Oikoi in the Arician Grove

By now we're used to the fact that anything can happen in the Metamorphoses. This "fact" shouldn't inure us to the singularly strange transitions and juxtapositions woven into the text, because we are probably meant to be perplexed by them. The rapid reader will find sheer arbitrariness in a segue that moves swiftly from the end of a 400+ line speech by an ancient Greek philosopher to a telegraphic note on the death of Numa, to the transformation of his consort Egeria, to the sudden intrusion of the voice of a figure who claims to be the dead Hippolytus, now restored and assisting Diana in Aricia under the new identity of Virbius. And that fast reader's reaction would be understandable. But perhaps there's more to it.

For purposes of making some headway here, note that Ovid has turned from the voice of Pythagoras to the texts of several of Euripides' tragedies -- the Orestes, Iphigeneia at Tauris and Hippolytus. These plays deal with the fates of two of the great Greek houses (oikoi) -- of Atreus and of Theseus. (Of course the Oresteia of Aeschylus is involved as well.)

Orestes and Pylades kill Aegisthus

These two tales couldn't be more different, and their differences are worth pondering. For example, Agamemnon's son Orestes (who was sent to live in Phocis after his mother, Clytemnestra, begins her involvement with Aegisthus) is ordered by the gods to kill his mother. Pursued by the Erinyes, he goes insane before being restored, judged not guilty, cleansed (by nine men at Troezen), and elevated to succeed his father as ruler of Mycenae. He also recovers Hermione, daughter of Helen and Paris, who was betrothed to him by Tyndareus, but who, after he went insane, was given by Menelaos to Neoptolemus.


In a nutshell, the concern with Orestes is with intra-familial murder, revenge, justice, and the recovering of kingly succession. The kingdom passes from Agamemnon to his son, but not in quite the ceremonial and orderly fashion most states would prefer.

Athena, Orestes, Priestesses at Delphi

The house of Theseus is not so much of a house. Through his human father Aegeus (who shares paternity with Poseidon), Theseus can trace his line to Erichthonius, the allegedly autochthonous early king of Athens. Theseus had a somewhat peculiar marriage with the Amazon Hippolyta (the only Amazon ever to wed any man), and Hippolytus was their child. After the death of Hippolyta, Hippolytus was sent to live in Troezen with his great-grandfather, Pittheus, while Theseus married Minos's daughter Phaedra, Ariadne's sister. Phaedra's unquenchable desire for Hippolytus leads to his brutal death. She lies to Theseus, claiming Hippolytus had assaulted her, and Theseus uses one of three wishes granted him by Poseidon to cause the death of his son.

The figure of a bull appears in a giant wave, frightening Hippolytus's horses, and fulfilling the apparent meaning of his name, which can mean "unleasher of horses," or, "destroyed by horses."

So, two stories of royal houses, fathers and sons, things going awry. In one, a son kills his natural mother; in the other, a stepmother brings about the death of the king's son. In one, order is restored, in the other, the house ends, but the son has a curious afterlife.

What brings these tales together in the Arician grove of "Oresteian Diana"? Why, after listening for quite some time to the voice of Pythagoras, do we suddenly out of the blue hear Hippolytus speaking to Egeria? What is at stake in this strange juxtaposition, and in the admittedly in-credible tale of how this tragic figure became Virbius? (Virgil's version of that tale is told in Aeneid 7).

To get a sense of the background, it might be useful to look at two of Ovid's Heroides in connection with this part of Metamorphoses 15: The letter of Hermione to Orestes, and the letter of Phaedra to Hippolytus.

Ignorance at Aulis

Metamorphoses 12 opens with the word nescius - "not knowing," "ignorant." The situation is that Priam is unaware that his son, Aesacus, is not dead, but caught in a constant repetitive plunge to a desired death that is defeated, as he's transformed into a diving bird, perhaps a kingfisher. Hektor and other brothers mourn at an empty tomb.

Ovid quickly cuts away from the Trojan royals to the scene at Aulis, where Calchas the seer has made it known that Artemis is angry, and a virgin, Iphigenia, must be sacrificed before the winds will allow the Greeks to depart for Troy. During the sacrifice, a snake appears:

when the ancient altar was alive with the kindled flames, The Greeks saw a dark-green snake sliding into a plane tree that stood near to where they had begun the sacrifice. There was a nest with eight young birds in the crown of the tree, and these the serpent seized and swallowed in its eager jaws, together with the mother bird, who circled her doomed fledglings.

Calchas reads this as a sign - it foretells that the Greeks will defeat Troy, but the labor will be long. At that, the serpent hardens into stone:

ille, ut erat virides amplexus in arbore ramos,
fit lapis et signat serpentis imagine saxum.

In a beautiful, pared phrase, Ovid says an initially reluctant Agamemnon was won over to sacrificing his beloved daughter:

postquam pietatem publica causa
rexque patrem vicit

The king's public cause conquered the father's love.

But during the sacrifice, there seems to be a switch:

as Iphigenia stood, among her weeping attendants, before the altar, to surrender her innocent blood, the goddess was vanquished, and veiled their eyes in mist, and, in the midst of the rites and confusion of the sacrifice, and the cries of the suppliants, they say she substituted a hind for the Mycenean girl.

Sacrifice of Iphigenia

The tale is told in terms of conquests: The father is conquered (vicit) by the king; the goddess is vanquished (victa) by the innocent blood of the girl. Artemis takes advantage of the confusion, the disorder (turba) of the scene, substituting hind for girl. Or so "they say."

Two things to note: This opening of book 12 begins and ends with a parent in a state of ignorance regarding the survival of a child. Aesacus and Iphigenia live on, but outside of the possible awareness of their fathers.

Within this ring structure of ignorance, a prophet reads a sign that seems to contain future knowledge. His reading is followed by a hardening of the sign. The serpent becomes an image of a serpent, much as Medusa's head had turned coral and Atlas and quite a few other entities into self-images. Meanwhile, the hubbub of the sacrifice leaves Agamemnon in the dark regarding the sacrifice he had just ordered, and we're left with a rumor about Iphigenia and a placated goddess.

The confusion leads neatly into the next scene, the house of Rumor, where confusion, murmur, and ignorance abound.

Iphigenie

The sceptre of Agamemnon

The descendents of Tantalos via Pelops lead directly to Homeric epic and Greek tragedy.

Here's how Homer traces the line of Pelops through the sceptre of Agamemnon, (Iliad 2. 100 ff trans. Lattimore):

Powerful Agamemnon stood up holding the sceptre Hephaistos had wrought him carefully. Hephaistos gave it to Zeus the king, the son of Kronos, and Zeus in turn gave it to the courier Argeiphontes, and lord Hermes gave it to Pelops, driver of horses, and Pelops again gave it to Atreus, the shepherd of the people. Atreus dying left it to Thyetes of the rich flocks, and Thyestes left it in turn to Agamemnon to carry and to be lord of many islands and over all Argos.

According to Theoi, the sceptre was the ancient Greek equivalent of the crown, symbol of kingship. Atreus and Thyestes are here understood to be the sons of Pelops, as in later accounts.

According to Pausanias, the sceptre was the only work of Hephaistos considered authentic in the ancient world:

Poets have sung, and the tradition of men has followed them, that Hephaistos made many works of art, but none is authentic except only the scepter of Agamemnon. Description of Greece 9. 41. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C 2nd A.D.)

Agamemnon holding his sceptre, 400 B.C.