This is the last of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 55-74, from the foundation of Troy to the age of Augustus.

The foundation of Troy by Laomedon who failed to repay Apollo and Neptune for their help, so Neptune floods the city. Peleus marries the Nereid Thetis, with their wedding banquet on Mount Pelion, attended by the gods. Eris, goddess of discord, throws a golden apple into the group as a reward for the fairest, setting up the Judgement of Paris and leading to the war against Troy. Thetis gives birth to Achilles.

55 The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis

Chione boasts she is fairer than Diana, so the goddess shoots an arrow through her tongue, and she bleeds to death. Her father is turned into a hawk. Ceyx and Halcyone are turned into kingfishers. Aesacus is turned into a seabird after the death of Hesperia from a snake bite.

56 The hawk, kingfishers and a diver

After his judgement, Paris abducts Helen and triggers the war against Troy. The thousand ships of the Greeks gather at Aulis, where they’re delayed by storms. Their leader Agamemnon had offended Diana, so has to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to propitiate the goddess. At the last moment, Diana may have substituted a deer.

57 The sacrifice of Iphigenia

The Greek fleet sets sail against Troy, and when it arrives Protesilaus, the first to land, is killed by Hector. Achilles kills Cycnus, who is transformed into a swan. Caeneus was born a woman and raped by Neptune, for which she was turned into a male warrior. Nestor tells of the battle between Lapiths and Centaurs at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodame.

58 A wedding ruined by centaurs

Neptune’s hatred for Achilles leads to the warrior’s death from an arrow shot by Paris.

59 The death of Achilles

Ajax and Ulysses contest for the armour of Achilles, but Ajax loses and falls on his sword. His blood is turned into the purple hyacinth flower. Troy falls, Priam is killed, Hector’s son Astyanax is thrown from a tower, and Troy is sacked by the Greeks.

60 The sack of Troy

Queen Hecuba’s youngest son is murdered, and her daughter Polyxena is sacrificed to gain fair winds for the departing Greek fleet. Hecuba blinds Polymestor and is transformed into a dog. Aurora laments the death of her son Memnon.

61 Sacrifice of Polyxena

Aeneas flees Troy with his father Anchises and son Ascanius, but his wife Creusa dies before she can escape. They sail with a fleet of Trojan survivors to Delos, then on to Crete.

62 Aeneas flees Troy

Aeneas sails on to land on Sicily. Galatea tells the story of her love for Acis, and the jealousy of Polyphemus the Cyclops, who killed Acis, whose blood was turned into a stream.

63 The tragedy of Galatea

Glaucus pursues Scylla, and is refused, so he visits Circe, who turns the lower part of Scylla’s body into a pack of dogs, then finally into a rock in the Straits of Messina. Together with Charybdis the whirlpool, they pose a threat to Odysseus’ ship.

64 Scylla meets Glaucus

Aeneas is rowed through the straits only to be blown south to Carthage, where he has an affair with Queen Dido. When he departs she falls on a sword he gave her and dies on her funeral pyre. Aeneas returns north to land at Cumae to visit its Sibyl. The pair visit the underworld, where they meet the ghost of Anchises.

65 The Cumaean Sibyl

A survivor left from Ulysses’ crew tells of their encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus, who had held them captive. Ulysses got him drunk and blinded his single eye. The crew escaped tied under a flock of sheep. As they fled in their ship, the Cyclops threw a huge rock at them.

66 The tale of Polyphemus

A second of Ulysses’ crew tells of their time on Circe’s island. She turned them into pigs, but they were transformed back after Ulysses and Circe married.

67 Circe and her swine

Circe transforms Picus, King of Latium, into a woodpecker. Aeneas arrives at Latium, where he has to fight Turnus for the throne. Aeneas’ ships are burned and transformed into sea nymphs. As the end of Aeneas’ life draws near, he undergoes apotheosis to become Indiges.

68 Apotheosis of Aeneas

Pomona, a dedicated gardener who shuns men, is courted unsuccessfully by Vertumnus, god of the seasons. He assumes the guise of an old woman to try to persuade her, and tells her the tragic story of Iphis and Anaxarete, who was transformed into a statue. Vertumnus finally succeeds.

69 Vertumnus and Pomona

Rome is founded by Romulus. Its war with the Sabines, the death of the Sabine King Tatius, and Romulus becomes ruler of both peoples. Romulus is transformed into the god Quirinus, with his wife Hersilia as the goddess Hora.

