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We're switching gears now. 
We're moving from the poetry of Virgil, 

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which is stately and grand and kind of 
long form into the poetry of Ovid, which 

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is more playful and intimate and is prone 
to digression. 

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You'll notice as you're reading Ovid that 
is episodic in nature. 

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Ovid can't quite keep his focus on any 
specific thing. 

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He likes to move from one piece of the 
story to, to a totally different story, 

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back to the story he was telling. 
It is strongly digressive in his approach 

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to things. 
It makes for a, a, a, a more playful kind 

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of a poetry and as you'll see, 
a very different form of entertainment 

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that we see with Virgil. 
in the case of Ovid, his dates are here 

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43 to seventeen of the common era. 
43 from BCE to seventeen of the common 

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era. 
in the, in the case of Ovid, what we see 

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are people caught in internal conflicts. 
a lot of what we see is going to be that 

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kind of conflict. 
People are torn between two courses of 

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action. 
Usually, passion on the one hand and duty 

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on the other hand. 
And as we saw in Virgil. 

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duty is supposed to win. 
Well, in Ovid, it's the other way around. 

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Passion almost always wins over duty. 
We're going to see lots of small details. 

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Regular people involved in great events. 
they will be kind of people on the 

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sidelines who get focused on as some 
monumental historical thing happens in 

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front of them. 
Or we'll zoom into people who are main 

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characters in the action. 
But a lot of the time he spends is on the 

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periphery of things. 
Watching the things from the edges, 

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zooming in, zooming out as he likes. 
we'll see hints in him of a philosophical 

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outlook of a world based on change. 
the idea of a kind of fumbling, roiling 

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conglomeration of atoms that comes 
together in one shape, and then falls 

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apart and comes together in another shape 
is a kind of world view that we'll see 

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Ovid working within. 
Ovid was from a prosperous family. 

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He had the best education money could 
buy, which at the time, meant a training 

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in the verbal arts. 
Ovid was being trained up to be a great 

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lawyer, and he made a phone call home at 
some point, Mom, Dad, I've got great 

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news, I want to be a poet. 
well back in those days there was still 

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money and fame to be gained if a person 
was involved in poetry. 

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but the normal course of events would 
have been to go off and use that 

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education, the training, and the verbal 
arts, that he had been trained up, in to, 

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in such a high degree. It's fine pitch of 
educational perfection would have been 

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for him to go off and become a wealthy 
senator a provincial governor, or, 

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something like that but Ovid have other 
plans for himself. He was indisputably, 

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the greatest poet of his day, in the 
generation after Virgil. 

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the Ancients had interestingly mixed 
feeling about him. 

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He was clearly a genius. 
And no one thought otherwise of him. 

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And as I say, he was definitely the 
greatest poet of his day. 

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But we have this wonderful preserved 
quotation from Quintilian. 

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a literary critic who read, reading Ovid, 
said, 

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he could have been better if he had 
controlled his genius rather than letting 

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it control him. 
It sounds a little bit actually, if 

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you've seen that depiction of the life of 
Mozart in the film Amadeus. 

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it has a little bit of a ring to it 
there. 

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there's a, a man in the grip of a 
tremendous talent that allows him to do 

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just about anything. 
And he allows the talent, his kind of 

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virtuoustic talent let get the better of 
him and take him off in directions that 

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may or may not be exactly what one should 
do with epic poetry. 

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he got himself into trouble with the 
authorities. 

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We're not exactly sure how. 
Augustus himself was angry with Ovid and 

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that resulted in Ovid being banished. 
He went away for some unknown error. 

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here's his birthplace of 
Sulmo as shown here. 

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Rome, right nearby. 
and then, Ovid gets tossed all the way 

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over to the other side on the coast the 
Black Sea and has to live in this place, 

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Tomis. 
Poor guy he's a, a very sophisticated or 

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vain person. 
He's living out there in the sticks at a 

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time when the, 
you know, maybe the greatest city of all 

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time was just waiting for his talents and 
his excitement to, to engage with it. 

