Ovid now imitated the sound of individual frogs,
croaking
near
by.
by.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v2
Her own out-
numbered them in the proportion of seven to one. Their very abundance
would be a defense from the changes of fortune. Even should many be
lost, the number would not fall so far as two, the narrow margin which
saved Latona from being childless.
After describing the Thebans as loth to interrupt their worship,
Ovid pictured the resentment of Latona. Many of the circumstances he
imitated from earlier tales. Latona had observed Niobe from her sacred
mountain, Cynthus. She appealed to her children as her only protectors
from neglect. She expressed the fear lest Niobe's defiance should be the
signal for general contempt. All this Ovid imitated from the conduct
of Venus, which he had recorded in the tale of Proserpina. After stating
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
her wishes, Latona added entreaty. Apollo declared it needless. This,
Ovid repeated from his interview of Juno and Tisiphone in the tale of
Athamas. But Ovid invented two further circumstances. According to
some authorities, Tantalus had offended the gods by telling over-much
about their affairs. Latona suggested that Niobe was imitating her
father's notorious example. And, since Niobe had taunted the goddess
with the idea that she was virtually childless, Latona repeated the word
"childless" to suggest Niobe's appropriate punishment.
The sculpture at Olympia had shown Apollo and Diana taking aim
at Niobe's children from the throne of Jupiter. Other accounts had not
indicated the place. Ovid imagined plausibly that Apollo and Diana
came down to the citadel of Thebes, concealing their presence with
clouds.
At least the majority of previous accounts had given the impres-
sion that both deities made a simultaneous attack. Ovid declared that
at first Apollo alone began to shoot. Diana still withheld her arrows
and spared the girls. The death of the sons was to serve as a third
warning to the proud Niobe, more definite and formidable than the
others, but still permitting her to repent and escape with half of her
children.
According to the Manual, the boys were hunting in the forest of
Mt. Cithaeron. Ovid made the circumstances more striking. He showed
the boys engaged in sport on a plain easily visible from the city. He
recorded their names, taking most of them from the Manual but adding
that of Ilioneus from Vergil's Aeneid, and he gave some account of the
sports with which they were occupied. The two oldest, Ismenus and
Sipylus, were riding richly caparisoned horses; two others, Phaedimus
and Tantalus, were wrestling; the three youngest, Alphenor, Damasich-
thon, and Ilioneus, apparently were watching the rest. The destruction
of the six older boys Ovid recounted with various and vivid effect. But
he was inclined to emphasize details which were not in harmony with the
tragic situation. The Manual had spoken of one boy who prayed to
Latona and escaped. This detail suggested to Ovid the pathetic inci-
dent of the youngest son, Ilioneus. To have spared him would have con-
fused the progress of the tragedy. But Ovid allowed a brief suspense.
Terrified, Ilioneus prayed to all the gods. Apollo strove, too late, to
withhold the arrow and struck him with a lighter but fatal wound.
The events immediately following Ovid told obscurely. Evidently
he altered the traditional story in several respects and supposed the
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? NIOBE
events to have been as follows. News of the disaster passed quickly to
the palace; Amphion had been spared by Apollo, but he took his own life
with a dagger; the bodies of Amphion and his seven sons were brought
into an area of open ground, visible from the citadel, and were laid on
biers for the funeral service. Then Niobe came forth, amazed and in-
credulous, attended by her daughters. At the sight of the dead, she
realized how much cause she had to mourn. Ovid contrasted the former
proud Niobe, envied by all, with the hapless Niobe wildly embracing her
dead sons, worthy of pity even from a foe.
But her pride remained. Even so dreadful a warning did not avail.
Looking up from the dead, she boasted that she still excelled Latona in
the number of her children. Hitherto Diana had been merciful. At this
she bent her bow.
In the new catastrophe, Ovid was anxious to avoid duplicating his
account of the boys. He did not name the daughters, and he narrated
very briefly the various deaths of the older six. The Manual had spoken
of a daughter who prayed to Latona and escaped. Ovid did not repeat
the incident, but again he introduced a moment of suspense. Scopas had
shown Niobe attempting to shield her youngest daughter from Diana's
shaft. Ovid followed his example, and he added that Niobe herself pleaded
for the life of her only remaining child. She prayed too late. As she
spoke the words, the arrow reached its mark.
Since Tantalus had been for a long time dead, Niobe could not re-
turn to live with him. Ovid thought it unlikely that she could even sur-
vive a loss so overwhelming. Sitting near the bodies of her husband and
her fourteen children, he said, she hardened gradually into marble. Ovid
recorded the change as it occurred, first externally and then within,
until it left no motion save the falling tears. Tradition had associated
the petrified Niobe with the crags of Mt. Sipylus. Accordingly, Ovid
invented a picturesque incident. As Niobe sat, a weeping statue, before
her palace at Thebes, a whirlwind passed by and swept her over land and
sea to her native mountain.
In spite of defective passages Ovid showed clearly the extent of
Niobe's impiety, and he presented the chief events with dramatic effect.
His account was always the most accessible and for many centuries it
was the only full account which survived. Apart from Statius, who fol-
lowed chiefly the Iliad and Hyginus, who followed the Manual, later
authors learned of Niobe from Ovid.
Ordinarily they were content with brief allusions. Seneca referred
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
in his Agamemnon to Manto's warning. In his Oedipus he described
Niobe as standing in Hades and still proudly counting the number of
her shades. Dante saw among examples carved on the terrace of pride,
Queen Niobe mourning over her dead children. In a final canzone to
Laura, Petrarch declared that Medusa and his sin had transformed him
into a weeping rock. Erasmus noted in his Praise of Folly that wonder
at an absurd preacher turned certain divines into stone, as grief trans-
formed Niobe.
Spenser referred three times to Ovid's myth. In the Shepherd's
Calendar, Thenot pronounced Queen Elizabeth superior to Apollo or
Diana and then remembered with alarm what punishment such compari-
sons had brought on Niobe. In the Faerie Queen, Spenser declared that
Beige, with her seventeen children, would have seemed at first happier
than Niobe but afterwards incurred almost as terrible a loss in the
twelve destroyed by the tyrant Philip. And Spenser compared Bel-
phoebe, shooting at Lust, to Diana shooting at Niobe's children. In
Childe Harold, Byron recalled Ovid while beginning his great description
of Rome:
The Niobe of nations ! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe.
