She betrayed the secret,
and her treason is commemorated by the name of the locality.
and her treason is commemorated by the name of the locality.
Ovid - 1934 - Metamorphoses in European Culture - v2
Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-26 11:21 GMT / http://hdl.
handle.
net/2027/mdp.
39015005276665 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SEVEN
formation chiefly on Alexandrian authors. The Manual contributed
much to all the more important tales except that of Aeson. An uniden-
tified author, who wrote probably in early Alexandrian times, was
Ovid's main reliance for the tragic adventures of Cephalus and Procris;
Apollonius, in the translation by Varro of Atax, became the most im-
portant source for the events in Colchis; an Alexandrian preface to
Euripides gave the outline for the tale of Aeson; and Euphorion was
Ovid's authority for the origin of aconite. Of the minor tales, Ovid took
at least five from Nicander, two from Boeus, and the rest mainly from
Alexandrian authors whom we cannot identify.
Much care was necessary in developing this material. Many of the
tales, especially those in the latter half of the book had no relation to
one another and presented difficult problems of adjustment to Ovid's
sequence of time. Ovid often had to invent a plausible relation between
tales and an appropriate background. Although this involved him in
some anachronism and improbability, he was able to keep such defects
inconspicuous and to add much that was picturesque and effective. Sev-
eral important tales included material which Ovid had used elsewhere in
his poetry and was unwilling to repeat. He avoided the difficulty often
by omitting circumstances, and in this he was not always successful.
The tales of Medea in Corinth and of Theseus became fragmentary, and,
for readers not familiar with the subject, other tales were sometimes
obscure. But Ovid tried also to introduce new circumstances -- nearly
always with happy effect. More often than in the previous books Ovid
had occasion to tell differently an incident which he had used earlier in
his Metamorphoses, and in meeting this difficulty he displayed astonish-
ing skill.
In elaborating his material, Ovid borrowed much from the chief
authors of the past. The Iliad afforded valuable suggestions for several
tales. The Odyssey, Theocritus, and Horace proved of great service in
the tale of Aeson. Thucydides and Lucretius contributed important
material to the story of the Myrmidons. And for many of Ovid's best
tales Vergil was invaluable. To borrow so much from his greatest prede-
cessors was to invite dangerous comparisons. But Ovid's boldness was
justified by his success. In selecting his material he judged well not only
its merit but its appropriateness for his own purpose, and often he im-
proved what he took. He varied and sometimes bettered it also by many
inventions of his own, which included not only three lesser transforma-
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? BOOK SEVEN
tions in the tale of Aeson but also in the very important soliloquy of
Medea.
After Ovid's time the Seventh Book influenced a great number of
Roman authors. They found especially valuable Ovid's account of magic
and pestilence. For medieval authors, the chief interest lay in the tales
about Medea, but the story of Procris was appreciated, especially by
Chaucer. Almost the entire book had a wide and important influence
among authors of the Renaissance. After this period it attracted much
less attention. But in the nineteenth century, several English poets re-
told the tale of Cephalus and Procris, and Hawthorne profited by the
almost forgotten tales of aconite and of Theseus.
Among authors who rarely noticed the Metamorphoses, the Seventh
Book attracted Manilius and Rabelais. It was used often by Dante,
Ariosto, and Milton. Seneca, Lucan, and Calderon found it of great
value. But probably the most memorable effect appeared in the work of
Shakespeare.
The tales of Medea in Colchis, of Aurora, and of Procris attracted
a number of modern painters. The tale of Procris was the earliest theme
of Russian opera.
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? BOOK EIGHT
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? CONTENTS OF BOOK EIGHT
PAGE
King Minos and Scylla . . . . . . . . 157
The Minotaur and Ariadne . . . . . . 168
Icarus and Perdix . . . . . . . . 178
Meleager and Atalanta . . . . . . . . 184
The Echinades and Perimele . . . . . . . 198
Philemon and Baucis . . . . . . . . . 200
Proteus . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Erysichthon . . . . . . . . . . 211
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
King Minos and Scylla
After describing briefly the return of Cephalus to Athens, Ovid
turned to Minos and his invasion of Attica. Aeschylus in the Choephorae
had spoken of him as attacking Megara, near the head of the Saronic
Gulf, and had observed that Nisus was king of the city. The Manual
added that Nisus was a brother of Aegeus and that Minos attacked
Megara in the course of his war with Athens. It stated further that
Alcathoiis, a son of Pelops, had rebuilt and fortified the city. Ovid fol-
lowed the Manual, referring to Megara as the city of Alcathoiis. The
traditional account of the siege included two ideas common in folklore.
The first was an idea of the supernatural importance of the hair.
Popular tales of many countries have assumed that in certain cases a
man's soul dwelt in the hairs of his head. Sometimes it was thought of as
residing equally in all the hairs, much oftener as restricted to a small
group of them or to a single hair. These popular tales are to the follow-
ing effect. A certain man, whose soul resided in the hair of his head, was
immune to ordinary injuries and for a long time was able to perform re-
markable feats. At last an enemy deprived him of his magic hair and
so put him to death. Ariosto told of a magician Orrilo, who recovered
easily and quickly from the most formidable wounds, but died immedi-
ately when Astolfo cut off his fateful hair.
