No More Learning

Some later Alexandrian writer appears to have recorded their origin
from rain and transferred them to the Mt. Ida in Phrygia. This
account we know only from Ovid.
A fifth tale recorded the metamorphoses of Crocus and Smilax.
Nicander seems to have told it as follows: Crocus was a young man of
Lydia, inhabiting the upper valley of the river Hermus. He loved a
girl named Smilax and was loved by her. The youth was killed acci-
dentally, perhaps by the god Mercury, and his blood became the
flower which bears his name. Smilax lamented him and became the
green briar, a plant sometimes used for mourning. With this tale
the Romans and the later Greeks appear to have been familiar. Ovid
himself was to mention it again in the Fasti. Probably he thought it
less interesting than the transformations^ of Hyacinthus to a flower
and Cyparissus to the funereal tree (Bk. 10).
The last myth dealt with Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. This tale
Ovid caused Alcithoe to recount in full.
In the region of Caria near the southwestern shores of Asia Minor,
a certain pool became quite famous. Any man bathing here, it was
said, would feel ^ mysterious enervation. Among the learned men
of Alexandrian Greece the supposed peculiarity attracted much atten-
tion; and later the Roman scholar, Varro, seems to have mentioned it
as one of the marvels known to science. Ovid repeated Varro's account
in the speech of Pythagoras (Bk. 15).
The Greek inhabitants of Caria attributed the phenomenon to
action of a strange water spirit, which was at once male and female
and attempted to bestow a like nature on any man coming under its
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
influence. The circumstance they explained by the following myth:
Mercury and Venus at one time became parents of a son, who was
called Hermaphroditus from Hermes and Aphrodite, the Greek names
of his father and mother. He grew up to be a youth of extraordinary
beauty. Happening to bathe in the pool, he was loved by the water
nymph Salmacis. She seized him and endeavored to drag him down
to the bottom. But Hermaphroditus resisted obstinately. Unable to
subdue, him, the nymph called on the gods and by their help fused
with the youth in a single preternatural body. Dismayed by the
change, Hermaphroditus asked that his misfortune might not be
unique but that others bathing in this water might also lose the quali-
ties distinguishing a man.
The idea that a local spirit might be at once male and female could
originate from malformations in nature. Among the higher animals
and human beings an individual is always of only one sex. But occa-
sionally there is born an animal or a human being so ill formed that
only careful examination will show whether it is male or female. Such
examples could suggest an ambiguous being of dual nature.
But the Carians might find a suggestion also in many religions of
Asia Minor. Among the Phoenicians and other Asiatic peoples, a god
of fertility was likely to have a goddess cooperating in his work. She
had similar functions and a very similar name. In the same way a
goddess of fertility was thought to have a male partner, resembling
her in his activities and his name. Imitating Phoenician practice, even
the Greek communities of Cypress gave their Venus (Aphrodite) a
divine consort Aphroditus. And for the worship of these deities, men
put on the attire of women, and women assumed the dress of men.
Such practice was on the whole foreign and incomprehensible to his-
toric Greece. Meeting in Asia with these divine partners a-nd extraor-
dinary rites, the Greeks might imagine that the Asiatics were wor-
shiping a being of dual nature, at once male and female.
The Carian myth of Hermaphroditus and his extraordinary trans-
formation in the pool attracted Nicander. This poet added a number
of preliminary events. The youth, he said, was born on Mt. Ida in
the Troad and reared by naiads until he was fifteen, the age when
according to Alexandrian belief a boy attained his greatest personal
charm. Eager to visit strange countries, the youth left Mt. Ida and
wandered southwards until he arrived in Caria.
