Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Ovid, Metamorphoses - Revisited
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Week 1 — Book 1
On the subject of Metamorphoses, I mostly don't know yet. I do want to call out two things I find interesting the the Proem.First, Stephanie McCarter in the introduction to her translation makes what could be an interesting point
Ovid announces his epic's main theme as metamorphosis in its first two lines: "My spirit moves to tell of shapes transformed / into new bodies." We might instead expect "bodies transformed into new shapes" since generally it is the body that is reshaped. This is how several translators render this line... But by undermining our expectations, Ovid places special emphasis on the body and invites us to consider carefully the relationship between the body, its shape, and the identity it contains.
I'm not sure I fully appreciate this but will try to come back to it as I consider the transformations that occur.
The second point I think worth noting about that Proem is the point made on line three in most translations about the gods transforming his work. As I understand it, Ovid was well known as an elegiac poet and with this work he has adopted the classical epic poetic form and elements. He is saying that the gods have moved him to write in this transformed manner and is calling attention to the form and genre of the work we are about to read.
I'm pretty unfamiliar with Greco-Roman mythology, so I'm glad to be reading this book with you guys.The ancients' idea that the beginning of time constituted a dense point where everything was combined into one sounds very familiar! It rhymes with the big bang theory's idea of a cosmological singularity. I thought that was really interesting, and I wonder if physicists were inspired by these stories in any way.
I also found it interesting how the wording of who caused the beginning of the universe to unfold is a bit uncertain: God OR Nature. That's so different from the Abrahamic religions, where you better damn well know that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
The Gods themselves are so petty and egotistical. An entire world drowned because one man did you wrong. Collective punishment really runs deep in human psychology, as is reflected in these stories of the Gods. The Gods are so driven by their own passions, and I suppose that makes perfect sense in a world of disease and unpredictable natural disasters. Jove trying to hide his lustful escapades from Juno and eventually taking so much pity on poor Io that he faces the music and confesses in order to turn her from a cow back into a human is a great example of this. An even more petty example is Cupid's revenge on Phoebus, just because he bragged about his superior archery skills! It's wild to see how petty the ancients thought the gods were.
I was struck by the change in tone. Ovid begins in the traditional manner of an epic poem by invoking the gods:the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me--or so I hope--with a poem. . .
We think we are in for a serious epic poem. Ovid sustains the tone until we get to the story of Apollo and Daphne--or thereabouts. The tone changes and becomes comical with Apollo pleading with Daphne to stop running. He announces he is not just a shepherd or ploughboy but the great, almighty Apollo, lord of Delphi, blah, blah, blah, as if expects the girl should be flattered to have the dubious distinction of being raped by a god.
And then there is poor Io's father who, when he realizes his daughter is now a heifer, says these hilarious lines:
"Alas for me! I have sought you, daughter,
All over the world, and now that I have found you,
I have found greater grief. You do not answer,
And what you think is sighing comes out mooing!
And all the while I, in my ignorance, counted
On marriage for you, wanting, first, a son,
Then, later grandsons; now your mate must be
Selected from some herd, your son a bullock.
(Humphries translation)
It seems as if Ovid is having a blast. His tone is irreverent and playful as he pokes fun at the gods and their antics. He has a great sense of humor and must have been a lot of fun at parties.
When Jupiter (AKA Jove, for those not up on Latin names in mythology; in Greek, Zeus) summons the gods to council he fairly explicitly is modeled on the Emperor Augustus summoning Senators, complete with reference to Rome's Palatine Hill. As many commentators point out, the comparison of the living emperor to the mythological god soon ceases to be so flattering.The Greeks had a rich mythology which their intellectuals deplored (not just Plato, who wanted poets banned from the perfect state lest they spread false ideas about the gods), but the Roman elite nevertheless absorbed it pretty thoroughly.
It cast their own Latin mythology rather in the shade. It is being retrieved, sometimes controversially, by modern scholars, with help from another poem by Ovid, the Fasti.
Ovid not only reveled in this originally foreign lore, he may have enhanced it. There are known earlier sources for most of the stories, even if some are fragments or scenes from art. But the story of Pan and Syrinx in Book One may be his own invention. If I remember, I will return to this story later.
I wonder what Spinoza might have thought of this line:Till God, or kindlier Nature,Or this rendering:
Settled all argument. . .
(Rolf Humphries)
Then God or Nature calmed the elements. . .Although the translator’s note clarifies that this is not God or Nature in Spinoza's metaphysical sense, it makes me wonder, why does Ovid obscure or avoid naming a creator god directly?
(Horace Gregory)
*God, or kindlier Nature: Ovid gets no more specific about the god who organizes matter into the created world of discrete forms; the traditional, highly individuated gods of Greek and Roman religion do not yet appear. Compare (line 32), “whatever god it was” and (line 57) “the framer of the world,” below.On the other hand, in the Latin original, the sun, moon, and sea had already been marked as personifications by names of gods (Titan, Phoebe, and Amphitrite) on page 3—a detail omitted by Humphries’s translation—so that traditional anthropomorphic deities do appear at this stage in the poem, if only on the level of Ovid’s poetic language (cf. the “one face of nature”: n. for p. 3 [1.6]).Was this ambiguity a literary device, a form of reverence, or something else? And might this apparent near-interchangeability of God or Nature suggest an ancient impression of Spinoza's formulation: Deus sive Natura?
