The imponderable lightness of weasels

Book 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses presents some unusual complications even as it repeats a pattern we've seen before -- one that's occurred often in the middle books of the poem (books 6 through 10).

The pattern, which we've noted before, is that the book shifts or breaks in the middle, changing its narrative focus to pursue a new series of tales. In book 7, for example, the arrival of Theseus in Athens puts an end to the lurid history of Medea. Minos enters, and Aeacus and Cephalus then narrate their stories. In book 8, after more Minos material and the tale of Meleager and the Calydonian boar, the book takes up tales told by Achelous and others in his grotto, where the river god is feasting Theseus. And in book 9, after the death and birth of Heracles, we have the central prophecy of Themis, raising the relation of the gods to Fate. The rest of the book is taken up with the two tales of Byblis and Iphis.

Heracles and Achelous

Even as this pattern is developing, other thematic concerns emerge. For example, Book 9 provides multiple perspectives on the relation of language and time, event and narration, or even more broadly, action and reflection. It opens with Achelous (who is asked about his broken horn) telling of his wrestling match with Heracles. It's a tale told after the fact by one of its participants to Theseus and his friends. It's worth noting that we don't see Theseus doing anything heroic, but we do see him, both here and at the end of Book 8, listening to stories that recapture past events. If Heracles is a hero in the mode of pure action (and basically zero reflection), Theseus appears in the Metamorphoses as one whose heroic deeds are mediated in song, but who in this poem mainly contemplates the deeds of others.

At certain moments, the order of cause and effect, or beginning and end, are reversed. We are told of the death of Heracles, (involving a vast pyre on Oeta that burns away the hero's mortal part, leaving a pure immortal form), then of his birth -- a kind of hysteron-proteron (cart before the horse). More interesting still, the hero's very birth is owed to a trick that is attributed to Galanthis, the redhead who is turned into a weasel for it. What's of interest is the nature of the trick. Here's how Alcmene, Heracles' mother, tells it to Iole:

Tortured for seven nights and as many days, worn out with agony, stretching my arms to heaven, with a great cry, I called out to Lucina, and her companion gods of birth, the Nixi. Indeed, she came, but committed in advance (praecorrupta), determined to surrender my life to unjust Juno. She sat on the altar, in front of the door, and listened to my groans. With her right knee crossed over her left, and clasped with interlocking fingers, she held back the birth, She murmured spells (carmina), too, in a low voice, and the spells halted the birth once it began. I laboured, and, maddened, made useless outcries against ungrateful Jove. I wanted to die, and my moans would have moved the flinty rocks. The Theban women who were there, took up my prayers (vota), and gave me encouragement in my pain. 

Tawny-haired Galanthis, one of my servant-girls, was there, humbly born but faithful in carrying out orders, loved by me for the services she rendered. She sensed that unjust Juno was up to something, and, as she was often in and out of the house, she saw the goddess, Lucina, squatting on the altar, arms linked by her fingers, clasping her knees, and said ‘Whoever you are, congratulate the mistress. Alcmena of Argolis is eased (levata), and the prayers (voto) to aid childbirth have been answered.’ 

The goddess with power over the womb leapt up in consternation, releasing her clasped hands: by releasing the bonds, herself, easing (levor) the birth. (Kline trans.)

Alcmene's tale is about weightiness -- heaviness and lightness, both in the physical sense (as Alcmene says, the pondus and gravitas of Heracles in her womb indicated that his father was Zeus), and in the rhetorical sense of uplift or levity.

The quick-witted Galanthis (known in some tellings as Historis) sees the goddess (Eileithyia or Lucina) using spells to hold back the easing of Alcmene's labor, and so she, the handmaid, lies. She tells Lucina that Alcmene's prayers (vota, vows, words that are intended to bring a result) have been answered and that the mother is eased (her womb is levata of Heracles).

