A Few Good Lines from Ovid's Metamorphoses

Selecting favorite lines from the METAMORPHOSES OF OVID is a bigger task than it appears. I tried narrowing my search by deciding to take the lines from the eight stories that have been detailed in class.

These lines are not in any specific order. They probably aren't the best known, but lines that seem to have meaning for me today.

On page 78, when Minerva is disguised as an old woman trying to warn Arachne, she says, "'Not all that old age offers is mere chaff: for one, the years bestow experience." As I age, I am grateful for the experiences of my life that have taught me so much and give me wonderful memories.

I guess it is Ovid lamenting Tereus' plans when we read, "O gods, how dark the night that rules men's minds! Precisely when he weaves his plot, he seems a man most dutiful; he wins much praise for what is wickedness." We must include women in the same state when we consider the revenge taken by Procne and Philomela.

But before we become to morose about our condition of being human, we can take comfort from a line Pythagoras' long speech. " . . . and since we are parts of the world, we, too, are changeable, For we're not only bodies, but winged souls;" My mother was always saying we all have it in us to be worse than the worst and better than the best. I don't think she ever read Ovid.

Going along with the last quote, Pythagoras also said, "'Just so, our bodies undergo the never-ending changes: what we were and what we are today is not to be tomorrow." This, to me, is what gives us hope and the will to continue on through our lives. Wherever we are we can always move on and keep trying to better ourselves.

I'll end with a short quote from Pygmalion on page 336. "With his art, he's hidden art." This is saying that he was such a great artist, you couldn't tell the woman he sculpted from ivory wasn't real. But to me it also seems to be saying that life too is art and if we realize it, we can look at it in ways that will improve it. We can choose to take what is beautiful and make it real.