Metamorphoses

This quotation, from III.135–138, comes after Cadmus’s victory over the serpent and his miraculous founding of Thebes. It expresses a dark sentiment, and its inclusion in the midst of Cadmus’s successes reminds us that happiness, prosperity, and good fortune may not last. Present blessings do not guarantee future prosperity. Ovid packs two meanings into this quotation. First, he suggests that we should wait until people have died to assess their lives, since disasters might befall them at the last minute. But the phrase “no one ought to be called blessed until he dies” has another, bleaker meaning. It suggests that we are better off dead and in our graves than alive and subject to the gods’ whims. This certainly proves true in Cadmus’s case. In Books III and IV, horrors are rained down on Cadmus’s family. Actaeon turns into a deer and is savagely torn apart by his own dogs; Semele is killed by Jupiter in the act of copulation; Pentheus is ripped to pieces by his own mother and aunt; Athamas bashes his grandson’s head into a rock and chases his last daughter, Ino, and her son over a cliff; and Cadmus and his wife are turned into snakes. Neither is Cadmus’s life exceptionally dreadful. The extent of the devastation is unusual, but most of the mortals in the poem suffer similar fates.

These words, from VII.89–93, are from the first and most sophisticated soliloquy in the poem. In that eloquent, clear soliloquy, Medea analyzes her feelings and considers the ramifications of her actions. She concludes that she has two options: She can be faithful to her father and unfaithful to Jason, or she can help Jason and betray her father. Therefore, her decision to help Jason is also a deliberate and intentional betrayal of her father. She weeps because she fully understands what she is about to do. Because of her wisdom and self-knowledge, Medea seems far more sophisticated even than the gods, who lack insight into their feelings. Medea is the most formidable mortal woman in the poem, but Ovid portrays many women as remarkably intelligent and clear thinking. His mortal female characters are psychologically complex in ways that his male characters and his gods are not. In the next three books, four more women face similar conflicts between duty and love and discuss those conflicts in soliloquies (Scylla in VIII.44–80, Byblis in IX.487–516, Myrrha in X.320–355, and Atalanta in X.611–635). In a poem peopled with one-dimensional characters, these soliloquies offer rare insight into human psychology.

This passage, from Book X, lines 254–258, describes Pygmalion’s infatuation with his own statue. In the ancient world, conventional wisdom held that the best art replicates nature almost perfectly. To some degree, the story of Pygmalion holds to this wisdom. Pygmalion’s statue mimics the female form so exactly that he mistakes it for a real woman. Indeed, the statue transforms into a real woman, as if Pygmalion’s artistry is so successful that it cannot remain mere art. At the same time, though, the story of Pygmalion may reverse the conventional wisdom. We could argue that Pygmalion’s artistry actually exceeds nature’s greatness, that the statue comes alive because nature longs to embody it. Elsewhere in the Metamorphoses, Ovid makes this reversal more explicit. In Book III, there is a grotto so beautiful that, the narrator says, it must be nature’s imitation of art. There is a similarly gorgeous grotto in Book XI. The narrator says he does not know whether nature or art created the grotto, but if he had to guess, he would say art. For Ovid, art transcends nature.

In this quotation, from lines 65–69 of Book XIII, Ulysses concludes his speech on the subject of why he, rather than Ajax, should get Achilles’ arms. Ulysses says that brains are more valuable than brawn. He wins the contest thanks to his clever rhetoric, a victory that proves his point. More broadly, though, the Metamorphoses as a whole confirms Ulysses’ thesis. Ovid repeatedly stresses the importance of speech. In many of the transformations that take place, the most painful byproduct is the inability to speak. When Callisto is changed into a bear, she cannot speak to her son or beseech Jupiter for help. As a cow, Io cannot speak to her father and must spell out her name with her hoof. Actaeon, a deer, cannot call off his dogs when they attack him. These characters are separated from their loved ones, or even killed, because of the loss of speech. Ineffective speech can also be painful. While lecturing herself about her incestuous love for her father, Myrrha gets lost in a tangle of words. She asks herself, “Will you be the rival of your mother and the mistress of your father? Will you be a sister to your son and a mother to your brother?” (X.344–347) Because she can’t give a name to her feelings, Myrrha suffers.

These words, from XV.871–879, conclude the Metamorphoses. In this quotation, Ovid insists on the permanence of his work, which may seem strange after his extensive exploration of transformations and changes. But Ovid believes that creating art is an effective way to fend off change of an unwelcome sort. In Metamorphoses, artists, even those with mediocre skills, are the ones who control their own destinies. Philomela transcends her imprisonment by creating a new mode of language. Daedalus escapes from captivity by creating wings to fly over land and sea. Pygmalion avoids the immoral women of his day by carving his ideal mate out of ivory. Ulysses weaves a compelling speech to defeat Ajax. Ovid suggests that like his characters, he possesses the artistry that will give him power over the most feared transformation: from life to death. His body may decay, but he will live on through his artistic creation.