“CONTIGERAT NOSTRAS INFAMIA TEMPORIS AURES;

QUAM CUPIENS FALSAM SUMMO DELABOR OLYMPO

ET DEUS HUMANA LUSTRO SUB IMAGINE TERRAS.

LONGA MORA EST QUANTUM NOXAE SIT UBIQUE REPERTUM

ENUMERARE; MINOR FUIT IPSA INFAMIA VERO.

MAENALA TRANSIEREM LATEBRIS HORRENDA FERARUM

ET CUM CYLLENE GELIDI PINETA LYCAEI;

ARCADIS HINC SEDES ET INHOSPITA TECTA TYRANNI

INGREDIOR, TRAHERENT CUM SERA CREPUSCULA NOCTEM.”

 

 

“THE INFAMY OF THE AGE HAD REACHED OUR EARS;

HOPING THESE RUMOURS WERE FALSE, I DESCEND OLYMPUS

AND THOUGH A GOD I WANDER THE EARTH IN HUMAN FORM.

IT WOULD BE A LONG STORY TO LIST ALL THE EVILS AND WHERE I FOUND THEM;

THE RUMOUR ITSELF WASN’T AS BAD AS THE TRUTH.

I HAD CROSSED THE HORRID MT. MAENALUS, WITH ITS HIDING PLACES FOR BEASTS

MT. CYLLENE AND THE FROZEN PINE FORESTS OF MT. LYCAEUS;

FROM HERE, I ENTER THE HOME AND INHOSPITABLE HOUSE OF THE TYRANT OF ARCADIA,

SINCE THE TWILIGHT HOUR WAS BRINGING ON THE NIGHT.”


 

Story time!  Yay!  Considering the levels of stories-within-stories this poem will get into, it is quite fitting that the first “proper” episode of the Metamorphoses should be a story-within-a-story.  The technical term for such a literary device is an “embedded narrative”.  Ovid loves telling stories, and so do his characters.  Of course, this adds a whole new dimension of doubt to the versions: how do we know Jupiter isn’t lying?  It’s an unanswerable question, but one that lends a degree of intrigue to the story.  Of course, depicting these embedded narratives was always going to be tricky.  That’s why I decided to go with the speech-balloon panel designs (and why I’ve been using rectangular speech balloons this whole time).  I think it should be a good shorthand to convey when we are in embedded narrative, and just how deep we (and believe you me, we will get deep).

Overall, this page was a lot of fun to draw.  I played around with new and more complex lighting techniques, and worked on getting a feel for drawing Jupiter (a character who will be perhaps one of the most recurrent in the poem) over and over again.   I also got to draw a cool palace, which I always love doing.  I wasn’t sure how to depict ancient Arcadia, but I decided to go for a more fantastical look, resembling something out of Lord of the Rings.  The reason for this is (once again) purposeful anachronism.  Ovid’s already relegated the world of Lycaon to extremely mythical prehistory.  There is nothing “realistic” about him.  He and his world are pure constructs of fantasy.  Therefore, I want my art style to reflect that.  By not directly appealing to a known era of history, I feel that he is more securely set in a mythical world.  Of course, there are historical elements to my design of the palace; the layout is based on Mycenean hill-castles, which constituted the most important settlements in pre-Dark Age Greece (i.e., pre-8th century).  Mycene itself was in my mind when I constructed the sloping skyline of the palace.

There is not much in the way of literary points to make about this page.  Barchiesi only has two notes on these lines.  Jupiter is, of course, enacting a xenophany, when gods travel the Earth disguised as mortals.  It was a common, moral-reinforcing tale: be nice to everyone, because they may be gods in disguise!  Sort of a pagan version of the Golden Rule, if you will.  These xenophanies are involved in a lot of different myths (even within the Metamorphoses itself).  Still, the fact that Ovid starts out with one is telling; there will be a lot of sections on the theme of gods versus mortals, which will constitute a strange, but important debate throughout the poem.

Other than that, I’ll let the page speak for itself.  Thanks for reading!