Aeschylus
told it at some length in his
Prometheus Unbound.
Prometheus Unbound.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v1
In savage myth and in folklore such ability has been imagined
for many animals; but it could be ascribed with special ease to the
raven.
Ancient Greece related the bird's change of color to an early love
affair of Apollo. According to the Catalogues, the god loved Coronis,
who dwelt near Lake Boebais in southern Thessaly. While he was
absent at Delphi, she secretly married a youth named Ischys. A raven
flew north to Delphi with the news. In the Catalogues the latter part
of the tale has been lost. But the Manual continued to the following
effect: Apollo returned in haste and shot Coronis with his fatal bow.
Then repenting his violence, he mounted the pyre, where the girl's
body was consuming; rescued his unborn son, Aesculapius; and en-
trusted the infant to the centaur Chiron. For provoking the god's
rash act, the raven was punished by loss of his original white.
Meanwhile several Greek poets had given the myth a different
form. Pindar told it in impressive language and with a more exalted
conception of the god. He was original also in many important de-
tails. According to Pindar, Coronis lapsed into the prevalent folly--
romantic dreams about strangers from distant lands. She began an
illicit love affair with Ischys, whom Pindar made an Arcadian.
Apollo, although absent in Delphi and without information of the
ordinary kind, perceived her guilt purely by the keenness of his mental
vision. To punish Coronis, he sent Diana, who destroyed her and also
many of her neighbors. But later he himself returned to save
Aesculapius. This version, which omitted the part of the raven, had
no influence on subsequent treatments.
Thus far the myth of the raven's dark plumage had been related
only to the tragic story of Apollo and Coronis. Callimachus, in the
Hecale, associated it with two other myths of independent origin.
The first myth told of an early Athenian god named Erichthonius.
Vulcan, it seems, had tried to ravish the goddess Athena, His attempt
was unsuccessful; but it caused Vulcan and Earth to become parents
of the Athenian god. In the sculpture of the Theseum and other early
works of art, Earth was personified as the divine mother. The tale
was known to Euripides and was told at some length by the Manual.
In the latter, Earth became merely the soil on which the event
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
occurred. Hence Ovid referred to Erichthonius as a child without a
mother.
The second myth sought to explain why crows appeared to shun
the Acropolis at Athens. It was invented as a sequal to the first.
Athena undertook the nurture of Erichthonius; but feeling ashamed
of his origin, she kept him hidden in a box On one occasion the
approach of a hostile army caused her to depart and strengthen the
defenses of her city. Meanwhile she entrusted the box to the three
daughters of the Athenian king, telling them not to open it. Disobey-
ing, they found the child guarded by a snake. A crow reported their
disobedience to Athena. She caused the girls to go mad and leap
over a cliff. The crow, as a bearer of ill tidings, she exiled forever
from the Acropolis. This story appeared first in ancient vase paint-
ings. Euripides referred to it at some length in his Ion; but
Callimachus seems to have been the earliest author who told it in full.
Instead of mentioning the exile of crows from the Acropolis, he said
that Athena banished them from her company, and afterwards this
was the usual account. But Lucretius still referred incredulously to
the older version. Both Euripides and Callimachus made all three
girls disobedient. But the Manual and other prose accounts restricted
the guilt to two.
Callimachus told first the myth of the raven and Coronis, and then
that of the crow and Erichthonius. He pointed out that each story
dealt with a bird which was punished for being over eager to tell the
unwelcome truth.
Nicander carried the idea a step further. While the raven was bear-
ing his message to Delphi, said Nicander, the crow tried to dissuade
him from informing Apollo by telling how she herself had been pun-
ished for informing Athena. But the raven refused to heed this warn-
ing. Nicander made only one girl, Aglauros, guilty of disobedience
and he related her punishment to a subsequent tale of Mercury and
Herse.
Nicander had already made the tale of the raven far more complex.
But he carried the process further. The crow, he said, had told not
only why she was banished but how she at first obtained the favor
of Athena. Originally she had been the daughter of Coroneus, king
of Phocis. Courted and pursued by Neptune, she called for help, and
Athena transformed her into a crow. This tale Nicander may have
invented.
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? CO RON IS AND PHOEBUS
Then Nicander complicated the myth still more. Not content with
telling her own history, the crow added a story of the owl, who suc-
ceeded her in Athena's favor. In its earlier form the myth had been
as follows: Epopeus, king of Libya, had a daughter Nyctimene. He
violated her and she hid ashamed in the forest. But Athena pitied
her misfortune and transformed her into the owl, which became her
sacred bird. Nicander made Epopeus king of Lesbos and he greatly
altered the story. Influenced by the famous tradition of Myrrha (cf.
Book 10), he showed Nyctimene guilty of seducing her father. With
this change the sympathy of Athena became improbable; but the story
was new and much more sensational.
By adding so many independent tales, Nicander tended to confuse
the reader and divert his attention from the tragedy of Coronis. This
Ovid may have realized. But he probably felt that the myth of the
raven was so familiar that it required some novelty of treatment.
And the many stories which Nicander had brought together were not
only very appropriate for his general purpose but difficult to intro-
duce in any better way. Accordingly Ovid followed Nicander's out-
line, adding details from Callimachus and the Manual. But he intro-
duced beneficial changes of his own. For the Romans he retold the
complicated myth effectively. For the modern reader he often took
too many circumstances for granted.
Callimachus had compared the pristine whiteness of the raven to
that of the swan, of milk, and of a wave on the shore. This idea Ovid
improved by making all his comparisons with birds--the spotless
doves, the geese on the Capitol, and the river-loving swan. And he
gave the subject further interest by reminding his countrymen that
these white geese had once preserved Rome from an attack of the Gauls.
Following Nicander, he then told of Apollo's love for Coronis and of
the raven's departure to report her infidelity. This part of the tale,
he wisely abridged, omitting even the name of Ischys. But he failed
to make it clear that Apollo was absent at Delphi. A reader un-
familiar with other accounts would not understand the situation at
this point and later would not know that, before shooting Coronis, the
god was supposed to return from a considerable distance.
During the raven's flight northwards, Ovid repeated the dialogue
between the raven and the crow. He took the precaution to make the
latter notably garrulous. For a crow this was in character. But
Ovid had a more important reason. Of the three stories which the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
crow was to tell, only that of her own tale-bearing was to the point.