70 Romulus and the founding of Rome

Myscelus is saved from death and goes on to found Crotona, where Pythagoras lived in exile. Pythagoras expounds change and transformation underlying everything in nature, and the central theme of Metamorphoses. The virtues of vegetarianism. King Numa returns to Rome and establishes its laws.

71 Pythagoras and Numa

Plague strikes Rome. The oracle at Delphi tells the Romans to bring the god Aesculapius to the city. He is taken as a snake from Epidaurus to his temple on Tiber Island, and the Romans are saved from plague.

72 Plague and Aesculapius

The assassination of Julius Caesar, who then undergoes apotheosis.

73 Julius Caesar

Jupiter foretells the accomplishments of Augustus, including success in battle, the fall of Cleopatra, and growth of the empire. The fate of Ovid in banishment to Tomis on the Black Sea.

74 The Age of Augustus

This is the third of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 37-54, from the fall of Icarus to King Midas.

Daedalus and his son Icarus try to escape Crete using wings of feathers and wax. Icarus flies too near the sun, his wings melt and he falls to his death. Daedalus’ nephew is transformed into a partridge.

37 The fall of Icarus

Calydon troubled by a wild boar. Many heroes hunt the animal, and Meleager is successful. He shares the glory of his prize with Atalanta, but his uncles take the prize, so Meleager kills them both.

38 The Calydonian Boar Hunt

Meleager’s mother Althaea avenges the deaths of her brothers by throwing a log on the fire, causing her son’s death. His sisters are turned into birds. Theseus travels home from the boar hunt and is entertained by Achelous, who explains how nymphs were transformed into the islands of the Echinades.

39 The feast of Achelous

Lelex tells of Jupiter and Mercury seeking hospitality when visiting Phrygia. Only the humble and poor couple Philemon and Baucis entertain them. The gods save them from a flood that drowns everyone else. They’re later transformed into intertwining oak and lime trees.

40 Hospitality to strangers and virtue rewarded

Achelous tells those at his banquet of three shape-shifters: Proteus the old man of the sea, Erysichthon who sold his daughter to assuage his hunger until he consumed his own body, and Achelous himself.

41 Shape-shifters and the Old Man of the Sea

Achelous and Hercules wrestle for the hand of Deianira. Achelous turns himself into a bull, and Hercules wrenches off one of his horns, which becomes cornucopia, the Horn of Plenty.

42 Wrestling for the Horn of Plenty

Hercules marries Deianira, but the centaur Nessus tries to abduct her, so Hercules kills him. Nessus gives Deianira some of his blood, and tricks her later into impregnating one of Hercules’ shirts with it, causing him to incinerate himself on a pyre. He is then turned into a god.

43 The death of Hercules

The birth of Hercules made difficult by Juno and Lucina. Other myths of Hercules as an infant.

44 The birth of Hercules

Dryope picks lotus flowers, and is punished by transformation into a Lotus Tree. Byblis dissolves into a spring after falling in love with her twin brother. A daughter raised as Iphis, a boy, who was transformed into a man immediately before marrying the woman Ianthe.

45 Dryope, Byblis and Iphis

Orpheus marries Eurydice, who is bitten by a snake and dies. He travels to the underworld and pleads for her to be allowed to return with him. That’s approved, provided he doesn’t look back. Near the end of their return journey, he does look back, and she fades away back into the underworld. He then shuns women for three years in his grief.

46 Orpheus and Eurydice

Cyparissus befriends a stag, then accidentally kills it, and in his grief is transformed into a cypress tree, now grown near cemeteries. Orpheus tells of the young Ganymede, who was abducted by Jupiter and taken to Mount Olympus to be cupbearer to the gods.

47 The cypress tree, and the abduction of Ganymede

Hyacinthus, lover of Apollo, is killed by the god’s discus, and transformed into the purple hyacinth flower.

48 Killed by Apollo’s discus

Pygmalion rejects libidinous behaviour in women, and remains celibate. He carves a statue of a woman in ivory, and asks Venus for a bride like her. His statue is transformed into a woman, they marry, and have a daughter Paphos.

49 Galatea transformed from a statue

Myrrha is made pregnant by her father following a deception. He tries to kill her, but she flees and calls on the gods, who transform her into a myrrh tree. Nevertheless, her baby is born, and becomes Adonis.

50 The making of myrrh and birth of Adonis

Venus tells Adonis of the story of Atalanta, who had been told not to marry, and became a fast runner. Hippomenes challenges her to a race for her hand in marriage. He tricks her during that by dropping three golden apples provided by Venus, and beats her to the finish as a result. He didn’t thank Venus for her help, so the couple make love in a shrine to Cybele. As punishment they are transformed into lions to draw Cybele’s chariot.

