“All things change; nothing perishes.”– Ovid
Ovid was a Roman poet who wrote his master work, The Metamorphoses or “Transformations,” in 8 C.E.. He weaves more than 250 Greek myths together in one long poem to tell a story of transformation, and explore the complexities of love as an agent of change.
Ovid’s voice has been influential over the centuries. The Metamorphoses was an important touchstone for Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other artists and thinkers whose works are foundational to today’s dominant culture. HIs perspective and the story that he tells are worth examination.
Is it still useful to us? Does it offer anything to our vision of the future?
Transcript of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Love and Transformation
Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.
I’m back in Colorado after a couple of weeks in the Hudson River Valley, where I participated in the springtime programming of the Greater Mysteries project in a variety of ways. The mystery of transformation, how this process takes place and the meaning and impacts of deep change, is on my mind and in the zeitgeist. Many of us experience a deep transformation of some sort at least once in our lives, and I think it’s clear that we’re going through a collective cultural transformation right now. A global shift, a polycrisis that will impact each of us.
Today I want to think about transformation through the lens of Ovid, a Roman poet who wrote his master work, The Metamorphoses or “Transformations,” in 8 C.E., when Augustus was Caesar in Rome. In The Metamorphoses, Ovid weaves more than 250 Greek myths together in one long poem to tell a story of transformation. Each of the myths involve a transformation of some sort: humans into gods or gods into humans, humans into animals or gods into animals, etc. He organized the stories into 15 books, but the work is essentially one long poem, written in dactylic hexameter like the Iliad and the Odyssey and Virgil‘s Aeneid, a mythic account of the founding of Rome after the Trojan War.
The Romans borrowed very heavily from Hellenic culture. The Greeks created a very compelling image of the world and life, of human society and the uncontrollable energies that act on us, through their myths, art, and philosophy. They posed questions that humans are still wrestling with, using methods of inquiry, philosophical, artistic, and scientific, that we still employ. They understood government and warfare, and poetry and beauty. The Romans recognized this richness and adopted many aspects of Greek culture, including the Greek gods and their myths and cult practices.
As I’m sure you know, deities in the Greek pantheon have both Greek and Roman names. Zeus is the Roman Jove, for example, and Hera is Juno. Athena is Minerva, Hermes is Mercury, and so on. So, it’s no surprise that Ovid, like other creative and ambitious Romans, borrowed his material from the Greeks. And yet, he did more than swap out the names of the deities. Ovid reworked the stories pretty extensively. The nature of his reworking is something that I’ll get into in a moment.
Ovid’s work is interesting in light of today’s theme, transformation. For one thing, his voice has been influential over the centuries. The Metamorphoses was an important touchstone for Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, other artists whose works are foundational to today’s dominant culture. Ovid’s perspective and the stories that he tells are worth examination. Are they still useful to us? Do they offer anything to our vision of the future?
Ovid’s tales, like the Greek myths that he’s reworking, are full of violence and misogyny. Part of me did not want to engage with Ovid’s stories given everything that’s going on in the world. And yet looking away does not make these problems go away. Ovid also lived in a chaotic time, a time marked by power struggles, civil war, and the rise of governmental institutions to support the shift from a Roman republic to a far-flung Roman Empire. In The Metamorphoses he conveys two essential truths about our mythic inheritance that were relevant then and are now.
One, that change is the essence of life and transformation is a central subject of myth. Everything changes and myths describe and explore how change takes place. Change happens and it’s a good thing or a problem, depending on your point of view. Second, Ovid explores the complexity of love as a powerful force, a catalyst for the best and worst actions and an agent of transformation. The power of love was a consistent theme in many of Ovid’s works. He explored love from many angles and he wasn’t starry eyed about its possibilities or effect on us.
So, although there are elements in these stories that are difficult to handle, I think it’s important that we look, really look, at the ideas about life, world, cosmos, and human nature that comprise the reality that we’ve constructed over the centuries. The world that the dominant culture supports, and that we occupy. To see those constructs and ourselves as clearly as we can, and to consider what we can change.