This is interesting because the girl is at once pretending that the prayers of the mother and the Theban women have been answered -- i.e., she claims an event has taken place because a verbal request received a response -- when, in fact, no such event has taken place. The carmina of Lucina were actually still effectual. In the contest of two sets of verbal charms, carmina and vota, Lucina's (backed by Hera) were in fact stronger, but since Lucina is outside the door of the room, she can't actually see what's the case. The moment she believes that the child is born, she opens her clenched legs and hands and ceases her spells, and it is then that Heracles is born. Amid all these magical charms, the joke here is that what actually brings about the birth of Heracles is an act of wit. Galanthis lies by saying Heracles is born when he has not been born, and the deception causes Heracles to be born. A false statement of an effect becomes the cause of itself becoming true.

Ovid underscores the fact that he's talking about the impact of words upon events, and about levity, by immediately showing us Galanthis laughing (and reminding us that this is all a tale):

They say Galanthis laughed at the duped goddess. (numine decepto risisse Galanthida fama est). As she laughed, the heaven-born one, in her anger, caught her by the hair, and dragged her down . . .

Weasel (Lat. mustela)

Galanthis's stroke of wit indeed brings about a desired result, but the moment she laughs at Lucina, she brings upon herself a different effect, her metamorphosis into a weasel. The ponderous plight of Alcmene is lightened, but the cost is precisely the loss of gravitas that often accompanies the entrance of grand personages like heroes. Nothing is less conducive to ponderous solemnity than weasels, otters, or badgers.

A few observations:

Instead of hysteron-proteron (cart before horse) we have the transformation of a lie into truth -- in delivering itself, the lie undoes itself and proves true. (This pattern is repeated with Iphis and Ianthe later in the book, as the puer fictus becomes a boy in fact.)

A story, then, need not be a subsequent re-counting, or mimesis, of an event. A clever or mendacious tale in certain situations can generate events, bring them into being, or release obstructions in shattering laughter. What is cleverness (sollertia - a word Ovid likes to use) if not a certain esprit of surprise, changing the complexion and expectation, the rules of the game, in short, that is underway?

Language has this disruptive power. This might seem an insight that was first brought to us in 1951 by the language philosopher J.L. Austin in his How To Do Things with Words. Austin is credited with a "revolutionary" exploration of "speech acts," the capability of language to do things, as when once says "I now pronounce you man and wife." It seems Ovid and the ancients were examining speech acts and the performative power of language somewhat earlier.

To underscore the point that words can do things, Ovid's Alcmene notes a "fact" about weasels:

because her lying mouth helped in childbirth, she gives birth through her mouth, and frequents my house, as before.

If the notion of the speech act ever needed a mascot, what creature more perfect than the animal that "gives birth through her mouth"? This bit of lore had a long afterlife in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages.

It seems that Ovid's concern with poetics -- his metapoetics, if you will -- extends beyond a sense of poetry as mimesis (description, reflection, retelling) to poetry as action (making new, creating, disrupting). The notion of setting in motion a chain of events which is then broken, altered, set on a new course, is not unlike the pattern we have noticed in which, in the middle of a book, one motif or subject is dropped and another begins.

Book 9, which begins the second half of his poem, seems to be particularly preoccupied with the matter of linguistic power. What does it mean, for instance, that the inaugural moment of the greatest action hero of the Greek world was made possible through the quick thinking of a servant girl?

When Heracles grew up, he built a sanctuary to Galinthias and sacrificed to her; the practice of honoring Galinthias in Thebes lasted down to late times.[2] [Galanthis].

I had hoped to get further in examining the structure of Book 9 at a more macro level. I hope to look at that relatively soon.

Eurystheus: Context for Heracles

This entry from Parada about Eurystheus helps place the tale of Heracles in context -- we are reminded that before Hebe answered Heracles' prayer to rejuvenate Iolaus in Metamorphoses 9, Hera had worked to retard the birth of Heracles while speeding up that of Eurystheus. Parada also notes that prior to Heracles and Eurystheus, their fathers were at loggerheads, opening strife between the Perseids (descendants of Io) and the Pelopides (descendants of Atlas) as to who would rule Mycenae:

Through Hera's agency, the goddess Ilithyia retarded Alcmena's delivery, and Eurystheus, who also was a Perseid, was born a seven-month child before Heracles 1. 

