Romance, autobiography and history in Metamorphoses 13

Glaucus and Scylla - J.M.W. Turner

It's intriguing to find the artist of water and light offering this meditation on the tale of Glaucus and Scylla, the final tale of Metamorphoses 13.

According to at least one analysis, the tale's entire love triangle is depicted here -- Circe, daughter of Helios, is imaged in the sun seeing and lighting the scene from just above the horizon. She's staring at Glaucus, who's staring at Scylla, who's turning away from this strange new sea creature.

Ovid says,

she ran, and, with the swiftness of fear, came to the top of a mountain standing near the shore. It faced the wide sea, rising to a single peak, its wooded summit leaning far out over the water. Here she stopped, and from a place of safety, marvelled at his colour; the hair that hid his shoulders and covered his back; and his groin below that merged into a winding fish’s tail; she not knowing whether he was god or monster. (monstrumne deusne ille sit, ignorans)

Glaucus and Scylla gaze at each other, as the sun gazes on them. The eyes of the girl and the sea-god are locked -- what Ovid calls admiror -- 'to regard with wonder' -- but they are experiencing symmetrically opposed erotic reactions.

Glaucus will try telling her his autobiography to assuage her fears and attract her love, hardly an original ploy. Is there any woman alive who has not had to listen to too many hubristic males rehearsing their resumes and life stories?

This turn to autobiography is a prominent feature of book 13, so let's have a look at it.

The origins and ends of Troy

If Homer had told the tale of Troy in a linear way, the following passage might have been very near the opening of his poem. It's the descent of the kings of Troy from Dardanus down to Priam. But in fact it comes in Book 20.213 ff, quite near the climactic and decisive fight between Achilles and Hektor.

The passage evokes the blessed, proud and happy beginnings of the city sacred to the gods:

"Howbeit, if thou wilt, hear this also, that thou mayest know well my lineage, and many there be that know it: at the first Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, begat Dardanus, and he founded Dardania, for not yet was sacred Ilios builded in the plain to be a city of mortal men, but they still dwelt upon the slopes of many-fountained Ida. And Dardanus in turn begat a son, king Erichthonius, [220] who became richest of mortal men.

And of course the horses of Troy have pride of place:

Three thousand steeds had he that pastured in the marsh-land; mares were they. rejoicing in their tender foals. Of these as they grazed the North Wind became enamoured, and he likened himself to a dark-maned stallion and covered them; and they conceived, and bare twelve fillies. These, when they bounded over the earth, the giver of grain, would course over the topmost ears of ripened corn and break them not, and whenso they bounded over the broad back of the sea, would course over the topmost breakers of the hoary brine. And Erichthonius begat Tros to be king among the Trojans, and from Tros again three peerless sons were born, Ilus, and Assaracus, and godlike Ganymedes that was born the fairest of mortal men; wherefore the gods caught him up on high to be cupbearer to Zeus by reason of his beauty, that he might dwell with the immortals. And Ilus again begat a son, peerless Laomedon, and Laomedon begat Tithonus and Priam and Clytius, and Hicetaon, scion of Ares. 

Two remarkable aspects of this recounting of the lineage must be noted. The first is that the speaker of these lines is not Homer, but Aeneas, who now places himself within that genealogy:

And Assaracus begat Capys, and he Anchises; but Anchises begat me and Priam goodly Hector. This then is the lineage amid the blood wherefrom I avow me sprung.

At the very point at which the fate of the city hangs by a thread, Aeneas, whom Homer knew would survive, is recapitulating his origins and descent as well as those of all the children of Priam.

The other remarkable thing here is that Aeneas isn't speaking to a friend or god or ally. He's speaking to Achilles. The gods have arranged for these two warriors to meet in battle, and the recital of forebears will precede the clash of arms.

