Section I: "Divine Comedy"
(Books 1-2)
After the prologue concerning the creation and flood, we begin a series of tales loosely linked by their shared interest in divine seductions.
Apollo and Daphne: (inspiration for Bernini's famous statue seen here). The earlier serious tone of the prologue, depicting the "majestic dignity" of gods' punishing the wicked and preserving the righteous after the flood, makes Apollo's love plight seem comic in contrast, acting like a lovesick teenager on Valentine's Day, his desperation merely humorous.
Ovid adds several ironic touches. Having just slain the Python with his arrows, the master archer becomes the victim of Cupid's darts. The god of healing can't heal himself of love's wound. Note Ovid describes the god's passion as "burning," consuming him, a common metaphor throughout the rest of the work. Apollo, the divine voice of prophecy at Delphi, is "fooled by his own oracles." He claims not to pursue her as a foe, but Ovid makes the comparison clear; Apollo is the hound after the rabbit.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream (2.1.230), Helena mocks the reluctant Demetrius whom she pursues for love: "Run when you will, the story shall be changed: Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase."
Jove and Io: In the next story, Jove himself appears as the henpecked husband caught with another woman, making the gods look even more ludicrous, a theme found more in Homer than the Greek tragedies. To hide his crime from Juno, he engulfs Io in the form of a mist (see painting by Corregio, 1531).
Ovid demeans Jove and Apollo as symbols of order and
stability, gods who give way to Eros and the dangerous flux of desire. This
becomes a major theme in Section III & IV: the power of passion and unconscious
forces outside one's control to destabilize the social and moral order. Human
structures of meaning are relative, shifting, as Ovid explores later in taboo
subjects like incest, and finally leading up to the impermanence of Rome itself.
Notice how Jove promises to protect Io, whereas he represents the major threat to her safety.
In the tragedy Prometheus Bound attributed to Aeschylus, the Titan foretells of Io's descendants. In five generations the fifty daughters of Danaus will be forced to marry their cousins, the fifty sons of Aegyptus (the subject of another trilogy by Aeschylus, and mentioned briefly by Ovid in book 4). The sisters make a pact to kill their husbands on their wedding night, but Hypermestra loves her husband and spares him. Ovid wrote a love letter of Hypermestra's defending her actions in Heroides 14. From their union a few generations later will come two heroes, Perseus, then much later, Heracles who will rescue Prometheus by killing the eagle tormenting him.
Mercury kills the monstrous Argus, who never closes all his eyes, by first telling a story, in itself another example of a female victim of divine lust. "Argus' boredom [with this story] is a grim reminder that male violence against women is an everyday occurrence, not worth staying awake for" (Sarah Annes Brown, Ovid, 2005, 30). Modern critics debate whether Ovid shows any sympathy for these unfortunate women he so often depicts. Sometimes Ovid reverses the plot and allows a spurned woman to take revenge on a male lover, as in the case of Circe and Picus (book 14).
Milton describes the heavenly cherubim as "spangled with eyes more numerous than those of Argus and more wakeful than to drowse" (Paradise Lost 11.131). Note how this story gives the origin of the peacock's tail.
Frequently, in internal narratives, listeners who don't pay attention to the tales are punished: Argus falls asleep and loses his head (a subtle hint to Ovid's readers to pay attention?), the raven turns black for ignoring the crow's cautionary tale about tattling on the gods (book 2), Pentheus fatally dismisses Acoetes' report about Bacchus' powers (book 3), Perseus' attackers don't believe his story of Medusa's head until too late (book 5).
The final instance of a divine affair between gods and mortal women is recorded at the end of this book, but only as an introduction to the product of that affair, Phaethon, son of the Sun, whose dramatic narrative picks up in book 2.
BOOK TWO:
Phaethon (sketch by Michelangelo)
The
names of the Sun's horses could be translated as Blaze, Dawn, Fire, and Flame.
If Flood was brought about by human wickedness (Lycaon), Fire results from divine folly, when Phoebus makes a promise before knowing his son's request.
