the woods burn with their mountains: Ovid’s fondness for catalogues allows him to display his erudition and entertain the reader with the epic poet’s equivalent of the cinematic travelogue.
Haemus…Oeagrus: Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, was slain here.
A catalogue of burning waters follows the catalogue of mountains.
Xanthus (destined to blaze up again): a reference to Homer: In the Iliad, Book XXI, the Xanthus is one of the rivers near Troy that engaged in battle with Achilles, aided by Hephaestos (Vulcan), who set it on fire.
Cycnus: If your name was Cycnus, the Latin word for swan, you evidently had a good chance of being changed into your namesake: this is the first of three such transformations that Ovid includes.
the Governor: Jove.
Callisto: unnamed, presumably because her story was too well known to Ovid’s Roman audience, or because by omitting her name, Ovid could emphasize just how many tales involving Jove’s sexual rapaciousness there were; note, as Juno will do later on, the interesting parallels with the tale of Io, in Book I.
her father: Callisto is the daughter of Lycaon.
two adjacent constellations: the Great Bear and the Little Bear.
your foster child: Tethys was Juno’s nurse.
those geese whose vocal vigilance / would one day keep the Capitol from harm: In the fourth century, when invading Gauls attempted to sneak up the Capitoline Hill in the middle of the night, a honking flock of geese gave the alarm; Ovid uses his simile to point out that there was a time when squawking birds were appreciated.
performs, / improperly, rites proper to the dead: The impropriety consists in the murderer performing such rites for the victim.
Boychild, bringer of good health: Aesculapius, unnamed, the god of medicine and healing. The story of how this Greek god was imported into the Roman pantheon is recounted in Book XV.
and the three goddesses will snap the thread: the Fates, three sisters known to the Romans as the Parcae: one sister, Clotho, spins the thread of life; a second, Lachesis, measures it; and the third, Atropos, snips it.
you had gone off to Elis and Messenia: Apollo’s grief for Coronis was not without term; suitably attired, he had already taken off to console himself with a young herdsman.
a Balearic sling: Used in hunting and in combat, the sling consisted of a thong, wider in the middle than at the ends, holding an egg-sized stone, or “bullet,” of clay or lead. The slinger would whirl his weapon around and then release one end of it to send the missile on its way. The Balearic Islands were famous for their slings.
that looks up to your mother on the left: Mercury’s mother, Maia, daughter of Atlas and Pleione, was a star herself, one of the Pleiades.
Book III: The Wrath of Juno
Jove and Europa: One might expect the story to be continued here, but it ends abruptly, and Ovid passes on to develop another of its consequences: the founding of Thebes by Cadmus. In the background, briefly alluded to, is the wrath of Juno over Jove’s involvement with Europa (a liaison that would produce Minos, who generates another “family” of stories); her anger has consequences for many of the descendents of Agenor.
the Snake / that keeps the Greater from the Lesser Bear: the constellation between Callisto and Arcas.
you will have seen / on feast days, in the theater: In the Roman theater, painted curtains were raised, rather than lowered, at the end of an act or the end of the play; figures on the curtains would appear to be gradually rising, just as the tiny warriors do.
having Mars and Venus as your in-laws: Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, was their daughter.
the Armoress of Nymphs: a purely honorary title, which Ovid grants to Arethusa in V. 797.
his pack of hunting dogs: Actaeon would no doubt have been able to name the individual members of his pack, as Ovid does here, but at this point in his story, it is doubtful that he would have had any such interest in doing so. The insertion of the catalogue of dogs here is one of Ovid’s most skillful manipulations of point of view, and since his audience knew the inevitable outcome, a marvelous assault on complacency.
transformed / into a woman: In another version of the myth, Tiresias is changed into a woman after he catches sight of Athena naked.
Narcissus and Echo: Ovid was the first to put these two figures together in one story.
a flower: the narcissus.
the thyrsus: a staff, wrapped in ivy and vine leaves and crowned with a pinecone, carried by Bacchus and those who celebrated his rites.
His grandfather: Pentheus is the son of Agave, daughter of Cadmus, and of Echion, one of the survivors of the men created from the sown dragon’s teeth.
