To Spenser the myth suggested two
incidents
of
his Faerie Queene.
his Faerie Queene.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v1
METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
Pindar often recalled the traditional glories of his native city. These
poets took special interest in the closing period of Theban history.
For the great drama of Athens Theban myth proved a storehouse
of tragic material. It suggested many dramas of Aeschylus; it in-
spired masterpieces of Sophocles; and it provided Euripides with the
subjects of many interesting, though rather unsuccessful, plays.
Athenian drama treated almost the whole range of Theban myth; but,
like the older Greek poetry, it found most congenial the later period--
the misfortunes of Oedipus and his successors and the adventurous
career of Hercules.
The Alexandrians made further use of the famous tradition. Their
poets, anxious to avoid material which might seem too well known,
looked chiefly to myths in the earlier history of Thebes. Theocritus
and others retold individual tales with originality and charm. Nicander
found new versions for almost all the earlier tales and also for a num-
ber of the later ones.
Although Ovid profited gladly by Theban myth, he did not retell it
in full. Like the Alexandrians, he gave his attention chiefly to the
earlier tales. These he selected carefully and arranged in a new and
more effective order. The improved Theban material he treated in his
Third Book and about half of the Fourth. Then he passed to other
themes. But in later passages of his poem he used still other Theban
myths for his tales of Niobe (Bk. 6), the Teumessian Fox (Bk. 7), the
death of Orion's daughters (Bk. 13), and a few adventures of Her-
cules (Bk. 9).
Cadmus and the Deagon
A small company of Phoenicians appear to have made the original
settlement at Thebes. They established a citadel, known as the
Cadmea, and brought in a higher form of culture than any which had
existed before in central Greece. According to Aeschylus, they intro-
duced the worship of Mars. And with him they associated a common
Semitic belief that a snake was guardian of their spring. They re-
garded the creature as sacred to Mars and often spoke of it as his son.
Although the earliest settlers were Phoenician, they soon intermarried
with the natives and became a Greek people. The author of the Iliad
referred to them as inhabitants of the Cadmea and worshippers of
Mars. The Odyssey mentioned their enclosing the city with the
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? CADMUS AND THE DRAGON
famous wall and its seven gates. But thus far we hear nothing of
Cadmus.
A century or more later, his story appears in rather definite form.
The Theogony declared that Cadmus married Harmonia, daughter of
Mars and Venus, and that their children were four daughters named
Ino, Semele, Agave, and Autonoe and a son named Polydorus. This
part of the story was followed by all subsequent authors, including
Ovid.
Pindar added that the gods attended the wedding bringing gifts
but that the later life of Cadmus was unhappy through the misfor-
, tune of his daughters. Pindar alluded also to a tradition that some
of the Thebans were descended from the sacred snake.
This part of the tale was first recorded by the mythographer
Pherecydes. Cadmus, he said, had put the reptile to death. Then
Athena, coming to his aid, advised him to plant a number of the crea-
ture's teeth. A crop of fierce warriors grew up, and Cadmus in alarm
threw stones among them. The warriors, believing that their neigh-
bors had struck them, engaged in a sanguinary battle until only
Echion and four others were left. These Athena persuaded to make
peace and aid in the founding of Thebes. The rest of the teeth Athena
conveyed to Aeetes of Colchis, and later they were planted by Jason
(cf. Bk. 7).
In the PhosnisscB Euripides added many further details. Before
going to Thebes, he said, Cadmus had visited the Delphic Oracle and
learned that he was to follow an unbroken heifer and settle where she
lay down. Before founding the city, Euripides continued, Cadmus
desired to sacrifice the heifer, and while obtaining water for the cere-
mony, he met with the snake and crushed its head with a boulder.
Mars, resenting the loss of his favorite, was appeased only many
generations later by the voluntary death of a youth named Menceceus.
Apollonius agreed in all essential details with Pherecides and
Euripides. But Nicander made two important changes. He height-
ened the interest of the battle by declaring that the boulder proved
ineffectual and he related the anger of Mars more definitely to the
subsequent tales of Thebes. Immediately after the battle, he said, the
god addressed Cadmus, indicating his displeasure and announcing
that later the hero himself was to become a snake. This change
allowed Nicander to relate the misfortunes of Cadmus' children and
grandchildren as effects of a single divine cause and to end the series
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK m
with the transformation predicted in the beginning. Ovid followed
both Nicander's innovations and he made the sudden warning im-
pressive. But he would have done better to make it clear that the
voice was that of Mars and that the prophecy referred to all the
ensuing tales. The prophecy should have been not only an effective
incident but the turning point in the cycle.
Meanwhile Herodotus had related Cadmus to Europa, and
Euripides had made him a descendant of Io. The Manual, after re-
peating and adding to this genealogy, declared that Agenor forbade
his sons to return without Europa. After a detailed account of the
search through Asia Minor and the Aegean isles, it recorded that
Cadmus settled in Thrace until the death of his mother. In the rest
of the tale the Manual differed from other versions considerably.
Cadmus, according to the Manual, did not travel alone, but was ac-
companied by other Phoenicians. After leaving the Delphic Oracle,
they wandered in a southeasterly direction for a considerable distance
and were entering the region later known as Boeotia, when they met
with the heifer. The district took its name from the famous cow.
Arriving at Thebes, Cadmus at first despatched his followers in search
of water. The snake destroyed the greater part of them. Then Cad-
mus himself battled with the reptile. After the warriors grew up
from the teeth, continued the Manual, a chance quarrel among them
may have led to the battle. Although Mars was offended at the death
of the, snake and its offspring, Cadmus appeased him by eight years'
service. The Manual added that Athena made Cadmus king of Thebes
and recorded the marriage of his three older daughters--Ino to Atha-
mas, Autonoe to Aristasus, and Agave to Echion.
From the Manual Ovid took the greater part of his tale. He
omitted the genealogy of Cadmus and all details of the quest for
Europa. The incidents of the oracle and the heifer he abridged and
he imagined that Cadmus found her immediately after leaving Delphi
and followed her from there to the site of his future citadel--an in-
credible distance. Ovid suggested effectively the awe and wonder of
Cadmus when he looked at the unfamiliar and beautiful country which
was to be his home.
Ovid reported that all the followers of Cadmus perished and so
made it more plausible that Athena should provide new followers
from the teeth. In describing the snake, he profited by Vergil's
memorable account of a serpent in the Cvlex, but he added many effec-
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? CADMUS AND THE DRAGON
tive details of his own and greatly magnified the creature's size and
power. In this he proceeded dangerously far: he made it unlikely
that a single warrior, even a giant, could overcome such a monster.
But this fault Ovid shared with Vergil and with many authors of later
times who wished to tell graphically of a hero overcoming a dragon.
