had lived a life of prosperity andhappiness. Though not a wealthy man, his means were such as to permit him to indulge in the luxuries of refined life, and his attainments as a poet had surrounded him with a circle of most desirable friends and admirers. He had even obtained the favor and patronage of the royal family. About the year 8 A.D. he, however, incurred the great
displeasure of Augustus, and was ordered by him to withdraw from Rome and dwell in the colony of Tomi, on the shore of the Euxine sea. Leaving behind him a wife to whom he was devotedly attached he obeyed the edict of his emperor and entered upon an exile from which he was destined never to return. He died in banishment at Tomi in the year 18 A.D.
The exact reason for Ovid's banishment has never been clear, though there have been many conjectures as to the cause. About two years previous to his exile Ovid had published a composition which had greatly displeased Augustus, on account of its immoral tendency. Almost coincident with this publication was the discovery of the scandal
relating to Julia, daughter of the emperor. It is probable that the
14
proximity of these two events tended to intensify the imperial
displeasure, and when some time later there was made public the intrigue of the emperor's granddaughter, the indignation of Augustus gave itself vent in the banishment of Ovid.
The writings of Ovid consist of the Amores in three books; the Heroic Epistles, twenty-one in number; the Ars Amatoria; the Remedia Amoris; the Metamorphoses, in fifteen books; the Fasti, in six books; the Tristia, in five books; the Epistles, in four books, and a few minor poems. In the following pages will be found a translation of the Metamorphoses. THE METAMORPHOSES. BOOK THE FIRST. THE ARGUMENT. [I.1-4] My design leads me to speak of forms changed into new bodies.[1] Ye Gods, (for you it was who changed them,) favor my attempts,[2] and bring 15 down the lengthened narrative from the very beginning of the world, {even} to my own times.[3] [Footnote 1: Forms changed into new bodies.--Ver. 1. Some commentators cite these words as an instance of Hypallage as being used for 'corpora mutata in novas formas,' 'bodies changed into new forms;' and they fancy that there is a certain beauty in the circumstance that the proposition of a subject which treats of the changes and variations of bodies should be framed with a transposition of words. This supposition is perhaps based rather on the exuberance of a fanciful imagination than on solid grounds, as if it is an instance of Hypallage, it is most probably quite accidental; while the passage may be explained without any reference to Hypallage, as the word 'forma' is sometimes used to signify the thing itself; thus the words 'formae deorum' and 'ferarum' are used to signify 'the Gods,' or 'the wild beasts' themselves.] [Footnote 2: Favor my attempts.--Ver. 3. This use of the word 'adspirate' is a metaphor taken from the winds, which, while they fill the ship's sails, were properly said 'adspirare.' It has been remarked, with some justice, that this invocation is not sufficiently long or elaborate for a work of so grave and dignified a nature as the Metamorphoses.] [Footnote 3: To my own times.--Ver. 4. That is, to the days of Augustus Caesar.] 16 FABLE I. [I.5-31] God reduces Chaos into order. He separates the four elements, and disposes the several bodies, of which the universe is formed, into their proper situations. At first, the sea, the earth, and the heaven, which covers all things, were the only face of nature throughout the whole universe, which men have named Chaos; a rude and undigested mass,[4] and nothing {more} than an inert weight, and the discordant atoms of things not harmonizing, heaped together in the same spot. No Sun[5] as yet gave light to the world; nor did the Moon,[6] by increasing, recover her horns anew. The Earth did not {as yet} hang in the surrounding air, balanced by its own weight, nor had Amphitrite[7] stretched out her arms along the lengthened margin of the coasts. Wherever, too, was the land, there also was the sea and the air; {and} thus was the earth without firmness, the sea unnavigable, the air void of light; in no one {of them} did its {present} form exist. And one was {ever} obstructing the other; because in the same body the cold was striving with the hot, the moist with the dry, the soft with the hard, things having weight with {those} devoid of weight. To this discord God and bounteous Nature[8] put an end; for he separated the earth from the heavens, and the waters from the earth, and distinguished the clear heavens from the gross atmosphere. And after he had unravelled these {elements}, and released them from {that} confused heap, he combined them, {thus} disjoined, in harmonious unison, {each} in {its proper} place. The element of the vaulted heaven,[9] fiery and without weight, shone forth, and selected a place for itself in the 17 highest region; next after it, {both} in lightness and in place, was the air; the Earth was more weighty than these, and drew {with it} the more ponderous atoms, and was pressed together by its own gravity. The encircling waters sank to the lowermost place,[10] and surrounded the solid globe. [Footnote 4: A rude and undigested mass.