Book VI

The Fable of Arachne or The Spinner (1656) Diego Velazquez source Wikiart

Minerva is quite pleased by the Muses’ story, but, wanting to punish someone herself, she finds Arachne, a girl of lowly birth raised up by the renown of her artistic weaving. Minerva, in the guise of an old woman, attempts to warn her of her pride, but Arachne shows complete contempt for the goddess, who reveals herself and accepts the girl’s spinning challenge. As a warning, Minvera weaves in the four corners of her cloth:  Thracians, Rhodope and Haemus, who took names from the gods and were turned into mountains; the Pygmaean queen who defeated Juno and was transformed into a crane; Antigone, daughter of the Trojan king, for being Jove’s consort was changed into a stork; and because of the boasting of their beauty, King Cinyras’ daughters were tranformed into the marble steps of Juno’s temple.  In what appears to be a forceful indictment against the gods, Arachne weaves into her cloth various scenes of the gods, representing deceptions, manipulations and transformations of humans.  Furious, Minerva strikes her; Arachne takes a nooses and hangs herself but in pity, Minerva allows her to live but in the form of a spider.

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Book V

Perseus turns Phineus and his followers to stone (early 1680s) Luca Giordano source Wikipedia

In the middle of the wedding feast, uproar rises and it is Phineus, the brother of King Cepheus, coming to revenge himself on Perseus for stealing his bride. Curiously King Cepheus chastises his brother for not saving his bride himself and says that he has given her to Perseus for his deeds.  Not certain whether to aim his shaft at the king or Perseus, Phineus chooses the latter, but Perseus hurls it back, killing Rhoetus, and the wedding feast turns into a brawl.  Perseus battles nearly everyone at the feast until he is backed against a pillar and his strength is beginning to ebb.  He holds up his old, trusty weapon, the head of Medusa, which turns his enemies to marble statues and his one friend, Aconteus, into stone.  Phineus repents, but too late, as he too is transformed into marble.

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Book III

Cadmus and Minerva (17th century) Jacob Jordaens source Wikimedia Commons

Agenor commands Cadmus to find his sister, Europa, yet while he wanders near and far, success eludes him, until the oracle of Apollo tells him to find a heifer who has never worn a yoke and there in Boeotia, he is to build his city, Thebes.  Cadmus kills a serpent and under Minerva’s orders, plants its teeth from which spring men, but warriors that, in their battle frenzy, kill each other until there are only five left: Echion and four others.  Together they build the walls of Thebes.

Cadmus’ first sorrow lay in his grandson, Actaeon, who when out hunting with his friends, came across Diana bathing in a pool, and for having viewed the sacred virgin, Actaeon is transformed into a stag by the goddess.  Yet the goddess is not satisfied with such a benign punishment, he is hunted by his own hunting dogs until,

“Upon all side, his hounds have hemmed him in;
they sink their muzzles into every limb —
the flesh of their own master in false guise
as stag.  Diana was not satisfied
until, so mangled, young Actaeon died …”

Thus, Juno’s rage against Europa, and all her blood, stemming from the house of Agenor, is assuaged.

Jove and Semele (1695) Sebastiano Ricci source Wikipedia

Juno learns that Cadmus’ daughter, Semele, is pregnant by Jove and, seeking revenge, she disguises herself as the girl’s nurse and counsels her to ask Jove to see him in all his powers. Unsuspecting, Semele makes this request of her lover and, unable to refuse her, she is killed by his bolts of light and turned to ash.  However, her unborn son, Bacchus, is rescued, sewen into the thigh of Jove and then given to Nysan nymphs upon his birth.

To settle an argument over whether men or women get more pleasure in love, Jove and Juno defer to Tiresias, who knew love as both genders (having been transformed by mating serpents to a woman and back again).  Furious at Tiresias siding with Jove, Juno steals away his sight, and Jove gives him the gift of prophecy for recompense.

Narcissus (1594-96) Caravaggio source Wikipedia

Asked by the river nymph, Liriope, if her son, Narcissus, would live to see a long life, Tiresias’ answer “Yes, if he never knows himself,” was a cryptic puzzle.  Yet the boy, loved by youths and girls alike, has a disdain for them all, including a nymph, named Echo, whom he spurns, and she wastes away until only her voice remains.  Finally, a youth prays to the gods that Narcissus receive the same treatment as they, and one day, as he sees his reflection in a pool, he immediately falls in love.

” … he is the seeker and 
the sought, the longed-for and the one who longs;
he is the arsonist — and is the scorched.”

He pines away, as had Echo, and eventually dies, but instead of a body, only a white-petalled flower with a yellow centre remains.

Bacchus (1596-97) Caravaggio source Wikipedia

Tiresias’ reputation grows but, Pentheus, Echion’s son, mocks Tiresias and his blindness, as he also scorns all the gods, especially refusing the rites of Bacchus.  The old man prophesies that Bacchus will soon come and if Pentheus does not accept him, he will be torn to pieces.

” ……………………. and then
you will complain that, in my blindness, I
saw far too well.”

Bacchus arrives and Pentheus is in a fury not even his grandfather, Cadmon, can assuage.  He captures a priest of Bacchus, Acoetes, who tells of his encounter with a young Bacchus on a ship, and of his god-like appearance.  When all the crew but Acoetes refused to take Bacchus to his destination, they were all turned into sea-monsters.  Enraged by the story, Pentheus finds the revellers on Mount Cithaeron, but tragically his mother is the first to see him.  Claiming that he is a boar, she incites her sisters to tear him to pieces, ripping off his head with her own hands.

