Milton
suggested
in his Ode on a Fair Infant that she had
ventured to return.
ventured to return.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v1
This doctrine Ovid
found implied in Vergil's Sixth Eclogue and explained elaborately in
Varro's Divine Antiquities. From Varro he took the greater part of
his material. This would account for his unusual reticence about the
gods. In the Fasti Ovid modified Varro further by identifying Chaos
with the Roman deity Janus, god of beginnings, and declaring that
during creation Janus obtained his odd contemporary form.
Another Alexandrian theory had done away entirely with the gods.
The Epicurean philosophers believed that Chaos had consisted of in-
numerable hard, indivisible atoms. Moving rapidly and colliding with
one another, these atoms had ultimately combined, first into the four
elements and then into all the phenomena of the present world. This
theory Lucretius expanded into a magnificent narrative of Creation.
But thoughtful Romans were not willing to depart so far from tra-
dition. They preferred the doctrine of the Stoics. For this reason
Ovid did not use the ideas of Lucretius. But he may have followed
him in some details.
In his account of the heavens, Ovid is peculiar. Both Genesis and
Lucretius have much to say of the sun and moon. But Ovid does not
mention them at all. Most accounts of the creation imagine the stars
to have been formed after the separation of earth and sky. But Ovid
supposed them to have existed in Chaos and to have lain buried under
the confused material.
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? THE CREATION
In his account of the earth Ovid followed on the whole the scientific
belief of his time. Thus he described the earth as round and he divided
it into the five zones which we recognize today. He assigned the winds
to four different regions of the earth and made them subject only to
the Creator. The more popular theory had supposed that the god
Aeolus kept all the winds in the cave of an island near Sicily. This
doctrine Vergil made famous in the Aeneid and Ovid was to follow in
several other tales of his Metainorphoses. In naming the regions ap-
pointed for the winds, Ovid was consistent with the geography of his
time; but he described the known world as smaller than it actually
was. Well informed Romans already had heard something of the
Ganges, the British Isles, Madeira, and the cataracts of the Nile. The
rather elaborate theories of animal life, which had been outlined by
Alexandrian philosophers, Ovid did not repeat. Like other ancient
poets, he made his treatment of plants and animals brief.
A belief that originally man was moulded out of clay was common
to early peoples in many regions of the world. In Greece it may have
begun as a local myth of Phocis, where a number of oddly formed
rocks were shown as work left incomplete by Prometheus. The idea
was recorded in the Manual and alluded to by Horace. Another idea
grew up, however, to the effect that a god created man from divine
substance, and this too appeared in the Manual. Alexandrine phil-
osophy had suggested the distinction between man as looking up and
animals as looking down. But Ovid was the first to phrase the dis-
tinction clearly and make it famous.
Ovid's narrative of the creation had not the pious reverence of
Genesis or the noble earnestness of Lucretius. There was even a ten-
dency to bring out the droll and grotesque. Yet within brief com-
pass Ovid gave the subject'great interest. His style was poetic; his
presentation was orderly; and he reached a well prepared climax in
the creation of man.
The Romans, especially Seneca, greatly admired Ovid's account.
Christian authors found it unusually interesting and reconciled it
easily with Scripture. In the eleventh century Heinrich von Augsburg
adapted it for his Latin poem about Adam. Camoens followed Ovid
in a spirited narrative of the Creation pictured on the walls of Nep-
tune's palace. In the final scene of King John Shakespeare applied
to England Ovid's opening words about Chaos. Milton, in his su-
preme descriptions of both Chaos and Creation, used material from
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
many parts of Ovid's narrative, including nearly all his account of
man.
Many poets delighted also in recalling single details which had
caught their attention. Tasso, while repeating the magician's advice
to Rinaldo, noted the distinction of man as looking upward. Lope
de Vega made the same observation in his Discreta Enamorada.
Shakespeare's Othello checked himself with the thought
Once put out thy light,
Thou cunningest pattern of excelling Nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
Which can thy light relume.
Goethe alluded to the Titan's creation of man at the close of his
famous lyrical monologue, Prometheus. And Dante remembered in
the Paradiso that Castile is "the region where sweet Zephyr rises, to
open the new leaves. "
The Four Ages
Until comparatively recently, men in all parts of the world have
been so. impressed with the evils of life as to imagine that humanity
had originally known a better time but somehow had declined into.
the present state of wretchedness. Early peoples accounted for "the
change in two ways. Accorcling to the Hebrews and Hindus, man first
inhabited a Paradise, which comprised a small area set apart either
in heaven or on earth. This happy abode he lost by disobedience.
According to other peoples, living as far apart as Persia and Mexico,
the whole earth had passed through a succession of ages. A given
age might end quietly or it might end in a great flood, fire, or other
catastrophe. But the change was not at first attributed to human sin.
The idea of successive 'ages appeared in Hesiod's Works and Days.
Digressing from his main theme, Hesiod recounted picturesquely the
ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes, and Iron. By the "Age of
Gold," he meant not only a happy period but one in which men were
actually created from gold, and so with the other ages named for
metals. By the Age of Heroes he referred to a mythical time of demi-
gods which included the wars about Thebes and Troy.
Aratus treated the idea in his Phenomena; but he related the
changes to an increase of wickedness among men. In the Golden Age,
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? THE FOUR AGES
he said, the maiden deity Justitia 1 lived with humanity, guiding men
in the ways of peace. In the Silver Age she retired to the hills but
returned occasionally to rebuke their evil ways. In the Bronze Age
evil increased so much that she left the earth and became the con-
stellation of the Virgin. This account Ovid probably knew both in
the original and in the translations by Cicero and by Varro of Atax.
He took from it the idea of his first three ages, with progressively in-
creasing evil, and the ultimate departure of Justice to heaven. Aratus
had said that she may have been the daughter of Astraeus. But Ovid
appears to have been the first who named her Astraea. In the Fasti
also he referred to her departure but called her Justitia. Both pas-
usages omitted her metamorphosis into a constellation. The idea of
Aratus that increasing wickedness brought men to feed on animals,
LQvid reserved for his speech of Pythagoras (Bk. 15).
