Ovid's Metamorphoses

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SANCTIUS HIS ANIMAL MENTISQUE CAPACIUS ALTAE

DEERAT ADHUC ET QUOD DOMINARI IN CETERA POSSET.

NATUS HOMO EST, SIVE HUNC DIVINO SEMINE FECIT

ILLE OPIFEX RERUM, MUNDI MELIORIS ORIGO,

SIVE RECENS TELLUS SEDUCTAQUE NUPER AB ALTO

AETHERE COGNATI RETINEBAT SEMINA CAELI,

QUAM SATUS IAPETO MIXTAM PLUVIALIBUS UNDIS

FINXIT IN EFFIGIEM MODERANTUM CUNCTA DEORUM.

PRONAQUE CUM SPECTENT ANIMALIA CETERA TERRAM,

OS HOMINI SUBLIME DEDIT CAELUMQUE VIDERE

IUSSIT ET ERECTOS AD SIDERA TOLLERE VULTUS.

SIC MODO QUAE FUERAT RUDIS ET SINE IMAGINE TELLUS

INDUIT IGNOTAS HOMINUM CONVERSA FIGURAS.

 

AT THIS POINT, A MORE SACRED ANIMAL OF HIGH MENTAL FACULTY

AND WHICH WAS ABLE TO HAVE DOMINION OVER ALL, DID NOT EXIST.

MAN* IS BORN, IF EITHER THAT ARTISAN OF MATTER** THE ORIGIN OF A BETTER WORLD

MADE HIM FROM DIVINE SEED,

OR IF EARTH RECENTLY BROKEN OFF OF THE HIGH AETHER

IT WAS BORN WITH RETAINED SOME SEED OF HEAVEN,

WHICH THE SON OF IAPETUS***, HAVING MIXED IT WITH FLOWING WATER,

MADE INTO THE SHAPE OF THE ALL-RULLING GODS.

WHILE OTHER, PRONE ANIMALS LOOK AT THE EARTH,

HE GAVE MAN AN UPLIFTED FACE TO SEE HEAVEN

AND ORDERED HIM TO RAISE HIS UPRIGHT FACE TO THE STARS.

THUS, WHAT WAS ONCE RUDE AND IMAGELESS CHANGED, AND THE EARTH

CLOTHED ITSELF IN THE STRANGE FIGURES OF MEN.

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[thanks to Stefano Poletti for helping with the translation!]

Phew! That’s the cosmogony COMPLETE!  The first episode is done, but have no fear: I’ll be back next week with the first page of the next one.  We’ve still got a long way to go: in terms of line numbers, we’re not even in the triple digits yet…

Hesiod may have written his Theogony about the birth of the universe and the gods, but the creation of Ovid’s universe culminates in the birth of human beings.  Ovid’s humans really are special: they are the crowning acheivement of creation, and possess special faculties to give them dominating power.  Hesiod’s humans were scared, ignorant and completely at the whims of the gods, whose struggles spilled over into their world.  When Zeus confiscated their fire, humans had to wait for Prometheus to steal it back.  When the gods sent Pandora and her box as a punishment, the ignorance of humans led them to open it and release suffering on themselves.  Ovid’s humans, on the other hand, are at the top of the world, and the poem, taking an important place in both.

Hesiod certainly provided a nice model for cosmological poetry, and he was definitely important as a source when Ovid was composing the Metamorphoses.  However, Ovid’s version is very different; so much so that it seems like he must have had other models.  In the creation of humanity, especially, many modern readers can’t help but notice the similarities to the Book of Genesis in the Bible.  The debate is hot over whether Ovid read the Bible.  Forthcoming work by Ingo Gildenhard may shed light on this.  While I don’t want to spoil Gildenhard’s publication, I do think it is interesting to point out the philosophical sources in this passage.  The specialness of humanity is not a concept unique to the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, or even to Semitic monotheism.  In Ovid’s day, an important philosophical school, the Stoics, who were an off-shoot of the school founded by Plato, preached the doctrine of divine providence.  Essentially, their theory went, the gods loved humanity specially, and designed both the human body and the world to be suited to our needs.  Without wishing to spoil my own work on Stoicism in the Metamorphoses, which is also forthcoming, the language of this passage is very reminiscent of Stoic teachings.  The focus on the stars is particularly Stoic, since they believed the stars themselves were gods  (remember the stars that took the shapes of gods on the last page).  One thing the Stoics stopped short of saying, however, is that humans were made in the image of the gods.  Ovid is the first writer (that we know of) to say this in the Greco-Roman world.  Where else in his day could you find this idea?  In the Bible.  This is not solid proof that he read it, but it is a very interesting notion.

Does that mean that Ovid is Christian?  Well, no – especially because the historical Jesus was 8 years old at the time the Metamorphoses was published.  Is he Jewish?  Again, no – although he does admit an enthusiasm for sleeping with Jewish girls in his poem/sex manual, the Ars Amatoria (the “Art of Love”).  If Ovid did indeed use the Bible as a source for mythology in the Metamorphoses, then he probably did it for non-religious reasons.  To be sure, Roman religion was not adverse to acquiring elements of other religious traditions.  In polytheistic belief systems, it is easy to explain other religions as simply possessing additional or alternative versions of religion, rather than heretical or blasphemous ones.  Therefore, if you encounter a god you haven’t before, you might easily begin praying to him, in case he has some extra benefits for you.  Additionally, if he resembles a god you already worship, he must just be the same god going by a different name.  In this way, Greco-Roman mythology was wont to grown and become diverse (to the chagrin of some: remember that Cicero quote I shared last week).  Diversity and equivocation of different religious beliefs led to an inconsistent mythology.  Hellenistic writers, often working around the library of Alexandria (destroyed before Ovid began writing the Metamorphoses), had a fascination with cataloguing and describing versions of myth.  Ovid is strongly a part of this tradition, although he presents his findings in a new and exciting way: he makes them all part of one big (albeit episodic) story.  So, if he did use the Bible, then it is not a profession of secret faith.  He simply did it because it was another version to take into account.  Ovid is very upfront about this: the either-or storytelling in the middle two panels of today’s page (lines 78-83) show this.  There are so many stories, even Ovid can’t make up his mind sometimes.  Some might come from the Bible, some from a handbook he found at the local library; either way, they all go into the wonderfully diverse and rich cosmos of the Metamorphoses.

 

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* That’s “man” as in “mankind”; the Latin word, “homo”, is less gendered than the English equivalent.  I rendered it differently in the comic to better reflect this, but I thought I should use the standard English word for “homo” in my own translation, given that I want it to be a literal, high school style translation for clarity.

** i.e., the demiurge, the creator gods whose golden hands have been hovering over much of this episode.

*** i.e., Prometheus, the Titan who created humanity and looked out for them.