Reading Ovid in Sarasota.
The First Creation * * *
As Io tells her own story in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, she rejected his whispered nighttime advances until the oracles caused her own father to drive her out into the fields of Lerna. There, Zeus covered her with clouds to hide her from the eyes of his jealous wife, Hera, who nonetheless came to investigate. In a vain attempt to hide his crimes, Zeus turned himself into a white cloud and transformed Io into a beautiful white heifer. Hera was not fooled. She demanded the heifer as a present. (Wikipedia)
The lore involving Io is huge, as the entry on her at Theoi reveals. She was a Naiad, a daughter of the river Inachus. He supposedly introduced the worship of Hera to Argos.
According to Meta. 2.401ff, it was Jupiter (the Roman Zeus) who took the form of Artemis/Diana so that he might evade his wife Juno’s detection, forcing himself upon Callisto while she was separated from Diana and the other nymphs. Her pregnant condition was discovered some months later while bathing with Diana and her fellow nymphs.Commissioned by Philip II of Spain, Titian's painting of this story from Ovid, and another of Diana and Actaeon, are now for sale in Scotland. NPR has the story here. Ovid is everywhere.
Upon this, Diana was enraged and expelled Callisto from the group, and subsequently she gave birth to Arcas. Juno then took the opportunity to avenge her wounded pride and transformed the nymph into a bear.
Sixteen years later Callisto, still a bear, encountered her son Arcas hunting in the forest. Just as Arcas was about to kill his own mother with his javelin, Jupiter averted the tragedy by placing mother and son amongst the stars as Ursa Major and Minor, respectively.
Juno, enraged that her attempt at revenge had been frustrated, appealed to Oceanus that the two might never meet his waters, thus providing a poetic explanation for their circumpolar positions. Wikipedia
We began to see that there's no substitute for the words of the author. Fortunately thanks to the Net, we have free access to them. The Perseus site can help, as you can have the hyperlinked Latin text on one side, and an English translation (Golding or More) on the other.Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum
unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe,
quem dixere chaos: (Bk. 1. 5-7)Before the Sea and Lande were made, and Heaven that all doth hide,
In all the worlde one onely face of nature did abide,
Which Chaos hight, (Golding)
Pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram,
85os homini sublime dedit, caelumque videre
iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus. (84-86)He gave to Man a stately looke replete with majestie.
And willde him to behold the Heaven wyth countnance cast on hie,
To marke and understand what things were in the starrie skie.
METAMORPHOSES INDEX1. Creation 1. Phaethon 1. Cadmus & the Dragon 1. The Minyades 1. Perseus & Phineus 1. Arachne & Minerva 1. Jason & Medea 1. Minos & Scylla 1. Hercules & Achelous 1. Orpheus & Eurydice 1. Death of Orpheus 1. Agamemnon at Aulis 1. Ajax & Ulysses 1. Scylla & Circe 9. Iphis & Anaxarete 10. Romulus1. Myscelus, Croton |
It was no longer an angry sea, since the king of the oceans putting aside his three-pronged spear calmed the waves, and called sea-dark Triton, showing from the depths his shoulders thick with shells, to blow into his echoing conch and give the rivers and streams the signal to return.
He lifted the hollow shell that coils from its base in broad spirals, that shell that filled with his breath in mid-ocean makes the eastern and the western shores sound.
So now when it touched the god’s mouth, and dripping beard, and sounded out the order for retreat, it was heard by all the waters on earth and in the ocean, and all the waters hearing it were checked.
Now the sea has shorelines, the brimming rivers keep to their channels, the floods subside, and hills appear. Earth rises, the soil increasing as the water ebbs, and finally the trees show their naked tops, the slime still clinging to their leaves.
Although he lacks the perceived gravitas of Homer, Sophocles, or his fellow Roman Virgil, Ovid is perhaps the most consistently influential and popular writer of the classical tradition.
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The 14th-century Antiovidianus, written in Italy, asserted that Ovid, together with his books, deserved to burn in the fires of Hell. [Dante had a different view - Inf. IV].
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In Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) the heroine is accosted by a middle-aged admirer who asks whether she has read Ovid. He then demonstrates his own familiarity with the poet's works by drinking out of her wineglass, an intimate gesture that Ovid recommends in the Ars amatoria as a surefire seduction technique.
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The Ovidian persona, urbane and opportunistic, smoothly accommodates itself to the idiom of the modern metrosexual male.
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Most would agree that the Metamorphoses (ca. 8 CE) is Ovid's masterpiece. Ovid called it a carmen perpetuum, a continuous song. This is a reference to its seamless and unbroken quality but might also function as a description of its Nachleben, or afterlife. Ovid's reputation may have had its ups and downs, but the Metamorphoses has been a persistent presence in post-classical Western culture. Its central position is reflected in the quality of its many important translations . . ..
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Perhaps part of Ovid's enduring appeal is the way his poetry combines themes that we sense are universal and unchanging with a dynamic of change and dislocation that reflects the geographical, temporal, and cultural distance between our world and his own.