(Rolf Humphries)
Michael wrote: "I'm not sure I fully appreciate this but will try to come back to it as I consider the transformations that occur."Thanks for that, Michael. I will have to pay close attention to the question of identity in the metamorphoses to come, especially how shape, body, are related or disrupted.
What struck me in the very first metamorphosis is how it seems less like a transformation of form and more like a division, a sorting or separating, rather than a change of one body into another:
Forever at war: within a single bodyThis primal metamorphosis, seems to add a dimension of differentiation to the process of transformation. It makes me wonder if Ovid frames any future transformations this way.
Heat fought with cold, wet fought with dry, the hard
Fought with the soft, things having weight contended
With weightless things. Till God, or kindlier Nature,*
Settled all argument, and separated
Heaven from earth, water from land, our air
From the high stratosphere, a liberation
So things evolved, and out of blind confusion
Found each its place, bound in eternal order.
(Humphries)
Susan wrote: "Metamorphoses — Week 1Book 1 includes: Prologue, The Creation, The Four Ages, The Giants, Lycaon, The Flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha, Python, Apollo and Daphne, Io and Jove, Syrinx, Io and Jove, and..."
Re: question on what is metamorphoses? Is it something seen in day to day life? If a metamorphosis can be said to be change, we are presented with at least 2 kinds. One is the sudden one: Daphne turns into a tree, Lycaon to a wolf, Io to a cow. Another change, as described in the Four Ages is quite slow and characterized by degeneration, from the Golden Age ( always Spring, no toil, no war, no need for laws because there are no evil acts) to the Iron Age (« all the forces of evil invaded a breed of inferior mettle » with war, crimes, « treacherous thoughts, brute force and a criminal lust for possession »)
Are we to assume the Iron Age descriptions are referencing the age of Augustus?
Being a programmer and having studied category theory morphisms of all different types and constructions come up a lot in my day to day.I found it interesting that Ovid placed the story of Daphne right next to the story of Io, both trying to escape the unwanted advances of gods. I am not sure if there was a deeper meaning in having the stories being back to back.
I enjoy the story of Phaethon and its later connection to Romeo and Juliet (in my opinion the line in the play beautifully captures youthful impatiences along with recklessness abandonment, who cares if the world is ablaze as long as I am with my lover sooner).
I am more familiar with the Greek names of the gods so I find myself looking up the Roman names a bit.
Mike wrote: "Being a programmer and having studied category theory morphisms of all different types and constructions come up a lot in my day to day.I found it interesting that Ovid placed the story of Daphne..."
Mike, as a programmer, would you describe Zeus’s decision, having soured on Lycaon, to scrap the human race and to go back to the drawing board — « He would take care of the future, he said; and he proposed to breed a new race of miraculous birth, unlike the people before it »— as an example of Iterative Design?
The orderer of the chaotic universe goes back to the equally anonymous “Demiourgos” the “Workman,” who imposes Form on Matter in the creation myth in Plato’s “Timaeus” (the dialogue which also introduced Atlantis. It is here blended with the Stoic cosmic Mind, and some other influences. (Some Stoics assigned it the name Zeus, but did not mean the anthropomorphic mythological character, but rather a principle of cosmic order properly a subject of reverence.)In later Western theology the Platonic concept of a limited *demiurge* is contrasted with that of the God who created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. Unfortunately, there are problems in imposing that view on the narrative in Genesis which have been glossed over by Jews and Christians for a couple of thousand years.
Not an expert here, but I have spent a chunk of time today looking into Ovid's description of the creation and feel ready to share an opinion that is a combination of different sources that I'm reading. First, he is taking a non-controversial position that is politically and socially expedient and will help his work succeed. He was in tune with his times and his audience. Emperor Augustan was trying to restore order and traditional moral and religious practices. Ovid citing a god puts him on the right side of things. It is also fairly ambiguous or inoffensive. The god could be anthropomorphic or an abstract divine being. A kinder nature could be a simple organizing principle like the Stoic nous Ian brought up.
Second, having an actor "deus et melior natura" (God AND a kinder/better Nature) get this thing started works better as a narrative. Changes that happen because gods or humans make them happen make more interesting fodder for stories than a rare, big-bang-like happenstance. Ovid is a poet and wants to spin a yarn.
Third, he is well-educated and is engaging with an intellectual history. I'm about to add a bunch of quotes here, apologies if it is too much.
