NOVEMBER 13/14: Epic stories: other views
READINGS: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, selections from books 13 and 14 (Procopy packet); Tuesday night class (Nov. 14), be sure to continue to the webnotes on Roman art and architecture
Summary:
The Metamorphoses ("Transformations") of the Roman poet, Ovid, is an epic poem of a different kind.  This work is familiar to many readers as an encyclopedic compilation of famous mythological tales told by a master storyteller.  Here you can find many of the stories of Greek mythology that inspired countless poems, paintings and other works of art.  The poem, however, is much more than a simple collection of stories. In his opening lines, Ovid sets three goals.  First, he will sing of “metamorphoses”: each of his stories will be a tale of transformation.  Secondly, his song will be “seamless”; each story will merge smoothly into the next.  Thirdly, his poem will go from the creation to his own times; this implies that there is a basic chronological framework - one of the simplest forms of narrative - for his poem.  In fact, these goals are more ambitious and complex than they seem.  The transformations in his stories take place in an infinite number of ways, occupying many different places in the structure of the narrative.  Secondly, Ovid uses a remarkable variety of devices to slip from one story into the next.  Lastly, Ovid plays with the chronological framework of his poem - and of individual stories, teasing us with the temporal links between stories and reminding us that time is only one of many things that hold stories together.
     I have chosen selections from book 13 and 14 of the Metamorphoses because they deal with the aftermath of the Trojan War and some of the characters and stories that we have already met in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid.  Transformations are crucial within each of the stories, but our discussions of Homer and Virgil should help you see a more fundamental transformation taking place in Ovid's work.  Ovid takes the familiar stories of the epics of Homer and Virgil and he utterly transforms them.  Minor episodes become major ones, major events are passed over in a single line, and the story of Aeneas' journeys becomes just the framework for a series of different and seemingly unrelated tales. Many stories are told as embedded narratives from the points of view of different characters, others are described through the description of works of art (ekphrasis),  the familiar time sequence is distorted by the use of embedded narratives, tragic episodes are transformed into parodies, comic scenes, or romantic tales.  Finally, Ovid's own emphasis on "transformations" in each of these stories reminds us that authors may choose to tell any story in their own way.  There is no, one, true version of a story: this, perhaps, is a commentary on Virgil's Aeneid in which Virgil used prophecies and the idea of fate and destiny to make the story of the Trojan War the basis for a grand authoritative, narrative of Roman history.
    
OUTLINE OF OVID'S TEXT
INTRODUCTION
    
We take up the story near the end of the Trojan War when Ulysses (Odysseus) has sailed to fetch the arrows of Hercules.  Here, Ovid alludes to well-known parts of the story of the Trojan War.  The Greeks are said to have received a prophecy that they could not sack the city of Troy without the bow and arrows of Hercules.  These belonged to a Greek warrior, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks had left behind on the island of Lemnos because he was suffering from a terrible wound caused by a snake bite.  Typically, Ovid alludes only briefly to a familiar story.  In fact, he alludes to other famous stories as well: by identifying Lemnos as "the country of Hypsipyle and of the renowned Thoas, a land made notorious in the past, when its wives murdered their husbands," he hints at part of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts, in which it is said that the women of Lemnos had risen up against the men and killed them all.  Ovid quickly passes over the end of Troy, "...the war that had dragged on so long was at last brought to a close. Troy and Priam fell together....", and begins to tell a story of transformation, the story of the transformation of Queen Hecuba, Priam's wife, into a dog...