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he has to spend his time out on the Black 
Sea. 

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So, because of this error, he has to live 
his live out there in exile. 

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near the beginning of the course, we 
defined myth as a traditional tale with 

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secondary partial reference to something 
of collective importance told by someone 

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for some reason. 
And that was the definition that we're 

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using in the course, that's our tried and 
true definition. 

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Walter Burkhardt the great scholar of 
Greek myth, came up with it. 

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And the com, after the comma is the 
struck edition told by someone for some 

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reason. 
With Ovid, we get a different definition 

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of mythology and I'll just go ahead and 
toss this one out. 

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Ovid thinks of myth as a clump of 
stories, probably, untrue about ancient 

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characters that may or may not have 
actually existed with some deeper trues 

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in them or not. 
But they're surely fun to hear. 

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In other words, Ovid's definition of myth 
is a little bit like what we see the 

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definition of mythology that is worked 
out today. 

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In Hollywood, in TV spectacular shows, in 
comic books of all kinds. 

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who knows exactly what the relationship 
is between these stories and some 

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anchoring insight into the grand 
structure of the universe. 

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However, boy, they're really fun to hear. 
Ovid jumps right into the pool of myths. 

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And tells and retells just about 
everything. 

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His metamorphoses stands in a in, in, 
you know, a unique position in the 

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sources that we've looked at in our, in 
our class. Ovid tries to doing synoptic 

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view of mythology from beginning to end. 
He tries to look at the whole thing and 

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well, all the way up to historical times 
to Roman times, 

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if you've got time on your own, we're 
only reading bits and pieces of the 

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metamorphosis, I highly recommend the 
rest of it for those of you who are able 

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to. 
and the, the idea of a his idea or his 

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take on any particular myths we're going 
to study is usually the one that wins out 

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over time. 
So, if you've seen a myth retold whether 

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that's on Wikipedia or an Edith Hamilton 
or any of the standard contemporary 

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resources that people go to, to learn 
about Greek myth. 

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If you see a myth being retold, chances 
are, you're seeing Ovid's version of the 

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myth. 
he becomes so authoritative because of 

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his encyclopedic nature and his 
incredibly playful spirit and well, 

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wonderful skill and virtuosity in his 
poetic technique. 

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he becomes the main goto source for the 
usual try to get the usual understanding 

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of what myth is about. 
this is interesting because as we'll see 

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Ovid has his own spin on things. 
He does things in his own way. 

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Just as any of the authors we've seen 
already do. 

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so, his shaping of the tradition I think 
can't really be underestimated. 

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He has an incredibly powerful place. 
[COUGH] 

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Ovid will present us in his sewing 
together of all these traditions with a 

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coherent group of old tales. 
And coherent needs to be put in there's a 

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little footnote there. 
It's coherent and so far, it all holds 

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together but Ovid will make it jump and 
move and bounce about. 

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The seams that are used to sew together 
the different traditions move in zig zag 

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patterns. 
You'll see Ovid can't follow a straight 

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line for the life of him. 
he's, he's bored by that. 

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It seems as though he would just not find 
that interesting. 

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So, instead he zigs and zags in always 
fascinating and interesting ways. 

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Now, this sewing together of all these 
traditions present something slightly 

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different than zeroing in on specific 
episodes within the mythic tradition that 

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we've seen, 
you know, whether that's the founding of 

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Rome, or the story of Aenea, or whether 
that's the tale of Orestes and all the 

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nasty things that happened to him or 
Odysseus. 

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it's trying to do the whole thing, 
everything all together. 

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So, with him, we start to see something 
more than just myths, we see mythology as 

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a kind of a study in and of itself. 
This large corporate collection of 

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things. 
Now, in Ovid's story, we'll see lots of 

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themes. 
number one, the theme of change and 

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transformation. 
remember those Spartoi that grew up out 

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of the ground? 
We saw, 

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saw those in our last slide. 
The Spartoi that grow up out of the 

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ground, 
that's just the kind of thing Ovid is 

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going to love to talk about. 
we've got a dragon that gets slayed. 

