Amor Ira and Sexual Identity in Ovids Metamorphoses

"Amor, Ira", and Sexual Identity in Ovid's "Metamorphoses"
Author(s): Betty Rose Nagle

Source: Classical Antiquity , Oct., 1984, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Oct., 1984), pp. 236-255
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/25010817
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BETTY ROSE NAGLE
Amor, Ira, and Sexual Identity in

Ovid's Metamorphoses
FROM THE VERY beginning of the current revival of interest in Ovid, attempts
have been made to relate the themes of metamorphosis, identity, and sexuality. Her
mann Frankel speculated on the "sensual" or "sexual" element of metamorphosis in
considering the role identity might have played in Ovid's choice of metamorphosis as
his theme. In the most recent general introduction to the Metamorphoses, Karl Galin
sky has remarked: "The psychological aspect of metamorphosis is perhaps the most
engaging for the modern reader.... This emphasis on human psychology is related
to the metamorphosis theme."2 Heretofore this emphasis has been placed on the iden
tity and sexuality of the individual who experiences transformation. This is understand
able, since, as Galinsky puts it, "The subject of metamorphosis naturally bears upon
1. H. Frankel, Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (Berkeley 1945) 220 n.73. The relationship between
the themes of identity and metamorphosis is fully recognized by recent scholarship, although scholars differ
about the intimacy of that relationship. For some, identity is a major theme of the Metamorphoses; for others
it is a minor but important theme; at the very least it is a noticeably recurrent element in some episodes
or sections of the work. The extreme view is held by Judith de Luce More (i.e., Judith de Luce) in "Mutatae
Formae: Studies in Ovid's Metamorphoses" (diss. U. of Wisconsin 1974); she states that (iii-iv) "We see
four themes-passion, power, identity, immortality-running throughout the poem." Also for Leo Curran,
"Transformation and Anti-Augustanism in Ovid's Metamorphoses," Arethusa 5 (1972) the connection is
fundamental (72): "What haunts the mind are those metamorphoses, both the more literal and more figurative,
that are most deeply implicated with that other greater theme of the poem, identity, those that make meta
morphosis a vehicle for the treatment of identity." More limited recognition of the correction appears in
John Barsby, Ovid, Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics no. 12 (Oxford 1978) 35-36: "A few
of the stories involve questions of personal identity, sometimes in direct relation to an actual metamorphosis
(Io), but more often not"; and Alan H. F. Griffin, "Ovid's Metamorphoses, " G & R 24 (1977) 68: "The
Narcissus and Pygmalion episodes also show that Ovid has what strikes us as a strangely modern interest
in the question of personal identity."
2. K. Galinsky, Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects (Berkeley 1975) 45.
? 1984 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

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NAGLE: Amor, Ira and Sexual Identity in Ovid 237
the identity of the person involved."3 A striking number of episodes in the Metamor
phoses (not all of which involve transformations) concern adolescents, that is, individuals
at a critical stage in their development of an identity and a sense of identity (of which
sexuality is an important component)-Daphne (and other "dedicated virgins"),
Phaethon, Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Hermaphroditus, Byblis, Myrrha, Atalanta,
Caenis, Iphis.4 My present focus, however, is the divine agents, rather than the human
victims, of metamorphosis. Ovid has so clearly distinguished between the behavior of
male and female divinities that the behavior of these gods also sheds light on the
relationship of sexuality and identity.
In the Metamorphoses, gods often cause suffering because of amor, as the unintend
ed consequence of erotic pursuit and conquest. The first instance, that of Apollo and
Daphne (1.452-567), is quickly followed by that of Jupiter and Io (1.588-746). God
desses, by contrast, more often intentionally and vindictively inflict injury to satisfy
ira aroused by supposed, or real but exaggerated, insults to their dignity; Diana and
Actaeon (3.138-252), Minerva and Arachne (6.5-145), Latona and Niobe (6.146-312)
are all familiar cases.5 Ovid's treatment of many of the myths included in the Metamor
phoses is shaped by this apparent "rule" of gods' accidental harm motivated by amor,
and goddesses' intentional harm motivated by ira. He also includes several striking
reversals of this rule, in episodes involving the gods Bacchus and Apollo, and the nymph
Salmacis. These "exceptions to the rule" not only "prove" it but, more important,
they provide clues about its relation to the theme of identity. In this paper, therefore,
I will be as interested in examining these exceptions as in establishing the existence
of the rule. It is the relationship between the rule about divine behavior and the theme
of identity, rather than that rule or that theme studied in isolation from one another,
that will contribute the most to our understanding of the poem.
The sense of identity comes in the fact from two simultaneous observations-the
perception of one's sameness and continuity, and the perception that others recognize
3. (supra n.2) 45.

4. I plan to develop this theme at length elsewhere.
5. My reference to "ira aroused by... insults" may perhaps be redundant, if insult and the desire
for revenge are inherent in the Latin word. Lewis and Short s.v. ira cite the definitions of Cicero, ira est
libido poeniendi eius, qui videatur laesisse iniuria (Tusc. 4.9.21), and Seneca, ira est cupiditas ulciscendae
injuriae (De ira 1.2.4). When Sir Ronald Syme criticizes Seneca's definition as "not very good," History
in Ovid (Oxford 1978) 223 n.2, it is not this definition to which he refers but, rather, to Seneca's distinction
between ira and iracundia (De ira 1.4.1). Syme's criticism occurs in his discussion of Ovid's "deliberate
and ominous" repetition in the Tristia of the collocations ira dei, numinis ira, principis ira, and Caesaris
ira. Syme's own definition (223) is instructive: " 'Ira' is choice and concentrated: anger excited by resent
ment at an affront or injustice, and often infused with the spirit of revenge. 'Ira' is appropriate to signal
the wrath of deities unrelenting." De Luce (supra n. 1) spends much of her second chapter, "The Gods of
the Metamorphoses" (57-97) on the divinities' "exercise of their power in the furtherance of their divine
authority and prerogatives" (70). In much of what she says there is a distinction, sometimes implicit, sometimes
explicit, between male and female deities, as in this: "This touchiness of the gods manifests itself most fre
quently in a deity trying to prove his power by punishing a mortal: the god may thus be punishing a human
offender while proving his strength to his fellow gods. With few exceptions the goddesses are the most insecure
about their positions and the most anxious to prove their might (70-71)," and "The gods may be quick
to punish, but they do not always try to hurt men. Certainly the male deities are motivated more often by
their lust: they do not mean to be malevolent, although the consequences of their desires are seldom happy (75)."

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238 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 3/ No. 2/ October 1984
these too.6 This is quite a fruitful observation for interpreting the identity theme in the
Metamorphoses. First, Ovid frequently emphasizes the continuity that persists after
metamorphosis: as Lycaon had behaved like a wolf toward men, so he became one
(1.237-39); Callisto and Actaeon retained human sensibility within mute animal bodies
(2.485-95; 3.201-205); Niobe still weeps after she has turned to stone (6.310-12),
and as a tree Myrrha still weeps the tears which will bear her name forever (10.500-502).
Second, other characters in the Metamorphoses often do not recognize an individual's
"sameness and continuity," e.g., Actaeon's hounds and hunting companions (3.228-50).
Frequently in the Metamorphoses when a character's self-perception is at variance with
that of others, gods (or would-be gods) are involved. Bacchus knows he is divine, and
Niobe believes she is, but the Thebans do not share either perception. This element
of recognition by others is a common motif in stories of gods-in-disguise. Jupiter in
mortal guise is recognized by all the Arcadians save the impious Lycaon (1.220-23);
conversely, Acoetes alone among the crew of Lydian sailors recognizes that their captive
Bacchus is divine (3.610-20).
The world of the Metamorphoses is a world of constant change, whose most common
form is bodily transformation. Although one would expect the gods' identities to be
secure, they are not. The perception of continuity on the part of ageless, deathless beings
whose self-transformations are voluntary surely must be strong. Faced with the percep
tions of others and the implicit question "Who am I in the eyes of others?", however,
Ovidian gods manifest considerable uncertainty. It is for this reason that they are so
readily offended by one another and by mortals. Indeed, the first metamorphosis in
the poem-Lycaon's transformation by Jupiter into a wolf-is the direct consequence
of Lycaon's refusal to recognize, and his intention even to test, the god's identity as
an immortal (1.220-25). In this metamorphosis-tale identity is central, not only Ly
caon's but also Jupiter's. This story is a keynote for other transformations, and also
is the prototype of a common tale-type in the poem, that of the spretor deorum. 7 When
Jupiter's ira (1.166, 274) is provoked, the consequence is intentional harm, the almost
total destruction of the human race. In the Metamorphoses the amorous Jupiter appears
much more frequently than the irate one. His wrath at Lycaon in particular, and at
6. This is Erik Erikson's explanation for the origin of "ego-identity," for which "sense of identity"
is the equivalent term used by David J. de Levita in his study of The Concept of Identity, tr. Ian Finlay
(New York 1965) 54. De Levita is greatly influenced by Erikson, and in turn my ideas about identity and
sense of identity have been shaped under the influence of de Levita's book, a work especially appropriate
to use in studying Ovid (as Galinsky [supra n.21 does, 45, 76 n.65) since it includes a consideration of the
"identity crises" in the Metamorphoses-chiefly that of Phaethon-in an "Intermezzo." The bulk of his
work, of course, uses evidence from clinical literature rather than examples from the Metamorphoses, but
the latter occur naturally enough to an Ovidian reader of de Levita's survey.
7. N. G. G. Davis "Studies in the Narrative Economy of Ovid's Metamorphoses" (diss. U. of California
1969), treats that tale-type extensively in his fourth chapter, "Spretor Deorum: A Synoptic View" (81-116).
In his first, introductory chapter, however, he explicitly "excluded, provisionally,... goddesses punishing
rivals" (14) from the "paradigm" of offense/punishment. Davis (83) calls Lycaon the prototype of "the
flagrant offender" and "a 'norm' of the rebellious character" and remarks on the "rather neat coincidence
between the first... variant of the paradigm and the very first tale of individual transformation." I doubt
it is a matter of coincidence. Some of Davis's ideas appear now in brief but more accessible form in "The
Problem of Closure in a Carmen Perpetuum: Aspects of Thematic Recapitulation in Ovid's Met. 15, "Grazer
Beitrage 9 (1980) 123-32.