Neither her adoption by Athena nor her being supplanted by the
guilty Nyctimene was essential or at all likely to dissuade the raven.
Yet both might form part of a garrulous complaint.
Believing his contemporaries familiar with the origin of Erichthonius,
Ovid left it obscure. The tale of the crow's disgrace he repeated
briefly as it had been told by Nicander. Proceeding to the early his-
tory of the crow, Ovid gave an admirable account of the metamorpho-
sis. Then he told of Nyctimene, briefly, because he intended later to
tell in detail a similar story of Myrrha.
After an effective description of the dismay with which Apollo heard
the raven, Ovid recorded the death of Coronis. But he hastened the
account so much that it was not clear how the dying mother knew
either the identity or the motive of her slayer. Apollo's repentance
Ovid told more successfully. The tradition that the god's healing
power could not save Hyacinthus (Bk. 10) may have suggested
Ovid's use of the same pathetic circumstance in the death of Coronis.
That the gods were immune from shedding tears was not a usual
. idea with the Greeks: the Iliad had implied that Jupiter wept crimson
dew after the loss of Sarpedon, and Ovid himself was to declare that
every morning we may see the tears of Aurora still grieving for the
death of Memnon (Bk. 13). But Euripides had made the contrary
belief famous in his Hippolytus Crowned.
From Ovid's myth of Apollo and Coronis, Chaucer developed a
strangely different story for his Canterbury Tales. This version,
? ? called the Maunciple's Tale, retold the myth with a number of radical
changes. Thus Chaucer made the raven a trained crow in a cage;
he omitted all the related stories, and he gave the narrative to an
ignorant man who delighted in moralizing. Yet this was almost the
only Ovidian tale where Chaucer retained the metamorphosis.
Ariosto, narrating the plight of Ulania and her companions, re-
called the origin of Erichthonius and the curiosity of Aglauros. In
the House of Busyrane Spenser mentioned a painting of Apollo's
grief for Coronis and added that she became a sweet briar.
The tale of Erichthonius inspired a painting of Piombo and two
important works of Rubens.
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? OCYRHOE AND AESCULAPIUS
OCYEHOE AND AESCULAPIUS
From the death of Coronis, Ovid could pass naturally to the care
of her son by the centaur Chiron and the strange transformation of
Chiron's daughter. This event Euripides had recorded in his
Melanippe the Wise. Although the centaur was only half human in
form, he said, his daughter Ocyrhoe was at first entirely human. From
her father she inherited the gift of prophecy. But so incautiously did
she use her power that Jupiter transformed her to a mare. Nicander
seems to have repeated the tale and made it available for Ovid.
The myth of Ocyrhoe was in itself appropriate and picturesque.
But to Ovid it offered a further advantage. Both Aesculapius, child
of Apollo and Coronis, and Chiron, his foster father, had become well
known mythological characters and had taken a leading part in re-
markable events. Ovid was anxious to include their adventures in his
poem. But he did not think it wise to recount them at length. He
was glad, therefore, to present them as foreshadowed vaguely in the
prophecy of Ocyrhoe. It will be of interest to suggest both the nature
of these events and the cause of Ovid's reticence.
Aesculapius was in prehistoric times a local god of healing, wor-
shiped in southern Thessaly, and related with savage beliefs about the
snake. Many early people imagined that the snake was gifted with
unusual cunning, that he understood the principles of medicine, and
that he had learned by casting his skin to renew his youth and be-
come immortal. Accordingly the serpent was often associated with a
god of healing. The Egyptians associated him with Isis, as Ovid was
to imply later in the tale of Ianthe (Bk. 9), and the Thessalians
related him frequently to Aesculapius. They believed that the god
himself was apt to appear in serpent form. A tradition of this kind
Ovid himself was to repeat, when he told how the Romans brought the
god from Epidaurus in the form of a great crested snake (Bk. 15).
In time the Thessalians came to prefer Apollo, a god of healing in
human form. They then regarded Aesculapius as his son and a mortal
who became a celebrated physician. The Iliad mentioned this belief,
and the Homeric Hymn to Aesculapius made him the child of Apollo
and Coronis. In the Catalogues we hear first of his dying by a
thunderbolt from Jupiter.
Pindar told the story in some detail. Aesculapius, he said, was
reared by Chiron. He grew famous for healing all manner of sickness.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
At length a splendid offer of gold tempted him to revive even a dead
man. But this was usurping a power allowed only to the gods, and
Jupiter destroyed both the physician and his patient. Pindar's ac-
count was not the usual tradition.
Ordinarily we hear that Aesculapius perished, but the resurrected
man continued living. To this Aeschylus alluded ruefully in his
Agamemnon and Euripides in his Alcestis. Later authors wished to
identify the revived man quite variously. In the Aeneid Vergil de-
clared that the physician acted at the request of Diana and restored
the life of her favorite, Hippolytus--a version which Ovid was glad
to use later in his myth of Egeria (Bk. 15).
Still another tradition recorded that, although Jupiter at first pun-
ished Aesculapius with death, he afterwards consoled Apollo by giving
the physician immortality as the constellation of the Serpent Holder
(Ophiuchus). This tradition Ovid followed in the prophecy of
Ocyrhoe. But he was unconventional in important details: he declared
that Aesculapius was not a mortal but a god and that to restore the
dead would have been his privilege, if the power had not been abused.
To the metamorphosis as the Serpent Holder, Ovid made only a vague
allusion. He was to need this event later in his Fasti.
Chiron was a centaur but unlike either Nessus (Bk. 9) or the troop
which battled with the Lapithae (Bk. 12). By nature he was intelli-
gent and humane. He lived on Mt. Pelion, in southern Thessaly, a
district rich in medicinal herbs, and since the Iliad he had been famed
as the teacher of Achilles. The Theogony had made him child of the
sea nymph Philyra. Apollonius and Vergil added that his father was
Saturn, who had taken the form of a magnificent horse, and this
Ovid himself was to mention in the tale of Arachne (Bk. 6).
Following the usual practice of ancient myth, Chiron should have
been mortal, and according to one tradition this was the case.