After some more words, the two fighters are at the striking point when Poseidon turns to the other gods, explains that Troy has earned Zeus's hate, and foretells the fate of Aeneas:

And forthwith he [Poseidon] spake among the immortal gods, saying: "Now look you, verily have I grief for great-hearted Aeneas, who anon shall go down to the house of Hades, slain by the son of Peleus, for that he listened to the bidding of Apollo that smiteth afar—fool that he was! nor will the god in any wise ward from him woeful destruction. But wherefore should he, a guiltless man, suffer woes vainly by reason of sorrows that are not his own?—whereas he ever giveth acceptable gifts to the gods that hold broad heaven. Nay, come, let us head him forth from out of death, lest the son of Cronos be anywise wroth, if so be Achilles slay him; for it is ordained unto him to escape, that the race of Dardanus perish not without seed and be seen no more—of Dardanus whom the son of Cronos loved above all the children born to him from mortal women. For at length hath the son of Cronos come to hate the race of Priam; and now verily shall the mighty Aeneas be king among the Trojans, and his sons' sons that shall be born in days to come." Iliad 20.292 ff

The entire family tree from Dardanus (actually, before him was Teucer) to Romulus and Remus is here. When the entire lineage is put together, the "linear" tale leads directly from Teucer to Rome. In rescuing Aeneas from the anger of Achilles, Homer's Poseidon is opening the way to Virgil's Aeneas and a new sacred city, the Imperium Romanum. 

Rome 100 AD

Hand and Mind: Ajax vs. Ulysses

After Ajax has scornfully cast Ulysses as the son of Sisyphus (which was a rumor), that is, a sneaky cowardly fellow who can't be trusted, let alone rewarded with the greatest honor of the Trojan War (the arms of Achilles, the god-crafted, physical embodiment of his glory), Ulysses sums his view of why he, and not Ajax, merits the prize:

tibi dextera bello
utilis, ingenium est, quod eget moderamine nostro;
tu vires sine mente geris, mihi cura futuri;
tu pugnare potes, pugnandi tempora mecum
eligit Atrides; tu tantum corpore prodes,
nos animo; quantoque ratem qui temperat, anteit
remigis officium, quanto dux milite maior,
tantum ego te supero. nec non in corpore nostro
pectora sunt potiora manu: vigor omnis in illis. (13.361-69)

Here's a slightly modified version of Kline's translation:

Your right hand, useful in war, needs the guidance of my intellect (ingenium). You have power (vires) without mind (mente), mine is the care for the future. You can fight, but Atrides, with me, chooses the time to fight. You only display the flesh (corpora), I the spirit (animo: "mind," "soul"). By as much as he who steers the ship is superior to him who rows, by as much as the general exceeds the soldier, by that much I surpass you. No less is the head (pectora: "heart, mind") more powerful than the hand, in our body: the energy of the whole (vigor omnis) is within it.

If Ajax's speech was entirely pragmatic, Ulysses's vocabulary borders on the metaphysical. Part of the irony here is that neither the hand nor the mind is willing to acknowledge the necessity of belonging to a larger whole. Without the mind, a hand is merely an aimless instrument. Without the hand, the mind's strategic powers reside feckless in a vacuum. Execution requires both hand and mind, and the greatest honors are given to artists, athletes, surgeons, craftsmen, etc. who possess and use intelligent fingertips.

In Ovid's scene in Metamorphoses 13, hand and mind are at war -- so passionate are both to claim the honor of being the sole agent of victorious warcraft that the matter of agency is itself put in question. If we can't agree on which of the executants should be credited, then we can't authoritatively say who did what. When agency is suspended, so is the glory of having acted. The very thing that makes the prize shield and helmet so valuable -- kleos, glory -- has gotten lost, unassignable, thanks to the debate that was supposed to assign it.

Detail of Achilles' shield, Kathleen A. Vail

Another part of the irony lies in what has caused this fight: bella movet clipeus - "even his shield makes war," Ovid says. If Ulysses and Ajax have blurred agency, then it's quite possible for the shield to turn into the actual agent of their conflict. Something that is normally considered a tool of war is now its cause. This kind of reversal is a recurrent phenomenon in the Metamorphoses. 

We might argue that this sort of statement -- "the shield makes war" -- is merely a shorthand way of saying that the desires of the two men for the shield and what it represents caused them to fight (and, ultimately, resulted in the suicide of one of them). But it is agency itself that's been put in question. If one cannot decide whether the mind or the hand is acting, then it's equally plausible to say that the shield moved the war as it is to say their desire for the shield was the cause. Agent and instrument can be reversed like cause and effect. When we hear someone say that "_____ made me do it" -- (if you google that expression, the results are quite interesting), they are entering into a willing suspension, not of disbelief, but of will itself, i.e., of agency.