“Naxos!” cried Liber: Naxos is important to this myth because the adult Bacchus discovered Ariadne on that island after she was abandoned by Theseus.
But now the oars are tangled up in ivy: The appearance of the god is signaled by dead wood sprouting green leaves, ivy, or grapevines.
Book IV: Spinning Yarns and Weaving Tales
The daughters of Minyas: The scene has moved from Thebes to Orchomenus, a city about forty miles away. Minyas was its king, and his three daughters challenge the power of Bacchus and pay dearly for it. The activity of the three daughters, weaving at home, would ordinarily be considered virtuous and appropriate; here, because of the nature of, and demands of, the god, it is regarded as transgressive. Ovid either invents or follows a different version of the myth from the one in which the three daughters repent and one of them tears apart her own son as a sacrifice to the god.
Great Thunderer!…Liber: names of Bacchus derived from characteristics of the god and of his ceremonies. Great Thunderer: a reference to the noisy nature of the rites. Sweet Bringer of Release: Bacchus is the god of wine. The next three references are to Jove’s taking over the duties of pregnancy after Semele’s destruction. Lenaeus: a name derived from an Athenian festival in honor of the god. The next two references are to the frenzied nature of the rites themselves. Eleleus and Euhan were ritual cries of the worshipers, and Iacchus was another name for the god. Liber, the Latin word for “free,” refers to the liberating aspects of wine.
Without your horns: Bacchus was often represented with horns, a suggestion of the bestial violence associated with his worship.
Now all the Orient admits: Bacchus wandered east through Asia to India, successfully spreading his cult where he went.
the tomb of Ninus: some local color: Ninus was the king of Babylon, husband of Semiramis, and presumably his shrine would have been prominent enough for the lovers to find in the dark.
son of Hyperion: Phoebus Apollo, the Sun.
the land of spices: the East in general, Persia specifically.
I will not mention here…Daphnis…Sithon…Celmis…the Curetes…Crocus and his Smilax: Alcithoe rejects some twice-told tales for those that have the virtue of unfamiliarity. A jealous nymph turned Daphnis into stone for his infidelity. Sithon is otherwise unknown, but his story is perhaps rejected as an inferior version of the one that she finally selects. Celmis protected baby Jove on Crete from the rage of his father, Saturn, and was then changed into stone by Jove after questioning his divinity. The Curetes were also Cretan defenders of Jove. Crocus and his Smilax, a boy and a nymph, were changed into flowers of the same names.
His face and name / made evident their offspring’s origins: He is the son of Mercury (Greek Hermes) and Venus (Greek Aphrodite); the Greek names of his parents allude to the outcome of the story.
those sisters born of Night: the Furies.
the place where infamy is punished: What follows is a brief catalogue of legendary figures, whose dubious behavior has merited them a place in the penitential part of the underworld. Tityos: a giant, guilty of the attempted rape of the goddess Latona; Tantalus: guilty of attempting to deceive the gods by serving them a feast consisting of his murdered son, Pelops; Sisyphus: guilty of slyness, nature unspecified; Ixion: guilty of the attempted rape of Juno; the Belides: granddaughters of Belus, m
ore commonly called the Danaides, the fifty daughters of Danaus, forty-nine of whom murdered their husbands on their wedding nights, not without provocation.
the sea owes me a favor: Venus is referring to the story, frequently represented by artists, of her origin from sea foam, the substance from which her name in Greek, Aphrodite, derives.
he became a serpent: the transformation predicted by Minerva in Book III.
throughout defeated / India: referring to the way in which the god’s cult spread throughout the East.
to pay the price for her own mother’s speech: Her mother, Cassiope, boasted of her own beauty and so irritated the Nereids that they persuaded Neptune to punish the kingdom with a flood. The oracle of Ammon revealed that only the sacrifice of Andromeda would relieve the kingdom.
Pegasus and his brother: His brother was Chrysaor, a mortal, otherwise unnoticed in the Metamorphoses.
hid her eyes behind her aegis: an attribute of Minerva, the aegis was usually represented as a breastplate or shield with the head of Medusa depicted in its center, surrounded by a fringe of serpents.