While he was approaching the pool of Salmacis, Nicander con-
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? SALMACIS AND HERMAPHRODITUS
tinued, he was observed by the naiad, who had left the water tempo-
rarily to gather flowers. The poet then imitated his account of Echo
courting Narcissus (cf. Bk. 3). Delighted with the boy's appearance,
Salmacis quickly adorned herself and approaching, made overtures
to Hermaphroditus and offered to embrace him. The boy shrank
from her advances, threatening to take refuge in flight. Salmacis, like
Echo, retreated and hid in the forest. At this point Nicander
diverged from his account of Narcissus. Instead of giving up the
courtship Salmacis continued watching Hermaphroditus and waited
for another opportunity. Supposing that she had gone, the boy
ventured to swim in the pool. The naiad, quickly returning, seized
him in an embrace from which he never could escape.
During later Alexandrian times the myth was treated frequently
by painters and sculptors. There still survive three Pompeian fres-
coes of the subject and an equal number of graceful statues.
From Nicander Ovid took the incidents of the tale and perhaps
even a few of the effective similes. But he seems to have given the
narrative far more animation and beauty and to have suited it skil-
fully to the rest of his poem.
Following Nicander, Ovid mentioned the strange effect of the pool
and then repeated briefly the story of Hermaphroditus until he arrived
at the fatal spot. Ovid had already described a clear, still pool which
attracted the young Narcissus. He now gave an account of a similar
delightful pool which appeared before Hermaphroditus. Yet so deftly
did he vary details that one might even read the two accounts succes-
sively without noting an undue likeness. Before proceeding with the
tale, Ovid emphasized carefully the self-indulgent character of
Salmacis. All other naiads, he pointed out, would follow Diana in
hunting or share in athletic sport. But, even when they urged
Salmacis to do likewise, she always refused. The entire time she
passed in adorning herself, or in lying on the soft grass, or at most
in gathering flowers. On one of these latter occasions, she observed
the stranger youth.
Ovid then repeated the incident of Salmacis quickly adorning her-
self and approaching Hermaphroditus. The gracious words of
Ulysses meeting Nausicaa suggested to him the speech of the naiad.
Yet by skilful alterations he transformed a dignified request for aid
into a wanton avowal of love. By three striking comparisons, Ovid
emphasized the boy's embarrassment, and then recorded his refusal.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
After sporting a while on the grassy margin, Ovid continued, the
boy tried the water with his feet, then laying aside his clothing, went
in eagerly and began to swim. A similar incident was to occur later
in the story of Arethusa (Bk. 5). Yet in these similar passages, Ovid
contrived not only to alter the details but to contrast the noisy, viva-
cious conduct of the boy with the shy, restrained approach of the
maiden.
After mentioning the unhallowed eagerness with which Salmacis
perceived her opportunity, Ovid tried to picture graphically the white
form of the boy gliding under the transparent water. It was, he said,
as if you were to see ivory figures or white lilies encased in clear
glass. To Ovid's contemporaries the likeness may have seemed elegant
and exact. Such illustration was used afterwards by eminent poets
of the Middle Ages and even by Thomson in his Summer. But com-
parison of an attractive object in nature to an example of human
artifice has become repellant to modern taste.
Ovid narrated with animation the naiad's plunging into the water
and struggling with the loved boy. The close and terrifying manner
in which she clung to him, he suggested by the likenesses of a serpent
wrapping about an eagle, ivy growing over a tree, the tentacles of an
octopus closing round its victim. The first of these comparisons was
suggested by a fine passage in the Aeneid. Vergil, narrating how the
horseman Tarchon pulled Venulus from his saddle and battled with
him as they rode across the field, likened him to a tawny eagle carrying
and fighting with a snake. While borrowing Vergil's idea, Ovid altered
it skilfully to suit his own quite different purpose. The strange fusion
of two bodies into one he illustrated aptly by the merging of a grafted
shoot with the original tree.
In this tale Ovid presented his remarkable incidents and beautiful
setting with appropriate energy and skill. He was unfortunate, how-
ever, in his portrayal of Salmacis. It would have been possible to
present the incident of a naiad loving and seizing a youth who swam
imprudently near her dwelling and yet to have observed due restraint
and beauty. For we may find this in works as unlike as Apollonius'
account of Hylas and Hood's narrative of Hero and Leander. By?
adding the nymph's courtship of the youth on the shore, Nicander
had suggested her wanton character. And Ovid, remembering the
similar incident in the tale of Narcissus, desired to vary the effect by
contrasting the modesty of Echo with the shameless effrontery of
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? SALMACIS AND HERMAPHRODITUS
Salmacis. But he was not content with this. Throughout the story,
he emphasized her wanton character and at the same time tended to
present her as attractive and deserving sympathy.