The chief incidents of the battle and the prophecy of Mars, Ovid took
from Nicander.
In picturing the strange growth of warriors from the soil, Ovid
compared it to the gradual appearance of figures outlined on the
curtain of a theater. To the Romans the comparison would have
seemed happy and exact, for at the end of their performance the
curtain was drawn upward from the floor until it hid the stage. Such
apt illustration from the civilized life of his time Ovid was to use occa-
sionally in other parts of his poem. For his contemporaries, the
device was very effective; but for readers of a later time, it often was
made obscure by a change of fashion. The older poets of Greece and
Rome had followed the safer practice of using illustration from proc-
esses of nature or from general human experience.
During the subsequent battle of the warriors, Ovid was anxious to
make the conflict differ where possible from a similar combat in the
story of Jason (Bk. 7). Tradition had made the two battles alike,
except that five of the Theban warriors survived, while the Colchian
warriors were exterminated. Ovid introduced further changes. In
the Theban battle he described Cadmus as alarmed at the sudden ap-
pearance of the warriors; in the Colchian, he described the alarm of
the spectators. The Theban warriors, he said, warned Cadmus to
remain neutral and began their conflict with a chance quarrel: the
Colchians fought blindly when Jason hurled a stone. He recounted
the Theban battle in some detail but merely summarized the other.
The founding of Thebes, the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia,
and the subsequent genealogy Ovid dismissed briefly. But he indicated
well the happy, prosperous state of Cadmus immediately after the
founding of the City. The early Athenian poet and statesman, Solon,
had observed that it is unwise to call any man happy before his death.
Sophocles repeated the idea impressively at the close of his Oedipus
and probably made it widely known among the later Greeks. With
this fitting proverb Ovid pointed forward from the tale of Cadmus
to those which were to follow.
In later times, Ovid's tale of Cadmus was well known. The Flamenca
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK in
named it as a favorite in thirteenth century Provence. In a sonnet to
Laura, Petrarch reminded himself that no man should be called happy
until his final day has sped. Tasso compared Armida rising from the
lake to a figure rising with the curtain of a theater. Camoens rebuked
the Europeans of his time for fighting like those warrior brothers
who sprang from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. In Corneille's
Psyche, Agenor and Cleomene, recalling the example of Cadmus, found
courage to await a dragon.
Referring in the Areopagitica to censorship of books, Milton
granted that "they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those
fabulous dragon's teeth, and, being sown up and down, may chance
to spring up armed men. " In Paradise Lost he used Ovid's descrip-
tion of the snake for a fine portrayal of the Tempter approaching
Eve
Not with indented wave
Prone on the ground, but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amid his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant.
Hawthorne used Ovid in part for his own charming paraphrase of
the story. Cadmus and Athena were painted by Salvator Rosa.
Actaeon
After the marriage of Cadmus, the Manual had told of his daugh-
ters Semele and Ino, whose careers began happily but ended in disaster.
Both these tales Ovid reserved until later. He felt that the marriage
of Cadmus was the happiest moment and the turning point in the
hero's life. And, to make the idea of subsequent misfortune as
emphatic as possible, he recorded immediately afterward the tragic
fate of his grandson Acta? on.
This myth had been a favorite in Greek literature and art. The
cause of Action's strange misfortune was given variously. Stesichorus
declared that the youth had been a rival of Jupiter in the courtship of
Semele. As punishment, Jupiter caused him to offend Diana. The
goddess transformed Action into a stag and allowed him to perish
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? ACTAEON
by his own hounds. Aeschylus repeated the tale in a play, now lost.
In the fifth century B. C. , the Greeks had accepted a form of the
Theban myths which made Semele Actaeon's aunt. That Actaeon
should court her was no longer acceptable and so this part of the tale
was omitted. Actaeon was thought to have suffered only for his
offense against Diana.
According to Euripides in the Bacchce, Actaeon offended the god-
dess by declaring that he excelled her in hunting. But later it was
supposed ordinarily that he intruded on her accidentally while she
was bathing. This version Callimachus told in his Bath of Pallas.
He added that Actaeon had been a companion of the goddess in her
hunting. After the tragedy, he continued, Actaeon's father and
mother sought, lamenting, for the scattered bones of their son. This
form of the myth Ovid did not use.
The Manual told also of Actaeon's intrusion and punishment, add-
ing that the goddess maddened the hounds. After Actaeon's death,
it continued, the dogs sought their master, whining piteously, until
the centaur Chiron appeased them by making an image of him. Ovid
followed the outline in the Manual, wisely omitting these details. He
added the circumstance of Actaeon's meeting with Diana in the vale
of Gargaphie and the description of the nymphs attending on the
goddess. And his was the famous conception of the nymphs hasten-
ing to conceal Diana, and the goddess standing divinely tall in the
middle of the group.
Stesichorus appears to have named at least a few of Actaeon's
hounds. Aeschylus followed his example, and early mythographers
added many more. The Manual mentioned fifty, and later Hyginus
was to name more than eighty! Though realizing the danger of ex-
cess, Ovid felt that a skillful enumeration would add much to the vivid-
ness and terror of the hunt. He tried, therefore, to enliven the cata-
logue in many ways and reduced the number of names to thirty-six.
Nicander also had told the story, adding the circumstance that
Actaeon retained his human mind and that he tried in vain to speak.
Ovid profited by these hints for his description of Actaeon's dismay
after the transformation and for the pathetic circumstances of his
death. Nicander may have suggested also the noonday heat which led
Actaeon to end his hunting. Ovid described this well, but he did not
make it seem probable that Actaeon should leave his followers and
wander at random through the forest.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
Ovid improved on what was best in the work of his predecessors and
was the first to develop the myth into an admirable narrative poem.
His version made the story popular in Roman and later times and
was always the chief source of later allusion. Recalling the myth in
the Tristia, Ovid declared that he himself resembled Actaeon, for
without evil intent he saw what was forbidden and incurred a cruel
punishment.
Statius included the tale in his Thebaiad.
In the Middle Ages, writers were inclined to interpret the story
allegorically, as an example of a young man pursued and destroyed
by his vices, and this suggested to Dante the incident of the prodigal
overtaken and torn to pieces by black hounds in the suicides' grove.
Petrarch imitated the story of Actaeon in an allegory of his courtship
of Laura and of the remorse following his repulse. Castillejo retold
Ovid's myth as an allegorical narrative, and Camoens referred to it
at some length in order to warn his sovereign against neglecting
affairs of state. In Twelfth Night Shakespeare used the myth as an
allegory of unhappy love. When the courtiers advised Orsino to hunt
the hart, he replied
Why, so I do, the noblest that I have:
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence:
That instant was I turned into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.
