Madness? This is Rome!

In the past couple of days, I've taken a break from Swann's Way and started re-reading Ovid's Metamorphoses. Although I want to study 20th/21st century British literature in grad school, I love mythology, legends, and folklore. So I periodically return to classical literature, epic poetry, and ancient legends.

The unifying motif of the Metamorphoses is, of course, transformation; Juno's jealous rage causes her to take revenge on Io and change her into a cow; Echo's unrequited love for Narcissus dwindles her to nothing more than a voice; a nymph's grief dissolves her into water. Ovid's work is often viewed as less "serious" than other Roman epics like the Aeneid, but his stories construct a psychology of the passions.

In the grips of their passions, characters are frequently changed into animals and plants, becoming sub-human, irrational or insensate beings. Ovid appears to uphold the binary opposition between emotion and rationality; the fits of passion are sudden, impuslive, and irrational, often leading to uncharacteristic behavior. But the individual is not expected to purge himself completely of all passion; Ovid presents them as natural, irrascible forces which everyone must confront, including the gods. For example, Jove criticizes Pluto's impulsive abduction of the girl Proserpina, but he reasons with the girl's mother, Ceres, that the god's actions were unthinking, instinctive, and therefore more forgiveable. He did not premeditate the abduction. There was no malice in his intentions, because he did not have any intentions; he was overtaken by passion. He lost his rational capacity under the influence of love and desire; even a god is helpless to overcome that.

Ironically, Venus, the goddess of love, is primarily motivated by pride; she instructed Cupid to fire his arrows at Pluto because of her desire for power over the other gods, and her anger with the virgin goddesses Minerva and Diana, whose rejection of love and sexuality constitutes a "revolt" in Venus' mind. Yet, this quest for domination accompanies her sense of duty; she will perform her task and inspire love, even if it leads to dischord (as it did here between Ceres and most of Italy, on which she took her revenge because the earth opened up and swallowed Pluto and Proserpina).

Similarly, Juno's punishment of Jove's (often unwilling) mistresses is just as fueled by her pride in her reputation as it is jealousy; she is mighty Juno, the queen of heaven, and any offender must pay dearly for daring to cross her. Juno is terribly jealous of Ino for having conceived a child with Jove, but she is even more jealous of the son of their union, Bacchus: "My rival bears a child, and he has power / To transform sailors, give the flesh of a son / For his mother to tear to pieces, turn the daughters / of Minyas into bats. and what can Juno / Do beyond weeping at insults unavenged? / Is that enough? Is that my only power?" (Ovid, Book IV, lines 423-428). Juno takes her revenge by deigning to enter the underworld and seeking the assistance of the Furies to drive Ino mad. Her own desire for revenge is irrational; Ino cannot be held responsible for the power of her son. Juno's pride and anger blind her to the injustice of her own actions, her misplaced anger and vengeance, even though Juno represents justice. Diana is also unjust in preserving her honor; a man accidentally sees her naked, and she punishes his inadvertant spying by changing him into a beast. And even Minerva stoops to seek Envy's assistance in enacting revenge. The passions, even among gods, lead them to break their character, even as they strive to uphold their reputations.

Bacchus is a common culprit for the worst and most animalistic madness. During Ovid's time, Bacchanalia (the festivals celebrating Bacchus) were officially illegal, but the cult continued to practice underground. Book IV is largely devoted to stories centering on these frenzied rituals of drink and dance, which act as agents of transformation. Ovid seems to view the Bacchanalia as distractions to an individual's proper vocation, as evidenced in the story of Pentheus. While everyone else indulged in ecstatic festivities, Pentheus was repulsed by their dereliction of duty: "What lunacy is this, oh sons of Mars, / Sons of the serpent's teeth, that dulls your wits? / ... / my fine young peers, who used to carry / Spears once, not wands, do you think it decent of you / To stick your heads through garlands, not in helmets?" (Ovid III. 545-547). Rather than being honorable warriors, rational beings, and responsible citizens, they have all given in to madness and superstition (symbolized by the wands). From Pentheus' view, they ought to be ashamed of themselves and hold their duty to their country higher than their obligations to this questionable god.

In Book IV, Ovid opposes servants of Bacchus with servants of Minerva. A group of women, the daughters of Minyas, decline to join in the orgies honoring Bacchus and spend the day weaving and telling tales instead. They "worship a better goddess, Pallas," (Minerva) and will not recognize the divinity of the wine god (Ovid IV.42). Their tales criticize uncontrolled passion-- the feud between two families that led to the senseless deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe, the jealousy of Clytie and Apollo's excessive preference for Leucothoe, etc. Rationalism is the enemy of Bacchus, and the daughters are punished for their transgression when Bacchus transforms them into bats, which symbolize the occult (in another story, Bacchus changes another irreligious individual into a screech owl, an omen of death). Minerva may be the better goddess, but she cannot defeat the madness that abounds, for Bacchus gets his revenge and expands his dominion across Greece, into Egypt, and beyond. I need to do more research on Rome under Augustus, but this could very well be a criticism of Roman society.

The passions come upon characters in a flash, but the repercussions of acting on those passions are permanent. The effects are not always negative; a few are elevated to godhood, or taken out of a dangerous situation and placed among the stars as a constellation. Other transformations reveal the true nature of an individual, like the blood-thirsty Lycaon's metamorphosis into a wolf. Ovid offers a nuanced view of the effects of strong emotion, with a wide array of consequences for the ways individuals confront these forces within them.