And in The Age of Bronze he noted satirically that Mother Church
Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring, Tithes.
Modern authors, like the ancients, mentioned Niobe as typical of
the profoundest grief. Chaucer's Pandarus told his nephew that it would
not be possible to win a lady by weeping like Queen Niobe, whose tears
are still visible in the marble. Shakespeare's Troilus declared that loss
of Hector would make Niobes of all the Trojan women and turn Priam
and the youths to stone. His Hamlet described the queen as following
the body of the former king, like Niobe all tears. And Alfred Tennyson
referred to the profound grief of Niobe in three poems, Walking for the
Mail, The Princess, and The Promise of May.
In the nineteenth century many poets retold Ovid's story at some
length. Chief among these were Landor, Frederick Tennyson, Lewis
Morris, and Leconte de Lisle.
Ovid's tale inspired paintings by Rottenhammer, Le Bril, and
Wilson.
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
The Lycian Peasants
Just as the fate of Pentheus made the Thebans eager to worship
Bacchus (Bk. 3), so, Ovid continued, the fate of Niobe made them eager
to worship Latona. Ovid then introduced another story. Latona's pun-
ishment of Niobe recalled to one of the people her earlier punishment of
some Lycian peasants. This event the narrator told as a story learned
when he visited the scene and questioned his Lycian guide. Later Ovid
used a transition of the same kind while introducing the tale of Philemon
and Baucis (Bk. 8).
The myth of Latona and the Lycians was recorded first by a local
historian, Menecrates of Xanthus. After the birth of Apollo and Diana,
he said, Juno continued persecuting Latona. The goddess fled with her
infants to the mountains of Lycia. One day, while tortured by thirst,
she arrived at a pond called Melas and wished to drink and to bathe her
children. A shepherd, Neocles, had come with several companions to
water their sheep.
These men brutally drove Latona away. She first tried to reason
with them. Finding it useless, she transformed them into frogs and de-
clared that it should be their punishment to remain always as keepers of
the pond. Nicander, repeating the story, gave a detailed account of the
metamorphosis. The ill nature of the shepherds, he said, caused the dis-
torted appearance of the frogs, and their ill-mannered outcries became
raucous croaking.
Ovid prefaced the myth with a few details concerning the birth of
Apollo and Diana. Both the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and Cal-
limachus in the Hymn to Delos had stated that Juno endeavored to pre-
vent the birth of the children. She kept Ilythia, goddess of childbirth,
ignorant of Latona's presence in Delos. But after nine days the other
goddesses brought Ilythia secretly to the island. An incident of this kind
Ovid planned to use later in his tale of Galanthis (Bk. 9) and so he
merely alluded to it, by observing that Latona bore her children despite
opposition of Juno.
The Homeric Hymn declared that Latona leaned against a palm
tree. Theognis, Euripides, and Callimachus repeated the incident. Euri-
pides in his Iphigenia among the Taurians mentioned also an olive tree
which grew near by. Callimachus added that nymphs playfully biting
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
the trunk afterwards amused the infant Apollo. Catullus declared that
Latona's children were born under the olive tree. Following these hints,
Ovid observed that Latona leaned against both the palm tree and the
olive tree. This idea he repeated later in his tale of the daughters of
Anius (Bk. 13).
In Greek mythology the district of Lycia had been famous chiefly
for its association with the Chimaera. The story, as told by the Iliad,
ran as follows. A certain Amisodorus of Lycia reared a fire-breathing
monster, the Chimaera, which combined the head of a lion and the body
of a goat with the tail of a snake. This animal ravaged the country and
proved so formidable that encountering it appeared to mean certain
death. King Iobates, who wished to destroy Bellerophon, sent him to
kill this monster. Contrary to expectation the hero with his arrows
destroyed the Chimaera. The Theogony added that Bellerophon rode
to the encounter on the winged horse Pegasus. Pindar and the Manual
retold the story, with further details of their own. Greek artists often
showed the adventure, but were inclined to represent the Chimaera as
having only the form of a lion. Vergil in the Culex had distinguished
Lycia as the home of the Chimaera. In the tale of Latona and the
Lycians Ovid followed his example. In his account of Byblis (Bk. 9) he
briefly described the monster. But he never told the story, probably
because it resembled too closely the adventures of Perseus.
For Latona's adventure at the pond Ovid used Nicander. But he
introduced many desirable changes. The event was not easy to recon-
cile with the circumstances given in Ovid's tale of Apollo and Python
(Bk. 1), and in any case it must have happened in the remote past. Ac-
cordingly, Ovid made the story more indefinite by leaving nameless the
pond and the Lycians. Ovid quoted Latona's words to the men. He
showed her observing that water, like sun and air, is not the possession
of any man but common to all.
In Nicander's tale a reader might find extenuation for the conduct
of the shepherds. They needed the water for their own purpose, they
might have supposed that bathing children would interfere with the care
of their flocks, and so they might have thought it necessary to drive
Latona away. Ovid was careful to remove these possible excuses. He
described the Lycians as peasants who were gathering osiers and reeds.
They were not going to use the water themselves. He showed Latona
disclaiming any intention of bathing. And he described the Lycians as
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
not only forbidding her to drink water which they did not need but as
wantonly jumping up and down to foul it with mud.
Nicander had shown the goddess condemning the Lycians to remain
always as keepers of the pond. This might not sound like punishment,
and it was not an accurate description of frogs. Ovid said therefore that
she condemned them appropriately to reside always in a muddy pool.
Following Nicander's example, he described the transformation at some
length. Vergil in the Georgics had imitated the sound of a distant chorus
of frogs.
Ovid now imitated the sound of individual frogs, croaking near
by. * But he was mistaken in describing them as croaking under water.
In later times Ovid's tale interested several great poets and artists.