Agreement of Zeus and Hera 

Now, the words of gods differ from those of mortals in that neither intention nor deed are divorced from them, a circumstance or quality that some call integrity: thought, word and deed constituting what is integrated in harmonious oneness. That is why Zeus did not go against his own word, although he did seize Ate by her hair, and having whirled her round his head, cast her out from Heaven and down to earth, where she may still be found among men. Instead Zeus, wishing to take care of both word and son, persuaded Hera to agree that while Eurystheus should be king (for being the first born Perseid, as he had proclaimed), Heracles 1 would be allowed to serve him and perform twelve LABOURS, to be prescribed by Eurystheus himself. But that after he had performed them, Heracles 1 should be given immortality. 

Previous differences on earth 

This was the nature of the relationship that Heaven established between Eurystheus and Heracles 1. Before them, however, differences had aroused between Heracles 1's stepfather Amphitryon, and Eurystheus' father Sthenelus 3. The background of it all may be said to be the infiltration of the Pelopides, who succeeded, through Sthenelus 3 and Eurystheus, in replacing the dynasty of the Perseids on the throne of Mycenae. For although Eurystheus was a Perseid on his father's side, he opened the way for the dominance of the Pelopides, his mother being daughter of Pelops 1. The conflict expressed by Eurystheus and Heracles 1 continued after their departure from this world, and only ended when the Perseids, renamed HERACLIDES, returned to the Peloponnesus, and took possession of what they regarded as their legitimate inheritance.

Parada's scheme of the three key ancestors -- Deucalion, Atlas, and Io -- is summarized here. Euripides made the Heraclides the basis of his play about the children of Heracles.

Isis at Byblos

Several versions of the Isis myth are readily found online. Here's one we have by way of Plutarch, which begins from the point when Isis has learned that Set, or Seth, has killed her brother/husband Osiris:

Isis on [hearing] the news, sheared off one of her tresses, and put on a mourning robe, whence the city, even to the present day has the name of “Copto” (I beat the breast). . . . She learnt by inquiry that the chest had been washed up by the sea at a place called Byblus [Byblos], and that the surf had gently laid it under an Erica tree. This Erica, a most lovely plant, growing up very large in a very short time had enfolded, embraced and concealed the coffer within itself. The king of the place being astonished at the size of the plant, and having cut away the clump that concealed the coffer from sight, set the latter up as a pillar to support his roof. 

They tell how Isis having learnt all this by the divine breath of fame, came to Byblus, and sitting down by the side of a spring all dejected and weeping spoke not a word to any other persons, but saluted and made friends of the maid servants of the queen, by dressing their hair for them, and infusing into their bodies a wonderful perfume out of herself; when the queen saw her maids again, she fell a longing to see the stranger, whose hair and whose body breathed of ambrosial perfume; and so she was sent for, [and] becoming intimate with the queen, was made nurse of her infant. The king’s name they say was Malacander, herself some call Astarte, others Sooses, others Neinanoë, who is the same with the Greek Athenais. 

Winged Isis

Isis is said to have suckled the child by putting, instead of her nipple, her finger into his mouth, and by night she singed away the mortal parts of his body. She turned herself into a swallow and flew around the pillar until the queen watched her, and cried out when she saw her child all on fire, and so took away the boy’s immortality.* Then the goddess, manifesting herself, asked for the pillar of the roof, and having removed it with the greatest ease, she cut away the Erica that surrounded it. This plant she wrapped up in a linen cloth, pouring perfume over it, and gave it in charge of the king; and to this day the people of Byblus venerate the wood, which is preserved in the temple of Isis.


*Note the strong resemblance of this part to the story of Demeter in the Homeric Hymn. 

Plutarch

A more detailed version of the story is here.