Notwithstanding this defect, Ovid's tale of Hermaphroditus exerted
an important influence in later times.
In a poem on Cleopatra, Martial borrowed the comparison of a
swimmer to lilies encased in glass and imitated the early part of the
struggle in the pool.
Dante heard souls walking in the fire of Purgatory recall Ovid's
myth as an example of normal lust. He imitated the metamorphosis
in the justly famous incident where the six-footed snake leaped on
Agnello; held more closely than ivy round an oak; and combined with
him into a monster which was neither two nor one.
In two sonnets of the Passionate Pilgrim and in Venus and Adonis,
Shakespeare recalled Ovid's Hermaphroditus. To his Adonis he gave
the same character of beautiful appearance and aversion to love. He
showed Venus, enamored with his beauty, first boldly courting him and
then seizing and clinging to him despite his resistance.
Milton, in the preface to his Defensio, declared that his opponent
Salmasius was like the fountain Salmacis and would have a similar
effect on noble minds. The fusion of Ovid's hero and heroine probably
suggested to him the very different passage where Raphael described
to Adam the nature of marriage between Angels:
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb exclusive bars,
Easier than air with air, if sprites embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring.
Here, as in the case of Eve beguiled by her own image, Milton spirit-
ualized the essential ideas.
Addison translated Ovid's story. Swinburne alluded to it while
describing an ancient statue of the hero.
Albani and Bosio treated the subject in painting. And modern
science has applied the term hermaphrodite not only to the spurious
examples of dual nature in man and the higher animals but also to the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
genuine cases of mollusks and earthworms, where the same individual
may have offspring as either male or female.
Athamas and Ino
By telling how Bacchus overcame the daughters of Minyas, Ovid
had introduced a new story among the familiar myths of Thebes. He
now returned to Theban tradition and recorded the fate of the god's
foster parents, Athamas and Ino. With Euripides and Theocritus
he had shown Ino taking part in the death of Pentheus (Bk. 3) and
so implied that her own tragic misfortune occurred later. Thus Ovid
was able to make the fate of Athamas and Ino an occasion for the last
event of his Theban history, the departure of Cadmus and Harmonia.
The myth that Ino became a sea goddess, Leucothea, was old and
'familiar to Greek literature. The Odyssey and Pindar mentioned it.
Aeschylus and Euripides treated the story in plays which are now lost.
Euripides told it again in his Phrixus, combining the myth of Ino with
a tale of the Golden Fleece (cf. Bk. 7). In the Medea he alluded to
an otherwise unknown version in which Ino herself killed her two sons.
None of these older accounts affected Ovid.
The Manual repeated the tale as follows: Juno was offended with
Athamas and Ino, because they attempted to rear the infant Bacchus.
She drove them mad. While hunting in the forest, Athamas mistook
his older son, Learchus, for a deer and killed him with an arrow. Ino,
throwing her younger child, Melicertes, into a cauldron, leaped with it
into the sea. There she became the goddess Leucothea, and her son
became Palasmon, a god of shores and harbors.
Nicander added further details. In order to madden Athamas and
Ino, he said, Juno invoked a Fury, which appeared on the threshold
of their palace and barred escape until they were driven from their
senses. After leaving the palace, he continued, Ino journeyed in a
southeasterly direction to the Isthmus of Corinth; followed its eastern
shore; and finally leaped from a headland called Moluris into the waves
of the Saronic Gulf. The queen's attendants followed her to the edge
of the cliff and there were transformed, some into statuesque rock,
others into sea fowl.
