The
courtship
was eloquent; the pursuit was thrilling.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v1
This belief has
interested early peoples in almost every region of the world. In nearly
every country, an excessively heavy rain, a rising of the sea before
a violent wind or tidal wave, or both causes together has occasionally
flooded a considerable area, causing widespread destruction. Recol-
lection of such a disaster, exaggerated with the passage of time, will
usually account for the tradition of a Deluge.
Often no cause of the Deluge was given. Sometimes it was imag-
ined that the Creator found his world unsatisfactory and so flooded
it again and created life anew. This form of the myth occurred in the
earliest literary version of Greece. The ancient Catalogues told of
Jupiter's bringing on a violent rain and flood in order to get rid of
a hybrid race half human and half divine. But the Hebrews and the
later Greeks attributed the disaster to human wickedness. In some
cases early peoples imagined that all life perished. More often, how-
ever, they supposed that a few human beings took refuge either on
some ground which remained uncovered or in some kind of ark. These
usually became the parents of a new race.
The idea that a race of human beings was created from stones
occurred in the mythology of Egypt and of Central Africa. In these
countries the idea had no connection with the Deluge. But in Greece
the two stories were associated from earliest times.
Some peoples imagined a great supernatural hero, who had be-
friended and instructed humanity in general and who enabled a cer-
tain man to escape the Deluge. In Greece this hero was Prometheus.
At first he may not have been associated with the escape of Deucalion,
for neither the Catalogues nor Pindar referred to him. But Apollonius
recorded that he was Deucalion's father.
The Manual made Prometheus the father of Deucalion, and Epi-
metheus the father of Pyrrha, his wife. Prometheus, it continued,
gave Deucalion warning and caused him to prepare food and a box
in which he might take refuge from the waters. The flood lasted nine
days. The mountain tops remained uncovered, so that a few other
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? THE DELUGE
people escaped. But Deucalion and Pyrrha created many more from
stones.
From the Manual Ovid took the outline of his version and also many
details. Unwisely he assumed that his readers were familiar with
the identity of Deucalion and Pyrrha and with their means of escape
and so he left these matters obscure. The duration of the flood he
left uncertain; but he implied that it was considerably longer than
the time given by the Manual. He made impressive the coming of the
storm and he added the very probable circumstance that, although
other men contrived to escape the waters, they perished from hunger.
Thus Deucalion and Pyrrha were the sole survivors and had a better
reason for repopulating the world by their transformation of stones.
Nicander had treated at least the latter part of the myth. He
showed Deucalion and Pyrrha making their prayer to Themis and
receiving the picturesque reply that they were to throw behind them
the bones of their mother. This incident and a few local details, Ovid
gladly included.
The Greeks' apparently had been interested in the incongruity of
sea creatures swimming over the vineyards and through the tree tops,
for Lycophron alluded to it. Horace mentioned the subject and spoke
also of deer swimming in the overwhelming flood. Ovid borrowed these
details and unwisely added many others. Thus he lost much of the
grandeur and terror of the catastrophe by emphasizing minor and
even improbable oddities. Vergil's Georgics suggested to Ovid the
idea that, having come from stones, men are a hard and much enduring
race.
In combining many discordant traditions, Ovid was not able to
adjust all details smoothly. Thus the previous story of Lycaon im-
plied that many rustic deities were to escape the Deluge, but the
manner of their escape Ovid forgot to explain. A later story implies
also that the wolf Lycaon and his human daughter Callisto survived
in some manner, and still later we learn that Cerambus outlived the
Deluge in the form of a beetle (Bk. 7). How vegetation survived the
Deluge, neither savage races nor the more civilized ancients thought
it necessary to inquire. Ovid implied, however, that it was able to live
submerged until the water receded.
The elder Seneca borrowed from Ovid for his own account of the
flood. Jean de Meun introduced Ovid's story in the Romance of the
Rose. Ariosto imitated it for the grotesque incident where Astolpho
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
rolled stones down a mountain and thus obtained eighty thousand
horses for his army.
In a preface to the Book of Sir Artegal, Spenser described the de-
generacy of his own time, observing:
And men themselves the which at first were framed
Of earthly mould, and formed of flesh and bone,
Are now transformed into hardest stone,
Such as behind their backs (so backward bred)
Were thrown by Pyrrha and Deucalion.
Shakespeare alluded to Ovid appropriately in both Coriolanus and A
Winter's Tale. Milton compared Adam and Eve at prayer to Deu-
calion and Pyrrha before the shrine at Themis, and he borrowed from
Ovid with admirable judgment for his own description of the flood.
Peruzzi made Ovid's myth the subject of a painting.
The Pythian Games
Ovid's next tale dealt with Apollo's assuming control of the famous
oracle at Delphi. Greek tradition supposed that an oracle had existed
there long before his coming. Aeschylus in the Eumenides had de-
clared that Earth, Themis, and Phoebe held the shrine in succession
before Apollo. Ovid himself mentioned the previous authority of
Themis.
Before assuming control of his Oracle, the god had vanquished a
huge reptile. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo it was a bloated she
dragon created by Juno. The god shot the monster and named the
place Pytho from her subsequent decay (Pythein). Euripides re-
peated the story of the combat in his Iphigenia. But he described
the creature as a male dragon, and this idea was preferred by all later
writers. Apollonius, Callimachus, and the Manual each alluded to
the subject briefly.
Nicander gave the myth a quite different form. The philosophers
Anaximenes and Empedocles had taught that animal life originated
from sunshine warming moist earth, and that it often took on mon-
strous forms. The process, they believed, had been most active soon
after the creation of the world but still continued in some degree dur-
ing their own time. Confirming the theory, the Alexandrians had re-
corded many supposed observations of creatures left in different stages
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? THE PYTHIAN GAMES
of creation by the retreating floods of the Nile. They regarded the
Egyptian jerboas as large, undeveloped mice. Availing himself of
the popular scientific doctrine, Nicander showed the Pythian dragon
forming from the slime left by the Deluge. He called the creature
Python and added that Apollo commemorated his victory by the
Pythian Games.
Ovid retold Nicander's story. But he emphasized the idea of spon-
taneous generation, adding details from the work of Varro. To this
material he was to return in the speech of Pythagoras. Nicander's
tale enabled him to pass easily from the Deluge to the myth of
Daphne. To adjust it with the earlier history of Apollo was more
difficult. Accordingly, Ovid deferred this material until much later
and told it as a story of the indefinite past (Bk. 6).