For many details of these three ages Ovid turned to earlier Boman
authors. Vergil's Fourth Eclogue and Georgics could furnish almost
all that he needed for the Golden Age. Varro had recorded Stoic
doctrines on the subject, which were helpful throughout. The Romans
had given up the Greek idea that men living in these three ages were
created from the respective metals. By the Golden Age they meant
only the happiest period of human history, by the Silver Age a time
of inferior felicity, and so on.
The idea of a fourth age of Iron, Ovid seems to have taken from an
Epode of Horace. In this poem Horace had pictured life in the Isles
of the Blest, where the Golden Age still continued and had not given
way to the Ages of Bronze and of Iron. JXhejdeaJhat. the gods in
general mingjed_wjth jrien until repelled by . the. wickedness of the latest
__age, Ovid found in Catullus' famous Marriage of Peteus anaTTlteiis.
To the Iron Age he seems to have transferred most of the circum-
stances which Varro had recorded for the Bronze. The change left
Ovid's account of the Bronze Age rather vague and inconsistent with
what followed. But it added to the effect of a graded and fearful
decline.
Among the Roman poets there had been a tendency to think of
1 Often the Greek name of a deity or a mythological person differs from that of his
Roman equivalent. Aratus calls the goddess of justice Dike, and Ovid calls her
(in the Fasti) Justitia. And this is true of such a well known deity as the Greek
Zeus and the Roman Jupiter or such a well known hero as the Greek Heracles and
the Roman Hercules. But for most readers of the Metamorphoses this distinction is
unimportant, and so I have avoided needless complication by using always the more
familiar Roman name.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
human life as improving. Lucretius, who did not refer to successive
ages, had given a long and interesting account of human advance.
Horace followed him more briefly in an early satire. Vergil in his
Georgics pointed out that, when Jupiter took away the Golden Age, he
gave men a chance to profit by industry and invention, and in his
Fourth Eclogue he even pictured a speedy recovery of the Golden
Age. With this view, Ovid himself was in accord. He was glad to
have been born late and to have escaped the earlier, ruder times. And
in some of his other poetry he gave the idea expression. In the Art
of Love he pictured the newly created race as solitary and savage until
mollified by the passion of love. In the Fasti he described the wretched
life of the Arcadians before the time of Jove and/of agriculture and
he acclaimed the improvement of living, when npen gave up wild green
herbs for acorns and these in turn for the products of agriculture. In
the Metamorphoses, a similar idea underlies the beginning of Ovid's
myth of Proserpina (Bk. 5). But when telling of the four ages, the
poet desired not only to include the greatest possible number of mu^
tattons but to show humanity degenerating steadily towards the
Deluge. And for these reasons he took the older, pessimistic view.
In relation to Ovid's poem as a whole, his account of the ages is
faulty. With Hesiod, Aratus, and Horace, he indicated that the last
age had continued to his own day. But meanwhile he introduced from
other sources the tradition of the Deluge. With this catastrophe the
Iron Age should end. Afterwards Ovid could have made a change in
Hesiod's chronology and introduced an Age of Heroes continuing to
the death of Aeneas (Bk. 14). And still another age ought to begin
with the subsequent time. Such adjustment would have been logical
and would have given a firmer structure to the poem.
But in itself, Ovid's narrative of the four ages was admirable. Al-
though not so picturesque as Hesiod's, it was far clearer and more
coherent. Ovid gave each period not only an orderly description but
an evident relation to the rest. These advantages he shared with
Aratus. But Ovid made his individual descriptions more attractive
and more general in their interest and, by adding a fourth age, he
gave a more marked impression of increasing decay. His narrative
had the further advantage of beginning naturally from the preceding
tale of the Creation and leading effectively to the story which imme-
diately followed. And it reached a fine climax in the flight of Astraea
to heaven.
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? THE FOUR AGES
For later times Ovid's version of the successive ages was much more
accessible than any other and its excellence attracted many subsequent
authors. Juvenal declared that his age had degenerated even from
the Iron. Dante's Matilda identified the Golden Age with a dream
of the Terrestrial Paradise. Jean de Meun inserted an account of
the four ages in the Romance of the Rose. And Chaucer borrowed
from Ovid's account of the Gold and Silver Eras in his early poem,
The Former Age.
In a chorus of the Aminta Tasso wistfully recalled Ovid's descrip-
tion of the Golden Age. In the Siglo d'Oro, Lope de Vega described
the period, excelling Ovid in richness of color and imagery. Cervantes
made it the theme of a eulogy by Don Quixote. The French poet
Regnier treated all four periods. Spenser prefaced his book on Sir
Artegal with an account of human deterioration from the Golden Age.
In Shakespeare's Tempest, the old Gonzalo outlined a plan for restor-
ing the Golden Era, but was derided by the other courtiers. Heywood
recalled Ovid in the titles of four of his plays. And Goethe's Werther
spoke of a certain noblewoman as declining into her ages of Bronze
and Iron.
While describing the Golden Age, Ovid associated the greatest
human felicity with an environment of unending spring. The Odyssey
had implied such an idea while describing the beautiful garden of King
Alcinous; and in the Georgics Vergil transferred the same idea to the
Golden Age, declaring this to have been an era when the season was
always springtime. But Ovid gave the conception widespread fame.
Not only did he follow Vergil in applying it to the Golden Age; but
later, when he showed P_roserpina gathering flowers near the grove of
Henna, he observed that here also there was perpetual spring. Both
passages were read and admired continually in the centuries that fol-
lowed. Recalling Ovid, lesser poets of the medieval period often de-
scribed some happy region where the springtime remained forever.
The idea reappeared strikingly in some of the greatest poetry of the
Renaissance. Ariosto used it in his magic Garden of Logostilla, and
Spenser in his famous Garden of Adonis. And Milton declared that
in Paradise there smiled perpetual spring.
Ovid's idea that gold was a chief motive for crime and should have
remained undiscovered in the earth attracted several prominent au-
thors. Lope de Vega recalled it frequently in his novel Dorothea.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Shakespeare seems to paraphrase it in the words of Romeo to the
apothecary
There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.
Milton recorded of Mammon that he taught men impiously to
Rifle the bowels of their Mother earth
For treasures better hid.