Eratosthenes declared that while showing Achilles trophies which
Hercules had left, Chiron dropped an arrow poisoned with the venom
of the hydra. The point struck Chiron's foot; he died and entered
heaven as the constellation of the Centaur. This Ovid was to tell in
the Fasti.
A more famous version of the story had been alluded to as early as
The Shield of Hercules.
Aeschylus told it at some length in his
Prometheus Unbound. Chiron, he said, was born immortal. During
the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae, he was present and acci-
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? BATTUS AND MERCURY
dently was wounded by one of the poisoned arrows of Hercules. The
wound proved incurable and gave him intolerable pain. He persuaded
the gods to make him mortal and grant him escape by death. This
story gave Ovid a different metamorphosis from the one which he was
to use in the Fasti. But he could not introduce it conveniently in his
battle of the Centaurs. He was glad, therefore, to include it in the
prophecy of Ocyrhoe. Euripides and others had shown Chiron himself
able to foretell coming events. But Ovid found it expedient to imply
the contrary.
Battus and Mercury
In parts of India men have imagined a divine patron of thieves.
This office the ancient Greeks accorded to Mercury. They reported
that he had been able to steal cattle even from the god Apollo. This
event Ovid told in his story of Battus. The idea that Mercury was a
patron of thieves he was to use again for the tale of Daedalion
(Bk. 11).
Before Ovid's time, the story of the theft had been treated in four
quite different ways. In the Homeric Hymn to Mercury, Apollo
seems to have been caring voluntarily for a herd which belonged to the
gods. Finding these cattle in the extreme north of Greece, Mercury
drove fifty of them southward past Onchestus in the central part of
the country. He noticed that an old man tending vines had observed
him and he offered the old man a rich harvest, if he would be silent.
Continuing southward to Arcadia, Mercury hid the stolen cattle near
the river Alpheus. Meanwhile Apollo had been following the trail.
He, too, observed the old man. Questioned by Apollo, the old man
promptly told all that he knew. This version appears later to have
inspired Alcaeus and Horace.
The Catalogues gave a quite different story. They declared that
Apollo tended cattle as a punishment and that the herd did not belong
to the gods. According to the Catalogues, the tending of cattle was
a sequel to Jupiter's destroying Aesculapius. Angered at the death
of his son, Apollo killed the Cyclopes, who had made the bolt. Jupiter
exiled him from Olympus and required him to spend a certain time
as herdsman of a mortal. In a charming satyr drama, The Trackers,
Sophocles added that the mortal was Admetus, king of southern
Thessaly, and that Mercury stole cattle from him. Euripides in the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
Alcestis alluded to the same story, and the Manual retold it in some
detail. Nothing was said of the old informer.
Callimachus offered a still different version. With the Homeric
Hymn he declared that Apollo tended cattle voluntarily, and with the
Catalogues he agreed that Apollo became herdsman of Admetus. But
he differed from both in regard to Apollo's motive. The god, he said,
undertook this humble labor because of his affection for the young
Admetus. Rhianus altered the new account in two particulars.
Apollo, he said, was swayed by love of Hymenaeus, a great grandson
of Athamas (cf. Bk. 4), and in order to be near him gathered a herd
of his own. These poets, too, ignored the incident of the old informer.
Nicander gave a fourth version. He agreed with Rhianus that
Apollo became a herdsman for the sake of Hymenaeus and that Apollo's
preoccupation with the lad gave Mercury a chance to drive off his
cattle. But he proceeded from this to the adventure with the informer,
improving the tale in several ways. The old man's name, he said, was
Battus. Instead of offering a good harvest, Mercury gave the more
tangible bribe of some money. But, fearing treachery, the god re-
turned later in a different guise and himself questioned the old man.
By offering a robe, he soon got the desired information. Mercury then
hit Battus with a staff and turned him into a rock which always con-
tains both fire and frost. This account Ovid mentioned in his Ibis.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid associated the tale of Battus with that
of Ocyrhoe. Apollo, he said, was unable to help Chiron during the
transformation of his daughter, because he was absent, tending cattle.
Ovid followed the outline of Nicander's version, making a number of
improvements. Since Hymenasus belonged to a later time, Ovid merely
said that Apollo became a pastoral lover. Nicander had shown the
god tending cattle in southern Thessaly; but this would have taken
him only a few miles from the residence of Chiron and would make it
appear that he was still accessible. Ovid supposed that Apollo had
gone rather to the far southwest of Greece and, to make the locality
clearer, he named the fields of Pylos. This country both the Iliad
and the Odyssey had rendered famous as the home of Nestor. To the
same distant region Ovid transferred Battus and made him a herds-
man of Nestor's father, Neleus. In the Homeric Hymn Mercury
drove the stolen cattle the entire length of Greece, and in the other
versions he drove them at least half that distance. This allowed the
poet to amuse his Greek readers by mentioning a number of places
I
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? AGLAUROS AND MERCURY
along the way, and alluding to their well known peculiarities. But
for Ovid's readers it would have seemed both extravagant and tedious.
Ovid imagined instead that Mercury drove the cattle only from Pylos
to the foot of some nearby mountains.
Nicander had meant to show Battus ready to break his agreement
as soon as he was offered a larger bribe. But the difference in value
was not obvious between a sum of money and a robe. Ovid made the
first bribe a cow and the second a cow and a bull besides. Such
bribes were also more likely to be offered by a stealer of cattle. Ovid
enlivened the tale with dialogue. And he closed wittily with the remark
that Battus was still known as index, which to the Romans meant both
informer and flint.
Ovid's myth suggested an interesting passage to Petrarch. In a
vision Laura appeared to her lover disguised so that he did not recog-
nize her and thus beguiled him into an avowal of his presumptuous
affection. Then, resuming his usual appearance, she punished him
with transformation to a rock.
Ovid inspired also a painting by Claude Lorrain.
Aglauros and Mercury
In the tale of Aglauros and Mercury, Ovid gave the sequel to the
story which the crow had told of Erichthonius and the three daugh-
ters of Cecrops (see Coronis). In Ovid's version, Aglauros alone had
disobeyed Athena. He now told how she offended further and incurred
a memorable punishment.
In a tradition recorded by the Manual, Herse, a sister of Aglauros,
was loved by Mercury and became the mother of the hero Cephalus.
With this tradition Nicander related the punishment . of Aglauros.
