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In our first section of reading from 
Ovid, we're going to go back to Thebes. 

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You'll recall in the week of the class 
when we looked at dissolving selves, 

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and we looked at, Oedipus around the site 
of Thebes. 

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And we looked at what happened, with 
Pentheus around the site of Thebes. 

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Ovid's going to spend some time in 
Thebes. 

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I mean, he is going to spend some time in 
a place where things kind of fall off, 

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and, go, go a bit wrong. 
that is definitely something that, is 

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interesting to him, 
so it's not surprising that he spends a 

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good bit of a good bit of time reinvent-, 
reinvestigating these traditional tales 

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around this city. 
Agave, 

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yeah she makes a mistake. 
there's her son's head she's carrying in, 

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thinking yes indeed, here's an animal. 
Well, it just really isn't. 

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the themes of transformation, 
as we mentioned in the previous lecture 

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are hugely important for Ovid. 
And that change is typically violent, and 

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it's not a happy kind of change. 
He is also in his techniques a highly 

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learned and elusive poet. 
He will go ahead and assume that you know 

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everything already that he's talking 
about. 

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So he'll at a very high level drop in 
things, 

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and expect that you, deeply learned 
person, already know all this stuff. 

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he's doing that because he's writing for 
a highly literate audience, not because 

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he's trying to annoy contemporary 
contemporary human beings, trying to 

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figure out what he was talking about 
2,000 years ago. 

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He's writing for a highly literate 
audience who already knows this stuff. 

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So you know, imagine yourself being 
involved in a set of stories that you 

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already know a lot of the background 
about, you get very annoyed if someone 

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spent a lot of time filling you in on all 
the details you already know about. 

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So, [COUGH] Ovid does his own retelling 
of tales. 

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the, the, the, figures, that revolve 
around Thebes are worth spending a little 

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bit of time with. 
Recall at the beginning Cadmus has his 

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engagement. 
he jumps in and finds these, 

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this dragon in his way, sliced the 
dragon, takes the teeth and tosses them 

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into the ground. 
We're going to see the slaying of the 

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serpent, something that Ovid spends a lot 
of time on. 

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He likes to kind of jump into this gory 
violence. 

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He is not afraid of that at all. 
We have got the lavish treatment of the 

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serpent getting cut down, and then the 
magic, the excitement of the transition 

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that happens when these plants all of a 
sudden become humans and start to move 

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and engage. 
From that background, we focus in on 

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Actaeon Semele. 
We have story of Teiresias. 

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We talk about Narcissus, we talked about 
Pentheus, all the kind of main themes in 

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these different or sets of the family 
centered in Cadmus and around Thebes. 

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In Actaeon the scene of Actaeon is in one 
we could spend a little bit of time with. 

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He spends sadly he, he gets a glimpse 
sadly of this woman right here, Diana. 

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Once again if you ever caught a glimpse 
of her you should be very cautious run 

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the other way. 
There's a very, a strong intimacy in this 

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scene. 
it's a close up detail in the life of the 

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goddess Diana. 
What's she doing? 

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Well she's like. 
In the bathroom. 

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You know, she's got, putting on makeup 
and grooming herself. 

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And it's just strongly close in a very 
imitate, and it's something that we ought 

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not to see. 
You're not supposed to see that about 

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strangers and you're surely not supposed 
see that about goddesses. 

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Ovid's alluding I think in, in allowing 
in his presentation of the scene, Ovid's 

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allowing us to be like Pentheus and kind 
of catch this special furtive glance at 

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what it is to be a goddess. 
He's inviting us to commit the same crime 

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that Actaeon does. 
looking with ogling eyes as, oh my gosh 

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that's a goddess. 
Ooh, what's she doing over there? 

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we get kind of pulled right in. 
note that when Diana reacts to what's 

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happening, she is embarrassed. 
She actually blushes. 

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So we got a goddess that blushes. That in 
itself, is embarrassing. 

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Imagine divinity blushing. 
I mean it's just crazy. 

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Who could think that, that such a thing 
would happen. 

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But it does, 
Diana is embarrassed and she blushes. 

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at that point all hell breaks loose. 
She has out after him. 

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Actaeon gets chowed up by his own dogs. 
turned into a, a, an animal. 

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and you can see his horns sprouting from 
his head in his depiction. 

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We hear a story of Semoli and the 
description of Semoli's story, I want to 

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focus in on one particular piece of it. 
Juno is prodding her and trying to get 

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her to doubt that it was really Zeus that 
came to her. 

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Right? 
whoever, whoever your lover was young 

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girl you, you should just make sure that 
you know who that is because so often men 

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go around claiming to be gods. 
Well, that little seed of doubt that Juno 

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plants in Semoli's head is her undoing. 
She then insists that Zeus should show. 

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Insult to her and does this in such a way 
that Zeus can't deny it so that when she 

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gets the, the full view of Zeus, 
she gets immolated and she's destroyed. 

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So the plant, the seed of doubt that Juno 
plants turns into her undoing and she is 

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caught up and gone. 
[COUGH] Now, just as in the case of 

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Actaeon and and Diana. 
In the case of Semele and Juno, the line 

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between human and divine is 
psychologized. 

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in the case of Actaeon, the reaction of 
Diana is embarrassment. 

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in the case of Juno, it's doubt and 
jealousy. 