Gray in his Ode on Vicissitude remembered Ovid's idea that sun and air
are common to all. Camoens likened the terrified Moors diving from the
ships of Garaa to the Lycians diving from the bank, after Latona had
transformed them. Milton declared in a sonnet that his Tetrachordon
was greeted with an outcry as noisy and stupid
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
Reubens, Brueghel, and Tench made Ovid's tale the theme of paintings.
A French sculptor used the subject for adorning a fountain at Versailles
and may have suggested to Thierry and Fremin the idea of treating the
same theme in one of the glorious fountains of San Ildefonso.
* Vergil imitated the sound in the words:
Et veterem in limo ranae cecinere querellam.
Ovid imitated it in the words:
Quamvis sint sub aqua, sub aqua maledicere temptant.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
Marsyas
The tale of the Lycian peasants who were metamorphosed because
of their impious opposition to Latona reminded another Theban of
Marsyas, who suffered because of his impious contest with Apollo. This
event the Manual had recorded as occurring soon after Apollo estab-
lished himself at Delphi (cf. Bk. 1). Ovid implied only that it had oc-
curred at some time in the remote past.
According to tradition, Marsyas had vied with Apollo in music.
The story resembled that of a contest in music between Pan and Apollo,
which Ovid intended to repeat later (Bk. 11). Both tales grew up in
Lydia and both imply an historical rivalry between admirers of two dif-
ferent musical instruments. Of these instruments the older was called
either the pipe or the flute. Ordinarily it was a slender tube, having a
mouthpiece at one end and a number of openings along the side. To play
the flute the musician held the tube in a vertical position, blew into the
mouthpiece, and allowed the air to escape through the proper opening,
covering the others with his fingers. Originally the flute was made from
reed, and in the Metamorphoses Ovid observed that Marsyas used an
instrument of this kind. Later it often was made of wood or some other
hard material, and in the Fasti Ovid declared that Marsyas played a
flute made of boxwood. The Greeks had also a double flute, in which a
pair of tubes were adjusted to a single mouthpiece. According to some
accounts, this form of instrument was used by Marsyas in the famous
contest. In Lydia the flute was preferred by the country folk and was
associated with Pan and other rural deities. *
Rivalling the flute in popular estimation was a new, stringed instru-
ment called the cither or the lyre. Originally this was made by running
strings across a hollow shell. The musician held the shell in his lap and
touched the strings with a small implement made of horn called a plec-
trum. The Homeric Hymn to Mercury spoke of that god as making the
first lyre from the shell of a tortoise. Apollo obtained the instrument
from him and became famous for his skill in playing it. During histor-
ical times the lyre appears to have been made either of ivory or of wood.
It had the advantage of allowing the musician to sing as well as play.
* During modern times the ancient vertical flute has been supplanted by the
transverse flute. On this instrument the mouthpiece is adjusted to the side, and the
performer holds the tube horizontally.
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? MARSYAS
Probably for this reason it became a favorite instrument wjth the courtly
and urbane, and in the tales both of Marsyas and of Pan the lyre ob-
tained the victory over the flute.
The woodland god Pan was reputed to be an excellent flute player.
Similar ability was attributed to other male divinities of the country-
side. These the Greeks designated either as sileni or as satyrs. Both
were supernatural beings, long-lived but not immortal. They were human
in form but shaggy, with pointed ears and coarse features. The sileni
were bearded in appearance, the satyrs smooth-faced and youthful. The
Romans tended to identify satyrs with fauns and to represent them as
half animal -- with the hoofs, tails, and shaggy lower limbs of goats.
In Greek tradition Marsyas appeared ordinarily as a silenus. But Ovid
always referred to him as a satyr.
In the earliest form of the story, Marsyas himself was inventor of
the flute. This idea Plato seems to have recalled in his dialogue, The
Laws. But the invention usually was attributed to Athena. Pindar gave
the following account. When Perseus killed Medusa, the other Gorgons
broke into shrill cries of lament. The strange new sounds attracted
Athena so much that she devised an instrument which would allow her
to imitate them at will, and so she began the art of flute playing. Greek
tradition did not follow Pindar's account of the Gorgon lament, but
ordinarily it agreed in making Athena inventress of the flute. Marsyas
had profited by her discovery.
Beginning towards the middle of the fifth century B. C. , Greek
painters and sculptors often dealt with the myth of Marsyas. The
story implied was as follows. Athena observed that flute playing dis-
torted her features, and she threw down the instrument in disgust. Mar-
syas immediately picked it up. Angry at his wishing to preserve it, she
struck him. But Marsyas kept the flute and became celebrated among
the country folk of Lydia. Grown presumptuous, he challenged Apollo
to a contest. The Muses were appointed to judge and gave Apollo the
victory. Then the god punished the silenus with a terrible death. He
bound Marsyas to a pine tree and caused a Scythian to flay him alive.
Actual cases of flaying have occurred in many parts of the world,
but fortunately this extreme form of cruelty seems never to have been
common. The Greeks and Romans preferred torture of other sorts. Yet
in late Roman times at least one Christian martyr was flayed alive.
Michelangelo pictured him in the Last Judgment wearing a new skin
but holding up the other as evidence which would send the murderers to
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
Hell. In the Middle Ages flaying sometimes was resorted to, notably in
the case of Bertrand de Gourdon, who caused the death of Richard
Coeur de Lion. And in 1587 the Turks inflicted this cruel torture on
Marcantonio Bragadino, last Venetian governor of Cyprus. Occasionally
such ferocity may have been sanctioned by law and public opinion, for a
medieval Lay of Havelok records it with satisfaction as the fate of a
tyrant who caused the hero's misfortunes. But in general it seems to
have been thought an excess, which was to be condoned only in the case
of an extraordinary offender. It seems to have entered rarely into myth-
ology and in Greek tradition to have been recorded only of Marsyas.