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depraved mankind in general, is an instance of traditional divine anger at irreverent

mortals. The prominence of this episode early in the Metamorphoses provides a stan
dard against which we may compare other cases of divine ira later in the work.
Throughout the poem, Ovid generally associates the harm done by male divinities
with the satisfaction of amor and that done by female divinities with satisfaction of
ira. The impression that amor and ira are somehow sex-linked is confirmed both by
special cases of this general rule and by exceptions to it. In the first part of what follows,
I shall demonstrate the rule's existence by considering two patterns that result from
its operation: (1) a god's amor causes a goddess's ira; and (2) a goddess's own amor
turns into ira. It is important to note that a god's amor is not in itself directly destruc
tive. The apparent exception of Jupiter and Semele is not a real exception; it is Juno's
jealousy that renders Jupiter's amor lethal: it is the consequences of the amor, rather
than the amor per se, that are harmful. The object of the god's desire may interpret
this as a threat to her identity (as Daphne does); often, it ultimately does threaten her
identity, because it arouses a goddess's jealousy.
In the first pattern, a common one, a god's amor leads to a goddess's ira, which
is then deflected onto the mortal (or lesser divinity such as a nymph) in between. Io
and Callisto are victims of the combination of Jupiter's amor and Juno's ira; their rape
by the god provokes the goddess's jealousy. In Callisto's case Jupiter's assault provokes
the wrath of two goddesses. When the virgin goddess Diana discovers that the nymph
is pregnant, she sanctimoniously expels her one-time favorite from her band of
companions. Bereft of this divine protection, Callisto is vulnerable to Juno's vengeance.
In fact, the nymph is victimized at the outset by her very devotion to Diana; Jupiter
has taken advantage of this devotion when he disguised himself as Diana in order to
catch the nymph off guard. In another variation on this kind of double jeopardy, Minerva
punishes Medusa with her famous snaky hair for being raped by Neptune in the god
dess's temple (4.798-801). Even Echo's peculiar speech defect is the consequence of
her having been a not-so-innocent bystander in the clash between Jupiter's amor and
Juno's ira; it is her punishment for diverting Juno with chatter from once again catching
Jupiter in the act (3.359-69).
Teiresias' loss of eyesight and compensation with prophetic vision occur in a brief
episode that is a neat illustration in miniature of the operation of amor and ira throughout
the poem. The nature of male and female sexuality becomes the subject of a discussion
or, rather, a disagreement. Jupiter maintains that the female derives maior voluptas
(3.320-21) from the sex act; Juno disputes this; Teiresias, who has spent seven years
as a woman, arbitrates in Jupiter's favor. Juno overreacts, blinding Teiresias. Since
one god cannot undo the acts of another, Jupiter makes amends as best he can by grant
ing Teiresias prophetic powers. Jupiter's claim about female sexual pleasure was a casual
remark made in a context of relaxation and levity. Teiresias is thus an accidental vic
tim, caught quite typically in an erotic dispute between Jupiter and Juno. Ovid's ver
sion of the blinding of Teiresias is illustrative also of the poet's methods of selecting
De Luce (supra n. 1) identifies "the cause of divine wrath" as "the fear of being ignored or openly
defied by men, and the consequences of letting them get away with it" (74) and says of Lycaon that he
"dared test Jove's identity" (13).

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his mythological material, since he tells the version of this episode more suited to his
theme of amor and ira. This version, the blinding by Juno, goes back to the pseudo
Hesiodic Melampodia (fr. 275 M-W). Another, less common version, appears in
Pherecydes (FGrHist 92), and is the one used by Callimachus in Hymn 5 (the Bath
of Pallas). In this version Teiresias accidentally saw Athena bathing (the same story
pattern that occurs in the Metamorphoses in the episode of Diana and Actaeon) and
the goddess accidentally blinded him when she attempted to cover his eyes with her
hand. In compensation, Athena herself, not some other divinity, gave Teiresias his pro
phetic ability.8 Juno's reaction to Teiresias' verdict, however, is intentional and,
according to the narrator's explicit comment, excessively vindictive (gravius Saturnia
iustolnec pro materia fertur doluisse, 3.333-34). Remarks of this kind, about a god
dess's (not a god's) vindictiveness are made frequently-by Ovid, by another character
in the poem, and by the goddess herself, who wishes to publicize her act of vengeance
to prevent future slights (infra, p. 248 and n.23).
The pattern that relates a god's amor to a goddess's ira can produce peculiar and
indirect variants. An understanding of this pattern helps to explain an otherwise puzzl
ingly anticlimatic erotic adventure of Mercury's. The erotic activities of the Ovidian
gods are passing fancies, not long-term attachments. Still, the extreme in erotic detach
ment appears in Mercury's pursuit of Herse, the daughter of the Athenian king Cecrops
(2.708-835). Access to Herse is blocked by her sister Aglauros, who demanded a bribe,
but persists in denying entry even after she has received the money. Mercury eliminates
this obstacle by turning her to stone (making literal truth of her threat not to budge)
but then, instead of proceeding to the object of his affection, he apparently loses interest
or forgets about her, and flies back to heaven.9 This episode clearly demonstrates the
extent to which Ovid makes amor, but not ira, characteristic of gods. Mercury is not
angered by Aglauros' request for a bribe, nor does he petrify her because of her inten
tional obstruction of the will of a god but, rather, only when she does not keep her
end of the bargain and makes a carelessly worded threat. Again, Aglauros' failure to
keep the bargain is not motivated by her initial greed but is attributed to jealousy caused
by the intervention of the goddess Minerva, who is outraged by the girl's mercenary
behavior (the goddess already has reason of her own to be angry with Aglauros, who
had disobeyed instructions not to look into a basket carrying the royal child Erichthonius;
at the time, Minerva punished, not the disobedience, but the informer who reported it).
8. Since Ovid does not use the version of blinding by Athena, he can make no use of the parallel between
Actaeon and Teiresias, as Callimachus does in his Hymn; there Athena replies to Teiresias' aggrieved mother,
a favorite companion of hers, by alluding to Actaeon's coming fate, saying that his parents will wish that
Actaeon had come back, blind, from hunting, and will call Teiresias' mother lucky (107-18).
9. W. S. Anderson, "Multiple Changes in the Metamorphoses, " TAPA 94 (1963) 1-27, assumes that
Mercury's passion was consummated (8): 'Mercury gratifies his passion with Herse and flies lightheartedly
away." Leo Curran, "Rape and Rape Victims," Arethusa 11 (1978) 213-41, describes this peculiarity accu
rately (235): "After introducing Herse and depicting at length the initial stages of her effect on Mercury,
Ovid turns to other matters and never tells us how he thought the god got her to bed, although the description
of his first seeing Herse, with its overtones of motifs habitually associated with rape, makes us anticipate
rape." Aglauros is clearly the more important character in the story of Mercury and Herse; with its theme
of the foolish oath and the emphasis on Mercury's verbal wit, the story of Aglauros is analogous to that
of Battus, the old man whom the god turned to stone for betraying Mercury to himself (in disguise), 2.676-707.

