The idea of destruction of the world by
fire and its recreation proved acceptable to the Stoics and later to
Christian theology.
fire and its recreation proved acceptable to the Stoics and later to
Christian theology.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v1
But always
they took at least the name from Ovid. Spenser in a procession of
the seasons portrayed August leading Astraea, who left a corrupted
world to become the constellation of the Maiden. Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus tried desperately to restore Astraea, who had forsaken
the earth. Milton suggested in his Ode on a Fair Infant that she had
ventured to return. Dryden gave the title Astraa Redux to an ode
on the restoration of King Charles, and Carlyle gave the same title to
a chapter of his French Revolution. Tennyson recalled Astraea in
The Princess.
The Giants
Ovid's third tale dealt with the popular theme of a war among
supernatural beings. The idea occurs in the mythology of many peo-
ples. In some cases the conflict was a strife between forces of good
and evil. This was true of the Persian myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman,
which probably suggested the Hebrew belief in a revolt of Satan. But
more often the issue was not moral. And this was true of the conflicts
recorded by Greek mythology.
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? THE GIANTS
Among those who endeavored to overthrow the pantheon of Jupiter,
we hear first of two enormous beings called Otus and Ephialtes. The
Iliad mentioned their chaining Mars and holding him thirteen months
in a brazen cell; the Odyssey declared that they piled on Mt. Olympus
two other mountains, Ossa and Pelion, in a vain attempt to drive the
gods from heaven. Ovid's Manual still recorded their revolt as distinct
from the rest; but afterwards they were usually identified with the
Giants.
Of the Giants we hear first in the Odyssey. They were referred to
as a proud race which inhabited Sicily and which was destroyed. The
Theogony added that they originated from blood of Uranus falling
on the earth. Neither of these early poems mentioned any conflict
with the gods. The first allusion to it occurred much later in a lyric
of Xenophanes. Pindar was familiar with the story and referred
more than once to the importance of Hercules in causing their defeat.
Aeschylus added that the battle took place on the plains of Phlegra.
There was a tendency to associate the myth with regions of volcanic
activity, for Phlegra was identified with many volcanic regions of
Italy and Greece.
Greek art often treated the subject. A famous example was a cer-
tain kind of embroidered robe which the Athenians offered annually to
their patron goddess. In earlier art, the Giants appeared as enor-
mous beings of human form. But, at the beginning of the third cen-
tury, B. C. , a huge altar frieze at Pergamum represented them as hav-
ing wings and as walking, not with legs, but with the bodies of two
great serpents--a monstrous form already associated with many other
creatures born directly from the earth. It became the favorite con-
ception in later art. The Manual adopted it and Ovid referred to it
frequently.
Nicander gave the myth a new form. Hostility had grown up be-
tween the Greek peoples with whom he was residing and the inhabitants
of northern Thessaly. It occurred to him that the older name of this
region, Hasmonia, might be explained as "the land of people sprung
from blood. " And so he declared that, after the destruction of the
Giants, Earth transformed the blood of her flagitious offspring into
the ancestors of this people. From Nicander Ovid took the outline of
the tale. But he tried to give the myth a more plausible form and
to suit it to his general plan. To Ovid a war among supernatural
beings appeared so fabulous as to be almost incredible. So he de-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
scribed it as occurring in a remote, unsettled time not long after the
creation of the world. He found it necessary, therefore, to avoid any
mention of the part usually assigned to Hercules. Perhaps for this
reason Ovid made his account very brief. Nicander's invention of the
people sprung from blood gave Ovid the necessary metamorphosis.
But Ovid could not identify this people with the Thessalians of his
own day. The Blood People would have perished in the Deluge. Ac-
cordingly he referred to them as a somewhat indefinite tribe of the
Iron Age.
Ovid was acquainted with many references to the Giants in the
work of Lucretius and other earlier Roman poets. Horace had treated
the myth at some length in more than one of his lyrics, and Vergil had
given a number of details in his Georgics. Ovid himself referred to the
subject frequently in his other poetry and had even begun an epic
called The Battle of the Giants. Later, in the song of Orpheus (Bk.