Greek art treated all the chief incidents of the myth. The sculptor
Myron in a very famous work showed Athena striking Marsyas. Other
sculptors copied his work, sometimes altering details. Their statues often
adorned the market place of some Greek city, and a copy at Rome was
mentioned by Horace, Martial, and Juvenal. Other artists showed Mar-
syas playing his newly discovered flute. Still others dealt with the con-
test between Marsyas and Apollo. In a temple at Mantinea, Praxiteles
made this event the theme of beautiful sculptured reliefs. He contrasted
the effort of Marsyas with the ease and grace of Apollo. In the back-
ground he showed a slave holding the ominous knife. But the event most
frequently treated was the vengeance of Apollo. In general, Greek
artists were content to show the grim preparations. Painter and sculp-
tor represented Marsyas with his back against the pine tree and his arms
stretched above his head. Ropes about his ankles and wrists held him
fast, while the Scythian whetted the knife.
Greek artists had not associated the tale of Marsyas with any par-
ticular place. Towards the middle of the fifth century B. C. , oral tradi-
tion localized it in Celaenae, a Lydian town already famous for two
palaces erected by Persian kings. One of these, built at a little distance
from the town, marked the source of the Maeander River; the other stood
on a hill occupied by the citadel. From a cavern underneath issued the
Catarrhactes River, which formed a small lake in the market place and
then coursed through the town on its way to join the Maeander. The
reeds growing in this lake were suitable for the making of flutes and
gave the lake itself the name of Aulocrene (Fluter's Pool). Here Apollo
was said to have vanquished Marsyas and hung the skin. Referring to
this account, Herodotus declared that Apollo himself had done the flay-
ing, an idea repeated in most later versions of the tale. According to
Herodotus, the skin still was to be seen in the market place. Xenophon
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? MARSYAS
added in his Anabasis that originally Apollo hung the skin in the cavern
which was the source of the river and for this reason the river itself was
called the Marsyas. The same tradition was mentioned later by the
Roman historians, Livy and Curtius.
The Manual, telling the story in full, differed from previous au-
thorities at many points. It said nothing of Athena's displeasure at
Marsyas and did not give the contest a definite locality. It identified
Marsyas as the son of a famous musician named Olympus. Before con-
testing, the rivals agreed to let the victor do as he pleased with the van-
quished. In previous accounts Apollo had won because he was the better
musician. The Manual showed him winning by a trick. After playing
the instrument in the ordinary position, he turned it upside down and
continued playing. He bade Marsyas do likewise. But, after reversing
the flute, Marsyas found it impossible to play at all.
Nicander retold the tale. For the most part he agreed with the
Manual, but he introduced the following changes. When Athena in-
vented the flute, she played it at a banquet of the gods. They ridiculed
her. She withdrew to a quiet pool, where the reflection was clear, and
learned that flute playing distorted her face. Then she threw down the
instrument in the grass, with a curse on anyone who should take it up.
Marsyas later discovered the flute and taught the art of playing it, not
only to himself but to others. Plato in the Symposium had spoken of
Marsyas as teaching Olympus. Following this idea, Nicander described
Olympus, not as the father of Marsyas, but as a favorite pupil. In the
contest there were two trials. After the first, the judges voted for Mar-
syas. In the second, Apollo reversed his lyre and won. For the conclu-
sion of the tale Nicander introduced the idea mentioned by Xenophon,
that Marsyas gave his name to the Lydian river. But he offered a dif-
ferent explanation. Blood of the dying Marsyas sank into the ground
and emerged as the clear stream which bears his name.
Among Roman authors the version of Nicander appears to have
been well known. Propertius referred to Athena's displeasure at the
flute. In the Art of Love Ovid followed his example, and in a Pontic
Epistle he referred to Olympus, the favorite pupil of Marsyas. In the
Fasti Ovid retold briefly the first part of the tale. He followed Nicander's
history of the flute but omitted the idea of a curse. Then, as briefly as
possible, he indicated the nature of the contest and the satyr's death.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid merely alluded to the history of the
flute by calling the instrument Athena's reed. He did not describe the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
contest. He planned later to recount a similar rivalry between Apollo
and Pan, in order to show the stupidity of Midas. And so he said only
that Marsyas was defeated. But he dwelt on the vengeance of Apollo.
In vain the tortured satyr offered to renounce the flute. Apollo per-
sisted without mercy. Ovid pictured the result, with appalling details.
The satyr's whole body became nothing but a wound. Ovid rejected the
transformation of the satyr's blood. Apollonius had told how nymphs
mourned for the death of Clite until their tears became a spring.
Ovid imagined a similar lamentation for Marsyas, and he probably re-
membered how Theocritus had described the grief of pastoral folk for
Daphnis. The rural deities, he said, the herdsmen and peasants, and the
beloved Olympus wept for Marsyas, their musician, and their tears be-
came the river which bears his name.
Ovid's account influenced almost all writers who afterwards re-
ferred to the myth. In the Ibis, Ovid himself named Marsyas and re-
called a few of the circumstances. Lucan, remembering both Ovid and
the historians, declared that Marsyas was defeated and was mourned
at Celaenae. Lewis Morris retold the entire story, in idealized form. In
his version Marsyas was a young poet who did not attain perfection in
his art yet died gladly after hearing the supreme achievement of Apollo.
Regarding the nature of his death, Morris spoke vaguely of cruel stripes.
Ovid had said nothing of the lyre and had spoken of Marsyas as
being defeated in a contest with the flute. Readers unacquainted with
Greek versions of the myth would imagine that both Apollo and Marsyas
were flute players. Statius appears to have been misled by the passage,
for he gave the same impression. Dante supposed that Apollo was an
unrivalled player on the flute. At the beginning of his Paradiso he prayed
Apollo to enter his breast and breathe music as wonderful as that which
brought destruction to Marsyas. Chaucer in the House of Fame not
only repeated this error but added another. Ovid, naming the satyr only
once, had used an unfamiliar Greek accusative, Marsya. Dante had
given the Italian form, which happened to be essentially the same. And
so Chaucer declared that Apollo had vanquished a certain presumptuous
woman called Marcia!
