CLAS 353
November 26, 2024

Birth of Dionysus (Apulian red-figure krater, ca. 405-385 BCE)

Group Presentations: Thursday, December 5 (Groups 4-6) & Tuesday, December 10 (Groups 1-3)



Ovid, Metamorphoses: Alison's "Ruined" stories

• thematic pairings (?): Semele ~ Glaucus & Scylla (desire & dangerous power/jealousy); Tereus, Procne & Philomela ~ Scylla, Nisus's daughter (desire & familial disruption); Hyacinth ~ Adonis (brevity of desire)
  
  
• Semele: Metamorphoses 3 (Theban book)
  
  Pittoni the Younger, Diana & Actaeon (1722)
  
  Metamorphoses 3.253-5 (reaction in Thebes to preceding Actaeon story)
  The talk goes two ways: the goddess seems too harsh
  to some, but others like what she’s done, says it suits
  her stern virginity; each side argues its case.
  
  Rubens, Death of Semele (ca. 1630)
  
  
• Juno's jealousy & Jupiter's foolish promise; power imbalance (Jupiter)
  
  Metamorphoses 3.302-9 (Jupiter grants Semele’s wish)
  As much as he can, he tries to pen in his strength—
  he won’t pick up the blazing bolt that atomized
  hundred-armed Typhon: that one’s too ferocious.
  There’s a more delicate bolt the Cyclops forged
  in which he poured less ravaging fury, less fire:
  gods call this second-tier arms. With it, Jove enters
  the House of Agenor. Semele’s body is stormed—
  she can’t manage this gift and explodes into flame.
  
  Silenus & infant Dionysus (Roman copy of 4th-3rd century BCE marble)
  
  
• compensation (Thebes?): birth of Bacchus
  
  L: Rosa, Glaucus and Scylla (ca. 1650)
  
  
• Glaucus & Scylla: nested sea-monster story (Sicilian sea-nymphs) within Ovid’s (anti-)Aeneid (Trojans reach Sicily, Scylla & Charybdis at Strait of Messina; avoided at Aeneid 3.684ff., as Circe at Aeneid 7.10ff.)
  
  L: Scylla (Paestan krater, 5th century BCE); R: Scylla (Boeotian bell krater, ca. 450-425 BCE)
  
  
• Circe's jealousy: rejection by Glaucus (his story?) after he's rejected by Scylla on seaside; Scylla's loss of form & self (body dysmorphia)
  
  Metamorphoses 14.59-69 (Scylla’s horrific metamorphosis in pool)
  Now Scylla appears. She dips herself to the hips
  and suddenly sees her loins deformed to barking
  beasts. At first she can’t believe these creatures are her,
  tries to get away—or get them away—afraid
  of the snapping jaws. But what she flees follows,
  and as she flails for her body—thighs, shins, or feet—
  She touches the fangs and muzzles of hell-hounds.
  She stands amid raving dogs that once were her hips,
  struggling to tame the wild bodies beneath her.
  Glaucus wept for the girl he’d loved, and he kept far
  from Circe, too cruel with her powerful potions.
  
  
  
• Tereus, Procne, Philomela: Ovid does tragedy (cf. lost Medea): cursed wedding of Thracian Tereus & Athenian Procne attended by Furies, screech-owl (6.428ff.); Procne's fateful request (6.440ff.)
  
  
• catalyst: Thracian tyrant Tereus's "natural lust" (6.458) > deception & undervalued kin relationships > tragic chain of events
  
  Metamorphoses 6.475-82 (Philomela pleads with her father to visit Procne; Tereus's gaze)
  What, when Philomela wants this as well, wrapping
  arms around her father, coaxing—can’t she go see
  her sister?—pleading for (but against!) her own good?
  Tereus watches and prefondles in looking,
  Seeing her kisses, her arms circling a neck—
  it all kindles and stirs and flares him up hot.
  Each time she embraces her father, he wishes
  he were her father (it would be no less obscene).
  
  
• predatory/tyrannical Tereus claims ownership of Philomela, "'I've won! What I want I now hold' / . . . like Jove’s hunting eagle that drops in the aerie / the hare it’s got trapped in hooked talons" (6.514ff.)
  
  
• Philomela raises voice after rape ("I'll find people and tell", 6.546); Tereus's reaction?
  
  Procne, Philomela & Itys (Attic cup, ca. 490 BCE)
  
  
• Philomela regains a voice
  
  Metamorphoses 6.581-6 (Philomela’s narrative tapestry)
  The brutal tyrant’s wife unrolls the cloth
  and there reads her ruined sister’s story—
  but (amazingly) says nothing. Fury seals her lips,
  and her tongue can't find words raging enough.
  No space in her for crying: what's right and wrong
  explode within, and all she sees is punishment.
  
