DOCSLIB.ORG

Persephone: Her Mythical Return to Sicily Di Federica Mazzara

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Persephone: Her Mythical Return to Sicily Di Federica Mazzara Persephone: her mythical return to Sicily di Federica Mazzara Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here. Dante Gabriel Rossetti The focus of this study is the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and, in particular, lesser-known aspects of this mythological tale related to its setting in Sicily. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of fertility. The myth tells about her rape by Hades, Lord of the Dead, who took her with him to the Underworld, where she was to be his wife. The rape takes place while Persephone is gathering flowers with her playmates. The rest of the myth tells about the desperate search of Demeter for her daughter and the agreement, in the end, with Hades to have Persephone live half of each year aboveground (Spring) and the other half (Winter) in the underworld. The first chapter of this work, that as a whole I will define as a “mythological journey”, deals generally with mythology. I refer to some authoritative scholars of mythology, such as Kerényi, Jung and Vernant, in order to underline its elusive nature and especially what, in my opinion, is its most important value, in other words, its continuing relevance in a modern context. As Kerényi affirms, the act of telling is what assures the survival of mythology, and I hope that this study too can help to maintain this tradition. The second chapter addresses the classical sources that have preserved the myth of Persephone and Demeter over time. These are the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is considered to be the first written record of this myth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti, and Claudian’s The 1 Rape of Proserpine. The aim of this second chapter is to show how from Ovid on a new tradition is pursued, a tradition that can be considered “Sicilian” and that has led to a different characterisation of themyth of Persephone, especially insofar as the setting is concerned. In order to sustain this thesis, I refer to the most authoritative source for it, Diodorus of Sicily, whose analysis is central in the third chapter of this text. The study of the classical sources, in other words, will bring to the fore some signs of what I develop later on and that deserve to be mentioned in tracing the path from the very beginning of this mythological journey. In the third chapter, my aim is to make the reader aware of the existence of this Sicilian tradition analysed in critical writings. These critics include Martorana, who in his Il Riso di Demetra analyses the myth of Persephone supporting the thesis of Diodorus, according to which the origin of the myth is Sicilian and not Greek, since the two goddesses, Demeter and Core, made their first appearance there. As a result, the setting of this myth started to be located in the Sicilian city of Enna, by the Lake of Pergusa, which has been identified with the site where therape of Persephone took place. Martorana further theorises that Persephone was originally an indigenous Sicilian deity of a spontaneous nature, who at that primordial time was not in a relation of interdependence with her mother Demeter, but rather was anindependent goddess. The rest of the myth, according to Martorana, therefore, was developed by the Greeks who must have absorbed the indigenous religious gods. According to this daring view, the Greek Persephone is the result of an incorporative process by the Greeks, which occurred after their arrival in Sicily. This explains the different characterisation of the myth depending on the tradition followed. In a Greek context there is a more elaborate mythology around Persephone that is probably due to the initiating nature of the myth. I refer to the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries that is also integrated in this myth. In the Sicilian tradition, on the other hand, the mythology of Persephone is, one might say, more “humble”, due to the fact that it has been associated with simpler concepts. The analysis then turns to Corradini’s work Enna: Storia e Mitologia attraverso le Fonti Classiche, and several descriptions of this 2 charming place depicted by many writers in their literary works, among them Cicero’s The Verrine Orations, where the direct relationship between Persephone and Demeter with the island of Sicily becomes more evident. The fourth and last chapter closes the cycle of this writing with reference to the modern and updated versions of this myth. I will take into account some modern literary examples, in this case belonging to the theatrical genre, trying to single out in these texts the Sicilian tradition. In particular the description of the places that, as I will try to demonstrate, seem perfectly to continue Diodorus’s description. I focus my attention on Goethe’s monodrama Proserpina, on Mary Shelley’s Proserpine, on Robert Bridges’s Demeter, A Mask, and finally on the most Sicilian of all, Rosso di San Secondo’s Il Ratto di Proserpina, where the myth of Persephone is revised in modern key. In my opinion the latter represents somehow the return of Persephone to her own dimension, that indigenous Sicilian phase when she was the deity of an uncorrupted Eden that found a suitable setting in that mythical island for many known as Sicily. 