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there's a psychological, emotioinal 
reading of what happens when human and 

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divine come together. 
Teiresias, we get to hear about 

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Teiresias, long story. 
We get inside of his head, 

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but mostly just to, so that we can get 
inside the tale of Narcissus. 

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he has a, a, a way of us getting into a 
story about someone who Teiresias knows 

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all kinds of things. 
How does he knows this? 

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Well, it turns out that he has, uniquely, 
been able to experience sex as both a man 

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and a woman. 
And because of this experiential 

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dimension that he has, he has now all 
knowledge. 

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those two, 
pieces of knowingness add up to total 

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knowledge. 
It's like they're multiplicatory. 

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And now Teiresias has a full knowledge of 
all things. 

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Juno is of course jealous. Juno is 
typically jealous, and she then blinds 

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him. 
just as she does when she takes away the 

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voice of Echo. 
We'll see this. 

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she punishes humans by making them 
defective. 

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And she might take away their eyesight or 
their voice or whatever it happens to be. 

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and then typically other things happen 
after that. 

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Narcissus we get into his story, and some 
of you will recall hearing about the 

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story of Narcissus, and you might recall 
it as a tale about, you know, where 

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flowers come from. 
Where did this beautiful flower come 

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from? 
Well, there's a story of a guy, and he 

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gets frozen. 
You know, he gets, he gets transfixed on 

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his own vision a vision of himself, at a 
pond. 

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And he just stands there, and he turns 
into a flower. 

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Well it's, 
that's usually the way it's retold for 

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the kids version of the story. 
But, think about the way that Ovid 

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presents this story here. 
Remember what Teiresias runs into. He's 

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told be Tyr, he, er, that what, what, he, 
Narcissus runs into. 

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He's told by Teiresias that he'll be fine 
as long as he never knows himself. 

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Well, in this story, what we've got is, 
Narcissus knowing himself. 

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And what he does is see himself as an 
object, he himself. 

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Like you and I, a subject, he's able to 
see and think about the world, he himself 

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has his own person. 
When he sees himself as an object, he 

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gets frozen. 
and in Otto's case it's, it's packaged 

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for us as a kind of erotic love which is 
completely misplaced. 

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but I think there's a further dimension 
to this story about what it is to be 

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human. 
It's strange to be a self aware, self 

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conscious subjectivity. 
It would be a little easier not to be one 

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of those. 
if, if I were my puppy. 

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I've got a little puppy, and if, if were 
my puppy right now, there'd be no 

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question of what I wanted. 
I'd be happy if I had some food in my 

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bowl, and if I could go for a walk. 
That, that would be enough. 

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As a self conscious human being, life is 
a little more complicated. 

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most of the time that's good, but some of 
the times it's not so good, and that 

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complexity to life understand, is, I 
think leads here in a kind of cap stone 

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experience for Narcissus, of 
understanding, sure, lots of things about 

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the world out there and having to make 
complex decisions etcetera, etcetera, 

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etcetera. 
But now Narcissus understands himself, a 

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knowing subject, as an object to other 
people. 

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Now that's really strange because he is 
not only himself a subjectivity who can 

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see, sense, and feel things but he's also 
an object to other people. 

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That is a disturbing recognition. 
and that disturbing recognition I think 

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freezes him in a state where he can't 
advance from. 

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So his life ends there. 
he doesn't get out of the greased funnel 

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of self- contemplation. 
Staring into his navel, turns out for 

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Narcissus to be a very bad thing. 
we then hear the story of Pentheus 

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[COUGH]. 
Sorry. 

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Narcissus closes, we come back to 
Teiresias and we hear about Teiresias' 

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duel with Pentheus. 
and then the Pentheus tale jumps in. 

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But for Ovid, it's really more of a story 
about Pentheus versus Teiresias, where 

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you hear, hear the full back story. 
But he shift, shifts it in, quite 

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dramatically to make it more of a 
discussion between Pentheus and 

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Teiresias. 
we get a further story about Bacchus' 

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birth and his coming into being, 
and men who don't recognize that they 

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have a god around them. 
That's troublesome. 

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and the full story of what we saw 
happening at Thebes, in the earlier parts 

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of the, of the, of the course, gets 
played out through these close in 

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connections between the human, and the 
divine world. 

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here, Narcissus, look at him. 
Poor guy. 

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[LAUGH] Can't get out of that, the 
greased funnel of contemplation. 

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In each of the stories that we see framed 
in this set of Theban tales in Ovid, 

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Actaeon, Semele, Teiresias Echo and 
Narcissus and Pentheus, talks about a 

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close in connection between the human and 
the divine. 

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Something goes terribly wrong and that 
close in connection is psychologized. 

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It's shown, in the case of Actaeon in 
the, in Diana's embarrassment, in 

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Semeele, it comes out as jealousy and 
Semele herself might actually be a little 

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bit embarrassed. 
we hear about Pentheus, who's, 

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uninitiated and wanting to see what he 
ought not to see, 

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temptation. 
and in the case of, Narcissus, his 

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emotional reaction to himself, gets, he, 
becomes his undoing. 

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these passions show, that the human 
transgression, vis-a-vis the divine, 

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leads to some kind of problem. 
That problem shows in a psychological 

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manifestation, and it ends in a corporeal 
undoing. 

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the human being dissolves, is ripped up, 
is torn. 

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and we separate now, humans and divine, 
because, as humans might aspire to get a 

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glimpse of that other divine world what 
we see mostly there is danger. 

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So, stay away.