About 50 years earlier, Lucretius in De Rerum Natura (On the Order of Things) described a creation that comes from a natural progression and a growth of elements or seeds as he called them. He very specifically argues against an ex nihilo creation saying "...nothing ever by divine power comes from nothing" and that "...things come into being without the aid of gods" and that finally "...nature resolves all things back into their elements." I think this is what we would call "conservation of matter" and aligns well with our modern concept of an expanding and collapsing universe. Ovid seems to be acknowledging that the raw materials did not come from nothing, but he is also saying that it takes a god or a natural force to organize that matter (or metamorphose it I suppose) into creation. A creator or a creative force gives creation purpose (a teleology). He also acknowledges Lucretius on line 8 (or 9 or thereabouts depending on your translation) when he says the material of chaos are the "seeds of things". The word seeds echos Lucretius' seeds and atoms.
In Virgil's Aeneid Book VI (lines 724-730), Anchises in the underworld explains to Aeneas that there is an inner spirit to all things that nurtures their seeds to grow.
...an inner spirit nurtures earth
and sky, the water's plains, the moon's bright globe,
the sun and stars; and mind infuses each part
and animates the mass of all there is...
their seeds have fiery force; these come from heaven.
I suspect, but haven't confirmed that "mind" in these lines is the nous (mind) or logos (divine reason) that is the impersonal natural force.
Five or six-hundred years earlier, a couple of pre-Socratic Greeks, translated beautifully by Dan Beachy-Quick, got a lot of this debate started.
Anaxagoras
Nothing falls apart from any other thing in the cosmic whole, nothing can be hewn off with a battle-ax, not the hot from the cold, not the cold from the hot.
And then Mind sets all things in motion; this motion causes everything to separate, dividing one from another, and this rotation creates more and more division.
...
Before that time when each thing became exactly itself, all being was the same, no color visible, difference was naught, for matter all intermingled prevented it--the wet and the dry (river's flow and arroyo, bird's liquid song and the empty air), the hot and the cold, the starbright and the nether-gloom, much earth in the substance and an endless number of seeds, not one like another.
Empedocles
Never in the whole-holy-All is anywhere empty--
and never can more come to be than is.
From nothing, nothing comes--
to die utterly away is impossible, unheard of--
wherever you push on eternity, eternity is always there.
Earth gives of earth, air of air.
In the no-world below many fires burn.
Aether's long roots plunge beneath the earth.
...
And these transformations, all through each, never cease--
now Love gathers all things into one,
then each is torn apart again by Strife's hatred.
...
these changes, all through each, never stop,
are endless, eternal, a cycle that cannot be broken.
And, we can go back a couple of hundred years earlier to Hesiod's Theogony
In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,
but then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,
Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,
and Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,
and Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who
makes their bodies (and men's bodies) go limp,
mastering their minds and subduing their wills.
From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.
And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse
with Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.
My take is that all of these sources were known to Ovid and to his readers. He is citing them with word-choice and evolving the lore to fit the purposes of his project.
Ian wrote: "The orderer of the chaotic universe goes back to the equally anonymous “Demiourgos” the “Workman,” who imposes Form on Matter in the creation myth in Plato’s “Timaeus”..."Yes, Plato's dialog too it seems. Thanks for the reference.
Terry wrote: "That's so different from the Abrahamic religions, where you better damn well know that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.The Gods themselves are so petty and egotistical. ..."
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Tamara wrote: "It seems as if Ovid is having a blast. His tone is irreverent and playful as he pokes fun at the gods and their antics. He has a great sense of humor and must have been a lot of fun at parties..."
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Mike wrote: "...who cares if the world is ablaze as long as I am with my lover sooner."
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This is going to be fun, isn't it?
Janet wrote: "Re: question on what is metamorphoses? Is it something seen in day to day life? If a metamorphosis can be said to be change, we are presented with at least 2 kinds. . ."It seems like we are building a composite understanding of metamorphoses by characterizing different types of change.
These changes seem characterized by,
1. Duration: sudden physical changes or the long historical shifts of the four ages.
2. Differentiation, as in the structuring of chaos into ordered form; I wonder about the duration of that event.
3. Degeneration, as in the four ages, where human society declines from a golden harmony back into the chaos of iron age violence.
4. Ontological changes, that include physical transformations, as well as the cosmic differentiation of the world.
5. Moral or ethical change, as in the degeneration of man through the four ages
There seems to be plenty of books left for other types of changes as well, Psychological or emotional changes, socio-political change, and existential or metaphysical change.
With all of these changes, one is left to wonder if changes like these from stories of the past still occurring in the present time, and what would it signify if they were or were not?
Michael wrote: "Not an expert here, but I have spent a chunk of time today looking into Ovid's description of the creation and feel ready to share an opinion that is a combination of different sources that I'm rea..."Thanks for handling Lucretius. He was of tremendous importance to Ovid (and Virgil) as a poet, but as a good Epicurean he disdained the gods of mythology, so his influence on the narrative is necessarily limited.
Hesiod was certainly known to better-educated Romans. Their knowledge of the pre-Socratics is debatable, but Anaxagoras and Empedocles are at least useful examples of the kind of criticism the traditional gods had received. Of course, criticizing them caused trouble for some, notably Socrates.