During a conversation between Tom Jones and the Man of the Hill,
Fielding quoted Ovid's words to the effect that money is the cause of
evil. And in The Ring and the Book, Browning spoke of
money dug from out the earth,
Irritant more, in Ovid's phrase, to ill.
Another idea, the departure of Astraea from an evil world, has at-
tracted many. In this case modern authors often associated Ovid's
conception with Vergil's belief that she might return. But always
they took at least the name from Ovid. Spenser in a procession of
the seasons portrayed August leading Astraea, who left a corrupted
world to become the constellation of the Maiden. Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus tried desperately to restore Astraea, who had forsaken
the earth.
Milton suggested in his Ode on a Fair Infant that she had
ventured to return. Dryden gave the title Astraa Redux to an ode
on the restoration of King Charles, and Carlyle gave the same title to
a chapter of his French Revolution. Tennyson recalled Astraea in
The Princess.
The Giants
Ovid's third tale dealt with the popular theme of a war among
supernatural beings. The idea occurs in the mythology of many peo-
ples. In some cases the conflict was a strife between forces of good
and evil. This was true of the Persian myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman,
which probably suggested the Hebrew belief in a revolt of Satan. But
more often the issue was not moral. And this was true of the conflicts
recorded by Greek mythology.
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? THE GIANTS
Among those who endeavored to overthrow the pantheon of Jupiter,
we hear first of two enormous beings called Otus and Ephialtes. The
Iliad mentioned their chaining Mars and holding him thirteen months
in a brazen cell; the Odyssey declared that they piled on Mt. Olympus
two other mountains, Ossa and Pelion, in a vain attempt to drive the
gods from heaven. Ovid's Manual still recorded their revolt as distinct
from the rest; but afterwards they were usually identified with the
Giants.
Of the Giants we hear first in the Odyssey. They were referred to
as a proud race which inhabited Sicily and which was destroyed. The
Theogony added that they originated from blood of Uranus falling
on the earth. Neither of these early poems mentioned any conflict
with the gods. The first allusion to it occurred much later in a lyric
of Xenophanes. Pindar was familiar with the story and referred
more than once to the importance of Hercules in causing their defeat.
Aeschylus added that the battle took place on the plains of Phlegra.
There was a tendency to associate the myth with regions of volcanic
activity, for Phlegra was identified with many volcanic regions of
Italy and Greece.
Greek art often treated the subject. A famous example was a cer-
tain kind of embroidered robe which the Athenians offered annually to
their patron goddess. In earlier art, the Giants appeared as enor-
mous beings of human form. But, at the beginning of the third cen-
tury, B. C. , a huge altar frieze at Pergamum represented them as hav-
ing wings and as walking, not with legs, but with the bodies of two
great serpents--a monstrous form already associated with many other
creatures born directly from the earth. It became the favorite con-
ception in later art. The Manual adopted it and Ovid referred to it
frequently.
Nicander gave the myth a new form. Hostility had grown up be-
tween the Greek peoples with whom he was residing and the inhabitants
of northern Thessaly. It occurred to him that the older name of this
region, Hasmonia, might be explained as "the land of people sprung
from blood. " And so he declared that, after the destruction of the
Giants, Earth transformed the blood of her flagitious offspring into
the ancestors of this people. From Nicander Ovid took the outline of
the tale. But he tried to give the myth a more plausible form and
to suit it to his general plan. To Ovid a war among supernatural
beings appeared so fabulous as to be almost incredible. So he de-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
scribed it as occurring in a remote, unsettled time not long after the
creation of the world. He found it necessary, therefore, to avoid any
mention of the part usually assigned to Hercules. Perhaps for this
reason Ovid made his account very brief. Nicander's invention of the
people sprung from blood gave Ovid the necessary metamorphosis.
But Ovid could not identify this people with the Thessalians of his
own day. The Blood People would have perished in the Deluge. Ac-
cordingly he referred to them as a somewhat indefinite tribe of the
Iron Age.
Ovid was acquainted with many references to the Giants in the
work of Lucretius and other earlier Roman poets. Horace had treated
the myth at some length in more than one of his lyrics, and Vergil had
given a number of details in his Georgics. Ovid himself referred to the
subject frequently in his other poetry and had even begun an epic
called The Battle of the Giants. Later, in the song of Orpheus (Bk.
10), he was to mention Jove's victory on the plain of Phlegra. For
the most part Ovid took his material directly from the Greeks. But
Vergil may have suggested his unconventional method of piling the
mountains Ossa, Pelion, and Olympus.
The later poets, Statius and Lucan, mentioned the Giants briefly,
and Claudian began an epic in Greek called the Gigantomachia, of
which fragments remain. They do not show any direct influence of
Ovid.
Still other conflicts of supernatural beings had appeared in Greek
myth. The Theogony and Aeschylus dealt much with a revolt of the
Titans. This theme proved less interesting to men of later times than
the Giants. The Manual still recorded it. But the poets, including
Ovid, usually were content to identify some details of the story with
the more popular myth of the Giants. The Iliad and Theogony had
told also of a monstrous creature Typhoeus, who engaged in a terrific
battle with the gods. He too was often identified by later writers as
one of the Giants. Ovid kept him distinct; but, in order to avoid two
successive tales of supernatural revolt, he told the myth later as a
theme of the Muses and Pierids (Bk. 5).
Ovid's account of the Giants was ordinarily the first read by men
of later times and so was important in directing their attention to
the theme. They used his version, adding further details from Vergil,
Horace, or Statius. Dante associated the presumption of the Giants
with the two Christian traditions of the Tower of Babel and the
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? LYCAON
revolt of Satan. He found a number of Giants chained about the rim
of the descent to Cocytus. On the Mount of Purgatory he saw the
defeat of the Giants carved as a warning against the sin of pride.
Shakespeare recalled Ovid prominently in the quarrel of Hamlet and
Laertes. Goethe treated the myth with whimsical independence in his
classic Walpurgis Night.
The revolt of the Giants inspired paintings of Perino del Vaga and
Rinaldo Mantovano and a meritorious work of W. Triibner. Gliick
treated it in an unsuccessful opera.
