oa ‘Homerus noemt mij niet’

This article examines the Achaemenides episode in the third book of Virgil’s Aeneid (3.588-691). It explores the intratextual connections with the Sinon episode in the second book and especially Virgil’s highly creative ‘rewriting’ of the Cyclops episode in the Odyssey (9.106-566). Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the Virgilian text metapoetically signals its intertextual engagement with the Odyssey. An intermezzo scrutinizes Achaemenides’ speaking name, arguing that it alludes to verbal and visual representations of Parthian suppliants in Augustan discourse. The article concludes with an analysis of a Dutch poem, Achaemenides by Willem Jan Otten, in which the Aeneid’s creative response to the Odyssey is thematised and given new meaning.