  Rubens, Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys (1636–8)
  
  
• Procne as agent of revenge: powerful emotions & bad choices; further tragedy & undervaluing of kin-relationship ("He can say mother, but she can't say sister", 6.633) > cannibalism
  
  Metamorphoses 6.652-73 (Tereus dines alone in "a grave family practice"; tragic irony/doublespeak)
  “Fetch Itys,” he says.
  Procne can no longer hide her bitter delight;
  wanting to announce her ruin herself, she says,
  “You have what you want right there.” He glances about,
  looks for the boy; and as he looks and calls again,
  Just as she is, hair spattered from savage slaughter,
  in bursts Philomela. She throws the boy’s bloody head
  at his father’s face, and she’s never wanted so
  much to speak, to find the right words for her joy.
  With a roar the Thracian shoves the table away
  and shouts to the snaky sisters of underland Styx.
  First he's crazed and would if he could slit open his gut,
  dig out the hideous meal and half-eaten flesh;
  then he weeps and says he's his boy's tragic tomb;
  now with bare sword he hunts Pandion's daughters.
  But the sisters suddenly seem fluttering, feathered:
  they do flutter with feathers! One flies to the forest,
  one up to the roof, and on their breasts they still bear
  the markings of murder: plumage speckled with blood.
  And he in his rage and rushing lust to avenge
  becomes a bird, too: on his head stands a crest
  and his oversized beak juts out like a sword.
  
  
• metamorphoses: L: hopooe (Tereus); C: nightingale (Philomela); R: swallow (Procne)
  
  thrush nightingale singing (lament?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdlIbNrki5o
  
  
• Scylla, daughter of Nisus: desire vs. kin-relationship (father/daughter)
  
  Europa & Zeus (Attic red-figure krater, 490 BCE)
  
  
• Minos of Crete (son of Jupiter & Europa): purple lock?
  
  
• Scylla's moment of rationalizing desire & betrayal
  
  Metamorphoses 8.72-5 (Scylla deifies her desire)
  I wish to god I had no father! We’re each our own
  god, really. Fortune’s disgusted by lazy desire.
  Any other girl burning like this would have long
  since demolished whatever hindered her love.
  
  Osprey ("sea hawk")
  
  
• nighttime theft of lock; Minos's reaction? pursuit of ship & metamorphosis of Nisus & Scylla into sea-birds
  
  
• Hyacinth & Apollo (Orpheus's tale): young Spartan athlete cut down in prime; god's unpossessable desire (cf. Adonis)
  
  Metamorphoses 10.189-95 (Hyacinth dies before Apollo)
  But his skills did no good: the wound couldn’t be healed.
  As, in a fresh garden, you snap stems of violets
  or poppies or lilies with long golden tongues
  and they wilt and soon droop their heavy, creped heads
  and can no longer stand but gaze at the ground:
  so, as he died, his face was cast down and his neck,
  with no strength for itself, slumped down to his chest.
  |
  L: Jean Broc, Death of Hyacinthos (1801); R: hyacinth flowers
  
  
• Hyacinth's short-lived flowering monumentalized in midsummer Spartan ritual of mourning/Hyacinthia (10.214-19)
  
  John William Waterhouse, The Awakening of Adonis (1899-1900)
  
  
• Adonis (Orpheus's final story, Metamorphoses 10): son of incestuous Cinyras & Myrrha (born from her tree); Venus infatuated ("Like Diana", 10.536); embedded cautionary tale of Atalanta & Hippomenes (mutual desire, race/courtship, brief marriage)
  
  
• Atalanta & Hippomenes metamorphisized into lions; Venus's warning? Adonis's death?
  
  Metamorphoses 10.731-9 (Adonis’s metamorphosis into short-lived flower)
  [Venus] sprinkled
  scented nectar on his blood. With every drop
  the blood began to swell, as when bubbles rise
  in volcanic mud. No more than an hour had passed
  when a flower the color of blood sprang up,
  the hue of a pomegranate hiding ruby seeds
  in its leathery rind. But the pleasure is brief:
  the anemone barely clings and falls at a breath,
  shaken free by the wind that lives on its name.
  
  L: Women at the Adonia (Attic red-figure vase, ca. 425 BCE); R: anemone ("wind") flowers
  
  
• brief nature of desire/pleasure/beauty (eludes even gods): cf. Adonia (aetiology of Greek women's festival, short-lived plants on rooftops)
  
  
  
  

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