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Its teeth get pulled out from, they get 
tossed into the ground and up from those 

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seed teeth, grow up plants that turned 
into human heroes. 

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He loves that kind of thing. 
transformations is going to be our really 

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central theme here and definitely one of 
the most important of them. 

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they're going to be a line between human 
and animal, it's going to be an important 

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one that he looks at and you recall as 
this slide depicts our tale of Agave and 

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how she mistakes her son for a 
sacrificial animal, slices off his head. 

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the line between humans and animals is 
going to be one of the pivotal moments of 

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trans of transformation and change that 
Ovid's going to be interested in. 

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And just as we've seen in the past, when 
that line gets crossed, these strange 

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things are likely to happen. 
violence is just around the corner, 

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always, in Ovid's tale. 
it's not much as he's 

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an elegant and playful storyteller, the 
materials that he's dealing with usually 

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are deadly serious and usually someone 
dies. 

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violence galore in those stories. 
theme two that we're going to see lots of 

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examples of illicit love and passion. 
love is sometimes a euphemism. 

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We're going to see lots of rape as in 
here, the depiction of the rape, 

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[UNKNOWN] by the women. 
the idea of rape in Ovid's tale is not 

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something that he is he's going to 
present it in a way that shows a certain 

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kind of titillation, 
excitement a transgression that happens. 

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They're the violent outcome, 
the, the, the results from these 

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transgressions is going to be exhibited 
as well. 

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but I think we'll feel, in some cases, 
we'll see a human turn into a flower and 

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that will seem like a charming story. 
In other cases, we'll see a rape that 

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results in a, a human woman turn into an 
animal. 

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In both cases, I think violence violence 
is closeby the surface. 

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And Ovid means to pull it out and, and, 
and set it up for us. 

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so don't be lulled into a sense of the 
charm of these stories as the violence is 

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occurring and that's definitely happening 
going to happen with, when we see these 

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scenes of elicit erotic passion turning 
into rapes. 

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another theme that we'll see is a strong 
sense of links between the divine and the 

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human world. 
but there are dangers as well, when these 

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kind of linkages happen. 
we're going to see when the human and 

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divine worlds get close as here when 
Diana is spotted. 

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watch out, you don't, if you're a human 
being and you spot a goddess, 

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run the other way even if you try to run, 
you are still going to get caught. 

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the bad things are going to happen. 
So, when the human and, and divine 

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dividing line is crossed or come close 
to, it's like you are approaching a kind 

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of third rail. 
danger is waiting and we see it visited 

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on those that did get too close to the 
divine world. 

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00:11:14,657 --> 00:11:17,391
Ovid is maybe a little bit like 
Prometheus. 

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He's stealing fire from the gods and when 
he does, there's punishment that happens 

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in each of these cases. 
we're going to see a final theme that 

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I'll just point to is the theme of 
bodies. 

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Ovid is very much interested in the 
physical, corporeal nature of you and I 

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as human beings. 
bodies are something that he focuses on 

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in a very close up way and we see them 
enter into we see their fragility, we see 

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their changeability we see human beings 
as they anchor to them, sadly. 

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and we see them as in a way that humans 
tend to resist. 

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We see them as all the things that the 
wider natural world sees them. 

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for example, when animals look at one 
predatory animals look at you and I, 

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they don't probably think of, oh, look at 
that nice human being, I might like to 

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get to know them. 
Instead, you and I look a little bit more 

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like you know, a carved out piece of meat 
ready to eat. 

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the in Ovid's world, our bodily nature is 
run through a whole template of the 

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different dimensions that it has and he 
is nowhere about to hide the fact that 

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you and I are flesh and that flesh is 
fragile, it may be predit, it may be a 

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prey for some other animal and it's 
changeable and it's very temporary. 

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Ovid's poem I'm not going to lay out the 
whole beginning here, we didn't assign 

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that part of the reading for class but I 
thought we could be, set it in useful 

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contrast to some of the things we have 
seen in the other stories that we have 

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looked at. 
The heroic epics of the Iliad and the 

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Odyssey and the Aeneid focusing on that 
first word on a pivotal important theme 

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of what the epic is all about. 
For the Illiad, it was a war rage. 