For those looking for a throrough but compact (comparatively speaking) guide to classical mythology, I suggest Dictionary of Classical Mythology, by Jenny March (but listed by Amazon as Jennifer R. March). This is a second edition, an improvement on Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology. The Kindle edition is more expensive than when I bought it a couple of years ago, but I think worth the money to those seriously interested. I suspect library copies will be on the non-circulating reference shelves, but maybe not.Despite a substantial background in classical mythology, I have found it very useful. March is very good about citing exact sources, which is not always the case in such compendia.
It should not be confused with her The Penguin Book of Classical Myths, which is retellings, and much less useful.
I do not recommend Robert Graves' The Greek Myths: Complete Edition, which is erratic in coverage, has unreliable references, and promulgates a personal view of Greek mythology with little or no substance behind it. Unfortunately, it has become a standard reference book, sometimes relied on by specialists in other mythologies.
Ian - it sounds like you may know more about this than I do so I would be happy to get any corrections or additional details on these points. Guided by different commentaries, I think Ovid was both acknowledging Lucretius and countering his take on a creation that didn't involve gods. His influence was negative as a source but as a position to react against.
I suspect you're right that general readers may not have been aware of the pre-Socratics or any of the other specific quotes I provided, but I do suspect they were familiar with the ideas. The specific word choices that tie to other writers may just be a wink and a nod to those more educated and familiar with the sources.
You did a very good job.I just wished to make sure people were aware that Lucretius was not a source for stories, but was a model for an (eccentric) epic poem in Latin, and thus important to Ovid.
Ovid and some of his readers may have known Hesiod directly, but there is a problem of how often Romans went back to early sources, or relied on (mainly) Alexandrian re-tellings and compilations.
Most sources are included at least in excerpts in Anthology of Classical Myth. It translates portions of later ancient handbooks, including a "Metamorphoses," along with earlier original sources.
This book is also available in Kindle. It was intended as a source of selected readings in college classes, not to be read through, so the arrangement is alphabetical by author, not chronological or thematic. If it is not a class requirement, it is probably of interest to serious mythology buffs.
Ian wrote: "Ovid and some of his readers relied on (mainly) Alexandrian re-tellings and compilations..."I think this is important for us too. Ovid isn't creating "A Library of Greek Mythology" like Apollodorus did. This isn't an interpretative encyclopedia either.
We need to understand the lore for what he is telling us but also need to ask about why and how he is telling it. We can explore the story of Apollo's pursuit and attempted rape of Daphne as a myth. That is, I think, the most basic reading. What I want to try to do is explore why he chose to include that story and how his version is different. What is it doing here?
Zooming out from any one story, why has he chosen metamorphosis as a subject? Just because it is interesting? What is he saying? Said another way, why has this persisted a for two thousand years as a classic of our western canon and why read it now?
That's the journey I hope to take at least. Any help you all give me is appreciated.
For those not up on (Pseudo-)Apollodorus, that is the name given to ancient manual, or “Library,” of Greek (not Roman) mythology, which was the subject of a Classics and the Western Canon discussion in 2020. It is a bare-bones but logically ordered summary of stories, arranged by geography and family, and possesses few literary virtues beyond brevity. And the fact that, when older sources can be checked, it seems to give accurate reports.Only the subject matter resembles Ovid, who is a superb storyteller as well as a poet (we are missing much of the latter in translation, but then, my Latin isn’t up to more than a few lines in succession, so I mostly rely on commentators and critics for the fine details myself).
There are some other surviving manuals, excerpted in the Anthology of Classical Myth I mentioned earlier, but the most important, Hyginus, is a textual disaster and demonstrably unreliable. Naturally, some of its stories are among the most famous.
Another kind of metamorphosis in Metamorphoses might be a narrative one. Around the story of Lycaon, there is a shift in narrator from Ovid to Jove himself. The poet steps back and lets Jove tell the story in his own voice:“He has indeed been punished. On that score have no worry. But what he did, And how he paid, are things that I must tell you. I had heard the age was desperately wicked, I had heard, or so I hoped, a lie, a falsehood, So I came down, as man, from high Olympus, Wandered about the world.” (Humphries)I cannot help but imagine this as something like a Ken Burns documentary, as if we are hearing sworn testimony from the god himself (without the slow pan over a Roman fresco, of course).
Why does Ovid do this? Is he simultaneously distancing himself from divine judgment and reinforcing the authority of it?
One of the features of epic, or at any rate Homeric Epic, is that a large part of the narrative is direct speech of one sort or another, coming close to drama, as Aristotle already pointed out. (The most famous parts of the Odyssey are a story told by Odysseus, not the primary narrator.) Ovid is here meeting an expectation of the genre he is re-inventing.Which is not to say that distancing effects are not involved; things are complicated throughout the poem, and I agree with the critics who don’t think we should expect Ovid to be consistent when he plays games with reader expectations and external allusions.
David wrote: "Around the story of Lycaon, there is a shift in narrator from Ovid to Jove himself. The poet steps back and lets Jove tell the story in his own voice... Why does Ovid do this? Is he simultaneously distancing himself from divine judgment and reinforcing the authority of it?"Ian wrote: "One of the features of epic, or at any rate Homeric Epic, is that a large part of the narrative is direct speech of one sort or another, coming close to drama... Ovid is here meeting an expectation of the genre he is re-inventing."