10), he was to mention Jove's victory on the plain of Phlegra. For
the most part Ovid took his material directly from the Greeks. But
Vergil may have suggested his unconventional method of piling the
mountains Ossa, Pelion, and Olympus.
The later poets, Statius and Lucan, mentioned the Giants briefly,
and Claudian began an epic in Greek called the Gigantomachia, of
which fragments remain. They do not show any direct influence of
Ovid.
Still other conflicts of supernatural beings had appeared in Greek
myth. The Theogony and Aeschylus dealt much with a revolt of the
Titans. This theme proved less interesting to men of later times than
the Giants. The Manual still recorded it. But the poets, including
Ovid, usually were content to identify some details of the story with
the more popular myth of the Giants. The Iliad and Theogony had
told also of a monstrous creature Typhoeus, who engaged in a terrific
battle with the gods. He too was often identified by later writers as
one of the Giants. Ovid kept him distinct; but, in order to avoid two
successive tales of supernatural revolt, he told the myth later as a
theme of the Muses and Pierids (Bk. 5).
Ovid's account of the Giants was ordinarily the first read by men
of later times and so was important in directing their attention to
the theme. They used his version, adding further details from Vergil,
Horace, or Statius. Dante associated the presumption of the Giants
with the two Christian traditions of the Tower of Babel and the
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? LYCAON
revolt of Satan. He found a number of Giants chained about the rim
of the descent to Cocytus. On the Mount of Purgatory he saw the
defeat of the Giants carved as a warning against the sin of pride.
Shakespeare recalled Ovid prominently in the quarrel of Hamlet and
Laertes. Goethe treated the myth with whimsical independence in his
classic Walpurgis Night.
The revolt of the Giants inspired paintings of Perino del Vaga and
Rinaldo Mantovano and a meritorious work of W. Triibner. Gliick
treated it in an unsuccessful opera.
Lycaon
In the tale of Lycaon Ovid showed the world at an even lower stage.
Not only the monstrous Giants, but ordinary human beings were
ready to defy the gods.
Lycaon was the theme of quite various traditions which agreed
in making him ancestor of the Arcadians. The most famous tradition
dealt with his offering human flesh to Jupiter. This tradition, like
those of Tantalus and Philomela (Bk. 6), may recall an early practise
of cannibalism, which even the prehistoric Greeks had learned to re-
gard with horror. The punishment for Lycaon's act was often re-
corded as transformation to a wolf. And this punishment associated
the myth with a savage belief in lycanthropy. The belief, which has
prevailed in many parts of the world, was that a human being might
change into a great man eating beast of prey, and in Europe the beast
was generally thought to be a wolf. Another form of the belief in
lycanthropy appeared in Ovid's myth of Hecuba (Bk. 13).
The earliest account of Lycaon's crime appeared in an ancient
poem called Astronomy. In this version Jupiter had seduced Lycaon's
daughter, Callisto, and Lycaon tried to punish him by killing and
serving to him the flesh of their son, Arcas. This version Ovid did
not use. He told the myth of Callisto separately and in a more inter-
esting form (Bk. 2).
Nicander altered the tale considerably. He made it an example
of the popular myth in which a god visits men in disguise, asking
shelter and bestowing an appropriate reward on the good and the
bad. The most famous example of this variety of myth was to appear
later in Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis (Bk. 8). According to
Nicander, Jove wandered through Arcadia and asked shelter at the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
house of Lycaon. While doing so, he showed his identity by a sign
which the Arcadians understood. The common people immediately
worshipped the god; but Lycaon planned to defy and insult him.
Pretending to receive Jupiter hospitably, he caused his followers to
murder a Molossian hostage and offer the flesh. But Jupiter dis-
covered his intent and turned him into a wolf. From this account
Ovid took the outline of his own. The myth of Lycaon was the first
in which Ovid had occasion to describe the transformation of an indi-
vidual. Partly for this reason he followed Nicander's method of
recording many traits which the new creature retained from his earlier
form. In later tales he seldom recorded more than one.
