Pursuing Pythagoras

The appearance of Pythagoras in Metamorphoses 15 is a remarkable instance of Ovid's poetic risk-taking. This time he quite deliberately blurs the boundaries of poetry and philosophy, even as the long speech of the ancient sage raises more interpretive difficulties than can be addressed here.

What, for example, to make of a voice of wisdom that seems to skate through a curious set of topics as diverse as hyperbolical vegetarianism, metempsychosis, the Eternal Flux, the Four Ages of Man, the elements, geologic changes, physical changes, autogenesis, the Phoenix, transfers of power, and the sanctity of life? The subtopics are even more varied; these are just the headers from Kline's translation.

The voice of the wise man is at times serene, and at other moments heated -- urgent in its call for an understanding of life that would find the eating of animal flesh inhuman. To him, meat-eaters appear to be the moral equivalent of Thyestes or Polyphemus.

Nowhere does this voice sound more enigmatic than when, in introducing his claims of godlike knowledge, Pythgoras assures us that his lips are being moved by the Delphic god:

Et quoniam deus ora movet, sequar ora moventem 

rite deum Delphosque meos ipsumque recludam 

aethera et augustae reserabo oracula mentis. 

Magna nec ingeniis investigata priorum 

quaeque diu latuere, canam;

‘Now, since a god moves my lips, I will follow, with due rite, the god who moves those lips, and reveal my beloved Delphi and the heavens themselves, and unlock the oracles of that sublime mind. I will speak of mighty matters, not fathomed by earlier greatness, things long hidden.'

It's hard to overstate how strange this statement is.

Setting and background in Metamorphoses 7

In the latter half of Metamorphoses 7, Ovid pointedly stage manages meetings between Aeacus and Minos, and then Aeacus and Cephalus. These latter happen to be ancestors, respectively, of Achilles and Odysseus -- the chief heroes of the Homeric epics.

Aeacus, son of Zeus and father of Peleus, was the king of Aegina - an island to the west of Athens - and grandfather of Achilles. Cephalus, grandson of Aeolus, was the great-grandfather of Odysseus through Clymene, the woman he married after the death of Procris. The line (known as "the line of only sons") is Cephalus -> Arcesius -> Laertes -> Odysseus -> Telemachus.

Aeacus while he reigned in Aegina was renowned in all Greece for his justice and piety, and was frequently called upon to settle disputes not only among men, but even among the gods themselves.[12][13] He was such a favourite with the latter, that, when Greece was visited by a drought in consequence of a murder which had been committed, the oracle of Delphi declared that the calamity would not cease unless Aeacus prayed to the gods that it might.[2][14] Aeacus prayed, and it ceased in consequence. (Aeacus)