Often, however, the great poets recalled Ovid in a more ordinary
sense. The wonder and pleasure experienced by Actaeon when he
suddenly beheld Diana was felt by Petrarch, when he chanced to see
his lady washing a veil. Chaucer mentioned Actaeon repeatedly
in the Knight's Tale. Camoens declared that some maidens surprised
by the Portuguese pretended to feel the shame of Diana when she saw
the young hunter.
To Spenser the myth suggested two incidents of
his Faerie Queene. In one of these Diana and her nymphs, while bath-
ing, were unpleasantly surprised by Venus. In the other, Faunus spied
on Diana and for punishment was arrayed as a stag and pursued with
hounds. Shelley compared to Actaeon the unfortunate shepherd who
came to mourn over Adonais. Tennyson imagined the story sculptured
on a gate of the feminine college in his Princess.
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? SEMELE AND JUPITER
The moment when Diana stood embarrassed among her nymphs
made a deep impression on both Dante and Shakespeare. Dante used
Ovid's description of her blush to suggest the indignant hue of Para-
dise when St. Peter rebuked the corruption of the papacy. Shake-
speare in Titus Andronicus distinguished Tamora as excelling other
Roman ladies
Like stately Phoebe mongst her nymphs.
And in his Henry Sixth Warwick advised the king to remain protected
by the citizens of London
Like modest Dian circled by her nymphs ( ! )
Ovid's myth of Actaeon inspired the modern painters Pittone,
Domenichino, Gaspard Poussin, Allegrain, and G. Caesar. It sug-
gested two masterpieces of Titian. The French painter Dampt varied
the myth so far as to show Diana mourning the death of her victim.
In the town hall of Dantzig Actaeon was represented by the unusual
device of a colored relief bearing the antlers of a real stag.
Semele and Jupiter
By a transition of his own inventing, Ovid passed from Actaeon
to Juno's plot against Semele. This allowed him to recount the myth
of Semele and also the birth and nurture of the god Bacchus.
Both the god and his worship were of foreign origin and had been
introduced into the Greek world not long before the dawn of historical
times. In fact the worship of Bacchus was the first of many oriental
and mystical cults which were to influence Greek civilization. Its
alien character impressed the historian Herodotus, and he suggested
that Cadmus had introduced the cult of Bacchus after some acquain-
tance with the worship of Osiris. Bacchus indeed had much in com-
mon with the Egyptian deity; but he entered the Greek world from the
more northern region of Phrygia and Thrace.
In these countries the god became known first as a spirit associated
with trees and worshiped in forests and wild places. At times he
revealed himself in the shape of a bull, a goat, a snake, or some other
animal form. He caused fertility in useful plants, in domestic animals,
and even in human beings. Through the warm summers he inhabited
the forests and the neighboring fields, making them green and fruit-
ful. When the colder, darker autumn came, he departed yearly with
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
the falling leaves to the world of the dead. But later he returned to
life with the new leaves of spring.
The signs of this marvellous resurrection were welcomed by a festi-
val of wild noise and frantic dancing. At first it probably occurred
every year in the spring; but during historical times it appears to
have been held only every second year. The clamor, the frenzy, and
often the license of these orgies made their name proverbial. According
to persistent tradition, the festival reached a climax, when the mad-
dened worshipers fell upon a living bull and tore him to pieces with
their hands and teeth. His flesh and blood were devoured raw by the
eager throng. That savages would not shrink from such ferocity, we
have only too good evidence. Even human beings met a similar fate
during a festival held annually by the Khonds of modern India. But
the practice ascribed to the Bacchanals seems to be physically im-
possible and may have been misunderstood by those who wrote long
after and from hearsay. A goat, or some other animal, might serve
as the victim instead of a bull. The flesh of the animal was consumed
as a sacrament, for at other times the worshipers often abstained
entirely from meat of any kind. To them the victim seemed a tempo-
rary incarnation of Bacchus, the tree spirit, who was reviving with
the new leaves. It was a feast of communion with the life giving deity
and was thought to infuse his spirit into all who took part.
The idea that Bacchus, the tree spirit, died and revived annually
suggesAed a belief that he might confer similar immortality on those
of his votaries who obtained his favor and ate sacramentally the flesh
inspired by his spirit. But a gift so wonderful was not to be had
easily or by everyone. It was possible only for those who observed a
prescribed ascetic life; attained a certain degree of purity, both cere-
monial and moral; and became acquainted with mysteries of magical
effect.
In early times Bacchus may have been entirely a tree spirit. But
later when agriculture began and barley or wheat were cultivated, he
became associated especially with grain. And when the vine was
brought into Phrygia and Thrace, he became a spirit of grapes. Later
this was his usual, but not his only, significance. In prehistoric times
he may have been a rather indefinite spirit of trees, grain, or vines.
But later we hear of him as offspring of Dio, the Thracian god of the
sky, and Zemele, the earth goddess of Phrygia.
During the tenth century, B. C. , worship of Bacchus entered the
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? SEMELE AND JUPITER
Greek world and began to coalesce with the worship of numerous local
gods of vegetation. Many of their names may survive among the titles
of Bacchus which Ovid was to record in the opening tale of his Fourth
Book. At first Bacchus was chiefly a god of the peasantry, the pa-
tron of rustic good cheer. But in time he obtained a prominent place
among the Olympian gods and became one of the most important of
Greek divinities. His father was thought to be Jupiter. His mother
sometimes was reported to be Proserpina, the young goddess of grain
and the lower world (cf. Bk. 5) ; more often she was identified with
the Theban princess, Semele; but in the opening lines of the Fourth
Book, Ovid was to mention an extraordinary tradition according
to which the god was first born by Proserpina and then reborn by
Semele!
Influenced by the civilization and good taste of Greece, worship of
Bacchus altered much in character. The god was said usually to
appear in a human, instead of an animal form, though he was apt to
retain small bull horns on his head. His death and resurrection were
associated less frequently with the annual fall and reappearance
of the leaves. They became rather a single and memorable act of
filial devotion, for at the close of his earthly career Bacchus was said
to have gone down voluntarily into Hades; rescued his mother, who
now took the name of Thyone; and ascended with her to join the
Olympian gods.
In the Bacchic ritual, much that was fierce and intemperate was
toned down. The bull or goat appears ordinarily to have been merely
killed and offered in the manner usual for animal sacrifices to other
gods. And eventually men so far forgot his identity with Bacchus,
that both Vergil and Ovid explained the ceremony as a solemn punish-
ment of cattle and goats for their destruction of the vines.