Not content with disobeying Athena, he said, she interfered between
Mercury and Herse and would not allow the god to approach her
sister until he bribed her with a large sum of gold. Incensed at this
new evidence of her presumption, Athena cursed Aglauros with envy
of her sister's good fortune. Aglauros then tried to prevent Mercury
from entering at all; but he changed her into stone. Ovid followed
Nicander's myth, with some important changes for the better. But he
avoided all reference to Cephalus, whom he was to introduce with
a different parentage and much later (Bk. 7).
The preceding tale of Battus was very much like the tale of
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? >> METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
Aglaitros in its theme. Both showed a person guilty of unusual
effrontery turned into stone. Under these circumstances Ovid would
ordinarily have sought variety by keeping the two stories far apart.
But in this case he gained the same end by a remarkable contrast in
the treatment. The tale of Battus he told simply and briefly with
the mere suggestion that the man became shapeless rock. The story
of Aglauros he told with brilliant simile, elaborate incident, and de-
tailed metamorphosis of the girl into a livid statue. Never did he
show more skill or obtain a happier effect.
After a striking account of Mercury soaring above Athens and
gazing enamored at Herse, the leader of a festival, Ovid showed the
god preparing to visit her, according to the style of a Roman gallant.
By having Mercury approach in a courteous and dignified manner, he
emphasized the churlishness of Aglauros. He was careful also to
make clear the nature of her accumulated offense. Before mentioning
Athena's journey to the forbidding home of Envy, Ovid described the
goddess appropriately in her older character of a warrior maid.
He then proceeded to improve Nicander's myth by this justly
famous adventure. And thus he found opportunity to excel all
predecessors in the art of personifying an abstract idea. In the Hymn
to Apollo Callimachus had spoken of a personified Envy. From him
Ovid may have taken the initial suggestion. But when he pictured
Athena travelling to summon the baleful spirit of Envy, he profited by
far more illustrious example. The Iliad had often referred incidentally
to personified abstractions, a practice followed by many subsequent
authors of narrative poetry. And sometimes it had given such char-
acters an important part in the action. Sleep cooperated at length in
Juno's plan for diverting the attention of Jove and announced her
success to Neptune. And later Sleep and Death bore home to Lycia
the body of great Sarpedon. The Shield of Hercules gave prominence
to a monster called Darkness of Death. Aeschylus introduced such
characters into tragedy. He showed Strength not only dragging
Prometheus to the place of torture but exhorting Vulcan in a dialogue
of some length. Euripides assigned an important role to Death in
his Alcestis and to Madness in his Hercules Furens. And in the
Aeneid Vergil had shown Iarbus warned by the celebrated personifi-
cation of Fame. With the Iliad and the Alcestis Ovid was undoubt-
edly familiar and on several occasions he was to show his interest in
Vergil's Fame.
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? AGLAUROS AND MERCURY
While using personification, the author of the Iliad thought only
of the action: he introduced Sleep in order that Jupiter might be
lulled opportunely to rest. And for a reader, the effect was the same
in the work of Aeschylus and Euripides. Thus Death appeared
chiefly because Alcestis was going to die. But the Shield of Hercules
had been interested in Darkness of Death for her own sake and had
given a careful description of her hideous appearance. Vergil com-
bined the two methods. He made Fame an agent in the action and
he gave a brilliant portrayal of her character and appearance. But
Ovid carried the process a step further. He not only gave Envy an
essential part in the destruction of Aglauros; and portrayed in full
her hideous appearance and baleful nature; but he intensified the effect
by describing first the region in which Envy found a congenial home.
And from every point of view Ovid excelled all his predecessors by his
vivid and definite detail. Later he was to use the same methods for his
equally famous accounts of Famine (Bk. 8), Sleep (Bk. 11), and
Fame (Bk. 12).
Ovid's tale of Aglauros interested many authors of later times.
Dante, ascending to the Mount of Purgatory, heard warning voices
repeating to the envious, "I was Aglauros who became a rock. "
Chaucer's Troilus invoked Mercury, recalling his love of Herse
For which Pallas was with Aglauros wroth.
In the opera Psyche Moliere and Corneille took from Ovid's Aglauros
both the name and the character of the more envious sister.
The adventure with Envy had an unusually important influence.
In the Romance of the Rose Guillaume Lorris profited by it for his
own description of the character. Spenser, narrating the return of
Sir Artegal, recalled Ovid for a long and splendid description of
Envy. Each poet had the advantage in certain respects. But
Spenser gained much by contrasting the relatively passive Envy with
the aggressive Detraction.
Especially interesting to later poets were the details of Envy's
flight to Athens. Tasso imitated Ovid, when he told how Allecto, on
her way to arouse Soliman, parched the fields and made the sun look
pale. In a Latin poem Milton remembered Envy's grieving at the
sight of prosperous Athens and attributed a like grief to Satan when
he beheld prosperous England. Envy's destructive effect on the coun-
try he imitated with far more grandeur in Paradise Lost, when Sin
and Death
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
Their course through thickest constellations held,
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan,
And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse
Then suffered.
But the influence of Ovid's Envy was not merely direct. During
the Middle Ages personification of abstractions became a very fre-
quent practice. Much of this work may have been the result of
medieval theology. But in the depiction of Envy and the later per-
sonifications of the Metamorphoses Ovid had given examples of extra-
ordinary merit. They were well known and enthusiastically admired
and they could not fail both to encourage personification and to sug-
gest the methods of medieval poets. The practice influenced pro-
foundly the work of Dante and became obvious in the Romance of the
Rose and the early poetry of Chaucer. During the Renaissance the
same tendency became pervasive in the Morality Plays and "the prose
of Bunyan. But the most wonderful of all personifications occurred in
the master work of Spenser and Milton. Both poets showed careful
study of Ovid. They began with an appropriate setting; they de-
picted the character vividly; and they gave it a suitable part in the
action. They excelled Ovid chiefly by associating their personification
with a theme of surpassing beauty and grendeur.
The Flemish painter, Van Baelen, showed Mercury looking down
at Herse and Aglauros in the procession. Turner pictured Mercury
and Herse. Pierre depicted Aglauros.
EUROPA AND JUPITEK
By supposing that Jupiter employed Mercury to drive down
Agenor's herd, Ovid passed from Aglauros to the famous myth of
Europa.