When you consider transformation and love, your first thought might be “wow this sounds good.” And I agree, love as a catalyst for transformation can be very positive. Love can be generous and tender and nurturing. Love can bring out the best in us. Love can inspire hope, faith, bravery, and stamina. Love can make us better people. And love is complicated.
Love can also drive us mad. It can fuel delusions. Love be expressed as power. It can lead to possessiveness and jealousy. Lust. Love can be hurtful. Deceitful. A betrayal of love can also lead to transformation. In Ovid’s poem, the majority of humans that undergo transformations are victims. Or, are they? The transformation comes as rescue from a rape or other crime, or it facilitates a crime, or it comes as punishment. The transformations catalyzed by love may or may not lead to a happy ending in Ovid’s telling.
It’s often said that love is a double-edged sword. Is this a simple fact, an unavoidable truth of human existence? How can we live with this reality and perhaps shape it, or consciously evolve in response to it? I don’t have complete answers to these questions but I think it’s crucial not to white wash or simplify the power and effects of love or transformation on us. Everything is layered and multi-dimensional, has positive and negative aspects which are often a matter of degree. Every quality, idea, person, and culture.
To live with these forces and navigate these processes and create a culture and world view to carry us into the future, I think we need to restore complexity. We need to be able to be handle complexity and sit with the ambiguity and uncertainty that result.
That was a long introductory comment. Let’s step into the opening myths told by Ovid. Because it’s a poem with a lovely rhythm, I’ll read a short excerpt from Alan Mandelbaum’s English translation at a couple of points.
Ovid begins with the Greek creation story. The creation of the world. But first he opens, as Homeric poems do, with an appeal to creative energies greater than his own. Ovid’s appeal is directed to the gods, not the muse. He writes,
“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world‘s beginning to our day.”
In these opening lines, Ovid tells us that transformation is his topic. He also suggests that change is the way of things. The “gods” that he invokes are “gods” with a small” g”, not a capital “G.” The transformations that he’ll relate in his poem may be put in motion by specifically named gods like Jove i.e, Zeus, for example, and yet this power doesn’t belong to a particular, named God. It’s cosmic and it acts upon the gods as well as everything else that exists. He employs the metaphor of “gods” to describe the forces of transformation because they are uncontrollable, autonomous energies obviously at work in the cosmos, beyond human understanding.
These are not “gods” that you worship but rather principles and processes that must be recognized.
Ovid then moves into the creation story, adapted from the Greek poet Hesiod.
“Before the sea and lands began to be,
before the sky had mantled everything,
then all of nature‘s face was featureless –
what man called chaos: undigested mass
of crude, confused, and scrambled elements,
a heap of seeds that clashed, of things mismatched.
There was no Titan Sun to light the world,
no crescent moon – no Phoebe – to renew
her slender horn; and the surrounding air,
the earth’s weight had yet to find its balanced state;
and Amphritrite’s arms had not yet stretched
along the furthest margins of the land.
For though the sea and land and air were there,
the land could not be walked upon, the sea
could not be swum, the air was without splendor:
no thing maintained its shape; all were at war;
in one same body cold and hot would battle;
the damp contended with the dry, things hard
with soft, and weighty things with weightless parts.
A god – and nature, now became benign –
ended this strife. He separated sky
and earth, and earth and waves, and he defined
pure air and thicker air. Unraveling
these things from their blind heap, assigning each
its place – distinct – he linked them all in peace.
Fire, the weightless force of heaven’s dome,
shot up; it occupied the highest zone.
Just under fire, the light air found its home.”