Probably following Ovid, Lucan mentioned Themis as presiding
at Delphi and alluded to Apollo's victory over Python. But he added
that the occasion for the battle was the fact that the monster prevented
Apollo's mother from drawing near the shrine.
Chaucer referred to the victory over Python in the Maunciple's
Tale. Spenser drew on Ovid's account of spontaneous generation for
his description of the reptiles disgorged by Sin and for his remarkable
tale of Belphoebe's birth. To Milton the same passage was of continual
interest. In a Latin elegy he elaborated it into an attractive allegory
of Earth wooing the Sun of spring. The same thought appeared more
briefly in his Ode on the Nativity. His controversial pamphlet, Of
Reformation, declared that "the sour leaven of human traditions
mixed in one putrified mass with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisy in
the hearts of the Prelates, that lie basking in the sunny warmth of
wealth and promotion, is the serpent's egg that will hatch an Anti-
christ. " And in Paradise Lost, Satan, punished by metamorphosis
into a snake, became
larger than whom the Sun
Ingendered in the Pythian Vale on slime,
Huge Python.
Daphne and Pekebus
The first love story in Ovid's Metamorphoses was that of the young
Apollo and Daphne.
The myth seems to have originated in Arcadia and to have had
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
many traits in common with the two other Arcadian myths of Syrinx
and Arethusa (Bk. 5). It did not enter literature until Alexandrian
times. In the earliest form, the story ran as follows: Daphne was a
child of the river Ladon and the goddess Earth (Tellus). Though
very beautiful, she was averse to love. Greek mythology supposed
regularly that either men or women who shunned love would occupy
themselves with the chase. Accordingly Daphne became a huntress
and won the approval of the maiden goddess Diana. A youth named
Leucippus fell in love with her. Dressing as a girl, he joined Daphne
and her attendant maidens in their hunting and tried assiduously to
gain her favor. But Apollo too had become enamored. By this con-
trivance Daphne and her maidens learned of the ruse and indignantly
put Leucippus to death. Then Apollo himself approached Daphne,
but she fled and prayed to her mother, the Earth, for deliverance.
The ground opening received her, and a laurel tree appeared on the
spot.
The myth was transferred from Arcadia to other localities. One
version related it with a celebrated grove of Daphne near Antioch,
in Asia Minor. Another version, which survives in the Loves of
Parthenius, localized the tale in the extreme south of Greece. Accord-
ing to this account, Daphne's father was King Amyclas and she was
therefore the sister of another favorite of Apollo, the young prince
Hyacinthus (Bk. 10).
Nicander transferred the myth to northern Thessaly. He retold
it in very different form and for a special purpose. Following an
ancient custom, the priests of Delphi conducted every eighth year a
sacred procession, which made a long journey north to the Vale of
Tempe and returned with laurel branches. These branches became
the prizes awarded victors in the Pythian Games. The explanation
of this custom had been as follows: When Apollo killed the snake,
Python, he became polluted, for the reptile was sacred to Juno. To
purify himself the god was obliged to make a pilgrimage to the river
Peneus in the Vale of Tempe. And this event was commemorated by
the Delphic procession. In Dahomey and other regions of Africa where
serpents are held sacred the atonement for killing one is often a similar
pilgrimage to a distant river. It may have seemed particularly fitting
that Apollo should go to the river Peneus because, as Lucan suggested,
the Python was created there. But Nicander required a different
explanation. He had not made the Python sacred but had derived it
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? DAPHNE AND PHOEBUS
from the warm mud left by the Deluge. Moreover he wished to explain
Apollo's unusual interest in the laurel.
Nicander related the procession to the myth of Daphne. The
father of the nymph, he said, was the river Peneus and her mother
was Earth. As Daphne grew up, she became a solitary huntress,
shunning the society of men. Apollo loved and courted her, rehears-
ing his many accomplishments. She fled, he pursued. Like Syrinx,
she found a river barring her way. Invoking the aid of her mother,
she became a laurel tree. Apollo then declared that the laurel should
be his favorite garland and should be the prize in the Pythian Games.
Nicander's version of the myth was a favorite theme of Alexandrian
painters. Their work shows clearly that Daphne first stood listening to
Apollo's courtship and later turned and fled.
Ovid followed Nicander but with many changes. From Nicander's
observation that Apollo was pierced by an arrow surer than his own,
Ovid invented the preliminary quarrel of Apollo and Cupid. In the 1
tragedy Iphigenia at Aidis Euripides had mentioned Cupid's two bows,
one dipped in the happy river, the other in the stuff of confusion.
This suggested to Ovid the better idea of the two arrows, one pointed
with gold to inspire love, the other pointed with lead to inspire aver-
sion. The quarrel was in itself an interesting event. It suggested
Ovid's later invention of the two splendors in the tale of Semele (Bk.
3) and the shooting of Pluto in the tale of Proserpina (Bk. 5). But
the idea that, to love, Apollo must be shot by Cupid was artificial.
The story itself, Ovid began very carelessly. His preliminary ac-
count of Cupid would imply that Daphne became averse to love only
after being struck with the leaden arrow. Nicander had shown her
always averse. Ovid made. no adjustment and left the matter ambigu-
ous. The account of the aversion itself he improved by adding
Daphne's request that her father grant her perpetual virginity--imi-
tating a similar request in Callimachus' Hymn to Diana. The
account of the love affair also Ovid began ambiguously. He left the
reader in doubt whether Apollo saw the nymph on several occasions,
or only once. And Ovid was even more at fault in the beginning of
the courtship. He said at first that immediately the nymph fled swifter
than the breeze; so that Apollo would have had to make an elaborate
speech of courtship while running at full speed. But later Ovid im-
plied that Daphne first waited long enough to hear.
Fortunately the rest of the tale more than atoned for the beginning.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Euripides had shown Apollo as the tuneful shepherd of Admetus, and
Alexandrian poetry had formed an attractive conception of pastoral
courtship. So Ovid conceived the god as an eager pastoral lover.
He caused Apollo to recount his many accomplishments, but wisely
said nothing of his being charioteer of the sun. And he adapted many
ideas of Alexandrian love poetry--the sudden, intense passion of the
lover, his fear that the girl might incur injury, the impotence of
medicine against love, and the beauty of the nymph while running.
This final detail Ovid was to use again in the story of Atalanta (Bk.
10). The comparison of Apollo to a pursuing hound, he adapted from
Vergil's account of Aeneas following Turnus: To Ovid's contempo-
raries all these details were familiar. But never had they been so
happily adapted, so effectively massed, and so brilliantly phrased.
The courtship was eloquent; the pursuit was thrilling.