One effect, is that you noticed it. For a moment, we get a first-person Jove and then oh yeah, we're back to an omniscient, third-person narrator. I don't think jarring is the right word, but because it is noticeable, you are then, if you give yourself the time to reflect, free to think about who this authoritative narrator is. It shines some light on the narratological artifice. I almost said a spotlight, that would be an overstatement. It could be that Ovid is saying, "hey everybody, I'm back, check me out while I tell these stories, I'm the one behind the wheel of this car and we're going where I want to take you and how I want to get you there."
He does make the gods look bad. Besides Jove here, Tamara called out how silly Apollo seems in his pursuit of Daphne. I don't get the sense that he is fearful of divine judgment. It doesn't feel like he is endorsing their decisions and behaviors either. I'm not sure what to make of his representation of the gods beyond the narratological and comic effects it brings. There could be something there I just don't understand yet.
Michael wrote: "It shines some light on the narratological artifice. I almost said a spotlight, that would be an overstatement."Maybe this suggests we should take Ovid’s invocation at the beginning more literally?
My intention* is to tell of bodies changed To different forms;* the gods, who made the changes,* Will help me, or I hope so, with a poem (Humphries)The gods, Jove no less in this case, step in to tell the story themselves. I just appreciate that he was so obliging to deliver his account in Ovid’s Latin hexameter, or in Humphries’ English pentameter, depending on your edition.
Simpson, using a different set of readings of the Latin text, with different case endings, translates the opening thusly:“My mind leads me to something new, to tell of forms changed to other bodies. Gods, inspire this poem I’ve begun (for you changed it, too), and from the first origin of the world spin my song’s fine thread unbroken down to my own time.”
He notes that in this reading “for you changed it, too” refers to the meter of the work, pure dactylic hexameter instead of the hexameter/pentameter elegiac couplets of Ovid’s earlier poetry.
I have noticed that there are two inexpensive ($3.99) Kindle editions of the exuberant old (1922) prose translation of The Metamorphoses by the American poet Brookes More. This once had considerable popularity (and a useful commentary, not available, was issued to accompany it).Of the two Kindle editions, the Alicia Edition is the better choice. The table of contents gives book divisions as well as names of stories, and line numbers appear at the heads of paragraphs, which makes it much easier to find things. It is the one with a clearly pictorial cover. I suggest downloading the sample to see if you like it.
Here is More’s opening: he follows a text that differs from Simpson’s base, and is quite typically filled with exclamation marks:My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time!
As will be seen, More’s version does not support a close discussion. There are similar problems with other translations, although these usually have the excuse of verse for departures from the literal meaning.
A few things caught my attention in the second creation of man. The first, done earlier in the book (lines 75-90), was a work of craftsmanship by Prometheus. It was a combination of divine seeds, earth, and careful handiwork. In lines 389-391 Deucalion wishes he "could use [his] father's arts to make new people by implanting souls in sculpted clay!" This second creation comes from a hopeful orientation toward the future and very hard materials (rocks) as the seeds or primary materials for these new bodies. There is some force that sculpts them similar to the process of carving a marble statue, but there doesn't seem to be a mention of divine seeds or souls and there isn't any mention of a sculptor, artist, or creator. I think of the throwing of the rocks over the shoulder as an optimistic, forward-looking action. That is why Deucalion, son of forward-looking Prometheus was able to understand that was what was needed instead of Pyrrha, daughter of the back-looking Epimetheus, who could only imagine the instruction as an insult to her dead mother (the past). Repopulating the earth is also a hopeful act after the devastation of the flood.
This scene reminds me of the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, Lot and his wife, and paintings of Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden. Orpheus and Lot's wife went against divine instruction and looked back with devastating consequences. Adam and Eve couldn't go back, only forward to a hard life of labor and birth pains in the fallen world.
The other thing I'm noticing is that in both of Ovid's creation stories, the creation of humans is separate and distinct from the creation of animals, making humans a different class of life.
I looked for other ancient Greek and Roman versions of this story and found only brief mentions of it by Apollodorus, Hesiod, Pindar, and Plato. Ovid's version is the only one I've found that tells the full story. I assume there were other sources now lost to us.
So, why did Ovid include this story and these details? Well, it is a touching survivor story, and the second creation of mankind from stones is a metamorphosis that explains or provides etiology for the hard lives we live. It is the first story in the collection that feels touchingly human to me. It is harder to relate to Lycaon's evil acts, but I do recognize them as human. Is there anything else I'm missing?
Finally, here are some links to artwork of the scene. My favorite is the Rubens in the last link. Seeing the paintings makes another point very salient. Parents move forward, ahead of us in time, leaving the younger generation behind, sometimes naked and unprepared for the world.
* https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/ed...
* https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Berna...
* https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/d... (various sculptures to scroll)
* https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/...
* https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/s...