Osiris Isis Horus

Miletus and children

Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος)

Miletus was son of Apollo and Areia, daughter of Cleochus, of Crete.^[1] When Areia gave birth to her son she hid him at a place where the plant milax* was growing; Cleochus found the child there and named him Miletus after the plant.^[2] Another tradition relates that Miletus' mother by Apollo was Akakallis, the daughter of Minos. Fearing her father's wrath she exposed the child, but Apollo commanded the she-wolves to come down and nurse the child.^[3] Yet another source^[4] calls his mother Deione, and himself by the matronymic Deionides. Finally, one source gives Miletus as the son of Euxantius, himself son of Minos by a Telchinian woman Dexithea.^[2] 

He was loved by both Minos and Sarpedon, but showed preference for the latter, and this became the reason why Sarpedon was expelled from Crete by his brother. Following the advice of Sarpedon, Miletus also left Crete for Samos, then moved to Caria and became the mythical founder and eponym of the city of Miletus.^[1][2][3] Myths further relate that the hero Miletus founded the city only after slaying a giant named Asterius, son of Anax; and that the region known as Miletus was originally called 'Anactoria'.^[5] 

Miletus married either Eidothea, daughter of Eurytus, or Tragasia, daughter of Celaenus, or Cyanee, daughter of the river god Maeander, or Areia, and by her had a son Kaunos (Caunus) and a daughter Byblis, who happened to develop incestous feelings for each other.^{[6][3][7][8][9]}

*Milax = Smilax, a nymph beloved of Crocus, who in turn was beloved of Hermes. Crocus and Smilax are briefly alluded to -- Metamorphoses 4.283.

Byblis
In Greek mythology, Byblis or Bublis (Ancient Greek: Βυβλίς) was a daughter of Miletus. Her mother was either Tragasia, Cyanee, daughter of the river-god Meander, or Eidothea, daughter of King Eurytus of Caria. She fell in love with Caunus, her twin brother.

Caunus
In Greek mythology, Caunus or Kaunos (Ancient Greek: Καῦνος) was a son of Miletus, grandson of Apollo and brother of Byblis.

Caunus became the object of his own sister's passionate love. From some accounts it appears that Caunus was the first to develop the affection towards her;^[1][2] others describe Byblis' feelings as unrequited.^[3][4][5] All sources agree, however, that Caunus chose to flee from home in order to prevent himself from actually committing incest with Byblis, and that she followed him until she was completely exhausted by grief and died (or committed suicide). 

Caunus eventually came to Lycia, where he married the Naiad Pronoe and had by her a son Aegialus. Caunus became king of the land; when he died, Aegialus gathered all the people from scattered settlements in a newly founded city which he named Caunus after his father.^[1]

Miletus

Cities:

Miletus here and here.
Caunus
Byblos

Milesian Tales also here.

The Milesian tale (Milesiaka, in Latin fabula milesiaca, or Milesiae fabula) originates in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic and titillating. M. C. Howatson, in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), voices the traditional view that it is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the Gesta Romanorum, the Decameron of Boccaccio, and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre." 

But Gottskálk Jensson of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, offers a dissenting view or corrective, arguing that the original Milesian tale was 

a type of first-person novel, a travelogue told from memory by a narrator who every now and then would relate how he encountered other characters who told him stories which he would then incorporate into the main tale through the rhetorical technique of narrative impersonation. [1] 

This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices." 

. . . the name Milesian tale originates from the Milesiaka[1] of Aristides of Miletus (flourished 2nd century BCE), who was a writer of shameless and amusing tales with some salacious content and unexpected plot twists. Aristides set his tales in Miletus, which had a reputation for a luxurious, easy-going lifestyle, akin to that of Sybaris in Magna Graecia; there is no reason to think that he was in any sense "of" Miletus himself.

Milesian tales gained a reputation for ribaldry: Ovid, in Tristia, contrasts the boldness of Aristides and others with his own Ars Amatoria, for which he was punished by exile.