Ulysses plays with the notion of agency in his speech. While Ajax emphasized how he stood against Hektor while Ulysses was nowhere to be found, Ulysses himself  says things like:

Why does Ulysses dare to go through the sentries and commit himself to night; to enter not only the walls of Troy but also the heights of the citadel, past the sharp swords; and to snatch the goddess from her temple, and carry her captive through the enemy ranks? If I had not done it, the son of Telamon would have carried the seven-layered bull’s-hide shield on his left arm in vain. That night the victory over Troy was established: I defeated Pergama then, when I secured the possibility of her defeat.

For Ajax, the practical, direct model of cause and effect is the only model. For Ulysses, war is like a game of chess. A move might not directly cause the end, but indirectly it can be decisive. Once he and Diomedes have stolen the Palladium, "I defeated Pergama." There are actually many more steps before the war is done -- he will, for instance, have to persuade Philoctetes to return, the wounded hero who is destined to kill Paris with the arrows of Heracles. But Ulysses can elide all those intervening causes and effects, because his strategic actions "established" the fall of Troy.

When the mind dismisses a cause that has to occur because it is only "a" cause, not THE cause, there's a contempt for the hand that's at least equal to the hand's blindness to the role of the mind. Mind and hand are mutually necessary, but also, it seems, incapable of sharing honor and responsibility. They are jealous of their own rights and agencies to the exclusion of each other (Ajax ultimately excludes himself from existing). With the obliteration of agency, instead of history we have mystery.

This framing of the problem of agency might be worth keeping "in mind" as we look at Ovid's approach to the story of Aeneas and the founding of Rome, the new Troy.

After the Iliad

Metamorphoses 12 gave us a sideways glimpse of Troy through the lens of Nestor, the voice of the epic past, featuring a pre-Iliadic battle over a stolen bride.

Book 13 begins at Troy after the death of Achilles. The scene unfolds as drama as Odysseus and Ajax debate their relative merits for deserving to be awarded the armor of Achilles.

Homer

For more information about Troy, a good source is found here on Livius.org -- at the top of the page are links to the various layers of Troy's archaeological remains, as well as to ancient texts that completed the Iliad's story, including the Cypria and the Little Iliad.

The general site entitled Livius.org is a superb encyclopedia of illustrated, brief articles on the ancient world. I've put a link to it on the right.

First blood: Protesilaus

Rumour has it you’re held at Aulis by delaying winds:
ah! when you left me, where were those winds then?
-- Laodamia to Protesilaus

The first Greek to be killed at Troy was Protesilaus. It never hurts to fill oneself in on such characters. It seems he was one of Helen's myriad suitors. He also knew that the first man to touch Trojan soil would die -- there was an oracle to that effect. He later became a cult figure. After his death, he was allowed to return to life for three hours, to be with his wife, Laodamia, because they were newly married when he had to leave for Troy. That post-mortem tryst didn't end happily, as her story bears witness.

Homer manages to get much of this back-story into his brief mention in the Catalog of Ships:

And they that held Phylace and flowery Pyrasus, the sanctuary of Demeter, and Iton, mother of flocks, and Antron, hard by the sea, and Pteleos, couched in grass, these again had as leader warlike Protesilaus, while yet he lived; howbeit ere now the black earth held him fast. [700] His wife, her two cheeks torn in wailing, was left in Phylace and his house but half established, while, for himself, a Dardanian warrior slew him as he leapt forth from his ship by far the first of the Achaeans.

Protesilaus

In the Heroides, Laodamia laments the absence of Protesilaus in terms reminiscent of the description of Ceyx's bark receding from Alcyone on the shore:

The North Wind leaned down, and filled your departing sails,
and soon my Protesilaus was far away.
While I could still see my husband, I delighted in watching
and your eyes were followed, all the way, by mine:
when I could no longer see you, I could see your sail,
your sail held my gaze for a long time.
But once I could not see you, or your vanishing sail,
and I could look at nothing except the waves,
the light went with you too, and suffocating darkness rising,
they say that, my knees failed, and I sank to the ground.

Ovid has her wishing him the very thing that would have deprived him of his glory:

I wish the gods might not make you over-eager!