* https://harvardartmuseums.org/collect...
* https://www.artic.edu/artworks/157763...
* https://www.meisterdrucke.uk/fine-art...
* https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-c...
Tamara wrote: "And then there is poor Io's father who, when he realizes his daughter is now a heifer, says these hilarious lines:"Alas for me! I have sought you, daughter,
All over the world, and now that I have found you,
I have found greater grief. You do not answer,
And what you think is sighing comes out mooing!
And all the while I, in my ignorance, counted
On marriage for you, wanting, first, a son,
Then, later grandsons; now your mate must be
Selected from some herd, your son a bullock.
(Humphries translation)
It seems as if Ovid is having a blast. His tone is irreverent and playful as he pokes fun at the gods and their antics. He has a great sense of humor and must have been a lot of fun at partie"
Reading this passage, I first thought of the irony, as you. But then a thought came, why couldn't it be the 'honest' lamentation of the father, who lost every joy he could connect with his daughter. And if thinking further on this passage, it also could be a mockery of some man Ovid knew, etc.
I have just gotten the chance to start the book. It is easier reading than I anticipated. The comments here got very scholarly and over my head pretty fast, but I am here to learn. I was absorbed by his creation story, the mythology of the deluge/flood and repopulation of the earth. The traditional myths of Daphne, Io, & Lycaon interspersed with the larger metamorphoses of the universe and Earth I supposed just highlighted the variety of ways nature, cultures & people are changed.I am reading the translation by Charles Martin and found it a little jarring to see more contemporary identifications of nature used such as Milky Way or the concept of gravity . Or am I ignorant that in the dawning of the Common Era that the Milky Way was identified as such or the concept of gravity was understood just not scientifically proven?
I don’t have a copy of Martin, but Milky Way (in Greek galaxias, milky vault) originally referred to the dense concentration of stars we now recognize as a slice through our own Galaxy. If you have an approximate line reference I will check Ovid’s Latin. It is very difficult to make out through modern light pollution, as in my native Los Angeles, and I recall seeing it once as a child during a cross-country trip far from a major city, and again after a major earthquake blacked out the city.Martin may be punning on Ovid’s Latin where Gravity is concerned. “Gravitas” in Latin mainly referred to “weightiness,” dignified demeanor suiting statesman or other members of the upper class. (The young Julius Caesar was thought to lack sufficient *gravitas* to succeed — were they ever surprised!)
The Newtonian notion of gravity as attraction describable by mathematics would have made no sense to the ancients without a lot of effort.As one finds laid out in Aristotle, weight was an inherent part of the Four Elements, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, Earth and Water being inherently heavy and sinking to the bottom of the universe, and covered by the inherently lighter Air and Fire.
A weightless Fifth Element, Aether, or the Quintessence, surrounded this round mass, making up the celestial spheres. The Luminiferous Ether of nineteenth century physics was its verbal descendant.
I checked using a search engine, and Ovid does use “gravitate” (four syllables in Latin, not the English word) in its physical sense ofInherent weight, in describing the early universe. It shows up again a little later, where I remembered it, in relation to Jupiter, referring to “gravitate regentis,” authoritativeness of a king. It shows up elsewhere in relation to pains and burdens, including pregnancy.
Thanks Ian I certainly knew the usage of the word gravitas, but when he was describing the creation of the earth, my science oriented mind went to the theory of gravity; but just the idea of weight would fit perfectly. the denser earth drew down gross elements and was compressed by its own gravity lines 229-231; When the nighttime sky is clear, there can be seen a highway visible in heaven, named the Milky Way, distinguished for its whiteness. It is lovely isn't it?
These lines also make me remember that I found Ovid's distinguishing characteristic description between the creation of animals & men was the latter's orientation to the heavens. And even though all the other animals lean forward and look down toward the ground, he gave man a face that is uplifted, and ordered him to stand erect and look directly up into the vaulted heavens and turn his countenance to meet the the stars; the earth, that was so lately rude and formless, was changed by taking on the shapes of men.
Alexey wrote: "But then a thought came, why couldn't it be the 'honest' lamentation of the father, who lost every joy he could connect with his daughter. "The father's lament is probably very genuine. But I can't help but hear Ovid laughing in the background at this poor father's conundrum. The diction Ovid uses seems to me to reinforce the hilarity of the situation.
On the other hand, Alexey, I may just have a warped sense of humor. I think Kafka's The Metamorphosis is one of the funniest stories I've ever read. I would laugh so hard every time I tried to teach it that my students would stare at me with an absolute look of horror on their faces. Their expressions were priceless: How could she be so cruel as to laugh at a poor man who turned into a bug?
As I say, I may just have a warped sense of humor. But I hear Ovid laughing all the way through Book 1.
Apollo’s speech to Daphne, in which he lists his attributes as reasons to love him is also something of a joke: it amounts to a hymn of praise, delivered by the god in the first person. The best known examples of this genre (despite Wikipedia to the contrary on the designation), are the “I am Isis” inscriptions, lauding the Egyptian deity, and it is associated with other “oriental” gods. Ovid may be deliberately giving the “foreign” self-praise to the arch-western Apollo.Another joke, lost in Humphries’ translation, is that Argus falls asleep during Mercury’s tale of Pan and Syrinx, and the conclusion is in the narrator’s voice, telling us what the god would have said.