When Ovid arrived at Daphne's appeal for deliverance, he said,
like Nicander, that she called for aid from her mother. But later it
occurred to him that she might appeal more naturally to her father.
The river god had promised her perpetual virginity, and she would
naturally recall his promise when his waters accidentally barred her
way. Ovid inserted the new idea in his manuscript but did not efface
the old. In making the change, he was encouraged by the similar
appeal of Syrinx to the river nymphs. The nymphs had responded by
transforming Syrinx to a reed. Ovid imagined that Peneus responded
by transforming Daphne to a laurel tree. But this was not in accord
with tradition. To river nymphs there often was given the power
of changing a human being into some other form, as we may infer
from the tale of Dryope (Bk. 9). A river god did not enjoy this
power. Later Ovid himself was to show Achelous obliged to invoke
the aid of Neptune in order to metamorphose Perimele (Bk. 8). It
was unorthodox to show Peneus himself metamorphosing Daphne. The
innovation may have struck Ovid himself as over bold. It certainly
troubled a few of his Roman readers. Placidius modified it in his
summary by recording that Peneus changed his daughter "with the
aid of the gods. " In later times the scruple has vanished.
After a brilliant description of the metamorphosis, Ovid came to
the final speech of the god. For Nicander and his Greek readers, the
interest of this passage had been association of Daphne with the Greek
festival of the Pythian Games. For the Romans the idea would have
been much less interesting. Ovid had alluded to it already at the end
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? DAPHNE AND PHOEBUS
of his myth of Python. He omitted it from the speech of Apollo, and
he invented instead a new association of Daphne with the grandeur of
Augustan Rome.
While telling the story of Daphne, Ovid planned an effective con-
trast of method with the subsequent tales of Io and Syrinx. All three
were to include courtship, pursuit, metamorphosis, and later events.
In the myth of Daphne, Ovid gave his chief attention to the courtship
and pursuit; in that of Io to the later events; in that of Syrinx to
picturesque details in the beginning of the story.
Beside Ovid's account, all others seemed tame. His tale of Daphne
became a favorite theme, not only for brief allusion, but for important
passages of later literature. In the Silvce Statius borrowed from it.
Chretien de Troyes imitated the simile of the hound and hare for an
elaborate simile of hawk and heron. Near the beginning of the
Paradiso Dante invoked the aid of Apollo in order to deserve a crown
from his favorite tree. And in his First Eclogue he mentioned the
laurel as leaves
First known when Peneus' daughter changed her shape.
In the Triumph of Love Petrarch saw among the vanquished gods
Apollo, who despised the shaft which was to bring him grief in
Thessaly. An ode to Laura told how Petrarch himself became trans-
formed into a laurel tree. And five other poems identified Laura
with the laurel tree (lauro) and with Daphne, the beloved of Apollo.
Chaucer in the Knight's Tale described the story of Daphne as shown
in mural paintings of Diana's temple.
Boiardo profited greatly by Ovid in narrating Rudigero's adventure
with a sorceress who took the form of a laurel tree. Ariosto applied
to his Alcina the idea that her revealed beauty allowed the observer
to infer. that similar beauty was hidden. His Astolpho learned, in
another passage, that Daphne was one of several women punished in
hell,, for being unappreciative of their lovers. Camoens imitated Ovid
in telling how Leonardo courted Ephyre. Like Ovid, he showed the
youth courting the maiden while running, but he implied that she
slackened her pace to hear.
Garcilaso de Vega followed Ovid in a sonnet, and Lope de Vega
borrowed from him for a play, Love in Love. Spenser used the tale
of' Daphne not only to describe the flight of his Amoret and his
Florimel but as a theme for the painting of Cupid's exploits in the
House of Busyrane. In the latter passage he said that Cupid shot
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Apollo for revealing the adultery of Mars and Venus (cf. Bk. 4). In
The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare described a painting of
Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,
Scratching her legs with briars, that one shall swear she bleeds;
And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,
So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.
La Fontaine took much from Ovid for his opera Daphne. Milton imi-
tated Ovid charmingly in the Seventh Latin Elegy. Pope took many
details for his myth of Lodona. In Sordello Browning referred to
Apollo and Daphne at considerable length. And Lowell turned the
story of Daphne into a shower of jests as the introduction of his
Fable for Critics.
Ovid's conception of gold and leaden shafts, inspiring love and
aversion, was long a favorite theme. Claudian imagined that the two
arrows were dipped in the contrasted fountains of Love and Hate.
His elaboration added further popularity to the idea; but most refer-
ences appear to be inspired by Ovid alone. The golden headed arrow
of love appears in the work of Petrarch, Marlowe, Corneille, and
Pope, and repeatedly in the work of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.
And on two occasions Petrarch recalled Ovid's idea that love results
from the arrow with the golden tip, aversion from the arrow with a
point of lead.
In painting, Ovid's tale of Daphne continued to interest prominent
artists. Luini, Peruzzi, the brothers Dossi, Giorgione, Boucher,
Turner, and perhaps Del Sarto worked on this theme. In sculpture
Ovid inspired a much admired statue of Bernini, statues at Paris by
Poussin and Coustou, Vignon's bronze relief at Marseilles, and
Dercheu's bronze statue in the square of St. Etienne.
In music the myth of Daphne was the subject of a work by Jacopo
Peri, which marks the very beginning of opera.
Jupiter and Io
In Ovid's myth of Io, the modern reader may well be astonished
by the marital conduct of the two great deities. Juno appears as both
the sister and the wife of Jove. Jupiter, indifferent to the rights
of his wife, indulges in a love affair with Io and enlists the help of
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? JUPITER AND 10
Mercury, his son by the goddess Maia, and Ovid implies that such
conduct was habitual with him. This strange situation resulted from
slow and important changes in human institutions.
Where men and women have lived in the same household for a long
period, they seem ordinarily to have no desire for marriage with
each other and even to think of it with abhorrence. The tendency
appears to have been normal at all times throughout the world. In
most tribes it led to rules forbidding marriage of parents with their
children and of brother with sister. And where large numbers of
people were in the habit of living together, the rule might apply also
to all relatives of any kind or even to all persons who lived in the same
village. Such rules affected unrelated persons, if they happened to
grow up in the same household; but they applied more strongly to
relatives, because relatives more frequently lived together. Even if they
did not live together, the rule might continue to apply.