Ovid had spoken of the satyr's entire body as becoming a single
wound. This description often was remembered. In the Ibis Ovid re-
ferred to Marsyas and used it again.
numbered them in the proportion of seven to one. Their very abundance
would be a defense from the changes of fortune. Even should many be
lost, the number would not fall so far as two, the narrow margin which
saved Latona from being childless.
After describing the Thebans as loth to interrupt their worship,
Ovid pictured the resentment of Latona. Many of the circumstances he
imitated from earlier tales. Latona had observed Niobe from her sacred
mountain, Cynthus. She appealed to her children as her only protectors
from neglect. She expressed the fear lest Niobe's defiance should be the
signal for general contempt. All this Ovid imitated from the conduct
of Venus, which he had recorded in the tale of Proserpina. After stating
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
her wishes, Latona added entreaty. Apollo declared it needless. This,
Ovid repeated from his interview of Juno and Tisiphone in the tale of
Athamas. But Ovid invented two further circumstances. According to
some authorities, Tantalus had offended the gods by telling over-much
about their affairs. Latona suggested that Niobe was imitating her
father's notorious example. And, since Niobe had taunted the goddess
with the idea that she was virtually childless, Latona repeated the word
"childless" to suggest Niobe's appropriate punishment.
The sculpture at Olympia had shown Apollo and Diana taking aim
at Niobe's children from the throne of Jupiter. Other accounts had not
indicated the place. Ovid imagined plausibly that Apollo and Diana
came down to the citadel of Thebes, concealing their presence with
clouds.
At least the majority of previous accounts had given the impres-
sion that both deities made a simultaneous attack. Ovid declared that
at first Apollo alone began to shoot. Diana still withheld her arrows
and spared the girls. The death of the sons was to serve as a third
warning to the proud Niobe, more definite and formidable than the
others, but still permitting her to repent and escape with half of her
children.
According to the Manual, the boys were hunting in the forest of
Mt. Cithaeron. Ovid made the circumstances more striking. He showed
the boys engaged in sport on a plain easily visible from the city. He
recorded their names, taking most of them from the Manual but adding
that of Ilioneus from Vergil's Aeneid, and he gave some account of the
sports with which they were occupied. The two oldest, Ismenus and
Sipylus, were riding richly caparisoned horses; two others, Phaedimus
and Tantalus, were wrestling; the three youngest, Alphenor, Damasich-
thon, and Ilioneus, apparently were watching the rest. The destruction
of the six older boys Ovid recounted with various and vivid effect. But
he was inclined to emphasize details which were not in harmony with the
tragic situation. The Manual had spoken of one boy who prayed to
Latona and escaped. This detail suggested to Ovid the pathetic inci-
dent of the youngest son, Ilioneus. To have spared him would have con-
fused the progress of the tragedy. But Ovid allowed a brief suspense.
Terrified, Ilioneus prayed to all the gods. Apollo strove, too late, to
withhold the arrow and struck him with a lighter but fatal wound.
The events immediately following Ovid told obscurely. Evidently
he altered the traditional story in several respects and supposed the
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? NIOBE
events to have been as follows. News of the disaster passed quickly to
the palace; Amphion had been spared by Apollo, but he took his own life
with a dagger; the bodies of Amphion and his seven sons were brought
into an area of open ground, visible from the citadel, and were laid on
biers for the funeral service. Then Niobe came forth, amazed and in-
credulous, attended by her daughters. At the sight of the dead, she
realized how much cause she had to mourn. Ovid contrasted the former
proud Niobe, envied by all, with the hapless Niobe wildly embracing her
dead sons, worthy of pity even from a foe.
But her pride remained. Even so dreadful a warning did not avail.
Looking up from the dead, she boasted that she still excelled Latona in
the number of her children. Hitherto Diana had been merciful. At this
she bent her bow.
In the new catastrophe, Ovid was anxious to avoid duplicating his
account of the boys. He did not name the daughters, and he narrated
very briefly the various deaths of the older six. The Manual had spoken
of a daughter who prayed to Latona and escaped. Ovid did not repeat
the incident, but again he introduced a moment of suspense. Scopas had
shown Niobe attempting to shield her youngest daughter from Diana's
shaft. Ovid followed his example, and he added that Niobe herself pleaded
for the life of her only remaining child. She prayed too late. As she
spoke the words, the arrow reached its mark.
Since Tantalus had been for a long time dead, Niobe could not re-
turn to live with him. Ovid thought it unlikely that she could even sur-
vive a loss so overwhelming. Sitting near the bodies of her husband and
her fourteen children, he said, she hardened gradually into marble. Ovid
recorded the change as it occurred, first externally and then within,
until it left no motion save the falling tears. Tradition had associated
the petrified Niobe with the crags of Mt. Sipylus. Accordingly, Ovid
invented a picturesque incident. As Niobe sat, a weeping statue, before
her palace at Thebes, a whirlwind passed by and swept her over land and
sea to her native mountain.
In spite of defective passages Ovid showed clearly the extent of
Niobe's impiety, and he presented the chief events with dramatic effect.
His account was always the most accessible and for many centuries it
was the only full account which survived. Apart from Statius, who fol-
lowed chiefly the Iliad and Hyginus, who followed the Manual, later
authors learned of Niobe from Ovid.
Ordinarily they were content with brief allusions. Seneca referred
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
in his Agamemnon to Manto's warning. In his Oedipus he described
Niobe as standing in Hades and still proudly counting the number of
her shades. Dante saw among examples carved on the terrace of pride,
Queen Niobe mourning over her dead children. In a final canzone to
Laura, Petrarch declared that Medusa and his sin had transformed him
into a weeping rock. Erasmus noted in his Praise of Folly that wonder
at an absurd preacher turned certain divines into stone, as grief trans-
formed Niobe.
Spenser referred three times to Ovid's myth. In the Shepherd's
Calendar, Thenot pronounced Queen Elizabeth superior to Apollo or
Diana and then remembered with alarm what punishment such compari-
sons had brought on Niobe. In the Faerie Queen, Spenser declared that
Beige, with her seventeen children, would have seemed at first happier
than Niobe but afterwards incurred almost as terrible a loss in the
twelve destroyed by the tyrant Philip. And Spenser compared Bel-
phoebe, shooting at Lust, to Diana shooting at Niobe's children. In
Childe Harold, Byron recalled Ovid while beginning his great description
of Rome:
The Niobe of nations ! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe.