Tamara wrote: "But I can't help but hear Ovid laughing in the background at this poor father's conundrum. The diction Ovid uses seems to me to reinforce the hilarity of the situation."So can't I, and translators seem to agree with your interpretation. I just acquired the habit of questioning my understanding of the classic authors, so different is the context of their lives.
Ian wrote: "Ovid may be deliberately giving the “foreign” self-praise to the arch-western Apollo."
I've thought that the tracing of the origins of the gods is quite modern. Do you think Ovid could contrast 'pure' Greek gods from those came from the Middle East?
Speaking of Apollo, I often misattribute him Asia Minor origin of his sister.
The Romans were acutely aware that some gods were “foreign,” and periodically banned them, including the cult of Isis.
It is probably worth mentioning, for those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the Greek gods, that Mercury (= Hermes) is the father of Pan, by a daughter of the Arcadian hero Dryops, and that he actually won her love while tending her father’s flocks. Despite this relatively legitimate background, Pan was notorious for his pursuit of nymphs — and pretty boys. He is often shown with goat legs and goat horns, but some ancient renderings show a human body with a goat head (and tail). He was mostly an obscure local god in rural Arcadia, but famously became part of the Athenian cult after he struck the Persians at Marathon with *Panikos,* his trademark terror, or panic.
For an antiquated survey, see Franz Cumont’s “The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism.” This is available from Project Gutenberg. For a high-level view from the late Republic, see Cicero, “On the Nature of the Gods” (De Natura Deorum), in several translations.
Apollo is what the kids these days would call an incel. He wants the girl, but is too clumsy and too much of a loser to get her. Yes, there is a lesson there about pursuing things you can't acquire, and medieval Christians interpreted this as allegorized lust and chastity. That's all fair, but not what I want to focus on.
The hardest part of this story, and the part that deserves a content warning, is the attempted rape and lack of consent. Even in the last lines, this story presents an interpretation of consent "with new boughs, the laurel nodded-- it seemed to sway its treetop like a head." This is Apollo's rationalization of the tragedy and his proposed remedy, trophy taking and using the laurel parts to honor different things. It is quite horrific. It resembles the rapist's excuse, "in the end she wanted it."
I believe Ovid makes Apollo look like a fool to call attention to this injustice and perhaps to criticize Augustus and his reforms. He calls him out by mentioning the use of the laurel as trophies by Apollo and symbols by the emperor.
"But since," he said, "you cannot be my wife,
you'll be my tree! You will adorn my hair,
laurel, and you my lyre, and you my quiver.
You'll grace the Latin leaders when glad voices
proclaim a triumph and the Capitol
views long parades. You'll guard most faithfully
Augustus' doorposts and the oak between them.
This year's Nobel laureate for literature is Han Kang. I read, and can recommend, The Vegetarian. It is not an explicit retelling of the myth, but knowing the story adds depth to the novel, which touches on themes of abuse and trauma, sexual predation, and escape. Here is the quote that most directly references the myth (view spoiler)
Finally, there is a lot of visual art associated with this myth. I've collected some here. Content warning, there be boobs ahead - https://pin.it/68cH2NNhj
Ian wrote: "The Newtonian notion of gravity as attraction describable by mathematics would have made no sense to the ancients without a lot of effort.As one finds laid out in Aristotle, weight was an inheren..."
Yes, Aristotle did have an understanding of what we would now call gravity, in discussing how there is no effect without cause and how the nature of heavy bodies caused them to fall to the center of the universe. Later Greek philosophers further developed ideas about what we would call gravity, expanding on and in opposition to Aristotle's conceptions. So it doesn't seem out of place to use gravity in the translation, perhaps in both senses, as gravitas/weight and gravity/gravitation.
Janet wrote: "Susan wrote: "Metamorphoses — Week 1Book 1 includes: Prologue, The Creation, The Four Ages, The Giants, Lycaon, The Flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha, Python, Apollo and Daphne, Io and Jove, Syrinx, Io..."
Are we to assume the Iron Age descriptions are referencing the age of Augustus?
Iron Age descriptions as referring to age of Augustus - that is how I read it.
The Four (originally Five) Races go back to Hesiod (and there are traces of where he got them not relevant to Ovid). They were the very good Golden Race (or Age), the Silver, who were less good, the Bronze, who were violent and wicked, and then historical time, the Iron Race. Hesiod inserts an Heroic Race after the Bronze, to account for the “hisorical” Homeric characters, but this is often dropped from the scheme of decreasing goodness and increasing violence. The idea can be read with reference to Augustus, but it is an inherited arrangement.The 19th-century “discovery” of Prehistoric Stone, Broze, and Iron Ages is not directly related.