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that's, that's something we read for the 
class, we made reference to it. 

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00:13:01,450 --> 00:13:04,157
For the Odyssey, 
the opening word is man. 

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What is it to be a male-gendered human 
being? 

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That is what the epic was going to be 
about. 

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00:13:09,522 --> 00:13:14,575
For the Aeneid, it's the arms and a man. 
Virgil tells us he is going to sing about 

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both of these main Homeric themes. 
For Ovid, he jumps in in a way that 

198
00:13:19,067 --> 00:13:22,124
slightly bends the traditional 
formulation. 

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his first word is new things in Noah. 
actually, it is a preposition. 

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A prepositional phrase begins his epic, 
not a concrete noun that you can jump 

201
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onto. 
And the thing that you are going to jump 

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into is this prepositional link to 
Noah, new stuff. 

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That's the beginning of what the epic is 
all about. 

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translations of it vary. 
the typical one that is latched onto is 

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the, the, the, looking at its first 
worthy idea of forms changed into new and 

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different bodies. 
This is what I was going to focus on, not 

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some single thing that's just sitting 
there, waiting for us to discover it like 

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a, a, a specimen that we are going to put 
under microscope for the whole epic. 

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Instead, what he's going to look at is 
changing things in and of themselves, as 

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they change. 
That's what he wants to do and that's 

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what he is going to dig into. 
Now the metamorphosis is going to focus 

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on moments of destruction. 
yeah, change is going to happen, but 

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these moments of change are not going to 
be gentle and sweet. 

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they're going to be violent. 
and when they do happen there's, there's 

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always pain and suffering of individuals. 
the metamorphosis any individual change 

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that's talked about could be a 
punishment. 

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It could be a form of justice that's 
delivered out. 

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more often, it's a kind of random 
visitation on someone just, that just 

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happened to step into some situation that 
was precarious and before you know it, 

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they're changed into something else. 
and the judgement that's visited on that 

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person may be deserved, may not be 
deserved. 

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It is not a world that, that is ruled by 
some over arching theme of justice. 

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we're not going to see that happen. 
Yeah. 

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More often instead, what we see them 
metamorphoses are bodies that are 

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victims. 
These are bodies that are [COUGH] porous, 

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they are wounded, they're dismembered, 
they're dissolved, 

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they're turned into a thing instead of a 
human being. 

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in the case of stories that we've already 
seen, like Actaeon and Pentheus, 

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we're going to, Ovid is going to focus on 
these. 

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He likes to talk about these traditional 
tales of humans getting ripped up. 

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they're going to be dismembered. 
In the case of Narcissius, a story that 

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you all might already know, 
you'll see how this version of it, it's 

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probably puts different spins on it than 
ones you've seen before. 

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we are going to see a body just kind of 
wastes away, just disappears. 

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in the case of sometimes we'll have he 
was change into animals or plants or 

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animals. 
But, but always, that change is, is 

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accompanied by some kind of destructive 
possibility. 

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Now, trying to focus understand this 
focus that Ovid has on bodies some have 

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pointed to the historical climate of his 
time. 

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he's dealing in an imperial age, in a way 
that Virgil has one foot back in an 

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earlier age and then also looks forward 
to this imperial age. 

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Ovid is dealing in fully in an imperial 
age, and this is an age of high 

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spectacle. 
The Colosseum is up and running. 

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We got human bodies that are put on 
display and being ripped up before our 

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very eyes by other animals. 
We're seeing the, the porous fragile 

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nature of human bodies exhibited to us in 
the form of entertainment you and I as 

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classical Romans. 
Ovid is putting us inside that world and 

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it may well be that his own approach to 
this stuff is influenced by certain 

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carelessness to the human form that is 
exhibited in the world around him, in the 

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high empire of Rome from here on, we'll 
start to look at specific 

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points in Ovid's story and these themes 
we'll see pulled out over and over again.