Among the thousand ships let yours be the thousandth,

and the last to be wrecked by the tormenting waters!

This also I forewarn you of: be the last to leave the vessel!

A quiz on the Fall of Troy

Note: I've added several new elements here to fill out the essentials of the Fall of Troy story.
Update 11.19.12: I've added a few more details at bottom.

Here's a nice quiz, a number of whose questions have to do with the fall of Troy. Have fun, and after choosing your answers, hit "submit answers for grading" to get your "grade."

Quiz or no quiz, you'll find here the conditions that had to be met before Troy would fall. It's a nice summary based strictly upon classical sources.

[Updates]: I've added a link on the right to Quintus Smyrnaeus's late classical epic, the Posthomerica, or The Fall of Troy, which purports to tell what happened after the Iliad ends.

Yet another condition that had to be met before Troy could fall is reason for the fame of the fisherman Damarmenus. He it was who, after the Trojan War, recovered from the sea the bone of Pelops 1. During the war it was prophesied to the Achaeans that Troy could not be taken unless, among other things, they could bring the bone of Pelops 1. From Pisa in Elis was brought the bone of Pelops 1, the ivory shoulder blade that replaced the part that Demeter had absent mindedly eaten at the time of Tantalus's grisly feast. As they were returning home from Troy, the ship carrying the bone was wrecked off Euboea in a storm. Many years later, Damarmenus, a fisherman from Eretria, drew up the bone. Amazed at its size he kept it hidden in the sand. Later the bone was given to the Eleans following an oracle from Delphi [Pau.5.13.4ff.].

The key source for knowing the conditions of vulnerability for Troy was Helenus, son of Priam and twin brother of Cassandra. He was said to be the wisest of the Trojans, and a seer. Parada:

only he knew the oracles that protected the city, which he revealed to the enemy so that the Achaeans could finally take Troy. For when Paris died, Helenus and his brother Deiphobus quarrelled for the hand of Helen; and when Deiphobus was preferred, Helenus left the city and established his residence on Mount Ida, where Odysseus captured him. And after having displayed the excellent seer in the Achaean camp, they forced this glorious prey to tell how Troy could be taken. That is why Helenus 1 prophesied whatever matter they asked, instructing them to bring the Bone of Pelops 1, to fetch Neoptolemus from Scyros, to persuade Philoctetes (in whose power were the Bow and Arrows of Heracles) to come from Lemnos, and also to steal the Palladium, a wooden statue that once had fallen from Heaven, since if it were carried off Troy could not survive.

There's a bit more to the story of Philoctetes and Heracles' arrows - here taken from notes found on the Perseus site:

When Hercules, through the imprudence of his wife Deianira, was seized with that cruel disease from which he had no release to hope for but death, he was carried to mount Oeta, and having ascended the funeral pile he obtained a promise from Philoctetes, the son of Poeas, that he would set fire to the pile, on condition of receiving his divine arrows as a reward for this last office. When the Greeks were on their voyage to Troy, it was foretold to them that they would never be able to overthrow llium, unless they discovered the altar of Chryse, erected on an island of the same name, and offered sacrifice thereon. While Philoctetes was showing where the altar was, he was wounded in the foot by a serpent which guarded it, and from that cause left at Lemnos. In the tenth year of the war Helenus, the Trojan prophet, being captured by Ulysses, predicted that Troy could never be taken but by the arrows of Hercules; upon this, messengers were sent to Lemnos in order to bring back Philoctetes with his arrows to Troy.

Helenus will appear in Metamorphoses 15 to provide Aeneas with crucial information for accomplishing the task of founding Rome. He also appears in Aeneid 3:

In Buthrotum, Aeneas met Andromache, the widow of Hector. She still laments for the loss of her valiant husband and beloved child. There, too, Aeneas saw and met Helenus, one of Priam's sons, who had the gift of prophecy. Through him, Aeneas learned the destiny laid out for him: he was divinely advised to seek out the land of Italy (also known as Ausonia or Hesperia), where his descendants would not only prosper, but in time rule the entire known world. In addition, Helenus also bade him go to the Sibyl in Cumae.