By the way, it is not necessary to have read Homer to understand Ovid, although the personalities of the gods are often similar. The Aeneid, a then-recent piece of Augustan propaganda, is also long, more helpful, but not essential. But I suspect the shorter mythographic “Theogony” and the moralizing “Works and Days,” both attributed to Hesiod, are more enlightening.The Theogony covers the rise of Zeus to supreme power, and his concern for Justice, which could have been applied in the learned flattery of Augustus, maybe seven or eight centuries later. Its tracing of the world from the beginning is a definite influence and model.
Works and Days laments a world of toil, menaced by corrupt petty kings and local judges, and could have been applied to the world before the Roman Empire by those inclined to flatter their conquerors.
Ian wrote: "The Romans were acutely aware that some gods were “foreign,” and periodically banned them, including the cult of Isis."Sorry for tediousness, but I wonder did they differentiate Olympian pantheon as more and less foreign gods. Particularly in case like 'Asiatic' Aphrodite of Greek pantheon conflate with very local Venus of Roman pantheon.
Michael wrote: "This is Apollo's rationalization of the tragedy and his proposed remedy, trophy taking and using the laurel parts to honor different things. It is quite horrific. It resembles the rapist's excuse, "in the end she wanted it.."I think if we shift the lens and look at the episode through Daphne’s eyes, we might see it a little differently.
Rather than submit to Apollo’s attempt to subdue her, Daphne pleads to her father to change her shape. He obliges and turns her into a tree. And as Apollo embraces the trunk and kisses the wood, we are told, And the wood shrank from his kisses.
Apollo then announces: Since you can never be my bride/My tree at least you will be. He goes on to say he will adorn himself with the laurel, will make the laurel wreath a symbol of triumph, etc. etc. Daphne seems to agree to this: The laurel/ Stirring, seemed to consent, to be saying Yes.
That’s a bit strange, isn’t it? Why would Daphne shrink from his kisses and yet agree to be worn as a crown symbolizing triumph? The question is whose triumph does the laurel wreath represent? Apollo obviously thinks it represents his triumph because he is waxing eloquent about how wonderful it is and brags about wearing it. But the fact is the laurel doesn’t represent his victory, at all. It is actually a testament to his failure—his failure to subdue Daphne (“Since you can never be my bride.”)
In other words, every time Apollo prances around wearing the laurel wreath, he is, in effect, advertising his failure to subdue Daphne and celebrating Daphne’s success in thwarting his attempted rape. And the delicious irony is the fool doesn’t even realize it. Daphne, on the other hand, certainly does. Why else would she agree to be his laurel wreath? This is her way of saying, “Look, everyone. He tried to exert his power over me, and he failed miserably.”
A young maiden has outfoxed the god Apollo. Anyone but me hear Ovid laughing?
Tamara wrote: "A young maiden has outfoxed the god Apollo. Anyone but me hear Ovid laughing?"More fun with translations! First, who knows how differently things might have gone if Cupid had not shot them with opposing arrows, and they had been free to act of their own accord?
Second, I do not get the sense, especially from the Gregory translation, that Ovid is laughing at Apollo’s failure. Rather, there is a degree of sympathy for what appears to be faithful, albeit Cupid-inspired, love:
“Daphne, Who cannot be my wife must be the seal, The sign of all I own, immortal leaf Twined in my hair as hers, and by this sign My constant love, my honour shall be shown...” (Gregory)Here, Apollo declares the laurel wreath not as a symbol of conquest, but as an emblem of love and honor—something to be celebrated in times of public ritual and triumph. In Gregory’s version, the laurel is bestowed as an honor, representing mastery, not loss.
In contrast, Humphries’ version feels more ambivalent. The laurel becomes not quite a “if I cannot have her, no one will” statement, but something closer to a trophy of defeat. Daphne preserves her autonomy through transformation, but Apollo still claims her symbolically. The laurel is not freely given; it is taken and reinterpreted by the pursuer.
The Gregory translation seems sympathetic to Apollo, while Humphries offers a more detached, even amoral, perspective. Ovid seems to presents this transformation as an amoral fairy tale, allowing the story to stand on its own terms. If we were to assign good and bad to the characters, the villain must be Cupid. But perhaps we are not meant to cheer or scorn, but simply to observe how power and desire reshape the world?
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
The Art of Love (other topics)The Art of Love (other topics)
Nightingale (other topics)
The Vegetarian (other topics)
The Metamorphosis (other topics)
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Book 1 includes: Prologue, The Creation, The Four Ages, The Giants, Lycaon, The Flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha, Python, Apollo and Daphne, Io and Jove, Syrinx, Io and Jove, and the beginning of the story of Phaethon.
Ovid starts with “the world’s beginning,” from its creation to the four ages of men to the flood and the re-peopling of the earth by Deucalion and Pyrrha. As we begin our journey through Ovid’s many changes, here are some questions to start with and also to keep in mind as we read on:
— What exactly is a metamorphoses? Is it something one sees in day to day life?
— Who are the gods who bring these beginnings and changes about?
— Is there a story or quote that particularly intrigued you and why?