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In this episode, the displacement of the anger Mercury should feel onto Minerva
maintains the association of ira with goddesses rather than with gods. Ovid's version
of Mercury, Minerva, and the Athenian princesses keeps amor and ira carefully
separated. The peculiar distribution of motives between Mercury and Minerva is con
sistent with the apparent sex-linkage of amor and ira. Mercury is motivated by amor
for Herse, while Minerva acts out of ira at Aglauros. The absence of any mention of
consummation highlights the division of the motives of amor and ira (and emphasizes
that Mercury's forte is verbal cunning, not erotic prowess). 0 Mercury's failure to react
with anger to erotic rejection or frustration is characteristic of the gods' behavior, and
significantly differs from goddesses' reactions, as we shall see next.
When a goddess's love is not reciprocated, a second dangerous pattern of amor
and ira results, in which the goddess's ira is provoked, not by a god's successful
amor, but by her own frustrated amor; that is, her own amor turns to ira. When the
sea-deity Glaucus comes to Circe for a love-charm to use on Scylla, Circe advises
him instead to reject the one who rejects his love and turn his affection onto a willing
object, namely herself (14.8-36). After he responds that his love will endure as long
as Scylla lives, it turns out, of course, that Circe cannot follow her own advice. The
rejection offends her, but Glaucus' divinity, as well as her love, prevents her from
hurting him. Her revenge is diverted onto Scylla, whom she transforms into the famous
sea-monster. Ovid is quite explicit about Circe's inability (and disinclination) to harm
Glaucus, and about the transference of her anger (14.40-42): et laedere quatinus
ipsum/non poterat (nec vellet amans), irascitur illi,lquae sibi praelata est. The god
dess's frustrated amor leads to ira and intentional harm, unlike the incidental harm
caused by a god's amor.
Later, Circe happens to see Picus while he is hunting. Her passion blazes up
(14.350-51) and she sends a phantom boar to lure him away from his companions.
So far, in her fiery arousal and in her resort to deception, her behavior is like that of
the gods. Then Picus rejects her profession of love in the same terms as Glaucus
did-he will remain loyal to his love, the nymph Canens, as long as she lives. After
meeting with repeated resistance, Circe first warns him that he will learn what a woman
injured in love can do, and then transforms him into a woodpecker. The dawn-goddess
Aurora encounters similar resistance from the young newlywed Cephalus, whom she
carries off against his will one morning after she has found him out hunting alone
(7.700-704). Her captive can talk of nothing but his bride Procris, so finally Aurora,
greatly annoyed, lets him go, but her parting words intentionally raise doubts in his
mind about Procris' fidelity (7.711-13), which he later tests with the goddess's help
and with unfortunate results. This goddess's revenge is more subtle than Circe's, but
still effective.
These goddesses can punish rejection, but they cannot force compliance. This
helplessness is emphasized in the case of Circe, since Ovid states explicitly that Circe
could not harm Glaucus himself (laedere . . . ipsum non poterat, 14.40-41). After
10. For a consideration of Mercury's verbal cunning specifically in the first two books of the poem,
including a treatment of the Herse-Aglauros episode, see B. R. Fredericks (i.e., B. R. Nagle), "Divine Wit
vs. Divine Folly," CJ 72.3 (February-March 1977) 244-49.

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Picus' first blunt rejection of her offer, she continues to plead often and in vain (frustra,
14.382). Since she is unable to get what she wants because she is female, it is significant
that she warns Picus about what a woman (femina), not a goddess,1l scorned will do.
The goddesses' punitive reactions to erotic rejection thus couple divine power with
the limitations imposed by the female role.
These goddesses interpret erotic rejection as an insult to their divinity which must
be punished. Circe is offended by Glaucis' rejection (indignata dea est, 14.40), and
she warns Picus non inpune feres (14.383).12 Aurora calls Cephalus ingrate (7.711).
Both gods and goddesses inform prospective lovers of their divine identity, but it is
only the goddesses who interpret erotic rejection as an insult to their divinity. Glaucus
comes to Circe for help fully aware of her divinity, but in her profession of love she
reminds him tht she is a goddess, the daughter of the Sun (33). In courting Picus, she
identifies herself as a goddess (374) and invites him to accept the sun as his father-in-law
(375-76; an economical way of indicating both her background and her intentions).
Gods use the same approach with reluctant females. Apollo emphasizes to Daphne
that luppiter est genitor (1.517). Similarly, when trying to gain access to Herse,
Mercury tells Aglauros pater est mihi luppiter ipse and urges her to assent to becoming
his child's aunt (2.744, 746). Jupiter gradually reveals to Io his identity as a god,
indeed the very one who wields the thunderbolt (594-96). Thus, gods and goddesses
share the notion that their prospective lovers should feel honored by divine sexual
attention, but the gods are not offended when reference to their divine identity does
not produce the intended effect. For a god, erotic rejection is a temporary obstacle
which he can overcome by force when persuasion has failed. Besides the most familiar
cases, involving Jupiter (Io, 1.589-600; Callisto, 2.425-38), there are a number of
other instances in which a god uses force after seduction fails; among these are Neptune
and Coroneus' daughter (2.574-76), Sol and Leucothoe (4.225-28), Alpheus and
Arethusa (5.597-638), and Boreas and Orithyia (6.680-707).13 By contrast, the god
desses' resources are limited to persuasion, and their divine identity is essential to
their attempt at persuasion. Erotic rejection becomes the equivalent of insulted divinity
because the goddesses themselves must present their case in those terms. Aurora and
Circe are angered by "rivals" whose chronological priority they obviously feel is less
11. Charles Segal, in "Circean Temptations: Homer, Vergil, and Ovid," TAPA 99 (1968) 437, cites
14.384-85, commenting: "Ovid makes it quite explicit how closely he has modeled his character after a
mortal paradigm, the woman scorned," as part of his thesis that Ovid has simplified the more complex Homeric
figure to "a female of strong passions" (436-37). De Luce (supra n. 1), citing the work of Julio Caro Baroja
(The World of the Witches [Chicago 1961], tr. O. N. V. Glenndinning), discusses Circe as a witch in a more
traditional sense, that is, a powerless, socially inferior female who uses magic to destroy "those whom she
feels have slighted her" (21-25).
12. Earlier in the poem Juno made the same threat-haud inpune ftres-to Callisto (2.474), but these
words are not always the expression of a goddess's sexual jealousy. It also appears in Diana's reaction to
Oeneus' failure to sacrifice to her At non inpune feremus (8.279).
13. See Curran (supra n.9) on the pattern of failed seduction followed by forcible rape (219-20), as
well as on rapes that occur so rapidly as to be called "instantaneous" (218) and those that are simply men
tioned casually in a brief line or two, e.g., the introductin of Narcissus as the product of the rape of Liriope
by Cephisus (217).

