Then she
considered
what to do next.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v2
Goethe showed this attitude with regard to
his Augustin and Sperata in Wilhelm Meister, and Grillparzer showed
it in presenting the hero and heroine of his Ancestress. In both cases
the brother was for a long time unaware of any kinship, but, after learn-
ing it, displayed a desire to persist.
Sympathy and revolt appeared more clearly in Chateaubriand's
Rene, where the heroine felt obliged to sacrifice herself to convention,
first by departing secretly from her brother and then by entering a
convent. * But rebellion against convention was even stronger in the
original plan of Shelley's Revolt of Islam and in Chateaubriand's Atala.
Both authors presented courtship of brother and sister as defensible
and worthy of admiration. And in the work of Chateaubriand the fact
was the more remarkable because it seemed gratuitous. His characters
Chactas and Atala were in fact unrelated. The author took advantage
as much as possible of the circumstance that Chactas had been adopted
by the father of Atala, and he showed the reverend priest Father Aubry
uttering a eulogy of the patriarchal age, with its illustrious examples of
brother married to sister.
The Romantic period with its emphasis on tragedy and revolt,
seems to have caused a reaction against such themes. A few isolated
examples appeared later, but with the second quarter of the nineteenth
century, leading authors turned their attention elsewhere.
Influenced probably by the Hippolytus of Euripides, most Alex-
andrian tales of illicit relations between parent and child or brother
'Probably by coincidence, Chateaubriand made his story RerU an interesting
contrast with Ovid's tale of Byblis. The two stories were alike in their chief circum-
stances. In both a young woman experienced illicit passion for her brother, and the
brother continued for a time unaware of the fact and then departed to another
country. The contrast appeared in the behavior of the heroine and the attitude of the
author. Ovid's heroine disclosed her passion to her brother and endeavored to seduce
him; Chateaubriand's heroine concealed her passion and carefully prevented the pos-
sibility of guilt. Ovid expressed disapproval of the heroine, Chateaubriand expressed
sympathy for her.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
and sister described a nurse or some other woman as promoting the
guilty affair. An example was the story of Myrrha, which Ovid planned
to recount later. In the tale of Byblis this element was absent. As an
unusual example of the familiar story and as a contrast with the tale of
Myrrha, Ovid probably thought it appropriate for treating at some
length. He also associated in his mind the stories of Byblis and Canace,
as he noted later in his Ibis, and saw a chance for another contrast. In
the Epistle of Canace, Ovid had shown the consequences of guilt. In the
story of Byblis he intended to study the growth of lawless passion.
The tradition of Byblis and Caunus entered literature early in the
Alexandrian period and took several different forms. According to the
version of Nicenaetus, which now is lost, Caunus was the one who expe-
rienced guilty passion. Fearing to reveal it, he left his native Miletus
and journeyed southeastwards over a range of mountains to a distance
of a hundred miles. There he founded the Carian city of Caunus. Byblis
lamented his absence until she became an owl, which continued wailing
before the gates of Miletus.
According to Nicander, it was Byblis who experienced guilty pas-
sion, and, to make the idea even more sensational, Nicander added that
she had abundant opportunity to love more wisely. Many suitors from
Miletus and other places offered themselves to her, but she rejected them
all and desired only her brother. Fearing that her passion might be
discovered, she hid from her parents in the day time, and at night visited
a cliff near Miletus, with the idea of leaping from the summit. The
nymphs, pitying her, lulled her into unconsciousness, and transformed
her into a hamadryad. A stream, which falls over the cliff, still is called
the Tears of Byblis. Nicander observed that the town of Caunus took
its name from her brother, but he did not associate the town with Byblis.
Both Nicenaetus and Nicander described a lover who was merely
passive and imagined only that Byblis was transformed. Other Alex-
andrian authors told of active courtship and of the sister's violent death.
Apollonius in his Founding of Caunus appears to have elaborated the
story at several points. Euripides in the Hippolytus had shown a nurse
defending the illicit passion of Phaedra by the example of Jupiter and
Semele. Apollonius showed Caunus defending his own passion in a
similar manner by the more relevant example of Jupiter and Juno. This
detail Ovid afterwards imitated in his Epistle of Phaedra. According
to Apollonius, the youth proceeded to court Byblis and was repulsed.
The story then followed the popular Alexandrian conception of
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? BYBLIS
the person who cruelly repels a lover and afterwards becomes inconsol-
able and perishes. After the departure of Caunus, Byblis felt a corre-
sponding passion and endeavored to overtake him. According to Apol-
lonius, the brother was traveling without any particular destination.
Unable to find him, Byblis continued southeastwards through the whole
district of Caria and on into Lycia -- an improbable distance. At a
place named Caryae, fatigue and despair overwhelmed her. She hanged
herself, and her flowing tears became a spring, which the natives call by
her name. Caunus, traveling at a slower rate, arrived in the same region,
and there a naiad, Pronoe, told him of the death and transformation of
Byblis. It was his son who founded Caunus. Conon repeated this tale,
and Nonnus afterwards made a long allusion to it.
The historian Aristocritus imagined that Byblis was the aggressor.
She loved Caunus, made overtures, and was repulsed. Caunus fled in
horror, and Byblis hanged herself on an oak tree. There was no trans-
formation. Parthenius retold this version of the tale, first in a poem
which now is lost and then in his book called Loves. Ovid, mentioning
the tale in his Art of Love, appeared to sympathize with Byblis, for he
said that she bravely ended her life by hanging.
In the Metamorphoses, Ovid combined ideas from several versions
of the story and added much material of his own. With Nicander and
Parthenius he agreed that Byblis was the one who experienced the law-
less passion. The idea that the guilty woman had other suitors he re-
jected, because he was reserving it for more effective use in the tale of
Myrrha. But it may have suggested to him that Byblis and Caunus
lived in a social atmosphere, and that Byblis envied other women who
seemed more beautiful. Perhaps for contrast with the tale of Canace
and her harsh father, Ovid rejected the idea that Byblis needed to fear
discovery by her parents. He seemed to imply that both Miletus and
Cyanee were dead.
With Nicander, Ovid agreed that Byblis was unable to subdue her
passion, and with Parthenius he agreed that she took the aggressive.
He desired chiefly to reveal the state of mind of a woman who could act
with such extraordinary audacity. In developing this part of the story,
Ovid may have taken details from an elegy of Hermesianax, which de-
scribed the passion of Leucippus for his sister, but undoubtedly he in-
vented much himself. Although Ovid's presentation of thoughts and
feelings gave the story animation and power, it tended to aggravate
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
whatever was undesirable in the theme. Ovid could have elaborated the
subject further, but he withheld some details which he thought more ser-
viceable for the stories of Myrrha and Ianthe, among them a supposed
precedent from the conduct of animals.