And in The Age of Bronze he noted satirically that Mother Church
Like Niobe, weeps o'er her offspring, Tithes.
Modern authors, like the ancients, mentioned Niobe as typical of
the profoundest grief. Chaucer's Pandarus told his nephew that it would
not be possible to win a lady by weeping like Queen Niobe, whose tears
are still visible in the marble. Shakespeare's Troilus declared that loss
of Hector would make Niobes of all the Trojan women and turn Priam
and the youths to stone. His Hamlet described the queen as following
the body of the former king, like Niobe all tears. And Alfred Tennyson
referred to the profound grief of Niobe in three poems, Walking for the
Mail, The Princess, and The Promise of May.
In the nineteenth century many poets retold Ovid's story at some
length. Chief among these were Landor, Frederick Tennyson, Lewis
Morris, and Leconte de Lisle.
Ovid's tale inspired paintings by Rottenhammer, Le Bril, and
Wilson.
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
The Lycian Peasants
Just as the fate of Pentheus made the Thebans eager to worship
Bacchus (Bk. 3), so, Ovid continued, the fate of Niobe made them eager
to worship Latona. Ovid then introduced another story. Latona's pun-
ishment of Niobe recalled to one of the people her earlier punishment of
some Lycian peasants. This event the narrator told as a story learned
when he visited the scene and questioned his Lycian guide. Later Ovid
used a transition of the same kind while introducing the tale of Philemon
and Baucis (Bk. 8).
The myth of Latona and the Lycians was recorded first by a local
historian, Menecrates of Xanthus. After the birth of Apollo and Diana,
he said, Juno continued persecuting Latona. The goddess fled with her
infants to the mountains of Lycia. One day, while tortured by thirst,
she arrived at a pond called Melas and wished to drink and to bathe her
children. A shepherd, Neocles, had come with several companions to
water their sheep.
These men brutally drove Latona away. She first tried to reason
with them. Finding it useless, she transformed them into frogs and de-
clared that it should be their punishment to remain always as keepers of
the pond. Nicander, repeating the story, gave a detailed account of the
metamorphosis. The ill nature of the shepherds, he said, caused the dis-
torted appearance of the frogs, and their ill-mannered outcries became
raucous croaking.
Ovid prefaced the myth with a few details concerning the birth of
Apollo and Diana. Both the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo and Cal-
limachus in the Hymn to Delos had stated that Juno endeavored to pre-
vent the birth of the children. She kept Ilythia, goddess of childbirth,
ignorant of Latona's presence in Delos. But after nine days the other
goddesses brought Ilythia secretly to the island. An incident of this kind
Ovid planned to use later in his tale of Galanthis (Bk. 9) and so he
merely alluded to it, by observing that Latona bore her children despite
opposition of Juno.
The Homeric Hymn declared that Latona leaned against a palm
tree. Theognis, Euripides, and Callimachus repeated the incident. Euri-
pides in his Iphigenia among the Taurians mentioned also an olive tree
which grew near by. Callimachus added that nymphs playfully biting
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
the trunk afterwards amused the infant Apollo. Catullus declared that
Latona's children were born under the olive tree. Following these hints,
Ovid observed that Latona leaned against both the palm tree and the
olive tree. This idea he repeated later in his tale of the daughters of
Anius (Bk. 13).
In Greek mythology the district of Lycia had been famous chiefly
for its association with the Chimaera. The story, as told by the Iliad,
ran as follows. A certain Amisodorus of Lycia reared a fire-breathing
monster, the Chimaera, which combined the head of a lion and the body
of a goat with the tail of a snake. This animal ravaged the country and
proved so formidable that encountering it appeared to mean certain
death. King Iobates, who wished to destroy Bellerophon, sent him to
kill this monster. Contrary to expectation the hero with his arrows
destroyed the Chimaera. The Theogony added that Bellerophon rode
to the encounter on the winged horse Pegasus. Pindar and the Manual
retold the story, with further details of their own. Greek artists often
showed the adventure, but were inclined to represent the Chimaera as
having only the form of a lion. Vergil in the Culex had distinguished
Lycia as the home of the Chimaera. In the tale of Latona and the
Lycians Ovid followed his example. In his account of Byblis (Bk. 9) he
briefly described the monster. But he never told the story, probably
because it resembled too closely the adventures of Perseus.
For Latona's adventure at the pond Ovid used Nicander. But he
introduced many desirable changes. The event was not easy to recon-
cile with the circumstances given in Ovid's tale of Apollo and Python
(Bk. 1), and in any case it must have happened in the remote past. Ac-
cordingly, Ovid made the story more indefinite by leaving nameless the
pond and the Lycians. Ovid quoted Latona's words to the men. He
showed her observing that water, like sun and air, is not the possession
of any man but common to all.
In Nicander's tale a reader might find extenuation for the conduct
of the shepherds. They needed the water for their own purpose, they
might have supposed that bathing children would interfere with the care
of their flocks, and so they might have thought it necessary to drive
Latona away. Ovid was careful to remove these possible excuses. He
described the Lycians as peasants who were gathering osiers and reeds.
They were not going to use the water themselves. He showed Latona
disclaiming any intention of bathing. And he described the Lycians as
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? THE LYCIAN PEASANTS
not only forbidding her to drink water which they did not need but as
wantonly jumping up and down to foul it with mud.
Nicander had shown the goddess condemning the Lycians to remain
always as keepers of the pond. This might not sound like punishment,
and it was not an accurate description of frogs. Ovid said therefore that
she condemned them appropriately to reside always in a muddy pool.
Following Nicander's example, he described the transformation at some
length. Vergil in the Georgics had imitated the sound of a distant chorus
of frogs.
Ovid now imitated the sound of individual frogs, croaking near
by. * But he was mistaken in describing them as croaking under water.
In later times Ovid's tale interested several great poets and artists.