To the Greek myth, the Italians added a surprising sequel, which
probably was recorded by Varro. When Ino leaped with her child
into the Saronic Gulf, they said, Panope and other sea deities pre-
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? AT HAM AS AND INO
served them from death and conveyed them by a very long and devious
route to the western shores of Italy and the mouth of the Tiber. There
they became deities and were identified with the Roman Matuta and
Portumnus.
Ovid found the myth of Athamas and Ino of great interest. He
retold it at length in the Metamorphoses; used it in the Fasti as ex-
planation of a festival called the Matralia, and alluded to it briefly
in the Ibis. For the Metamorphoses Ovid borrowed judiciously from
the Manual, Nicander and Varro. But he improved the tale greatly
by adding new material from? others and by inventions of his own.
Tradition had localized the events in Orchomenus. Ovid implied,
however, that the tragedy occurred in the more familiar city of Thebes
and not long after Bacchus conquered the daughters of Minyas. Under
these circumstances it was hardly possible to suppose with the
Manual that Juno was punishing Athamas and Ino for receiving the
infant god. So long an interval of time had passed that Bacchus was
now a grown man. Ovid imagined, therefore, that Juno overlooked the
offense until Ino provoked her a second time by immoderate boasting.
Imitating the jealous soliloquies of Juno in the Aeneid, Ovid pic-
tured the goddess reviewing the triumphs of her enemy Bacchus and
resolving to use similar methods in return. Nicander had shown Juno
employing a Fury to madden Athamas, and Vergil had shown her
leaving heaven to enlist the Fury Allecto in her plot for arousing
Amata and Turnus. Ovid followed both poets, substituting the better
known Fury Tisiphone.
Nicander and Vergil had merely recorded the summoning of the
Fury, leaving the details obscure. Ovid imagined that Juno sought
Tisiphone even in the world of the dead. Thus he added to the story
a theme of extraordinary interest.
In the Odyssey a memorable pas-
sage had recorded the experience of Ulysses in the land of shades.
Many subsequent authors of Greece had treated more or less fully of
the future life and from the time of Lucretius almost every important
Roman poet had explored in imagination the world of the dead. Of
these many predecessors, none had approached in beauty and orderly
fullness the account in Vergil's Aeneid.
Following Vergil, Ovid described the approach to Hades, the gen-
eral nature of the kingdom, and the home of the Furies before the
gates of Tartarus. But he himself invented the city of Dis. Since the
Odyssey, Greek and Roman poets had been fond of describing the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
region of punishment and recording the torture of notorious offenders.
Ovid followed their example. With Tibullus he called this region the
Accursed Seat and described the torture of Ixion and the Belides, or
daughters of Danaus. From the Odyssey he added the account of
Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus. But he suggested appropriately that
Juno took special interest in the sufferings of her former enemy Ixion
and of Sisyphus, the brother of her new enemy Athamas. That Juno
should see the region of punishment, was in accord with the Odyssey
and most other poetical descriptions of the land of spirits. These
accounts assumed that the region of punishment was visible and acces-
sible to the rest of Hades. But Vergil described Tartarus a. s shut off
by a high wall and closed gates, so that Aeneas could learn of it only
by hearsay. Ovid combined inadvertently the older idea of notorious
felons in an accessible region of punishment with the Vergilian idea
of Furies guarding the closed gates of Tartarus.
At the beginning of the Aeneid Vergil had shown Juno imploring the
aid of Aeolus and promising him reward, and Aeolus replying that she
needed only to command and the work would be done. This passage
Ovid had imitated already in Juno's appeal to Oceanus (see Callisto
Bk. 2). He followed it again in Juno's visit to Tisiphone, but for
variety he merely indicated, instead of quoting, Juno's plea.
Ovid invented a terrifying description of the Fury arraying herself
and departing, attended by shapes of Fear, Terror, and Madness.
Following Nicander, he showed her appearing on the threshold of
Athamas and barring escape; but he added the vivid account of her
snaky locks. Vergil had shown how Alecto hurled a snake at Amata,
which crawled over her breast infecting her mind with its poison, and
how later the same Fury used her torch to incite madness in Turnus.
