CLAS 353
November 15, 2023

Ovid, Metamorphoses: idiosyncratic epic in 15 books



Publius Ovidius Naso: 43 BCE-17 CE, from Sulmo (Sulmona), studied in Rome & Athens; abandons law career for poetry; Latin love poetry celebrity (Amores, "Loves", Ars Armatoria, "The Art of Love"); exiled to Tomis (8 CE) by Augustus for carmen ("poem”) and error (“a mistake"); life in exile (Tristia, "My Sorrows", Epistulae ex Ponto, "Letters from the Black Sea")

• Ovid's identification with Actaeon ("Looking")
  
  L: death of Actaeon, Apulian red-figure skyphos (400-350 BCE)
  
  Metamorphoses 3.138-42 (Theban book)
  Amid such happy times, Cadmus, your grandson
  was first to cause you pain—strange antlers sprouting
  from his brow, those dogs that drank their master's blood.
  If you look closely, you blame the boy's Fortune,
  not a crime. How can a mistake be a crime? [error]
  
  Ovid, Tristia 2.103-10 (regrets of exiled poet)
  Why did I see anything? Why make my eyes guilty?
  Why was mischief, unwittingly, known to me?
  Actaeon, unaware, saw Diana unclothed:
  nonetheless he became his own hounds’ prey.
  Even fate must be atoned for, among the powers that be,
  to a wounded god chance is no excuse.
  On that day, when my unlucky error misled me,
  my house, humble, without stain, was destroyed.
  
  Pittoni the Younger, Diana & Actaeon (1721)
  
  
• Actaeon & loss of voice, identity, alienation; wrathful god ("Now you can tell everyone you've seen me undressed— / that is, if you can tell anything", 3.192-3)
  
  Metamorphoses 3.230ff. (hunter becomes hunted; male gaze punished)
  . . . He wants to cry out—
  no words in his mind . . .
  . . . As they pin down their master
  the pack rushes in and sets teeth in his flesh.
  Soon no place is left to rip; he groans a sound
  that doesn't seem human but could be cried
  by no stag and fills the hills he's known so well
  with cries of grief, then on his knees he begs
  not with pleading arms but with a silent face
  His friends goad the frenzied pack with the usual
  shouts, and they look for Actaeon, with no idea,
  and bellow for Actaeon, as if he weren't there
  (at his name he lifts his head), and they're mad
  the slacker's missed the show and will not see the prize.
  He'd rather miss this but he's there; he'd rather
  see than feel his own dogs' ravenous ripping.
  They cluster upon him, muzzles deep in his flesh,
  and tear apart master falsely figured as a stag.
  Not until all his many wounds wane away his life
  is the fury of quivered Diana appeased.
  
  
• Metamorphoses (pre-exile poem, ca. 8 CE, but later editions?): dactylic hexameters, new direction for Roman epic (cf. Vergil’s focused national epic & Ovid's distorted Aeneid, Metamorphoses 13.623-14.608)
  
  
• "epic" scope of Metamorphoses: creation of world (Mets. 1) to apotheosis & catasterism of Julius Caesar (Mets. 15); genesis > contemporary Rome
  
  Metamorphoses 1.1-4 (Ovid's program)
  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
  That runs from the world's beginning to our own days. [(di) ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen, "Gods, weave a continuous song to my own time"]

• collection/tapestry of 250 independent stories ingeniously linked by metamorphosis: cf. (Alexandrian) Callimachus’ (3rd BCE) Aetia, series of independent stories that are aetiological; Nicander’s (lost, 2nd BCE) Heteroeumena ("Metamorphoses"); ultimate model for collective epic verse Hesiod’s Theogony (8th century BCE)
  
  
  Augustus as Jupiter (1st century CE)
  
  
• Metamorphoses & Augustus: emperor linked with all-powerful "Jupiter of the Palatine" (1.168ff.); ironic/irreverent treatment of Julius Caesar's deification as Divus Iulius (42 BCE), "No work, in all of Caesar's great achievement, / Surpassed this greatness, to have been the father / Of our own Emperor . . . Greatness surpassed only be being father / Of one yet greater" (15.750ff.); "We cannot think him mortal, our Augustus, / Therefore, our Julius must be made a god / To justify his son" (15.760ff.); gods ignore Venus' plea for "Iulus' last descendant" (cf. Aeneid 1) & civil wars forecasted to commence, as "Jovian" Augustus' apotheosis (15.868ff.)
  