From Tristia:

Aristides associated himself with Milesian vice,
but Aristides wasn’t driven from his city.

Miletus and Maeander

The clasp of time

Heracles and Iolaus battle the Lernaean Hydra

At the exact center of Metamorphoses 9, the sudden appearance of a rejuvenated Iolaus startles Alcmene, the mother of Hercules, and Iole, the daughter of Eurytus.

nam limine constitit alto
paene puer dubiaque tegens lanugine malas,
ora reformatus primos Iolaus in annos.

There, on the steep threshold, stood Iolaüs, Hercules’s nephew and companion, alive again, with the look of his early years, a hint of down on his cheeks, almost, again, a child.

The marvel on the threshold gives rise to the abrupt speech of Themis, which manages in one mouthful to pull together several threads of the tale of Theban cycle and link them with the usually unrelated story of Heracles:

Priapus and Lotis

But crimson Priapus, guardian and glory of gardens,
Of them all, was captivated by Lotis:
He desires, and prays, and sighs for her alone,
He signals to her, by nodding, woos her with signs.
But the lovely are disdainful, pride waits on beauty:
She laughed at him, and scorned him with a look.
It was night, and drowsy from the wine,
They lay here and there, overcome by sleep.
Tired from play, Lotis rested on the grassy earth,
Furthest away, under the maple branches.
Her lover stood, and holding his breath, stole
Furtively and silently towards her on tiptoe. . .  Fasti I Jan. 9 A.S. Kline

In Ovid's Fasti,[19] the nymph Lotis fell into a drunken slumber at a feast, and Priapus seized this opportunity to advance upon her. With stealth he approached, and just before he could embrace her, Silenus's donkey alerted the party with "raucous braying". Lotis awoke and pushed Priapus away, but her only true escape was to be transformed into the lotus tree. To punish the donkey for spoiling his opportunity, Priapus bludgeoned it to death with his gargantuan phallus.

Priapus and Lotis

Priapus was described as the son of Aphrodite by Dionysus, or the son of Dionysus and Chione,[1] perhaps as the father or son of Hermes,[2] and the son of Zeus or Pan, depending on the source.[3] According to legend, Hera cursed him with impotence, ugliness and foul-mindedness while he was still in Aphrodite's womb, in revenge for the hero Paris having the temerity to judge Aphrodite more beautiful than Hera.[4] The other gods refused to allow him to live on Mount Olympus and threw him down to Earth, leaving him on a hillside. He was eventually found by shepherds and was brought up by them. 

Priapus joined Pan and the satyrs as a spirit of fertility and growth, though he was perennially frustrated by his impotence. In a ribald anecdote told by Ovid,[5] he attempted to rape the nymph Lotis but was thwarted by an ass, whose braying caused him to lose his erection at the critical moment and woke Lotis. He pursued the nymph until the gods took pity on her and turned her into a lotus plant. The episode gave him a lasting hatred of asses and a willingness to see them destroyed in his honour.[6]

Priapus: Wikipedia; Theoi; Parada.

Heracles and women

The adventures of Heracles (Hercules) as told by Ovid in Metamorphoses 9 break up what another writer might offer as a chronological narrative of his life into several "slices," each of which tells a key moment in his story. Briefly, they follow this order:

1. Contest with Achelous for the hand of Deianeira
2. Nessus' attempted rape of Deianeira and death by the arrow dipped in the Hydra's blood
3. Rumor (Fama) causes Deianeira to send Nessus' poisoned tunic to Heracles
4. Death and apotheosis of Heracles
5. Protracted birth of the hero.

The famed 12 labors of Heracles occur between parts 2 and 3, and are summarily listed by the hero in his death agony in 4. That is to say, as usual, Ovid pointedly swerves around the epic material (as he did with Jason and Theseus), or distorts it into something grotesque rather than grand (Perseus). For Heracles, who gets more space than these other heroes, the poet spends most of his time on moments that involve certamina (contests that prove something), eros, ambiguous language or gossip (Fama), and vividly agonistic liminal moments.