In this case, all the magician's hairs had the same appearance,
although only one of them contained the soul. Usually the part of the
hair which was magical was distinguished by some remarkable color. In
the lore of ancient Greece the magic hair of King Pterelaiis of Taphus
was golden, and that of King Nisus was purple. Accounts varied as to
whether Nisus had a number of magic hairs or only one. Aeschylus men-
tioned a lock, the Manual, a single hair. Vergil and Ovid, although in-
definite, seem to have agreed with the Manual. According to most pop-
ular tales, the existence of such hair was kept secret. In the story of
Nisus it appears to have been a matter of general knowledge. Almost
always in popular tales the owner of magic hair was betrayed by a
woman. This was true both of Pterelaiis and of Nisus. But these two
stories were unusual in having king and country perish together.
This fact associated them with another idea common to many pop-
ular tales of countries lying near the eastern end of the Mediterranean
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK EIGHT
Sea. The purpose of such tales ordinarily was to account for some local
name, such as the Maiden's Castle. And the stories were to the follow-
ing effect. An enemy laid siege to a certain fortified place and for a long
while was unable to take it. The commander of the garrison had a daugh-
ter, who knew where the defenses were weak.
She betrayed the secret,
and her treason is commemorated by the name of the locality. A typical
example was the myth of the Roman girl Tarpeia, whose treachery was
said to have been commemorated by the name of the Tarpeian Cliff.
Stories of this kind were localized at various points within an area ex-
tending from Mesopotamia westwards to Gergovia in Auvergne. They
entered literature with the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers (1300 B. C. )
and continued to appear as late as the medieval Gesta Romanorum.
Among them was the Greek myth of Nisus, for the walled city of Megara
was betrayed by his daughter, Scylla.
In these tales of the treacherous maiden, her motive sometimes was
avarice. The Greek girl Arne betrayed Siphnus in order to obtain a sum
of gold (cf. Bk. 7), and the Roman Tarpeia betrayed the Capitoline Hill
in the hope of obtaining the bracelets of the besieging Sabines. Scylla
originally was thought to have been treacherous for a similar reason. By
offering her a gold necklace and other gifts, said Aeschylus, King Minos
persuaded her to betray her father. While Nisus slept, she stole the fatal
hairs, and he died.
More often in Greek tales of this kind, the maiden fell in love with
the leader of the besiegers. According to the early epic called Returns,
an Amazon named Antiope loved Theseus and delivered her native
city into his hands. Alexandrian authors told many stories of maidens
treacherous for the sake of love. The Manual noted how the princess,
Comaetho, because of her passion for Amphitryon, betrayed King
Pterelaiis. Parthenius added three new examples. Two of them were
concerned with the mythical heroines Leucophyre and Pisidice, the
third with a certain Nanis who betrayed Sardis to Cyrus the Great of
Persia. Parthenius told also an inverted form of the usual tale. A young
man named Diognetus, who was a leader of the besiegers, fell in love with
Polycrite, daughter of the commander of the garrison, and for her sake
betrayed his fellow soldiers into the hands of the defenders. * Scylla, too,
was thought to have been impelled by love. A Greek tragedy, which is
now lost, presented the tale in this form. The Manual recorded the new
*Medea and Ariadne were guilty of treason on account of love, but their treachery
did not involve the safety of the country.
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
version as follows. Scylla, falling in love with Minos, pulled out the
fatal hair. Nisus died, and Minos captured the city.
In popular folk tales the besieger was willing to profit by the girl's
treachery. Usually he gave her encouragement, and, if the motive was
love, he was willing to promise marriage. But he secretly despised her.
In the end he withheld the expected reward, and usually he put the
treacherous girl to death. Amphitryon slew Comaetho with his own
hands. Achilles ordered his soldiers to crush Pisidice with stones, and
Tatius had the Sabines bury Tarpeia under their heavy shields. Accord-
ing to the Manual, Minos had Scylla fastened to the stern of his ship and
dragged through the water until she drowned. Statius added that he left
her body on the promontory which afterwards was called in her memory
Scyllaeum.
Parthenius in his Metamorphoses retold the story of Scylla at some
length. His account, which is now lost, appears to have introduced a
number of important changes. In the Hippolytw Euripides had shown
an unscrupulous nurse aiding and abetting Phaedra's courtship of the
hero. This idea had influenced many Alexandrian tales of illicit love.
Parthenius had shown Pisidice sending her nurse to Achilles, in order to
arrange for his marrying her and for the betrayal of the city. Par-
thenius imagined that Scylla caused her nurse to make a similar agree-
ment with Minos. Evidently he supposed that such a marriage would
have been possible. The Manual had indicated that Minos had been mar-
ried previous to this time, for he was the father of Androgeus, but that
he was not yet the husband of Pasiphae. Parthenius assumed that he was
a widower when he laid siege to Megara. He made a change in the cir-
cumstances of the theft. Instead of pulling out the magic hair, Scylla
cut it with a pair of shears.