3 An introduction to mythology Writing about myth and mythology (in this case I refer to Greek mythology) is a very difficult undertaking; due both to the complexity of the topic and to the impossibility of defining with precision such an elusive subject.Before starting the treatment of this topic we should, in fact, assume that when we deal with mythology we have not to look for explanations or for a unique interpretation that would reduce somehow the infinite material that is mythology. Instead, we should accept what K. Kerényi affirms rightly in his analysis of myth1, that we have just to listento the myth without wondering about its true origin that goes beyond what mortal minds can reach. Another definition of myth comes from Jean Pierre Vernant, who in his work The Universe, The Gods and the Myth2, explains that a myth is a kind of tale that comes from the mists of time and that existed even before a narrator would starts telling it. This to say, that the mythical tale derives neither from a personal invention nor from the creative fantasy, but rather from an act of mnemonic transmission. In order to clarify this concept I borrow again Kerényi’s words that explain perfectly the starting assumption, in dealing with mythology: The stuff of mythology is composed of something that is greater than the story-teller and than all human beings -“as they are now”, said Homer - but always as something visible, perceptible or, at least, capable of being expressed in images, and never as the Godhead in abstracto, or even as the Godhead in concreto, if the latter is to be regarded as 3 unimaginable. Taking for granted that the mythological material is undefinable and unfathomable, I would rather concentrate on one of the basic aspects of the myth that concerns its being always valid and applicable: “Mythology [...] 1 Jung C. G., Kerényi K., Introduction to a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, London, Routledge-Kegan Paul, 1970. 2 Vernant J. P., l’Universo, gli dei e gli Uomini, il racconto del mito, Torino, Einaudi, 2000, p. 5. 3 Kerényi K., The Gods of the Greeks, London, Thames and Hidson, 1951, p. 3. 4 goes on singing even in death and from afar. In its lifetime, among the peoples where it was indigenous, it was not only sung like a kind of music, it was also lived”4. Today what remains is the possibility to live the effects of such mythology: we tell again and again those mythical tales of which an unchangeable pattern, common to all its variations, remains. In this regard, Vernant has spoken of the “vitality of myths”, referring to “the way they constantly become charged with new meanings and absorb commentaries, glosses and new interpretations that open them up to new dimensions of reality yet to be explored or rediscovered”5. The Greek word mythologìa, as Kerényi again helps us understand, “contains the sense not only of “stories” (mythoi), but also of “telling” (legein): a form of narration that originally was also echo-awakening, [...]”6. It is the “act” of telling, therefore, that assures the survival of the mythological world. Telling myths always requires some “changes”, some variations that the narrator chooses on the basis of some circumstances, his public or his personal preferences; therefore, where he can, he adds or modifies what considers necessary.7 But this does not threaten the preservation of the myths. Vernant in his work Myth and Society in Ancient Greece affirms: “If the myths can vary in this way fromone version to another without damaging the balance of the general system it must be because what matters is not the way the story is told, which can vary from one account to another, but rather the mental categories as a whole and by the intellectual organisation which underlines all the various versions”8. The subjectivity in telling mythologycannot be avoided, but it must be restrained through a fidelity to the tradition that each narrator inherits. In my study of the myth of Persephone and Demeter I will rely on to the deep analysis that Jung and Kerényi together have expounded in their 4 Jung C. G., Kerényi K., Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Cit., p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • MYTHOLOGY – ALL LEVELS Ohio Junior Classical League – 2012 1
    MYTHOLOGY – ALL LEVELS Ohio Junior Classical League – 2012 1. This son of Zeus was the builder of the palaces on Mt. Olympus and the maker of Achilles’ armor. a. Apollo b. Dionysus c. Hephaestus d. Hermes 2. She was the first wife of Heracles; unfortunately, she was killed by Heracles in a fit of madness. a. Aethra b. Evadne c. Megara d. Penelope 3. He grew up as a fisherman and won fame for himself by slaying Medusa. a. Amphitryon b. Electryon c. Heracles d. Perseus 4. This girl was transformed into a sunflower after she was rejected by the Sun god. a. Arachne b. Clytie c. Leucothoe d. Myrrha 5. According to Hesiod, he was NOT a son of Cronus and Rhea. a. Brontes b. Hades c. Poseidon d. Zeus 6. He chose to die young but with great glory as opposed to dying in old age with no glory. a. Achilles b. Heracles c. Jason d. Perseus 7. This queen of the gods is often depicted as a jealous wife. a. Demeter b. Hera c. Hestia d. Thetis 8. This ruler of the Underworld had the least extra-marital affairs among the three brothers. a. Aeacus b. Hades c. Minos d. Rhadamanthys 9. He imprisoned his daughter because a prophesy said that her son would become his killer. a. Acrisius b. Heracles c. Perseus d. Theseus 10. He fled burning Troy on the shoulder of his son. a. Anchises b. Dardanus c. Laomedon d. Priam 11. He poked his eyes out after learning that he had married his own mother.