The story had grown up in Crete, where Europa was worshiped as
a goddess.
for many animals; but it could be ascribed with special ease to the
raven.
Ancient Greece related the bird's change of color to an early love
affair of Apollo. According to the Catalogues, the god loved Coronis,
who dwelt near Lake Boebais in southern Thessaly. While he was
absent at Delphi, she secretly married a youth named Ischys. A raven
flew north to Delphi with the news. In the Catalogues the latter part
of the tale has been lost. But the Manual continued to the following
effect: Apollo returned in haste and shot Coronis with his fatal bow.
Then repenting his violence, he mounted the pyre, where the girl's
body was consuming; rescued his unborn son, Aesculapius; and en-
trusted the infant to the centaur Chiron. For provoking the god's
rash act, the raven was punished by loss of his original white.
Meanwhile several Greek poets had given the myth a different
form. Pindar told it in impressive language and with a more exalted
conception of the god. He was original also in many important de-
tails. According to Pindar, Coronis lapsed into the prevalent folly--
romantic dreams about strangers from distant lands. She began an
illicit love affair with Ischys, whom Pindar made an Arcadian.
Apollo, although absent in Delphi and without information of the
ordinary kind, perceived her guilt purely by the keenness of his mental
vision. To punish Coronis, he sent Diana, who destroyed her and also
many of her neighbors. But later he himself returned to save
Aesculapius. This version, which omitted the part of the raven, had
no influence on subsequent treatments.
Thus far the myth of the raven's dark plumage had been related
only to the tragic story of Apollo and Coronis. Callimachus, in the
Hecale, associated it with two other myths of independent origin.
The first myth told of an early Athenian god named Erichthonius.
Vulcan, it seems, had tried to ravish the goddess Athena, His attempt
was unsuccessful; but it caused Vulcan and Earth to become parents
of the Athenian god. In the sculpture of the Theseum and other early
works of art, Earth was personified as the divine mother. The tale
was known to Euripides and was told at some length by the Manual.
In the latter, Earth became merely the soil on which the event
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
occurred. Hence Ovid referred to Erichthonius as a child without a
mother.
The second myth sought to explain why crows appeared to shun
the Acropolis at Athens. It was invented as a sequal to the first.
Athena undertook the nurture of Erichthonius; but feeling ashamed
of his origin, she kept him hidden in a box On one occasion the
approach of a hostile army caused her to depart and strengthen the
defenses of her city. Meanwhile she entrusted the box to the three
daughters of the Athenian king, telling them not to open it. Disobey-
ing, they found the child guarded by a snake. A crow reported their
disobedience to Athena. She caused the girls to go mad and leap
over a cliff. The crow, as a bearer of ill tidings, she exiled forever
from the Acropolis. This story appeared first in ancient vase paint-
ings. Euripides referred to it at some length in his Ion; but
Callimachus seems to have been the earliest author who told it in full.
Instead of mentioning the exile of crows from the Acropolis, he said
that Athena banished them from her company, and afterwards this
was the usual account. But Lucretius still referred incredulously to
the older version. Both Euripides and Callimachus made all three
girls disobedient. But the Manual and other prose accounts restricted
the guilt to two.
Callimachus told first the myth of the raven and Coronis, and then
that of the crow and Erichthonius. He pointed out that each story
dealt with a bird which was punished for being over eager to tell the
unwelcome truth.
Nicander carried the idea a step further. While the raven was bear-
ing his message to Delphi, said Nicander, the crow tried to dissuade
him from informing Apollo by telling how she herself had been pun-
ished for informing Athena. But the raven refused to heed this warn-
ing. Nicander made only one girl, Aglauros, guilty of disobedience
and he related her punishment to a subsequent tale of Mercury and
Herse.
Nicander had already made the tale of the raven far more complex.
But he carried the process further. The crow, he said, had told not
only why she was banished but how she at first obtained the favor
of Athena. Originally she had been the daughter of Coroneus, king
of Phocis. Courted and pursued by Neptune, she called for help, and
Athena transformed her into a crow. This tale Nicander may have
invented.
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? CO RON IS AND PHOEBUS
Then Nicander complicated the myth still more. Not content with
telling her own history, the crow added a story of the owl, who suc-
ceeded her in Athena's favor. In its earlier form the myth had been
as follows: Epopeus, king of Libya, had a daughter Nyctimene. He
violated her and she hid ashamed in the forest. But Athena pitied
her misfortune and transformed her into the owl, which became her
sacred bird. Nicander made Epopeus king of Lesbos and he greatly
altered the story. Influenced by the famous tradition of Myrrha (cf.
Book 10), he showed Nyctimene guilty of seducing her father. With
this change the sympathy of Athena became improbable; but the story
was new and much more sensational.
By adding so many independent tales, Nicander tended to confuse
the reader and divert his attention from the tragedy of Coronis. This
Ovid may have realized. But he probably felt that the myth of the
raven was so familiar that it required some novelty of treatment.
And the many stories which Nicander had brought together were not
only very appropriate for his general purpose but difficult to intro-
duce in any better way. Accordingly Ovid followed Nicander's out-
line, adding details from Callimachus and the Manual. But he intro-
duced beneficial changes of his own. For the Romans he retold the
complicated myth effectively. For the modern reader he often took
too many circumstances for granted.
Callimachus had compared the pristine whiteness of the raven to
that of the swan, of milk, and of a wave on the shore. This idea Ovid
improved by making all his comparisons with birds--the spotless
doves, the geese on the Capitol, and the river-loving swan. And he
gave the subject further interest by reminding his countrymen that
these white geese had once preserved Rome from an attack of the Gauls.
Following Nicander, he then told of Apollo's love for Coronis and of
the raven's departure to report her infidelity. This part of the tale,
he wisely abridged, omitting even the name of Ischys. But he failed
to make it clear that Apollo was absent at Delphi. A reader un-
familiar with other accounts would not understand the situation at
this point and later would not know that, before shooting Coronis, the
god was supposed to return from a considerable distance.
During the raven's flight northwards, Ovid repeated the dialogue
between the raven and the crow. He took the precaution to make the
latter notably garrulous. For a crow this was in character. But
Ovid had a more important reason. Of the three stories which the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
crow was to tell, only that of her own tale-bearing was to the point.