51 The race between Hippomenes and Atalanta

Despite the warnings of his lover Venus, Adonis goes hunting, is gored in the groin by a wild boar, and dies. His blood is turned into the red anemone.

52 Death of Adonis

Orpheus is attacked by a mob of Bacchantes, torn limb from limb, and dies. His remains are dispersed into rivers, and his soul reunited with Eurydice. The Bacchantes are transformed into an oak wood.

53 The death of Orpheus

Bacchus grants the wish of King Midas, and everything he touches is transformed into gold. This proves a disaster, so Bacchus removes that gift. Midas loses a music contest with Apollo, for which he is given ass’s ears.

54 How Midas got his touch and his ears

This is the first of four articles providing brief summaries and contents for this series of paintings telling myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and covers parts 1-18, from the start to the fall of the house of Thebes.

About Ovid and his life; his other writings, and his banishment. References.

Introduction

The aim of the Metamorphoses, about telling tales of bodies changed into new forms. The origin of the world from chaos, through a summary of pre-history and the fall of the Titans. Lycaon transformed into a wolf by Jupiter. Jupiter’s proposal to destroy humanity.

1 Creation and Lycaon’s cannibalism

The flood, and its survivors Deucalion and Pyrrha. Stones turned into men and women of the next generation. Apollo destroys the Python, and institutes the Pythian Games.

2 The flood and the Python

Apollo inflamed with love for Daphne, and his attempt to rape her. Daphne saved by transformation into the laurel.

3 Daphne becomes the laurel

Jupiter’s rape of Io, and her transformation into a white cow. Detected by Juno, who puts Argus to keep a watch on her. Inset story of Pan’s attempt to rape Syrinx, who is transformed into reeds. Mercury kills Argus, whose eyes decorate the peacock. Io as a cow driven to Egypt, and there returned to human form, to be worshipped as a goddess.

4 Io as a cow, the eyes of Argus, and Syrinx

Phaëthon son of Phoebus persuades his father to let him drive the sun chariot. Disaster strikes, Phaëthon is killed after much of the earth is burned by the sun. His sisters transformed into poplar trees, and their tears into amber. His friend transformed into a swan.

5 Fall of Phaëthon

Callisto raped by Jupiter in the form of Diana, cast out from Diana’s followers, and transformed by Juno into a bear. Jupiter transforms Callisto and their son into the constellations of the Great and Little Bears.

6 Callisto victimised

The white raven turned to black for telling on others. Minerva leaves a basket containing the infant Ericthonius with Aglauros, who discovers the basket also contains a snake. The crow downgraded in the order of birds for reporting that to Minerva. Apollo kills his unfaithful lover Coronis, but rescues his unborn child, who becomes Aesculapius.

7 Gossip and the death of Coronis

Mercury’s theft of Apollo’s cattle, and Battus turned to stone. Mercury’s love for Herse, and her jealous sister Aglauros turned to stone.

8 Aglauros turned into stone

Jupiter in the form of a bull abducts and rapes Europa.

9 The abduction of Europa

Europa’s brother Cadmus directed to found a city. His men devoured by a monster, who is killed by Cadmus’ javelin. He sows the dragon’s teeth, which grow into warriors, who help Cadmus found Thebes.

10 Cadmus and the founding of Thebes

Cadmus’ grandson Actaeon stumbles into Diana when hunting. He’s transformed into a stag, and killed by his own dogs.

11 Actaeon changed into a stag

Jupiter gets Semele pregnant, and she insists on him revealing himself to her in his full divine glory. She is consumed by flames, and her unborn baby is sewn into Jupiter’s thigh to be born as the god Bacchus.

12 Death of Semele and Jupiter’s surrogate pregnancy

Tiresias changed from man to woman, then back again. Blinded by Juno as punishment, but given prophetic powers by Jupiter. Echo too loquacious for Juno, so her speech is limited to repeating the words of others. Echo falls in love with Narcissus, but he falls in love with his own reflection, dies and is transformed into narcissus flowers.

13 Echo and Narcissus

Pentheus warned to worship Bacchus, but he defies the god’s cult, and is torn limb from limb by his own mother and sisters, as foreseen by Tiresias.

14 Death of Pentheus

Two lovers meet outside their city, but she arrives first and flees from a lioness. He sees her shawl bloodied by the lioness, assumes his lover is dead, and kills himself with his own sword. His blood changes the colour of mulberry fruit from white to red. She finds him dying, and kills herself.