--Ver. 7. This is very similar to the words of the Scriptures, 'And the earth was without form and void,' Genesis, ch. i. ver. 2.] [Footnote 5: No Sun.--Ver. 10. Titan. The Sun is so called, on account of his supposed father, Hyperion, who was one of the Titans. Hyperion is thought to have been the first who, by assiduous observation, discovered the course of the Sun, Moon, and other luminaries. By them he regulated the time for the seasons, and imparted this knowledge to others. Being thus, as it were, the father of astronomy, he has been feigned by the poets to have been the father of the Sun and the Moon.] [Footnote 6: The Moon.--Ver. 11. Phoebe. The Moon is so called from the Greek phphphphphph, 'shining,' and as being the sister of Phoebus, Apollo, or the Sun.] [Footnote 7: Amphitrite.--Ver. 14. She was the daughter of Oceanus and Doris, and the wife of Neptune, God of the Sea. Being the Goddess of the Ocean, her name is here used to signify the ocean itself.] [Footnote 8: Nature.--Ver. 21. 'Natura' is a word often used by 18 the Poet without any determinate signification, and to its operations are ascribed all those phenomena which it is found difficult or impossible to explain upon known and established principles. In the present instance it may be considered to mean the invisible agency of the Deity in reducing Chaos into a form of order and consistency. 'Et' is therefore here, as grammarians term it, an expositive particle; as if the Poet had said, 'Deus sive natura,' 'God, or in other words, nature.'] [Footnote 9: The element of the vaulted heaven.--Ver. 26. This is a periphrasis, signifying the regions of the firmament or upper air, in which the sun and stars move; which was supposed to be of the purest fire and the source of all flame. The heavens are called 'convex,' from being supposed to assume the same shape as the terrestrial globe which they surround.] [Footnote 10: The lowermost place.--Ver. 31. 'Ultima' must not be here understood in the presence of 'infima,' or as signifying 'last,' or 'lowest,' in a strict philosophical sense, for that would contradict the account of the formation of the world given by Hesiod, and which is here closely followed by Ovid; indeed, it would contradict his own words,--'Circumfluus humor coercuit solidum orbem.' The meaning seems to be, that the waters possess the lowest place only in respect to the earth whereon we tread, and not relatively to the terrestrial globe, the supposed centre of the system, inasmuch as the external surface of the earth in some places rises considerably, and leaves the water to subside in channels.] 19 EXPLANATION. The ancient philosophers, unable to comprehend how something could be produced out of nothing, supposed a matter pre-existent to the Earth in its present shape, which afterwards received form and order from some powerful cause. According to them, God was not the Creator, but the Architect of the universe, in ranging and disposing the elements in situations most suitable to their respective qualities. This is the Chaos so often sung of by the poets, and which Hesiod was the first to mention. It is clear that this system was but a confused and disfigured tradition of the creation of the world, as mentioned by Moses; and thus, beneath these fictions, there lies some faint glimmering of truth. The first two chapters of the book of Genesis will be found to throw considerable light on the foundation of this Mythological system of the world's formation. Hesiod, the most ancient of the heathen writers who have enlarged upon this subject, seems to have derived much of his information from the works of Sanchoniatho, who is supposed to have borrowed his ideas concerning Chaos from that passage in the second verse of the first Chapter of Genesis, which mentions the darkness that was spread over the whole universe--'and darkness was upon the face of the deep'--for he expresses himself almost in those words. Sanchoniatho lived