Ovid began with pointing a moral. Byblis is an instance that girls
ought not to love unlawfully. He then indicated the development of her
passion. At first, he said, she did not realize that it differed from sis-
terly affection. Presently she began to speak of Caunus not as her
brother but as her lord, and she preferred to have him call her not sister
but Byblis. While awake, she still restrained her desire. But in sleep she
experienced wanton dreams. Ovid spoke at first as if this occurred in
several nights. Later he seemed to think of only one. The issue now was
clearly before her.
Remembering his practice in other tales, such as that of Medea,
Ovid showed Byblis debating the question in a soliloquy, and he made it
clear that she understood the better course but followed the worse. It
will suffice to mention only a few circumstances in this portrayal of a
degenerate woman.
Recalling Apollonius, Ovid showed Byblis encouraging herself with
the precedent of Jupiter and Juno; and, recalling the Theogony, he
showed her adding for good measure the examples of Saturn and Ops
(Rhea) and of Oceanus and Tethys. But she answered this argument
with the idea that gods belonged to a different order from human beings
and were subject to different laws. Later Ovid showed her considering
the tradition about the children of Aeolus. With the earlier version she
noted that brothers had married their sisters, but with recollection of
the later version she recoiled from the tale as the worst possible prece-
dent. Byblis thought it preferable to die rather than to be guilty. She
hoped that Caunus might kiss her lifeless body; but realized that, if he
should guess the cause of her death, he might regard even this as a
concession to her wicked intent. She encouraged herself in her purpose
with the idea that, if he had loved first, she would have treated him
kindly.
Euripides had imagined that Phaedra shrank from pleading with
Hippolytus, and therefore that she sent her nurse with a message. Ovid
imagined that Byblis shrank from pleading with Caunus. But he wished
to avoid introducing a nurse. He imagined that Byblis sent her message
in a letter. And rather against probability -- he assumed that writing
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? BY BUS
materials were so conveniently near that Byblis was able to find them
without leaving her couch.
In Ovid's day it had long been customary for anyone writing a
letter to use a pen made from a certain variety of reed, to dip it in some
kind of ink, write on a sheet of papyrus leaf, and then roll the leaf and
tie it with string. Ovid had indicated this method of writing in his
Epistle of Canace. To Byblis he attributed a much older method. The
idea that she struggled with conflicting motives and yet undertook to
compose a letter suggested to him a passage of Euripides in the Iphi-
genia at Aulis. And, as he followed the details of human conflict, he
repeated also the ancient mechanical process.
According to Euripides, Agamemnon reluctantly composed a letter
ordering that his daughter should be brought for sacrifice. He used a
stylus, an instrument resembling a large needle, and with it scratched
his characters on tablets of pine wood covered with wax. To cancel a
mistake, he pushed back the wax over the mark with the blunt end of
the stylus. After finishing the letter, he stamped the tablets with his
personal seal, folded them on one another in some way, and tied them
with a string. Euripides described Agamemnon as writing, then cancel-
ling, tying and then untying, and throwing the tablet on the ground,
meanwhile weeping and showing evidences of despair. Ovid imagined
Byblis as composing with similar materials and behaving in a similar
manner. He added that her face bore an expression of boldness mingled
with shame.
The idea of an unhappy woman composing a letter to the man
whom she loved reminded Ovid of the epistles in his Heroides, especially
those of Phaedra and Dido. He imagined that Byblis composed a poetic
epistle, presenting her ideas in a similar manner. For the Romans, this
letter had the special interest of being the first and only one which
Ovid composed in hexameter verse. For all readers, Ovid's narrative
setting gave it the advantage of being unusually short and intense.
After writing and cancelling the word "sister", Byblis resolved to
proceed several lines before identifying herself. In the opening phrase
of Roman epistles the writer often used to wish his correspondent well.
The term employed was salus, which might suggest a number of desir-
able things, among them health, well being, and safety. The several
meanings invited a play on the word, in which Ovid had indulged more
than once in his Heroides. At the beginning of the Epistle of Phaedra,
the heroine had wished these good things to Hippolytus but had de-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
clared that she herself must live without them, unless Hippolytus in
turn should wish them to her. With this idea and with almost identical
words, Byblis began her letter to Caunus.
After calling his attention to many mute evidences of her passion,
Byblis declared that she had done everything possible to overcome it
but now was obliged abjectly to take from his hands either safety or
destruction. He ought, she continued, to be disposed favorably towards
her, for she already was associated closely with him and desired an even
closer tie. Phaedra had asserted that no lover stops to consider pro-
priety and that gods themselves offer precedents for putting moral
restrictions aside. Byblis offered the same argument in different terms.
Leave to old men, she said, the nice discrimination of right and wrong.
We, who are young and are emboldened by love, are not hindered by the
thought of deterrents and merely follow the example of the gods. Since
Byblis already had admitted to herself that gods were no precedent, this
plea was remarkably shameless. Phaedra had suggested that, as her
stepson, Hippolytus might associate with her and yet cause no suspi-
cion. Byblis made a similar suggestion to her brother. Ovid's Dido had
closed by warning Aeneas to avoid being noted on her tomb as the
cause of her death. With the same warning Byblis ended her letter to
Caunus.
Like Agamemnon, she marked the tablet with her seal. For some
reason the gem needed to be moistened, and ordinarily she would have
done this with her tongue. But, said Ovid, agitation had left her mouth
so dry that instead she moistened the gem with her tears. Although it
may have been improbable that distress would affect Byblis in this man-
ner, the idea certainly indicated that her distress was intense.
Then Byblis called a servant. She did not tell him the purpose of
her letter. She felt embarrassment at giving him any order at all. She
bade him carry the tables to -- and, after a long pause, added -- her
brother. Since Ovid had noted that she made it a practice to speak of
Caunus as her lord, it seems likely that she would have used this im-
personal term. But, as often in other tales, Ovid was anxious to impress
the idea that wickedness was deliberate. When Byblis gave the letter
to the servant, it slipped from her hands and fell. She regarded this as
an evil omen but sent the tablet none the less.
After waiting for an appropriate occasion, the servant gave her
letter to Caunus. According to Euripides, when the nurse delivered
Phaedra's message, Hippolytus became very angry and denounced the
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? BYBLIS
nurse for cooperating in such an affair. Ovid imagined a like response
from Caunus. The youth read part of the letter; threw the tablet down;
and, imagining that the servant knew its contents, bade him flee and re-
joice that unwillingness to publish the scandal had induced him to spare
the servant's life. The man reported this to Byblis. Ovid assumed that
he then withdrew.