Accompanied by her nurse, she visited Minos and offered him the
fatal hair. Appalled at such treachery, he refused to take it. He thought
her capable of any crime and ordered her to be tied to the rudder of his
ship. But Scylla did not drown. The history of her ancestors recorded a
famous transformation of Procne to a swallow and of the hostile Tereus
to a hawk (cf. Philomela, Bk. 6). Parthenius invented a similar trans-
formation of Scylla and Nisus. The daughter turned into a bird with a
purple crest, called the Ciris (keiris) from her crime of shearing the hair
(keirem). The father became a sea eagle and still shows his resentment
by continually pursuing her.
Alluding to this version of the tale, a Pompeiian mural represented
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK EIGHT
Scylla, accompanied by her nurse, as offering the hair and Minos as
turning away in horror. Parthenius appears to have influenced all Ro-
man allusions to the myth. Roman authors often accepted his idea that
Scylla became a bird, but Hyginus declared that she became a fish.
According to the original account, Nisus died as soon as he lost the
fatal hair. During Alexandrian times another idea entered into the
story. In folk tales of many countries, certain men were said to have
possessed remarkable strength and prestige while their hair remained
long but to have lost it as soon as the hair was cut. This idea occurred
in the Old Testament narrative of Samson, in many tales of magicians,
and in a modern Greek story of a king with three magic golden hairs. It
even affected the tenure of early French kings, for Pepin shaved the head
of Childeric Third in order to depose him. Parthenius appears to have
thought that Nisus survived the theft of his hair but lost his ability to
defend Megara and perished when the city was taken. Later authors
mentioned the idea explicitly.
Vergil, in his early poem called The Ciris, retold the story at some
length. Although influenced by Parthenius, he added many new circum-
stances, and, wherever he could, he made the tale favorable to Scylla.
Vergil assigned a different cause for the war. Minos, he said, was trying
to recapture the seer Polyidus, who had taken refuge in Megara. Vergil
gave a more detailed account of Nisus. The purple hair grew on the
crown of his head, and all his other hairs were white. For the infatua-
tion of Scylla, Vergil imagined a supernatural cause. After unwittingly
profaning a temple of Juno, the girl denied that she had done so. The
offended goddess persuaded Cupid to shoot her with a golden arrow.
Without indicating how Scylla first became aware of Minos, Vergil gave
a long account of her desperate behavior. He implied that, as a neces-
sary condition of the marriage, Minos demanded the fatal hair.
Although Nisus had guards stationed outside the palace, he feared
no danger from within, and he left his bed chamber unprotected. As
Scylla paused before his door, trying to gather sufficient boldness for
the attempt, the nurse overtook her and persuaded her first to see
whether they could induce her father to arrange for the marriage. Find-
ing that Nisus refused to do this, they resorted to theft. With the fall
of the city Minos presumably recaptured the seer Polyidus.
Since Minos had no further business in Attica, Vergil imagined that
he immediately prepared to sail for Crete. Minos gave orders that Scylla
should be tied to the rear of his ship. Apparently she was not fastened
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
to the rudder but to the topmost part of the stern. Sometimes she was
raised high in air, as a wave lifted the vessel; and at other times she sank
to the level of the water, as the stern went down into the succeeding
trough of the sea.
While the fleet bore Scylla away from her native land, Vergil showed
her uttering a long complaint. She reproached Minos for disregard of
his promise to marry her, for ingratitude, and for failure to appreciate
her sacrifices in his behalf. Indifferent to her reproaches, Minos con-
tinued down the Saronic Gulf and out into the Aegaean Sea. Vergil gave
an impressive account of the voyage. After passing the island of Seri-
phus, the girl fainted.
The goddess Amphitrite took pity on her and transformed her into
a beautiful bird, the Ciris. Vergil described the change in detail. This
bird, he said, inhabits lonely rocks and cliffs along the shore. Jupiter,
he continued, was not willing to have the traitress fare better than her
pious father, and he transformed Nisus into a variety of his favorite
bird, the eagle. Vergil ended with a description of the manner in which
the sea eagle pursues the ciris through the air. In the Georgics he re-
peated the description, noting the spectacle as a sign of fair weather.
Some Alexandrian author had identified Scylla, daughter of Nisus,
with Scylla, the monster of the Calabrian shore. Vergil in his Sixth
Eclogue accepted the innovation. Propertius followed his example, and
Ovid alluded to the idea repeatedly in his amatory poems. But in the Ciris
Vergil rejected the idea, and in the Metamorphoses Ovid too rejected it,
because he desired to tell a different tale of Scylla, the monster (Bks.
13-14).
