10. The Flight of Dædalus (VIII. 152–259) II. The Calydonian Hunt (VIII. 260-525) 12. Philemon and Baucis (VIII. 620-724). 13. The Death of Hercules (IX. 134–272) . 14. Orpheus and Eurydice (X. 1-77) . 15. The Song of Orpheus (X. 86–219) 16. The Death of Orpheus (XI. 1–84) 17. The Story of Midas (XI. 85-193) 18. The Chiefs at Troy (XII. 1–145) 19. Rivalry of Ajax and Ulysses (XIII. 1-398) 20. The Tale of Galatea (XIII. 750-897) 21. The Wisdom of King Numa (XVI. 1–487) I. THE FASTI. SHORTER Poems. a. The Festival of Pales (IV. 721-808) a. The Poet of Idleness (I. 15) 179 INTRODUCTION ΤΟ THE METAMORPHOSES" QF OVID. THE Mythology of the Greeks, adopted by the Romans, consists mainly of two distinct parts. The first is what is technically called Theogony, "the generation of the gods," and was put in the shape best known to us by Hesiod, some time before 500 B.C. It began, there is no reason to doubt, with rude personifications of the objects and forces of nature, such as would be natural to a people of active intelligence, lively imagination, and childlike ignorance on all matters of science. The Sun, the Dawn, the Winds, the Floods, are easily conceived as superhuman persons. Some of the earlier fables are hardly any thing more than metaphors, or poetic images, put in the form of narrative. That the Sun is figured as a shepherd, and the fleecy clouds his flock, which are scattered by the wind and gathered again by his beams, a very old bit of Eastern poetry, — easily gives rise to the stories of Apollo as the shepherd of Admetus, and that which tells the stealing of his cattle by the rogue Hermes. That the maiden Artemis gazes with love on the sleeping prince Endymion, is hardly more than a poetical way of describing the beautiful spectacle of a full moon rising opposite the sun at his going down. A season of blasting drought and heat may have been described by saying that the chariot of the Sun was driven from its course by the unskilful, self-confident boy, whose fate is told in the wild tale of Phaethon. And so on. But few fables can be explained in this simple way. By a very natural process, a group of divine or ideal Persons was conceived, whose family history or personal adventures became the subject of tales absolutely devoid of any symbolical meaning. In the system found in the Greek and Roman poets, nature is full of mythological beings, grouped as subjects in a monarchy-about the one celestial or royal family, which has its abode on Mount Olympus. The King of Heaven, ZEUS (Jupiter), with his sisterqueen HERE (Funo), is the child of KRONOS (Saturn) or Time, who again is the son of OURANOS and GAIA (Heaven and Earth), beyond which imagination did not seek to go. His brothers are POSEIDON (Neptune) and HADES (Pluto), kings of the Waters and of the Lower World. His sisters are DEMETER (Ceres) and HESTIA (Vesta), queens of the Harvest and of the Home. His sons are APOLLO, god of Light, ARES (Mars) of Strife, and HERMES (Mercury) the Herald. His daughters are ATHENE (Minerva), APHRODITE (Venus), and ARTEMIS (Diana), goddesses of Wisdom, of Love, and of the Chase. These are the twelve great divinities (dii majores). And about them, in nearer or remoter kindred, are grouped the inferior deities, the heroes or demigods, their children by half-mortal parentage, and the innumerable progeny of fabulous beings inhabiting the kingdoms of sky, water, or earth. The other department of mythology is that with which this poem chiefly deals. It consists of the miracles and adventures ascribed to these superhuman persons, — a vast field, in which ancient fancy rioted as freely as the modern fancy in novels and fairy-tales. Some of them may possibly be explained as a picturesque way of recounting natural phenomena, or as exaggerated tales of real events. But in general they seem purely fictions of the imagination. In a very large proportion they take the form of metamorphoses, that is, transformations of men or other creatures into various shapes; and this feature gives the subject and. the title of the present poem (see the first lines of Book I.). It professes simply to tell those stories which have in them this element of the marvellous, the transformations, particularly, of men into plants or animals. But as nearly all myths introduce some such feature, first or last, it manages to include nearly all the important ones with more or less fulness. They are told in a rambling discursive way, one story leading to another by the slightest possible link |