The idea of ascetic discipline and mystic communion was elaborated
by the Orphic Societies, which became important after the seventh cen-
tury B. C. These worshipers, who called themselves followers of Orpheus
(cf. Bk. 10), cultivated purity of life and manners in order to obtain
mysterious insight and immortality. Among them Euripides after-
wards included the martyred prince Hippolytus (see Bk. 15). In both
Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, worship of Bacchus was combined
with that of Ceres and Proserpina, probably, as Euripides suggests,
because together they provided nourishment for men. Ceres gave
grain to eat and Bacchus wine to drink.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
At Athens the Bacchic ritual assumed a still different form. Every
year an actor and a chorus were trained in order that they might
recount and imitate part of the god's adventures for the commemo-
ration of his sacred festival. And from this practice there grew even-
tually both the tragic and the comic drama of Greece.
In Greek literature Bacchus obtained some mention from the be-
ginning. The Iliad referred to him as a child of Jupiter and Semele
who was reared by the nymphs of Nysa. Hesiod in the Works and
Days was the first to speak of him as the giver of wine. The Theogony
declared that, although Bacchus was child of a mortal mother, he was
born immortal. The circumstance, as the author pointed out, was
unusual. But it would have been easy to confuse the tradition of the
mortal mother, Semele, with a tradition in which the mother was
Proserpina or some other goddess. Pindar declared that Semele
had perished by a thunderbolt. And Aeschylus told her story in a
tragedy.
Alluding to the myth in the Baccha, Euripides mentioned further
circumstances. The death of Semele, he reported, was occasioned by
Juno, and she attempted to destroy Bacchus also. The little god's
father, Jupiter, frustrated the plot by giving her an image of Bacchus
made from air. The three sisters of Semele declared that her
lover was mortal and that she was destroyed for pretending the
contrary.
According to the tradition mentioned by Pindar, Semele was con-
sumed by the thunderbolt. Euripides added that the fire destroyed
her residence. And Propertius afterwards reported that it reduced
the entire citadel to ashes. This tradition of death by fire Ovid ac-
cepted in all his references to Semele, but he did not extend the destruc-
tion beyond the girl herself.
The Manual recorded the whole story, but with some important
variations. Jupiter, it seems, promised to give Semele whatever she
might desire. Aware of this, Juno persuaded her to request that he
would visit her in the same manner that he came to woo Juno. Jupiter
arrived in his chariot, attended by lightnings, and launched a thunder-
bolt. Semele was uninjured; but she died of fright.
The Manual did not stop here but recorded a further tradition
which Euripides had rejected. This resembled at first the tale which
both the Manual and Ovid recorded of Coronis (Bk. 2). Both Coronis
and Semele perished while their sons were still unborn; and in both
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? SEMELE AND JUPITER
tales, the divine father prevented the child from dying with the mother.
But Aesculapius had been ready for birth. Bacchus, on the contrary,
was not. Therefore Jupiter made an incision in his own thigh;
inserted the tiny infant; and fastened the edges with golden clasps.
Here the child was nourished until his proper time, and hence he might
be called twice born.
Underlying this unusual myth there may have been acquaintance
with a savage practice called the Couvade. It existed among the
natives of the Pyrenees and Sardinia during ancient times and more
recently among a few tribes of southern Asia. According to these
tribes, the father as well as the mother was liable to incur the pain
and danger of childbirth. Both parents were supposed to retire to
their beds and be attended with special care. Apparently the Greeks
adopted the savage idea of a father's having a share in childbirth,
but they altered it from an habitual occurrence, to a single and re-
markable event.
When Bacchus emerged from Jupiter's thigh, the Manual continued,
he was reared for a while by his aunt and uncle, Ino and Athamas.
Hoping to avoid the notice of Juno, they disguised him as a girl. The
goddess discovered the ruse and brought destruction on the foster
parents. But Bacchus escaped: Jupiter, transforming him into a kid,
conveyed him to the nymphs of Nysa. These nymphs, who now reared
the young god of the vine, were quite appropriately the Bringers of
Rain and later entered heaven as the constellation of the Hyades.
Nysa, the region in which Bacchus grew up, seems to have been an
imaginary country, so called probably to explain the latter half of
his Greek name, Dionysus.
Nicander retold the myth of Semele, adding that before visiting
her Juno assumed the form of an old woman called Beroe.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid took his outline from the Manual but
greatly improved the tale. Beginning with Juno, he caused the god-
dess to meditate in a soliloquy on Jupiter's courtship of Semele and
the approaching birth of the child. The tone and many of the ideas
he adapted from the similar passages of Vergil's Aeneid, which had
helped him already in the tale of Callisto (Bk. 2). But he showed the
goddess complaining further that she had hardly been so fortunate as
to bear a child to Jupiter. The complaint was justifiable; the Iliad
spoke of Jupiter and Juno as parents of three deities--Vulcan, Hebe,
and Mars; but later tradition declared Vulcan and Hebe children of
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
Juno without a father, and Ovid in the Fasti was to report the same
of Mars.
The disguise as Beroe, Ovid took from Nicander. But the details
of her appearance he added from Vergil's description of Allecto visit-
ing Turnus. Then he made a judicious innovation. Both Euripides
and the Manual had implied that Semele mentioned the divinity of her
lover to her sisters and that the sisters suspected, after the tragedy,
that the lover was only a mortal masquerading as Jove. Ovid showed
Semele mentioning the divinity of her lover to the disguised Juno and
Juno raising the suspicion. Before accepting so unlikely a claim,
Juno continued, let Semele require proof of his good faith; let him
appear in the splendor which he displayed before Juno.
Although Semele had now a better reason for asking Jupiter to
appear in splendor, Ovid caused her to begin cautiously by asking
merely for a favor. Thus he gave Jupiter occasion for his rash
promise. And to show that the promise must be kept, Ovid added the
pledge by the river Styx. In the tale of Phaethon (Bk. 2) Ovid had
imagined that it would be possible to avoid the consequences, if Phae-
thon should withdraw the request, and he had made this the occasion
for a dialogue adding much to the interest of the story. But in the
tale of Semele he could gain no such advantage and he wisely assumed
that there was no escape.
After introducing a fine description of Jupiter's return to heaven,
Ovid added the further idea that Jupiter tried to lessen the evil con-
sequences. Recalling the two arrows of differing effect, which Cupid
had used in the tale of Daphne (Bk. 1), Ovid invented two armories
of differing brilliance for Jupiter. But even the milder of these was
fatal to Semele.
The latter part of the tale Ovid dismissed briefly. He indicated
the various stages in the nurture of Bacchus, but the destruction of
Ino and Athamas he preferred to tell later and under different circum-
stances (Bk. 4).
By judicious changes and inventions Ovid had far surpassed his
predecessors. He had given the story motivation, poetic beauty, and
even a touch of grandeur. To him, therefore, men looked in later
times whenever they thought of Semele.