At first Byblis grew pale and faint. But, as she recovered strength,
her passion returned. Ovid showed her deliberating the new problem in
a soliloquy. First she regretted the past. Unwilling to admit that any
fault lay in her purpose, she attributed it to other possible causes --
failure to try her brother with cautious approaches, as a sailor tries
the wind and proceeds with reefed sail into the unknown ocean beyond
the Pillars of Hercules; failure to wait for a lucky day; failure to avail
herself of the many possible advantages of appealing in person; reli-
ance on a messenger who might have been tactless. She reasoned that
Caunus was capable of being moved. Here Ovid recalled various pas-
sages in which Alexandrian and Roman poets had ascribed an implacable
disposition to some extraordinary parentage and nurture. He recalled
especially his own assertion in the tale of Scylla that Minos was the
offspring of an Armenian tigress and the idea of Theocritus that Cupid
was suckled by a lioness in a wild forest. He repeated the traditional
idea, but with the opposite intent. Byblis declared that Caunus was
not born of a tigress or suckled by a lioness and added that his heart
was not flint nor iron nor adamant.
Then she considered what to do next. Already she had disgraced
herself in the opinion of Caunus. By giving up her purpose, she might
incur the further harm of appearing to lack sincerity. By persisting
she would have nothing to fear and much to hope. Vergil in the Cirit
had shown Scylla describing her sudden, disastrous passion for Minos
'with the phrase "I saw, I perished! " Ovid showed Byblis imitating this
phrase in the words "I wrote, I pleaded ! "* After recording the solilo-
quy of Byblis, he made the following apt observation: she regretted that
she had tried and yet wanted to try again.
Ovid was interested in her state of mind, not in the external action
which followed. He observed only that she made repeated attempts and
*The imitation lay chiefly in sound and cadence. Vergil used the phrase ut vidi,
ut periil Ovid echoed it with Et scripai, et petit! Ovid was fond of the Ciris, as he
showed in the tales of Scylla (Bk. 8) and Myrrha (Bk. 10), and his context was
similar. But he may have remembered also that Vergil repeated the same phrase In
a more beautiful and famous passage of the Eighth Eclogue.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
incurred repeated repulse. Caunus, unable to discourage her, fled. Up
to this point Ovid had been elaborating ideas from Nicander and Par-
thenius. And he now alluded to a further idea of Parthenius that
Caunus founded a Carian city of that name. But in the rest of the tale
Ovid wanted to follow Apollonius, to tell how Byblis went in search of
her brother through the whole of Caria and on into the more distant
region of Lycia. If her brother was at Caunus, this would be improb-
able. And so Ovid remarked vaguely that Caunus founded a new city
in a strange land.
Byblis went insane, he continued. She abandoned any concealment
of her disgraceful passion and endeavored at all costs to overtake her
brother. Ovid imagined her traveling on foot southeastwards along the
coast. He recorded only the more picturesque circumstances. Near
Bubassus in the adjacent part of Caria, women observed her howling in
the fields like a bacchanal. Beyond that point Ovid seemed vague about
localities. He spoke of her wandering past a Carian people, the Leleges,
and then noted various places in Lycia, indicating that Byblis followed
the Lycian shore to its southeastern limit, for he mentioned the ridge
inhabited once by the Chimaera.
According to Parthenius, Byblis hanged herself on an oak tree.
According to Apollonius, she hanged herself, and her tears became a
spring. Ovid took suggestions from both authors. He mentioned a holm
oak tree but rejected the idea of a violent death. He elaborated the idea
of transformation. He imagined that Byblis dropped exhausted, with
her face buried in the grass and fallen leaves, and wept oblivious to any-
thing but her grief. Apollonius had spoken of the naiad Pronoe as
taking an interest in the fate of Byblis ; Nicander had spoken of nymphs
as transforming her. Ovid imagined that naiads of the region attempted
to console her, but finding that impossible, granted her an inexhaustible
flow to tears. Byblis wasted away and became a spring at the foot of a
holm oak tree.
Ovid's account of Byblis interested a number of later poets. Old-
ham and Dennis each made a close paraphrase of it. They modernized
some details, especially the writing of the letter, and they said that
Byblis hoped her brother would kiss her, not after she was dead, but
while she was dying. Dennis observed that she died raving and alone,
but neither poet mentioned any transformation.
Other poets referred to Byblis as an example of gross wickedness.
According to Martial, the modest Sulpicia denied even the existence of
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? BY B LIS
such women as Byblis and Scylla. Petrarch in his Triumph of Love
spoke of observing Semiramis, Byblis, and Myrrha together and de-
clared that each of them appeared to be ashamed of her past. Spenser
noted that Britomart's love for Artegal was very different from the
passion of Byblis or Myrrha.
Still other poets referred to Ovid's account merely as a famous love
story. Gottfried von Strassburg declared that Tristan and Isolde told
it as one of a number of sad tales from classic authors. Chaucer men-
tioned the story in his Parliament of Fowls as one of many which were
portrayed on the temple of Venus. And Swinburne made Ovid's theme
the subject of one of his earliest poems. Petrarch imitated the closing
incident. He declared that, overcome by love for Laura, he fell and
wasted away until he became a spring at the foot of a beech tree.
Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost appears to have recalled the idea
that nice discrimination of morality is appropriate only in old men, for
he observed,
Young blood will not obey an old decree.
Gray in a Latin ode to the Prince of Wales recalled the first soliloquy of
Byblis and echoed the phrasing of her address to Venus and Cupid.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
Iphis and Ianthe
With the abnormal passion of Byblis, which inspired horror and
resulted in disaster, Ovid planned to contrast an example of abnormal
passion that should inspire pity and end in happiness. The tale which
he selected had one association with that of Byblis. The events were
said to have occurred comparatively near Miletus, on the island of
Crete. Since the date of these events remained indefinite, Ovid imagined,
as a further association, that the experiences of Byblis and the events in
Crete were contemporary. The story of Byblis failed to attract atten-
tion on the island, he said, because the Cretans were preoccupied with an
amazing affair of their own, the recent transformation of a girl named
Iphis. Ovid proceeded to tell the story.
He adapted freely a tale of Nicander, which ran to the following
effect. Near the town of Phaestus, which occupies part of an inland
valley just south of Mt. Ida, there lived a certain Lamprus. Nicander
seemed to imply that he was prominent and wealthy, for he took as his
wife a Spartan woman named Galatea. Apparently Lamprus was harsh
and formidable in character. When the time drew near for his wife to
bear a child, he told her that, if the child should be a daughter, it must be
destroyed. To the ancients this attitude might appear cruel, but it was
not illegal. The Greek father seems to have been allowed to decide
whether he would raise his child or dispose of it by giving it away, sell-
ing it, or putting it to death. The Boman father certainly had this
right. Lamprus was an owner of sheep, which in summer would have to
be reared in the mountains far from home. Often it was necessary for
him to be absent for a long period. During one of these absences the child
was born. It proved to be a daughter.
The mother found several reasons for disobeying the father's order.
