Metamorphoses 1

                As I may have mentioned in previous blogs, I love to read about any type of creation myth and compare it to those I’m familiar with.  The stories told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are no exception.

With the start of the creation on page 5, Ovid gives some colorful imagery to work with.  I can almost see a painting composed of colorful torrents of energy amassed.  It’s interesting to see that an unnamed god starts creating order after Chaos, disentangling the energies and giving “them their separate places” (6).  I get an image of a powerful being actually shaping the universe with their hands, separating the elements into their respective domains, and even creating separate climate zones on page 7, which is something I haven’t really seen discussed in an origin myth before.

                On page 8, we see something comparable to elements in Judeo-Christian creation.  Man is created to take dominion over the beasts of the earth.  We have higher cognitive function, and from the start we were children of philosophy, with our faces “uplifted to gaze at the stars of heaven” (9).  This is what I think it suggests, as we may have retained some divine element of the heavens in our being, and this is what separates us, making us almost in a godlike image.

                The depiction of the Four Ages (9-12) is not unlike accounts in Genesis.  In the Golden Age, it is always spring, and the lands are lush and self-sustaining in foods of all varieties.  There is no need to work the land, and everyone seems to be living harmoniously.  This could be what the world was like before Adam and Eve sinned, because afterward, they were required to work the land.  Murder and depravity began to stain the earth, which led to God flooding the world.  As the ages pass, from Gold to Silver to Bronze and finally Iron, mankind has taken a similar path, and this horrible behavior warrants retaliation by Jupiter.  He was not alone in this task to wipe out and reshape humanity, as Neptune helps on page 18.  This is somewhat similar to the Sumerian pantheon deciding to rid the world of man.

There are two things I find most interesting about this version of the flood story.  First, Jupiter initially chose to destroy the earth by fire and lightning, but realized that this fate would befall the earth at a later time (17-18).  This is partially in concordance with scripture throughout the Bible.  The other interesting thing is that there were numerous survivors at first, but they had died off from starvation.  The only two that made it were Deucalion and Pyrrha, but there was little indication that they were favored by the gods, as Jupiter noticed them, their little boat, and their prayers after the floodwaters had destroyed all else.  It was more like he felt bad for them, as they were devout, and called off the destruction early (21).

Reading the transformation stories gives new insight as to how the ancient Romans saw their deities.  Even the gods couldn’t help to keep themselves from the beauties of mortals.  This was explained in both the stories of Daphne and Apollo, Jupiter and Io, and Pan and Syrinx.  Apollo fell under the charms of Cupid’s arrow, chasing after Daphne, a human repulsed by any man.  It ended similarly to Syrinx’s story, with both of them being transformed into natural objects by nymphs.  Unfortunately for Io, it wasn’t by choice.  Jupiter couldn’t man up to his infidelities and instead decided to let Io suffer for it.  It is interesting to see that even the most revered of gods in the pantheon would resort to molestation and injustice.  These human-like qualities have been quite prevalent in past readings, such as in the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh.  I almost wonder if these stories are promoting chastity, as the women refused these gods, despite the situation.  It is a bizarre turn from the etiology I am familiar with in his works.

Questions:

Do the stories that Ovid attempts to patch together seem rather streamlined, or do the events that don’t necessarily occur in chronological order create some confusion?

What do you think the purpose was with having gods so enraptured by mortals?

What are some of the ideas of ancient philosophical science bleeding through the creation myths in the beginning of Book 1?