Ovid imagined that Tisiphone used both incitements against Athamas
and Ino and poured out also an infernal mixture compounded of in-
numerable fantastic ingredients. Ovid's account was vivid and dra-
matic, but it erred by running to excess.
The Manual had spoken of Athamas as killing his son in the forest.
Ovid increased the horror by having the event occur in the palace and
in the presence of his mother, and in other ways he heightened the
atrocity of the crime. Since Juno had resolved to learn by the ven-
geance which Bacchus inflicted on Pentheus, Ovid described the whole
scene as a mocking imitation of the death of Pentheus. And he fol-
lowed it with a striking account of Ino's leap into the sea.
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? ATHAMAS AND INO
The marvellous voyage of Ino and Melicerta from the Saronic Gulf
to the banks of the Tiber Ovid was to tell at length in his Fasti. He
decided to give the present myth a different conclusion. Aware that
Venus had persuaded Jupiter to deify her son Aeneas (Bk. 14), he
showed her persuading Neptune to deify her granddaughter Ino and
the child Melicerta. This event, he said, interrupted the voyage while
they were still tossing among the waves of the Ionian Sea.
While recording the words of Venus, Ovid mentioned gracefully two
well known accounts of her origin. Introducing her as the niece of
Neptune, he implied with the Iliad that she was a child of Jupiter and
Dione. But he showed her alluding to a belief that she was created in
foam of the sea. The Theogony had recorded this tradition, declaring
that Venus took form when the severed flesh of Uranus fell into the
waves and was conveyed by them to Cythera. This tradition had
inspired a well known picture by Apelles, to which Ovid alluded fre-
quently in his other poems.
Following Nicander, Ovid closed the tale with the transformation
of Ino's attendants. He described vividly their hardening into statu-
esque rock. It would have been well to omit the less interesting change
into sea fowl.
Ovid's effective and very original treatment of Athamas and Ino
was for many centuries the only account available for later times, and
always it has been the best. The passage dealing with the Lower
World was especially famous. This and a passage in Ovid's tale of
Orpheus (Bk. 10) afforded the only well known descriptions of the
famous criminals Tantalus and Sisyphus.
Dante compared the madness of Athamas and Ino with that of his
Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha. He recalled Ovid's city of Dis, describ-
ing it as a walled city enclosing the lower circles of Hell. And the
punishment of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill only to have it
roll down again, probably suggested to him the fate of the Miserly and
the Prodigal. These, he said, roll huge stones in opposite directions
round the Fourth Circle of the Inferno until they clash; then taunt
each other; and roll them back to clash on the other side.
Jean de Meun used Ovid's account of Sisyphus in the Romance of
the Rose. Ino and Melicerta reappeared among the sea deities of
Ariosto, Camoens, Spenser, and Milton's Comus. Spenser followed
Ovid also in more important passages. The flight and metamorphosis
of Ino inspired a remarkable account of Malbecco, who fled crazed by
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
misfortune; leaped from a sea cliff; and became the personification of
Jealousy. And the descent of Juno into the Lower World suggested
a fine passage in which Night descended thither to obtain the help
of Aesculapius. Recalling Melicerta's fate, Milton said of the
drowned Lycidas
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shall be good
To all who wander on the perilous flood.
Ovid's myth inspired also statues by the French sculptors Royal
and Granier in the garden of Versailles.
Cadmus and Harmonia
The departure of Cadmus and Harmonia and their transforma-
tion into serpents was told in one form in the Baccha of Euripides.