According to Homer, Helios is the sun-god in the Odyssey,
and Phaethon (meaning "bright") is one of Dawn's chariot horses; see also Euripides'
Medea whose last-minute rescue is on Helios' chariot. In other traditions, Apollo is equated with the sun-god (fragment from Euripides' Phaethon, Parmenides and Orphic religion) but apparently this attribution of Apollo as the Sun was not prominent until the Hellenistic-Roman period. Ovid uses his alternate name Phoebus, allowing him in this story some dignity and seriousness, in contrast to the womanizing Apollo in surrounding stories.
Ovid is the first to credit Vulcan with major artistic works for the Sun, creating his palace doors and fiery chariot, perhaps explaining the Sun god's gratitude in returning the favor, telling Vulcan of the affair of his wife Venus with Mars (Book 4).
Just before Phaethon takes his fatal ride, Ovid mentions
Lucifer, "last to leave the heavens." Lucifer means "light-bearer" and refers to
the morning star, the planet Venus. In Christian lore, Lucifer became another
name for Satan, by a misreading of Isaiah 14:12, "How art thou fallen from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" In context, this passage compares the
king of Babylon to the morning star, without any suggested reference to the fall
of an angelic Satan from heaven (as depicted in Paradise Lost). Ovid includes several playful anachronisms throughout his poem, as when Phaethon frightens the bear constellation before its creation in the next story.
Likewise, in book four, Atlas is described as a mountain before Perseus turns him into one. Ovid plays several such games with his readers.
Ovid mentions that the Xanthus river will burn a second time, alluding to
the Iliad book 21 when Achilles defeats the river by fire.
Jove appears unaware or unconcerned about Earth's plight until she brings it to his attention, but even then he acts only after realizing his own interests are threatened.
One earlier version of this myth portrays the great flood putting out Phaethon's fires. Connecting the flood with Lycaon may have been Ovid's contribution to personify evil humanity.
The early Christians sometimes associated Christ with the sun
god. In the 3rd century Clement of Alexandria
wrote: “For the Sun of Righteousness,
who drives His chariot over all, pervades equally all humanity, like His Father,
who makes His sun to rise on all men” (Exhortation to the Heathen 11).
One of the earliest depictions of Christ (2nd century), found in the tombs under
St. Peter's basilica, shows Christ riding the chariot of the sun. Christians
worshipped on the first day of the week, Sun-day.
Plato mentions the fall of Phaethon in Timaeus 22c .
Several times Shakespeare alludes to this story:
Gallop apace you fiery footed steeds
Romeo & Juliet 3.2.1-4 Why, Phaethon, for thou art Merop's son
Two Gentlemen 3.1.152-4 O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent
3 Henry VI 2.6.11-16 Painting by Sebastiano Ricci (1704):
Further exploits of gods and women
Towards Phoebus' lodging; such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car
And with thy daring folly burn the world?
That Phaethon should cheque thy fiery steeds,
Thy burning car never had scorch'd the earth! 
Jove and Callisto: After the exciting drama of Phaethon (the longest story in the entire work), we return to an earlier theme: Jove's seduction of Callisto (in the original Latin text, she is never named, but her story was well known). Somehow this daughter of Lycaon survived the flood; in an earlier version of the myth, her rape was the reason for Lycaon's rebellion against the gods. Jove comes to her appearing as Diana, "lust disguised as the symbol of chastity" (Simpson). An innocent victim, whose pristine surroundings mirror her virginal state, is abused in turn by three gods, Jove, Diana, and Juno. Callisto's narrow escape from her son foreshadows Actaeon's fate (book 3), who's not so lucky. Afterward Juno's jealousy is still not satisfied, as she imagines Callisto has benefited from her metamorphosis into a constellation (it's doubtful that Callisto would agree). In the Latin text here, Ovid refers to Juno, identified by her peacocks, as "Saturnia" daughter of Saturn. In this story we begin to see the gods' vengeance turning progressively more cruel, as the tone of the poem becomes more serious in Section II.