Propertius took great interest in the tale of Scylla. In one place he
associated it with the tradition that after death Minos became a judge
of the souls entering Hades. By punishing the traitress, he said, Minos
showed justice to his enemies and acted in a manner worthy of his future
position as a judge in the Lower World. In another poem the tale of
Scylla suggested to Propertius a new myth of Tarpeia.
He imagined Tarpeia in love with the Sabine leader Tatius. Pro-
pertius gave throughout the tale a very unfavorable impression of his
heroine. The chief events were as follows. Tarpeia was in the habit of
leaving Rome to draw water from a secluded spring. During one of these
excursions she saw Tatius engaged in warlike exercises on the plain. Ap-
parently he was on horseback and in full armor but had his face uncov-
ered. Impressed with his fine features and beautiful armor, she fell vio-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK EIGHT
lently in love with him. Later Propertius represented her as considering
her fate in a long soliloquy. She thought of leaving Rome, in order to
live always as a captive within view of Tatius. Then she thought of be-
traying the city. She reflected that Tatius was worthy to rule and that
his cause was just. She hoped to become his queen and to bring her
country peace. Choosing an appropriate hour, she visited the enemy,
obtained his promise to marry her, and showed him the unguarded path.
In the MetaTtwrphoses Ovid profited much by the work of his Alex-
andrian and Roman predecessors. For the background of the tale he
drew on the Manual. Although this was convenient both for Ovid and
for his readers, it brought several disadvantages. Following the Manual,
Ovid described Minos as a son of Jupiter and Europa (Bk. 2). Even in
the Manual this idea had made the chronology difficult. According to
the plan of the Metamorphoses, it would have put Minos at least four
generations earlier than the time of Scylla.
The Manual had supposed further that after the fall of Megara,
Pasiphae became the wife of Minos and was guilty of unnatural lust for
a bull and that many years later Theseus arrived in Athens. Ovid used
all these incidents, but felt obliged to reverse their order and to shorten
the interval of time. Already he had put first the arrival of Theseus in
Athens. He imagined the scandalous conduct of Pasiphae as occurring
immediately afterward, so that it was a little earlier than the siege of
Megara and even was known to Scylla. This idea added something to
the effect of Scylla's reproaches. But it was wholly inconsistent with her
plan to become the wife of Minos. Ovid lessened the evil by not mention-
ing Pasiphae until very late in the story. With the Manual he agreed
that for a long time the Cretans besieged Megara in vain, and he made
the period five lunar months.
Most of the incidents Ovid chose skilfully from the accounts of
Vergil and Propertius. He followed Propertius entirely in his hostile atti-
tude towards Scylla. Vergil suggested the preliminary circumstances.
He had noted that Apollo gave the stone in the city walls a magic prop-
erty ; so that, if any one struck it, the sound was musical, like notes of a
lyre. Although Vergil seems to have meant that the quality belonged
only to the one stone on which Apollo had reposed his lyre, the wording
suggested that it belonged to many stones, if not to the entire wall.
Vergil had noted later that Megara was provided with towers command-
ing a wide view of the country outside. Deftly combining these two ideas,
Ovid made them an essential part of the story. Before the time of the
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
war, he said, Scylla had been accustomed to ascend a tower on the walls
and to amuse herself by dropping pebbles on the tuneful stones below.
During the siege she continued to frequent this tower and so had occa-
sion to notice events of the war. In the Heroic Age, warriors appear to
have fought almost entirely with spears and swords. It was possible to
watch their combats in relative safety and at close range. According to
the Iliad, Helen, standing on the walls of Troy, easily identified the
leaders of the besieging Greeks. Although Ovid spoke of the Cretans as
having their famous bows, he too imagined that it was possible for Scylla
in her tower to observe the military operations at close range and to rec-
ognize the Cretan leaders, including Minos.
According to Propertius, Tarpeia, seeing Tatius engaged in war-
like exercises, fell in love with him. Ovid imagined a similar cause for the
passion of Scylla. But he supposed that Minos was engaged in actual
combat and that Scylla observed him on a number of occasions and be-
came enamored more gradually. Propertius had spoken of Tarpeia as
admiring the skill with which Tatius handled his weapons while riding
and as being enamored of his fine features. Ovid elaborated the idea ef-
fectively. Scylla admired the crested helmet of Minos and his golden
shield. She marvelled at his handling of the spear. If he bent the bow,
she likened him to Apollo. And when he rode without his helmet, clad in
purple and borne on a milk-white horse with gorgeous trappings, she was
almost mad with delight. In Anacreontic lyrics the lover often envied the
good fortune of some ornament or object of dress, which continually was
in contact with his lady. Scylla envied the javelins and the reins, which
where touched by the hands of Minos.
The idea that Tatius and Minos rode on horseback was more pic-
turesque than probable. During the Heroic Age the Greeks inhabited
rough, mountainous country, and they seem to have lacked a good breed
of horses. The Iliad noted how Adrastus was saved by the fleetness of
his horse, Arion, and spoke of a performer who drove four horses and
leaped deftly from one to another; and the Odyssey told how the ship-
wrecked Ulysses rode a plank as a horseman rides a steed.
? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK SEVEN
formation chiefly on Alexandrian authors. The Manual contributed
much to all the more important tales except that of Aeson. An uniden-
tified author, who wrote probably in early Alexandrian times, was
Ovid's main reliance for the tragic adventures of Cephalus and Procris;
Apollonius, in the translation by Varro of Atax, became the most im-
portant source for the events in Colchis; an Alexandrian preface to
Euripides gave the outline for the tale of Aeson; and Euphorion was
Ovid's authority for the origin of aconite. Of the minor tales, Ovid took
at least five from Nicander, two from Boeus, and the rest mainly from
Alexandrian authors whom we cannot identify.
Much care was necessary in developing this material. Many of the
tales, especially those in the latter half of the book had no relation to
one another and presented difficult problems of adjustment to Ovid's
sequence of time. Ovid often had to invent a plausible relation between
tales and an appropriate background. Although this involved him in
some anachronism and improbability, he was able to keep such defects
inconspicuous and to add much that was picturesque and effective. Sev-
eral important tales included material which Ovid had used elsewhere in
his poetry and was unwilling to repeat. He avoided the difficulty often
by omitting circumstances, and in this he was not always successful.
The tales of Medea in Corinth and of Theseus became fragmentary, and,
for readers not familiar with the subject, other tales were sometimes
obscure. But Ovid tried also to introduce new circumstances -- nearly
always with happy effect. More often than in the previous books Ovid
had occasion to tell differently an incident which he had used earlier in
his Metamorphoses, and in meeting this difficulty he displayed astonish-
ing skill.
In elaborating his material, Ovid borrowed much from the chief
authors of the past. The Iliad afforded valuable suggestions for several
tales. The Odyssey, Theocritus, and Horace proved of great service in
the tale of Aeson. Thucydides and Lucretius contributed important
material to the story of the Myrmidons. And for many of Ovid's best
tales Vergil was invaluable. To borrow so much from his greatest prede-
cessors was to invite dangerous comparisons. But Ovid's boldness was
justified by his success. In selecting his material he judged well not only
its merit but its appropriateness for his own purpose, and often he im-
proved what he took. He varied and sometimes bettered it also by many
inventions of his own, which included not only three lesser transforma-
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? BOOK SEVEN
tions in the tale of Aeson but also in the very important soliloquy of
Medea.
After Ovid's time the Seventh Book influenced a great number of
Roman authors. They found especially valuable Ovid's account of magic
and pestilence. For medieval authors, the chief interest lay in the tales
about Medea, but the story of Procris was appreciated, especially by
Chaucer. Almost the entire book had a wide and important influence
among authors of the Renaissance. After this period it attracted much
less attention. But in the nineteenth century, several English poets re-
told the tale of Cephalus and Procris, and Hawthorne profited by the
almost forgotten tales of aconite and of Theseus.
Among authors who rarely noticed the Metamorphoses, the Seventh
Book attracted Manilius and Rabelais. It was used often by Dante,
Ariosto, and Milton. Seneca, Lucan, and Calderon found it of great
value. But probably the most memorable effect appeared in the work of
Shakespeare.
The tales of Medea in Colchis, of Aurora, and of Procris attracted
a number of modern painters. The tale of Procris was the earliest theme
of Russian opera.
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? BOOK EIGHT
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? CONTENTS OF BOOK EIGHT
PAGE
King Minos and Scylla . . . . . . . . 157
The Minotaur and Ariadne . . . . . . 168
Icarus and Perdix . . . . . . . . 178
Meleager and Atalanta . . . . . . . . 184
The Echinades and Perimele . . . . . . . 198
Philemon and Baucis . . . . . . . . . 200
Proteus . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Erysichthon . . . . . . . . . . 211
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
King Minos and Scylla
After describing briefly the return of Cephalus to Athens, Ovid
turned to Minos and his invasion of Attica. Aeschylus in the Choephorae
had spoken of him as attacking Megara, near the head of the Saronic
Gulf, and had observed that Nisus was king of the city. The Manual
added that Nisus was a brother of Aegeus and that Minos attacked
Megara in the course of his war with Athens. It stated further that
Alcathoiis, a son of Pelops, had rebuilt and fortified the city. Ovid fol-
lowed the Manual, referring to Megara as the city of Alcathoiis. The
traditional account of the siege included two ideas common in folklore.
The first was an idea of the supernatural importance of the hair.
Popular tales of many countries have assumed that in certain cases a
man's soul dwelt in the hairs of his head. Sometimes it was thought of as
residing equally in all the hairs, much oftener as restricted to a small
group of them or to a single hair. These popular tales are to the follow-
ing effect. A certain man, whose soul resided in the hair of his head, was
immune to ordinary injuries and for a long time was able to perform re-
markable feats. At last an enemy deprived him of his magic hair and
so put him to death. Ariosto told of a magician Orrilo, who recovered
easily and quickly from the most formidable wounds, but died immedi-
ately when Astolfo cut off his fateful hair.