The death of Pentheus, said Euripides, would compel them to leave
Thebes. They were to become serpents and ride in a chariot drawn
by cows, leading a barbarian host into Greece. By plundering Delphi,
they should incur the destruction of their army. But Mars should
transport Cadmus and Harmonia to the Isles of the Blest. This
account Ovid did not use. Callimachus and Apollonius alluded to a
quite different story. They implied that Cadmus and Harmonia re-
tained the human form and made war not on the Greeks, but on the
Illyrians inhabiting the northern shores of the Adriatic. Not until
they had conquered Illyria, did they assume the serpent form. This
account the Manual repeated with a few additional details: After
leaving Thebes, Cadmus and Harmonia took refuge with a tribe called
the Eel Men (Enchelians). The latter, obeying an oracle, made them
their leaders in a war against Illyria. During this war, Harmonia
bore a son named Illyricus. Ultimately Cadmus and Harmonia were
transformed and Jupiter put their souls in Elysium. This version
also Ovid ignored.
Nicander gave a still different account. He said nothing of Illyrian
warfare and confined himself to the metamorphosis. This he made the
final stage in the atonement required by Mars because Cadmus had
vanquished the sacred dragon (cf. Bk. 8). In describing the meta-
morphosis Nicander drew on a popular belief, especially common in
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? PERSEUS AND ATLAS
Africa, that, when a human being dies, the spirit leaves the body in the
form of a snake. The Zulu and others holding this belief imagine that
the spirit retains a human mind but always appears as a serpent.
Accordingly, Nicander showed Cadmus and Harmonia continuing
after the change to inhabit Illyria and show kindness to the human
race.
Thus far the occasion for the departure of Cadmus and Harmonia
had been the death of Pentheus. But Ovid made the occasion the sub-
sequent destruction of Athamas and Ino. Then, he said, Cadmus and
Harmonia fled to Illyria and Cadmus was anxious to complete the
atonement required after the death of the dragon. In the rest of the
tale Ovid probably followed Nicander closely. The transformation
of Cadmus and Harmonia he pictured with admirable brevity, and
power. Their alarm was occasioned by dread of separation from
each other. Later Ovid was to give a similar, though less detailed,
account of Philemon and Baucis (Bk. 8).
Ovid's tale inspired more than one great passage of modern poetry.
Dante recalled it in the famous incident where the serpent Guercio
exchanged forms with the thief Buoso. Milton, describing the dragon
shape in which the Tempter drew near to Eve, characterized it as equal
in loveliness to the serpent forms which changed Harmonia and Cad-
mus. Details from Ovid's myth aided Milton later in the great involun-
tary transformation of Satan and his followers. Matthew Arnold
retold Ovid's entire story in a charming song of his Empedocles on
Aetna,
Perseus and Atlas
After recording how Cadmus and Harmonia obtained their new
form, Ovid mentioned the ascent of Bacchus to join the gods of
Olympus, with the improbable suggestion that these fresh honors
greatly comforted Cadmus and Harmonia, his serpent grandparents in
Illyria. At this point Ovid passed from the myths of Thebes to those
of Argos. He pointed out that Acrisius, king of the latter city, had
remained hostile not only to the alien Bacchus but even to his 'own
grandson, Perseus. Ovid then began to tell striking adventures of
Perseus, who, as he said, was related distantly to the family of Cadmus
because both were descendants of Io.
In Greek culture the story of Perseus was of early origin and very
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
famous. The Iliad mentioned him as child of Jupiter and Danae and
grandson of Acrisius. The Theogony recorded his killing the Gorgon
Medusa. Pindar and others added further circumstances, and certain
adventures of Perseus appeared frequently in vase painting and sculp-
ture. The story was recorded in full by the Manual. Though neg-
lected by leading Roman authors, the subject was well known to the
Augustans. Ovid found it of great interest and alluded to it repeat-
edly in his other poetry. In the Metamorphoses he told certain adven-
tures which he thought that his countrymen would find new or
especially interesting; but he assumed that his readers were already
acquainted with the subject and made no attempt to give the tale as
a whole. Before noticing single adventures it will be wise, therefore,
to repeat the story in the Manual, which Ovid used as the basis of his
own.