Lycaon
In the tale of Lycaon Ovid showed the world at an even lower stage.
Not only the monstrous Giants, but ordinary human beings were
ready to defy the gods.
Lycaon was the theme of quite various traditions which agreed
in making him ancestor of the Arcadians. The most famous tradition
dealt with his offering human flesh to Jupiter. This tradition, like
those of Tantalus and Philomela (Bk. 6), may recall an early practise
of cannibalism, which even the prehistoric Greeks had learned to re-
gard with horror. The punishment for Lycaon's act was often re-
corded as transformation to a wolf. And this punishment associated
the myth with a savage belief in lycanthropy. The belief, which has
prevailed in many parts of the world, was that a human being might
change into a great man eating beast of prey, and in Europe the beast
was generally thought to be a wolf. Another form of the belief in
lycanthropy appeared in Ovid's myth of Hecuba (Bk. 13).
The earliest account of Lycaon's crime appeared in an ancient
poem called Astronomy. In this version Jupiter had seduced Lycaon's
daughter, Callisto, and Lycaon tried to punish him by killing and
serving to him the flesh of their son, Arcas. This version Ovid did
not use. He told the myth of Callisto separately and in a more inter-
esting form (Bk. 2).
Nicander altered the tale considerably. He made it an example
of the popular myth in which a god visits men in disguise, asking
shelter and bestowing an appropriate reward on the good and the
bad. The most famous example of this variety of myth was to appear
later in Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis (Bk. 8). According to
Nicander, Jove wandered through Arcadia and asked shelter at the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
house of Lycaon. While doing so, he showed his identity by a sign
which the Arcadians understood. The common people immediately
worshipped the god; but Lycaon planned to defy and insult him.
Pretending to receive Jupiter hospitably, he caused his followers to
murder a Molossian hostage and offer the flesh. But Jupiter dis-
covered his intent and turned him into a wolf. From this account
Ovid took the outline of his own. The myth of Lycaon was the first
in which Ovid had occasion to describe the transformation of an indi-
vidual. Partly for this reason he followed Nicander's method of
recording many traits which the new creature retained from his earlier
form. In later tales he seldom recorded more than one.
The Manual gave still another story. Lycaon's sons, it reported,
were even more guilty than their father. Jupiter, therefore, destroyed
the entire household with a thunderbolt and almost annihilated the
human race with a flood. To this account Ovid alluded in his Ibis.
For the Metamorphoses he took the incident of Jupiter's destroying
all except Lycaon with a thunderbolt and the idea that Lycaon's insult
was the occasion for the Deluge.
Ovid had now a good story tending in the direction which he desired.
But he wished to give it more dignity and a more probable relation
to the Deluge. Before telling of an important event, the Iliad and
other great epics had shown Jupiter gathering a council of the gods.
And Catullus had described his nod which shook the earth. Ovid
followed their example. Greek tradition had imagined further that
the gods were dependent on the steam of sacrifices offered by men, for
Aristophanes had treated the idea in his comedy The Birds. And
Greek tradition probably had regarded the Milky Way as a thorough-
fare in heaven, for this has been a world wide popular belief. Ovid
profited by both these ideas.
To add this effective material was a great improvement. But Ovid
did more. He gave the rather familiar ideas a novel form very inter-
esting to the Romans. The abode of the gods he portrayed in terms
of Rome and the Imperial Residence on the Palatine Hill. Jupiter
assembling the other divinities for consultation he described as if the
Emperor Augustus were convening the Senate in the Imperial Library.
And Ovid carried the likeness much further. Just as recently traitors
had plotted the death of Julius Caesar and the overthrow of the
Roman Cosmos, in the same way, he declared, Lycaon had planned
the death of Jupiter and the overthrow of the gods. And to make
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? THE DELUGE
the resemblance more notable, Ovid implied it would have been possible
for Lycaon to do it. The idea of Jupiter's being assassinated was bold,
but not without warrant. The Romans were acquainted with the
traditional death of such great deities as Osiris, Bacchus (Bk. 3), and
Adonis (Bk. 10). And, like other pious pagans, they had probably
been horrified by a Cretan story about the grave of Zeus.
The idea that Lycaon attempted murder as well as insult, Ovid
introduced rather awkwardly. It confused the orderly and single
effect of the tale. Yet even this disadvantage did not prevent the
change from being beneficial. The idea not only gave the story keen
interest for the Romans but it made Lycaon's guilt typical of a
degraded race which had become a menace to the gods.
In the geography of the story, Ovid followed a policy which he used
later in the myths of Daphne and Arethusa (Bk. 5). He mentioned
well known names of mountains, towns, or other localities which would
suggest extensive travel in the district where the events were supposed
to have occurred. But he made no attempt to record these places in
their actual relation to one another. Whether a traveler from Mt.
Maenala to Mt. Lycseus was likely to go by way of Mt. Cyllene, a
Roman audience would neither know nor care.
Among later poets the incidental detail of Ovid's version proved
more interesting than the story itself. Marlowe remembered that the
Milky Way was the route by which the gods passed to Jupiter's court.
Tasso recorded that, before sending rain to preserve Godfrey's army,
the Deity shook all Cosmos with his nod. Milton recalled Ovid's lines
on the rustic deities in II Penseroso, Comus, Paradise Lost, and Para-
dise Regained. He* seemed always to associate them with pleasant
woods and fields.
Spenser imitated Ovid's council of the gods in his tale of Mutability,
and Browning's Guido Franceschini recalled the transformation of
Lycaon, grimly desiring a like fate for himself.
The Deluge
In his fifth story Ovid dealt with two ways in which life might
perish. One of these was a world conflagration. The idea was not
uncommon in savage mythologies; but originally the Greeks appear to
have imagined only a partial destruction by Phaethon (Bk 2). Their
philosopher Heraclitus was the first to record a more radical theory.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
The world, he thought, had originated from fire and would relapse
into it and be created anew. The idea of destruction of the world by
fire and its recreation proved acceptable to the Stoics and later to
Christian theology. In England it was afterwards treated by many
poets from Milton to Pollok. Doubtless Ovid found the subject dis-
cussed in the work of Varro.