Another condition:

. . . when Achilles was nine years old, the seer Calchas, whom Agamemnon has called "prophet of evil," declared that Troy could not be taken without him. This is one of the reasons why Achilles came to Troy; for he, who had not been among the SUITORS OF HELEN, was not bound by the Oath of Tyndareus.

[Added 11.19.12] It turns out there were six famous conditions for the fall of Troy - Plautus cites three of them in a humorous scene of his Bacchides:

“I have heard there were three destinies attending Troy, which were fatal to it; if the statue should be lost from the citadel -- [it was carried off by Odysseus and Diomedes] -  whereas the second was the death of Troilus; the third was when the upper lintel of the Phrygian (aka Scaean gate) gate should be demolished.”

According to the commentary in Perseus by Charles Simmons: 

This last involved the disturbance of the tomb of Laomedon, and was brought about when the [Scaean] gate was widened to bring in the horse. A fourth condition was the presence of an Aeacid. This was satisfied by bringing to the war the young son of Achilles, Pyrrhus (cf. 155 n.), who thence got the name Neoptolemus. For fatis = ‘destruction,’ see 180 n.

A note on p. 196-197 of this edition of Plautus mentions three more conditions: 

If the horses of Rhesus should be captured before they had tasted of the pastures of Troy and the waters of Xanthus; if the bow and arrow of Hercules should be employed in the siege; and if one of the posterity of Achilles should be present (the Aeacid, Neoptolemos). 

The Horses of Rhesus

Troy - Maps and Genealogies

With the story of Laomedon's scam of the gods, Ovid touches on the tale of Troy:

Sigeum, Rhoeteum, Troy

Latona’s son left Mount Tmolus and, flying through the clear air, he came to earth in the country of Laomedon, this side of the narrows of the Hellespont, named from Helle, daughter of Nephele. To the right of the deeps of Sigeum, and to the left of those of Rhoeteum, there was an ancient altar of Jupiter the Thunderer, ‘source of all oracles’. There, Apollo saw Laomedon building the foundations of the new city of Troy. The great undertaking prospering with difficulty, and demanding no little resources, he, and Neptune, trident-bearing father of the swelling sea, put on mortal form, and built the walls of the city for the Phrygian king for an agreed amount in gold. The edifice stood there.

But the king denied them payment, and as a crowning treachery, perjured himself by claiming they were lying.

A few links perhaps helpful for the site of the city and its ruling family:

Troy - Parada has fine maps and a fairly detailed genealogy from Dardanus down through the Roman kings.

Hesione - adds some details to the Troy story.

Peleus - for the background of Aeacus's sons. More on Peleus here.

There is no city so barbarous or so strange in its speech that it does not know the fame of the hero Peleus, the fortunate in-law of gods, or of Aias and his father Telamon.

"The fate destined by Zeus Peleus made his own: devouring flames, and the sharp claws of fearless lions, and tearing teeth safely endured, his Nereis bride he won from her high seat, and saw, round him enthroned, the gods of sky and sea proffer their gifts, foretelling the kingdom he and his race should rule."

  Pindar on Peleus.

Genealogical Tree of the House of Troy 

Dardanus - sire of Erichthonius, who was father of Tros.

The Dardanians split into two ruling houses of Troy:

Ilus - Founder of Troy, a story very much in part like that of Cadmus: 

Ilus founded the city of Ilium (Troy) that he called after himself. Ilus went to Phrygia, and taking part in games that at the time were held by the king, he won victory in wrestling. As a prize he received fifty youths and as many maidens; and the king, obeying an oracle, gave him also a cow and asked him to found a city wherever the cow should lie down. This took place when the cow came to the hill of Ate, and in that spot Ilus built the city which he called Ilium. Then he prayed to Zeus that a sign might be shown to him and he saw the Palladium, fallen from heaven and lying before his tent. Ilus was blinded, since the Palladium was not to be looked upon by any man. But later, when he had made offerings to the goddess, he recovered his sight

Assaracus - brother of Ilus and Ganymede, father of Capys, grandfather of Anchises.

Parada situates the Trojans within the descendants of Atlas (father of Electra and the other Pleiades). Parada's charts arguing that nearly everyone (except Athenians) can be traced back to one of three ancestors -- Atlas, Deucalion, or Io -- can be found here.