    [Show full text]
  • “How Strangely Chang'd”: the Re-Creation of Ovid by African
    “How Strangely Chang’d”: The Re-creation of Ovid by African American Women Poets By Rachel C. Morrison Submitted to the graduate degree program in Classics and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. ______________________________________ Chair: Emma Scioli ______________________________________ Pam Gordon ______________________________________ Tara Welch Date Approved: 10 May 2018 The thesis committee for Rachel C. Morrison certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: “How Strangely Chang’d”: The Re-creation of Ovid by African American Women Poets ______________________________________ Chair: Emma Scioli ______________________________________ Pam Gordon ______________________________________ Tara Welch Date Approved: 10 May 2018 ii Abstract This project examines the re-creation of Ovid by African American women poets. Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved Black woman writing in colonial America, engages with Ovid’s account of Niobe in her epyllion “Niobe in Distress.” Henrietta Cordelia Ray, who was active in the late ​ nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, picks up where Wheatley left off in a sonnet called “Niobe.” Elsewhere, in “Echo’s Complaint,” Ray also imagines what Echo might say to Narcissus if she had full control over her words—an imaginative exercise that has resonances ​ ​ with Ovid’s Heroides. Finally, in her 1995 book Mother Love, the contemporary poet Rita Dove ​ ​ ​ ​ re-examines the tale of Demeter and Persephone from a number of different angles. In reworking the Metamorphoses, all three poets paint vivid images of vulnerable girls and bereft mothers. ​ ​ Moreover, Wheatley, Ray, and Dove play with Ovidian elements to explore themes of repetition, voice, motherhood, and power dynamics.
    [Show full text]
  • A Dictionary of Mythology —
    Ex-libris Ernest Rudge 22500629148 CASSELL’S POCKET REFERENCE LIBRARY A Dictionary of Mythology — Cassell’s Pocket Reference Library The first Six Volumes are : English Dictionary Poetical Quotations Proverbs and Maxims Dictionary of Mythology Gazetteer of the British Isles The Pocket Doctor Others are in active preparation In two Bindings—Cloth and Leather A DICTIONARY MYTHOLOGYOF BEING A CONCISE GUIDE TO THE MYTHS OF GREECE AND ROME, BABYLONIA, EGYPT, AMERICA, SCANDINAVIA, & GREAT BRITAIN BY LEWIS SPENCE, M.A. Author of “ The Mythologies of Ancient Mexico and Peru,” etc. i CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1910 ca') zz-^y . a k. WELLCOME INS77Tint \ LIBRARY Coll. W^iMOmeo Coll. No. _Zv_^ _ii ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTRODUCTION Our grandfathers regarded the study of mythology as a necessary adjunct to a polite education, without a knowledge of which neither the classical nor the more modem poets could be read with understanding. But it is now recognised that upon mythology and folklore rests the basis of the new science of Comparative Religion. The evolution of religion from mythology has now been made plain. It is a law of evolution that, though the parent types which precede certain forms are doomed to perish, they yet bequeath to their descendants certain of their characteristics ; and although mythology has perished (in the civilised world, at least), it has left an indelible stamp not only upon modem religions, but also upon local and national custom. The work of Fruger, Lang, Immerwahr, and others has revolutionised mythology, and has evolved from the unexplained mass of tales of forty years ago a definite and systematic science.