From this description of a chaos of clashing possibilities and the emergence of heaven and earth, Ovid goes on to describe the creation of a differentiated Earth with watery oceans and mountains, night and day, and a myriad of various life forms which appear in the familiar order found in other creation myths. In beginning at the very beginning, Ovid suggests that the first transformation was the transformation of this roiling chaos of warring elements and possibilities into a harmonious order of distinct forms. The establishment of a “cosmos” or universe. The Greek word “cosmos” means “good order” and “harmony.”
This was the first act of these powers, these little “g” gods of transformation, which suggests that this is their nature and the nature of all that they bring into being. To create is to transform. Transformation is the way of things. Inherent to being some thing, to having form, place, identity.
Next Ovid describes a Golden age, a time of harmony when the earth was fertile and humans were relatively few and peaceful, a time before agriculture, cities, wars, and governments. A time before the Olympians. This golden age is followed by the Silver age, which is when Jove and the rest of his pantheon appear. It is the beginning of a process of degradation that continues through the Bronze and Iron ages. The Iron age is a time of declining fertility of the Earth, of increasing hardship, and violence. A time when humans multiply, create more and more tools to exploit the earth, a time when they began to ruin everything. A time of greed, cruelty and impiety.
Jove is disgusted and angry at their behavior, and with the agreement of the other gods, he brings about a great flood. One pious couple manages to survive in a small boat. When the waters recede, an oracle tells them to throw the bones of their mother, that is stones of the earth, behind them as they walk. These stones become humans. Other forms of earthly life, plants and animals, arise from the moist heat of the earth. Seeds and bones subject to the transforming power that is inherent in the Earth herself, the divine being the Greeks called Gaia.
So, the new generations after the flood are once again created through uncountable transformations, some brought about under the direction of the Olympian gods and many, most, by the transformative powers of the earth, the mother.
Now Earth gave birth to one monstrous creature against her will, an enormous serpent called Python that kills people and animals in the area near Delphi. This is all that Ovid tells us about this monster, maybe for artistic reasons, who knows – but in Greek myth Python was connected to Hera, sister and wife of Zeus, who occasionally tried to cultivate her own great powers in order to thwart or counterbalance her husband. Unsuccessfully. The great goddesses, subsumed or replaced by gods as the patriarchy advanced. In any event, Python could also pronounce oracles, a power that Apollo wanted to claim for himself. Apollo killed his rival as he set up the Oracle of Delphi under his control.
Ovid doesn’t include these details, rather he suggests that Apollo wanted to be a hero and rescued those who were threatened by Python. After dispatching this monster, Apollo, flush with victory, meets Cupid, known to the Greeks as Eros, God of Love. That’s capital “L “Love. Cupid is the son of the goddess Venus, the Greek Aphrodite. I’ll tell you more about Cupid or Eros later.
Staying with this story for now, Apollo is a supremely accurate archer. He killed Python with arrows. This was his great warrior skill, one shared with his sister Artemis or Diana to the Romans. Cupid is also an archer, but in the Roman imagination, Cupid is a boy, a little boy with a little wings who is often depicted in sweet scenes. Apollo claims that Cupid could never match his skill with the bow and arrow. The little boy is insulted.
Now nearby is Daphne, a beautiful nymph, daughter of the river-god Peneus. Daphne is attracting a lot of romantic attention from the males around her. Romantic attention that she does not want. Daphne wants to be in service to Diana, the Greek Artemis, to roam the deep woods and hunt. To leave her hair loose and wear a short tunic. She does not need a man. She has no desire to marry or be in love or have children. She has discussed this with her father. Peneus told her that she owed him grandsons but she pleaded to be allowed to enjoy her freedom, perpetual virginity, just as the goddess Diana. This is left unresolves but her father is not sure this will be possible because she is so beautiful.
Back to Cupid and Apollo, the argument between them and those arrows. Cupid may be small and his arrows may be relatively small, but they are very powerful. Cupid has two types of arrows with two very potent powers. One arrow is golden, its tip is sharp and glittering. A wound from this arrow inspires an all-consuming love. A love that cannot be denied. Cupid shoots Apollo with one of these arrows and at once the god is inflamed with love. And who does he see first, but Daphne. Now he must have her.