Apollo and Coronis: The crow attempts to warn the raven about tattling to the gods, as they often repay such storytelling with an unwanted transformation. The raven chooses to ignore this advice and reports to Apollo about Coronis' affair, for which he is rewarded with black wings. Notice how the gods lack true human emotion. After killing his beloved Coronis, Apollo cannot weep; likewise, Artemis could not weep for Hippolytus (in the play by Euripides).
Chiron and Ocyrhoe: Apollo's son and Chiron's foster son is Aesculapius, the famous healer, "savior of the world." Ocyrhoe prophesies of Aesculapius' ability to raise the dead and his own eventual death for displeasing the gods. In Ovid's Fasti (6.733), he explains how Pluto and the Fate Clotho objected to his interfering with death, their proper domain; they convince Jupiter to strike him down with his lightning bolt but Apollo intervenes and his son becomes a god. In book 15 Aesculapius brings Hippolytus back to life and saves Rome from a plague.
Chiron was an immortal centaur (son of Jove) struck by Heracles' poison arrow, but couldn't die; later he took the punishment of Prometheus onto himself, willing to descend to Hades in his place (Apollodorus 2.5.4).
Mercury is the son of Jupiter and Maia, daughter of the Titan Atlas. According to the Homeric Hymn, Mercury grew to adulthood on the day he was born, and stole Apollo's cattle that evening. Mercury offered Apollo his lyre made from a tortoise shell to make up for stealing his cattle. In return Apollo gave Mercury the caduceus, the staff entwined with two snakes and topped with wings. In modern times the caduceus has mistakenly become a symbol for medicine, being confused with the rod of Aesculapius the healer which has only one snake and no wings.
Background to Herse and Aglaurus: One day Vulcan (Hephaistos) attempted to rape Minerva (Athena), spilling his semen on her leg, which she wiped off and threw to the ground, from which sprang Erichthonius, one of the legendary kings of Athens, whose name means "trouble from the earth." Minerva wanted to raise the child in secret so she placed him in a box, and gave it to Herse and Aglaurus (daughters of Cecrops, another king of Athens), warning them never to open it. Of course, their curiosity got the better of them and they did. They found the child who was (depending on the source) half-snake, or had a snake wrapped around him. They were so frightened that they threw themselves off the Acropolis (a detail which Ovid ignores). Erichthonius' symbol was the snake, which was depicted next to the statue of Athena in the Parthenon (photo from the replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee). His son Pandion was the father of Procne and Philomela (see book 6).
Ovid uses an interesting literary device in the stories of Mercury and Battus and Aglaurus. A god turns a human's own words against him: Battus vows "that stone will talk before I do," but when he tells Mercury's secret, he is turned to stone himself. This is an example of the gods' reinterpreting a mortal's words with fateful results, called kledonomancy or divinatory wordplay. A kledon in Greek means a casual comment overheard by someone making an important decision, taking this comment for an omen, as if the gods were using the speaker's words to other effect (notes from Garth Tissol, The Face of Nature, 1997). Three classical examples:
When Mercury falls in love with Herse, Ovid describes the Panathenaia, the great city festival of Athens depicted on the Parthenon frieze and the Porch of the Maidens on the Acropolis, a very ancient rite, alluded to in Iliad 6.86.
Mercury, usually Jove's messenger, now stands in his place as potential seducer. "Up to now the god has been only killer, thief, and sadistic transformer; now he follows his father's noble example as lecher" (Anderson). Enjoy the colorful description of the House of Envy, and compare it to the House of
Sleep (book 11) and the House of Rumor (book 12).
Europa and the bull: once again Ovid leaves a main character unnamed, assuming his readers will know. Odd that this very famous story (she names a continent) leads nowhere; we expect it to pick up in the next book as in Phaethon's tale, another surprise. At left is a painting of Europa found at Pompeii. Europa is depicted on the central door of St. Peter's basilica (by Filarete 1445), a typical Renaissance mixture of pagan and Christian images.
In Much Ado about Nothing, Claudio teases the love-sick Benedict: "Tush, fear not, man; we'll tip thy horns with gold, And all Europa shall rejoice at thee, As once Europa did at lusty Jove, When he would play the noble beast in love" (5.4.44).
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