The Manual gave still another story. Lycaon's sons, it reported,
were even more guilty than their father. Jupiter, therefore, destroyed
the entire household with a thunderbolt and almost annihilated the
human race with a flood. To this account Ovid alluded in his Ibis.
For the Metamorphoses he took the incident of Jupiter's destroying
all except Lycaon with a thunderbolt and the idea that Lycaon's insult
was the occasion for the Deluge.
Ovid had now a good story tending in the direction which he desired.
But he wished to give it more dignity and a more probable relation
to the Deluge. Before telling of an important event, the Iliad and
other great epics had shown Jupiter gathering a council of the gods.
And Catullus had described his nod which shook the earth. Ovid
followed their example. Greek tradition had imagined further that
the gods were dependent on the steam of sacrifices offered by men, for
Aristophanes had treated the idea in his comedy The Birds. And
Greek tradition probably had regarded the Milky Way as a thorough-
fare in heaven, for this has been a world wide popular belief. Ovid
profited by both these ideas.
To add this effective material was a great improvement. But Ovid
did more. He gave the rather familiar ideas a novel form very inter-
esting to the Romans. The abode of the gods he portrayed in terms
of Rome and the Imperial Residence on the Palatine Hill. Jupiter
assembling the other divinities for consultation he described as if the
Emperor Augustus were convening the Senate in the Imperial Library.
And Ovid carried the likeness much further. Just as recently traitors
had plotted the death of Julius Caesar and the overthrow of the
Roman Cosmos, in the same way, he declared, Lycaon had planned
the death of Jupiter and the overthrow of the gods. And to make
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? THE DELUGE
the resemblance more notable, Ovid implied it would have been possible
for Lycaon to do it. The idea of Jupiter's being assassinated was bold,
but not without warrant. The Romans were acquainted with the
traditional death of such great deities as Osiris, Bacchus (Bk. 3), and
Adonis (Bk. 10). And, like other pious pagans, they had probably
been horrified by a Cretan story about the grave of Zeus.
The idea that Lycaon attempted murder as well as insult, Ovid
introduced rather awkwardly. It confused the orderly and single
effect of the tale. Yet even this disadvantage did not prevent the
change from being beneficial. The idea not only gave the story keen
interest for the Romans but it made Lycaon's guilt typical of a
degraded race which had become a menace to the gods.
In the geography of the story, Ovid followed a policy which he used
later in the myths of Daphne and Arethusa (Bk. 5). He mentioned
well known names of mountains, towns, or other localities which would
suggest extensive travel in the district where the events were supposed
to have occurred. But he made no attempt to record these places in
their actual relation to one another. Whether a traveler from Mt.
Maenala to Mt. Lycseus was likely to go by way of Mt. Cyllene, a
Roman audience would neither know nor care.
Among later poets the incidental detail of Ovid's version proved
more interesting than the story itself. Marlowe remembered that the
Milky Way was the route by which the gods passed to Jupiter's court.
Tasso recorded that, before sending rain to preserve Godfrey's army,
the Deity shook all Cosmos with his nod. Milton recalled Ovid's lines
on the rustic deities in II Penseroso, Comus, Paradise Lost, and Para-
dise Regained. He* seemed always to associate them with pleasant
woods and fields.
Spenser imitated Ovid's council of the gods in his tale of Mutability,
and Browning's Guido Franceschini recalled the transformation of
Lycaon, grimly desiring a like fate for himself.
The Deluge
In his fifth story Ovid dealt with two ways in which life might
perish. One of these was a world conflagration. The idea was not
uncommon in savage mythologies; but originally the Greeks appear to
have imagined only a partial destruction by Phaethon (Bk 2). Their
philosopher Heraclitus was the first to record a more radical theory.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
The world, he thought, had originated from fire and would relapse
into it and be created anew.
The idea of destruction of the world by
fire and its recreation proved acceptable to the Stoics and later to
Christian theology. In England it was afterwards treated by many
poets from Milton to Pollok. Doubtless Ovid found the subject dis-
cussed in the work of Varro.