    [Show full text]
  • Death and the Female Body in Homer, Vergil, and Ovid
    DEATH AND THE FEMALE BODY IN HOMER, VERGIL, AND OVID Katherine De Boer Simons A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Depart- ment of Classics. Chapel Hill 2016 Approved by: Sharon L. James James J. O’Hara William H. Race Alison Keith Laurel Fulkerson © 2016 Katherine De Boer Simons ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT KATHERINE DE BOER SIMONS: Death and the Female Body in Homer, Vergil, and Ovid (Under the direction of Sharon L. James) This study investigates the treatment of women and death in three major epic poems of the classical world: Homer’s Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I rely on recent work in the areas of embodiment and media studies to consider dead and dying female bodies as representations of a sexual politics that figures women as threatening and even mon- strous. I argue that the Odyssey initiates a program of linking female death to women’s sexual status and social class that is recapitulated and intensified by Vergil. Both the Odyssey and the Aeneid punish transgressive women with suffering in death, but Vergil further spectacularizes violent female deaths, narrating them in “carnographic” detail. The Metamorphoses, on the other hand, subverts the Homeric and Vergilian model of female sexuality to present the female body as endangered rather than dangerous, and threatened rather than threatening. In Ovid’s poem, women are overwhelmingly depicted as brutalized victims regardless of their sexual status, and the female body is consistently represented as bloodied in death and twisted in metamorphosis.
    [Show full text]
  • Bulfinch's Mythology
    Bulfinch's Mythology Thomas Bulfinch Bulfinch's Mythology Table of Contents Bulfinch's Mythology..........................................................................................................................................1 Thomas Bulfinch......................................................................................................................................1 PUBLISHERS' PREFACE......................................................................................................................3 AUTHOR'S PREFACE...........................................................................................................................4 STORIES OF GODS AND HEROES..................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................7 CHAPTER II. PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA...............................................................................13 CHAPTER III. APOLLO AND DAPHNEPYRAMUS AND THISBE CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS7 CHAPTER IV. JUNO AND HER RIVALS, IO AND CALLISTODIANA AND ACTAEONLATONA2 AND THE RUSTICS CHAPTER V. PHAETON.....................................................................................................................27 CHAPTER VI. MIDASBAUCIS AND PHILEMON........................................................................31 CHAPTER VII. PROSERPINEGLAUCUS AND SCYLLA............................................................34
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Swinburne's the Garden Of
    READING SWINBURNE’S THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE: A SEMIOTICS OF POETRY ANALYSIS A GRADUATING PAPER Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Gaining the Bachelor Degree in English Literature By: HESTI ROHMANASARI 13150045 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF ADAB AND CULTURAL SCIENCES STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY SUNAN KALIJAGA YOGYAKARTA 2017 iii READING SWINBURNE’S THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE: A SEMIOTICS OF POETRY ANALYSIS By: Hesti Rohmanasari ABSTRACT Poetry has many significances that can be analyzed. The poem’s significance can be discovered through the interrelation of its structure. This research uses Swinburne’s The Garden of Proserpine as the object. To find the significance, the poem should read intertextually. Through reading intertextually, the structure can be found in the poem. This research uses objective approach by applying Semiotics of Poetry theory by Michael Riffaterre. Close reading technique is used in this research to collect the data. By using heuristic and hermeneutic reading, this research demonstrates the significance (meaning of meaning) from poetry. The meaning of poetry comes from matrix. This research finds (1) the matrix that is the lamentation from goddesses and (2) the hypogram of the particular poem, they are the poems entitled Death by George Herbert, Homer entitled Hymn to Demeter, The World by Henry Vaughan, the epigram of Vaughan’s The World John 2:16-17, and The Holy Sonnet 10 by John Donne. Keywords: poem, poem’s significance, The Garden of Proserpine, Semiotics of Poetry. v READING SWINBURNE’S THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE: A SEMIOTICS OF POETRY ANALYSIS Oleh: Hesti Rohmanasari ABSTRAK Puisi memiliki banyak makna yang dapat dianalisa.