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important than their own divine identity. They compete for affection with nymphs or
mortal women, and by so doing, and failing, demean their own divinity. Gods do not
compete for affection in this way, and therefore are not rejected in favor of previous
attachments. In the Metamorphoses Jupiter is never rejected by a female character
whose motive is fidelity to a lover or husband.14
Aurora and Circe both are goddesses whose amor leads to ira. Although they feel
that their rivals should yield to their divine status, their motive is clearly erotic, and
it is predominantly erotic frustration (rather than outraged divinity) that causes their
response. Juno comes to mind most readily as the goddess typically subject to sexual
jealousy, and provides a clue for Ovid's sex-linkage of amor and ira in divine behavior.
She has a whole series of "rivals" who replace her, if only temporarily. But while
Jupiter's motives are erotic, Juno's are not, although they are sexual. Juno neither loves
nor desires Jupiter (unlike Deianira, who loves Hercules and therefore fears her rival
lole); 5 Juno is, however, concerned for her identity as Jupiter's wife, and contingent
upon that, as the regina deorum (2.512). Only at the beginning of the first incident
does she appear in a relatively sympathetic light, as the wife of a perennial philanderer.
She happens to notice that the area where Jupiter has just seduced Io is enshrouded
in mist; since it is an otherwise clear day, she suspects yet another infidelity on the
part of the husband she had caught so often before (1.601-606). Even after Jupiter
gave her Io, disguised as a heifer, to allay her suspicions, non protinus exuit omnemldiva
metum timuitque lovem (622-23). She seems as much a victim of Jupiter as does Io,
but she ceases to be so sympathetic when she sends the gadfly to torment Io after Mer
cury has killed her watchman Argus.
Against her rivals Callisto and Semele, Juno is increasingly brutal and vindictive.
Moreover, in these episodes the nature of the threat these rivals pose to her becomes
clear. Callisto gives birth to a son as a result of her union with Jupiter. This child is
living proof of Jupiter's infidelity; it is this in particular that angers Juno, as Ovid stresses
parenthetically-iam puer Arcas (id ipsumlindoluit luno) fuerat de paelice natus
(2.468-69)-and the goddess herself emphasizes in her tirade against Callisto (471
ft.). Juno's punishment is intended to destroy the beauty which had attracted Jupiter
14. Admittedly, married victims of rape are rare in the Metamorphoses, a fact that Curran (supra n.9)
notes and on the significance of which he speculates (228-32).
15. Deianira expresses the fear of being replaced in her husband's bed: I must take action quickly,
she says, dum licet et nondum thalamos tenet altera nostros (9.146); Juno expresses a similar concern in
the case of Callisto (2.525-26), but there is closer verbal similarity in her more "political" anxiety that
pro me tenet altera caelum (2.513). Like the goddesses in general, Deianira interprets Iole's existence as
an iniuria, and like Circe in particular she speaks of what a "woman scorned" can do, when she momentarily
considers murdering her rival to prove quantum... iniuria possitlfemineusque dolor (150-51). Nevertheless,
Ovid represents her sympathetically: in love (amans) and completely terrified (perterrita) by the rumor about
Hercules' new love (141), her first reaction is to weep piteously (miseranda, 143). Although she briefly
contemplates killing the rival, she finally chooses instead to use Nessus' alleged love-potion on her husband,
so that vires defecto reddat amori (154). Rather than take action against the rival, she plans to restore Her
cules' love, a novel approach in the Metamorphoses, and admittedly one for which Deianira has been uni
quely equipped. The narrator emphasizes the pathetic irony of her decison, since quid tradat, nescia luc
tuslipsa suos tradit (155-156), and he calls her miserrima (156).

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(471-75) but this punishment-metamorphosis into a bear-is undone when Jupiter

transforms the bear into a constellation. Juno's enraged reaction is addressed to the
sea-gods, from whom she asks the favor of never letting the Bear constellations (Callisto
and her son) dip into the sea. She explains that she, the regina deorum, has come to
them, because pro me tenet altera caelum (513). She asks rhetorically why anyone should
avoid injuring her in the future, since her punishments turn into rewards; she is powerless
(518-22). She further asks rhetorically why Jupiter does not just drive her out and install
Callisto in her bedroom as her replacement (525-26). Juno's identity as queen of the
gods depends on being Jupiter's wife; she fears her position is in jeopardy.16 She is
furious that her ability to punish and so prevent future threats is so ineffectual. Ovid
gave an earlier indication of this ineffectuality when Jupiter first saw Callisto and
wondered whether getting caught would be worth it; his wife's complaints (iurgia,
423-24) are the only thing he must balance against his pleasure with Callisto.
Like Callisto, Semele becomes pregnant by Jupiter. In her case, however, Juno
is not angered simply that there will be evidence of the infidelity (3.268-69), but by
the desire which she attributes to Semele: mater, quod vix mihi contigit, unolde love
vultfieri: tanta estfiduciaformae (269-70). 7 Realizing how unproductive her com
plaints to Jupiter have been in the past, she decides to take the matter into her own
hands (262-63), swearing to herself that she will destroy Semele, if she is rightly called
maxima luno, if she wields the scepter, if she is Jupiter's queen, sister, and wife (263-66).
Thus she links, almost as a test case, her two concerns-her ability to punish her rivals,
and the identity which is jeopardized by them. Although she successfully contrives
Semele's destruction by the full force of Jupiter's divinity, once again, however, she
is thwarted by him, when he rescues the fetus, brings it to term sewn into his thigh,
and then entrusts the infant Bacchus to his aunt Ino.
Anderson has pointed out how Semele's punishment fits her crime of imagining
"for herself impossible privileges that are reserved for the gods," and he emphasizes
16. Curran (supra n.9) 224-26 devotes special attention to Juno's role as the harshest persecutor of
rape victims; since she is "the divine patroness of the social institution of marriage," Ovid uses her as "the
embodiment, on the level of myth, of society's attitudes toward marriage and such related matters as virginity
and adultery" (225). It is not to Curran's purpose to consider Juno's concern for her identity as jeopardized
by rivals, as I do here, but his explanation is not unrelated to mine. As I see it, it is with her identity as
her husband's wife that Juno is chiefly concerned. In antiquity, after all, a woman's identity was, far more
than in modern times, defined by the "social institution of marriage"; a girl began life as her father's daughter,
and then became her husband's wife. De Luce (supra n. 1) puts it well when she says (71) that "Juno's sen
sitivity about the strength of her position underlies her treatment of the women of Cadmus' house."
17. Juno's anger at Semele's alleged desire (and actual ability) to become a mother by Jupiter implicitly
reappears in her persecutions of Latona (6.332 ff.) and Alcmena (9.284 ff.) during their pregnancies, persecu
tions which include efforts to prevent their delivery.
In the Fasti 5.230-58, Ovid relates that after Jupiter gave birth on his own to Minerva, Juno, with
the aid of magic from Flora, bore Mars parthenogenically. Philip Slater, The Glory of Hera (Boston 1968)
130, considers the psychological significance of Zeus' assimilation of the female role in giving birth to Athena
and to Dionysus and reports that "in one version Zeus and Hera compete in attempting to produce offspring
unaided, the latter bearing both Hephaestus and the monster Typhon in this manner [Apollodorus 1.3.5;
Homeric Hymn to Apollo 305-55; Hesiod Theogony 924-29]. To have Zeus best Hera in this contest sug
gests the intensity of the fear of feminine superiority."

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that Juno dupes Semele into asking "for the rights of Juno herself."18 Besides usurp
ing Juno's identity, however, Semele unwittingly, and at Juno's instigation, tests Jupiter's
identity as well, since what Semele asks for has been designed primarily as a test of
Jupiter's identity. Juno, disguised as Semele's old nurse, had expressed doubt about
the identity of Semele's lover. Even if he really is Jupiter, that is not enough; he must
prove his love:
nec tamen esse Iovem satis est; det pignus amoris,

si modo verus is est, quantusque et qualis ab alta
Iunone excipitur, tantus talisque, rogato,
det tibi conplexus suaque ante indignia sumat. (3.283-86)
When Jupiter sadly equips himself for his fatal meeting with Semele, he does not choose
his most powerful bolt (3.302-304) but, rather, his tela secunda (307), a lightning bolt
cui dextra Cyclopumlsaevitiaeflammaeque minus, minus addidit irae (305-306). Saevitia
and ira are both emotions characteristic of insulted deities. Here, however, Jupiter uses
his bolt to avenge, not his own insulted divinity, but that of Juno, who has cunningly
contrived to punish both her rival and her unfaithful husband at one stroke.
That Juno's rivals usurp her place in Jupiter's bed and her role as the mother of
his children are emphatic points in her tirades against them. The goddess's rivals damage
her self-esteem in two more general ways. One's rivals by definition fill a role of one's
own. The perception that one is interchangeable in a role "implies a heavy blow to
the feeling of self-esteem"; just such a vulnerability of self-esteem is experienced by
an eldest child at the birth of his first sibling.19 Juno could not be more explicit about
her sense of interchangeability, in saying of Callisto that pro me tenet altera caelum
and in asking rhetorically why Jupiter does not simply install Callisto in their bedroom
in her place. Moreover, Juno's powerlessness to deter or punish her rivals detracts
still further from her self-esteem. She articulates her sense of powerlessness in the strong
contrast she makes between the ability of her rival's son Bacchus to exact vengeance
from those who slight him (the sailors, Pentheus, the Minyades)-potuit de paelice natus
(4.422; she deigns to refer to Bacchus only by that circumlocution)-and her own ability
to do nothing but weep over unavenged grievances-nil poterit luno nisi inultos flere
dolores? (426). Besides the forms of posse in that antithesis, Juno refers explicitly to
her potentia in the bitter rhetorical question haec (sc. flere dolores) una potentia nostra
est? (427). Likewise, in addressing Tethys and Oceanus earlier about Callisto, she twice
refers ironically to her power- quam vasta potentia nostra est! (520), and sic est mea
magna potestas! (522).
Juno is also keenly aware of her humiliating lack of autonomy.20 In Callisto's case,
18. Anderson (supra n.9) 10.