Another form of destruction was a world flood.
found implied in Vergil's Sixth Eclogue and explained elaborately in
Varro's Divine Antiquities. From Varro he took the greater part of
his material. This would account for his unusual reticence about the
gods. In the Fasti Ovid modified Varro further by identifying Chaos
with the Roman deity Janus, god of beginnings, and declaring that
during creation Janus obtained his odd contemporary form.
Another Alexandrian theory had done away entirely with the gods.
The Epicurean philosophers believed that Chaos had consisted of in-
numerable hard, indivisible atoms. Moving rapidly and colliding with
one another, these atoms had ultimately combined, first into the four
elements and then into all the phenomena of the present world. This
theory Lucretius expanded into a magnificent narrative of Creation.
But thoughtful Romans were not willing to depart so far from tra-
dition. They preferred the doctrine of the Stoics. For this reason
Ovid did not use the ideas of Lucretius. But he may have followed
him in some details.
In his account of the heavens, Ovid is peculiar. Both Genesis and
Lucretius have much to say of the sun and moon. But Ovid does not
mention them at all. Most accounts of the creation imagine the stars
to have been formed after the separation of earth and sky. But Ovid
supposed them to have existed in Chaos and to have lain buried under
the confused material.
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? THE CREATION
In his account of the earth Ovid followed on the whole the scientific
belief of his time. Thus he described the earth as round and he divided
it into the five zones which we recognize today. He assigned the winds
to four different regions of the earth and made them subject only to
the Creator. The more popular theory had supposed that the god
Aeolus kept all the winds in the cave of an island near Sicily. This
doctrine Vergil made famous in the Aeneid and Ovid was to follow in
several other tales of his Metainorphoses. In naming the regions ap-
pointed for the winds, Ovid was consistent with the geography of his
time; but he described the known world as smaller than it actually
was. Well informed Romans already had heard something of the
Ganges, the British Isles, Madeira, and the cataracts of the Nile. The
rather elaborate theories of animal life, which had been outlined by
Alexandrian philosophers, Ovid did not repeat. Like other ancient
poets, he made his treatment of plants and animals brief.
A belief that originally man was moulded out of clay was common
to early peoples in many regions of the world. In Greece it may have
begun as a local myth of Phocis, where a number of oddly formed
rocks were shown as work left incomplete by Prometheus. The idea
was recorded in the Manual and alluded to by Horace. Another idea
grew up, however, to the effect that a god created man from divine
substance, and this too appeared in the Manual. Alexandrine phil-
osophy had suggested the distinction between man as looking up and
animals as looking down. But Ovid was the first to phrase the dis-
tinction clearly and make it famous.
Ovid's narrative of the creation had not the pious reverence of
Genesis or the noble earnestness of Lucretius. There was even a ten-
dency to bring out the droll and grotesque. Yet within brief com-
pass Ovid gave the subject'great interest. His style was poetic; his
presentation was orderly; and he reached a well prepared climax in
the creation of man.
The Romans, especially Seneca, greatly admired Ovid's account.
Christian authors found it unusually interesting and reconciled it
easily with Scripture. In the eleventh century Heinrich von Augsburg
adapted it for his Latin poem about Adam. Camoens followed Ovid
in a spirited narrative of the Creation pictured on the walls of Nep-
tune's palace. In the final scene of King John Shakespeare applied
to England Ovid's opening words about Chaos. Milton, in his su-
preme descriptions of both Chaos and Creation, used material from
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
many parts of Ovid's narrative, including nearly all his account of
man.
Many poets delighted also in recalling single details which had
caught their attention. Tasso, while repeating the magician's advice
to Rinaldo, noted the distinction of man as looking upward. Lope
de Vega made the same observation in his Discreta Enamorada.
Shakespeare's Othello checked himself with the thought
Once put out thy light,
Thou cunningest pattern of excelling Nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
Which can thy light relume.
Goethe alluded to the Titan's creation of man at the close of his
famous lyrical monologue, Prometheus. And Dante remembered in
the Paradiso that Castile is "the region where sweet Zephyr rises, to
open the new leaves. "
The Four Ages
Until comparatively recently, men in all parts of the world have
been so. impressed with the evils of life as to imagine that humanity
had originally known a better time but somehow had declined into.
the present state of wretchedness. Early peoples accounted for "the
change in two ways. Accorcling to the Hebrews and Hindus, man first
inhabited a Paradise, which comprised a small area set apart either
in heaven or on earth. This happy abode he lost by disobedience.
According to other peoples, living as far apart as Persia and Mexico,
the whole earth had passed through a succession of ages. A given
age might end quietly or it might end in a great flood, fire, or other
catastrophe. But the change was not at first attributed to human sin.
The idea of successive 'ages appeared in Hesiod's Works and Days.
Digressing from his main theme, Hesiod recounted picturesquely the
ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes, and Iron. By the "Age of
Gold," he meant not only a happy period but one in which men were
actually created from gold, and so with the other ages named for
metals. By the Age of Heroes he referred to a mythical time of demi-
gods which included the wars about Thebes and Troy.
Aratus treated the idea in his Phenomena; but he related the
changes to an increase of wickedness among men. In the Golden Age,
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? THE FOUR AGES
he said, the maiden deity Justitia 1 lived with humanity, guiding men
in the ways of peace. In the Silver Age she retired to the hills but
returned occasionally to rebuke their evil ways. In the Bronze Age
evil increased so much that she left the earth and became the con-
stellation of the Virgin. This account Ovid probably knew both in
the original and in the translations by Cicero and by Varro of Atax.
He took from it the idea of his first three ages, with progressively in-
creasing evil, and the ultimate departure of Justice to heaven. Aratus
had said that she may have been the daughter of Astraeus. But Ovid
appears to have been the first who named her Astraea. In the Fasti
also he referred to her departure but called her Justitia. Both pas-
usages omitted her metamorphosis into a constellation. The idea of
Aratus that increasing wickedness brought men to feed on animals,
LQvid reserved for his speech of Pythagoras (Bk. 15).