But Cupid’s other arrows have a lead tip and a blunt shaft, and to be pierced by one of these arrows is to be full of a compelling revulsion equal to the love inspired by the golden one. Cupid pierces Daphne with one of these arrows, ensuring that she will never, ever succumb to Apollo’s pleas for her love.
Apollo is love struck and longs to wed Daphne, and although he is the god of oracles, there is nothing he could know, no action he could take, that would quench his desire for her. His heart is aflame. He burns. He watches the beautiful nymph and is in rapture over every detail of her being. But when he comes near, she cannot bear it and tries to get away. Apollo calls after her,
“Dear Daphne I don’t pursue you as an enemy! Wait, nymph, you flee as would the lamb before the wolf, the deer before the lion, or the trembling dove before the eagle; thus all flee from hostile things, but it is love for which I seek you now!”
Apollo races after the nymph intent on catching her and also full of worry that she will fall and be hurt. He pleads with her to stop. He tells her that being in love with him will be a beautiful experience and reminds her that he is the god of song, and medicine, and many other good things. Alas, he says, there is no herb to cure my passion, so please stop and be that cure.
But Daphne does not halt. Instead, she picks up speed. She runs and runs, her tunic fluttering and her hair streaming in the breeze. Now Apollo has lost patience, and as he is a god, you know that he can catch her. He comes up right behind her. They are both hunters but now he alone hunts and she is the prey. He is very swift because he is full of hope. What urges her is fear, an even greater power, but he is a god. He is right behind her now and she feels his breath upon the hair that streams down her neck.
They are close to her father‘s river and she cries out, “Help me, dear father! If the river gods have any power, then transform, dissolve my gracious shape, that form that pleases too well.”
“As soon as she is finished with her prayer, a heavy numbness grips her limbs; thin bark begins to guard her tender frame, her hair is changed to leaves, her arms to boughs; her feet – so keen to race before – are now held fast by sluggish roots; the girl’s head vanishes, becoming a treetop. All that is left of Daphne is her radiance.”
She has become a laurel tree. The first laurel tree. Apollo still loves her and leans against the trunk. He kisses the wood but that is much of her as he will gain. So, he decides that laurel leaves will be his adornment and one of the earthly forms to which he will lay symbolic claim. A wreath of laurel leaves will become the mark of victory for the warrior or the athlete who wins at the games, and a sign of gladness.
Thus, they are always bound together, Apollo and his beloved Daphne. In her new form, Daphne shook her crown, as if she meant to show her consent.
Transformations. From the formation of the cosmos, to the appearance of humans and other life after the great flood, to a nymph changed into a laurel tree in response to prayers to her father. In devoting his poem to hundreds of myths about transformation, Ovid suggests that these events, great and small, are all expressions of the essence of existence. Sounds clear and simple and yet, many questions remain.
Daphne’s prayer was answered, she was rescued from the unwanted affections of Apollo. Did she also receive her greater wish? Was her transformation a tragedy or a fulfillment? And what about Apollo? Is his attachment to Daphne, his love, likely to be more satisfying, longer lasting, now that she is in this form? Those loved by Apollo don’t fare very well in the surviving myths about this god.
And, there are many beautiful nymphs. Many beautiful nymphs. By virtue of this transformation, Daphne became unique, singular, a subject of myth.
Let’s return to Cupid AKA Eros for a moment. This god of Love has been repeatedly reimagined over the centuries. In the earliest written accounts that we have today, Eros is a cosmic principle that emerged from the chaos at the same time as Gaia, the Earth. Eros, the force of attraction, desire, love is a transformative energy, the inner coherence of the cosmos. What holds its disparate pieces together.
