I. Gods as primordial artists/poets — imposing meaning onto the matter of the world

II. The human transmission and reception of the meaning of the world

III. Can humans also write meaning on the matter of the world?

1. "When human life, all too conspicuous, lay foully groveling on the earth, weighed down by grim Religion looming from the skies, horribly threatening mortal men, a man, a Greek [Epicurus], first raised his mortal eyes bravely against this menace. No report of gods, no lightning-flash, no thunder-peal made this man cower, but drove him all the more with passionate manliness of mind and will to be the first to spring the tight-barred gates of Nature's hold asunder...Religion, so, is trampled underfoot, and by his victory we reach the stars." (Lucretius, p. 21)
   
2. "...in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together." (Ovid, 1)
   
3. "The earth is our great mother and the stones within earth's body surely are the bones the oracle intends." (12)
   
4. "Her power of speech was quenched; a fearful growl,/Angry and menacing, came from her heart;/Moan after moan proclaimed her misery." (38)
   
5. "So vast my influence! She whom I forbade/To be a woman, made a goddess! Thus/The guilty pay! So great my sovereignty!" (39)
   
6. "By my disgrace, debar from your green deeps/That sevenfold star that at the price of shame/Was set in heaven, nor let that prostitute/Your waters' pure integrity pollute.'" (40)
   
7. "While the others have ceased work/And throng those spurious rites, let us as well/Busy for Pallas now, a better goddess,/Lighten our useful toil with talk, and tell/Some tale in turn to while the tedious hours/Away and give delight to idle ears." (75)
   
8. "when they try to speak/They send a tiny sound that suits their size" (86)
   
9. "In all that work of hers, Pallas could find/Envy could find, no fault. Incensed at such/Success the warrior goddess, golden-haired,/Tore up the tapestry, those crimes of heaven..." (125).
   
10. "as a spider, still/Weaving her web, pursues her former skill." (125).
    
11. "It is clarification. It is a process by which characteristics of a person, essential or incidental, are given physical embodiments and so are rendered visible and manifest. Metamorphosis makes plain a person's qualities, yet without passing judgment on them. It is -- and this constitutes a central paradox of the poem -- a change which preserves, an alteration which maintains identity, a change of form by which content becomes represented in form." (Solodow, 174)
    
12. "Of bodies changed to other forms I tell;/You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,/Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay/In one continuous song from nature's first/Remote beginnings to our modern times." (1)
    
13. "Those stones (who would believe did ancient lore/Not testify the truth?) gave up their hardness." (13)
    
14. "I'll not relate, she said, the well-known love/Of Daphnis, Ida's shepherd, whom a nymph/In anger at her rival turned to stone:/Such pain sears lovers' hearts! [...] these stories I'll pass by,/And hold you with a charming novelty." (82)
    
15. "Then every man and woman, all of them,/Dreaded the goddess' wrath made manifest,/And worshipped more devoutly the divine/Power of the mother of the heavenly pair./And, as will happen, new tales bring back old,/And one of them this story then retold." (130)
    
16. "All Lydia rang; the story [of Arachne] raced abroad/Through Phrygia's towns and filled the world with talk. Before her marriage Niobe had known/Arachne, when she lived in Lydia,/Near Sipylus, while still a girl. Even so/She took no warning from the punishment/Of her compatriot to give the gods/Their proper place and moderate her tongue." (125)
    
17. " On a clumsy native loom/She wove a clever fabric, working words/In red on a white ground to tell the tale/Entrusted it to a woman and by signs/Asked her to take it to the queen...The savage monarch's wife/Unrolled the cloth and read the tragic tale/Of her calamity -- and said no word/(It seemed a miracle, but anguish locked her lips)." (139)
    
18. "She, it's said,/Was violated in Minerva's shrine/By Ocean's lord. Jove's daughter turned away/And covered with her shield her virgin's eyes,/And then for fitting punishment transformed/The Gorgon's lovely hair to loathsome snakes./Minerva still to strike her foes with dread,/Upon her breastplate wears the snakes she made." (98)
    
19. "...beneath his touch the flesh/Grew soft, its ivory hardness vanishing,/And yielded to his hands, as in the sun/Wax of Hymettus softens and is shaped/By practised fingers into many forms,/And usefulness acquires by being used." (234)
    
20. "Now stands my task accomplished, such a work/As not the wrath of Jove, nor fire nor sword/Nor the devouring ages can destroy./Let, when it will, that day, that has no claim/But to my mortal body, end the span/Of my uncertain years. Yet I'll be borne,/The finer part of me, above the stars,/Immortal, and my name shall never die./Wherever through the lands beneath her sway/The might of Rome extends, my words shall be/Upon the lips of men. If truth at all/Is stablished by poetic prophecy,/My fame shall live to all eternity." (379)
    
21. "And while the other creatures on all fours/Look downwards, man was made to hold his head/Erect in majesty and see the sky,/And raise his eyes to the bright stars above./Thus earth, once crude and featureless, now changed/Put on the unknown form of humankind." (3)

Hardie, Philip, et al, editors. Ovidian Tranformations. (Cambridge: Cambridge Phil. Society, 1999)

Myers, Sara. Ovid's Causes: Cosmogony and Aetiology in the Metamorphoses. (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1994)

Solodow, Joseph. The World of Ovid's Metamorphoses. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1988)

Wheeler, Stephen. A Discourse of Wonders. (Philadelphia: UPenn Press, 1999)

---. Narrative Dynamics in Ovid's Metamorphoses. (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2000)

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