    [Show full text]
  • GREEK STUDIES Jl?»!!& • R "^ ^%W '^^^Ww^^M Ip « - 47/*^ •
    ,KW ;^-;i> ::*' :^?' 5^':^%?'*^^' i :^ %^^' S^ i^i*/ in, >*<. •3. m '<>.-.NS*,Crt' V;;. *« ^!y> m Tprescntc^ to of tbc laniverelti? of Toronto b^ Xab? falconer from tbe boohs ot tbc late Sir IRobert jfalconcr, ii^.(i,/iib,(3., IpresiDent ot tbe Tanfversitv> ot ^Toronto, 1907-1932 51 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Toronto http://www.archive.org/details/greekstudiesserOOpate GREEK STUDIES Jl?»!!& • r "^ ^%w '^^^ww^^m ip « - 47/*^ • GREEK STUDIES A SERIES OF ESSAYS BY WALTER PATER LATE FELLOW OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE PREPARED FOR THE PRESS BY CHARLES L SHADWELL FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE Nefaj gork MACMILLAN AND CO. AND LONDON 1895 Aii rights reserved : Copyright, 1894, By MACMILLAN AND CO. SbSo Pi7 Noriuootr ^rfss J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. Boston, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE The present volume consists of a collection of essays by the late Mr. Pater, all of which have already been given to the public in various Magazines ; and it is owing to the kindness of the several proprietors of those Magazines that they can now be brought together in a collected shape. It will, it is believed, be felt, that their value is considerably enhanced by their appearance in a single volume, where they can throw light upon one another, and exhibit by their connexion a more complete view of the scope and purpose of Mr. Pater in dealing with the art and literature of the ancient world. The essays fall into two distinct groups, one dealing with the subjects of Greek mythology and Greek poetry, the other with the history of Greek sculpture and Greek architecture.
    [Show full text]
  • Bulfinch's Mythology the Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch
    1 BULFINCH'S MYTHOLOGY THE AGE OF FABLE BY THOMAS BULFINCH Table of Contents PUBLISHERS' PREFACE ........................................................................................................................... 3 AUTHOR'S PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. 4 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 7 ROMAN DIVINITIES ............................................................................................................................ 16 PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA ............................................................................................................ 18 APOLLO AND DAPHNE--PYRAMUS AND THISBE CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS ............................ 24 JUNO AND HER RIVALS, IO AND CALLISTO--DIANA AND ACTAEON--LATONA AND THE RUSTICS .................................................................................................................................................... 32 PHAETON .................................................................................................................................................. 41 MIDAS--BAUCIS AND PHILEMON ....................................................................................................... 48 PROSERPINE--GLAUCUS AND SCYLLA ............................................................................................. 53 PYGMALION--DRYOPE-VENUS
    [Show full text]
  • Artemis and Virginity in Ancient Greece
    SAPIENZA UNIVERSITÀ DI ROMA FACOLTÀ DI LETTERE E FILOSOFIA DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN FILOLOGIA E STORIA DEL MONDO ANTICO XXVI CICLO ARTEMIS AND VIRGINITY IN ANCIENT GREECE TUTOR COTUTOR PROF. PIETRO VANNICELLI PROF. FRANCESCO GUIZZI 2 Dedication: To S & J with love and gratitude. Acknowledgements: I first and foremost wish to thank my tutor/advisor Professor Pietro Vannicelli and Co- Tutor Professor Francesco Guizzi for agreeing to serve in these capacities, for their invaluable advice and comments, and for their kind support and encouragement. I also wish to thank the following individuals who have lent intellectual and emotional support as well as provided invaluable comments on aspects of the thesis or offered advice and spirited discussion: Professor Maria Giovanna Biga, La Sapienza, and Professor Gilda Bartoloni, La Sapienza, for their invaluable support at crucial moments in my doctoral studies. Professor Emerita Larissa Bonfante, New York University, who proof-read my thesis as well as offered sound advice and thought-provoking and stimulating discussions. Dr. Massimo Blasi, La Sapienza, who proof-read my thesis and offered advice as well as practical support and encouragement throughout my doctoral studies. Dr. Yang Wang, Princeton University, who proof-read my thesis and offered many helpful comments and practical support. Dr. Natalia Manzano Davidovich, La Sapienza, who has offered intellectual, emotional, and practical support this past year. Our e-mail conversations about various topics related to our respective theses have
    [Show full text]
  • The Poetics, Philosophy, and Psychology of Love in Algernon Charles Swinburne’S Poems and Ballads [1866]
    “SEE LOVE, AND SO REFUSE HIM”: THE POETICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE IN ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE’S POEMS AND BALLADS [1866] by Jason Wilfred Jacques Boulet A thesis submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (April, 2014) Copyright © Jason Wilfred Jacques Boulet, 2014 Abstract This dissertation studies the concept of “love” in Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads [1866]. As I argue in Chapter One, there has been surprisingly little critical discussion of the concept of love in Poems and Ballads, and what there has been is flawed in that it inadvertently reinforces the longstanding charge of Swinburne’s “meaninglessness,” obscures the ways in which the love of Poems and Ballads is an informed critical response to the culture of the time, and tends to render the poems and their dramatic speakers interchangeable. In Chapter Two, I attempt to redress the ahistoricism that has dominated these discussions by explaining how the love of Poems and Ballads arose in response to the “cult of love” of Swinburne’s contemporaries, which he, informed by ideas that he inherited from his Romantic forbearers, viewed as an impoverishment of sensual experience, and consequently of humankind’s creative capacities—as dramatized through his speakers’ “refusals” of love and its imaginative possibilities. In Chapter Three, I explore two such “refusals,” expressed through the voices of the very different speakers of the “Hymn to Proserpine” and “The Triumph of Time.” After clarifying some sources of confusion, I trace how both of these characters, by means of different philosophical and psychological pathways, come to turn away from love and (in doing so) their own poetic potential.