Among a few peoples, however, a suitable wife was difficult to
obtain or there seemed to be unusual need of keeping the family
property undivided. In such cases the normal prohibitions were re-
laxed. In ancient Egypt and a few savage tribes full brother and
sister might marry. Some other peoples, including the early Hebrews
and the Athenians, allowed marriage of brother and sister, if they
had different mothers. And several peoples, who forbade marriage
of brother and sister in general, came to allow it for members of the
royal family. Still other peoples, who never permitted such marriage
among contemporaries, imagined that it might have been necessary at
some time in the past. In their mythology a brother and a sister were
said to have been the original human pair at the Creation or the only
survivors after the Deluge. And in certain tribes of India and Java,
where mythology did not record such marriage of human beings, it
imagined marriage of brother and sister among the gods.
Ancient Greece forbade any contemporary marriage of full brother
and sister. Following the Egyptian custom, Ptolemy Philadelphus
introduced such marriage at Alexandria. Theocritus commemorated
the innovation. The majority of Greeks looked on it with horror.
But Greek mythology imagined in the past at least one case of mar-
riage among mortal brothers and sisters, for the Odyssey recorded
briefly that Aeolus married his sons to his daughters. This myth,
Euripides rejected in his tragedy of Canace. Yet the Greeks con-
tinued to associate the idea frequently with their gods. Since the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Theogony Saturn had been both husband and brother of Rhea, and
Oceanus had been husband and brother of Tethys. And since the Iliad
the double relation had been recorded of Jupiter and Juno. Vergil
made it famous in the Aeneid, and Ovid mentioned it frequently not
only in his Metamorphoses but in the Heroides and the Fasti. Re-
ligious conservatism maintained the tradition, justifying it on the
ground that the gods were an order of beings to whom human restric-
tions did not apply (cf. Byblis Bk. 9). Probably the defense would
have proved inadequate, if many of the educated had not either ceased
to take the old myths literally or come to regard them with indiffer-
ence.
The illicit love affairs of Jupiter were survivals from an ancient
institution of polygamy. Among the lower savages, a single wife has
been the rule. Where a few scattered families made a bare livelihood
by hunting or the crudest form of agriculture, no man was able to
maintain more. But with a stronger tribal organization, the chiefs
might profit in some measure by the efforts of the rest. And where
a people lived by raising large numbers of domestic animals or by
using them for agriculture, a number of men might have more than
the mere necessities of living. In such tribes, the majority of men
continued to have only a single wife, but the successful could have
more. This might protect the chief from the evils of having no son to
succeed him in the care and defense of his household. It would often
ally him with a number of prominent families and gave him the advan-
tage of help from a number of wives and children, and the advantage
would be great where he could expect aid only from his kin. And
where there were frequent wars and a high rate of infant mortality, it
would allow more women to marry and bear children who would save
the tribe from extinction. These and other reasons often made more
than one wife appear a benefit, not only for the chief but for the tribe
as a whole. Sometimes the number of wives was limited by law to two
or to four, but often it was unrestricted and might even reach several
hundred. Usually the first wife occupied a distinctly higher position
legally than the rest; but some tribes gave equal rights to all. In
tribes allowing polygamy, it was possible also for a man to have one
or more concubines, often slave women, who did not share all of the
rights accorded a wife but nevertheless were recognized and somewhat
protected by law. In Babylon, for example, a concubine who bore
children might not be sold to another master, and, if there were no
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? JUPITER AND 10
legitimate children, hers might inherit the father's property. Even in
tribes which forbade more than a single wife, concubines were some-
times recognized by law. And nearly all mythologies attributed either
polygamy or concubinage to the gods.
With the growth of civilization both polygamy and concubinage
tended to decline. Less danger and a lower death rate made a single
wife appear sufficient both for the family and the race. And a safer,
easier form of life made it possible for women to avoid a harem by
continuing unmarried. Polygamy occurred in the case of Charle-
magne and a few later Christian sovereigns and for a time among
the Anabaptists and a few other fanatical sects. In Oriental civiliza-
tions it lingered until recently and in the Mohammedan world it per-
sists, at least in theory, today. Concubinage survived longer than
polygamy in most countries and especially in royal and noble families
of Europe. '
During prehistoric times, the Greeks may have indulged in po-
lygamy. The Theogony recorded the names of six goddesses who pre-
ceded Juno as wives of Jupiter. This tradition probably was a
survival from a remote past. Even in Homeric times a Greek had only
one wife; but he might have also a number of concubines, who were
ordinarily women captured in war. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey
show this to have been the practice of the chief Greek heroes, notably
of Agamemnon and Ulysses. The same law applied to the gods. In
the Iliad Jupiter did not scruple to give Juno a long list of those
whom he had loved in the past, and Juno was content with being pre-
ferred in the present. Even much later, serious minded Greeks were
ready to approve such conduct. The Shield of Hercules and the
Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus commended Jupiter's intrigues with
mortal women as making possible the deeds of Hercules. A similar
attitude prevailed with regard to Apollo and other divinities. And
the light loves of the gods were often recorded proudly as the origin
of the heroic family which had distinguished a particular locality in
the past.
But in time the attitude of thoughtful Greeks became less favorable.
Sophocles and Euripides, recording the infidelity of ancient heroes,
began to show the disadvantages of their conduct. Euripides went
further. In his Ion he dealt with an intrigue of Apollo and boldly
questioned its morality. After his time the more serious pagans tended
to reject such myths or to explain them as allegory. The less serious
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
treated the amours of heroes and gods as amiable vices and matter for
diverting story. The Don Juan of ancient times was Jupiter. Juno
assumed more and more the character of the jealous wife. This was
the attitude of Ovid. In treating the story of Io and many similar
tales, he told the myth for its literary possibilities and took irreverent
pleasure in recording the undignified shifts of Jupiter.
The myth of Io was of very early origin and assumed many forms.
It may have developed from a Phoenician worship of the moon which
Phoenician traders brought to the south of Greece. Io seems to have
been the moon; she was thought of as wearing horns; and she wan-
dered far and wide in the heavens. Meanwhile Argus, the sky, kept
watch with his innumerable stars. This conception of Argus appears
to account for Ovid's frequent references to him as starry. Later it
furnished modern Italian thieves the word argo, their dialect name for
the sky.
Io was conceived also as a deity in the form of a cow, who wan-
dered throughout the known world. Worship of the human goddess
Juno supplanted the older cult. Io became an unsuccessful rival, who
was transformed into a cow and suffered exile. Argus became Juno's
watchman, whom Mercury killed with a stone. Both the Iliad and the
Odyssey allude to the myth, referring to Mercury as the killer of
Argus.
