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Delahoyde & Hughes
Orpheus
OVID
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Quiz:
Arachne:
"Arachne shows Europa cheated by
"In all that work of hers Pallas could find, / Envy could find,
no fault" (125). It's just a simple scene of Pallas' daddy's
rape history, and uncle Neptune's too. So Pallas tears up Arachne's
work and beats her on the head. Trying to hang herself to escape,
Arachne is transformed into a spider. Ovid seems to have some
sympathy for persecuted artists whose subject matter upsets the
authorities.
Niobe does sound like a jackass when she says of Latona, "She bore
two children; so her womb was worth / A seventh part of mine. O
happy me!" (127). Congratulations on the mathematics of being a SF
breeder. Apollo and his sister mow down all the kids.
Tereus sails to fetch his wife Procne's sister, Philomela, for a visit.
But he locks her in a cabin and rapes her. So that she cannot tell the
tale,
". . . he seized
Then he rapes her again. The tongue's writhing about on the floor Ovid
compares, with outrageous indelicacy to say the least, with a snake,
so that the sexist association between a woman's tongue and a serpent
arises at the most vile time. But although Tereus tells Procne that
her sister is dead, Philomela weaves her story on a loom and has it
conveyed to Procne. During a Bacchic festival, Philomela is able to
reach her sister. All revealed, Procne sees Itys, her son. ("What's
for dinner, mommy?") "You're like, so like your father!" (140). The
sisters butcher and feed the rapist husband his own son. Philomela
gets to throw the severed head at Tereus, who in turn wants to rip
his own guts open when the horror dawns on him. Mercifully for this
rather dysfunctional family, they all turn into birds (like those in
the final short anticlimactic story in this book).
1) What is Arachne's punishment?
2) In what context have we heard of Niobe before?
Arachne's ostensible hubris concerning her abilities "in the arts
of wool-craft" (121) is enough to instigate the spinning and
weaving contest with Minerva, who weaves a fairly self-serving set
of scenes. More interesting than the etiological elements here
(arachnids = spiders) is the politics of art involved. Aside from
Minerva's pettiness and jealousy, why does Arachne receive
such a vicious punishment? Is it her pride, her skill, or the
content of her artistic works?
Niobe:
The bull's disguise, a real bull you'd think,
. . .
Asterie in the struggling eagle's clutch
She wove, and pictured Leda as she lay
Under the white swan's wings, and added too
How Jove once in a satyr's guise had got
Antiope with twins, and, as Amphitryon,
Bedded Alcmena; in a golden shower
Fooled Danae, Aegina in a flame,
And as a shepherd snared Mnemosyne,
And as a spotted serpent Proserpine.
Neptune she drew, changed to a savage bull
For love of Canace." [Etc., etc.] (124)
You may remember Niobe from the fourth episode in Sophocles' tragedy
Antigone, or from Achilles' reference to her in the Iliad
when trying to get Priam to let go of enough of his grief at least to
eat something. Antigone compares herself to Niobe.
Tereus, Procne, and Philomela:
We hear of the origin of frogs (132), and then of Marsyas who,
because he played flute better than Apollo, was flayed, becoming
"one huge wound, blood streaming everywhere" (133) -- a sort of Mr.
Anatomy figure -- gross. A brief mention of Pelops' ivory shoulder
brings us into the next story.
Chaucer includes this tale as one of the stories in his Legend of
Good Women -- really more an anthology of bad men. The tale is
also a significant source for Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus,
in which an edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses actually appears
onstage as a prop.
Her tongue with tongs and, with his brutal sword,
Cut it away. The root jerked to and fro;
The tongue lay on the dark soil muttering
And wriggling, as the tail cut off a snake
Wriggles, and, as it died, it tried to reach
Its mistress' feet." (138)
Ovid Index
Orpheus: Roman Mythology