In later Greek myths, Eros is given various sets of divine parents, Hermes and Aphrodite, for example. His parentage seems to shift in response to the needs of that particular myth. The nature of Eros is multifaceted, the nuances conveyed in his changing backstory. The notion that love or attraction is what knits everything together is not completely erased, the transformative power remains, and yet over time this god‘s primary occupation came to be that of troubling humans.
Of troubling men especially, the male being the human and females, women, being something less, something Other in the Greek imagination. An imagining that has unfortunately, persisted. As far back as Plato, Love is a force, a god, the result of divine actions that mystify and often compel men to suffer. To make wrong choices and commit crimes. To be vulnerable to love, to be overtaken by it, is presented as a big problem. One that not even the other gods and goddesses can fully escape. Look at what happened to Apollo and his pursuit of Daphne. Although the consequences for the gods and goddesses in their perfect beauty, and with all their powers and immortality, are significantly less.
Cupid has two types of arrows and he inspires love or hate. These seemingly opposite emotions have the same source. We need to develop and maintain a complex view of love and transformation. I’ve given you a little bit of Ovid’s storytelling. He gave the myths a certain flavor but he didn’t exhaust the possibilities they contain or answer all of the questions that we can pose. The meaning of Daphne’s transformation remains ambiguous. Let me introduce several pieces by contemporary poets also inspired by the myth of Daphne’s great change, to give voice to this ambiguity.
The following three poems are from the collection titled Orpheus and Company, Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology edited by Deborah DeNicola.
“Daphne with Her Thighs in Bark” a reference to Ezra Pound, by Eavan Boland
“Daphne” by A.E. Stallings
Do what you will.
What blood you’ve set to music I
Can change to chlorophyll,
and root myself, and with my toes
wind to subterranean streams.
Through solid rock my strength now grows.
Such now am I, I cease to eat,
But feed on flashes from your eyes;
Light, to my new cells, is meat.
Find then, when you seize my arm
That xylem thickens in my skin
And there are splinters in my charm,
I may give in; I do not lose.
Your hot stare cannot stop my shivering,
With delight, if I so choose.
A range of responses to Daphne’s myth, a variety of imaginings into her experience or transformation. And which one is true? Not the right question, as you know.
I want to say a few more words about Ovid but let’s pause to offer a big welcome to new email subscribers: Sherry, Annie, Kay, Jonathan, Desiree, Marcus, Betsy, Maria, Judith, Jenn, Thomas, Barbara, Joy, Alaa, Denise, Heike, Megan, Huibrecht, Christine, Judith, Michelle, Leslie, Becca, Ruby, Garen, Kathy, Randy, Carlota, Ben, Beth, and Laura. Welcome to Myth Matters!
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Let’s return to Ovid for a moment before we part ways. Ovid was very popular among many in ancient Rome and his influence has extended across the centuries. He was also controversial. His irreverent tone and skepticism about the gods offended the more pious members of Roman society. Even those who were also reluctant to grant the gods the level of authority they had enjoyed in earlier times, sometimes felt that Ovid trivialized important issues and thereby degraded the high standards of Roman society. He was seen as a bad influence and honestly, he may not have been the most virtuous of men.
At various points in his poem, Ovid references the Caesars and draws parallels between them and their power building, and the machinations of the Olympian Jove. These observations and sly critiques were not looked upon favorably. Despite his popularity and many supporters, Ovid spent the last decade of his life in exile from his homeland at the command of Augustus Caesar. A poet living amongst strangers, who did not speak his native tongue.
Reworking the old stories and foundational myths is an act of creativity that often requires courage.
Who gets to tell the stories, and which stories do we privilege? Every person in every community who has been denied the right to testify to their own experience or tinker with the old forms knows how essential this is to having identity and agency. There’s power in storytelling. There’s power in the revision, in re-imagining, rewriting. There’s also a power in listening, in posing questions, and in declaring preferences.
These are ways that we shape the old stories that shape us. This is another way we change the world.
If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and life-centered, life-embracing world.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
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