The Aeginus gave the earliest literary version. Io, it said, was
daughter of Piren and priestess of Juno. Jupiter seduced her and
transformed her into a cow, hoping to deceive his wife.
interested early peoples in almost every region of the world. In nearly
every country, an excessively heavy rain, a rising of the sea before
a violent wind or tidal wave, or both causes together has occasionally
flooded a considerable area, causing widespread destruction. Recol-
lection of such a disaster, exaggerated with the passage of time, will
usually account for the tradition of a Deluge.
Often no cause of the Deluge was given. Sometimes it was imag-
ined that the Creator found his world unsatisfactory and so flooded
it again and created life anew. This form of the myth occurred in the
earliest literary version of Greece. The ancient Catalogues told of
Jupiter's bringing on a violent rain and flood in order to get rid of
a hybrid race half human and half divine. But the Hebrews and the
later Greeks attributed the disaster to human wickedness. In some
cases early peoples imagined that all life perished. More often, how-
ever, they supposed that a few human beings took refuge either on
some ground which remained uncovered or in some kind of ark. These
usually became the parents of a new race.
The idea that a race of human beings was created from stones
occurred in the mythology of Egypt and of Central Africa. In these
countries the idea had no connection with the Deluge. But in Greece
the two stories were associated from earliest times.
Some peoples imagined a great supernatural hero, who had be-
friended and instructed humanity in general and who enabled a cer-
tain man to escape the Deluge. In Greece this hero was Prometheus.
At first he may not have been associated with the escape of Deucalion,
for neither the Catalogues nor Pindar referred to him. But Apollonius
recorded that he was Deucalion's father.
The Manual made Prometheus the father of Deucalion, and Epi-
metheus the father of Pyrrha, his wife. Prometheus, it continued,
gave Deucalion warning and caused him to prepare food and a box
in which he might take refuge from the waters. The flood lasted nine
days. The mountain tops remained uncovered, so that a few other
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? THE DELUGE
people escaped. But Deucalion and Pyrrha created many more from
stones.
From the Manual Ovid took the outline of his version and also many
details. Unwisely he assumed that his readers were familiar with
the identity of Deucalion and Pyrrha and with their means of escape
and so he left these matters obscure. The duration of the flood he
left uncertain; but he implied that it was considerably longer than
the time given by the Manual. He made impressive the coming of the
storm and he added the very probable circumstance that, although
other men contrived to escape the waters, they perished from hunger.
Thus Deucalion and Pyrrha were the sole survivors and had a better
reason for repopulating the world by their transformation of stones.
Nicander had treated at least the latter part of the myth. He
showed Deucalion and Pyrrha making their prayer to Themis and
receiving the picturesque reply that they were to throw behind them
the bones of their mother. This incident and a few local details, Ovid
gladly included.
The Greeks' apparently had been interested in the incongruity of
sea creatures swimming over the vineyards and through the tree tops,
for Lycophron alluded to it. Horace mentioned the subject and spoke
also of deer swimming in the overwhelming flood. Ovid borrowed these
details and unwisely added many others. Thus he lost much of the
grandeur and terror of the catastrophe by emphasizing minor and
even improbable oddities. Vergil's Georgics suggested to Ovid the
idea that, having come from stones, men are a hard and much enduring
race.
In combining many discordant traditions, Ovid was not able to
adjust all details smoothly. Thus the previous story of Lycaon im-
plied that many rustic deities were to escape the Deluge, but the
manner of their escape Ovid forgot to explain. A later story implies
also that the wolf Lycaon and his human daughter Callisto survived
in some manner, and still later we learn that Cerambus outlived the
Deluge in the form of a beetle (Bk. 7). How vegetation survived the
Deluge, neither savage races nor the more civilized ancients thought
it necessary to inquire. Ovid implied, however, that it was able to live
submerged until the water receded.
The elder Seneca borrowed from Ovid for his own account of the
flood. Jean de Meun introduced Ovid's story in the Romance of the
Rose. Ariosto imitated it for the grotesque incident where Astolpho
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
rolled stones down a mountain and thus obtained eighty thousand
horses for his army.
In a preface to the Book of Sir Artegal, Spenser described the de-
generacy of his own time, observing:
And men themselves the which at first were framed
Of earthly mould, and formed of flesh and bone,
Are now transformed into hardest stone,
Such as behind their backs (so backward bred)
Were thrown by Pyrrha and Deucalion.
Shakespeare alluded to Ovid appropriately in both Coriolanus and A
Winter's Tale. Milton compared Adam and Eve at prayer to Deu-
calion and Pyrrha before the shrine at Themis, and he borrowed from
Ovid with admirable judgment for his own description of the flood.
Peruzzi made Ovid's myth the subject of a painting.
The Pythian Games
Ovid's next tale dealt with Apollo's assuming control of the famous
oracle at Delphi. Greek tradition supposed that an oracle had existed
there long before his coming. Aeschylus in the Eumenides had de-
clared that Earth, Themis, and Phoebe held the shrine in succession
before Apollo. Ovid himself mentioned the previous authority of
Themis.
Before assuming control of his Oracle, the god had vanquished a
huge reptile. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo it was a bloated she
dragon created by Juno. The god shot the monster and named the
place Pytho from her subsequent decay (Pythein). Euripides re-
peated the story of the combat in his Iphigenia. But he described
the creature as a male dragon, and this idea was preferred by all later
writers. Apollonius, Callimachus, and the Manual each alluded to
the subject briefly.
Nicander gave the myth a quite different form. The philosophers
Anaximenes and Empedocles had taught that animal life originated
from sunshine warming moist earth, and that it often took on mon-
strous forms. The process, they believed, had been most active soon
after the creation of the world but still continued in some degree dur-
ing their own time. Confirming the theory, the Alexandrians had re-
corded many supposed observations of creatures left in different stages
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? THE PYTHIAN GAMES
of creation by the retreating floods of the Nile. They regarded the
Egyptian jerboas as large, undeveloped mice. Availing himself of
the popular scientific doctrine, Nicander showed the Pythian dragon
forming from the slime left by the Deluge. He called the creature
Python and added that Apollo commemorated his victory by the
Pythian Games.
Ovid retold Nicander's story. But he emphasized the idea of spon-
taneous generation, adding details from the work of Varro. To this
material he was to return in the speech of Pythagoras. Nicander's
tale enabled him to pass easily from the Deluge to the myth of
Daphne. To adjust it with the earlier history of Apollo was more
difficult. Accordingly, Ovid deferred this material until much later
and told it as a story of the indefinite past (Bk. 6).
Probably following Ovid, Lucan mentioned Themis as presiding
at Delphi and alluded to Apollo's victory over Python. But he added
that the occasion for the battle was the fact that the monster prevented
Apollo's mother from drawing near the shrine.