Gray in his Ode on Vicissitude remembered Ovid's idea that sun and air
are common to all. Camoens likened the terrified Moors diving from the
ships of Garaa to the Lycians diving from the bank, after Latona had
transformed them. Milton declared in a sonnet that his Tetrachordon
was greeted with an outcry as noisy and stupid
As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs
Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.
Reubens, Brueghel, and Tench made Ovid's tale the theme of paintings.
A French sculptor used the subject for adorning a fountain at Versailles
and may have suggested to Thierry and Fremin the idea of treating the
same theme in one of the glorious fountains of San Ildefonso.
* Vergil imitated the sound in the words:
Et veterem in limo ranae cecinere querellam.
Ovid imitated it in the words:
Quamvis sint sub aqua, sub aqua maledicere temptant.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
Marsyas
The tale of the Lycian peasants who were metamorphosed because
of their impious opposition to Latona reminded another Theban of
Marsyas, who suffered because of his impious contest with Apollo. This
event the Manual had recorded as occurring soon after Apollo estab-
lished himself at Delphi (cf. Bk. 1). Ovid implied only that it had oc-
curred at some time in the remote past.
According to tradition, Marsyas had vied with Apollo in music.
The story resembled that of a contest in music between Pan and Apollo,
which Ovid intended to repeat later (Bk. 11). Both tales grew up in
Lydia and both imply an historical rivalry between admirers of two dif-
ferent musical instruments. Of these instruments the older was called
either the pipe or the flute. Ordinarily it was a slender tube, having a
mouthpiece at one end and a number of openings along the side. To play
the flute the musician held the tube in a vertical position, blew into the
mouthpiece, and allowed the air to escape through the proper opening,
covering the others with his fingers. Originally the flute was made from
reed, and in the Metamorphoses Ovid observed that Marsyas used an
instrument of this kind. Later it often was made of wood or some other
hard material, and in the Fasti Ovid declared that Marsyas played a
flute made of boxwood. The Greeks had also a double flute, in which a
pair of tubes were adjusted to a single mouthpiece. According to some
accounts, this form of instrument was used by Marsyas in the famous
contest. In Lydia the flute was preferred by the country folk and was
associated with Pan and other rural deities. *
Rivalling the flute in popular estimation was a new, stringed instru-
ment called the cither or the lyre. Originally this was made by running
strings across a hollow shell. The musician held the shell in his lap and
touched the strings with a small implement made of horn called a plec-
trum. The Homeric Hymn to Mercury spoke of that god as making the
first lyre from the shell of a tortoise. Apollo obtained the instrument
from him and became famous for his skill in playing it. During histor-
ical times the lyre appears to have been made either of ivory or of wood.
It had the advantage of allowing the musician to sing as well as play.
* During modern times the ancient vertical flute has been supplanted by the
transverse flute. On this instrument the mouthpiece is adjusted to the side, and the
performer holds the tube horizontally.
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? MARSYAS
Probably for this reason it became a favorite instrument wjth the courtly
and urbane, and in the tales both of Marsyas and of Pan the lyre ob-
tained the victory over the flute.
The woodland god Pan was reputed to be an excellent flute player.
Similar ability was attributed to other male divinities of the country-
side. These the Greeks designated either as sileni or as satyrs. Both
were supernatural beings, long-lived but not immortal. They were human
in form but shaggy, with pointed ears and coarse features. The sileni
were bearded in appearance, the satyrs smooth-faced and youthful. The
Romans tended to identify satyrs with fauns and to represent them as
half animal -- with the hoofs, tails, and shaggy lower limbs of goats.
In Greek tradition Marsyas appeared ordinarily as a silenus. But Ovid
always referred to him as a satyr.
In the earliest form of the story, Marsyas himself was inventor of
the flute. This idea Plato seems to have recalled in his dialogue, The
Laws. But the invention usually was attributed to Athena. Pindar gave
the following account. When Perseus killed Medusa, the other Gorgons
broke into shrill cries of lament. The strange new sounds attracted
Athena so much that she devised an instrument which would allow her
to imitate them at will, and so she began the art of flute playing. Greek
tradition did not follow Pindar's account of the Gorgon lament, but
ordinarily it agreed in making Athena inventress of the flute. Marsyas
had profited by her discovery.
Beginning towards the middle of the fifth century B. C. , Greek
painters and sculptors often dealt with the myth of Marsyas. The
story implied was as follows. Athena observed that flute playing dis-
torted her features, and she threw down the instrument in disgust. Mar-
syas immediately picked it up. Angry at his wishing to preserve it, she
struck him. But Marsyas kept the flute and became celebrated among
the country folk of Lydia. Grown presumptuous, he challenged Apollo
to a contest. The Muses were appointed to judge and gave Apollo the
victory. Then the god punished the silenus with a terrible death. He
bound Marsyas to a pine tree and caused a Scythian to flay him alive.
Actual cases of flaying have occurred in many parts of the world,
but fortunately this extreme form of cruelty seems never to have been
common. The Greeks and Romans preferred torture of other sorts. Yet
in late Roman times at least one Christian martyr was flayed alive.
Michelangelo pictured him in the Last Judgment wearing a new skin
but holding up the other as evidence which would send the murderers to
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
Hell. In the Middle Ages flaying sometimes was resorted to, notably in
the case of Bertrand de Gourdon, who caused the death of Richard
Coeur de Lion. And in 1587 the Turks inflicted this cruel torture on
Marcantonio Bragadino, last Venetian governor of Cyprus. Occasionally
such ferocity may have been sanctioned by law and public opinion, for a
medieval Lay of Havelok records it with satisfaction as the fate of a
tyrant who caused the hero's misfortunes. But in general it seems to
have been thought an excess, which was to be condoned only in the case
of an extraordinary offender. It seems to have entered rarely into myth-
ology and in Greek tradition to have been recorded only of Marsyas.