Another form of destruction was a world flood. 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.
they took at least the name from Ovid. Spenser in a procession of
the seasons portrayed August leading Astraea, who left a corrupted
world to become the constellation of the Maiden. Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus tried desperately to restore Astraea, who had forsaken
the earth. Milton suggested in his Ode on a Fair Infant that she had
ventured to return. Dryden gave the title Astraa Redux to an ode
on the restoration of King Charles, and Carlyle gave the same title to
a chapter of his French Revolution. Tennyson recalled Astraea in
The Princess.
The Giants
Ovid's third tale dealt with the popular theme of a war among
supernatural beings. The idea occurs in the mythology of many peo-
ples. In some cases the conflict was a strife between forces of good
and evil. This was true of the Persian myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman,
which probably suggested the Hebrew belief in a revolt of Satan. But
more often the issue was not moral. And this was true of the conflicts
recorded by Greek mythology.
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? THE GIANTS
Among those who endeavored to overthrow the pantheon of Jupiter,
we hear first of two enormous beings called Otus and Ephialtes. The
Iliad mentioned their chaining Mars and holding him thirteen months
in a brazen cell; the Odyssey declared that they piled on Mt. Olympus
two other mountains, Ossa and Pelion, in a vain attempt to drive the
gods from heaven. Ovid's Manual still recorded their revolt as distinct
from the rest; but afterwards they were usually identified with the
Giants.
Of the Giants we hear first in the Odyssey. They were referred to
as a proud race which inhabited Sicily and which was destroyed. The
Theogony added that they originated from blood of Uranus falling
on the earth. Neither of these early poems mentioned any conflict
with the gods. The first allusion to it occurred much later in a lyric
of Xenophanes. Pindar was familiar with the story and referred
more than once to the importance of Hercules in causing their defeat.
Aeschylus added that the battle took place on the plains of Phlegra.
There was a tendency to associate the myth with regions of volcanic
activity, for Phlegra was identified with many volcanic regions of
Italy and Greece.
Greek art often treated the subject. A famous example was a cer-
tain kind of embroidered robe which the Athenians offered annually to
their patron goddess. In earlier art, the Giants appeared as enor-
mous beings of human form. But, at the beginning of the third cen-
tury, B. C. , a huge altar frieze at Pergamum represented them as hav-
ing wings and as walking, not with legs, but with the bodies of two
great serpents--a monstrous form already associated with many other
creatures born directly from the earth. It became the favorite con-
ception in later art. The Manual adopted it and Ovid referred to it
frequently.
Nicander gave the myth a new form. Hostility had grown up be-
tween the Greek peoples with whom he was residing and the inhabitants
of northern Thessaly. It occurred to him that the older name of this
region, Hasmonia, might be explained as "the land of people sprung
from blood. " And so he declared that, after the destruction of the
Giants, Earth transformed the blood of her flagitious offspring into
the ancestors of this people. From Nicander Ovid took the outline of
the tale. But he tried to give the myth a more plausible form and
to suit it to his general plan. To Ovid a war among supernatural
beings appeared so fabulous as to be almost incredible. So he de-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
scribed it as occurring in a remote, unsettled time not long after the
creation of the world. He found it necessary, therefore, to avoid any
mention of the part usually assigned to Hercules. Perhaps for this
reason Ovid made his account very brief. Nicander's invention of the
people sprung from blood gave Ovid the necessary metamorphosis.
But Ovid could not identify this people with the Thessalians of his
own day. The Blood People would have perished in the Deluge. Ac-
cordingly he referred to them as a somewhat indefinite tribe of the
Iron Age.
Ovid was acquainted with many references to the Giants in the
work of Lucretius and other earlier Roman poets. Horace had treated
the myth at some length in more than one of his lyrics, and Vergil had
given a number of details in his Georgics. Ovid himself referred to the
subject frequently in his other poetry and had even begun an epic
called The Battle of the Giants. Later, in the song of Orpheus (Bk.