She pitied the child and shrank from the loneliness of the house. She
was encouraged also by dreams and by the advice of soothsayers, who
told her to rear the child as a boy. Following their counsel, she was able
to deceive her husband. It is probable that a Greek father, even when
he was at home, concerned himself very little with the care of young
children. And, in times when girls were supposed always to wear a dis-
tinctive dress, actual cases have shown that disguise in male attire can
be remarkably successful. Still, Nicander's idea was hardly more than
plausible.
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? IPHIS AND IANTHE
The child was named Leucippus. As it matured and assumed a dis-
tinctly feminine beauty, Galatea was fearful that Lamprus might be-
come aware of the deception. Visiting the shrine of Latona, she prayed
that her daughter might be transformed into a boy. To many of the
ancients, transformation of this kind appeared possible, for a man so
well informed as the Elder Pliny declared that in the north African town
of Thysdris he saw with his own eyes a person named Lucius Cassicus,
who had grown up as a woman and at the time of his wedding had become
a man. Greek mythology had recorded a number of instances. Accord-
ing to Nicander, Galatea herself reminded Latona of two cases where a
woman had become a man -- those of Caenis (cf. Bk. 12) and Hyperm-
nestra (cf. Bk. 8). And, less relevantly, she mentioned also the young
hunter Siproetes, whom Diana metamorphosed into a woman because he
saw the goddess bathing; and the seer Tiresias, who was metamorphosed
from a man into a woman and back again (cf. Bk. 3). It may have been
natural that Galatea should recall such examples of transformation, but
it detracted much from the wonder of the tale. Latona metamorphosed
Leucippus into a boy. The Phaestians erected a shrine to him and com-
memorated his transformation with an annual festival, at which bridal
couples did honor to the shrine.
In retelling the story Ovid showed more clearly the locality of
Phaestus. This village was in the central part of Crete, only a short
distance from Cnossus, the famous residence of King Minos. Ovid took
care to give as favorable an impression as possible of the husband's con-
duct. He described the husband as a man of excellent character but of
humble rank and poor. Ovid implied that his wife was a native of the
same district and of similar station. And perhaps to suggest further the
idea of humble folk, he changed their names to Ligdus and Telethusa.
According to Ovid, Ligdus informed his wife that he desired first
an easy childbirth and then a son. Realizing that his future child might
be a daughter, he took the following ground, which was not unreasonable.
Already he found it difficult to make a living. He might add a little
more difficulty by venturing to raise a boy, who soon would be able to
protect and provide for himself; but he could not undertake to raise a
girl, who would continue to be dependent and would need provision for
her marriage. Still he showed reluctance to command that a daughter
should be killed, and after doing so he wept. Although his wife pleaded
against the idea for a long time, he insisted on the course that seemed
wise.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
Nicander had supposed that after the child was born the mother
resolved to disobey orders, and he assigned a number of reasons. Ovid
imagined that she made her decision in advance and for a single im-
pressive reason. Nicander had spoken of dreams and of soothsayers, who
purported to give the will of the gods. Ovid imagined that Telethusa
had an experience which was both a dream and a direct expression of the
divine will. In the night a goddess visited, or seemed to visit, her. Ovid
declared that she was not Latona but the Egyptian Isis, whom the
Greeks had identified with Io (Bk. 1) and whom he indicated therefore
as the daughter of Inachus.
Isis had been originally a spirit of the grain field, and so Ovid
mentioned her wearing a wheaten garland in her hair. By long evolution
in the minds of her worshipers she had acquired a character of serene
dignity and had been associated with immortality. In Ovid's day she
already had become a favorite goddess among Roman ladies; two cen-
turies later the Emperor Caracalla formally recognized her as a deity
of Rome; and still later Egyptian and Greek representations of Isis
with the child Horus entered into the Roman Catholic conception of the
Virgin Mary. By introducing Isis, Ovid associated the tale with a god-
dess very interesting to his countrymen. He had also a chance to de-
scribe her impressive appearance and the remarkable company that
attended her.
The Egyptians often thought of Isis as taking the form of a cow,
an idea which Ovid had noted in the tale of the Pierids (Bk. 5), and as
wearing cow horns even when she appeared in human form. The Greeks,
identifying her with their lunar goddess Io, imagined these horns as
assuming the appearance of a crescent moon. Ovid described them ac-
cordingly. He then mentioned a number of other Egyptian deities,
whose attributes were becoming familiar to the Romans. There ap-
peared Anubis, with his head like that of a jackal; Bubastis formed in
part like the sacred cat; the black and white bull Apis; and Osiris, for
whom Isis never had wearied in searching. Ovid mentioned also the god
Horus. Egyptian sculptors had represented him as a naked child, with
a lotus flower in his hair and with his finger in his mouth. The Greeks,
misunderstanding the idea, had imagined that the child held his finger
to his lips in order to command silence, and Ovid described him in this
way.
There were also the sistra, instruments familiar in the worship of
Isis. Each of them consisted of two fixed metal rods and four mobile
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? IPHIS AND IANTHE
wooden rods, all fastened together loosely by metal rings. At various
times during the ceremonies they were shaken and made a loud rattling.
Finally as a symbol of Isis in her character of goddess of healing, there
followed that strange serpent, the asp or Egyptian cobra, which the
Romans may have associated chiefly with the suicide of Cleopatra.
Standing by the couch of Telethusa, Isis told her to disregard her
husband's order and assured her that she might expect aid in time of
need. After the departure of the goddess, Telethusa rose from her bed
and prayed that her vision might come true. Although Ovid did not men-
tion the seasonal absences of Ligdus with the sheep, he appears to have
accepted Nicander's idea. He implied that Ligdus was away at the time
of the vision, and he probably assumed that he still, or again, was absent
when the child was born.
Immediately after the daughter's birth, Telethusa began her pious
fraud by giving instructions to feed the boy. Fortunately the only per-
son aware of the deceit was a nurse, who willingly cooperated with her.
Probably Ovid imagined this nurse as hired to care for mother and child
until the mother should be able to resume her normal duties. The father,
believing that his child was a son, made offerings which he had promised
to the gods and named the infant after its grandfather. Nicander had
spoken of the child's receiving the name Leucippus. Ovid said more ap-
propriately that it was called Iphis, a name which was welcome to the
mother as being suitable either for a boy or for a girl.
Nicander had supposed that it was the daughter's womanly appear-
ance which caused the mother to fear discovery. Ovid rejected this idea.
The appearance of Iphis, he said, was favorable to the plan. Her fea-
tures, like those of Atalanta (Bk. 8), were attractive but not distinc-
tive either of a boy or a girl. Ovid imagined a more urgent cause for
alarm, the approaching marriage of Iphis. Among the ancients a boy
was thought old enough to marry at the age of fourteen, and a girl was
thought old enough at twelve. For Iphis, Ovid made the age thirteen.