In this case, all the magician's hairs had the same appearance,
although only one of them contained the soul. Usually the part of the
hair which was magical was distinguished by some remarkable color. In
the lore of ancient Greece the magic hair of King Pterelaiis of Taphus
was golden, and that of King Nisus was purple. Accounts varied as to
whether Nisus had a number of magic hairs or only one. Aeschylus men-
tioned a lock, the Manual, a single hair. Vergil and Ovid, although in-
definite, seem to have agreed with the Manual. According to most pop-
ular tales, the existence of such hair was kept secret. In the story of
Nisus it appears to have been a matter of general knowledge. Almost
always in popular tales the owner of magic hair was betrayed by a
woman. This was true both of Pterelaiis and of Nisus. But these two
stories were unusual in having king and country perish together.
This fact associated them with another idea common to many pop-
ular tales of countries lying near the eastern end of the Mediterranean
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK EIGHT
Sea. The purpose of such tales ordinarily was to account for some local
name, such as the Maiden's Castle. And the stories were to the follow-
ing effect. An enemy laid siege to a certain fortified place and for a long
while was unable to take it. The commander of the garrison had a daugh-
ter, who knew where the defenses were weak.
She betrayed the secret,
and her treason is commemorated by the name of the locality. A typical
example was the myth of the Roman girl Tarpeia, whose treachery was
said to have been commemorated by the name of the Tarpeian Cliff.
Stories of this kind were localized at various points within an area ex-
tending from Mesopotamia westwards to Gergovia in Auvergne. They
entered literature with the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers (1300 B. C. )
and continued to appear as late as the medieval Gesta Romanorum.
Among them was the Greek myth of Nisus, for the walled city of Megara
was betrayed by his daughter, Scylla.
In these tales of the treacherous maiden, her motive sometimes was
avarice. The Greek girl Arne betrayed Siphnus in order to obtain a sum
of gold (cf. Bk. 7), and the Roman Tarpeia betrayed the Capitoline Hill
in the hope of obtaining the bracelets of the besieging Sabines. Scylla
originally was thought to have been treacherous for a similar reason. By
offering her a gold necklace and other gifts, said Aeschylus, King Minos
persuaded her to betray her father. While Nisus slept, she stole the fatal
hairs, and he died.
More often in Greek tales of this kind, the maiden fell in love with
the leader of the besiegers. According to the early epic called Returns,
an Amazon named Antiope loved Theseus and delivered her native
city into his hands. Alexandrian authors told many stories of maidens
treacherous for the sake of love. The Manual noted how the princess,
Comaetho, because of her passion for Amphitryon, betrayed King
Pterelaiis. Parthenius added three new examples. Two of them were
concerned with the mythical heroines Leucophyre and Pisidice, the
third with a certain Nanis who betrayed Sardis to Cyrus the Great of
Persia. Parthenius told also an inverted form of the usual tale. A young
man named Diognetus, who was a leader of the besiegers, fell in love with
Polycrite, daughter of the commander of the garrison, and for her sake
betrayed his fellow soldiers into the hands of the defenders. * Scylla, too,
was thought to have been impelled by love. A Greek tragedy, which is
now lost, presented the tale in this form. The Manual recorded the new
*Medea and Ariadne were guilty of treason on account of love, but their treachery
did not involve the safety of the country.
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
version as follows. Scylla, falling in love with Minos, pulled out the
fatal hair. Nisus died, and Minos captured the city.
In popular folk tales the besieger was willing to profit by the girl's
treachery. Usually he gave her encouragement, and, if the motive was
love, he was willing to promise marriage. But he secretly despised her.
In the end he withheld the expected reward, and usually he put the
treacherous girl to death. Amphitryon slew Comaetho with his own
hands. Achilles ordered his soldiers to crush Pisidice with stones, and
Tatius had the Sabines bury Tarpeia under their heavy shields. Accord-
ing to the Manual, Minos had Scylla fastened to the stern of his ship and
dragged through the water until she drowned. Statius added that he left
her body on the promontory which afterwards was called in her memory
Scyllaeum.
Parthenius in his Metamorphoses retold the story of Scylla at some
length. His account, which is now lost, appears to have introduced a
number of important changes. In the Hippolytw Euripides had shown
an unscrupulous nurse aiding and abetting Phaedra's courtship of the
hero. This idea had influenced many Alexandrian tales of illicit love.
Parthenius had shown Pisidice sending her nurse to Achilles, in order to
arrange for his marrying her and for the betrayal of the city. Par-
thenius imagined that Scylla caused her nurse to make a similar agree-
ment with Minos. Evidently he supposed that such a marriage would
have been possible. The Manual had indicated that Minos had been mar-
ried previous to this time, for he was the father of Androgeus, but that
he was not yet the husband of Pasiphae. Parthenius assumed that he was
a widower when he laid siege to Megara. He made a change in the cir-
cumstances of the theft. Instead of pulling out the magic hair, Scylla
cut it with a pair of shears.