In the sphere of Saturn Beatrice did not smile, lest her brightness
should bring the fate of Semele on Dante. Spenser described as fol-
lows a tapestry in the House of Busyrane:
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Pindar often recalled the traditional glories of his native city. These
poets took special interest in the closing period of Theban history.
For the great drama of Athens Theban myth proved a storehouse
of tragic material. It suggested many dramas of Aeschylus; it in-
spired masterpieces of Sophocles; and it provided Euripides with the
subjects of many interesting, though rather unsuccessful, plays.
Athenian drama treated almost the whole range of Theban myth; but,
like the older Greek poetry, it found most congenial the later period--
the misfortunes of Oedipus and his successors and the adventurous
career of Hercules.
The Alexandrians made further use of the famous tradition. Their
poets, anxious to avoid material which might seem too well known,
looked chiefly to myths in the earlier history of Thebes. Theocritus
and others retold individual tales with originality and charm. Nicander
found new versions for almost all the earlier tales and also for a num-
ber of the later ones.
Although Ovid profited gladly by Theban myth, he did not retell it
in full. Like the Alexandrians, he gave his attention chiefly to the
earlier tales. These he selected carefully and arranged in a new and
more effective order. The improved Theban material he treated in his
Third Book and about half of the Fourth. Then he passed to other
themes. But in later passages of his poem he used still other Theban
myths for his tales of Niobe (Bk. 6), the Teumessian Fox (Bk. 7), the
death of Orion's daughters (Bk. 13), and a few adventures of Her-
cules (Bk. 9).
Cadmus and the Deagon
A small company of Phoenicians appear to have made the original
settlement at Thebes. They established a citadel, known as the
Cadmea, and brought in a higher form of culture than any which had
existed before in central Greece. According to Aeschylus, they intro-
duced the worship of Mars. And with him they associated a common
Semitic belief that a snake was guardian of their spring. They re-
garded the creature as sacred to Mars and often spoke of it as his son.
Although the earliest settlers were Phoenician, they soon intermarried
with the natives and became a Greek people. The author of the Iliad
referred to them as inhabitants of the Cadmea and worshippers of
Mars. The Odyssey mentioned their enclosing the city with the
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? CADMUS AND THE DRAGON
famous wall and its seven gates. But thus far we hear nothing of
Cadmus.
A century or more later, his story appears in rather definite form.
The Theogony declared that Cadmus married Harmonia, daughter of
Mars and Venus, and that their children were four daughters named
Ino, Semele, Agave, and Autonoe and a son named Polydorus. This
part of the story was followed by all subsequent authors, including
Ovid.
Pindar added that the gods attended the wedding bringing gifts
but that the later life of Cadmus was unhappy through the misfor-
, tune of his daughters. Pindar alluded also to a tradition that some
of the Thebans were descended from the sacred snake.
This part of the tale was first recorded by the mythographer
Pherecydes. Cadmus, he said, had put the reptile to death. Then
Athena, coming to his aid, advised him to plant a number of the crea-
ture's teeth. A crop of fierce warriors grew up, and Cadmus in alarm
threw stones among them. The warriors, believing that their neigh-
bors had struck them, engaged in a sanguinary battle until only
Echion and four others were left. These Athena persuaded to make
peace and aid in the founding of Thebes. The rest of the teeth Athena
conveyed to Aeetes of Colchis, and later they were planted by Jason
(cf. Bk. 7).
In the PhosnisscB Euripides added many further details. Before
going to Thebes, he said, Cadmus had visited the Delphic Oracle and
learned that he was to follow an unbroken heifer and settle where she
lay down. Before founding the city, Euripides continued, Cadmus
desired to sacrifice the heifer, and while obtaining water for the cere-
mony, he met with the snake and crushed its head with a boulder.
Mars, resenting the loss of his favorite, was appeased only many
generations later by the voluntary death of a youth named Menceceus.
Apollonius agreed in all essential details with Pherecides and
Euripides. But Nicander made two important changes. He height-
ened the interest of the battle by declaring that the boulder proved
ineffectual and he related the anger of Mars more definitely to the
subsequent tales of Thebes. Immediately after the battle, he said, the
god addressed Cadmus, indicating his displeasure and announcing
that later the hero himself was to become a snake. This change
allowed Nicander to relate the misfortunes of Cadmus' children and
grandchildren as effects of a single divine cause and to end the series
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK m
with the transformation predicted in the beginning. Ovid followed
both Nicander's innovations and he made the sudden warning im-
pressive. But he would have done better to make it clear that the
voice was that of Mars and that the prophecy referred to all the
ensuing tales. The prophecy should have been not only an effective
incident but the turning point in the cycle.
Meanwhile Herodotus had related Cadmus to Europa, and
Euripides had made him a descendant of Io. The Manual, after re-
peating and adding to this genealogy, declared that Agenor forbade
his sons to return without Europa. After a detailed account of the
search through Asia Minor and the Aegean isles, it recorded that
Cadmus settled in Thrace until the death of his mother. In the rest
of the tale the Manual differed from other versions considerably.
Cadmus, according to the Manual, did not travel alone, but was ac-
companied by other Phoenicians. After leaving the Delphic Oracle,
they wandered in a southeasterly direction for a considerable distance
and were entering the region later known as Boeotia, when they met
with the heifer. The district took its name from the famous cow.
Arriving at Thebes, Cadmus at first despatched his followers in search
of water. The snake destroyed the greater part of them. Then Cad-
mus himself battled with the reptile. After the warriors grew up
from the teeth, continued the Manual, a chance quarrel among them
may have led to the battle. Although Mars was offended at the death
of the, snake and its offspring, Cadmus appeased him by eight years'
service. The Manual added that Athena made Cadmus king of Thebes
and recorded the marriage of his three older daughters--Ino to Atha-
mas, Autonoe to Aristasus, and Agave to Echion.
From the Manual Ovid took the greater part of his tale. He
omitted the genealogy of Cadmus and all details of the quest for
Europa. The incidents of the oracle and the heifer he abridged and
he imagined that Cadmus found her immediately after leaving Delphi
and followed her from there to the site of his future citadel--an in-
credible distance. Ovid suggested effectively the awe and wonder of
Cadmus when he looked at the unfamiliar and beautiful country which
was to be his home.
Ovid reported that all the followers of Cadmus perished and so
made it more plausible that Athena should provide new followers
from the teeth. In describing the snake, he profited by Vergil's
memorable account of a serpent in the Cvlex, but he added many effec-
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? CADMUS AND THE DRAGON
tive details of his own and greatly magnified the creature's size and
power. In this he proceeded dangerously far: he made it unlikely
that a single warrior, even a giant, could overcome such a monster.
But this fault Ovid shared with Vergil and with many authors of later
times who wished to tell graphically of a hero overcoming a dragon.
The chief incidents of the battle and the prophecy of Mars, Ovid took
from Nicander.