Neither her adoption by Athena nor her being supplanted by the
guilty Nyctimene was essential or at all likely to dissuade the raven.
Yet both might form part of a garrulous complaint.
Believing his contemporaries familiar with the origin of Erichthonius,
Ovid left it obscure. The tale of the crow's disgrace he repeated
briefly as it had been told by Nicander. Proceeding to the early his-
tory of the crow, Ovid gave an admirable account of the metamorpho-
sis. Then he told of Nyctimene, briefly, because he intended later to
tell in detail a similar story of Myrrha.
After an effective description of the dismay with which Apollo heard
the raven, Ovid recorded the death of Coronis. But he hastened the
account so much that it was not clear how the dying mother knew
either the identity or the motive of her slayer. Apollo's repentance
Ovid told more successfully. The tradition that the god's healing
power could not save Hyacinthus (Bk. 10) may have suggested
Ovid's use of the same pathetic circumstance in the death of Coronis.
That the gods were immune from shedding tears was not a usual
. idea with the Greeks: the Iliad had implied that Jupiter wept crimson
dew after the loss of Sarpedon, and Ovid himself was to declare that
every morning we may see the tears of Aurora still grieving for the
death of Memnon (Bk. 13). But Euripides had made the contrary
belief famous in his Hippolytus Crowned.
From Ovid's myth of Apollo and Coronis, Chaucer developed a
strangely different story for his Canterbury Tales. This version,
? ? called the Maunciple's Tale, retold the myth with a number of radical
changes. Thus Chaucer made the raven a trained crow in a cage;
he omitted all the related stories, and he gave the narrative to an
ignorant man who delighted in moralizing. Yet this was almost the
only Ovidian tale where Chaucer retained the metamorphosis.
Ariosto, narrating the plight of Ulania and her companions, re-
called the origin of Erichthonius and the curiosity of Aglauros. In
the House of Busyrane Spenser mentioned a painting of Apollo's
grief for Coronis and added that she became a sweet briar.
The tale of Erichthonius inspired a painting of Piombo and two
important works of Rubens.
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? OCYRHOE AND AESCULAPIUS
OCYEHOE AND AESCULAPIUS
From the death of Coronis, Ovid could pass naturally to the care
of her son by the centaur Chiron and the strange transformation of
Chiron's daughter. This event Euripides had recorded in his
Melanippe the Wise. Although the centaur was only half human in
form, he said, his daughter Ocyrhoe was at first entirely human. From
her father she inherited the gift of prophecy. But so incautiously did
she use her power that Jupiter transformed her to a mare. Nicander
seems to have repeated the tale and made it available for Ovid.
The myth of Ocyrhoe was in itself appropriate and picturesque.
But to Ovid it offered a further advantage. Both Aesculapius, child
of Apollo and Coronis, and Chiron, his foster father, had become well
known mythological characters and had taken a leading part in re-
markable events. Ovid was anxious to include their adventures in his
poem. But he did not think it wise to recount them at length. He
was glad, therefore, to present them as foreshadowed vaguely in the
prophecy of Ocyrhoe. It will be of interest to suggest both the nature
of these events and the cause of Ovid's reticence.
Aesculapius was in prehistoric times a local god of healing, wor-
shiped in southern Thessaly, and related with savage beliefs about the
snake. Many early people imagined that the snake was gifted with
unusual cunning, that he understood the principles of medicine, and
that he had learned by casting his skin to renew his youth and be-
come immortal. Accordingly the serpent was often associated with a
god of healing. The Egyptians associated him with Isis, as Ovid was
to imply later in the tale of Ianthe (Bk. 9), and the Thessalians
related him frequently to Aesculapius. They believed that the god
himself was apt to appear in serpent form. A tradition of this kind
Ovid himself was to repeat, when he told how the Romans brought the
god from Epidaurus in the form of a great crested snake (Bk. 15).
In time the Thessalians came to prefer Apollo, a god of healing in
human form. They then regarded Aesculapius as his son and a mortal
who became a celebrated physician. The Iliad mentioned this belief,
and the Homeric Hymn to Aesculapius made him the child of Apollo
and Coronis. In the Catalogues we hear first of his dying by a
thunderbolt from Jupiter.
Pindar told the story in some detail. Aesculapius, he said, was
reared by Chiron. He grew famous for healing all manner of sickness.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
At length a splendid offer of gold tempted him to revive even a dead
man. But this was usurping a power allowed only to the gods, and
Jupiter destroyed both the physician and his patient. Pindar's ac-
count was not the usual tradition.
Ordinarily we hear that Aesculapius perished, but the resurrected
man continued living. To this Aeschylus alluded ruefully in his
Agamemnon and Euripides in his Alcestis. Later authors wished to
identify the revived man quite variously. In the Aeneid Vergil de-
clared that the physician acted at the request of Diana and restored
the life of her favorite, Hippolytus--a version which Ovid was glad
to use later in his myth of Egeria (Bk. 15).
Still another tradition recorded that, although Jupiter at first pun-
ished Aesculapius with death, he afterwards consoled Apollo by giving
the physician immortality as the constellation of the Serpent Holder
(Ophiuchus). This tradition Ovid followed in the prophecy of
Ocyrhoe. But he was unconventional in important details: he declared
that Aesculapius was not a mortal but a god and that to restore the
dead would have been his privilege, if the power had not been abused.
To the metamorphosis as the Serpent Holder, Ovid made only a vague
allusion. He was to need this event later in his Fasti.
Chiron was a centaur but unlike either Nessus (Bk. 9) or the troop
which battled with the Lapithae (Bk. 12). By nature he was intelli-
gent and humane. He lived on Mt. Pelion, in southern Thessaly, a
district rich in medicinal herbs, and since the Iliad he had been famed
as the teacher of Achilles. The Theogony had made him child of the
sea nymph Philyra. Apollonius and Vergil added that his father was
Saturn, who had taken the form of a magnificent horse, and this
Ovid himself was to mention in the tale of Arachne (Bk. 6).
Following the usual practice of ancient myth, Chiron should have
been mortal, and according to one tradition this was the case.
Eratosthenes declared that while showing Achilles trophies which
Hercules had left, Chiron dropped an arrow poisoned with the venom
of the hydra. The point struck Chiron's foot; he died and entered
heaven as the constellation of the Centaur. This Ovid was to tell in
the Fasti.