Greek art treated all the chief incidents of the myth. The sculptor
Myron in a very famous work showed Athena striking Marsyas. Other
sculptors copied his work, sometimes altering details. Their statues often
adorned the market place of some Greek city, and a copy at Rome was
mentioned by Horace, Martial, and Juvenal. Other artists showed Mar-
syas playing his newly discovered flute. Still others dealt with the con-
test between Marsyas and Apollo. In a temple at Mantinea, Praxiteles
made this event the theme of beautiful sculptured reliefs. He contrasted
the effort of Marsyas with the ease and grace of Apollo. In the back-
ground he showed a slave holding the ominous knife. But the event most
frequently treated was the vengeance of Apollo. In general, Greek
artists were content to show the grim preparations. Painter and sculp-
tor represented Marsyas with his back against the pine tree and his arms
stretched above his head. Ropes about his ankles and wrists held him
fast, while the Scythian whetted the knife.
Greek artists had not associated the tale of Marsyas with any par-
ticular place. Towards the middle of the fifth century B. C. , oral tradi-
tion localized it in Celaenae, a Lydian town already famous for two
palaces erected by Persian kings. One of these, built at a little distance
from the town, marked the source of the Maeander River; the other stood
on a hill occupied by the citadel. From a cavern underneath issued the
Catarrhactes River, which formed a small lake in the market place and
then coursed through the town on its way to join the Maeander. The
reeds growing in this lake were suitable for the making of flutes and
gave the lake itself the name of Aulocrene (Fluter's Pool). Here Apollo
was said to have vanquished Marsyas and hung the skin. Referring to
this account, Herodotus declared that Apollo himself had done the flay-
ing, an idea repeated in most later versions of the tale. According to
Herodotus, the skin still was to be seen in the market place. Xenophon
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? MARSYAS
added in his Anabasis that originally Apollo hung the skin in the cavern
which was the source of the river and for this reason the river itself was
called the Marsyas. The same tradition was mentioned later by the
Roman historians, Livy and Curtius.
The Manual, telling the story in full, differed from previous au-
thorities at many points. It said nothing of Athena's displeasure at
Marsyas and did not give the contest a definite locality. It identified
Marsyas as the son of a famous musician named Olympus. Before con-
testing, the rivals agreed to let the victor do as he pleased with the van-
quished. In previous accounts Apollo had won because he was the better
musician. The Manual showed him winning by a trick. After playing
the instrument in the ordinary position, he turned it upside down and
continued playing. He bade Marsyas do likewise. But, after reversing
the flute, Marsyas found it impossible to play at all.
Nicander retold the tale. For the most part he agreed with the
Manual, but he introduced the following changes. When Athena in-
vented the flute, she played it at a banquet of the gods. They ridiculed
her. She withdrew to a quiet pool, where the reflection was clear, and
learned that flute playing distorted her face. Then she threw down the
instrument in the grass, with a curse on anyone who should take it up.
Marsyas later discovered the flute and taught the art of playing it, not
only to himself but to others. Plato in the Symposium had spoken of
Marsyas as teaching Olympus. Following this idea, Nicander described
Olympus, not as the father of Marsyas, but as a favorite pupil. In the
contest there were two trials. After the first, the judges voted for Mar-
syas. In the second, Apollo reversed his lyre and won. For the conclu-
sion of the tale Nicander introduced the idea mentioned by Xenophon,
that Marsyas gave his name to the Lydian river. But he offered a dif-
ferent explanation. Blood of the dying Marsyas sank into the ground
and emerged as the clear stream which bears his name.
Among Roman authors the version of Nicander appears to have
been well known. Propertius referred to Athena's displeasure at the
flute. In the Art of Love Ovid followed his example, and in a Pontic
Epistle he referred to Olympus, the favorite pupil of Marsyas. In the
Fasti Ovid retold briefly the first part of the tale. He followed Nicander's
history of the flute but omitted the idea of a curse. Then, as briefly as
possible, he indicated the nature of the contest and the satyr's death.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid merely alluded to the history of the
flute by calling the instrument Athena's reed. He did not describe the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SIX
contest. He planned later to recount a similar rivalry between Apollo
and Pan, in order to show the stupidity of Midas. And so he said only
that Marsyas was defeated. But he dwelt on the vengeance of Apollo.
In vain the tortured satyr offered to renounce the flute. Apollo per-
sisted without mercy. Ovid pictured the result, with appalling details.
The satyr's whole body became nothing but a wound. Ovid rejected the
transformation of the satyr's blood. Apollonius had told how nymphs
mourned for the death of Clite until their tears became a spring.
Ovid imagined a similar lamentation for Marsyas, and he probably re-
membered how Theocritus had described the grief of pastoral folk for
Daphnis. The rural deities, he said, the herdsmen and peasants, and the
beloved Olympus wept for Marsyas, their musician, and their tears be-
came the river which bears his name.
Ovid's account influenced almost all writers who afterwards re-
ferred to the myth. In the Ibis, Ovid himself named Marsyas and re-
called a few of the circumstances. Lucan, remembering both Ovid and
the historians, declared that Marsyas was defeated and was mourned
at Celaenae. Lewis Morris retold the entire story, in idealized form. In
his version Marsyas was a young poet who did not attain perfection in
his art yet died gladly after hearing the supreme achievement of Apollo.
Regarding the nature of his death, Morris spoke vaguely of cruel stripes.
Ovid had said nothing of the lyre and had spoken of Marsyas as
being defeated in a contest with the flute. Readers unacquainted with
Greek versions of the myth would imagine that both Apollo and Marsyas
were flute players. Statius appears to have been misled by the passage,
for he gave the same impression. Dante supposed that Apollo was an
unrivalled player on the flute. At the beginning of his Paradiso he prayed
Apollo to enter his breast and breathe music as wonderful as that which
brought destruction to Marsyas. Chaucer in the House of Fame not
only repeated this error but added another. Ovid, naming the satyr only
once, had used an unfamiliar Greek accusative, Marsya. Dante had
given the Italian form, which happened to be essentially the same. And
so Chaucer declared that Apollo had vanquished a certain presumptuous
woman called Marcia!
Ovid had spoken of the satyr's entire body as becoming a single
wound. This description often was remembered. In the Ibis Ovid re-
ferred to Marsyas and used it again.