For many details of these three ages Ovid turned to earlier Boman
authors. Vergil's Fourth Eclogue and Georgics could furnish almost
all that he needed for the Golden Age. Varro had recorded Stoic
doctrines on the subject, which were helpful throughout. The Romans
had given up the Greek idea that men living in these three ages were
created from the respective metals. By the Golden Age they meant
only the happiest period of human history, by the Silver Age a time
of inferior felicity, and so on.
The idea of a fourth age of Iron, Ovid seems to have taken from an
Epode of Horace. In this poem Horace had pictured life in the Isles
of the Blest, where the Golden Age still continued and had not given
way to the Ages of Bronze and of Iron. JXhejdeaJhat. the gods in
general mingjed_wjth jrien until repelled by . the. wickedness of the latest
__age, Ovid found in Catullus' famous Marriage of Peteus anaTTlteiis.
To the Iron Age he seems to have transferred most of the circum-
stances which Varro had recorded for the Bronze. The change left
Ovid's account of the Bronze Age rather vague and inconsistent with
what followed. But it added to the effect of a graded and fearful
decline.
Among the Roman poets there had been a tendency to think of
1 Often the Greek name of a deity or a mythological person differs from that of his
Roman equivalent. Aratus calls the goddess of justice Dike, and Ovid calls her
(in the Fasti) Justitia. And this is true of such a well known deity as the Greek
Zeus and the Roman Jupiter or such a well known hero as the Greek Heracles and
the Roman Hercules. But for most readers of the Metamorphoses this distinction is
unimportant, and so I have avoided needless complication by using always the more
familiar Roman name.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
human life as improving. Lucretius, who did not refer to successive
ages, had given a long and interesting account of human advance.
Horace followed him more briefly in an early satire. Vergil in his
Georgics pointed out that, when Jupiter took away the Golden Age, he
gave men a chance to profit by industry and invention, and in his
Fourth Eclogue he even pictured a speedy recovery of the Golden
Age. With this view, Ovid himself was in accord. He was glad to
have been born late and to have escaped the earlier, ruder times. And
in some of his other poetry he gave the idea expression. In the Art
of Love he pictured the newly created race as solitary and savage until
mollified by the passion of love. In the Fasti he described the wretched
life of the Arcadians before the time of Jove and/of agriculture and
he acclaimed the improvement of living, when npen gave up wild green
herbs for acorns and these in turn for the products of agriculture. In
the Metamorphoses, a similar idea underlies the beginning of Ovid's
myth of Proserpina (Bk. 5). But when telling of the four ages, the
poet desired not only to include the greatest possible number of mu^
tattons but to show humanity degenerating steadily towards the
Deluge. And for these reasons he took the older, pessimistic view.
In relation to Ovid's poem as a whole, his account of the ages is
faulty. With Hesiod, Aratus, and Horace, he indicated that the last
age had continued to his own day. But meanwhile he introduced from
other sources the tradition of the Deluge. With this catastrophe the
Iron Age should end. Afterwards Ovid could have made a change in
Hesiod's chronology and introduced an Age of Heroes continuing to
the death of Aeneas (Bk. 14). And still another age ought to begin
with the subsequent time. Such adjustment would have been logical
and would have given a firmer structure to the poem.
But in itself, Ovid's narrative of the four ages was admirable. Al-
though not so picturesque as Hesiod's, it was far clearer and more
coherent. Ovid gave each period not only an orderly description but
an evident relation to the rest. These advantages he shared with
Aratus. But Ovid made his individual descriptions more attractive
and more general in their interest and, by adding a fourth age, he
gave a more marked impression of increasing decay. His narrative
had the further advantage of beginning naturally from the preceding
tale of the Creation and leading effectively to the story which imme-
diately followed. And it reached a fine climax in the flight of Astraea
to heaven.
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? THE FOUR AGES
For later times Ovid's version of the successive ages was much more
accessible than any other and its excellence attracted many subsequent
authors. Juvenal declared that his age had degenerated even from
the Iron. Dante's Matilda identified the Golden Age with a dream
of the Terrestrial Paradise. Jean de Meun inserted an account of
the four ages in the Romance of the Rose. And Chaucer borrowed
from Ovid's account of the Gold and Silver Eras in his early poem,
The Former Age.
In a chorus of the Aminta Tasso wistfully recalled Ovid's descrip-
tion of the Golden Age. In the Siglo d'Oro, Lope de Vega described
the period, excelling Ovid in richness of color and imagery. Cervantes
made it the theme of a eulogy by Don Quixote. The French poet
Regnier treated all four periods. Spenser prefaced his book on Sir
Artegal with an account of human deterioration from the Golden Age.
In Shakespeare's Tempest, the old Gonzalo outlined a plan for restor-
ing the Golden Era, but was derided by the other courtiers. Heywood
recalled Ovid in the titles of four of his plays. And Goethe's Werther
spoke of a certain noblewoman as declining into her ages of Bronze
and Iron.
While describing the Golden Age, Ovid associated the greatest
human felicity with an environment of unending spring. The Odyssey
had implied such an idea while describing the beautiful garden of King
Alcinous; and in the Georgics Vergil transferred the same idea to the
Golden Age, declaring this to have been an era when the season was
always springtime. But Ovid gave the conception widespread fame.
Not only did he follow Vergil in applying it to the Golden Age; but
later, when he showed P_roserpina gathering flowers near the grove of
Henna, he observed that here also there was perpetual spring. Both
passages were read and admired continually in the centuries that fol-
lowed. Recalling Ovid, lesser poets of the medieval period often de-
scribed some happy region where the springtime remained forever.
The idea reappeared strikingly in some of the greatest poetry of the
Renaissance. Ariosto used it in his magic Garden of Logostilla, and
Spenser in his famous Garden of Adonis. And Milton declared that
in Paradise there smiled perpetual spring.
Ovid's idea that gold was a chief motive for crime and should have
remained undiscovered in the earth attracted several prominent au-
thors. Lope de Vega recalled it frequently in his novel Dorothea.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Shakespeare seems to paraphrase it in the words of Romeo to the
apothecary
There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.
Milton recorded of Mammon that he taught men impiously to
Rifle the bowels of their Mother earth
For treasures better hid.