19. De Levita (supra n.6) 144-46
20. Autonomy, self-esteem, and repeated gratification are all related, according to de Levita (supra
n.6) 90-91, since self-esteem derives from the power to experience repeated gratification; hence the predic
tability and constancy of gratification are crucial to the concept of identity (153). In the Metamorphoses,
Jupiter and Juno might well be taken as paradigms of gratification and frustration respectively.

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246 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 3/ No. 21 October 1984
and again in Semele's, she must avail herself of other powers to get revenge. In the
first case, she anticipates the need to explain why she, the regina deorum, has come
to the sea-gods for help. In the second case, angered at the pride Ino takes in her divine
foster-child Bacchus, Juno follows the model of that god's vengeance on Pentheus by
driving Ino and her husband Athamas mad (4.416-31), but to do so she must recruit
a Fury. Juno's descent to the Underworld is one of the five extensive allegorical set
pieces in the Metamorphoses, four of which involve goddesses in search of assistance
from another power, and indeed, the first three of which involve goddesses seeking
vengeance.21 Juno's descent to Tartarus is an extreme measure, and she herself empha
sizes that she must avail herself of another power because her own has been exhausted
(426-31). Her resort to another power, in other words, is necessitated by her own
weakness and is a manifestation of her low self-esteem.
By contrast, the gods are powerful enough in most cases to be self-reliant in achiev
ing gratification, and only rarely call for assistance. When they do, the motive is amor,
not ira. Mercury helps Jupiter set up the seduction of Europa, but he acts on command
and does not know the motive for his father's order (because Jupiter withholds it: nec
causamfassus amoris, 2.836). In a minor tale the river-god Achelous invokes Neptune
on behalf of his beloved, whose father has thrown her into him (qua river) to drown
(8.590-610). Another intercession on behalf of another god's beloved is Mercury's
employment to rescue Io from her keeper Argus. This is a case parallel to Juno's
impotence against rivals, and instructively, it is motivated by the amor characteristic
of the gods, not the ira of goddesses.
Up to this point, I have attempted to demonstrate the operation in Ovid's Metamor

phoses of a rule describing divine behavior, the rule, that is, of injury caused by the
amor of a god, but by the ira of a goddess. First, I outlined the pattern in which a
god's (satisfied) amor provokes a goddess's ira. Next, I discussed the pattern in which
a goddess's (frustrated) amor leads to her own ira. Episodes involving Juno's wrath
are the most numerous and the most notable; they also provide the clearest indication
of the role Ovid gives to identity in the goddesses' (usually sexual) jealousy. The role
of gender, the sex-linkage of amor and ira, becomes even clearer in two notable excep
tions to the rule, exceptions that directly involve questions of sexual identity and sex
roles. Bacchus, whose sexual ambivalence is one of his characteristic features, exacts
grisly vengeance to satisfy the saevam laesi... numinis iram (4.8). The nymph Salmacis
in effect rapes the youth Hermaphroditus when he resists her advances, and the conse
quence of this role reversal for her male victim is metamorphosis into a sexually
ambiguous being (4.285-388). It is my thesis that Bacchus' destructive ira is related
to his feminine characteristics, as Salmacis' destructive amor results from masculine
21. In the first instance (2.760 ff.), Minerva goes to Invidia to punish Aglauros. The second occur
rence is Juno's descent. In the third (8.796 ff.), Ceres requests the assistance of Fames against Erysichthon.
In the fourth case, the motive is not vengeance; Juno again resorts to another power, Somnus (11.583 ff.),
to make Alcyone realize that Ceyx had died at sea and so stop pestering the goddess with prayers for his
safety. The fifth and final case is Fama (12.40 ff.), spreading the news to Troy of the approaching Greek fleet.

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aggression and results in emasculation. Moreover, Ovid has strikingly juxtaposed these
two exceptions in the arrangement of his poem.22
Bacchus is an outstanding exception to the thesis that gods only accidentally cause
harm through amor, while goddesses intentionally do so to satisfy their ira. In the
Metamorphoses there is a sequence of three cases-the Tyrrhenian sailors, Pentheus,
and the daughters of Minyas-in which Bacchus punishes those who scorn him. Ovid's
Bacchus, that is, behaves like the traditional Dionysus, dealing with resistance to himself
and to his worship, i.e., with refusal to acknowledge his divine identity. Ovid's Pen
theus, like Euripides', disregards Teiresias' prophecy that he will suffer if he refuses
to acknowledge Bacchus' divinity and to worship him as he deserves. The god retaliates
by driving the king's mother and aunts mad, so that they perceive Pentheus as a wild
animal and tear him limb from limb. The god has contrived a fitting punishment indeed:
as Pentheus' perception of Bacchus did not correspond with the god's own sense of
his divine identity, so the god arranges that others do not share the king's sense of
his identity. He is not, like Actaeon, a human trapped in an animal's form, but one
trapped in the hallucination of an animal's form.
Ovid associates Bacchus' assertion of his disputed identity with two of the most
vindictive acts of the two most characteristically vindictive goddesses. Ovid's organiza
tion of this material and inclusion of overt cross-references make this connection clear.
Pentheus' dismemberment occurs at the end of the book of the Metamorphoses that
began with the punishment of Actaeon by Diana. This parallel is made explicit when
Pentheus futilely tries to avert disaster by reminding the crazed women of Actaeon's
fate (3.720). In turn, Bacchus' successful act of vengeance against Pentheus enrages
Juno, but at the same time provides her with a model, as we have already seen (supra
p. 246). Juno diverts her resentment of Semele and Bacchus onto Ino, the only one
of the god's aunts to have survived unscathed. She maddens Ino and her husband
Athamas (who, she alleges, me cum coniuge semperlsprevit, 4.468-69). Athamas thinks
his wife and children are a lioness and her cubs and kills one of the "cubs," whereupon
Ino flees with the other child, jumps off a cliff into the sea, and the two are saved only
by the intervention of Venus and Neptune, who transform them into sea-divinities
(4.512-42).
Actaeon and Ino are both undeserving victims of divine wrath. Actaeon accidentally
encountered Diana while she was bathing; the goddess punished him because of her
assumption that he would tell about what he had seen, expressed in the cruel sarcasm
of her injunction: nunc tibi me posito visam velamine narres/si poteris narrare, licet.
(3.192-93). Ino's only crime was her relationship to Semele and Bacchus, and the hap
piness she found in her husband, children, and divine nephew. Nor is the reader left
22. The Salmacis/Hermaphrodite story is told by one of the Minyades, the sisters who, even after
the terrible fate of Pentheus, persist in refusing to worship Bacchus. While his rites are being celebrated,
they stay at home weaving and passing the time by telling four stories of unlucky love (4.55-388). Salmacis/Her
maphroditus concludes the series; as soon as that tale is finished, Bacchus appears to punish the sisters, by
changing them into bats (388-415). As Eleanor Winsor Leach, "Ekphrasis and the Theme of Artistic Failure
in Ovid's Metamorphoses," Ramus 3.2 (1974) 110, puts it: "No sooner are the stories concluded than the
influence of the neglected Bacchus falls upon the tellers."