Book V: Contests of Arms and Song
Perseus and the suitors: Once again, Ovid continues a story directly from a previous book. The first of two battles described in Book V, its extravagant violence may remind contemporary readers of an afternoon spent watching professional wrestling or the violence of animated cartoons. It is, however, the least of three increasingly violent mock-heroic scenes; the others are the hunt for the Calydonian Boar in Book VIII and the struggle between the Lapiths and centaurs in Book XII.
Typically for Ovid, epic is mock-epic, and this one, an invention of Ovid’s, is a parody of the scene between Odysseus and Penelope’s suitors, not without reference to the struggle between Aeneas and Turnus for the hand of Lavinia in the Aeneid. Ovid casually employs Minerva, the half sister of Perseus, as a bridge to the next story, the battle between the Muses and the Pierides, but the two tales are also linked by Ovid’s ironic attitude toward both battles.
Jupiter, transformed into fool’s gold: Phineus’ dismissive treatment of the legend of the hero’s conception, when Jove appeared to his mother Danaë, in a shower of gold.
in order to avenge his undeserving / grandfather, Acrisius: In the usual version of the myth, Acrisius is something of a villain: believing an oracle to the effect that the son of his daughter Danaë will kill him, he shuts her up in a tower, to which Jove comes as a shower of gold, impregnating her. She and Perseus are thrown into the sea in a wooden box and rescued by Polydectes (see note below on 351). Perseus later goes looking for Acrisius and accidentally slays him, as Apollo slays Hyacinthus, with a discus. Ovid, however, casts Acrisius as the victim of his villainous brother Proetus, avenged by Perseus.
Polydectes: In the alternative version, he rescues Perseus and Danaë after Acrisius throws them into the sea. He inspires Perseus to go after the Medusa in order to have the chance to seduce Danaë.
the virgin Muses: According to Hesiod, these were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, each charged with being the divine patron of a different kind of poetry. Urania (378) here appears to be their Mother Superior; Calliope (503), who is chosen by them to respond to the song of the Pierides, was the muse of epic poetry, a genre that Ovid has just treated somewhat less than reverentially in the previous tale.
this new spring of yours: the Hippocrene, whose waters were said to inspire poets.
Pyreneus: His story, which is given only here, may conceal a literary satire on a bad poet.
Daughters of Memory: the Muses.
Calliope’s hymn to Ceres: Proem: Based on the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the song of the Muses is the first of three “poetic” interludes placed at the end of each five books of the Metamorphoses and discussed in “A Note on this Translation,” frontmatter. Critics who see Ovid as culturally transgressive read it as satire: Anderson, in his commentary, says that in their response to the Pierides, “the Muses prove equally obnoxious and incompetent’ (Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books I–V, edited, with introduction and commentary by William S. Anderson [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997]); Ovid’s irony may be difficult for the modern reader to see here, but its presence should not go unsuspected.
The rape of Proserpina: Proserpina is a fertility goddess who, as a result of her abduction by Dis, must spend the wintry half of the year underground (jointly ruling the kingdom of death with her husband) before she comes back up again in the spring.
Vigorous Sicily sprawled: personification.
Pelorus…Pachynus…Lilybaeum: the three capes of Sicily.
the Lord of the Silent: Dis, the god of the underworld.
by joining her to her uncle: Ceres’ daughter, Proserpina, was Jove’s daughter and so the niece of his brother Dis.
Ascalaphus: otherwise unknown.
a pomegranate…seven of its seeds: The pomegranate, a symbol of immortality, became associated with Proserpina; in other versions of the tale, she eats only one seed, which suffices.
Triptolemus and Lyncus: the latter is otherwise unknown, but the former was Demeter’s favorite, whom she sent around the world in a serpent-drawn chariot to foster the growth of agriculture.
Book VI: Of Praise and Punishment
Arachne: Rivalry between the gods and mortals was present in the contest between the Muses and the Pierides in Book V, but it faded into the background with the elaboration of the hymn to Ceres and the story of Arethusa. With the tales of Arachne, Niobe, Latona, and Marsyas, it comes to the fore once again, developed differently each time.
Minerva shows: The contest Minerva depicts was one between Neptune (Greek Poseidon) and Minerva (Greek Athena) to determine the name of the city. An illustration of her victory is followed by the representation of a series of episodes in which presumptuous mortals are punished for their imprudent behavior, an implicit warning to Arachne.