Chaucer referred to the victory over Python in the Maunciple's
Tale. Spenser drew on Ovid's account of spontaneous generation for
his description of the reptiles disgorged by Sin and for his remarkable
tale of Belphoebe's birth. To Milton the same passage was of continual
interest. In a Latin elegy he elaborated it into an attractive allegory
of Earth wooing the Sun of spring. The same thought appeared more
briefly in his Ode on the Nativity. His controversial pamphlet, Of
Reformation, declared that "the sour leaven of human traditions
mixed in one putrified mass with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisy in
the hearts of the Prelates, that lie basking in the sunny warmth of
wealth and promotion, is the serpent's egg that will hatch an Anti-
christ. " And in Paradise Lost, Satan, punished by metamorphosis
into a snake, became
larger than whom the Sun
Ingendered in the Pythian Vale on slime,
Huge Python.
Daphne and Pekebus
The first love story in Ovid's Metamorphoses was that of the young
Apollo and Daphne.
The myth seems to have originated in Arcadia and to have had
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
many traits in common with the two other Arcadian myths of Syrinx
and Arethusa (Bk. 5). It did not enter literature until Alexandrian
times. In the earliest form, the story ran as follows: Daphne was a
child of the river Ladon and the goddess Earth (Tellus). Though
very beautiful, she was averse to love. Greek mythology supposed
regularly that either men or women who shunned love would occupy
themselves with the chase. Accordingly Daphne became a huntress
and won the approval of the maiden goddess Diana. A youth named
Leucippus fell in love with her. Dressing as a girl, he joined Daphne
and her attendant maidens in their hunting and tried assiduously to
gain her favor. But Apollo too had become enamored. By this con-
trivance Daphne and her maidens learned of the ruse and indignantly
put Leucippus to death. Then Apollo himself approached Daphne,
but she fled and prayed to her mother, the Earth, for deliverance.
The ground opening received her, and a laurel tree appeared on the
spot.
The myth was transferred from Arcadia to other localities. One
version related it with a celebrated grove of Daphne near Antioch,
in Asia Minor. Another version, which survives in the Loves of
Parthenius, localized the tale in the extreme south of Greece. Accord-
ing to this account, Daphne's father was King Amyclas and she was
therefore the sister of another favorite of Apollo, the young prince
Hyacinthus (Bk. 10).
Nicander transferred the myth to northern Thessaly. He retold
it in very different form and for a special purpose. Following an
ancient custom, the priests of Delphi conducted every eighth year a
sacred procession, which made a long journey north to the Vale of
Tempe and returned with laurel branches. These branches became
the prizes awarded victors in the Pythian Games. The explanation
of this custom had been as follows: When Apollo killed the snake,
Python, he became polluted, for the reptile was sacred to Juno. To
purify himself the god was obliged to make a pilgrimage to the river
Peneus in the Vale of Tempe. And this event was commemorated by
the Delphic procession. In Dahomey and other regions of Africa where
serpents are held sacred the atonement for killing one is often a similar
pilgrimage to a distant river. It may have seemed particularly fitting
that Apollo should go to the river Peneus because, as Lucan suggested,
the Python was created there. But Nicander required a different
explanation. He had not made the Python sacred but had derived it
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? DAPHNE AND PHOEBUS
from the warm mud left by the Deluge. Moreover he wished to explain
Apollo's unusual interest in the laurel.
Nicander related the procession to the myth of Daphne. The
father of the nymph, he said, was the river Peneus and her mother
was Earth. As Daphne grew up, she became a solitary huntress,
shunning the society of men. Apollo loved and courted her, rehears-
ing his many accomplishments. She fled, he pursued. Like Syrinx,
she found a river barring her way. Invoking the aid of her mother,
she became a laurel tree. Apollo then declared that the laurel should
be his favorite garland and should be the prize in the Pythian Games.
Nicander's version of the myth was a favorite theme of Alexandrian
painters. Their work shows clearly that Daphne first stood listening to
Apollo's courtship and later turned and fled.
Ovid followed Nicander but with many changes. From Nicander's
observation that Apollo was pierced by an arrow surer than his own,
Ovid invented the preliminary quarrel of Apollo and Cupid. In the 1
tragedy Iphigenia at Aidis Euripides had mentioned Cupid's two bows,
one dipped in the happy river, the other in the stuff of confusion.
This suggested to Ovid the better idea of the two arrows, one pointed
with gold to inspire love, the other pointed with lead to inspire aver-
sion. The quarrel was in itself an interesting event. It suggested
Ovid's later invention of the two splendors in the tale of Semele (Bk.
3) and the shooting of Pluto in the tale of Proserpina (Bk. 5). But
the idea that, to love, Apollo must be shot by Cupid was artificial.
The story itself, Ovid began very carelessly. His preliminary ac-
count of Cupid would imply that Daphne became averse to love only
after being struck with the leaden arrow. Nicander had shown her
always averse. Ovid made. no adjustment and left the matter ambigu-
ous. The account of the aversion itself he improved by adding
Daphne's request that her father grant her perpetual virginity--imi-
tating a similar request in Callimachus' Hymn to Diana. The
account of the love affair also Ovid began ambiguously. He left the
reader in doubt whether Apollo saw the nymph on several occasions,
or only once. And Ovid was even more at fault in the beginning of
the courtship. He said at first that immediately the nymph fled swifter
than the breeze; so that Apollo would have had to make an elaborate
speech of courtship while running at full speed. But later Ovid im-
plied that Daphne first waited long enough to hear.
Fortunately the rest of the tale more than atoned for the beginning.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Euripides had shown Apollo as the tuneful shepherd of Admetus, and
Alexandrian poetry had formed an attractive conception of pastoral
courtship. So Ovid conceived the god as an eager pastoral lover.
He caused Apollo to recount his many accomplishments, but wisely
said nothing of his being charioteer of the sun. And he adapted many
ideas of Alexandrian love poetry--the sudden, intense passion of the
lover, his fear that the girl might incur injury, the impotence of
medicine against love, and the beauty of the nymph while running.
This final detail Ovid was to use again in the story of Atalanta (Bk.
10). The comparison of Apollo to a pursuing hound, he adapted from
Vergil's account of Aeneas following Turnus: To Ovid's contempo-
raries all these details were familiar. But never had they been so
happily adapted, so effectively massed, and so brilliantly phrased.
The courtship was eloquent; the pursuit was thrilling.