10), he was to mention Jove's victory on the plain of Phlegra. For
the most part Ovid took his material directly from the Greeks. But
Vergil may have suggested his unconventional method of piling the
mountains Ossa, Pelion, and Olympus.
The later poets, Statius and Lucan, mentioned the Giants briefly,
and Claudian began an epic in Greek called the Gigantomachia, of
which fragments remain. They do not show any direct influence of
Ovid.
Still other conflicts of supernatural beings had appeared in Greek
myth. The Theogony and Aeschylus dealt much with a revolt of the
Titans. This theme proved less interesting to men of later times than
the Giants. The Manual still recorded it. But the poets, including
Ovid, usually were content to identify some details of the story with
the more popular myth of the Giants. The Iliad and Theogony had
told also of a monstrous creature Typhoeus, who engaged in a terrific
battle with the gods. He too was often identified by later writers as
one of the Giants. Ovid kept him distinct; but, in order to avoid two
successive tales of supernatural revolt, he told the myth later as a
theme of the Muses and Pierids (Bk. 5).
Ovid's account of the Giants was ordinarily the first read by men
of later times and so was important in directing their attention to
the theme. They used his version, adding further details from Vergil,
Horace, or Statius. Dante associated the presumption of the Giants
with the two Christian traditions of the Tower of Babel and the
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? LYCAON
revolt of Satan. He found a number of Giants chained about the rim
of the descent to Cocytus. On the Mount of Purgatory he saw the
defeat of the Giants carved as a warning against the sin of pride.
Shakespeare recalled Ovid prominently in the quarrel of Hamlet and
Laertes. Goethe treated the myth with whimsical independence in his
classic Walpurgis Night.
The revolt of the Giants inspired paintings of Perino del Vaga and
Rinaldo Mantovano and a meritorious work of W. Triibner. Gliick
treated it in an unsuccessful opera.
Lycaon
In the tale of Lycaon Ovid showed the world at an even lower stage.
Not only the monstrous Giants, but ordinary human beings were
ready to defy the gods.
Lycaon was the theme of quite various traditions which agreed
in making him ancestor of the Arcadians. The most famous tradition
dealt with his offering human flesh to Jupiter. This tradition, like
those of Tantalus and Philomela (Bk. 6), may recall an early practise
of cannibalism, which even the prehistoric Greeks had learned to re-
gard with horror. The punishment for Lycaon's act was often re-
corded as transformation to a wolf. And this punishment associated
the myth with a savage belief in lycanthropy. The belief, which has
prevailed in many parts of the world, was that a human being might
change into a great man eating beast of prey, and in Europe the beast
was generally thought to be a wolf. Another form of the belief in
lycanthropy appeared in Ovid's myth of Hecuba (Bk. 13).
The earliest account of Lycaon's crime appeared in an ancient
poem called Astronomy. In this version Jupiter had seduced Lycaon's
daughter, Callisto, and Lycaon tried to punish him by killing and
serving to him the flesh of their son, Arcas. This version Ovid did
not use. He told the myth of Callisto separately and in a more inter-
esting form (Bk. 2).
Nicander altered the tale considerably. He made it an example
of the popular myth in which a god visits men in disguise, asking
shelter and bestowing an appropriate reward on the good and the
bad. The most famous example of this variety of myth was to appear
later in Ovid's tale of Philemon and Baucis (Bk. 8). According to
Nicander, Jove wandered through Arcadia and asked shelter at the
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
house of Lycaon. While doing so, he showed his identity by a sign
which the Arcadians understood. The common people immediately
worshipped the god; but Lycaon planned to defy and insult him.
Pretending to receive Jupiter hospitably, he caused his followers to
murder a Molossian hostage and offer the flesh. But Jupiter dis-
covered his intent and turned him into a wolf. From this account
Ovid took the outline of his own. The myth of Lycaon was the first
in which Ovid had occasion to describe the transformation of an indi-
vidual. Partly for this reason he followed Nicander's method of
recording many traits which the new creature retained from his earlier
form. In later tales he seldom recorded more than one.
