Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses Books 8-10, Part A

For week four, I'm choosing a slightly different angle of Greek/Roman mythology and focusing on Ovid's Metamorphoses, books 8-10. Read below for my notes!

1: Daedalus and Icarus

-King Minos's wife fell in love with a bull and, as a result, gave birth to the Minotaur (half-man, half-bull); Minos wants the minotaur gone, so he goes to Daedalus who builds the labyrinth that the minotaur gets stuck in; Theseus kills the minotaur and leaves with Minos's daughter Ariadne, and abandons her on an island; Bacchus-Liber (Dionysus) finds her crying and takes her crown, putting it in the sky and making it a constellation; Daedalus is imprisoned on the island too by King Minos

-Trying to escape the island, Daedalus makes a pair of wings; as Daedalus worked, his son Icarus played next to him and unknowingly hindered his father's work; when Daedalus was done, he had made a pair of wings for himself and a pair for Icarus

-Daedalus warns Icarus that he can't fly too low or too high, and that he has to follow the path Daedalus shows him; they take off, and Icarus ignores his father's warning; he flies too high and the heat from the sun melts the wax holding his wings together, and he falls into the ocean and dies

2: Philemon and Baucis

-in Phrygia, Mercury and Jupiter (disguised as a mortal) go to the house of Baucis and Philemon (an old married couple) to rest; Baucis and Philemon offer them a place to sleep and food, even though they don't have much (a couch made of straw and cloth, a three-legged table, etc.)

-they have a surprisingly elaborate feast, and everyone is in high spirits

3: Transformation of Philemon and Baucis

-Baucis and Philemon notice that as each bowl of wine is empty, it refills itself; this scares them, so they pray for forgiveness from the gods quietly; they try to sacrifice a goose for Mercury and Jupiter for dinner, but they tell them not to; Mercury and Jupiter say that their neighborhood will recieve just punishment, but they will be exempt, if they climb a mountainside with them

-as Baucis and Philemon climb the mountain, they look back and see that their neighbors' houses are no longer there, only theirs is left; their house then turns into a temple and Jupiter tells them they to ask for whatever they want

-Philemon asks that they be made priests that can watch over Jupiter's new temple (their house) and that they both die at the same time, so they won't have to live without each other; Jupiter granted their wishes, and once they both died, they became trees that stand next to one another next to the temple steps 

4: Ceres and Erysichthon 

-Erysichthon was a man who hated the gods; once, he violated a grove of Ceres by cutting down an ancient tree (he ordered his servants to do it, anyway); when his servants were hesitant, he decided to cut down the tree himself

-when he went to cut down the tree, the tree started to turn white, and when he would hit it with the axe, blood would come out of the bark; one of his servants tried to stop him from hurting the tree further, but Erysichthon killed him; he continued cutting the tree down when a voice spoke from the trunk and warned him that if he killed the tree, he would be punished severely; he didn't listen and cut the tree down anyway

5: The Famine

-after Erysichthon cut down the tree, all the mourning Dryads ran to Ceres and begged her to punish him, so she sends a messenger named Oread to tell Famine to torment Erysichthon; Oread gives the message to Famine and leaves quickly (because Famine is scary)

-Famine goes to Erysichthon while he sleeps and "breathes herself into him"; while he sleeps Erysichthon starts to dream of food; when he wakes up, he's starving and no amount of food can satisfy him 

-eventually, Erysichthon buys so much food and eats so much that he doesn't have any money, but he's still hungry; so, he tries to sell his daughter; his daughter refuses and goes to Neptune to ask him to save her from slavery; Neptune grants her prayer and turns her into a fisherman; the guy who wanted to buy her comes to her and asks where the girl went; she tells him that she hasn't seen anyone; when he leaves, Neptune turns her back into a girl; when Erysichthon finds out his daughter can shape shift, he begins selling her over and over again for money, making her change shape and escape from her buyers in a different form so she can be sold again

-eventually, Erysichthon became so hungry he ate himself 

6: Achelous 

-Theseus asks Achelous why he only has one horn when he used to have two; Achelous decides to tell him the story of the time he fought Hercules

-Achelous and Hercules were interested in marrying the same girl, Deianira, and both went to her father to ask for her hand; they argue about who would be a better son-in-law; Achelous taunts Hercules with insults, so Hercules gets angry and challenges him to a fight

-Hercules and Achelous fight; at one point, Hercules pins Achelous to the ground, but Achelous changes shape into a snake and gets out from under him; they continue fighting, and Achelous changes into a bull; Hercules eventually beats him and tears one of his horns off; he gives the horn to Naiades, who fills it with fruit and flowers and calls it "the horn of plenty"

7: The Shirt of Nessus

-a centaur named Nessus was also infatuated with Deianira, the woman Hercules and Achelous fought over; after fighting Achelous, Hercules married Deianira 

-one day, they're traveling back to Hercules's home when the come across a river and try to cross it;  Nessus comes to them and tells Hercules that he'll carry Deianira across while Hercules swims; Hercules agrees, and swims across first; when Hercules gets across, he turns around and Nessus is trying to carry Deianira away; as Nessus runs away, Hercules threatens him and shoots him with a poisoned arrow in the chest; Nessus tells Hercules he will not die without revenge, and gives Deianira his blood-soaked shirt as a gift

-a very long time later, Deianira hears a (false) rumor is going around that Hercules is in love with a girl named Iole, the daughter of a king Hercules had just fought; Deianira believes the rumor and gets upset, wondering what she should do; she decides to send the blood-soaked shirt Nessus gave her to Hercules to remind him of his love for her; when he gets it, he puts it on, not remembering that it also has poison on it from the poisoned arrow 

8: The Death of Hercules

-after Hercules unknowingly puts on the poisoned shirt, he makes offerings to Jupiter; eventually, the pain from the poison becomes so strong he overturns the altar; he tries to take the shirt off but it tears off his skin and makes his blood boil

-as he's dying, he cries to Juno; he calls her an evil stepmother, and wonders why he's dying this way after everything he's done in his life; he contemplates whether gods actually exist if he can't fight off this poison; he runs around the forest, groaning and trying to get the shirt off and shouting at the gods

-he eventually finds the messengers, Lichas, who brought him the shirt from Deianira; Hercules gets angry at him for bringing it and hurls him into the sea; Lichas turns into a rock in the sea

-Hercules builds himself a funeral pyre, gives Philoctetes his weapons and commands Philoctetes to light it after he lays down; while he lays in the funeral pyre, Jupiter tells the gods that the fire will only burn away the mortal part of Hercules, and the immortal part will allow them to make him a deity because of everything he's done in his life; after Hercules dies, Jupiter places him among the stars as a constellation 

9: Birth of Hercules

-after Hercules dies, his son Hyllus marries Iole and she eventually gets pregnant; one day, Hercules's mother Alcmena tells her the story of Hercules's birth

-after seven days and nights of labor, Alcmena cried out to Lucina (the goddess of childbirth) to help her; Lucina had previously promised Juno to make Hercules's birth horrible, because Jupiter had cheated on her with Alcmena; so Lucina did nothing to help her, she just prolonged labor and halted the birth each time it began

-Galanthis, one of Alcmena's servants, sensed that the problems with the birth were because of Juno, and sees Lucina by the altar; Galanthis lies and tells Lucina that Alcmena has had the baby, and thinking that it was over, Lucina releases the bonds she had over the birth previously, which allows Alcmena to have Hercules; Lucina realizes Galanthis has tricked her and changes her into a weasel  

The fall of Icarus. Source: Wikipedia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Metamorphoses" by Ovid, translated by Tony Kline. Web Source: UnTextbook.