In picturing the strange growth of warriors from the soil, Ovid
compared it to the gradual appearance of figures outlined on the
curtain of a theater. To the Romans the comparison would have
seemed happy and exact, for at the end of their performance the
curtain was drawn upward from the floor until it hid the stage. Such
apt illustration from the civilized life of his time Ovid was to use occa-
sionally in other parts of his poem. For his contemporaries, the
device was very effective; but for readers of a later time, it often was
made obscure by a change of fashion. The older poets of Greece and
Rome had followed the safer practice of using illustration from proc-
esses of nature or from general human experience.
During the subsequent battle of the warriors, Ovid was anxious to
make the conflict differ where possible from a similar combat in the
story of Jason (Bk. 7). Tradition had made the two battles alike,
except that five of the Theban warriors survived, while the Colchian
warriors were exterminated. Ovid introduced further changes. In
the Theban battle he described Cadmus as alarmed at the sudden ap-
pearance of the warriors; in the Colchian, he described the alarm of
the spectators. The Theban warriors, he said, warned Cadmus to
remain neutral and began their conflict with a chance quarrel: the
Colchians fought blindly when Jason hurled a stone. He recounted
the Theban battle in some detail but merely summarized the other.
The founding of Thebes, the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia,
and the subsequent genealogy Ovid dismissed briefly. But he indicated
well the happy, prosperous state of Cadmus immediately after the
founding of the City. The early Athenian poet and statesman, Solon,
had observed that it is unwise to call any man happy before his death.
Sophocles repeated the idea impressively at the close of his Oedipus
and probably made it widely known among the later Greeks. With
this fitting proverb Ovid pointed forward from the tale of Cadmus
to those which were to follow.
In later times, Ovid's tale of Cadmus was well known. The Flamenca
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK in
named it as a favorite in thirteenth century Provence. In a sonnet to
Laura, Petrarch reminded himself that no man should be called happy
until his final day has sped. Tasso compared Armida rising from the
lake to a figure rising with the curtain of a theater. Camoens rebuked
the Europeans of his time for fighting like those warrior brothers
who sprang from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. In Corneille's
Psyche, Agenor and Cleomene, recalling the example of Cadmus, found
courage to await a dragon.
Referring in the Areopagitica to censorship of books, Milton
granted that "they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those
fabulous dragon's teeth, and, being sown up and down, may chance
to spring up armed men. " In Paradise Lost he used Ovid's descrip-
tion of the snake for a fine portrayal of the Tempter approaching
Eve
Not with indented wave
Prone on the ground, but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amid his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant.
Hawthorne used Ovid in part for his own charming paraphrase of
the story. Cadmus and Athena were painted by Salvator Rosa.
Actaeon
After the marriage of Cadmus, the Manual had told of his daugh-
ters Semele and Ino, whose careers began happily but ended in disaster.
Both these tales Ovid reserved until later. He felt that the marriage
of Cadmus was the happiest moment and the turning point in the
hero's life. And, to make the idea of subsequent misfortune as
emphatic as possible, he recorded immediately afterward the tragic
fate of his grandson Acta? on.
This myth had been a favorite in Greek literature and art. The
cause of Action's strange misfortune was given variously. Stesichorus
declared that the youth had been a rival of Jupiter in the courtship of
Semele. As punishment, Jupiter caused him to offend Diana. The
goddess transformed Action into a stag and allowed him to perish
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? ACTAEON
by his own hounds. Aeschylus repeated the tale in a play, now lost.
In the fifth century B. C. , the Greeks had accepted a form of the
Theban myths which made Semele Actaeon's aunt. That Actaeon
should court her was no longer acceptable and so this part of the tale
was omitted. Actaeon was thought to have suffered only for his
offense against Diana.
According to Euripides in the Bacchce, Actaeon offended the god-
dess by declaring that he excelled her in hunting. But later it was
supposed ordinarily that he intruded on her accidentally while she
was bathing. This version Callimachus told in his Bath of Pallas.
He added that Actaeon had been a companion of the goddess in her
hunting. After the tragedy, he continued, Actaeon's father and
mother sought, lamenting, for the scattered bones of their son. This
form of the myth Ovid did not use.
The Manual told also of Actaeon's intrusion and punishment, add-
ing that the goddess maddened the hounds. After Actaeon's death,
it continued, the dogs sought their master, whining piteously, until
the centaur Chiron appeased them by making an image of him. Ovid
followed the outline in the Manual, wisely omitting these details. He
added the circumstance of Actaeon's meeting with Diana in the vale
of Gargaphie and the description of the nymphs attending on the
goddess. And his was the famous conception of the nymphs hasten-
ing to conceal Diana, and the goddess standing divinely tall in the
middle of the group.
Stesichorus appears to have named at least a few of Actaeon's
hounds. Aeschylus followed his example, and early mythographers
added many more. The Manual mentioned fifty, and later Hyginus
was to name more than eighty! Though realizing the danger of ex-
cess, Ovid felt that a skillful enumeration would add much to the vivid-
ness and terror of the hunt. He tried, therefore, to enliven the cata-
logue in many ways and reduced the number of names to thirty-six.
Nicander also had told the story, adding the circumstance that
Actaeon retained his human mind and that he tried in vain to speak.
Ovid profited by these hints for his description of Actaeon's dismay
after the transformation and for the pathetic circumstances of his
death. Nicander may have suggested also the noonday heat which led
Actaeon to end his hunting. Ovid described this well, but he did not
make it seem probable that Actaeon should leave his followers and
wander at random through the forest.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
Ovid improved on what was best in the work of his predecessors and
was the first to develop the myth into an admirable narrative poem.
His version made the story popular in Roman and later times and
was always the chief source of later allusion. Recalling the myth in
the Tristia, Ovid declared that he himself resembled Actaeon, for
without evil intent he saw what was forbidden and incurred a cruel
punishment.
Statius included the tale in his Thebaiad.
In the Middle Ages, writers were inclined to interpret the story
allegorically, as an example of a young man pursued and destroyed
by his vices, and this suggested to Dante the incident of the prodigal
overtaken and torn to pieces by black hounds in the suicides' grove.
Petrarch imitated the story of Actaeon in an allegory of his courtship
of Laura and of the remorse following his repulse. Castillejo retold
Ovid's myth as an allegorical narrative, and Camoens referred to it
at some length in order to warn his sovereign against neglecting
affairs of state. In Twelfth Night Shakespeare used the myth as an
allegory of unhappy love. When the courtiers advised Orsino to hunt
the hart, he replied
Why, so I do, the noblest that I have:
O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence:
That instant was I turned into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.