The Manual gave still another story. Lycaon's sons, it reported,
were even more guilty than their father. Jupiter, therefore, destroyed
the entire household with a thunderbolt and almost annihilated the
human race with a flood. To this account Ovid alluded in his Ibis.
For the Metamorphoses he took the incident of Jupiter's destroying
all except Lycaon with a thunderbolt and the idea that Lycaon's insult
was the occasion for the Deluge.
Ovid had now a good story tending in the direction which he desired.
But he wished to give it more dignity and a more probable relation
to the Deluge. Before telling of an important event, the Iliad and
other great epics had shown Jupiter gathering a council of the gods.
And Catullus had described his nod which shook the earth. Ovid
followed their example. Greek tradition had imagined further that
the gods were dependent on the steam of sacrifices offered by men, for
Aristophanes had treated the idea in his comedy The Birds. And
Greek tradition probably had regarded the Milky Way as a thorough-
fare in heaven, for this has been a world wide popular belief. Ovid
profited by both these ideas.
To add this effective material was a great improvement. But Ovid
did more. He gave the rather familiar ideas a novel form very inter-
esting to the Romans. The abode of the gods he portrayed in terms
of Rome and the Imperial Residence on the Palatine Hill. Jupiter
assembling the other divinities for consultation he described as if the
Emperor Augustus were convening the Senate in the Imperial Library.
And Ovid carried the likeness much further. Just as recently traitors
had plotted the death of Julius Caesar and the overthrow of the
Roman Cosmos, in the same way, he declared, Lycaon had planned
the death of Jupiter and the overthrow of the gods. And to make
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? THE DELUGE
the resemblance more notable, Ovid implied it would have been possible
for Lycaon to do it. The idea of Jupiter's being assassinated was bold,
but not without warrant. The Romans were acquainted with the
traditional death of such great deities as Osiris, Bacchus (Bk. 3), and
Adonis (Bk. 10). And, like other pious pagans, they had probably
been horrified by a Cretan story about the grave of Zeus.
The idea that Lycaon attempted murder as well as insult, Ovid
introduced rather awkwardly. It confused the orderly and single
effect of the tale. Yet even this disadvantage did not prevent the
change from being beneficial. The idea not only gave the story keen
interest for the Romans but it made Lycaon's guilt typical of a
degraded race which had become a menace to the gods.
In the geography of the story, Ovid followed a policy which he used
later in the myths of Daphne and Arethusa (Bk. 5). He mentioned
well known names of mountains, towns, or other localities which would
suggest extensive travel in the district where the events were supposed
to have occurred. But he made no attempt to record these places in
their actual relation to one another. Whether a traveler from Mt.
Maenala to Mt. Lycseus was likely to go by way of Mt. Cyllene, a
Roman audience would neither know nor care.
Among later poets the incidental detail of Ovid's version proved
more interesting than the story itself. Marlowe remembered that the
Milky Way was the route by which the gods passed to Jupiter's court.
Tasso recorded that, before sending rain to preserve Godfrey's army,
the Deity shook all Cosmos with his nod. Milton recalled Ovid's lines
on the rustic deities in II Penseroso, Comus, Paradise Lost, and Para-
dise Regained. He* seemed always to associate them with pleasant
woods and fields.
Spenser imitated Ovid's council of the gods in his tale of Mutability,
and Browning's Guido Franceschini recalled the transformation of
Lycaon, grimly desiring a like fate for himself.
The Deluge
In his fifth story Ovid dealt with two ways in which life might
perish. One of these was a world conflagration. The idea was not
uncommon in savage mythologies; but originally the Greeks appear to
have imagined only a partial destruction by Phaethon (Bk 2). Their
philosopher Heraclitus was the first to record a more radical theory.
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK I
The world, he thought, had originated from fire and would relapse
into it and be created anew.
The idea of destruction of the world by
fire and its recreation proved acceptable to the Stoics and later to
Christian theology. In England it was afterwards treated by many
poets from Milton to Pollok. Doubtless Ovid found the subject dis-
cussed in the work of Varro.
Another form of destruction was a world flood. 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.