Note:  Tiresias also dispenses his prophecies in Sophocles, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and in The Odyssey Book XI.

I’m noticing quite a bit of irony in this book: Cadmus’ warrior’s instead of killing an enemy, kill each other; Actaeon, the hunter, becomes the hunted; Semele is killed by the power/love of her lover, and in fact, unknowingly requests her own death; Narcissus rejects all, yet in the end also rejects himself; Tiresias’ knowledge causes his blindness; Pentheus, through rejecting sacred rites, becomes a sacrifice himself, and Pentheus’ mother kills her own son.  Ovid’s world is very bleak, and he ensures that we experience it to the fullest.

The Boy Bacchus (1615) Guido Reni source Wikiart

Metamorphoses

The Fall of Phaeton (c. 1604-05) Peter Paul Ruebens source Wikimedia Commons

Phaethon reaches the gorgeous palace of Phoebus, where his father confirms his birthright.  Arrogantly, Phaeton requests to drive his chariot, and sadly Phoebus concedes, giving instructions to his son for his safe journey. Thetis unbars the way for her grandson and the horses leap high in the air, but it’s as if they have no rider and control is lost.  Phaethon regrets his decision, yet is paralyzed and the chariot finally plunges down to earth destroying large swaths of it with fire.  The earth cries out and “the Almighty Father” (Jove) hurls a thunderbolt, unseating Phaeton, yet combatting fire with fire.  Phaeton, consumed by the fire, is buried by the river Po by the Naiads, while his father in grief buries his face and shuts out the sun for a day.  Clymene laments with her daughters, the Heliades, at her son’s grave, but her daughters metamorphosize into trees in spite of her attempts to save them.

Cycnus, a king of Liguria and a relative of Phaeton’s, goes to pay his respects and is transformed into a swan, a bird who does not trust to seek the sky because of Jove’s lightning bolts.

Jove then inspects the heavens and earth for damage from the fire, but spots a nymph, Callisto and, disguising himself as the goddess Diana before reappearing in his normal form, rapes her in spite of her frantic struggles. Diana discovers her shame and sends her away, and when Juno learns of Jove’s crime and of the son born to Callisto, Arcas, she transforms Callisto into a bear.  Later, Arcas encounters his mother and nearly kills her, but Jove intervenes, grabbing both and placing them in the sky as Ursa Major and Minor.

Plate 101 Raven John James Audubon source Wikiart

As Juno is enraged at the compliment given to Callisto, she travels to heaven in her chariot which is drawn by the peacocks who have recently changed hue.  We hear of another bird, Phoebus’ sacred bird, the Raven, who also gets his colour changed from white to black, as punishment for his talkative chatter. He refuses to listen to the Crow’s warning, whose feathers were transformed as he informed on the three daughters of the bi-form Cecrops, Pandrosos, Herse and Aglauros, when they looked into a basket and discovered a baby that had been formed by the seed of Vulcan, after he attempt to rape Minerva.  Minerva, however, turns him black for his snitching, and the poor crow relates that before this incident, he had been a princess, but was transformed into a crow while escaping from the sea-god who attempted to ravish her.  Yet now he is supplanted in the affections of Minerva by Nyctimene, the owl, oh woe is he!  The Raven, however, declines to heed the crow’s wise wisdom, and instead reveals to Apollo (Phoebus) that his love, Coronis had lain beside a Thessalian youth. Inflamed with hot fury, Apollo kills Coronis yet before she is burned, he snatches their unborn son, Aesculapius, from her womb and gives him to the centaur, Chiron, to raise.  The Raven, however, receives his due and is banished.  We learned of this same story in Chaucer’s The Manciple’s Tale.

The daughter of Chiron, Ocyrhoe, prophesies over Aesculapius, saying that he will become a great healer and god.  Her father’s immortality will also change to mortality, but as she speaks she is transfigured into the form of a horse with a new name, Hippe.

Landscape with Mercury and Battus (1618) Jacob Pynas source Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile, bereft with grief, Phoebus is roaming the hills in the guise of a shepherd, but in his mourning over the fate of Coronis, his cows wander off and are hidden by Mercury.  Yet an old man named Battus witnesses the theft, but Mercury buys off his silence with a choice cow from the herd.  Battus promises a stone would give more information than he.  To test the old man’s resolve, Mercury disguises himself and returns asking for “his cows” and offering Battus a cow from the herd for information on the theft.  Battus reveals all and Mercury changes him into a stone (now called a touchstone or tellstone) in payment for his betrayal.

Mercury spots Herse, daughter of Cecrops, and is determined to possess her. He enlists the help of her sister, Aglauros, but Envy, spurred by Minerva, poisons Aglauros.  Infected with resentment of her sister’s happiness, she attempts to prevent Mercury from entering her bedroom, and he turns Aglauros into a statue.

Returning to heaven, Mercury is directed by Jove to drive the king Agenor’s cattle down to the shore, yet unbeknownst to him, Jove is planning the capture of the daughter of the king, Europa.  He disguises himself as a perfect white bull, entices the girl, and then rides away into the ocean with her on his back.

The Abductiion of Europa (1715) Jean-François de Troy source Wikipedia

Metamorphoses