Arachne shows: She represents seductions and rapes carried out by Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Bacchus, and Saturn. While Minerva’s work is balanced and formal, Ovid emphasizes the realism of Arachne’s more loosely organized depictions.
Niobe knew this girl: one of Ovid’s more casual bridges, but there is a strong thematic connection between the two tales.
the twin gods she bore: Apollo and Diana, or, as Ovid prefers here, to emphasize their twinship, Phoebus and Phoebe.
only one man…my father, Tantalus: After the scandalous behavior of Tantalus (see note below on 581), which won him a place in the punitive part of the underworld, the gods may have reconsidered the propriety of inviting mortals to their feasts.
Jupiter himself, who raped my husband’s mother: Jupiter raped Antiope (an episode depicted by Arachne in her weaving) and produced Amphion. Niobe does not let the impropriety of the act prevent her from emphasizing the connection with a distinguished in-law.
their stepmother: Juno. Latona was Jove’s first wife, according to one legend about the goddess.
the ivory patch on his left shoulder: Pelops, the son of Tantalus, was slain by him as a child; his father, to test the gods’ omniscience, served him to them as a feast. Only Demeter, momentarily distracted, ate a portion, which turned out to be Pelop’s left shoulder; this she later replaced, when he was brought back to life, with an ivory patch.
the enmity of fierce Diana: a reference to the tale of Meleager and Althaea, in Book VIII.
a bent that Thracians have for lechery: If this seems an inadequate explanation of the horror that follows, it is nonetheless an example of Ovid’s emphasis—in psychology as in cosmology—on process rather than cause.
the thyrsus: See note for III. 702.
“Ulula!” and “Euhoy!”: ritual cries of the devotees of Bacchus.
One flies to the woods, / the other finds her refuge under roofs: Procne becomes a nightingale, and Philomela, a house swallow.
Boreas, a northerner like Tereus: presented to us first as a person, then as a personification: the north wind. Ovid concludes this book with
another tale of rape, but one where brutality is concealed by narrative discretion and the comic bluster of its protagonist. It ends happily, with the birth of two wingèd heroes (Zetes and Calaïs, not named by Ovid) who grow up to become the Argonauts, whose search for the Golden Fleece forms a bridge to the action of the next book.
Golden Fleece: the prize sought by Jason and the Argonauts: the fleece of the ram that carried Phrixus, son of Athamas and Ino, to safety in the realm of Colchis when his parents sought to kill him. Received there by King Aeetes, Phrixus sacrificed the ram and presented the fleece to the king, with whom it remained until Jason captured it.
Book VII: Of the Ties That Bind
the Argonauts: Under the leadership of Jason, they journeyed, aboard the Argo, to Colchis, to bring back the Golden Fleece in the possession of the magician-king Aeetes. The action of Book VII begins with their arrival.
Phineus: After blinding his own sons, he was given the choice of death or blindness by Zeus. In opting for the latter, he insulted the Sun, who sent the Harpies to punish him by stealing or befouling his food.
I wonder if this isn’t love, so called: Medea struggles against a passion that is self-inflicted, rather than imposed by the gods. The theme of the female magician made helpless by her own erotic desires is developed later in the tales of Circe and is also related to Aurora’s passion for Cephalus, later in Book VII.
those clashing / mountains in midocean: the Symplegades.
Jason removes / the serpent’s teeth and sows them: Ovid does not tell us, but Minerva kept half of the dragon’s teeth given to Cadmus in Book III and gave them to Aeetes.
clattering bronze: Making a great deal of noise outdoors was the approved Roman way of forcing an eclipse to end.
the effects that it produced on Glaucus: which he himself describes in Book XIII.
Bacchus observed: Ovid’s fleeting reference implies the existence of a tale no longer in circulation.
Medea and Pelias: In Ovid, Medea’s meanness is unmotivated. Other versions of the story describe a history of trouble between Aeson and Pelias, who were half brothers. Pelias sent Jason off on the quest for the Golden Fleece and, in one version of the story, killed Aeson while his son was away; when Jason returned, Medea persuaded him to let her avenge him.