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to recognize for himself the innocence of Actaeon and Ino. Both cases lead to overt
discussion of the goddesses' vindictiveness. Actaeon's gory death, by which ira
pharetratae... satiata Dianae (3.252), provokes a debate over whether the punishment
was justified; to some the goddess seemed violentior aequo (3.253). Juno's persecu
tion of Ino prompts the intervention of Venus, who pities the inmeritae neptis... labores
(4.531). The Theban women, who do not realize that Ino and her little son have been
rescued by their transformation into sea-deities, reproach Juno as parum iustae
nimiumque. ..saevae (4.547). Juno then punishes them for this criticism, saying she
will thus make them the greatest saevitiae monimenta meae (4.550). Passages like these
throughout the Metamorphoses reinforce the impression that vindictiveness is
characteristic of goddesses.23 Here they also specifically serve as a context for Bacchus'
vengeance, so that in exacting vengeance Bacchus appears to be behaving like a goddess.
In Euripides' tragedy, Dionysus is the god of ambivalence, of which his sexuality
is one aspect; in the Bacchae Pentheus comments on his effeminate characteristics,24
as he does in the Metamorphoses (3.555-56). Further, when Bacchus, disguised as the
sailor Acoetes, tells Pentheus about the miraculous transformation of his fellow crewmen
into dolphins by the apparently helpless boy whom they have kidnapped, he describes
the boy (actually Bacchus himself) as having a virginea. ...forma (3.607). Finally, when
the daughters of Minyas are stubbornly absent from the Bacchic rites, the prophecy
about the god's saeva ira is immediately followed by a passage that imitates hymn
form (4.11-30). In the middle of this list of the god's titles and epithets (which receives
emphasis from its prominent position as the beginning of a book of the Metamorphoses),
he is characterized by inconsumpta iuventa, he is called a puer aeternus, and he has
a virgineum caput (4.17, 18, 20).
The vengeful wrath of Bacchus is analogized to the ira more characteristic of god
desses by the context in which it occurs, that is, by its association with the ira of the
23. Other comments on vindictiveness appear at 5.668 and 6.2 (the Muses and the Pierides); 6.3-4
(Minerva and Arachne); and 6.313-15 (Latona and Niobe). Presumably because he has been for so long
persecuted by her, Hercules at the beginning of his prayer to her (9.176-78) on Mount Oeta attributes to
Juno vindictive delight in his agony. Diana prefaces her dispatch of the Calydonian boar in vengeance for
Oeneus' omission of sacrifice by saying At non inpuneferemus:lquaeque inhonoratae, non et dicemur inultae
(8.279-80); the narrator observes tangit et ira deos (279; cf. Aeneid 1.11), as if at this point in the Metamor
phoses we are unaware of that element of divine psychology. When Theseus is returning from his part in
the boar hunt, he is entertained by the river-god Achelous, who recounts an incident in which he too avenged
a slight to his honor, which he prefaces by remarking quoque minus spretaefactum mirere Dianae (8.579;
note that in this exception to the rule that it is goddesses who act vengefully, Achelous analogizes his behavior
to that of a goddess, here, admittedly, for reasons of topicality). Finally, Venus explains to Adonis tht her
punishment of Atalanta and Hippomenes for ingratitude was intended to prevent future slights (10.681-85).
24. In the introduction to his edition and commentary on the Bacchae (Oxford 19602, rev.), E. R.
Dodds warns (xvi) that "We must keep this ambivalence in mind if we are rightly to understand the play."
Speaking of "the Stranger," he says (xliv), "he is Dionysus.... From the standpoint... of human morali
ty, he is and must be an ambiguous figure." Pentheus comments on Dionysus' effeminacy at Bacchae 235,
353, 453-59; for the effeminacy of Dionysus in earlier Greek literature, and for the effeminization of represen
tations of him beginning in late fifth-century painting and sculpture, see Dodds, Bacchae 133-34 ad 453-59;
there (133) Dodds refers to "the feminine character which is so marked in Hellenistic representations."
See also the more recent study by Charles Segal, "The Menace of Dionysus: Sex Roles and Reversals in
Euripides Bacchae," Arethusa 11 (1978) 185-202.

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goddesses Diana and Juno. Likewise, in an exception to the rule of injury caused
accidentally by a god's amor-the rape of Hermaphroditus by the nymph Salmacis and
his ensuing metamorphosis into a literal hermaphrodite-almost every detail is the mirror
image of an element in such rapes committed by gods earlier in the poem.25 This is
true of the characters, their actions, and the setting. The scenario for the earlier rapes
involved a god's encountering a nymph (or human female) alone in some isolated place.
Apollo's Daphne was an habitual wanderer in nemora avia (1.479), Jupiter invited Io
into some nearby shady woods to escape the sun (1.590-92), and he found Callisto
resting from the hunt in shady woods (2.417-22). Hermaphroditus is a god (the adoles
cent son of Hermes and Aphrodite) who encounters the nymph Salmacis on the grass
beside the pool she inhabits. It is an ideal locale for a rape, and one does take place,
but he is the victim. Daphne and Callisto were both devoted to hunting and to the virgin
goddess of the hunt, Diana. Ovid prepares his reader for the role reversal in the Salmacis
Hermaphroditus episode by describing this nymph in terms that explicitly contrast her
with the previous ones: she is not suited for hunting, she is not experienced in archery
or running, and she is the only nymph not known to Diana.26 As Daphne's father had
tried to persuade her to marry, so Salmacis' sister-nymphs exhort her to come hunting,
but she refuses (4.305-309). Instead, she primps-combing her hair, and bathing in
her pool-and lies on the soft grass in a transparent gown, whereas nymphs usually
are in a becoming state of disarray from the exertion of hunting. Apollo and Jupiter
respectively found dishevelled hair and clothing attractive in Daphne and Callisto (1.497
ff., 2.409-13).27
Salmacis may be a nymph, but it is Hermaphroditus who plays the part (Ovidian
nymphs are emphatically not "nymphomaniac").28 Hermaphroditus is sexually inno
cent (nescit enim, quid amor, 330), and blushes (329) at Salmacis' suggestions (as
Daphne nec... quid Amor... curat, 1.480, and blushed, 484, at her father's sugges
tion that she marry and have children). He rejects Salmacis' initial overture, and when
she continues to make advances, threatens to flee if she will not let him alone; when
25. For an insightful treatment of rape and rape victims in the poem, see Curran (supra n.9) who observes
(223) the connection of some of the themes I am treating: "a major function of woman in the Metamor
phoses is to be a victim, usually, although not exclusively, of rape. The victims are not always female, and
when they are, it is not always rape that they suffer; nor are the persecutors by any means always male.
Victimizers are frequently female and often the stories in which they figure have to do with divine jealousy
and other subjects unrelated to rape." It is precisely my point, however, that the stories of "divine jealousy
and other subjects" are not "unrelated to rape."
26. Cf. Hugh Parry, "Ovid's Metamorphoses: Violence in a Pastoral Landscape," TAPA 95 (1964)
273: "When the poet informs us at length that there was a nymph, Salmacis, who showed no interest whatever
in hunting, despite pressures brought to bear upon her to engage in this activity so becoming of virgins,
we should not be surprised that she is to become the aggressor, not the victim!"
27. Cf. Curran (supra n.9) 227: "Beauty and sexual desirability are enhanced by disarray of clothing
of hair, by discomfort and embarrassment, or by fear. For the rapist these are all aphrodisiacs. Daphne's
hair and dress are attractively disordered by the breezes as she flees Apollo."
28. Curran (supra n.9) 230-231 and nn.26-28 contrasts the sexual behavior of the "typical nymphs"
of mythology with Ovid's "dedicated virgins." He observes: "Some of Ovid's nymphs are very different"
(italics mine), but I think it can be put in stronger terms than that. The dedicated virgin is the norm for
the Ovidian nymph.

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he is trapped by her deception (as Callisto and Europa are deceived by Jupiter), he
struggles physically. In earlier episodes, nymphs resisted assault by flight (Daphne),
fight (Callisto), or both (Io).
As Hermaphroditus is the reluctant victim, Salmacis is the zealous aggressor. Her
reaction to the sight of the boy is instantaneous: puerum vidit visumque optavit habere
(4.316). Apollo's reaction to Daphne is comparable: Phoebus amat visaque cupit conubia
Daphnes,lquodque cupit, sperat 1.490-91). Salmacis prefaces her proposition with
compliments-the boy is most worthy (dignissime, 320) to be thought a god (perhaps
Cupid), but if he is mortal, how happy (beati, 322) are his parents, siblings, and nurse,
and happier still (beatior, 325), his wife, if he has one. Jupiter's condensed (and ironic)
version of this overture to Io has slight verbal echoes-she is a maiden worthy (digna,
1.589) of Jupiter and about to make someone happy (beatum, 589) in her bed. Salmacis'
proposition itself is a model of frankness: haec tibi sive aliqua (sc.sponsa) est, mea
sitfurtiva voluptas;lseu nulla est, ego sim, thalamumque ineamus eundem (4.327-28).
The gods are not so candid. Apollo assures Daphne that love, not hostility, was the
reason for his chasing her (1.504-507). After his fairly direct compliments to lo, Jupiter
then invites her to rest in the shady wood where she need not fear the wild beasts,
since he, a god, will protect her (1.590-94). Mercury states his intentions with relatively
greater candor to Herse's sister when he asks her just to consent to be called the aunt
of his child (2.745-746).
When the direct approach has failed, however, and Hermaphroditus threatens to
leave, Salmacis pretends to go away but acutally lurks in hiding until he strips to enter
her pool; then Salmacis exarsit: flagrant quoque lumina nymphae (4.347), like the sun
reflected in a mirror. The gods' erotic responses are also fiery-at the sight of Herse
Mercury blazed (note the same verb, exarsit, 2.727) like a lead sling bullet in flight;
Apollo caught fire (inflammas abiit, 1.495) like a field of stubble after harvest or like
a hedge accidentally torched by a careless traveller. Salmacis plunges into the pool
and grapples with Hermaphroditus; although she had shouted triumphantly vicimus et
meus est! (4.356)29 as soon as he entered the water, in fact her conquest is not com
plete until she prays that henceforth the gods never let the two of them be separated;
their two bodies unite into one which is at the same time both male and female, and
neither. The metamorphosed creature is Hermaphroditus, once a man, now half a man.
Salmacis apparently is now totally identified with her pool, which, in response to Her
maphroditus' prayer to his parents, retains this emasculating power.
In the case of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis the basic pattern of accidental injury
as a consequence of amor is presented as the deliberate point-by-point reversal of situa
tions illustrating the rule that such damage occurs when a god commits the assault.
But just as Bacchus' ira was different from that of the goddesses to which it was analo
29. To Salmacis' triumphant cry, cf. Tereus' shout as his ship pulls out with Philomela on board:
vicimus!.. .mecum mea vota feruntur (6.513). The end of the next line vix animo sua gaudia differt (514)
finds a parallel in Salmacis' reaction to the sight of Hermaphroditus stripped vix iam sua gaudia differt (4.350).
There is also a shout of erotic triumph when Myrrha's nurse reports her success in arranging an assignation
with her father Cinyras: utque domum rediit, 'gaude, mea' dixit 'alumna:/vicimus!' (10.442-43).

