Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses by Ovid (8)

Ovid's Metamorphoses opens with a cosmogony: a shapeless Chaos is organized by an unnamed divine creator into the four elements, the heavens, and the zones of earth, culminating in the creation of man, who alone among creatures is given an upright face to gaze at the stars. Four successive ages follow — gold, silver, bronze, and iron — tracing humanity's decline from innocence into violence, greed, and impiety. Angered by human wickedness, especially the cannibal king Lycaoen (transformed into a wolf), Jove calls a council of the gods and resolves to destroy mankind, first considering fire, then sending a flood that drowns the world. Only Deucalion and Pyrrha survive on Parnassus; consulting Themis's oracle, they repopulate the earth by throwing stones that become men and women. Apollo slays the serpent Python, then pursues the nymph Daphne, who is transformed into the laurel tree as she flees him. Jove, as a stream of stories unfolds, seduces Ioe and turns her into a heifer to hide her from Juno, who sets the many-eyed Argus to guard her; Mercury kills Argus (recounting the tale of Pan and Syrinx along the way), and Juno sends a Fury to torment Ioe until Jove restores her human form on the banks of the Nile. Ioe's son Epaphus taunts Phaeton, son of Phoebus, over his claim to divine parentage; Phaeton begs to drive his father's sun-chariot, loses control, and scorches the earth until Jove strikes him down with a thunderbolt; his sisters mourn him into poplar trees weeping amber, and his kinsman Cycnus becomes a swan. Jove, surveying the world, seduces the huntress Calistho, whom Juno turns into a bear; her son Arcas nearly kills her before Jove sets them both among the stars, further enraging Juno. The crow and the raven tell their own transformation tales to explain Apollo's killing of his pregnant beloved Coronis, whose unborn son — hailed as a future healer — is saved and given to Chiron; Chiron's daughter Ocyrrhoe is turned into a mare for prophesying too freely. Mercury steals Battus's trust and turns him to stone, then falls for Herse, whose sister Aglauros is turned to stone by envy and Minerva's curse. Jove dispatches Mercury to Sidon, and Cadmus, searching for his sister, founds Thebes after slaying a sacred serpent and sowing its teeth, which spring up as armed men. Cadmus's descendants suffer further misfortunes: his grandson Actaeon is turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds after glimpsing Diana bathing; Jove's affair with Semele, tricked by Juno into demanding to see Jove in his full glory, leaves her incinerated, though her son Bacchus is saved and sewn into Jove's thigh. Tiresias, blinded by Juno for a judgment on male versus female pleasure, gains prophetic sight instead and foretells the fates of Narcissus and Pentheus. Narcissus spurns the nymph Echo and, falling in love with his own reflection, wastes away into the narcissus flower. Pentheus rejects Bacchus's worship despite warnings, hears the sailor Acoetes' tale of Bacchus's transformative powers, and is torn apart by his own frenzied mother and aunts among the Bacchantes. The Minyeian sisters, who scorn Bacchus's rites, tell each other stories instead — Pyramus and Thisbe's tragic love, the loves of the Sun (Mars and Venus's exposure, Leucothoe, and Clytie turned toward the sun as a flower), and Salmacis and the son of Hermes and Venus, bathing in whose spring enervates him — before being transformed into bats. Juno, enraged by Bacchus's triumphs, drives Ino and Athamas mad through the Fury Tisiphone; Athamas kills his son Learchus, and Ino leaps into the sea with her remaining child, both becoming sea deities, while her mourning attendants are turned to stone or birds. Cadmus and his wife, overwhelmed by grief, are themselves transformed into serpents. Perseus, flying with Medusa's severed head, turns Atlas into a mountain, rescues Andromeda from a sea monster and marries her, then defeats her jealous rejected suitor Phineus and his allies by exposing them to Medusa's petrifying gaze, recounting along the way how he obtained the Gorgon's head. At Mount Helicon, Minerva hears the Muses' account of their singing contest with the boastful daughters of Pierus, who told of the gods' flight from the giant Typhon. The Muse Calliope's winning song narrates Pluto's abduction of Proserpine, Ceres' grieving search (including the transformation of Cyane, Ascalaphus, and a boy turned into a lizard), the pact dividing Proserpine's year between earth and the underworld, and Arethusa's own transformation into a spring while fleeing the river god Alpheus. The defeated daughters of Pierus are turned into chattering magpies. Minerva then punishes the weaver Arachne, who dared to rival her in a weaving contest depicting the gods' scandalous love affairs, transforming her into a spider. Proud Niobe boasts that her fourteen children make her superior to the goddess Latona, who sends Apollo and Diana to kill all of Niobe's children; Niobe herself turns to eternal weeping stone. Related tales follow: the Lycia peasants turned into frogs for denying Latona water, and the satyr flayed by Apollo after losing a musical contest on the pipe, his tears forming the river Marsya. The Thracian king Tereus marries Procne, then rapes her sister Philomela and cuts out her tongue to silence her; Philomela weaves the truth into a tapestry, and the sisters take savage revenge by killing and serving Tereus his own son Itys, after which all three are transformed into birds. Boreas, the north wind, abducts and marries Orithyia, fathering the winged twins Calais and Zethes, who join the Argonauts' voyage in search of the golden fleece. Sailing onward, the Argonauts come upon Phineus, old and sightless, tormented by endless hunger, from whom the sons of Boreas drive away the birds that plague him, and the ship presses on until it reaches the banks of the swift river Phasis.

By Ovid · First published 8 · Genre: Epic Poetry, Mythology, Transformation Fiction · 15 chapters · 106,852 words

First lines

From bodies various form'd, mutative shapes My Muse would sing:Celestial powers give aid! From you those changes sprung,--inspire my pen; Connect each period of my venturous song Unsever'd, from old Chaoes' rude misrule, Till now the world beneath Augustus smiles.

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Books of Transformations · Fables · Horror · Metamorphosis · Narrative poetry · Ovid, 43 BC-18 AD · Poetry · Roman poetry · air · arms · beneath · blood

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