  
• Ovid's bold self-prophecy (poetic metamorphosis):
  
  Metamorphoses, Epilogue
  Now I have done my work. It will endure,
  I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire, and sword,
  beyond Time's hunger. The day will come, I know,
  So let it come, that day which has no power
  Save over my body, to end my span of life
  Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
  The better part, immortal, will be borne
  Above the stars; my name will be remembered
  Wherever Roman power rules the conquered lands,
  I shall be read, and through all centuries
  If prophecies of bards are truthful,
  I shall be living, always.
  
  judgement of Paris, mosaic from Antioch (ca. 150 CE)
  

• Metamorphoses: short, swift, fluid narratives (entertaining, humorous, clever, surprising, shocking, provocative, sad); narrative complexity—nesting of stories to avoid catalogue-effect or single narrative voice > non-linear narrative with multiple storytellers
  
  
• virtuoso poet: variety of tones, styles, genres (heroic epic, mock-epic, tragedy, comedy, elegy/love poetry, scientific/philosophical writing)
  
  
• major themes: appearance & reality, representation & reality (e.g. Arachne's Europa tapestry: "you'd think it's a real bull and a real sea", 6.104), set in universe of dynamic flux/change
  
  
• Jane Alison's selection of erotic tales (Change Me: Stories of Sexual Transformation from Ovid): psychology of desire
  
  
• transformative effects of desire in Roman elite culture: male gaze, male ownership of less privileged bodies, rape (female agency? empathy for poem's victims?); cf. "Our identities matter in core classrooms" (Columbia Daily Spectator op-ed)
  
  
• Metamorphoses: emotionally intense, visual narrative tapestry, i.e. Arachne & Minerva
  
  ancient loom scene, black-figure lekythos (550-530 BCE)
  
  
• Metamorphoses 6: Minerva's weaving contest with mortal Arachne of Lydia (theme of impiety toward gods)
  
  Metamorphoses 6.61-9 (contestants' artistry & Metamorphoses' complex narrative tapestry)
  . . . Woven in purple concocted in Tyrian pots
  and delicate shades that invisibly shift,
  as when sunrays shine through a shower of rain
  and a rainbow curves color across the wide sky;
  in it glows the whole spectrum of hues,
  but from one to the next a haze fools out eyes.
  Each shade like the next, but the ends: so distant!
  Woven in too is wiry gold thread—
  and plotted into each web are old stories.
  
  L: Houasse, Minerva and Arachne (1706)
  
  
• Minerva's tapestry: contest of Minerva & Neptune (Athens) in center, cautionary tales of divine challengers (6.85-102) in corners vs. Arachne's "subversive" composition (esp. Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo)
  
  Metamorphoses 6.129-38 (censored tapestry)
  Neither Minerva nor gnawing Envy could niggle
  with her work. Her triumph pained the golden goddess:
  she ripped that cloth colored with godly assaults
  and, clutching her shuttle of Cytorian boxwood,
  hit Arachne three or four times in the head.
  The girl couldn't bear it and slipped a noose around
  her pounding throat. But Minerva pitied and lifted
  her, saying, "Live on, bold girl, but hang all the same.
  So you'll be worried for the future as well,
  may your line bear this punishment always."
  
  Cornelis de Vos, Apollo and the Serpent Python (ca. 1636)

• Metamorphoses 1: chaos & order > desires of Apollo & Jupiter; first post-creation story, Apollo & Daphne (Apollo slays Python, yields to Cupid's arrows; epic > love poetry)
  
  L: Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (ca. 1625)
  

• Apollo's powerful desire (gaze at hair, fantasies, etc., 1.497ff.) vs. Daphne's wishes (devotee of Diana): Daphne unimpressed by Apollo's resume, appeal to Peneus; request granted; compensation?
  
  Metamorphoses 1.546-67 (transformation & Romanized conclusion)
  "Help me, Father, if there's mystic strength in your stream,
  destroy this form that's too pleasing: change me."
  Words barely uttered when slowness seeps in her limbs,
  delicate bark nestles around her soft breasts,
  her hair fans into leaves, arms lengthen to branches,
  the feet just so quick sink down sluggish as roots,
  her face turns leafy crown: all that stays is splendor.
  Apollo loves her this way, too, touches the trunk,
  can feel the nymph's heart beating beneath the new bark.
  Holding a branch like an arm in his own, he kisses
  the wood, but even it shrinks away from that kiss.
  So the god says, "Since you cannot be my bride,
  you will be my tree, laurel, and your leaves
  will twine about my hair, quiver, and lute.
  You'll be with Roman leaders when the song of glory's
  sung and the Capitol sees parades of triumph; [laurel on triumphal chariot]
  you'll stand as faithful sentinel by the twin gates
  of Augustus and guard the oak wreath hung between. [laurels before palace of emperor, Augustus' "civic crown"]
  And as my head is young, my hair's never shorn,
  you too will have forever an evergreen grace."
  The Healer was done. The laurel made a sign
  with her branches, seemed to shake her leafy crown.
  