The father chose a bride for his supposed son. She was Ianthe,
daughter of a Cretan named Telestes. She was of the same age as Iphis,
a native of the same valley, and she was regarded as the most beautiful
girl in Phaestus.
his Augustin and Sperata in Wilhelm Meister, and Grillparzer showed
it in presenting the hero and heroine of his Ancestress. In both cases
the brother was for a long time unaware of any kinship, but, after learn-
ing it, displayed a desire to persist.
Sympathy and revolt appeared more clearly in Chateaubriand's
Rene, where the heroine felt obliged to sacrifice herself to convention,
first by departing secretly from her brother and then by entering a
convent. * But rebellion against convention was even stronger in the
original plan of Shelley's Revolt of Islam and in Chateaubriand's Atala.
Both authors presented courtship of brother and sister as defensible
and worthy of admiration. And in the work of Chateaubriand the fact
was the more remarkable because it seemed gratuitous. His characters
Chactas and Atala were in fact unrelated. The author took advantage
as much as possible of the circumstance that Chactas had been adopted
by the father of Atala, and he showed the reverend priest Father Aubry
uttering a eulogy of the patriarchal age, with its illustrious examples of
brother married to sister.
The Romantic period with its emphasis on tragedy and revolt,
seems to have caused a reaction against such themes. A few isolated
examples appeared later, but with the second quarter of the nineteenth
century, leading authors turned their attention elsewhere.
Influenced probably by the Hippolytus of Euripides, most Alex-
andrian tales of illicit relations between parent and child or brother
'Probably by coincidence, Chateaubriand made his story RerU an interesting
contrast with Ovid's tale of Byblis. The two stories were alike in their chief circum-
stances. In both a young woman experienced illicit passion for her brother, and the
brother continued for a time unaware of the fact and then departed to another
country. The contrast appeared in the behavior of the heroine and the attitude of the
author. Ovid's heroine disclosed her passion to her brother and endeavored to seduce
him; Chateaubriand's heroine concealed her passion and carefully prevented the pos-
sibility of guilt. Ovid expressed disapproval of the heroine, Chateaubriand expressed
sympathy for her.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
and sister described a nurse or some other woman as promoting the
guilty affair. An example was the story of Myrrha, which Ovid planned
to recount later. In the tale of Byblis this element was absent. As an
unusual example of the familiar story and as a contrast with the tale of
Myrrha, Ovid probably thought it appropriate for treating at some
length. He also associated in his mind the stories of Byblis and Canace,
as he noted later in his Ibis, and saw a chance for another contrast. In
the Epistle of Canace, Ovid had shown the consequences of guilt. In the
story of Byblis he intended to study the growth of lawless passion.
The tradition of Byblis and Caunus entered literature early in the
Alexandrian period and took several different forms. According to the
version of Nicenaetus, which now is lost, Caunus was the one who expe-
rienced guilty passion. Fearing to reveal it, he left his native Miletus
and journeyed southeastwards over a range of mountains to a distance
of a hundred miles. There he founded the Carian city of Caunus. Byblis
lamented his absence until she became an owl, which continued wailing
before the gates of Miletus.
According to Nicander, it was Byblis who experienced guilty pas-
sion, and, to make the idea even more sensational, Nicander added that
she had abundant opportunity to love more wisely. Many suitors from
Miletus and other places offered themselves to her, but she rejected them
all and desired only her brother. Fearing that her passion might be
discovered, she hid from her parents in the day time, and at night visited
a cliff near Miletus, with the idea of leaping from the summit. The
nymphs, pitying her, lulled her into unconsciousness, and transformed
her into a hamadryad. A stream, which falls over the cliff, still is called
the Tears of Byblis. Nicander observed that the town of Caunus took
its name from her brother, but he did not associate the town with Byblis.
Both Nicenaetus and Nicander described a lover who was merely
passive and imagined only that Byblis was transformed. Other Alex-
andrian authors told of active courtship and of the sister's violent death.
Apollonius in his Founding of Caunus appears to have elaborated the
story at several points. Euripides in the Hippolytus had shown a nurse
defending the illicit passion of Phaedra by the example of Jupiter and
Semele. Apollonius showed Caunus defending his own passion in a
similar manner by the more relevant example of Jupiter and Juno. This
detail Ovid afterwards imitated in his Epistle of Phaedra. According
to Apollonius, the youth proceeded to court Byblis and was repulsed.
The story then followed the popular Alexandrian conception of
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? BYBLIS
the person who cruelly repels a lover and afterwards becomes inconsol-
able and perishes. After the departure of Caunus, Byblis felt a corre-
sponding passion and endeavored to overtake him. According to Apol-
lonius, the brother was traveling without any particular destination.
Unable to find him, Byblis continued southeastwards through the whole
district of Caria and on into Lycia -- an improbable distance. At a
place named Caryae, fatigue and despair overwhelmed her. She hanged
herself, and her flowing tears became a spring, which the natives call by
her name. Caunus, traveling at a slower rate, arrived in the same region,
and there a naiad, Pronoe, told him of the death and transformation of
Byblis. It was his son who founded Caunus. Conon repeated this tale,
and Nonnus afterwards made a long allusion to it.
The historian Aristocritus imagined that Byblis was the aggressor.
She loved Caunus, made overtures, and was repulsed. Caunus fled in
horror, and Byblis hanged herself on an oak tree. There was no trans-
formation. Parthenius retold this version of the tale, first in a poem
which now is lost and then in his book called Loves. Ovid, mentioning
the tale in his Art of Love, appeared to sympathize with Byblis, for he
said that she bravely ended her life by hanging.
In the Metamorphoses, Ovid combined ideas from several versions
of the story and added much material of his own. With Nicander and
Parthenius he agreed that Byblis was the one who experienced the law-
less passion. The idea that the guilty woman had other suitors he re-
jected, because he was reserving it for more effective use in the tale of
Myrrha. But it may have suggested to him that Byblis and Caunus
lived in a social atmosphere, and that Byblis envied other women who
seemed more beautiful. Perhaps for contrast with the tale of Canace
and her harsh father, Ovid rejected the idea that Byblis needed to fear
discovery by her parents. He seemed to imply that both Miletus and
Cyanee were dead.
With Nicander, Ovid agreed that Byblis was unable to subdue her
passion, and with Parthenius he agreed that she took the aggressive.
He desired chiefly to reveal the state of mind of a woman who could act
with such extraordinary audacity. In developing this part of the story,
Ovid may have taken details from an elegy of Hermesianax, which de-
scribed the passion of Leucippus for his sister, but undoubtedly he in-
vented much himself. Although Ovid's presentation of thoughts and
feelings gave the story animation and power, it tended to aggravate
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
whatever was undesirable in the theme. Ovid could have elaborated the
subject further, but he withheld some details which he thought more ser-
viceable for the stories of Myrrha and Ianthe, among them a supposed
precedent from the conduct of animals.
