Summary
Ovid begins the Metamorphoses by invoking
the gods. He asks them to inspire his work, which opens with the
creation of the world and continues on to the present day, and is
about the transformation of bodies. After this short prayer, Ovid
describes the birth of the world. A creator separated earth from
heaven, sea from land, and lighter air from heavier air. He then
made beings to inhabit these new spaces: Gods and stars filled the
heavens, fish the seas, beasts the land, and birds the air. Man
was created to rule the world. Four ages followed. The age of gold
was a time of trust, moral goodness, and fruitfulness. In the age
of silver, people had to work for a living. The age of bronze saw
the first wars, but some semblance of morality persisted. In the
age of iron, however, nothing is sacred. Even family ties lead to
bloodshed.
In the iron age, the gods appear and witness human impiety.
In particular, Jupiter visits the house of the Lycaon, who treats
Jupiter with the greatest disrespect, even trying to murder him
in his sleep. Outraged, Jupiter decides to punish humanity with
a flood. Because of their piety, Deucalion and Pyrrha survive. No
one else does. Themis gives Deucalion and Pyrrha cryptic advice
about how to repopulate the earth: They must cover their heads,
let their garments loose, and cast the bones of their great mother
behind their backs. Initially, Pyrrha is disheartened, because she
interprets this advice as sacrilegious. How can she desecrate her
mother’s bones? Deucalion has a different interpretation. He thinks
Themis was referring not to their actual mothers, but to the earth.
They try throwing stones behind them, and the stones morph into
people.
Apollo speaks disparagingly to Cupid, who shoots two arrows
in retaliation. The first arrow causes Apollo to fall in love, and
the second arrow makes the object of his love, Daphne, flee. Apollo
pursues Daphne, but she rejects him. Apollo pleads and persists,
and Daphne cries out to her father for help. He responds by transforming
her into a laurel tree. Not entirely deterred, Apollo gropes the tree.
At this point, Jupiter catches sight of a young nymph, Io, and lust
fills his heart. He rapes her. Juno, Jupiter’s wife, suspects something.
To throw his wife off the scent, Jupiter turns Io into a cow. But this
move makes Juno even more suspicious. She asks Jupiter for Io as
a present and sets many-eyed Argus to keep watch over the transformed
Io. Upset by Io’s great distress, Jupiter sends Mercury to kill Argus.
Mercury succeeds, and Io is eventually transformed back into a nymph.
She has a son by Jupiter, Epaphus.
Analysis
From the first sentence of his Metamorphoses, Ovid
makes it clear that he is not writing a traditional epic. He states
outright that his intention is to create something new, writing,
“My mind carries me to speak of bodies changed into new forms”
(I.1–2). The phrase “new
forms” suggests that Metamorphoses will not mimic
Virgil’s Aeneid or Homer’s Iliad.
Ovid differentiates himself still further from Virgil by stating
that his mind moves him to write. Instead of calling on a muse for
inspiration, Ovid calls on the gods. This difference in inspirations
may seem slight, but by invoking all of the gods, Ovid insures that
none of them get credit. Ovid subtly suggests that this work is
all about him.
Ovid depicts a group of gods who are often irrational.
In this section of the work, Jupiter provides a prime example of
the gods’ tendency to draw foolish conclusions. Based on his negative
experience with one man, Lycaon, Jupiter decides that all humans
are evil and must be exterminated. He fails to consider Deucalion
and Pyrrha, two models of piety who prove that not all humans are
immoral. Jupiter’s other reason for causing the flood is his desire
to make the world a safer place for lesser divinities that do not
inhabit the heavens: nymphs, fauns, satyrs, and mountain-dwelling
divinities. However, this reasoning is also flawed. As the epic
continues and we read about the brutal behavior of the gods—Apollo’s
pursuit of the anguished Daphne, Jupiter’s rape of Io, and so on—we
realize that the gods don’t have the moral authority to police the
world. Indeed, the lesser divinities need to be protected from the
gods, rather than protected by them.
The gods are as immoral as they are irrational. Ovid gets
his narrative off to a dark start by introducing the theme of divine
rape almost immediately. Apollo, filled with lust for Daphne, attempts
to rape her. Even after she is turned into a tree, Apollo kisses
her and gropes her bark. Jupiter is no better. He lusts after Io,
rapes her, and turns her into a cow when his wife gets suspicious.
Jupiter’s crime is both more violent than Apollo’s and more hypocritical;
he commits it directly after flooding the earth to wipe it clean
of impious mortals. The other gods are no less hypocritical. They
care far more about token gestures of respect than they do about
actual good behavior. When confronted with the possible destruction
of humanity, they worry only about who will burn incense on their
altars. Incense is more important to them than compassion.