Accompanied by her nurse, she visited Minos and offered him the
fatal hair. Appalled at such treachery, he refused to take it. He thought
her capable of any crime and ordered her to be tied to the rudder of his
ship. But Scylla did not drown. The history of her ancestors recorded a
famous transformation of Procne to a swallow and of the hostile Tereus
to a hawk (cf. Philomela, Bk. 6). Parthenius invented a similar trans-
formation of Scylla and Nisus. The daughter turned into a bird with a
purple crest, called the Ciris (keiris) from her crime of shearing the hair
(keirem). The father became a sea eagle and still shows his resentment
by continually pursuing her.
Alluding to this version of the tale, a Pompeiian mural represented
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK EIGHT
Scylla, accompanied by her nurse, as offering the hair and Minos as
turning away in horror. Parthenius appears to have influenced all Ro-
man allusions to the myth. Roman authors often accepted his idea that
Scylla became a bird, but Hyginus declared that she became a fish.
According to the original account, Nisus died as soon as he lost the
fatal hair. During Alexandrian times another idea entered into the
story. In folk tales of many countries, certain men were said to have
possessed remarkable strength and prestige while their hair remained
long but to have lost it as soon as the hair was cut. This idea occurred
in the Old Testament narrative of Samson, in many tales of magicians,
and in a modern Greek story of a king with three magic golden hairs. It
even affected the tenure of early French kings, for Pepin shaved the head
of Childeric Third in order to depose him. Parthenius appears to have
thought that Nisus survived the theft of his hair but lost his ability to
defend Megara and perished when the city was taken. Later authors
mentioned the idea explicitly.
Vergil, in his early poem called The Ciris, retold the story at some
length. Although influenced by Parthenius, he added many new circum-
stances, and, wherever he could, he made the tale favorable to Scylla.
Vergil assigned a different cause for the war. Minos, he said, was trying
to recapture the seer Polyidus, who had taken refuge in Megara. Vergil
gave a more detailed account of Nisus. The purple hair grew on the
crown of his head, and all his other hairs were white. For the infatua-
tion of Scylla, Vergil imagined a supernatural cause. After unwittingly
profaning a temple of Juno, the girl denied that she had done so. The
offended goddess persuaded Cupid to shoot her with a golden arrow.
Without indicating how Scylla first became aware of Minos, Vergil gave
a long account of her desperate behavior. He implied that, as a neces-
sary condition of the marriage, Minos demanded the fatal hair.
Although Nisus had guards stationed outside the palace, he feared
no danger from within, and he left his bed chamber unprotected. As
Scylla paused before his door, trying to gather sufficient boldness for
the attempt, the nurse overtook her and persuaded her first to see
whether they could induce her father to arrange for the marriage. Find-
ing that Nisus refused to do this, they resorted to theft. With the fall
of the city Minos presumably recaptured the seer Polyidus.
Since Minos had no further business in Attica, Vergil imagined that
he immediately prepared to sail for Crete. Minos gave orders that Scylla
should be tied to the rear of his ship. Apparently she was not fastened
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
to the rudder but to the topmost part of the stern. Sometimes she was
raised high in air, as a wave lifted the vessel; and at other times she sank
to the level of the water, as the stern went down into the succeeding
trough of the sea.
While the fleet bore Scylla away from her native land, Vergil showed
her uttering a long complaint. She reproached Minos for disregard of
his promise to marry her, for ingratitude, and for failure to appreciate
her sacrifices in his behalf. Indifferent to her reproaches, Minos con-
tinued down the Saronic Gulf and out into the Aegaean Sea. Vergil gave
an impressive account of the voyage. After passing the island of Seri-
phus, the girl fainted.
The goddess Amphitrite took pity on her and transformed her into
a beautiful bird, the Ciris. Vergil described the change in detail. This
bird, he said, inhabits lonely rocks and cliffs along the shore. Jupiter,
he continued, was not willing to have the traitress fare better than her
pious father, and he transformed Nisus into a variety of his favorite
bird, the eagle. Vergil ended with a description of the manner in which
the sea eagle pursues the ciris through the air. In the Georgics he re-
peated the description, noting the spectacle as a sign of fair weather.
Some Alexandrian author had identified Scylla, daughter of Nisus,
with Scylla, the monster of the Calabrian shore. Vergil in his Sixth
Eclogue accepted the innovation. Propertius followed his example, and
Ovid alluded to the idea repeatedly in his amatory poems. But in the Ciris
Vergil rejected the idea, and in the Metamorphoses Ovid too rejected it,
because he desired to tell a different tale of Scylla, the monster (Bks.
13-14).
Propertius took great interest in the tale of Scylla. In one place he
associated it with the tradition that after death Minos became a judge
of the souls entering Hades. By punishing the traitress, he said, Minos
showed justice to his enemies and acted in a manner worthy of his future
position as a judge in the Lower World. In another poem the tale of
Scylla suggested to Propertius a new myth of Tarpeia.