  
• cf. Arethusa's metamorphosis: Greek nymph & hunter (Diana) > spring in Sicily; elaborately nested (Muses, rape of Proserpina) 1st-person story told to Ceres
  
  L: Houasse, Alpheus and Arethusa (1668); R: head of Arethusa, Syracusan coin (405-400 BCE)
  

  Metamorphoses 5.630-41 (Diana's protective cloud; traumatized Arethusa's transformation)
  Alpheus stays put (for he saw no footprints
  trailing off). He stood and watched my cloud, my spot.
  A chill sweat seeped out of my haunted limbs;
  deep blue drops slid from all over my skin.
  Wherever I stepped turned into a pool, dew dripped
  from my hair, and faster than I can tell this tale,
  I'd become a stream. But the river-god knew me
  even liquid, shed the man's form he'd assumed, turned
  into his water-self so he could flow within me.
  Then Diana tore open the earth. I drove through dark
  caves and reached Ortygia, which I love because
  it's Diana's name, too: here I burst into air." [freshwater spring, Sicily <> Alpheus River, Greece]

• Echo & Narcissus (Thebes, link through Tiresias: boy will live long "As long as he never knows himself", 3.348); theme of self-love (self-looking, "his eyes will be his end"; cf. Lucretius' simulacra-crazed lovers)
  
  
• Echo's back story (body > voice)? failed pursuit of Narcissus & metamorphosis ("her bones became rock", 3.401)?
  
  
  L: Cabanal, Echo (1874); R: Narcissus flower
  
  Metamorphoses 3.455-73 (Narcissus's realization; self-destructive paradox)
  "Surely my looks and age
  can't repell you—even nymphs have adored me.
  What hope your face offers I cannot quite read,
  but when I reach for you, you reach for me, too;
  when I smile, so do you; and I've spotted tears
  on your face when I cry. You signal with nods
  and I can guess by your sweet murmuring mouth
  that you answer my words with yours—I can't hear.
  I am he. I knew, my image doesn't delude me.
  I burn with love for myself, fan and feel the same flames.
  What do I do? Chase or be chased? Why chase at all?
  What I want I have: needing nothing makes me poor.
  Oh, if only my body and I could divide!
  Odd wish for a lover: to want the loved one to go.
  This hopelessness will kill me; I can't have long
  to live and will be put out while still young.
  But death doesn't disturb me—no more despair.
  Only I wish the one I love could live longer.
  Now the two of us will die with one breath."
  
  L: "The Medusa" in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); R: Cesari, Perseus & Andromeda (1592)
  
  
• Perseus & Andromeda: allusive story of heroic quest & conquest of Gorgon Medusa ("Looking"?) relegated to end of Ovid's account (Atlas' metamorphosis, slaying of sea monster; rescue of Andromeda, "he'd have sworn she was marble", 4.675), multiple metamorphoses, followed by wedding feast—Medusa's back story (Neptune, Minerva)?
  
  
  Takács, #Me(dusa)too (2018); "When Medusa Meets #MeToo"
  

• Metamorphoses 10 (misogynistic Orpheus narrates): Venus' Cyprus and the Propoetides (scorners of Venus & first prostitutes): "Pygmalion was sickened by the ingrained flaws / of the female mind and so lived alone" (10.244-5)
  
  Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea (ca. 1890)
  
  
• Pygmalion the sculptor: creation of his “ivory girl” (10.276; named "Galatea" in later texts); desire to mold beloved fulfilled
  
  Pygmalion theme in film & television: Vertigo (1958), My Fair Lady (1964), Educating Ruby (1983), Can't Buy Me Love (1987), Mannequin (1987), Pretty Woman (1990), La Femme Nikita (1997-2001), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), She’s All That (1999), The Shape of Things (2003), Project Nim (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012), Her (2013), The Makeover (2013), Barbie (?) (2023)
  
  Lars and the Real Girl (2007):
  
  (trailer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNcs9DrKYRU
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwltl2P5DJA
  
  Metamorphoses 10.250-8 (Pygmalion contemplates representation and reality)
  It looks like a real girl you'd think is alive
  and longs to be moved, except shyness intrudes—
  art masks his art so well. Pygmalion's in awe;
  flames of love for the feigned body flick at his heart.
  he touches it often with curious hands to see
  if it's flesh or ivory—it can't be ivory.
  He feels his fingers sink in the limbs and he strokes
  and then fears where he's touched might bear a bruise.
  
  Metamorphoses 10.280-94 (Pygmalion's statue comes to life after he prays to Venus)
  At home, he hurried to his modeled girl,
  leaned on a couch, and kissed her: Was she really warm?
  He brushed her lips again and touched a breast;
  when he stroked, the ivory gave, no longer firm
  but soft to his touch, as when Hymettian wax
  melts in the sun and, turned about one's thumb,
  is molded to forms, more pliable with plying.
  Amazed, thrilling nervously, afraid that he's wrong,
  again and again the lover strokes what he's wished.
  It is a live body; veins beat at his thumb!
  Then indeed our Paphian hero bursts with words
  of thanks for Venus and presses real lips at last
  with his own. The girl feels the kisses he gives
  and goes pink. Then, lifting shy eyes toward the light,
  she sees at once both lover and sky.