Acrisius, according to this version, learned from an oracle that he
was to die by the hand of his grandson. To prevent this, he confined
his daughter, Danae, in a strong and well guarded tower. But Jupiter
courted her, entering as a shower of gold. When Perseus was born,
Acrisius had the mother and child put in a chest and thrown into the
sea. The waves carried them to the island of Seriphus. There a
fisherman, Dictys, rescued and cared for them, aided by Polydectes,
the king. When Perseus was grown, the king began to court Danae
against her will and removed Perseus by directing him to bring as a
wedding present the head of the Gorgon Medusa. This he supposed
would assure the death of the youth. But Mercury and Athena came
to the aid of Perseus. By their direction he seized the single eye
which the three Graeae were using in turn and so compelled them to
inform him how he might obtain from certain nymphs a pair of winged
sandals, a helmet which would render him invisible, and a wallet for
carrying the Gorgon head. Mercury then furnished a sickle-shaped
sword and Athena a shield in which he was to see the Gorgon's reflec-
tion. Thus provided he was successful. While returning with the
head of Medusa he delivered and married Andromeda, daughter of
Cepheus, the Aethiopian king, and overcame the opposition of another
suitor) named Phineus. Continuing with Andromeda to Seriphus,
Perseus destroyed Polydectes and rescued his mother. From there he
departed to his native Argos. At the news of his approach, Acrisius
left the city. Perseus followed, hoping to reassure his grandfather,
but killed him accidentally with a discus.
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? PERSEUS AND ATLAS
Passing over the earlier half of the story in the Manual, Ovid began
at the moment when Perseus was returning with the head of Medusa.
He implied that, instead of enclosing it in a wallet, Perseus carried the
fearful object exposed in his hand. The idea was improbable for
more than one reason, but it enabled Ovid to include more easily sev-
eral new incidents. The first was the transformation of Medusa's
blood, which fell through the air to the sand of Libya far beneath. In
the Theogony drops of blood from the wounded Uranus had become
Furies as they touched the ground. Apollonius observed that by a
similar miracle the blood of Medusa became the many deadly serpents
of Libya. Varro of Atax repeated the tale, and Ovid gladly followed
his example.
Greek authors had differed greatly as to the places where Perseus
went in search of the Gorgons. At one time or another they localized
the Gorgons near each of the four limits of the world. Profiting by
these discordant suggestions, Ovid imagined that Perseus, while return-
ing across Libya, encountered violent and contrary winds which
swept him hither and thither throughout the known world and at last
drove him back to western Africa and the region of Atlas. The idea
was picturesque; but Ovid carried it to undesirable excess.
With the coming of night, Ovid continued, Perseus craved shelter
from the famous giant Atlas. This giant, according to the Odyssey,
had charge of the pillars which upheld the sky. The Theogony
declared that Atlas himself supported the heavens on fiis shoulders, and
this became the more usual view. Both Apollonius and the Manual
added that he was owner of the famous garden, from which Hercules
plundered the golden apples of the Hesperides. And Vergil described
Atlas as a giant who had assumed the likeness of a great, snowy moun-
tain commanding the western region of Africa. Profiting by these
hints, Ovid imagined that, when Perseus arrived, Atlas was still a giant
in human form, ruling a prosperous kingdom and alarmed by a
prophecy that one day his garden should be robbed by a son of Jove.
When Perseus described himself as a son of Jove, Atlas mistook him
for the destined robber and endeavored by violence to drive him away.
Unable to resist, Perseus transformed him into the well known moun-
tain described by Vergil. Telling later how Perseus visited the Graeae,
Ovid forgot his innovation and referred to Atlas as already a moun-
tain at this earlier time.
Ovid's transformations of the Gorgon blood and the giant Atlas
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK IV
attracted many authors of later times. Lucan repeated the account
of Medusa's blood changing to Libyan serpents and added a fearsome
list of the chief varieties. Milton, following both Ovid and Lucan, com-
pared the hall swarming with devils who had become serpents to the
soil bedropt with blood of Gorgon.
Petrarch declared himself petrified by the glance of Laura, as Atlas
by that of Medusa. To Camoens the fate of Atlas probably suggested
a fine account of Adamastor hardening into a mountain near the Cape
of Storms.