During a conversation between Tom Jones and the Man of the Hill,
Fielding quoted Ovid's words to the effect that money is the cause of
evil. And in The Ring and the Book, Browning spoke of
money dug from out the earth,
Irritant more, in Ovid's phrase, to ill.
Another idea, the departure of Astraea from an evil world, has at-
tracted many. In this case modern authors often associated Ovid's
conception with Vergil's belief that she might return. But always
they took at least the name from Ovid. Spenser in a procession of
the seasons portrayed August leading Astraea, who left a corrupted
world to become the constellation of the Maiden. Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus tried desperately to restore Astraea, who had forsaken
the earth.
Milton suggested in his Ode on a Fair Infant that she had
ventured to return. Dryden gave the title Astraa Redux to an ode
on the restoration of King Charles, and Carlyle gave the same title to
a chapter of his French Revolution. Tennyson recalled Astraea in
The Princess.
The Giants
Ovid's third tale dealt with the popular theme of a war among
supernatural beings. The idea occurs in the mythology of many peo-
ples. In some cases the conflict was a strife between forces of good
and evil. This was true of the Persian myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman,
which probably suggested the Hebrew belief in a revolt of Satan. But
more often the issue was not moral. And this was true of the conflicts
recorded by Greek mythology.
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? THE GIANTS
Among those who endeavored to overthrow the pantheon of Jupiter,
we hear first of two enormous beings called Otus and Ephialtes. The
Iliad mentioned their chaining Mars and holding him thirteen months
in a brazen cell; the Odyssey declared that they piled on Mt. Olympus
two other mountains, Ossa and Pelion, in a vain attempt to drive the
gods from heaven. Ovid's Manual still recorded their revolt as distinct
from the rest; but afterwards they were usually identified with the
Giants.
Of the Giants we hear first in the Odyssey. They were referred to
as a proud race which inhabited Sicily and which was destroyed. The
Theogony added that they originated from blood of Uranus falling
on the earth. Neither of these early poems mentioned any conflict
with the gods. The first allusion to it occurred much later in a lyric
of Xenophanes. Pindar was familiar with the story and referred
more than once to the importance of Hercules in causing their defeat.
Aeschylus added that the battle took place on the plains of Phlegra.
There was a tendency to associate the myth with regions of volcanic
activity, for Phlegra was identified with many volcanic regions of
Italy and Greece.
Greek art often treated the subject. A famous example was a cer-
tain kind of embroidered robe which the Athenians offered annually to
their patron goddess. In earlier art, the Giants appeared as enor-
mous beings of human form. But, at the beginning of the third cen-
tury, B. C. , a huge altar frieze at Pergamum represented them as hav-
ing wings and as walking, not with legs, but with the bodies of two
great serpents--a monstrous form already associated with many other
creatures born directly from the earth. It became the favorite con-
ception in later art. The Manual adopted it and Ovid referred to it
frequently.
Nicander gave the myth a new form. Hostility had grown up be-
tween the Greek peoples with whom he was residing and the inhabitants
of northern Thessaly. It occurred to him that the older name of this
region, Hasmonia, might be explained as "the land of people sprung
from blood. " And so he declared that, after the destruction of the
Giants, Earth transformed the blood of her flagitious offspring into
the ancestors of this people. From Nicander Ovid took the outline of
the tale. But he tried to give the myth a more plausible form and
to suit it to his general plan. To Ovid a war among supernatural
beings appeared so fabulous as to be almost incredible. So he de-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
scribed it as occurring in a remote, unsettled time not long after the
creation of the world. He found it necessary, therefore, to avoid any
mention of the part usually assigned to Hercules. Perhaps for this
reason Ovid made his account very brief. Nicander's invention of the
people sprung from blood gave Ovid the necessary metamorphosis.
But Ovid could not identify this people with the Thessalians of his
own day. The Blood People would have perished in the Deluge. Ac-
cordingly he referred to them as a somewhat indefinite tribe of the
Iron Age.
Ovid was acquainted with many references to the Giants in the
work of Lucretius and other earlier Roman poets. Horace had treated
the myth at some length in more than one of his lyrics, and Vergil had
given a number of details in his Georgics. Ovid himself referred to the
subject frequently in his other poetry and had even begun an epic
called The Battle of the Giants. Later, in the song of Orpheus (Bk.
10), he was to mention Jove's victory on the plain of Phlegra. For
the most part Ovid took his material directly from the Greeks. But
Vergil may have suggested his unconventional method of piling the
mountains Ossa, Pelion, and Olympus.
The later poets, Statius and Lucan, mentioned the Giants briefly,
and Claudian began an epic in Greek called the Gigantomachia, of
which fragments remain. They do not show any direct influence of
Ovid.
Still other conflicts of supernatural beings had appeared in Greek
myth. The Theogony and Aeschylus dealt much with a revolt of the
Titans. This theme proved less interesting to men of later times than
the Giants. The Manual still recorded it. But the poets, including
Ovid, usually were content to identify some details of the story with
the more popular myth of the Giants. The Iliad and Theogony had
told also of a monstrous creature Typhoeus, who engaged in a terrific
battle with the gods. He too was often identified by later writers as
one of the Giants. Ovid kept him distinct; but, in order to avoid two
successive tales of supernatural revolt, he told the myth later as a
theme of the Muses and Pierids (Bk. 5).
Ovid's account of the Giants was ordinarily the first read by men
of later times and so was important in directing their attention to
the theme. They used his version, adding further details from Vergil,
Horace, or Statius. Dante associated the presumption of the Giants
with the two Christian traditions of the Tower of Babel and the
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? LYCAON
revolt of Satan. He found a number of Giants chained about the rim
of the descent to Cocytus. On the Mount of Purgatory he saw the
defeat of the Giants carved as a warning against the sin of pride.
Shakespeare recalled Ovid prominently in the quarrel of Hamlet and
Laertes. Goethe treated the myth with whimsical independence in his
classic Walpurgis Night.
The revolt of the Giants inspired paintings of Perino del Vaga and
Rinaldo Mantovano and a meritorious work of W. Triibner. Gliick
treated it in an unsuccessful opera.