Ovid began with pointing a moral. Byblis is an instance that girls
ought not to love unlawfully. He then indicated the development of her
passion. At first, he said, she did not realize that it differed from sis-
terly affection. Presently she began to speak of Caunus not as her
brother but as her lord, and she preferred to have him call her not sister
but Byblis. While awake, she still restrained her desire. But in sleep she
experienced wanton dreams. Ovid spoke at first as if this occurred in
several nights. Later he seemed to think of only one. The issue now was
clearly before her.
Remembering his practice in other tales, such as that of Medea,
Ovid showed Byblis debating the question in a soliloquy, and he made it
clear that she understood the better course but followed the worse. It
will suffice to mention only a few circumstances in this portrayal of a
degenerate woman.
Recalling Apollonius, Ovid showed Byblis encouraging herself with
the precedent of Jupiter and Juno; and, recalling the Theogony, he
showed her adding for good measure the examples of Saturn and Ops
(Rhea) and of Oceanus and Tethys. But she answered this argument
with the idea that gods belonged to a different order from human beings
and were subject to different laws. Later Ovid showed her considering
the tradition about the children of Aeolus. With the earlier version she
noted that brothers had married their sisters, but with recollection of
the later version she recoiled from the tale as the worst possible prece-
dent. Byblis thought it preferable to die rather than to be guilty. She
hoped that Caunus might kiss her lifeless body; but realized that, if he
should guess the cause of her death, he might regard even this as a
concession to her wicked intent. She encouraged herself in her purpose
with the idea that, if he had loved first, she would have treated him
kindly.
Euripides had imagined that Phaedra shrank from pleading with
Hippolytus, and therefore that she sent her nurse with a message. Ovid
imagined that Byblis shrank from pleading with Caunus. But he wished
to avoid introducing a nurse. He imagined that Byblis sent her message
in a letter. And rather against probability -- he assumed that writing
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? BY BUS
materials were so conveniently near that Byblis was able to find them
without leaving her couch.
In Ovid's day it had long been customary for anyone writing a
letter to use a pen made from a certain variety of reed, to dip it in some
kind of ink, write on a sheet of papyrus leaf, and then roll the leaf and
tie it with string. Ovid had indicated this method of writing in his
Epistle of Canace. To Byblis he attributed a much older method. The
idea that she struggled with conflicting motives and yet undertook to
compose a letter suggested to him a passage of Euripides in the Iphi-
genia at Aulis. And, as he followed the details of human conflict, he
repeated also the ancient mechanical process.
According to Euripides, Agamemnon reluctantly composed a letter
ordering that his daughter should be brought for sacrifice. He used a
stylus, an instrument resembling a large needle, and with it scratched
his characters on tablets of pine wood covered with wax. To cancel a
mistake, he pushed back the wax over the mark with the blunt end of
the stylus. After finishing the letter, he stamped the tablets with his
personal seal, folded them on one another in some way, and tied them
with a string. Euripides described Agamemnon as writing, then cancel-
ling, tying and then untying, and throwing the tablet on the ground,
meanwhile weeping and showing evidences of despair. Ovid imagined
Byblis as composing with similar materials and behaving in a similar
manner. He added that her face bore an expression of boldness mingled
with shame.
The idea of an unhappy woman composing a letter to the man
whom she loved reminded Ovid of the epistles in his Heroides, especially
those of Phaedra and Dido. He imagined that Byblis composed a poetic
epistle, presenting her ideas in a similar manner. For the Romans, this
letter had the special interest of being the first and only one which
Ovid composed in hexameter verse. For all readers, Ovid's narrative
setting gave it the advantage of being unusually short and intense.
After writing and cancelling the word "sister", Byblis resolved to
proceed several lines before identifying herself. In the opening phrase
of Roman epistles the writer often used to wish his correspondent well.
The term employed was salus, which might suggest a number of desir-
able things, among them health, well being, and safety. The several
meanings invited a play on the word, in which Ovid had indulged more
than once in his Heroides. At the beginning of the Epistle of Phaedra,
the heroine had wished these good things to Hippolytus but had de-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
clared that she herself must live without them, unless Hippolytus in
turn should wish them to her. With this idea and with almost identical
words, Byblis began her letter to Caunus.
After calling his attention to many mute evidences of her passion,
Byblis declared that she had done everything possible to overcome it
but now was obliged abjectly to take from his hands either safety or
destruction. He ought, she continued, to be disposed favorably towards
her, for she already was associated closely with him and desired an even
closer tie. Phaedra had asserted that no lover stops to consider pro-
priety and that gods themselves offer precedents for putting moral
restrictions aside. Byblis offered the same argument in different terms.
Leave to old men, she said, the nice discrimination of right and wrong.
We, who are young and are emboldened by love, are not hindered by the
thought of deterrents and merely follow the example of the gods. Since
Byblis already had admitted to herself that gods were no precedent, this
plea was remarkably shameless. Phaedra had suggested that, as her
stepson, Hippolytus might associate with her and yet cause no suspi-
cion. Byblis made a similar suggestion to her brother. Ovid's Dido had
closed by warning Aeneas to avoid being noted on her tomb as the
cause of her death. With the same warning Byblis ended her letter to
Caunus.
Like Agamemnon, she marked the tablet with her seal. For some
reason the gem needed to be moistened, and ordinarily she would have
done this with her tongue. But, said Ovid, agitation had left her mouth
so dry that instead she moistened the gem with her tears. Although it
may have been improbable that distress would affect Byblis in this man-
ner, the idea certainly indicated that her distress was intense.
Then Byblis called a servant. She did not tell him the purpose of
her letter. She felt embarrassment at giving him any order at all. She
bade him carry the tables to -- and, after a long pause, added -- her
brother. Since Ovid had noted that she made it a practice to speak of
Caunus as her lord, it seems likely that she would have used this im-
personal term. But, as often in other tales, Ovid was anxious to impress
the idea that wickedness was deliberate. When Byblis gave the letter
to the servant, it slipped from her hands and fell. She regarded this as
an evil omen but sent the tablet none the less.
After waiting for an appropriate occasion, the servant gave her
letter to Caunus. According to Euripides, when the nurse delivered
Phaedra's message, Hippolytus became very angry and denounced the
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? BYBLIS
nurse for cooperating in such an affair. Ovid imagined a like response
from Caunus. The youth read part of the letter; threw the tablet down;
and, imagining that the servant knew its contents, bade him flee and re-
joice that unwillingness to publish the scandal had induced him to spare
the servant's life. The man reported this to Byblis. Ovid assumed that
he then withdrew.