He imagined Tarpeia in love with the Sabine leader Tatius. Pro-
pertius gave throughout the tale a very unfavorable impression of his
heroine. The chief events were as follows. Tarpeia was in the habit of
leaving Rome to draw water from a secluded spring. During one of these
excursions she saw Tatius engaged in warlike exercises on the plain. Ap-
parently he was on horseback and in full armor but had his face uncov-
ered. Impressed with his fine features and beautiful armor, she fell vio-
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? METAMORPHOSES -- BOOK EIGHT
lently in love with him. Later Propertius represented her as considering
her fate in a long soliloquy. She thought of leaving Rome, in order to
live always as a captive within view of Tatius. Then she thought of be-
traying the city. She reflected that Tatius was worthy to rule and that
his cause was just. She hoped to become his queen and to bring her
country peace. Choosing an appropriate hour, she visited the enemy,
obtained his promise to marry her, and showed him the unguarded path.
In the MetaTtwrphoses Ovid profited much by the work of his Alex-
andrian and Roman predecessors. For the background of the tale he
drew on the Manual. Although this was convenient both for Ovid and
for his readers, it brought several disadvantages. Following the Manual,
Ovid described Minos as a son of Jupiter and Europa (Bk. 2). Even in
the Manual this idea had made the chronology difficult. According to
the plan of the Metamorphoses, it would have put Minos at least four
generations earlier than the time of Scylla.
The Manual had supposed further that after the fall of Megara,
Pasiphae became the wife of Minos and was guilty of unnatural lust for
a bull and that many years later Theseus arrived in Athens. Ovid used
all these incidents, but felt obliged to reverse their order and to shorten
the interval of time. Already he had put first the arrival of Theseus in
Athens. He imagined the scandalous conduct of Pasiphae as occurring
immediately afterward, so that it was a little earlier than the siege of
Megara and even was known to Scylla. This idea added something to
the effect of Scylla's reproaches. But it was wholly inconsistent with her
plan to become the wife of Minos. Ovid lessened the evil by not mention-
ing Pasiphae until very late in the story. With the Manual he agreed
that for a long time the Cretans besieged Megara in vain, and he made
the period five lunar months.
Most of the incidents Ovid chose skilfully from the accounts of
Vergil and Propertius. He followed Propertius entirely in his hostile atti-
tude towards Scylla. Vergil suggested the preliminary circumstances.
He had noted that Apollo gave the stone in the city walls a magic prop-
erty ; so that, if any one struck it, the sound was musical, like notes of a
lyre. Although Vergil seems to have meant that the quality belonged
only to the one stone on which Apollo had reposed his lyre, the wording
suggested that it belonged to many stones, if not to the entire wall.
Vergil had noted later that Megara was provided with towers command-
ing a wide view of the country outside. Deftly combining these two ideas,
Ovid made them an essential part of the story. Before the time of the
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? KING MINOS AND SCYLLA
war, he said, Scylla had been accustomed to ascend a tower on the walls
and to amuse herself by dropping pebbles on the tuneful stones below.
During the siege she continued to frequent this tower and so had occa-
sion to notice events of the war. In the Heroic Age, warriors appear to
have fought almost entirely with spears and swords. It was possible to
watch their combats in relative safety and at close range. According to
the Iliad, Helen, standing on the walls of Troy, easily identified the
leaders of the besieging Greeks. Although Ovid spoke of the Cretans as
having their famous bows, he too imagined that it was possible for Scylla
in her tower to observe the military operations at close range and to rec-
ognize the Cretan leaders, including Minos.
According to Propertius, Tarpeia, seeing Tatius engaged in war-
like exercises, fell in love with him. Ovid imagined a similar cause for the
passion of Scylla. But he supposed that Minos was engaged in actual
combat and that Scylla observed him on a number of occasions and be-
came enamored more gradually. Propertius had spoken of Tarpeia as
admiring the skill with which Tatius handled his weapons while riding
and as being enamored of his fine features. Ovid elaborated the idea ef-
fectively. Scylla admired the crested helmet of Minos and his golden
shield. She marvelled at his handling of the spear. If he bent the bow,
she likened him to Apollo. And when he rode without his helmet, clad in
purple and borne on a milk-white horse with gorgeous trappings, she was
almost mad with delight. In Anacreontic lyrics the lover often envied the
good fortune of some ornament or object of dress, which continually was
in contact with his lady. Scylla envied the javelins and the reins, which
where touched by the hands of Minos.
The idea that Tatius and Minos rode on horseback was more pic-
turesque than probable. During the Heroic Age the Greeks inhabited
rough, mountainous country, and they seem to have lacked a good breed
of horses. The Iliad noted how Adrastus was saved by the fleetness of
his horse, Arion, and spoke of a performer who drove four horses and
leaped deftly from one to another; and the Odyssey told how the ship-
wrecked Ulysses rode a plank as a horseman rides a steed.