When Ovid arrived at Daphne's appeal for deliverance, he said,
like Nicander, that she called for aid from her mother. But later it
occurred to him that she might appeal more naturally to her father.
The river god had promised her perpetual virginity, and she would
naturally recall his promise when his waters accidentally barred her
way. Ovid inserted the new idea in his manuscript but did not efface
the old. In making the change, he was encouraged by the similar
appeal of Syrinx to the river nymphs. The nymphs had responded by
transforming Syrinx to a reed. Ovid imagined that Peneus responded
by transforming Daphne to a laurel tree. But this was not in accord
with tradition. To river nymphs there often was given the power
of changing a human being into some other form, as we may infer
from the tale of Dryope (Bk. 9). A river god did not enjoy this
power. Later Ovid himself was to show Achelous obliged to invoke
the aid of Neptune in order to metamorphose Perimele (Bk. 8). It
was unorthodox to show Peneus himself metamorphosing Daphne. The
innovation may have struck Ovid himself as over bold. It certainly
troubled a few of his Roman readers. Placidius modified it in his
summary by recording that Peneus changed his daughter "with the
aid of the gods. " In later times the scruple has vanished.
After a brilliant description of the metamorphosis, Ovid came to
the final speech of the god. For Nicander and his Greek readers, the
interest of this passage had been association of Daphne with the Greek
festival of the Pythian Games. For the Romans the idea would have
been much less interesting. Ovid had alluded to it already at the end
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? DAPHNE AND PHOEBUS
of his myth of Python. He omitted it from the speech of Apollo, and
he invented instead a new association of Daphne with the grandeur of
Augustan Rome.
While telling the story of Daphne, Ovid planned an effective con-
trast of method with the subsequent tales of Io and Syrinx. All three
were to include courtship, pursuit, metamorphosis, and later events.
In the myth of Daphne, Ovid gave his chief attention to the courtship
and pursuit; in that of Io to the later events; in that of Syrinx to
picturesque details in the beginning of the story.
Beside Ovid's account, all others seemed tame. His tale of Daphne
became a favorite theme, not only for brief allusion, but for important
passages of later literature. In the Silvce Statius borrowed from it.
Chretien de Troyes imitated the simile of the hound and hare for an
elaborate simile of hawk and heron. Near the beginning of the
Paradiso Dante invoked the aid of Apollo in order to deserve a crown
from his favorite tree. And in his First Eclogue he mentioned the
laurel as leaves
First known when Peneus' daughter changed her shape.
In the Triumph of Love Petrarch saw among the vanquished gods
Apollo, who despised the shaft which was to bring him grief in
Thessaly. An ode to Laura told how Petrarch himself became trans-
formed into a laurel tree. And five other poems identified Laura
with the laurel tree (lauro) and with Daphne, the beloved of Apollo.
Chaucer in the Knight's Tale described the story of Daphne as shown
in mural paintings of Diana's temple.
Boiardo profited greatly by Ovid in narrating Rudigero's adventure
with a sorceress who took the form of a laurel tree. Ariosto applied
to his Alcina the idea that her revealed beauty allowed the observer
to infer. that similar beauty was hidden. His Astolpho learned, in
another passage, that Daphne was one of several women punished in
hell,, for being unappreciative of their lovers. Camoens imitated Ovid
in telling how Leonardo courted Ephyre. Like Ovid, he showed the
youth courting the maiden while running, but he implied that she
slackened her pace to hear.
Garcilaso de Vega followed Ovid in a sonnet, and Lope de Vega
borrowed from him for a play, Love in Love. Spenser used the tale
of' Daphne not only to describe the flight of his Amoret and his
Florimel but as a theme for the painting of Cupid's exploits in the
House of Busyrane. In the latter passage he said that Cupid shot
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Apollo for revealing the adultery of Mars and Venus (cf. Bk. 4). In
The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare described a painting of
Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,
Scratching her legs with briars, that one shall swear she bleeds;
And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,
So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.
La Fontaine took much from Ovid for his opera Daphne. Milton imi-
tated Ovid charmingly in the Seventh Latin Elegy. Pope took many
details for his myth of Lodona. In Sordello Browning referred to
Apollo and Daphne at considerable length. And Lowell turned the
story of Daphne into a shower of jests as the introduction of his
Fable for Critics.
Ovid's conception of gold and leaden shafts, inspiring love and
aversion, was long a favorite theme. Claudian imagined that the two
arrows were dipped in the contrasted fountains of Love and Hate.
His elaboration added further popularity to the idea; but most refer-
ences appear to be inspired by Ovid alone. The golden headed arrow
of love appears in the work of Petrarch, Marlowe, Corneille, and
Pope, and repeatedly in the work of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.
And on two occasions Petrarch recalled Ovid's idea that love results
from the arrow with the golden tip, aversion from the arrow with a
point of lead.
In painting, Ovid's tale of Daphne continued to interest prominent
artists. Luini, Peruzzi, the brothers Dossi, Giorgione, Boucher,
Turner, and perhaps Del Sarto worked on this theme. In sculpture
Ovid inspired a much admired statue of Bernini, statues at Paris by
Poussin and Coustou, Vignon's bronze relief at Marseilles, and
Dercheu's bronze statue in the square of St. Etienne.
In music the myth of Daphne was the subject of a work by Jacopo
Peri, which marks the very beginning of opera.
Jupiter and Io
In Ovid's myth of Io, the modern reader may well be astonished
by the marital conduct of the two great deities. Juno appears as both
the sister and the wife of Jove. Jupiter, indifferent to the rights
of his wife, indulges in a love affair with Io and enlists the help of
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? JUPITER AND 10
Mercury, his son by the goddess Maia, and Ovid implies that such
conduct was habitual with him. This strange situation resulted from
slow and important changes in human institutions.
Where men and women have lived in the same household for a long
period, they seem ordinarily to have no desire for marriage with
each other and even to think of it with abhorrence. The tendency
appears to have been normal at all times throughout the world. In
most tribes it led to rules forbidding marriage of parents with their
children and of brother with sister. And where large numbers of
people were in the habit of living together, the rule might apply also
to all relatives of any kind or even to all persons who lived in the same
village. Such rules affected unrelated persons, if they happened to
grow up in the same household; but they applied more strongly to
relatives, because relatives more frequently lived together. Even if they
did not live together, the rule might continue to apply.