    [Show full text]
  • Tales of Old Sicily
    - • -,:-— - ' TALES OF OLD SICILY Ex Libria C. K. OGDEN TALES OF OLD SICILY BY ALEXANDER NELSON HOOD AUTHOR OF "Adria: A Tale of Venice," &c. LONDON HURST AND BLACKETT LIMITED 1906 All rights reserved 'chapelH RIVER. |Sj press: TkingstonT I SURREY I PR SANTA BARBAIIA H8T3 JANE THOMSON, the friend of my childhood and later years, these tales of that Sicily we know so well are dedicated with gratitude and affection ; PREFATORY NOTE. In these tales concerning the Sicihan past, the writer has referred to certain phases of hfe, which by an observant mind may be recognised as reUcs of that past to-day. Much exists in Sicily, shadowy though it be, and at times difficult to trace, of the hopes and aspirations, the beliefs, customs and fears of ancient days. Many have come down from the Greeks, if not intact, at least in a manner to be recognised, although more than twenty centuries have intervened. In the great affection for the land, the desire to possess some portion, however small, the unweary- ing, almost loving devotion bestowed on its care by the Sicilian peasant, and in his pride for its exuberant production, the adoration and love for " The Great Mother," the Earth Goddess, Demeter or Ceres, is clearly to be traced. Similarly the cult of Venus, who had her remarkable temple on Mount Kryx, with its celebrated festivals and depraved orgies, survives in the designation of various places and of persons. Pride of race for the greatness of the past viii PREFATORY NOTE. the superstition that attaches to ancient strongholds or battlefields where
    [Show full text]
  • HESIOD in OVID: the METAMORPHOSIS of the CATALOGUE of WOMEN a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Co
    HESIOD IN OVID: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE CATALOGUE OF WOMEN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Ioannis V. Ziogas February 2010 © 2010 Ioannis V. Ziogas HESIOD IN OVID: THE METAMORPHOSIS OF THE CATALOGUE OF WOMEN Ioannis V. Ziogas, Ph.D. Cornell University, 2010 The subject of my dissertation is Ovid's intertextual engagement with the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (aka the Ehoiai). I examine the Hesiodic character of Ovid’s work, focusing mainly on the Metamorphoses and Heroides 16-17. The Metamorphoses begins with Chaos and moves on to the loves of the gods, reiterating the transition from the Theogony to the Catalogue. Divine passions for beautiful maidens constitute a recurring motif in the Metamorphoses, establishing the importance of the erotic element in Ovid’s hexameter poem and referring to the main topic of the Ehoiai (fr. 1.1-5 M-W). The first five books of Ovid’s epic follow the descendants of the river-god Inachus, beginning with Jupiter’s rape of Io and reaching forward to Perseus, and the stemma of the Inachids features prominently in the Hesiodic Catalogue (fr. 122-59 M-W). As a whole, the Metamorphoses delineates the genealogies of the major Greek tribes (Inachids, Thebans, Athenians), and includes the Trojans, the only non-Greek genealogies of the Catalogue, which were dealt with in the last part of Hesiod’s work. Ovid’s foray into the Hesiodic corpus gives us a new perspective to interpreting his aemulatio of Vergil.
    [Show full text]