A more famous version of the story had been alluded to as early as
The Shield of Hercules.
Aeschylus told it at some length in his
Prometheus Unbound. Chiron, he said, was born immortal. During
the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae, he was present and acci-
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? BATTUS AND MERCURY
dently was wounded by one of the poisoned arrows of Hercules. The
wound proved incurable and gave him intolerable pain. He persuaded
the gods to make him mortal and grant him escape by death. This
story gave Ovid a different metamorphosis from the one which he was
to use in the Fasti. But he could not introduce it conveniently in his
battle of the Centaurs. He was glad, therefore, to include it in the
prophecy of Ocyrhoe. Euripides and others had shown Chiron himself
able to foretell coming events. But Ovid found it expedient to imply
the contrary.
Battus and Mercury
In parts of India men have imagined a divine patron of thieves.
This office the ancient Greeks accorded to Mercury. They reported
that he had been able to steal cattle even from the god Apollo. This
event Ovid told in his story of Battus. The idea that Mercury was a
patron of thieves he was to use again for the tale of Daedalion
(Bk. 11).
Before Ovid's time, the story of the theft had been treated in four
quite different ways. In the Homeric Hymn to Mercury, Apollo
seems to have been caring voluntarily for a herd which belonged to the
gods. Finding these cattle in the extreme north of Greece, Mercury
drove fifty of them southward past Onchestus in the central part of
the country. He noticed that an old man tending vines had observed
him and he offered the old man a rich harvest, if he would be silent.
Continuing southward to Arcadia, Mercury hid the stolen cattle near
the river Alpheus. Meanwhile Apollo had been following the trail.
He, too, observed the old man. Questioned by Apollo, the old man
promptly told all that he knew. This version appears later to have
inspired Alcaeus and Horace.
The Catalogues gave a quite different story. They declared that
Apollo tended cattle as a punishment and that the herd did not belong
to the gods. According to the Catalogues, the tending of cattle was
a sequel to Jupiter's destroying Aesculapius. Angered at the death
of his son, Apollo killed the Cyclopes, who had made the bolt. Jupiter
exiled him from Olympus and required him to spend a certain time
as herdsman of a mortal. In a charming satyr drama, The Trackers,
Sophocles added that the mortal was Admetus, king of southern
Thessaly, and that Mercury stole cattle from him. Euripides in the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
Alcestis alluded to the same story, and the Manual retold it in some
detail. Nothing was said of the old informer.
Callimachus offered a still different version. With the Homeric
Hymn he declared that Apollo tended cattle voluntarily, and with the
Catalogues he agreed that Apollo became herdsman of Admetus. But
he differed from both in regard to Apollo's motive. The god, he said,
undertook this humble labor because of his affection for the young
Admetus. Rhianus altered the new account in two particulars.
Apollo, he said, was swayed by love of Hymenaeus, a great grandson
of Athamas (cf. Bk. 4), and in order to be near him gathered a herd
of his own. These poets, too, ignored the incident of the old informer.
Nicander gave a fourth version. He agreed with Rhianus that
Apollo became a herdsman for the sake of Hymenaeus and that Apollo's
preoccupation with the lad gave Mercury a chance to drive off his
cattle. But he proceeded from this to the adventure with the informer,
improving the tale in several ways. The old man's name, he said, was
Battus. Instead of offering a good harvest, Mercury gave the more
tangible bribe of some money. But, fearing treachery, the god re-
turned later in a different guise and himself questioned the old man.
By offering a robe, he soon got the desired information. Mercury then
hit Battus with a staff and turned him into a rock which always con-
tains both fire and frost. This account Ovid mentioned in his Ibis.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid associated the tale of Battus with that
of Ocyrhoe. Apollo, he said, was unable to help Chiron during the
transformation of his daughter, because he was absent, tending cattle.
Ovid followed the outline of Nicander's version, making a number of
improvements. Since Hymenasus belonged to a later time, Ovid merely
said that Apollo became a pastoral lover. Nicander had shown the
god tending cattle in southern Thessaly; but this would have taken
him only a few miles from the residence of Chiron and would make it
appear that he was still accessible. Ovid supposed that Apollo had
gone rather to the far southwest of Greece and, to make the locality
clearer, he named the fields of Pylos. This country both the Iliad
and the Odyssey had rendered famous as the home of Nestor. To the
same distant region Ovid transferred Battus and made him a herds-
man of Nestor's father, Neleus. In the Homeric Hymn Mercury
drove the stolen cattle the entire length of Greece, and in the other
versions he drove them at least half that distance. This allowed the
poet to amuse his Greek readers by mentioning a number of places
I
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? AGLAUROS AND MERCURY
along the way, and alluding to their well known peculiarities. But
for Ovid's readers it would have seemed both extravagant and tedious.
Ovid imagined instead that Mercury drove the cattle only from Pylos
to the foot of some nearby mountains.
Nicander had meant to show Battus ready to break his agreement
as soon as he was offered a larger bribe. But the difference in value
was not obvious between a sum of money and a robe. Ovid made the
first bribe a cow and the second a cow and a bull besides. Such
bribes were also more likely to be offered by a stealer of cattle. Ovid
enlivened the tale with dialogue. And he closed wittily with the remark
that Battus was still known as index, which to the Romans meant both
informer and flint.
Ovid's myth suggested an interesting passage to Petrarch. In a
vision Laura appeared to her lover disguised so that he did not recog-
nize her and thus beguiled him into an avowal of his presumptuous
affection. Then, resuming his usual appearance, she punished him
with transformation to a rock.
Ovid inspired also a painting by Claude Lorrain.
Aglauros and Mercury
In the tale of Aglauros and Mercury, Ovid gave the sequel to the
story which the crow had told of Erichthonius and the three daugh-
ters of Cecrops (see Coronis). In Ovid's version, Aglauros alone had
disobeyed Athena. He now told how she offended further and incurred
a memorable punishment.
In a tradition recorded by the Manual, Herse, a sister of Aglauros,
was loved by Mercury and became the mother of the hero Cephalus.
With this tradition Nicander related the punishment . of Aglauros.
