Byblis and Myrrha: Two Incest Narratives in the "Metamorphoses" Author(s): Betty Rose Nagle Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1983), pp. 301-315 Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296771 . Accessed: 19/02/2011 06:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=camws. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Journal. http://www.jstor.org BYBLIS AND MYRRHA: TWO INCEST NARRATIVES IN THE METAMORPHOSES In two consecutive books of the Metamorphosesoccur episodes of incest (9.450-665; 10.298-502). Byblis' passion for her brotherCaunus is narratedby Ovid himself, as an illustration ut ament concessa puellae (454). Myrrha's desire for her fatherCinyras is partof the cycle of Orpheus'songs, one of those on the theme . inconcessisquepuellas/ ignibus attonitas meruisse libidine poenam (153-154).1 The two stories naturally have a number of parallels because of the similarityof subject, as well as differences, some of which can be attributedto Orpheus'personal bias. His narrativeis moretendentious, but, curiously, moreprurient. Despite the tendentiouslystated moral purpose of his story, Orpheus exploits the horror2of Myrrha's incest in a melodrama of "pietas perverted," whereas Ovid presents a sympatheticand relatively re- strainedaccount of Byblis. Many of the differencesbetween the styles of these two narrativesarise from one underlying difference-the attitudeof the nar- rator toward his main character. Ovid is consistently sympathetic toward Byblis, whereas Orpheusis ambivalenttoward Myrrha, with his initial revul- sion ultimately giving way to sympathy. Ovid frequentlyputs a story in the mouth of one of his fictional characters. Scholars have noted this, both in the present case of Orpheus, and in others elsewhere, but they have offered a variety of explanationsfor why Ovid does this. The device of stories-within-a-storyhad been part of the epic tradition from the tales of Odysseus through the neoteric epyllia.3 As for Ovid's particularmotives for attributingstories to his charactersin the Metamorph- oses, scholarly explanationsfall into two broadcategories, those which relate Ovid's motives to structureand theme, and those which relatethem to tone and mood. Structuraland thematicexplanations are common in Brooks Otis, as a consequence of his overall approachto the poem. For Otis, Orpheuslinks the stories of Pygmalion, Myrrha,and Venus and Adonis (183), while the stories "attributedto the Minyades" achieve variety and anticipatea thematictransi- tion (152). Before Otis, HermannFriinkel noted that the Pygmalion story, put into the mouth of Orpheus, implicitly underscores parallels in these two characters'situations; L.P. Wilkinsonexplained the phenomenonin generalas 'In fact, Orpheus'story of Myrrhais "the only one which accuratelycarries out" thattheme, as William S. Andersonrightly observes in his commentaryedition, Ovid's Metamorphoses:Books 6-10 (Norman, Oklahoma 1972) 501, hereaftercited as "Anderson." 2BrooksOtis, OvidAs An Epic Poet (Cambridge1970; 2nd rev. ed.), hereaftercited as "Otis," states, 421, in his Appendix on sources, that it is reasonablycertain one of Ovid's alterationsof Cinna's Zmyrna was "that Ovid himself emphasized the horrorof the story both to make it the climax of his episodes of furiosa libido and to establish a contrast with the Pygmalion. " 3See M. MarjorieCrump, The Epyllionfrom Theocritusto Ovid (Oxford 1931) 62-70, on the "digression" as a "rule" in epyllia; for her, the Metamorphoses"is really a collection of epyllia" (47). For two morerecent studies which deal specifically with Ovid's stories-within-a-story,see K. Gieseking, Die Rahmenerziihlungenin Ovids Metamorphosen(diss. Tiibingen 1965), and Michel Boillat, "Les recits intercales," Les Metamorphosesd'Ovide: Themesmajeurs et problemes de composition (Bern and Frankfort1976). 