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In the closing parts of Ovid's treatment 
of the Trojan War, we see the sufferings 

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of Hecuba and her children. 
These are famous threads in the yarn 

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around Troy, and it's not as though the 
tradition ignores them, but Ovid seems to 

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pay special attention to embrace them. 
we've seen him take the pieces of the 

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narrative story of Troy where great 
heroic grandeur is traditionally 

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displayed, and recast them as moments of 
kind of nastiness, so the heroism gets 

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drained out of them. 
And now in the parts of the tradition 

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where the nastiness is acknowledged Ovid 
almost embraces them greedily and spends 

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time concentrating on them. 
the figure of Hecuba, we see her 

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suffering and she has a kind of 
matriarchal sense to her [SOUND] that on 

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a great loss, she maintains her dignity 
with a decimated family and we jump in 

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from here, pretty seamlessly into a story 
of the Aeneid. 

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you recall our Aeneas here, our grand 
figure. 

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we're going to meet his story, too. 
we get him out of Troy. 

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that, that, that happens, we're off we 
go, and we go through Delos and Crete and 

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as far as Scylla and Charybdis. 
That moves very quickly. 

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Notice how quickly Ovid treats all these 
things. 

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Then, once we get to that point, there's 
a long digression. 

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It goes on for almost ten pages in your 
translation. 

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Well, we hear about Galatea and Acis, who 
are happy lovers, 

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but guess what? 
The cyclops loves Galatea. 

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So, all of a sudden what is Ovid giving 
us? 

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a long digression after only a very short 
treatment of what's happening with our 

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grand hero, Aeneas. 
A long digression on the softer side of 

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the Cyclops. 
Remember this guy from from Homer? 

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I mean, he is just nasty. 
Well, Ovid starts to think about him as 

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having romantic feelings for this you 
know, young, young beautiful tender 

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woman. 
and, and, but the Cyclops gets all mushy 

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inside. 
I mean, it's just absurdly, I mean, it's 

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quite funny. 
I'm sorry. 

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Explaining a joke is never a funny thing. 
So if I, if I, feel like I'm, doing that, 

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that's it goes with the territory I 
guess. 

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then, so we have a this long digression 
on that and then we hear about the Scylla 

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and how she got that way. 
Again, it makes us kind of feel tender to 

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the Scylla.1 there's a love that's goes 
wrong and now she's turned into a 

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monster. 
So, there's this soft side of these 

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monsters. 
And then there's a monstrous side of, of 

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the people that we admire. 
we hear about Dido and the sibyl. 

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That's another few pages that we jump 
back into our story and then another long 

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digression. 
We hear Greek tales of Achaemenides and 

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there's some more story that talks about 
Polyphemus, and Aeolus, and Circe. 

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and then some love stories of people that 
you're not sure who they are. 

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Remember, we're supposed to be talking 
about Aeneid now, and the story of Aeneas 

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and the founding of Rome. 
I mean, it seems as though Ovid would 

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have just done that as opposed to 
launching off into whatever digression he 

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felt, 
but he's going off on all digressions. 

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Then we get a founding of a Roman 
settlement. 

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There is a war with the locals that were 
Rutulians. 

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Five pages of that, 
so some kind of more grand epic kind of 

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heroic warrior stuff that happens as 
Aeneas is clobbering the local Rutulians 

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that happened in 7 trough 12 of the 
Aeneid that we did not read for our 

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class. 
but there are more digressions that 

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pepper this story. 
he avoids direct confrontation with 

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Virgil but there are strong contrasts 
that are pretty, pretty obvious on first 

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look. 
there is a lack of theological thrust in 

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Ovid. 
It's not as though things are all moving 

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toward a purposeful end, 
instead it seems the opposite. 

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Things are whenever they start towards 
some purposeful end, they get pushed off 

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into a digression. we got a predictable 
emphasis in history on the source for 

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Circe and the prophetess Sibyl. 
He likes these figures, they're 

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shapeshifters. 
There is a lack of prophecy, we don't 

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have lots of pronouncements. I mean yes, 
you have to go do this, here's the 

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future, fate is leading you forward. 
instead there's a prophecy at the very 

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end of the story what, that shows, Ovid's 
story that shows up parts of the epic 

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that we're not reading, but it doesn't 
figure in to these heroic kind of 

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battles. 
He's got this strong quickness to follow 

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digression. 
And, it makes us wonder in the end what 

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kind of Rome or Romanesque is Ovid 
imagining. 

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we've got order on the one hand these 
are, are beautiful ruins over here have 

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fallen down, 
but imagine them up and straight and 

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beautiful and, disorder on the other of 
things just and falling apart. 

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In Ovid, the world is kind of struggling 
between these two potential strong 

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forces, order on the one hand, disorder 
on the other. 

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disorder in the end kind of seems 
stronger doesn't it? 

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Anything that seems stable is always 
about to change. 

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Disorder upends it. 
there's internal conflict passion versus 

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duty. 
Passion almost always wins out. 

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Not to be known as exonerated for that. 
It's not embraced, but yet oftly 

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punished. 
but it just shows that things don't quite 

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work out the way humans would want them 
to. 

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We have a closing look at everyday life, 
small people in the middle of grand 

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circumstances. 
and we've got this kind of fumbling march 

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toward some kind of an endpoint. 
Who knows what it is? 

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Well, in the end, Ovid tells us at the 
end of his metamorphoses, 

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it is indeed Rome and it is indeed 
Augustus, 

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and he doesn't seem have his tongue in 
his cheek while he's talking about that. 

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it seems to be quite, 
[INAUDIBLE] what, what he means, the 

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grandeur of Rome and the grandeur of 
Augustus, but at the, as a closing a tale 

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on an epic that is built on change and, 
and, and instability the idea of Roman 

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permanence and stability at least 
somewhat subtly is a bit undercut by the 

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way Ovid has told this story up till now. 
So, this is a poet that's really 

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interested in how this grand vision of a 
monumental Rome may have some creaky 

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pieces to it and stability for all time 
as is imagined by political leaders, who 

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knows is probably not something that I 
would as ready to say is going to happen 

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forever, and ever, and ever, and ever. 
After all things, all change. 

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that this, may, be connected somehow with 
the reasons why Ovid was exiled, 

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but as I said at the beginning of our 
treatment of Ovid, we just don't know. 

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We not sure why he had to spend all that 
time out there, but he did not he did 

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something to displease Augustus and, 
that's never wise.