Not content with disobeying Athena, he said, she interfered between
Mercury and Herse and would not allow the god to approach her
sister until he bribed her with a large sum of gold. Incensed at this
new evidence of her presumption, Athena cursed Aglauros with envy
of her sister's good fortune. Aglauros then tried to prevent Mercury
from entering at all; but he changed her into stone. Ovid followed
Nicander's myth, with some important changes for the better. But he
avoided all reference to Cephalus, whom he was to introduce with
a different parentage and much later (Bk. 7).
The preceding tale of Battus was very much like the tale of
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? >> METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
Aglaitros in its theme. Both showed a person guilty of unusual
effrontery turned into stone. Under these circumstances Ovid would
ordinarily have sought variety by keeping the two stories far apart.
But in this case he gained the same end by a remarkable contrast in
the treatment. The tale of Battus he told simply and briefly with
the mere suggestion that the man became shapeless rock. The story
of Aglauros he told with brilliant simile, elaborate incident, and de-
tailed metamorphosis of the girl into a livid statue. Never did he
show more skill or obtain a happier effect.
After a striking account of Mercury soaring above Athens and
gazing enamored at Herse, the leader of a festival, Ovid showed the
god preparing to visit her, according to the style of a Roman gallant.
By having Mercury approach in a courteous and dignified manner, he
emphasized the churlishness of Aglauros. He was careful also to
make clear the nature of her accumulated offense. Before mentioning
Athena's journey to the forbidding home of Envy, Ovid described the
goddess appropriately in her older character of a warrior maid.
He then proceeded to improve Nicander's myth by this justly
famous adventure. And thus he found opportunity to excel all
predecessors in the art of personifying an abstract idea. In the Hymn
to Apollo Callimachus had spoken of a personified Envy. From him
Ovid may have taken the initial suggestion. But when he pictured
Athena travelling to summon the baleful spirit of Envy, he profited by
far more illustrious example. The Iliad had often referred incidentally
to personified abstractions, a practice followed by many subsequent
authors of narrative poetry. And sometimes it had given such char-
acters an important part in the action. Sleep cooperated at length in
Juno's plan for diverting the attention of Jove and announced her
success to Neptune. And later Sleep and Death bore home to Lycia
the body of great Sarpedon. The Shield of Hercules gave prominence
to a monster called Darkness of Death. Aeschylus introduced such
characters into tragedy. He showed Strength not only dragging
Prometheus to the place of torture but exhorting Vulcan in a dialogue
of some length. Euripides assigned an important role to Death in
his Alcestis and to Madness in his Hercules Furens. And in the
Aeneid Vergil had shown Iarbus warned by the celebrated personifi-
cation of Fame. With the Iliad and the Alcestis Ovid was undoubt-
edly familiar and on several occasions he was to show his interest in
Vergil's Fame.
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? AGLAUROS AND MERCURY
While using personification, the author of the Iliad thought only
of the action: he introduced Sleep in order that Jupiter might be
lulled opportunely to rest. And for a reader, the effect was the same
in the work of Aeschylus and Euripides. Thus Death appeared
chiefly because Alcestis was going to die. But the Shield of Hercules
had been interested in Darkness of Death for her own sake and had
given a careful description of her hideous appearance. Vergil com-
bined the two methods. He made Fame an agent in the action and
he gave a brilliant portrayal of her character and appearance. But
Ovid carried the process a step further. He not only gave Envy an
essential part in the destruction of Aglauros; and portrayed in full
her hideous appearance and baleful nature; but he intensified the effect
by describing first the region in which Envy found a congenial home.
And from every point of view Ovid excelled all his predecessors by his
vivid and definite detail. Later he was to use the same methods for his
equally famous accounts of Famine (Bk. 8), Sleep (Bk. 11), and
Fame (Bk. 12).
Ovid's tale of Aglauros interested many authors of later times.
Dante, ascending to the Mount of Purgatory, heard warning voices
repeating to the envious, "I was Aglauros who became a rock. "
Chaucer's Troilus invoked Mercury, recalling his love of Herse
For which Pallas was with Aglauros wroth.
In the opera Psyche Moliere and Corneille took from Ovid's Aglauros
both the name and the character of the more envious sister.
The adventure with Envy had an unusually important influence.
In the Romance of the Rose Guillaume Lorris profited by it for his
own description of the character. Spenser, narrating the return of
Sir Artegal, recalled Ovid for a long and splendid description of
Envy. Each poet had the advantage in certain respects. But
Spenser gained much by contrasting the relatively passive Envy with
the aggressive Detraction.
Especially interesting to later poets were the details of Envy's
flight to Athens. Tasso imitated Ovid, when he told how Allecto, on
her way to arouse Soliman, parched the fields and made the sun look
pale. In a Latin poem Milton remembered Envy's grieving at the
sight of prosperous Athens and attributed a like grief to Satan when
he beheld prosperous England. Envy's destructive effect on the coun-
try he imitated with far more grandeur in Paradise Lost, when Sin
and Death
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK II
Their course through thickest constellations held,
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan,
And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse
Then suffered.
But the influence of Ovid's Envy was not merely direct. During
the Middle Ages personification of abstractions became a very fre-
quent practice. Much of this work may have been the result of
medieval theology. But in the depiction of Envy and the later per-
sonifications of the Metamorphoses Ovid had given examples of extra-
ordinary merit. They were well known and enthusiastically admired
and they could not fail both to encourage personification and to sug-
gest the methods of medieval poets. The practice influenced pro-
foundly the work of Dante and became obvious in the Romance of the
Rose and the early poetry of Chaucer. During the Renaissance the
same tendency became pervasive in the Morality Plays and "the prose
of Bunyan. But the most wonderful of all personifications occurred in
the master work of Spenser and Milton. Both poets showed careful
study of Ovid. They began with an appropriate setting; they de-
picted the character vividly; and they gave it a suitable part in the
action. They excelled Ovid chiefly by associating their personification
with a theme of surpassing beauty and grendeur.
The Flemish painter, Van Baelen, showed Mercury looking down
at Herse and Aglauros in the procession. Turner pictured Mercury
and Herse. Pierre depicted Aglauros.
EUROPA AND JUPITEK
By supposing that Jupiter employed Mercury to drive down
Agenor's herd, Ovid passed from Aglauros to the famous myth of
Europa.
The story had grown up in Crete, where Europa was worshiped as
a goddess.