OUTLINE
HECUBA'S FATE
  
-short summary of the Sack of Troy (Notice how quickly - and irreverently - Ovid passes over the dramatic events of the death of Priam, the sack of the city, and the killing of Hektor's young son, Astyanax)
   -the Trojan women are taken captive, and the Greeks sail for Thrace (also the first stop on Aeneas' voyage)
   -Achilles' ghost appears and demands the sacrifice of Polyxena, Priam's daughter
   -Hecuba mourns Polyxena and finds the body of her son, Polydorus, murdered by the Thracians (Aeneid 3.19-89)
   -In revenge, Hecuba blinds the Thracian king, Polymestor; before the Thracians can kill her, she is transformed into a dog
AURORA AND MEMNON
   -Aurora, goddess of the dawn mourns the recent death of her son, Memnon, the Ethiopian king, at Troy (Aeneid 1.692)
   -She appeals to Jupiter, and Memnon's body, burning on the funeral pyre, is transformed into a flock of birds, the Memnonides
AENEAS' ESCAPE AND JOURNEY (Notice Ovid's tongue-in-cheek way of describing Aeneas' flight, "The hero Aeneas, the son of Venus, carried away upon his shoulders the city's sacred images, and with them another burden, equally sacred, his venerable father. Out of all his great possessions, the good Aeneas chose to bear away this portion, and his son Ascanius"): Ovid will use Aeneas' journey as a framework for telling another series of stories, many of them involving embedded narratives, while the tale of Aeneas' travels recedes to the background.
   -KING ANIUS TELLS THE STORY OF HIS DAUGHTERS: a double transformation: the daughters turn anything they touch into corn, wine or oil, and the daughters are eventually transformed into doves
   -ANIUS GIVES AENEAS A DRINKING BOWL DECORATED WITH THE STORY OF ORION'S DAUGHTERS
(transformation: two young men, the Coroni, rise from the ashes of their funeral pyre)
After a quick summary of Aeneas' journey to Crete (Aeneid 3.131-190), his encounter with the Harpies on the Strophades (Aeneid 3.274-346), his sailing past Ithaca and Actium (Aeneid 3.349-365), and his visit to Helenus (Aeneid 3.380-659), Ovid continues with Aeneas' arrival at Sicily where several perils - Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops - familiar from the Odyssey and prophesied by Helenus await him...
   -THE STORY OF SCYLLA: AS A GIRL, SHE SCORNED HER SUITORS, AND TOLD STORIES TO THE SEA NYMPHS
      -THE NYMPH, GALATEA, TELLS OF CYCLOPS' LOVE FOR HER
         -Polyphemus, the Cyclops, sings a love song to Galatea
         -Polyphemus surprises Galatea and her lover, Acis; he kills Acis, and a transformation takes place: Acis becomes a river
      -GLAUCUS MEETS SCYLLA, TELLS STORY OF HIS TRANSFORMATION INTO A SEA GOD
      -SPURNED BY SCYLLA, GLAUCUS COMPLAINS TO CIRCE
            -Circe seeks Glaucus' love, is rejected, and seeks revenge on Scylla
            -With magical poisons and spells, Circe transforms Scylla into a monster...Scylla later takes revenge on Circe "by robbing Ulysses of his friends", a reference to Odysseus' loss of several of his men to Scylla as he sailed past the monster.
With the reference to Ulysses/Odysseus, Ovid returns to the framing story of Aeneas' voyage, quickly summing up his visit to Dido, their love affair, his stop in Sicily, and the death of Palinurus.  While recounting Aeneas' crossing to Italy, Ovid describes the transformation of the Cercopes into "a kind of mis-shapen animal".  He sums up Aeneas' visit to the Sibyl and his descent to the underworld, and, instead, he uses the Sibyl's conversation with Aeneas on the way out of the underworld to introduce the Sibyl's own story.
   -THE SIBYLTELLS HER STORY, AND ANTICIPATES HER FUTURE TRANSFORMATION
On the shore, Aeneas meets another of the men of Odysseus/Ulysses: Macareus.  He recognizes Achaemenides, the Greek whom Aeneas rescued from the land of the Cyclops...
   -ACHAEMENIDES TELLS THE STORY OF THE CYCLOPS; MACAREUS TELLS THE STORY OF THE NEXT PART OF ODYSSEUS' JOURNEY, FOCUSING ON HIS VISIT TO CIRCE
      -Macareus describes how Circe transformed him and his friends into animals, and how Ulysses subdued Circe and had her restore the men to their human form
      -Macareus tells how one of Circe's servant girls told him a story of a statue of a young man (Picus) with a woodpecker on his head.
         -THE SERVANT GIRL TELLS MACAREUS THE STORY OF PICUS
            -Circe falls in love with Picus when she sees him hunting.
            -She tries to seduce him, but he rejects her.
            -Circe transforms him into a woodpecker, and she transforms his men into animals.
            -Picus' wife, the nymph, Canens, mourns him and wastes away, vanishing into thin air.
Ovid returns to the story of Aeneas and sums up his wars against Turnus and the Rutulians.  One of Turnus' men, Venulus, seeks help from the Greek warrior, Diomedes, who had settled in Italy...
   -DIOMEDES' STORY
      -Diomedes describes the fall of Troy, and his sufferings, at the hands of Venus, in its aftermath
      -One of his men, Acmon, challenges Venus, and he is transformed into a seabird
   -STORY OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF A SHEPHERD INTO AN OLIVE TREE
   -STORY OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE TROJAN SHIPS INTO SEA NYMPHS
(Aeneid 9.87-159)
The story of Aeneas concludes with his transformation, at Venus' request, into a god.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
-Describe the different ways in which Ovid introduces transformation into his stories.
-Describe the different ways in which Ovid connects one story to another.  How does Ovid link these stories together thematically?
-What are the comic elements in Ovid's stories?  How does he poke fun at Virgil and Homer?
-Compare Ovid's use of the embedded narrative with Virgil's use of the technique.
-How does Ovid link his stories with the framing story of the fall of Troy and Aeneas' journey to Italy?  How does he refer back to Odysseus' journey?



NOV. 14/15: ROMAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Monday/Wednesday)
SCHEDULE OF READINGS (Tuesday night)
RETURN TO HUM 2211