Lycaon
In the tale of Lycaon Ovid showed the world at an even lower stage.
Not only the monstrous Giants, but ordinary human beings were
ready to defy the gods.
Lycaon was the theme of quite various traditions which agreed
in making him ancestor of the Arcadians. The most famous tradition
dealt with his offering human flesh to Jupiter. This tradition, like
those of Tantalus and Philomela (Bk. 6), may recall an early practise
of cannibalism, which even the prehistoric Greeks had learned to re-
gard with horror. The punishment for Lycaon's act was often re-
corded as transformation to a wolf. And this punishment associated
the myth with a savage belief in lycanthropy. The belief, which has
prevailed in many parts of the world, was that a human being might
change into a great man eating beast of prey, and in Europe the beast
was generally thought to be a wolf. Another form of the belief in
lycanthropy appeared in Ovid's myth of Hecuba (Bk. 13).
The earliest account of Lycaon's crime appeared in an ancient
poem called Astronomy. In this version Jupiter had seduced Lycaon's
daughter, Callisto, and Lycaon tried to punish him by killing and
serving to him the flesh of their son, Arcas. This version Ovid did
not use. He told the myth of Callisto separately and in a more inter-
esting form (Bk. 2).
Nicander altered the tale considerably. He made it an example
of the popular myth in which a god visits men in disguise, asking
shelter and bestowing an appropriate reward on the good and the
bad. The most famous example of this variety of myth was to appear
later in Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis (Bk. 8). According to
Nicander, Jove wandered through Arcadia and asked shelter at the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
house of Lycaon. While doing so, he showed his identity by a sign
which the Arcadians understood. The common people immediately
worshipped the god; but Lycaon planned to defy and insult him.
Pretending to receive Jupiter hospitably, he caused his followers to
murder a Molossian hostage and offer the flesh. But Jupiter dis-
covered his intent and turned him into a wolf. From this account
Ovid took the outline of his own. The myth of Lycaon was the first
in which Ovid had occasion to describe the transformation of an indi-
vidual. Partly for this reason he followed Nicander's method of
recording many traits which the new creature retained from his earlier
form. In later tales he seldom recorded more than one.
The Manual gave still another story. Lycaon's sons, it reported,
were even more guilty than their father. Jupiter, therefore, destroyed
the entire household with a thunderbolt and almost annihilated the
human race with a flood. To this account Ovid alluded in his Ibis.
For the Metamorphoses he took the incident of Jupiter's destroying
all except Lycaon with a thunderbolt and the idea that Lycaon's insult
was the occasion for the Deluge.
Ovid had now a good story tending in the direction which he desired.
But he wished to give it more dignity and a more probable relation
to the Deluge. Before telling of an important event, the Iliad and
other great epics had shown Jupiter gathering a council of the gods.
And Catullus had described his nod which shook the earth. Ovid
followed their example. Greek tradition had imagined further that
the gods were dependent on the steam of sacrifices offered by men, for
Aristophanes had treated the idea in his comedy The Birds. And
Greek tradition probably had regarded the Milky Way as a thorough-
fare in heaven, for this has been a world wide popular belief. Ovid
profited by both these ideas.
To add this effective material was a great improvement. But Ovid
did more. He gave the rather familiar ideas a novel form very inter-
esting to the Romans. The abode of the gods he portrayed in terms
of Rome and the Imperial Residence on the Palatine Hill. Jupiter
assembling the other divinities for consultation he described as if the
Emperor Augustus were convening the Senate in the Imperial Library.
And Ovid carried the likeness much further. Just as recently traitors
had plotted the death of Julius Caesar and the overthrow of the
Roman Cosmos, in the same way, he declared, Lycaon had planned
the death of Jupiter and the overthrow of the gods. And to make
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? THE DELUGE
the resemblance more notable, Ovid implied it would have been possible
for Lycaon to do it. The idea of Jupiter's being assassinated was bold,
but not without warrant. The Romans were acquainted with the
traditional death of such great deities as Osiris, Bacchus (Bk. 3), and
Adonis (Bk. 10). And, like other pious pagans, they had probably
been horrified by a Cretan story about the grave of Zeus.
The idea that Lycaon attempted murder as well as insult, Ovid
introduced rather awkwardly. It confused the orderly and single
effect of the tale. Yet even this disadvantage did not prevent the
change from being beneficial. The idea not only gave the story keen
interest for the Romans but it made Lycaon's guilt typical of a
degraded race which had become a menace to the gods.
In the geography of the story, Ovid followed a policy which he used
later in the myths of Daphne and Arethusa (Bk. 5). He mentioned
well known names of mountains, towns, or other localities which would
suggest extensive travel in the district where the events were supposed
to have occurred. But he made no attempt to record these places in
their actual relation to one another. Whether a traveler from Mt.
Maenala to Mt. Lycseus was likely to go by way of Mt. Cyllene, a
Roman audience would neither know nor care.
Among later poets the incidental detail of Ovid's version proved
more interesting than the story itself. Marlowe remembered that the
Milky Way was the route by which the gods passed to Jupiter's court.
Tasso recorded that, before sending rain to preserve Godfrey's army,
the Deity shook all Cosmos with his nod. Milton recalled Ovid's lines
on the rustic deities in II Penseroso, Comus, Paradise Lost, and Para-
dise Regained. He* seemed always to associate them with pleasant
woods and fields.
Spenser imitated Ovid's council of the gods in his tale of Mutability,
and Browning's Guido Franceschini recalled the transformation of
Lycaon, grimly desiring a like fate for himself.
The Deluge
In his fifth story Ovid dealt with two ways in which life might
perish. One of these was a world conflagration. The idea was not
uncommon in savage mythologies; but originally the Greeks appear to
have imagined only a partial destruction by Phaethon (Bk 2). Their
philosopher Heraclitus was the first to record a more radical theory.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
The world, he thought, had originated from fire and would relapse
into it and be created anew. The idea of destruction of the world by
fire and its recreation proved acceptable to the Stoics and later to
Christian theology. In England it was afterwards treated by many
poets from Milton to Pollok. Doubtless Ovid found the subject dis-
cussed in the work of Varro.
Another form of destruction was a world flood.