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gized, because it was more justified and his victims were not innocent, so too, in the
case of Salmacis' amor, there are significant differences from the basic pattern of assault
by a god.
Although a nymph can thwart divine pursuit, as Daphne does, by metamorphosis,
once a god has physically caught her and uses force the conclusion is foregone. Callisto
struggles quantum modo femina posset,/... sed quem superare puella,lquisve lovem
poterat? (2.434, 436-37). For Salmacis, however, force is not sufficient and she requires
outside assistance, as goddesses occasionally do to satisfy their ira. 30 Most significantly,
since it emphasizes the sexual roles and sexual identity of the characters, the whole
encounter between Salmacis and Hermaphroditus is more sexually explicit than the
encounters between gods and nymphs (I have already noted that her proposition is
franker: supra p. 250). The sexual arousal and release experienced by gods is described
briefly and in conventional or metaphorical, which is not to imply euphemistic, terms.3'
Gods "blaze up" or "catch fire" and then "struggle" or "fight" with "resisting"
or "fleeing" nymphs and, by the use of "force," "win" or "are victorious." The
crow's narrative of her assault by Neptune (which she escaped by metamorphosis into
that bird) is a schematic summary of divine seduction technique: vidit et incaluit pelagi
deus, utque precandoltempora cum blandis absumpsit inania verbis,lvim parat et
sequitur; fugio (2.574-77). The extreme in telegraphic brevity, perhaps Ovid's erotic
equivalent of veni, vidi, vici, occurs when the essentials of the rape of Proserpina occur
in one line-paene simul visa est dilectaque raptaque Diti (5.395), the speed of which
is sufficient to elicit the comically otiose gloss from the narrator in the next line usque
adeo estproperatus amor. 32 The brevity of these divine sexual encounters partly reflects
the ease with which a god can overcome such resistance as is offered to the quick satisfac
tion of passion quickly aroused; their gratification is repeated and predictable. Apollo's
desire is not consummated and his prolonged pursuit of Daphne reflects this frustra
tion. Still, even this pursuit is presented in metaphorical terms-the god himself com
plains he has been "wounded incurably" (1.519-524, an erotic commonplace which
in his case is literally true since he has been shot by Cupid) and the narrator describes
the chase as that of a hound after a hare (533).
Within the limits of the conventions of epic poetry, Salmacis' actions and feelings
are much more explicit. When she voyeuristically watches Hermaphroditus strip, she
blazes, explicitly nudaeque cupidineformae (346). The gleam in her eyes is a specific
physical symptom unlike those the gods display. Her urgent desire is expressed in
straightforward unmetaphorical terms: vixque moram patitur, vix iam sua gaudia dif
fert,liam cupit amplecti, iam se male continet amens (350-51). When at last the boy
enters the water and she dives in after him, pugnantemque tenet luctantiaque oscula
carpit/subiectatque manus invitaque pectora tangitlet nunc hac iuveni, nunc circum
30. In his one paragraph on raped men, Curran (supra n.9) 216 points out that "Salmacis, so long
as she retains the form of a woman, cannot use force on Hermaphroditus."
31. Nevertheless, Curran's (supra n.9) point is well taken (216) that "Ovid is not writing pornography
but a kind of epic and does not have a lickerish interest in clinical and anatomical details."
32. Curran (supra n.9) 218 comments: "The speed of the rape of Persephone is breathtaking."

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funditur iliac (358-60). The three similes for this struggle are quite different from those
that appear in the earlier struggles between gods and nymphs. Salmacis wraps around
Hermaphroditus like a snake coiling around the eagle that has caught it and is trying
to fly away, like ivy twining around a tree trunk, like an octopus trapping its prey with
its tentacles (362-67). This confusion of male and female genital imagery33 reflects
the actual physical transformation that soon occurs. Hermaphroditus perstat... sperata
que gaudia nymphaeldenegat; illa premit commissaque corpore totolsicut inhaerebat
(368-69), and then Salmacis utters her prayer. While the other nymphs pray to avoid
union, she prays to avoid separation. Finally, Hermaphroditus' metamorphosis is con
siderably different from that of the assaulted nymphs. First, his is an explicitly sexual
change, whereas the sexual significance of the other transformations is conveyed
indirectly. Moreover, this sexual metamorphosis is the direct result of Salmacis' sexual
assault (including her prayer for aid). By contrast, the nymphs change shape either
somewhat voluntarily, in order to escape (Daphne, explicitly so), or afterwards as the
indirect consequence of the assault (Io to be concealed from the suspicious Juno, Callisto
as punishment by that goddess). When Salmacis' love is not reciprocated by Her
maphroditus, she does not react with anger or resentment but, like the gods in similar
situations, with deception and force.
There is a case in which a god's amor does lead to destructive ira, but this
"exception," like the exceptions of Bacchus and Salmacis, proves the general rule.
Apollo's divinity was not compromised by his failure to capture Daphne, because there
was no rival of lower status. The god's love for another girl, Coronis, has been
reciprocally satisfied; he did not compete for her with a rival, but learns through an
informer that she now has another lover, an unnamed "young man from Thessaly"
(2.598-99). Apollo's reaction is one of murderous rage; he immediately shoots Cor
onis with an arrow, and just as immediately regrets this hasty action when Coronis'
dying words contain the reproach that he has taken not only her life but that of their
unborn child. The ira that Apollo's amor provokes is rage, not resentment, and his
response is immediate and direct, not delayed or transferred. In this way he differs
from the "goddesses scorned." His remorse is a significant difference, too-he hates
himself and his bow, he tries to save Coronis, but it is too late even for the god of
healing. Apollo's laughably disastrous courtship of Daphne and his tragically impetuous
jealousy of Coronis are characteristic of this god's behavior in the Metamorphoses,34
but, for reasons related to identity which we will now consider, his failures do not lead
to an obsession with vengeance.
33. Parry (supra n.26) 271 cites the examples of Daphne and Apollo (1.533 ff.), Hermaphroditus and
Salmacis (4.356 ff.), and Polyphemus and Galatea (13.805 f.), to show that Ovid uses language appropriate
to a literal hunt in describing an erotic one, but he does not point out (because it is not particularly germane
to his thesis) that the similes of Salmacis' attacking Hermaphroditus have much stronger sexual overtones
than those of hound and hare or hounds and stag. In conversation, Charles Segal has argued that the imagery
in the similes is not of confusion but, rather, is part of the reversal of roles, i.e., that these are images of
the aggressive female-threatening, devouring, smothering.
34. For a consideration of Apollo's behavior specifically in the first two books of the poem, see Nagle
(supra n. 10).