Often, however, the great poets recalled Ovid in a more ordinary
sense. The wonder and pleasure experienced by Actaeon when he
suddenly beheld Diana was felt by Petrarch, when he chanced to see
his lady washing a veil. Chaucer mentioned Actaeon repeatedly
in the Knight's Tale. Camoens declared that some maidens surprised
by the Portuguese pretended to feel the shame of Diana when she saw
the young hunter.
To Spenser the myth suggested two incidents of
his Faerie Queene. In one of these Diana and her nymphs, while bath-
ing, were unpleasantly surprised by Venus. In the other, Faunus spied
on Diana and for punishment was arrayed as a stag and pursued with
hounds. Shelley compared to Actaeon the unfortunate shepherd who
came to mourn over Adonais. Tennyson imagined the story sculptured
on a gate of the feminine college in his Princess.
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? SEMELE AND JUPITER
The moment when Diana stood embarrassed among her nymphs
made a deep impression on both Dante and Shakespeare. Dante used
Ovid's description of her blush to suggest the indignant hue of Para-
dise when St. Peter rebuked the corruption of the papacy. Shake-
speare in Titus Andronicus distinguished Tamora as excelling other
Roman ladies
Like stately Phoebe mongst her nymphs.
And in his Henry Sixth Warwick advised the king to remain protected
by the citizens of London
Like modest Dian circled by her nymphs ( ! )
Ovid's myth of Actaeon inspired the modern painters Pittone,
Domenichino, Gaspard Poussin, Allegrain, and G. Caesar. It sug-
gested two masterpieces of Titian. The French painter Dampt varied
the myth so far as to show Diana mourning the death of her victim.
In the town hall of Dantzig Actaeon was represented by the unusual
device of a colored relief bearing the antlers of a real stag.
Semele and Jupiter
By a transition of his own inventing, Ovid passed from Actaeon
to Juno's plot against Semele. This allowed him to recount the myth
of Semele and also the birth and nurture of the god Bacchus.
Both the god and his worship were of foreign origin and had been
introduced into the Greek world not long before the dawn of historical
times. In fact the worship of Bacchus was the first of many oriental
and mystical cults which were to influence Greek civilization. Its
alien character impressed the historian Herodotus, and he suggested
that Cadmus had introduced the cult of Bacchus after some acquain-
tance with the worship of Osiris. Bacchus indeed had much in com-
mon with the Egyptian deity; but he entered the Greek world from the
more northern region of Phrygia and Thrace.
In these countries the god became known first as a spirit associated
with trees and worshiped in forests and wild places. At times he
revealed himself in the shape of a bull, a goat, a snake, or some other
animal form. He caused fertility in useful plants, in domestic animals,
and even in human beings. Through the warm summers he inhabited
the forests and the neighboring fields, making them green and fruit-
ful. When the colder, darker autumn came, he departed yearly with
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
the falling leaves to the world of the dead. But later he returned to
life with the new leaves of spring.
The signs of this marvellous resurrection were welcomed by a festi-
val of wild noise and frantic dancing. At first it probably occurred
every year in the spring; but during historical times it appears to
have been held only every second year. The clamor, the frenzy, and
often the license of these orgies made their name proverbial. According
to persistent tradition, the festival reached a climax, when the mad-
dened worshipers fell upon a living bull and tore him to pieces with
their hands and teeth. His flesh and blood were devoured raw by the
eager throng. That savages would not shrink from such ferocity, we
have only too good evidence. Even human beings met a similar fate
during a festival held annually by the Khonds of modern India. But
the practice ascribed to the Bacchanals seems to be physically im-
possible and may have been misunderstood by those who wrote long
after and from hearsay. A goat, or some other animal, might serve
as the victim instead of a bull. The flesh of the animal was consumed
as a sacrament, for at other times the worshipers often abstained
entirely from meat of any kind. To them the victim seemed a tempo-
rary incarnation of Bacchus, the tree spirit, who was reviving with
the new leaves. It was a feast of communion with the life giving deity
and was thought to infuse his spirit into all who took part.
The idea that Bacchus, the tree spirit, died and revived annually
suggesAed a belief that he might confer similar immortality on those
of his votaries who obtained his favor and ate sacramentally the flesh
inspired by his spirit. But a gift so wonderful was not to be had
easily or by everyone. It was possible only for those who observed a
prescribed ascetic life; attained a certain degree of purity, both cere-
monial and moral; and became acquainted with mysteries of magical
effect.
In early times Bacchus may have been entirely a tree spirit. But
later when agriculture began and barley or wheat were cultivated, he
became associated especially with grain. And when the vine was
brought into Phrygia and Thrace, he became a spirit of grapes. Later
this was his usual, but not his only, significance. In prehistoric times
he may have been a rather indefinite spirit of trees, grain, or vines.
But later we hear of him as offspring of Dio, the Thracian god of the
sky, and Zemele, the earth goddess of Phrygia.
During the tenth century, B. C. , worship of Bacchus entered the
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? SEMELE AND JUPITER
Greek world and began to coalesce with the worship of numerous local
gods of vegetation. Many of their names may survive among the titles
of Bacchus which Ovid was to record in the opening tale of his Fourth
Book. At first Bacchus was chiefly a god of the peasantry, the pa-
tron of rustic good cheer. But in time he obtained a prominent place
among the Olympian gods and became one of the most important of
Greek divinities. His father was thought to be Jupiter. His mother
sometimes was reported to be Proserpina, the young goddess of grain
and the lower world (cf. Bk. 5) ; more often she was identified with
the Theban princess, Semele; but in the opening lines of the Fourth
Book, Ovid was to mention an extraordinary tradition according
to which the god was first born by Proserpina and then reborn by
Semele!
Influenced by the civilization and good taste of Greece, worship of
Bacchus altered much in character. The god was said usually to
appear in a human, instead of an animal form, though he was apt to
retain small bull horns on his head. His death and resurrection were
associated less frequently with the annual fall and reappearance
of the leaves. They became rather a single and memorable act of
filial devotion, for at the close of his earthly career Bacchus was said
to have gone down voluntarily into Hades; rescued his mother, who
now took the name of Thyone; and ascended with her to join the
Olympian gods.
In the Bacchic ritual, much that was fierce and intemperate was
toned down. The bull or goat appears ordinarily to have been merely
killed and offered in the manner usual for animal sacrifices to other
gods. And eventually men so far forgot his identity with Bacchus,
that both Vergil and Ovid explained the ceremony as a solemn punish-
ment of cattle and goats for their destruction of the vines.