At first Byblis grew pale and faint. But, as she recovered strength,
her passion returned. Ovid showed her deliberating the new problem in
a soliloquy. First she regretted the past. Unwilling to admit that any
fault lay in her purpose, she attributed it to other possible causes --
failure to try her brother with cautious approaches, as a sailor tries
the wind and proceeds with reefed sail into the unknown ocean beyond
the Pillars of Hercules; failure to wait for a lucky day; failure to avail
herself of the many possible advantages of appealing in person; reli-
ance on a messenger who might have been tactless. She reasoned that
Caunus was capable of being moved. Here Ovid recalled various pas-
sages in which Alexandrian and Roman poets had ascribed an implacable
disposition to some extraordinary parentage and nurture. He recalled
especially his own assertion in the tale of Scylla that Minos was the
offspring of an Armenian tigress and the idea of Theocritus that Cupid
was suckled by a lioness in a wild forest. He repeated the traditional
idea, but with the opposite intent. Byblis declared that Caunus was
not born of a tigress or suckled by a lioness and added that his heart
was not flint nor iron nor adamant.
Then she considered what to do next. Already she had disgraced
herself in the opinion of Caunus. By giving up her purpose, she might
incur the further harm of appearing to lack sincerity. By persisting
she would have nothing to fear and much to hope. Vergil in the Cirit
had shown Scylla describing her sudden, disastrous passion for Minos
'with the phrase "I saw, I perished! " Ovid showed Byblis imitating this
phrase in the words "I wrote, I pleaded ! "* After recording the solilo-
quy of Byblis, he made the following apt observation: she regretted that
she had tried and yet wanted to try again.
Ovid was interested in her state of mind, not in the external action
which followed. He observed only that she made repeated attempts and
*The imitation lay chiefly in sound and cadence. Vergil used the phrase ut vidi,
ut periil Ovid echoed it with Et scripai, et petit! Ovid was fond of the Ciris, as he
showed in the tales of Scylla (Bk. 8) and Myrrha (Bk. 10), and his context was
similar. But he may have remembered also that Vergil repeated the same phrase In
a more beautiful and famous passage of the Eighth Eclogue.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
incurred repeated repulse. Caunus, unable to discourage her, fled. Up
to this point Ovid had been elaborating ideas from Nicander and Par-
thenius. And he now alluded to a further idea of Parthenius that
Caunus founded a Carian city of that name. But in the rest of the tale
Ovid wanted to follow Apollonius, to tell how Byblis went in search of
her brother through the whole of Caria and on into the more distant
region of Lycia. If her brother was at Caunus, this would be improb-
able. And so Ovid remarked vaguely that Caunus founded a new city
in a strange land.
Byblis went insane, he continued. She abandoned any concealment
of her disgraceful passion and endeavored at all costs to overtake her
brother. Ovid imagined her traveling on foot southeastwards along the
coast. He recorded only the more picturesque circumstances. Near
Bubassus in the adjacent part of Caria, women observed her howling in
the fields like a bacchanal. Beyond that point Ovid seemed vague about
localities. He spoke of her wandering past a Carian people, the Leleges,
and then noted various places in Lycia, indicating that Byblis followed
the Lycian shore to its southeastern limit, for he mentioned the ridge
inhabited once by the Chimaera.
According to Parthenius, Byblis hanged herself on an oak tree.
According to Apollonius, she hanged herself, and her tears became a
spring. Ovid took suggestions from both authors. He mentioned a holm
oak tree but rejected the idea of a violent death. He elaborated the idea
of transformation. He imagined that Byblis dropped exhausted, with
her face buried in the grass and fallen leaves, and wept oblivious to any-
thing but her grief. Apollonius had spoken of the naiad Pronoe as
taking an interest in the fate of Byblis ; Nicander had spoken of nymphs
as transforming her. Ovid imagined that naiads of the region attempted
to console her, but finding that impossible, granted her an inexhaustible
flow to tears. Byblis wasted away and became a spring at the foot of a
holm oak tree.
Ovid's account of Byblis interested a number of later poets. Old-
ham and Dennis each made a close paraphrase of it. They modernized
some details, especially the writing of the letter, and they said that
Byblis hoped her brother would kiss her, not after she was dead, but
while she was dying. Dennis observed that she died raving and alone,
but neither poet mentioned any transformation.
Other poets referred to Byblis as an example of gross wickedness.
According to Martial, the modest Sulpicia denied even the existence of
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? BY B LIS
such women as Byblis and Scylla. Petrarch in his Triumph of Love
spoke of observing Semiramis, Byblis, and Myrrha together and de-
clared that each of them appeared to be ashamed of her past. Spenser
noted that Britomart's love for Artegal was very different from the
passion of Byblis or Myrrha.
Still other poets referred to Ovid's account merely as a famous love
story. Gottfried von Strassburg declared that Tristan and Isolde told
it as one of a number of sad tales from classic authors. Chaucer men-
tioned the story in his Parliament of Fowls as one of many which were
portrayed on the temple of Venus. And Swinburne made Ovid's theme
the subject of one of his earliest poems. Petrarch imitated the closing
incident. He declared that, overcome by love for Laura, he fell and
wasted away until he became a spring at the foot of a beech tree.
Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost appears to have recalled the idea
that nice discrimination of morality is appropriate only in old men, for
he observed,
Young blood will not obey an old decree.
Gray in a Latin ode to the Prince of Wales recalled the first soliloquy of
Byblis and echoed the phrasing of her address to Venus and Cupid.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
Iphis and Ianthe
With the abnormal passion of Byblis, which inspired horror and
resulted in disaster, Ovid planned to contrast an example of abnormal
passion that should inspire pity and end in happiness. The tale which
he selected had one association with that of Byblis. The events were
said to have occurred comparatively near Miletus, on the island of
Crete. Since the date of these events remained indefinite, Ovid imagined,
as a further association, that the experiences of Byblis and the events in
Crete were contemporary. The story of Byblis failed to attract atten-
tion on the island, he said, because the Cretans were preoccupied with an
amazing affair of their own, the recent transformation of a girl named
Iphis. Ovid proceeded to tell the story.
He adapted freely a tale of Nicander, which ran to the following
effect. Near the town of Phaestus, which occupies part of an inland
valley just south of Mt. Ida, there lived a certain Lamprus. Nicander
seemed to imply that he was prominent and wealthy, for he took as his
wife a Spartan woman named Galatea. Apparently Lamprus was harsh
and formidable in character. When the time drew near for his wife to
bear a child, he told her that, if the child should be a daughter, it must be
destroyed. To the ancients this attitude might appear cruel, but it was
not illegal. The Greek father seems to have been allowed to decide
whether he would raise his child or dispose of it by giving it away, sell-
ing it, or putting it to death. The Boman father certainly had this
right. Lamprus was an owner of sheep, which in summer would have to
be reared in the mountains far from home. Often it was necessary for
him to be absent for a long period. During one of these absences the child
was born. It proved to be a daughter.
The mother found several reasons for disobeying the father's order.