15 Pyramus and Thisbe

The adultery of Venus and Mars. How the Sun was first to witness that. In revenge for the Sun telling Vulcan of her adultery, Venus makes the Sun fall in love with Leucothoë and rape her. Her father buries her alive, and she’s transformed into a frankincense tree. Clytie’s unrequited love for the Sun, leading to her transformation into a sunflower.

16 Adultery and Unrequited love

The nymph Salmacis desires Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, but he won’t oblige. They are transformed into a single body, both man and woman.

17 Hermaphroditus

Summary of the fall of the house of Cadmus, founder of Thebes. Juno seeks vengeance on Ino by summoning the Fates from the underworld to drive Ino’s husband Athamas mad. He kills one of their infant sons, she leaps from a cliff with the other in her arms. Venus intervenes, and Neptune transforms them into gods. Cadmus and his wife leave Thebes, and are transformed into snakes.

18 Ino and the fall of the house of Cadmus

With Julius Caesar transformed into a star following his assassination, Ovid ends the last book of his Metamorphoses with praise of the contemporary Emperor Augustus, and expresses his own aspirations to immortality.

Jupiter foretells some of the accomplishments of Caesar’s adopted heir, Augustus, who was then still known as Octavius or Octavian. These include successes in battle, the fall of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and the growth of the Roman Empire. Ovid then looks ahead to Augustus’ own future apotheosis, when he will become a god. Finally, the author wishes for his words to be read throughout the empire, and to live on in fame.

Cleopatra’s legendary beauty has been expressed in paint by several artists, among them Louis Gauffier, whose Cleopatra and Octavian of 1787 shows the young Augustus and Queen Cleopatra conversing under the watchful eye of Julius Caesar’s bust. Cleopatra allied herself with Antony, and was eventually defeated at the Battle of Actium, ending years of civil war in Rome. Antony fell on his sword, and Cleopatra is reputed to have killed herself with the bite of an asp.

It’s Jean-Léon Gérôme who reminds us of the great events that were taking place at the eastern end of the Mediterranean during the reign of Augustus, in The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ (c 1852-54). The emperor sits on his throne, overseeing a huge gathering of people from all over the Roman Empire. Grouped in the foreground in a quotation from a traditional nativity is the Holy Family, whose infant son was to transform the empire in the centuries to come. Sadly for Ovid, and even Virgil, Gérôme’s throng doesn’t appear to include distinguished poets from the Augustan age.

Several painters have, though, shown Augustus’ favourite Virgil at the emperor’s court. Jean-Joseph Taillasson’s Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia from 1787 shows the poet at the left, holding a copy of his Aeneid, reading a passage to the emperor Augustus and his sister Octavia. Augustus has been moved to tears by the passage praising Octavia’s dead son Marcellus, and his sister has swooned in her emotional response.

Ovid was in no position to commit Augustus’ eventual death and apotheosis to verse, but this is shown in an exquisite sardonyx cameo known as The Great Cameo of France from the first century CE. Augustus is here being brought up to the gods at the top of the scene.

Although a fan of Virgil and a minor author in his own right, Augustus wasn’t a strong patron of the arts. Until 8 BCE, his friend Gaius Maecenas acted as cultural advisor to Augustus, and was a major patron of Virgil. Tiepolo’s Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Emperor Augustus from 1743 shows Maecenas at the left introducing an anachronistic woman painter and other artists to the emperor.

Ovid’s major patron was Marcus Valerius Messalia Corvinus, and is thought to have been friends with poets in the circle of Maecenas. But all this became irrelevant when Ovid offended Augustus, and in 8 CE was banished to Tomis, on the western coast of the Black Sea, at the north-eastern edge of the Roman Empire.

It is perhaps JMW Turner who has best captured this in his Ancient Italy – Ovid Banished from Rome, exhibited in 1838. In a dusk scene more characteristic of Claude Lorrain’s contre-jour riverscapes, Turner gives a thoroughly romantic view of Ovid’s departure by boat from the bank of the Tiber.

Ovid died in Tomis in 17 or 18 CE, and by a quirk of fate his banishment from the city of Rome wasn’t formally revoked until 2017, two millennia later.

But Ovid saw his road to immortality not by apotheosis, rather through his work being read, and living on in the minds of those countless readers. In that, he undoubtedly succeeded: his Metamorphoses and other poems continue to be read, both in their original Latin and in translation into many languages, and depicted in many great paintings.