Ovid's Metamorphoses
How Love Transforms
Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,
Valentine’s Day may have passed, but as we know, true love endures.
Although that’s not to say it always stays the same.
So, to cap the week, we have one last romance themed article for you, this time looking at one of the greatest works of ancient literature, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
It’s all about what David Bowie called ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.
Ovid’s grand and enduring collection of myths is bound together by this thread of transformation. It showcases various tales from ancient Greece, all featuring an instance of a character turning (or being turned) into something else. Sometimes it’s harrowing, sometimes it’s moving, and sometimes it’s a little baffling!
Yet it’s through Ovid’s retellings that many of these Greek myths have survived. The stories themselves were transformed in the telling, and they in turn have inspired more and more retellings. As much as a contradiction as it may sound, it seems that for anything to truly last, it must change, again and again.
A bit like David Bowie, after all.
And a bit like love.
All the best,
Sean Kelly
Managing Editor
Classical Wisdom
Ovid’s Metamorphoses: How Love Transforms
by Katherine Smyth
Ovid’s Metamorphoses has a legacy like no other literary work. Comprising of 250 myths and over nearly 1200 lines of poetry, it has inspired a vast number of artists, poets, and creators, including William Shakespeare. Although Ovid’s popularity has faded since the Renaissance, there is still much we can learn from and admire about his literary creation.
Ancient Beginnings
You might be surprised to know that Ovid’s defining work was actually influenced by Alexandrian poetry, which was written in ancient Greek, with the earliest texts dating to the Archaic period. The most notable contributions to Alexandrian poetry were, of course, the two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is itself considered an epic, as it is of a significant length, and is told in dactylic hexameter. Yet where most epics (or epic-like offshoots) restrain themselves to one style or genre, Metamorphoses breaks with this tradition by utilizing the themes and tones of many literary styles. These range from epic to tragedy, and from elegy to pastoral; as such it has defied categorization into any one genre.
So, what exactly did Ovid write about, and what can we learn from it?
Metamorphoses is considered to be a comprehensive mythic chronology that recounts the world’s creation through to the death of Julius Caesar – a pivotal event which occurred only 1 year before Ovid’s birth in 43 BC.
Whilst the text is unbroken in its chronology, Classics scholar Brooks Otis identified four naturally occurring divisions within the work, which he refers to as:
Book I–Book II (end, line 875): The Divine Comedy
Book III–Book VI, 400: The Avenging Gods
Book VI, 401–Book XI (end, line 795): The Pathos of Love
Book XII–Book XV (end, line 879): Rome and the Deified Rule
Ovid begins the Metamorphoses with the ritual of invoking the Muse. However, it deviates here from the expected extolment of a mortal hero, and instead leaps from story to story with seemingly no connection or reason. Ovid’s narration style has been considered by some to be arbitrary; these tales sometimes overlap in their content, particularly when they relate to events that were considered to be central to the world of Greek mythology.
However, one recurring theme of Metamorphoses is love. That includes both the experience of love, as well the personified deity of love, Amor/Cupid. In Ovid’s work, the gods were continually humiliated and confused by Cupid, who was otherwise considered to be a relatively insignificant minor god.
“Thus she disclos’d the woman’s secret heart,
Young, innocent, and new to Cupid’s dart.
Her thoughts, her words, her actions wildly rove,
With love she burns, yet knows not that ’tis love.”
~ Book X
One example is the tale of Apollo, who was so confounded by love that he was unable to think rationally or to even use reason. This portrayal of all-powerful gods made them much more human. In turn, this actually elevated humans to being almost god-like, as they experience the same pangs and passions as the divine.
“But the lewd monarch [Phoebus/Apollo], tho’ withdrawn apart,
Still feels love’s poison rankling in his heart:
Her face divine is stamp’d within his breast,
Fancy imagines, and improves the rest:
And thus, kept waking by intense desire,
He nourishes his own prevailing fire.”
~ Book VI
However, throughout the narrative, the most apparent and unifying theme is (perhaps not unsurprisingly, based on the title!) metamorphosis or transformation. This significance is announced at the very beginning with the opening line “In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas /corpora” or “I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities”. Some of the transformations are of gender or appearance, whereas others include those of humans becoming animals, plants, or even constellations.
The Influence of the Metamorphoses
Across the centuries, Metamorphoses had a huge influence on many works that we now consider to be classic literature.
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, we have several adaptations that can be identified with a Metamorphoses-base: The Wife of Bath is based on Midas’ story, as is The Book of the Duchess, which is based on Ceyx and Alcyone. We can also see Ovid’s influence in several of Shakespeare’s works, including Romeo and Juliet which is influenced by Pyramus and Thisbe, and even Prospero’s speech in The Tempest, which is almost taken word-for-word from Medea’s speech in Metamorphoses.
Other writers who’ve benefited from Ovid’s influence include John Milton in Paradise Lost, and works by Giovanni Boccaccio, and Dante. During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, both artists and writers benefited hugely from the renewed interest in Ovid’s work, so much so that it spawned the term “Ovidian”. Although this trend did peter out over the 18th century, towards the 20th century there was another resurgence and appreciation of his work.
Although the first publication of Metamorphoses was available from 8 AD, around Ovid’s exile, no original manuscript survives from the period. There are, however, examples from the 9th and 10th centuries in fragmented form, as well as some complete manuscripts from the 11th century. Fortunately, there are also translations of these manuscripts, with the earliest English version being produced by William Caxton in 1480.
Other English translations date from 1567, by Arthur Golding, and George Sandys in 1621-26. Then in 1717, Samuel Garth produced a translation that was heralded as being produced “by the most eminent hands”, which included contributions from John Dryden, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Tate Gay, William Congreve, and Nicholas Rowe. This translation was printed for many years, well into the 1800s, and was considered to be without any real rival until the 20th century, when new translations began to appear.
Transformational Lessons
Ultimately, if we are to learn anything from Ovid’s work, it’s probably these fundamental points: with its power to confuse and overwhelm, love will humanize even the most god-like beings, and that everything and everyone, even the gods, are subject to the transformative powers of love.
So, don’t try and run from love. If the gods can’t escape it, neither can you!
“The fire of love the more it is supprest,
The more it glows, and rages in the breast.”
~ Book IV
Thanks for this. I particularly like Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes
Beautiful. I recently inherited an very old copy of these poems. I can’t wait yo read them!