Looking at Envy

Videt intus edentem
vipereas carnes, vitiorum alimenta suorum,
770Invidiam, visaque oculos avertit. At illa
surgit humo pigre semesarumque relinquit
corpora serpentum passuque incedit inerti;
utque deam vidit formaque armisque decoram,
ingemuit vultumque ima ad suspiria duxit.
775Pallor in ore sedet, macies in corpore toto,
nusquam recta acies, livent rubigine dentes,
pectora felle virent, lingua est suffusa veneno.
Risus abest, nisi quem visi movere dolores.
Nec fruitur somno, vigilacibus excita curis,
780sed videt ingratos intabescitque videndo
successus hominum, carpitque et carpitur una,
suppliciumque suum est.

Kline:

Envy could be seen, eating vipers’ meat that fed her venom, and at the sight the goddess averted her eyes. But the other got up slowly from the ground, leaving the half-eaten snake flesh, and came forward with sluggish steps. When she saw the goddess dressed in her armour and her beauty, she moaned and frowned as she sighed. Pallor spreads over her face, and all her body shrivels.

Her sight is skewed, her teeth are livid with decay, her breast is green with bile, and her tongue is suffused with venom. She only smiles at the sight of suffering. She never sleeps, excited by watchful cares. She finds men’s successes disagreeable, and pines away at the sight. She gnaws and being gnawed is also her own punishment.

Note how this passage from Metamorphoses 2 is constructed out of words for seeing (videt), sight (visa), eyes (oculos), and culiminates in a vision of Envy wasting away through seeing (videndo).

Then further consider that Envy is Invidia, i.e., a "looking into" - the first words are in fact videt intus - and we begin to see how the narrative is acting out an act of looking, or not looking (oculos avertit), at a creature who, instead of being fed by the joy of the eye, is consumed by the act of looking. Unlike Aglauros who looked into the casket of Erichthonius, Athena averts her eyes from this snaky creature (recall, the goddess's shield bears the head of Medusa - another being who could not be looked at head-on).

This scene of Athena at the house of Envy, with its psychological "insight," is clearly one of the set pieces that led to a host of medieval and Renaissance imitators -- one thinks of allegories even up to Spenser's Fairie Queen as Ovidian. It also led to the commonplace that Ovid (and other classical works) contained, as the great art historian Émile Mâle put it, "a dim sort of revelation" (see a bit more from Mâle here).

And here is Giotto's vision of Invidia from the Scrovegni Chapel, complete with consuming serpent consumed, fire and moneybag:

Treacherous tongues: Aglauros and the Crow

The tale of the three daughters of Cecrops -- Aglauros, Herse and Pandrosos -- appears twice in Book 2. We first learn, from the crow (Cornix), how Minerva gave a casket to the sisters, admonishing them not to look inside. Aglauros nonetheless opened it, and found an infant (Erisichthon or Erichthonius) and a serpent lying side by side. When Cornix told Minerva that Aglauros had flouted her command, she was angered, and even though the bird had been Minerva's favorite, the goddess turned it forever black.

Curiously, the father, King Cecrops, was half-man, half-serpent (or half-fish), and a key figure of legend, since he not only founded Athens, but invented marriage, instituted the worship of Zeus, and brought reading, writing, and ceremonial burial among other basic cultural elements to his people.

The three daughters re-appear a bit later, in the story about Hermes coming to pay court to Herse, only to be extorted by, you guessed it, Aglauros, who demands a large sum of gold in return for acquiescing to the god's desire for her sister. This leads to Ovid's portrait of Envy, or Invidia, which became the reference and touchstone for authors ever after:

There saw she Envie sit within fast gnawing on the flesh

Of Snakes and Todes, the filthie foode that keepes hir vices fresh.

It lothde hir to beholde the sight. Anon the Elfe arose

And left the gnawed Adders flesh, and slouthfully she goes

With lumpish laysure like a Snayle, and when she saw the face

Of Pallas and hir faire attire adournde with heavenly grace,

She gave a sigh, a sorie sigh, from bottome of hir heart.

Hir lippes were pale, hir cheekes were wan, and all hir face was swart:

Hir bodie leane as any Rake. She looked eke askew.

Hir teeth were furde with filth and drosse, hir gums were waryish blew.

The working of hir festered gall had made hir stomacke greene.

And all bevenimde was hir tongue. No sleepe hir eyes had seene.

Continuall Carke and cankred care did keepe hir waking still:

Of laughter (save at others harmes) the Helhound can no skill.

It is against hir will that men have any good successe,

And if they have, she frettes and fumes within hir minde no lesse

Than if hir selfe had taken harme. (Golding)

We last encountered Aglauros and her life blighted by Envy in Purgatorio 14. By the way, both her sisters' names mean "dew," but I can't find a convincing meaning for "Aglauros" - suggestions gratefully accepted.

There's a splendid meditation upon Envy by A.S. Byatt here, and here's another by Joseph Epstein.