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After his initial defeat, by archery, of the monster Python, whereby he establishes
himself at Delphi, Apollo had boasted the superiority of his archery over Cupid's; the
love-god's retaliation against this gratuitous provocation caused Apollo's love for Daphne
(an unusual variation in which one god's ira leads to another's amor,35 and, significantly,
one of only three cases in the Metamorphoses of love actually "caused" by the exter
nal intervention of Cupid and his arrows). In one episode after another, Apollo's
impetuosity and ineptitude meet with frustration and failure. He has neither Jupiter's
strength nor Mercury's cunning. This lack of control and powerlessness Apollo shares
with the vindictive goddesses, especially Juno, whose obsession with vengeance is as
much related to her inability to prevent future insults as to her desire to punish present
ones. But Apollo's almost uninterrupted series of failures and frustrations does not make
him vengeful, at least not as Ovid presents him. Probably the most brutal and sadistic
act of divine vengeance in Greek mythology is the flaying alive of the satyr Marsyas
after his unsuccessful challenge of Apollo to a music contest. Ovid treats this episode
very briefly, does not use the word ira of Apollo's motivation, and in fact underplays
everything except the descriptive possibilities of the gruesome punishment (6.382-400).
Structurally, this incident is deemphasized by its position as a brief pendant to a sequence
of episodes in which goddesses avenge challenges.36 The better-known episodes in the
series are Arachne's challenge of Minerva to a weaving contest (6.1-145, for which
the Apollo-Marsyas is a doublet) and Niobe's invidious comparison of her brood of
fourteen to Latona's paltry two, Diana and Apollo, who serve as the agents of the god
dess's vengeance when they kill all Niobe's children (6.146-312). Not only is Apollo's
vengeance against Marsyas underplayed, but it appears in the context of vengeance
taken by goddesses,37 so as to emphasize-once again-that vindictiveness is more
characteristic of them than of gods as, earlier, Ovid associated Bacchus' acts of
vengeance with those of Diana and Juno for the same effect.
Significantly, Apollo's constant failures come after he has established himself at
Delphi, whereas Bacchus' anger and vengeance are provoked by his failure to establish
himself and his worship at Thebes. Apollo's failures are not interpreted by him as slights
to his divinity. Thus Juno has more in common with Bacchus, whom she explicitly
35. Ovid makes the causal connection between ira and amor explicit in his two-hexameter introduc
tion to the story of Apollo and Daphne (1.452-53), a sentence which begins with amor and ends with ira:
Primus amor Phoebi Daphne Peneia: quem non/fors ignara dedit, sed saeva Cupidinis ira. The saeva ira
of the boy-god Cupid, like that of goddesses and of the youthful god Bacchus, is provoked by an insult to
his dignity-Apollo's invidious comparison of his bow to Cupid's (454-62).
36. Leach (supra n.22) 118 says: "The brief tale of the flaying of Marsyas provides a grisly reprise
of the stories of Arachne and the Pierides."
37. Once again it seems that Ovid is manipulating mythological material to suit his theme of amor
and ira, by simultaneously playing down the Apollo/Marsyas episode (the frequent subject of artistic represen
tation) while playing up the Minerva/Arachne episode. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Baltimore 1955)
I, 98, prefaces his account of the latter story by asserting that Athena "is not recorded to have shown petulant
jealousy on more than a single occasion." (The two ancient sources Graves cites, 99 n.8, are the version
in the Metamorphoses and the allusion to Minerva's antipathy to spiders at Georgics 4.246). On the other
hand, Slater concludes a chapter on Apollo in The Glory of Hera (supra n. 17) 160 with reference to "the
several outbursts of vicious sadism attributed to" the god, and cites the assertion of Gertrude Levy, The
Gate of Horn (New York n.d.) 278 that "his cruelties were always the result of wounded pride."

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takes as a model for vengeance. As I have already pointed out, gods, unlike goddesses,
do not interpret erotic rejection as an insult to their divinity, because then can force
compliance while goddesses can only punish rejection (supra, pp. 242-43). The god
desses' powerlessness makes their gratification unpredictable and inconstant; conse
quently they suffer frequent losses of self-esteem. Put simply: (1) gods get what they
want, and someone else is likely to get hurt in the process, while (2) goddesses get
vengeance-by hurting someone-for not getting what they want. Apollo and Juno
respectively deviate from these generalizations in ways that show the critical relation
ship of gender to power, control, self-esteem, and the sense of identity. Juno seems
to be able to take vengeance on the various females with whom Jupiter consorts, but
she becomes increasingly vindictive (and obsessed with vengeance) because her acts
of vengeance fail in their ultimate goal-to eliminate future rivals. Each failure rein
forces itself and causes Juno to feel her identity as regina deorum increasingly threatened.
Starting with Daphne, Apollo rarely gets what he wants; he is an almost constant failure,
because he lacks power and control. Despite this, his identity is apparently so secure
that failure does not shake it and he only rarely succumbs to ira. Although he fails
to get exactly what he wants from Daphne, he nevertheless does assert his identity.
Daphne does not completely elude him by her metamorphosis into a laurel tree. To
the extent that he can, Apollo does "possess" Daphne, taking rather comical consola
tion from the fact that at quoniam coniunx mea potes esse,larbor eris certe... .mea.
(1.557-58). He assimilates her identity to his own; she not only loses her physical identity
but is reduced to a symbol or attribute of Apollo's divine identity.38
In the Metamorphoses, Ovid explored the concept of identity in relation not only
to human victims of metamorphosis, but also to divinities subject to the passions of
love (amor) and rage (ira). Amor and ira and their relation to identity and gender are
key themes which Ovid establishes early in the Metamorphoses, as Brooks Otis rightly
saw; as amor is the theme of the section he called "The Divine Comedy," so ira is
thematic in "The Avenging Gods.39 Tales of divine seduction and divine vengeance
38. Apollo's treatment of Daphne is an instance of the process E. G. Schachtel termed reification,
whereby one identifies a person by treating him as a thing rather than as a living object. In this process,
for instance, "my wife" becomes "my wife." Identity can be defined as the sum of all such reifications.
On Schachtel and reification, see de Levita (supra n.6) 8, 147-149. In Daphne's case, the difference be
tween 'my wife" and "my tree" is actually slight since, thus reified, she is included in the sum of the reifications
that constitutes Apollo's identity.
39. See B. Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge 19702) 83-85 for the statement and schematic presen
tation of what he calls the "four unmistakable divisions or sections of the work." Considering the diversity
of structural schemes proposed since the resurgence of interest in Ovid, it is an overstatement to call Otis's
divisions "unmistakable." Truly unmistakable, however, is the thematic predominance of love in that first
section and vengeance in the second. Ovid employs a technique comparable to the initial statement of a theme
in a musical composition, by telling a series of stories on a related theme (e.g., love) to fix it in his reader's
mind, before moving on to another theme (e.g., vengeance). Davis (supra n.7) begins the chapter of his
dissertation on "Indicium as a Mode of Offense" (18-65) by listing the ten tales in which indicium (the
revelation of "hitherto undisclosed information," 18) is the chief offense (19), and then remarks on the
striking fact that the first four of these occur consecutively in Book 2. This he calls the narrative strategy
of "fixing" a paradigm in the reader's mind by successive repetition.

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have more in common than merely their divine actors. Jupiter's anger at Lycaon, Juno
anger at lo, Callisto, and Semele, Cupid's anger at the boastful Apollo, Diana's anger
at being observed by Actaeon and at being overlooked by Oeneus (the cause for her
sending the bear to ravage Calydon), Bacchus' anger at the disbelieving Thebans
Apollo's anger at Coronis' infidelity, Circe's anger at Glaucus' and Picus' rejection
and Aurora's anger at Cephalus for his all hinge on slighted divinity of one sort or
another. The theme of the spretor deorum is a major one in the poem, and he who
spurns a goddess's advances is, in her eyes, a spretor deorum (or, rather, deae). With
the spretor deorum theme Ovid most directly and overtly examines identity on the divine
plane, as he most directly and overtly examines identity on the human plane with the
theme of physical, corporeal, metamorphsis.
The concept of identity is a link between the erotic material in the Metamorphose
and its organizing principle, metamorphosis. In this work, Ovid does not, with very
few exceptions, present a view of amor as a means of expanding or combining two
personalities to their mutual benefit, but as, quite the contrary, a threat to personal
identity and the integrity of a personality (as in the cases of Daphne and of He
maphroditus, and the other adolescents I will treat in a subsequent paper). A god
amor is destructive, not because of any malice, but because he has the power to impose
his identity or assimilate his victim's. So too, a goddess's ira can be easily provoked
by an insult to her divinity, that is, her divine identity, precisely because her powe
is less and her identity correspondingly less imposing.
Indiana University,
Bloomington

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Amor Ira and Sexual Identity in Ovids Metamorphoses

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"Amor, Ira", and Sexual Identity in Ovid's "Metamorphoses"

Author(s): Betty Rose Nagle

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