301 302 BETTYROSE NAGLE a way of including stories which do not fit Ovid's announcedchronological scheme.4 The motive of tone and mood appearsin Friinkel'sexplanation that the battleof the Lapithsand Centaursis laid "in the mouthof old Nestor," as a way for Ovid to avoid telling this "brutal tale" himself (102). Note that Frinkel's reasoningseems to be-it is a brutaltale, thereforeOvid has Nestor tell it-not-it is a brutaltale because Ovid has Nestor tell it. Wilkinson calls attentionto the vividness which results when a narratortells his own story, in the case of Arethusa's story about her escape from Alpheus (176), and of Achelous' account of his struggle with Hercules (176 n. and 201). Otis, referringto the tone of the story of Cephalusand Procris, asserts (181): "The harsh cupidity and indecency of Ovid's sources are softened not so much by Ovid speaking in propria persona as by his narrator,Cephalus." Until recently this has been the extent to which scholarshave consideredthe effect a fictional narratormay have upon a tale.5 The fictional narratorhas been regardedprimarily as a fictional character,with certainpersonality traits and biographicalexperiences which Ovid may exploit for reasonsof theme or tone. Despite Otis' observationabout Cephalus as narrator,his prevailing attitude appears when he refers to the section of the poem which is "nominally attributed"to Orpheus(190). Thus, accordingto Otis, the story of Cyparissus appears in the catalogue of trees, "told by Ovid in propria persona, but Gandymede's(since he was not a tree) is put in the mouthof Orpheus"(185); (italics mine). Recently, however, scholarshave begun to take the fictional narratorsmore seriously as narrators, and to discover reasons for Ovid's use of them which relateto the self-reflexive natureof his poem, in which the role of the artistis an importantconcern.6 Zumwalt has shown thatNestor's bias in his version of the Lapiths and Centaursundermines his otherwise excellent qualifications, thus allowing Ovid to commentupon the possibility of truthin narrative.'In a brief discussion of Ovid's narrative art, Segal has shown the effect of context (including audience, circumstances, and setting, as well as narrator)on the tales of Pyramus and Thisbe and Baucis and Philemon; his excellent recent studyof the Cephalusand Procris episode includes considerationof the effect of Cephalus as narrator,as well as other elements of the context." The Cephalusand Procrisepisode has also been discussed by Galinsky;for him, the use of Cephalus as narratorallows Ovid to achieve "a fine balance between the 'experience' and the 'artistic' aspects of the story" and "to 4Ovid:A PoetBetween Two Worlds(Berkeley 1945), hereaftercited as "Frinkel," 96-97; Ovid Recalled (Cambridge1955), hereaftercited as "Wilkinson," 147. 5Even the narrativetheorists Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (Oxford 1966) 263, contrastthe effect of the "multiplicationof eye-witness narrators"with thatof "the interlocking tale-tellers of frankly fictional narrativeslike Ovid's Metamorphoses or the Arabian Nights." 6Alison GoddardElliot, "Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Bibliography, 1968-1978," CW 73.7 (April-May 1980) 391, remarkson this as one of the emerging trendsin the scholarshipin that decade, as part of the concern with Ovidian poetics and narrativetechnique (385). 7"Fama Subversa: Theme and Structurein Ovid's Metamorphoses 12," CSCA 10 (1977) 209-220, particularly212-217. 8"NarrativeArt in the Metamorphoses," CJ 66 (1971) 331-337; "Ovid's Cephalusand Procris: Myth and Tragedy," Grazer Beitriige 7 (1978) 175-205. BYBLISAND MYRRHA 303 demonstratethat he could tell the story differently and with sustaineddignity and even profundity."9 The notion of Ovid's desire to tell a familiar myth "differently" is fundamentalto Galinsky's interpretationof the Metamorph- oses. According to him (4), Ovid's concern in that poem was "with the metamorphosisof myth ratherthan mythological metamorphoses;"the poet was able to accomplish this metamorphosis by following the example of Odysseus, whom he had representedin his own Ars Amatoriaas respondingto Calypso's repeatedrequests to hear about the fall of Troy by telling "the same thing differently" (ille referre aliter saepe solebat idem, Ars 2.128). A special category of this narrativediversification, yet to be examined thoroughly, consists of the tales told "differently" by Ovid's fictional nar- rators. For this purpose it is especially useful to juxtapose