Model of Troy layer 1000 years before its destruction

A few notes on Midas

According to Hyginus, Fab. 46, Zeus killed Erechtheus with a thunderbolt at the request of Poseidon, who was enraged at the Athenians for killing his son Eumolpus.

Ovid says in passing that Midas, along with Eumolpus, was tutored by Orpheus:

King Midas, to whom, with Athenian Eumolpus, Orpheus of Thrace had taught the Bacchic rites.

If one looks into Eumolpus a little, it is immediately clear he's a major culture hero -- son of Poseidon, a teacher of Heracles (as Theocritus notes in Idyll 24), and a bridge between Silenus, Dionysus and Orpheus, and the Eleusinian Mysteries.* As Wikipedia notes,

Triptolemos,Demeter, Persephone

The Eleusinian Mysteries (Greek: Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια) were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter signals Eumolpus's importance:

She to Triptolemus taught, and to Diocles, driver of horses,
Also to mighty Eumolpus, to Celeus, leader of peoples,
Cult of the holy rites, to them all her mystery telling. HH Dem. 474-476

As a son of Poseidon, Eumolpus is also linked to the pre-Athena days of Athens - before the contest by which the city chose Athena over the sea God, as depicted by Athena in Book 6.

The point here is that Midas, although he has come down to us in fables as the prototypical fool, is linked with Eumolpus as learning Bacchic rites directly from Orpheus. Midas recognizes Silenus, the tutor of Bacchus, and entertains him for 10 days, then returns him to his ward, who allows him any wish.

Bacchus and Midas: Poussin

We then get two familiar stories about Midas -- the golden touch and the ears of the ass -- and we might consider why, in the course of describing the dissemination of the Orphic tradition, Ovid puts them together here. Midas seems to indicate a decline, a possibly errant or degenerate path of the Orphic tradition -- quite different from what Eumolpus taught at Eleusis.

In part, this would be Ovid's way of indicating differences between the central Greek tradition and that which perhaps got bowdlerized in Anatolia. If so -- and this is just speculation -- is Ovid suggesting something about the background of Troy, something in the roots of Rome? How might this relate to the tale of Peleus and Thetis, both of whom bring into play their own complex histories?

Peleus and Thetis: Leonard Porter 

*The Eumolpidae: (Greek: Ευμολπιδαι) were a family of priests at Eleusis who maintained the Eleusinian Mysteries during the Hellenic era. As hierophants, they popularized the cult and allowed many more to be initiated into the secrets of Demeter and Persephone. The legendary genealogy of the Eumolpidae cast them as descendants of Eumolpus, one of the first priests of Demeter at Eleusis, through his second son, Herald-Keryx.

Uncertain dreams: The Matter of Troy

With Book 11, Ovid turns -- if "turn" is the right word -- to Troy, the sacred mother city of Rome. As such, no detail related to it is without interest, and as is his wont, Ovid selects some of the city's more obscure, errant, seemingly arcane tales to introduce the setting that will frame the last five books of the Metamorphoses.

Ceyx and Alcyone, Richard Wilson

We don't actually realize we're headed toward Troy right away. First there's the matter of Orpheus, who just sang most of Book 10's tales of love and death, now becoming the content of Ovid's tale of Orpheus's own savage demise. Is there something for the reader to think about in making the death of the arch-poet, the artist of art about art, a prelude to the story of Troy? Then there's Peleus and Thetis, Ceyx and Alcyone, Somnus, Aesacus and Hesperia. What are they to Hecuba?

Other questions naturally will arise as we follow Ovid's peculiar concatenations. Both Apollo and Dionysus do things as a result of Orpheus's death -- Apollo turns to stone the snake that's about to attack Orpheus's briny head; Bacchus turns the Maenads to oaks. Bacchus leads into the story of Midas, twice foolish. The second tale of Midas then follows Apollo, who gave the king his his ass's ears, as he hies to the country of Laomedon, the Troad. (Good zoomable map of ancient Greece and Troy here, and a large pdf map here.)

Greece and Troad

The first ten books of Ovid's poem glancingly touched on the fates of several cities and kingdoms -- Thebes, Crete, Aegina, Sicily, Colchis (home of Medea), Athens, Mycenae,  Miletus, Smyrna (Myrrha),Trachis (Ceyx's kingdom). Now we're amid the earliest tales of Troy, and they'll lead to Carthage, Latium and Rome. This itinerary of course moves in a way that is more dreamlike than "historical."