Among a few peoples, however, a suitable wife was difficult to
obtain or there seemed to be unusual need of keeping the family
property undivided. In such cases the normal prohibitions were re-
laxed. In ancient Egypt and a few savage tribes full brother and
sister might marry. Some other peoples, including the early Hebrews
and the Athenians, allowed marriage of brother and sister, if they
had different mothers. And several peoples, who forbade marriage
of brother and sister in general, came to allow it for members of the
royal family. Still other peoples, who never permitted such marriage
among contemporaries, imagined that it might have been necessary at
some time in the past. In their mythology a brother and a sister were
said to have been the original human pair at the Creation or the only
survivors after the Deluge. And in certain tribes of India and Java,
where mythology did not record such marriage of human beings, it
imagined marriage of brother and sister among the gods.
Ancient Greece forbade any contemporary marriage of full brother
and sister. Following the Egyptian custom, Ptolemy Philadelphus
introduced such marriage at Alexandria. Theocritus commemorated
the innovation. The majority of Greeks looked on it with horror.
But Greek mythology imagined in the past at least one case of mar-
riage among mortal brothers and sisters, for the Odyssey recorded
briefly that Aeolus married his sons to his daughters. This myth,
Euripides rejected in his tragedy of Canace. Yet the Greeks con-
tinued to associate the idea frequently with their gods. Since the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
Theogony Saturn had been both husband and brother of Rhea, and
Oceanus had been husband and brother of Tethys. And since the Iliad
the double relation had been recorded of Jupiter and Juno. Vergil
made it famous in the Aeneid, and Ovid mentioned it frequently not
only in his Metamorphoses but in the Heroides and the Fasti. Re-
ligious conservatism maintained the tradition, justifying it on the
ground that the gods were an order of beings to whom human restric-
tions did not apply (cf. Byblis Bk. 9). Probably the defense would
have proved inadequate, if many of the educated had not either ceased
to take the old myths literally or come to regard them with indiffer-
ence.
The illicit love affairs of Jupiter were survivals from an ancient
institution of polygamy. Among the lower savages, a single wife has
been the rule. Where a few scattered families made a bare livelihood
by hunting or the crudest form of agriculture, no man was able to
maintain more. But with a stronger tribal organization, the chiefs
might profit in some measure by the efforts of the rest. And where
a people lived by raising large numbers of domestic animals or by
using them for agriculture, a number of men might have more than
the mere necessities of living. In such tribes, the majority of men
continued to have only a single wife, but the successful could have
more. This might protect the chief from the evils of having no son to
succeed him in the care and defense of his household. It would often
ally him with a number of prominent families and gave him the advan-
tage of help from a number of wives and children, and the advantage
would be great where he could expect aid only from his kin. And
where there were frequent wars and a high rate of infant mortality, it
would allow more women to marry and bear children who would save
the tribe from extinction. These and other reasons often made more
than one wife appear a benefit, not only for the chief but for the tribe
as a whole. Sometimes the number of wives was limited by law to two
or to four, but often it was unrestricted and might even reach several
hundred. Usually the first wife occupied a distinctly higher position
legally than the rest; but some tribes gave equal rights to all. In
tribes allowing polygamy, it was possible also for a man to have one
or more concubines, often slave women, who did not share all of the
rights accorded a wife but nevertheless were recognized and somewhat
protected by law. In Babylon, for example, a concubine who bore
children might not be sold to another master, and, if there were no
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? JUPITER AND 10
legitimate children, hers might inherit the father's property. Even in
tribes which forbade more than a single wife, concubines were some-
times recognized by law. And nearly all mythologies attributed either
polygamy or concubinage to the gods.
With the growth of civilization both polygamy and concubinage
tended to decline. Less danger and a lower death rate made a single
wife appear sufficient both for the family and the race. And a safer,
easier form of life made it possible for women to avoid a harem by
continuing unmarried. Polygamy occurred in the case of Charle-
magne and a few later Christian sovereigns and for a time among
the Anabaptists and a few other fanatical sects. In Oriental civiliza-
tions it lingered until recently and in the Mohammedan world it per-
sists, at least in theory, today. Concubinage survived longer than
polygamy in most countries and especially in royal and noble families
of Europe. '
During prehistoric times, the Greeks may have indulged in po-
lygamy. The Theogony recorded the names of six goddesses who pre-
ceded Juno as wives of Jupiter. This tradition probably was a
survival from a remote past. Even in Homeric times a Greek had only
one wife; but he might have also a number of concubines, who were
ordinarily women captured in war. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey
show this to have been the practice of the chief Greek heroes, notably
of Agamemnon and Ulysses. The same law applied to the gods. In
the Iliad Jupiter did not scruple to give Juno a long list of those
whom he had loved in the past, and Juno was content with being pre-
ferred in the present. Even much later, serious minded Greeks were
ready to approve such conduct. The Shield of Hercules and the
Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus commended Jupiter's intrigues with
mortal women as making possible the deeds of Hercules. A similar
attitude prevailed with regard to Apollo and other divinities. And
the light loves of the gods were often recorded proudly as the origin
of the heroic family which had distinguished a particular locality in
the past.
But in time the attitude of thoughtful Greeks became less favorable.
Sophocles and Euripides, recording the infidelity of ancient heroes,
began to show the disadvantages of their conduct. Euripides went
further. In his Ion he dealt with an intrigue of Apollo and boldly
questioned its morality. After his time the more serious pagans tended
to reject such myths or to explain them as allegory. The less serious
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
treated the amours of heroes and gods as amiable vices and matter for
diverting story. The Don Juan of ancient times was Jupiter. Juno
assumed more and more the character of the jealous wife. This was
the attitude of Ovid. In treating the story of Io and many similar
tales, he told the myth for its literary possibilities and took irreverent
pleasure in recording the undignified shifts of Jupiter.
The myth of Io was of very early origin and assumed many forms.
It may have developed from a Phoenician worship of the moon which
Phoenician traders brought to the south of Greece. Io seems to have
been the moon; she was thought of as wearing horns; and she wan-
dered far and wide in the heavens. Meanwhile Argus, the sky, kept
watch with his innumerable stars. This conception of Argus appears
to account for Ovid's frequent references to him as starry. Later it
furnished modern Italian thieves the word argo, their dialect name for
the sky.
Io was conceived also as a deity in the form of a cow, who wan-
dered throughout the known world. Worship of the human goddess
Juno supplanted the older cult. Io became an unsuccessful rival, who
was transformed into a cow and suffered exile. Argus became Juno's
watchman, whom Mercury killed with a stone. Both the Iliad and the
Odyssey allude to the myth, referring to Mercury as the killer of
Argus.
The Aeginus gave the earliest literary version. Io, it said, was
daughter of Piren and priestess of Juno. Jupiter seduced her and
transformed her into a cow, hoping to deceive his wife.