She pitied the child and shrank from the loneliness of the house. She
was encouraged also by dreams and by the advice of soothsayers, who
told her to rear the child as a boy. Following their counsel, she was able
to deceive her husband. It is probable that a Greek father, even when
he was at home, concerned himself very little with the care of young
children. And, in times when girls were supposed always to wear a dis-
tinctive dress, actual cases have shown that disguise in male attire can
be remarkably successful. Still, Nicander's idea was hardly more than
plausible.
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? IPHIS AND IANTHE
The child was named Leucippus. As it matured and assumed a dis-
tinctly feminine beauty, Galatea was fearful that Lamprus might be-
come aware of the deception. Visiting the shrine of Latona, she prayed
that her daughter might be transformed into a boy. To many of the
ancients, transformation of this kind appeared possible, for a man so
well informed as the Elder Pliny declared that in the north African town
of Thysdris he saw with his own eyes a person named Lucius Cassicus,
who had grown up as a woman and at the time of his wedding had become
a man. Greek mythology had recorded a number of instances. Accord-
ing to Nicander, Galatea herself reminded Latona of two cases where a
woman had become a man -- those of Caenis (cf. Bk. 12) and Hyperm-
nestra (cf. Bk. 8). And, less relevantly, she mentioned also the young
hunter Siproetes, whom Diana metamorphosed into a woman because he
saw the goddess bathing; and the seer Tiresias, who was metamorphosed
from a man into a woman and back again (cf. Bk. 3). It may have been
natural that Galatea should recall such examples of transformation, but
it detracted much from the wonder of the tale. Latona metamorphosed
Leucippus into a boy. The Phaestians erected a shrine to him and com-
memorated his transformation with an annual festival, at which bridal
couples did honor to the shrine.
In retelling the story Ovid showed more clearly the locality of
Phaestus. This village was in the central part of Crete, only a short
distance from Cnossus, the famous residence of King Minos. Ovid took
care to give as favorable an impression as possible of the husband's con-
duct. He described the husband as a man of excellent character but of
humble rank and poor. Ovid implied that his wife was a native of the
same district and of similar station. And perhaps to suggest further the
idea of humble folk, he changed their names to Ligdus and Telethusa.
According to Ovid, Ligdus informed his wife that he desired first
an easy childbirth and then a son. Realizing that his future child might
be a daughter, he took the following ground, which was not unreasonable.
Already he found it difficult to make a living. He might add a little
more difficulty by venturing to raise a boy, who soon would be able to
protect and provide for himself; but he could not undertake to raise a
girl, who would continue to be dependent and would need provision for
her marriage. Still he showed reluctance to command that a daughter
should be killed, and after doing so he wept. Although his wife pleaded
against the idea for a long time, he insisted on the course that seemed
wise.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK NINE
Nicander had supposed that after the child was born the mother
resolved to disobey orders, and he assigned a number of reasons. Ovid
imagined that she made her decision in advance and for a single im-
pressive reason. Nicander had spoken of dreams and of soothsayers, who
purported to give the will of the gods. Ovid imagined that Telethusa
had an experience which was both a dream and a direct expression of the
divine will. In the night a goddess visited, or seemed to visit, her. Ovid
declared that she was not Latona but the Egyptian Isis, whom the
Greeks had identified with Io (Bk. 1) and whom he indicated therefore
as the daughter of Inachus.
Isis had been originally a spirit of the grain field, and so Ovid
mentioned her wearing a wheaten garland in her hair. By long evolution
in the minds of her worshipers she had acquired a character of serene
dignity and had been associated with immortality. In Ovid's day she
already had become a favorite goddess among Roman ladies; two cen-
turies later the Emperor Caracalla formally recognized her as a deity
of Rome; and still later Egyptian and Greek representations of Isis
with the child Horus entered into the Roman Catholic conception of the
Virgin Mary. By introducing Isis, Ovid associated the tale with a god-
dess very interesting to his countrymen. He had also a chance to de-
scribe her impressive appearance and the remarkable company that
attended her.
The Egyptians often thought of Isis as taking the form of a cow,
an idea which Ovid had noted in the tale of the Pierids (Bk. 5), and as
wearing cow horns even when she appeared in human form. The Greeks,
identifying her with their lunar goddess Io, imagined these horns as
assuming the appearance of a crescent moon. Ovid described them ac-
cordingly. He then mentioned a number of other Egyptian deities,
whose attributes were becoming familiar to the Romans. There ap-
peared Anubis, with his head like that of a jackal; Bubastis formed in
part like the sacred cat; the black and white bull Apis; and Osiris, for
whom Isis never had wearied in searching. Ovid mentioned also the god
Horus. Egyptian sculptors had represented him as a naked child, with
a lotus flower in his hair and with his finger in his mouth. The Greeks,
misunderstanding the idea, had imagined that the child held his finger
to his lips in order to command silence, and Ovid described him in this
way.
There were also the sistra, instruments familiar in the worship of
Isis. Each of them consisted of two fixed metal rods and four mobile
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? IPHIS AND IANTHE
wooden rods, all fastened together loosely by metal rings. At various
times during the ceremonies they were shaken and made a loud rattling.
Finally as a symbol of Isis in her character of goddess of healing, there
followed that strange serpent, the asp or Egyptian cobra, which the
Romans may have associated chiefly with the suicide of Cleopatra.
Standing by the couch of Telethusa, Isis told her to disregard her
husband's order and assured her that she might expect aid in time of
need. After the departure of the goddess, Telethusa rose from her bed
and prayed that her vision might come true. Although Ovid did not men-
tion the seasonal absences of Ligdus with the sheep, he appears to have
accepted Nicander's idea. He implied that Ligdus was away at the time
of the vision, and he probably assumed that he still, or again, was absent
when the child was born.
Immediately after the daughter's birth, Telethusa began her pious
fraud by giving instructions to feed the boy. Fortunately the only per-
son aware of the deceit was a nurse, who willingly cooperated with her.
Probably Ovid imagined this nurse as hired to care for mother and child
until the mother should be able to resume her normal duties. The father,
believing that his child was a son, made offerings which he had promised
to the gods and named the infant after its grandfather. Nicander had
spoken of the child's receiving the name Leucippus. Ovid said more ap-
propriately that it was called Iphis, a name which was welcome to the
mother as being suitable either for a boy or for a girl.
Nicander had supposed that it was the daughter's womanly appear-
ance which caused the mother to fear discovery. Ovid rejected this idea.
The appearance of Iphis, he said, was favorable to the plan. Her fea-
tures, like those of Atalanta (Bk. 8), were attractive but not distinc-
tive either of a boy or a girl. Ovid imagined a more urgent cause for
alarm, the approaching marriage of Iphis. Among the ancients a boy
was thought old enough to marry at the age of fourteen, and a girl was
thought old enough at twelve. For Iphis, Ovid made the age thirteen.
The father chose a bride for his supposed son. She was Ianthe,
daughter of a Cretan named Telestes. She was of the same age as Iphis,
a native of the same valley, and she was regarded as the most beautiful
girl in Phaestus.
