus, the Shield of Aeneas, and Callimachus’s Hymn to Artemis

Abstract

Callimachus’s Hymn to Artemis provides a useful intertext for tracing the development of Venus and Aeneas in Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses . The Callimachean Artemis and Vergilian Venus each receive promises of future glory from their fathers, charm artisans into producing weapons that advance their divinity, and gradually emerge as powerful goddesses in their own right. Comparison with the Hymn furthermore shows how Aeneas’s status as a future god is guaranteed by his divine armor.