Get the hint, Phoebus!
Chew, Chat, Change: Week 6
Ponytail Press drops an excerpt from Ovid's Metamorphoses (translated by Anthony S. Kline) every Monday morning. We all chew on it throughout the week and then discuss it on the weekend under the post that drops the following Saturday. Sound fun?
This week, one god tries to teach another god a lesson in humility. But whether he hears it from Cupid or Daphne, the new object of his desire, Pheobus/Apollo just can’t get it through that immortal skull of his.
If you’re lost, this past Monday’s bit will fill you in. Click the button below for access.
Love Wins
So we get two gods, Phoebus and Cupid, using the same weapon at the beginning of this piece of Ovid’s poem. A quick read would give you the impression that they’re evenly matched, but a closer look indicates the poet’s bias toward the Valentine’s Day mascot.
Sure, Phoebus shows his skill with the bow by killing the “swollen Python” (the double-entendre abounds!). But it takes a thousand arrows to do the job. How many arrows leave Cupid’s quiver? Just two. Two arrows bring Phoebus to his knees.
Is It Love, Though?
Are we OK with calling the results of Cupid’s first arrow love? Post-#MeToo, let's go with “no”. Looks more like an unhealthy, misogynistic obsession to me1. Plus, Cupid’s goal for inflicting Phoebus with this desire for Daphne2 was to give him a dose of humility, something Phoebus clearly shows to have missed in his “Don't you know who I am?” speach.
We understand this to be a more recent objection. As Ovid does here, writers (read: men) have compared their sexual pursuits with hunting for millenia. Ovid wasn’t the first, and he wasn’t the last either. A few passages here highlight the creep factor, though, what with him “hanging on her fleeing shoulders” and “breathing on the hair flying round her neck.” Shiver.
These, and the panic in Daphne/Peneïs’ plea to her father (the river god Peneus) makes me feel like maybe our objections to this predatory behaviour aren’t so new after all. Especially when you take Ovid’s less-than-complimentary depiction of Phoebus in the early comparison to Cupid/Amor, it seems to me that the poet could recognize the nastiness of this type of behaviour.
Sidenote: Let’s acknowledge the constant use of multiple names for a second. As a first-time reader, I found this confusing and annoying, so I looked into it. These gods and goddesses have their own names as well as epithets that refer to their parentage.
A Google search tells me the name “Phoebus” refers to Apollo’s grandmother, Phoibe, or “the bright one.” As you probably gathered from the earlier reference to Daphne/Peneïs, her second name refers to her paternal heritage.
Looking Past the Nasty
We’re not dealing with historical accounts here. We’re dealing with mythology. So we’d be remiss to only focus on the ethical implications of this story and not uncover what each character represents.
From my understanding, after reading a little Nietzsche, Apollo represents structure and form. As the “sun god,” he rules such subjects as music, poetry, medicine, and science. Basically, he’s the god of what we know and the ways we wield our knowledge to suit our needs.
That sheds a whole other light (pardon the pun) on his spat with Cupid and the ensuing loss of control over his emotions. Even the god of order can’t control Desire once it gets ahold of him.
If you didn’t notice already, music and poetry are pretty important to me. So I also find it interesting that Cupid chooses Daphne, the daughter of the river god, as the victim of his second arrow. A little more reading on Wikipedia tells me that she comes to represent other bodies of fresh water: wells, springs, streams, etc. You can see the irony in the god of form falling for someone so connected to an element as difficult to control as water. It reminds me of the essay I published this past Thursday and its comments on the futility of language.
But then Daphne’s dad turns her into a tree! What’s that all about? And is there something to Cupid choosing the river-god’s daughter as the source of desire for Apollo, the god who just killed a snake the size of a river? And then this same god continues to “love” her, despite her new bark-covered form?
So many questions left unanswered.
Ideas?
What do you read into this transformation of Daphne’s?
What do you make of Phoebus’ use of the laurel tree? How do you interpret their use as symbols for the Roman Empire (the wreath, the lyre, the quiver)?
The implications, after thinking about Western imperialism in general, are enough to make one shudder, no?
Tell me what you think. I want to know!
An obsession to which my pubescent self could likely relate, unfortunately.
There’s an emo band name for you.