So it's fitting that along with a rip-roaring storm and shipwreck, Book 11 offers a fairly close-up view of the house of Sleep (Somnus):

There is a deeply cut cave, a hollow mountain, near the Cimmerian country, the house and sanctuary of drowsy Sleep. Phoebus can never reach it with his dawn, mid-day or sunset rays. Clouds mixed with fog, and shadows of the half-light, are exhaled from the ground. No waking cockerel summons Aurora with his crowing: no dog disturbs the silence with its anxious barking, or goose, cackling, more alert than a dog. No beasts, or cattle, or branches in the breeze, no clamour of human tongues. There still silence dwells. But out of the stony depths flows Lethe’s stream, whose waves, sliding over the loose pebbles, with their murmur, induce drowsiness. In front of the cave mouth a wealth of poppies flourish, and innumerable herbs, from whose juices dew-wet Night gathers sleep, and scatters it over the darkened earth. There are no doors in the palace, lest a turning hinge lets out a creak, and no guard at the threshold. But in the cave’s centre there is a tall bed made of ebony, downy, black-hued, spread with a dark-grey sheet, where the god himself lies, his limbs relaxed in slumber. Around him, here and there, lie uncertain dreams, taking different forms, as many as the ears of corn at harvest, as the trees bear leaves, or grains of sand are thrown onshore.

With the uncertain dreams, this book also features highly competent shape-shifters -- there's Thetis and Proteus along with Morpheus (along with Icelos and Phobetor). As Ovid approaches the beginning of what we might call the "linear" history of Troy that leads to the Roman Empire, the path is filled with winds and amorphous dreams, grand liars (Laomedon) and gods who have a far greater repertoire of shapes than Achelous had. We'll want to think about why.

Myrrha and co. in Inferno 30

If you look for Myrrha in Dante's Commedia, you might be surprised where she can be found. In the 10th bolgia, or sac, of the eighth circle, (in Canto 30) she enters as one of a pair of violent spirits racing around the pit, tearing other shades to pieces with their teeth. She and Gianni Schicchi are compared to beasts:

... two shades I saw, both pale and naked,

who, biting, ran berserk in just the way 

a hog does when it's let loose from its sty.

The canto is rich in imagery and suggestive power, perhaps in part because it's the canto of falsifiers, liars. For Dante, who defined poetry as una bella menzogna -- a beautiful lie -- the proximity of the poetic enterprise to the vicious worlds of impersonators, counterfeiters, and famous liars (including Sinon, the Greek who talked the Trojans into opening their city to the wooden horse, and Potiphar's wife, false accuser of Joseph in Genesis) -- seems to provoke a stunning burst of vivid narrative fragments.

Most of these are from Ovid. I'll just note them here -- a reading of the entire canto is a task for another day. The books of Metamorphoses where each appears are in parens:

1. The canto begins with Juno's rage against Semele (Book 3);
2. Which leads to the madness of Athamas, who hurls his own son Learchus to his death (Books 3-4).
3. And to Hecuba, turned into a barking lunatic at the sight of her children, Polyxena and Polydorus, dead in ruined Troy (7 & 13).
4. Then "accursed Myrrah": "she who loved her father past the limits of just love" (Book 10).
5. The vile exchange of japes between Maestro Adamo the Florentine counterfeiter and Sinon the lying Greek (Sinon is not in Ovid, but from the Aeneid) leads to a final Ovidian reference when Adamo says to Sinon:

                       "You have both dryness and a head that aches;
                        few words would be sufficient invitation
                       to have you lick the mirror of Narcissus." (Book 3)

Clearly Dante not only read Ovid with care, but with acute attention to the interplay of illusion and the likenesses of truth that we have come to appreciate as "Ovidian."

With a simile that could have come from the poet of Metamorphoses himself, Dante conveys the burden of being caught in the entrancingly duplicitous world of appearances:

Even as one who dreams that he is harmed 

and, dreaming, wishes he were dreaming, thus

desiring that which is, as if it were not, 

so I became within my speechlessness.

Dore: Myrrha, Virgil, Dante