The idea of ascetic discipline and mystic communion was elaborated
by the Orphic Societies, which became important after the seventh cen-
tury B. C. These worshipers, who called themselves followers of Orpheus
(cf. Bk. 10), cultivated purity of life and manners in order to obtain
mysterious insight and immortality. Among them Euripides after-
wards included the martyred prince Hippolytus (see Bk. 15). In both
Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, worship of Bacchus was combined
with that of Ceres and Proserpina, probably, as Euripides suggests,
because together they provided nourishment for men. Ceres gave
grain to eat and Bacchus wine to drink.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
At Athens the Bacchic ritual assumed a still different form. Every
year an actor and a chorus were trained in order that they might
recount and imitate part of the god's adventures for the commemo-
ration of his sacred festival. And from this practice there grew even-
tually both the tragic and the comic drama of Greece.
In Greek literature Bacchus obtained some mention from the be-
ginning. The Iliad referred to him as a child of Jupiter and Semele
who was reared by the nymphs of Nysa. Hesiod in the Works and
Days was the first to speak of him as the giver of wine. The Theogony
declared that, although Bacchus was child of a mortal mother, he was
born immortal. The circumstance, as the author pointed out, was
unusual. But it would have been easy to confuse the tradition of the
mortal mother, Semele, with a tradition in which the mother was
Proserpina or some other goddess. Pindar declared that Semele
had perished by a thunderbolt. And Aeschylus told her story in a
tragedy.
Alluding to the myth in the Baccha, Euripides mentioned further
circumstances. The death of Semele, he reported, was occasioned by
Juno, and she attempted to destroy Bacchus also. The little god's
father, Jupiter, frustrated the plot by giving her an image of Bacchus
made from air. The three sisters of Semele declared that her
lover was mortal and that she was destroyed for pretending the
contrary.
According to the tradition mentioned by Pindar, Semele was con-
sumed by the thunderbolt. Euripides added that the fire destroyed
her residence. And Propertius afterwards reported that it reduced
the entire citadel to ashes. This tradition of death by fire Ovid ac-
cepted in all his references to Semele, but he did not extend the destruc-
tion beyond the girl herself.
The Manual recorded the whole story, but with some important
variations. Jupiter, it seems, promised to give Semele whatever she
might desire. Aware of this, Juno persuaded her to request that he
would visit her in the same manner that he came to woo Juno. Jupiter
arrived in his chariot, attended by lightnings, and launched a thunder-
bolt. Semele was uninjured; but she died of fright.
The Manual did not stop here but recorded a further tradition
which Euripides had rejected. This resembled at first the tale which
both the Manual and Ovid recorded of Coronis (Bk. 2). Both Coronis
and Semele perished while their sons were still unborn; and in both
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? SEMELE AND JUPITER
tales, the divine father prevented the child from dying with the mother.
But Aesculapius had been ready for birth. Bacchus, on the contrary,
was not. Therefore Jupiter made an incision in his own thigh;
inserted the tiny infant; and fastened the edges with golden clasps.
Here the child was nourished until his proper time, and hence he might
be called twice born.
Underlying this unusual myth there may have been acquaintance
with a savage practice called the Couvade. It existed among the
natives of the Pyrenees and Sardinia during ancient times and more
recently among a few tribes of southern Asia. According to these
tribes, the father as well as the mother was liable to incur the pain
and danger of childbirth. Both parents were supposed to retire to
their beds and be attended with special care. Apparently the Greeks
adopted the savage idea of a father's having a share in childbirth,
but they altered it from an habitual occurrence, to a single and re-
markable event.
When Bacchus emerged from Jupiter's thigh, the Manual continued,
he was reared for a while by his aunt and uncle, Ino and Athamas.
Hoping to avoid the notice of Juno, they disguised him as a girl. The
goddess discovered the ruse and brought destruction on the foster
parents. But Bacchus escaped: Jupiter, transforming him into a kid,
conveyed him to the nymphs of Nysa. These nymphs, who now reared
the young god of the vine, were quite appropriately the Bringers of
Rain and later entered heaven as the constellation of the Hyades.
Nysa, the region in which Bacchus grew up, seems to have been an
imaginary country, so called probably to explain the latter half of
his Greek name, Dionysus.
Nicander retold the myth of Semele, adding that before visiting
her Juno assumed the form of an old woman called Beroe.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid took his outline from the Manual but
greatly improved the tale. Beginning with Juno, he caused the god-
dess to meditate in a soliloquy on Jupiter's courtship of Semele and
the approaching birth of the child. The tone and many of the ideas
he adapted from the similar passages of Vergil's Aeneid, which had
helped him already in the tale of Callisto (Bk. 2). But he showed the
goddess complaining further that she had hardly been so fortunate as
to bear a child to Jupiter. The complaint was justifiable; the Iliad
spoke of Jupiter and Juno as parents of three deities--Vulcan, Hebe,
and Mars; but later tradition declared Vulcan and Hebe children of
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK III
Juno without a father, and Ovid in the Fasti was to report the same
of Mars.
The disguise as Beroe, Ovid took from Nicander. But the details
of her appearance he added from Vergil's description of Allecto visit-
ing Turnus. Then he made a judicious innovation. Both Euripides
and the Manual had implied that Semele mentioned the divinity of her
lover to her sisters and that the sisters suspected, after the tragedy,
that the lover was only a mortal masquerading as Jove. Ovid showed
Semele mentioning the divinity of her lover to the disguised Juno and
Juno raising the suspicion. Before accepting so unlikely a claim,
Juno continued, let Semele require proof of his good faith; let him
appear in the splendor which he displayed before Juno.
Although Semele had now a better reason for asking Jupiter to
appear in splendor, Ovid caused her to begin cautiously by asking
merely for a favor. Thus he gave Jupiter occasion for his rash
promise. And to show that the promise must be kept, Ovid added the
pledge by the river Styx. In the tale of Phaethon (Bk. 2) Ovid had
imagined that it would be possible to avoid the consequences, if Phae-
thon should withdraw the request, and he had made this the occasion
for a dialogue adding much to the interest of the story. But in the
tale of Semele he could gain no such advantage and he wisely assumed
that there was no escape.
After introducing a fine description of Jupiter's return to heaven,
Ovid added the further idea that Jupiter tried to lessen the evil con-
sequences. Recalling the two arrows of differing effect, which Cupid
had used in the tale of Daphne (Bk. 1), Ovid invented two armories
of differing brilliance for Jupiter. But even the milder of these was
fatal to Semele.
The latter part of the tale Ovid dismissed briefly. He indicated
the various stages in the nurture of Bacchus, but the destruction of
Ino and Athamas he preferred to tell later and under different circum-
stances (Bk. 4).
By judicious changes and inventions Ovid had far surpassed his
predecessors. He had given the story motivation, poetic beauty, and
even a touch of grandeur. To him, therefore, men looked in later
times whenever they thought of Semele.
In the sphere of Saturn Beatrice did not smile, lest her brightness
should bring the fate of Semele on Dante. Spenser described as fol-
lows a tapestry in the House of Busyrane:
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