Key to All Mythologies

Francis Tarwater is a teenage boy who has been raised in near-isolation by his great uncle Mason Tarwater somewhere in deepest backwaters of the American South. The elder Tarwater has been preparing the boy to be a prophet of God, in the line of Old Testament prophets like Jonah, Daniel, and Elijah, but Tarwater reacts to his great-uncles death by first getting drunk, and second by burning down th...

After 14 books and more than 15,000 lines of poetry, we have reached the final book of Ovid’s epic, the Metamorphoses . And in the final book we encounter the philosopher Pythagoras, who has the longest and most unusual soliloquy in a poem that has been filled with them. Pythagoras’ vision of reality seems to resemble closely Ovid’s himself: a world of constant change, in which nothing, neither bo...

This book completes the story of Aeneas, as he ventures into the underworld, guided by Sybil. Returning to the human world, Sybil tells Aeneas that she is cursed to age at the normal pace, but not to die – until she eventually becomes only a disembodied voice. Early Roman history begins in book 14, with some of Rome’s founding myths, including the deification of Aeneas. Book 14 also relates the es...

Book 13 features monologues from heroes like Ulysses and Ajax, from queens and nymphs like Galatea, and monsters, like Polyphemus. All in all, this book is a potent reminder that human speech has been the primary vehicle driving the action in the Metamorphoses. Polyphemus is an especially interesting case because instead of appearing as a monstrous, shadowy presence on the edge of the world, eatin...

On this episode we are reading Book 11 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Book 11 opens with the grisly dismemberment of Orpheus, whose severed head floats down the Hebrus River, the waters causing his mouth to still murmur his sad songs mourning the loss of his wife Eurydice, as if the earth itself were mourning for him (or with him). This book also relates the famous story of Midas and his ill-fated wish...

Book Ten begins with the familiar story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus, famous bard, uses his songs to re-claim his new bride Eurydice from the Underworld, only to lose her to death once again when he looks back at her too early as they are leaving the land of the dead. The rest of the book is a series of stories told by Orpheus to illustrate, perhaps, the dangers of marriage, and what a world w...

On this bonus episode of the Key , we have a very off-the-cuff, very free-ranging discussion of Auden’s short poem “The Fall of Rome,” which you can listen to the man himself reading in his great, mid-century baritone here. (Or you can listen to us read it in our nasally, 21st century rasp to start the episode, but it is not as impressive). What is the fall of Rome, as Auden chronicles it? Somethi...

Hercules takes center stage in book nine, but we spend most of our time discussing the story of Byblis, who pines for her brother Caunas. Byblis has a long monologue where she weighs the pros and cons of confessing her feelings to her brother, eventually deciding to write them out on a tablet, which Caunas then reads and hurls angrily aside. Byblis, sick with the rejection, is eventually transform...

We begin and end with a consideration of the myth of Erysichthon. Herein Erysichthon, a man with no reverence for the gods, mutilates the sacred grove of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. His punishment is to be cursed by Famine, so that no matter how much he consumes, he is never full. His final act, after eating whole forests and rivers, among other things, is to eat himself. For such a rich sy...

In this episode we mainly discuss two complicated love stories: Jason & Medea, and Cephalus & Procris. Both these stories begin with happiness for the lovers, but end with madness, violence, and death. What does this say about the place of love in the Metamorphoses ? The overwhelming power of desire is a constant in this poem, but those possessed by desire rarely (never?) come to good ends...

Book VI contains three stories of horrific violence, each somehow more horrific than the last. First, the goddess Athena beats Arachne almost to death with a weaving tool, then transforms her into a spider. Them, Niobe’s 14 children are systemically murdered by Apollo and Artemis. Finally, most horribly of all, Tereus rapes and mutilates Philomela, sister to his wife Procne; whereupon Procne murde...

In Book V the narrative veers away from Bacchus and tells the story of Perseus, who escapes an angry mob by using the head of Medusa to turn them all to stone. Then we fly with Minerva to visit the Muses, who relate the tale of the human sisters who challenged them to a story-telling contest, lost, and were transformed into magpies as punishment. Is there any connection between all these events? O...

We continue to discuss the meaning of the worship of Bacchus among the women of Thebes. The few women who hold out against the new cult are punished for their impertinence by being transformed into bats. What about the stories they tell merits the punishment they receive? Is the Bacchanalian revelry about sexual desire, a more literal desire to possess or merge with another being, chaos overtaking...

Book III contains the story of Narcissus, the beautiful boy who falls in love with own reflection, and then drowns himself because he will never be able to possess the object of his desire. This is easily the most famous image from the entire Metamorphoses . We spend almost no time discussing it. Instead we spend most of the hour discussing the arrival of the “new god” Bacchus. Even in a book abou...

We again consider the question of Jove and his behavior. Sometimes he behaves like a great and noble king, other times like a petulant child, and other times like an unrepentant rapist and criminal. What are we to make of this? Do Jove’s actions have any special moral meaning, or are they simply one more example of a world where everything, very much including morality, is always shifting and unce...

We start by trying to establish the terms of the moral universe Ovid depicts. Are the gods meant to be figures of ridicule? Does Ovid take them seriously at all? Are the linked vignettes which comprise the Metamorphoses , for the most part, meant to have the qualities of fables? Lessons? Horror movies? Jokes? Jove brought change and decay into the world by the introduction of seasons. Does this po...

We wrap up our discussion of the Georgics with a lot of talk about the meaning of bees, bee-keeping, and the fact that bees sleep very peacefully at night because they do not have sex. How does this relate to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice? If all your bees die at once, say of the plague, will slaughtering a bull bring them back? Are horse-flies a punishment for excessive human acquisitiveness?...

Here we begin our two part digression into the Georgics of Vergil. We consider the meaning of the implicit contrast Vergil draws between the solitary life of the farmer and the hectic life of the citizen in Rome. We ask ourselves, “Who is the audience for this poem?” Is Vergil attempting to teach farmers anything? Or is he only attempting to remind Roman soldiers, politicians, and social climbers...

We arrive at the final book of Vergil’s epic. We consider the meaning of conquest and Roman identity, considering that it is the Trojans, not the Latins, whom Jove decrees will lose their language and identity, despite being the victors in battle. What is it about the synthesis of two losers – the Trojans, defeated by the Greeks, and the the Latins, defeated by the Trojans – which gives rise to th...

We spend a lot of our time in this episode discussing the beguiling character of Camilla, a fearsome warrior and virginal acolyte of the goddess Diana. Camilla is represented in Book XI as being a kind of Amazonian princess: primitive, noble, powerful, uncorrupted (shades of Rousseau and the “noble savage” to be sure). However, whatever her qualities, she is ultimately defeated by Aeneas and the T...

Book X is the first book of the Aeneid where battle scenes dominate the narrative. As such, we consider the battlefield conduct of Aeneas in light of the questions we have been discussing throughout our reading of the whole poem. Does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? Or, since his piety is always with him, perhaps it is better to ask, How does Aeneas display piety as he slaughter...

At the center of Book IX is the night raid of Nisus and Euryalus. Modeled closely on the night raid of Odysseus and Diomedes in the Iliad , the raid here has less military justification and is less successful; yet upon their violent, predictable, and seemingly pointless deaths, Vergil praises Nisus and Euryalus in the highest terms. The meaning of this praise is the central question we discuss in...

We spend much of our time on this episode comparing and contrasting the shield that the maker god Vulcan (called Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon) forges for Aeneas with the one he previously forged for Achilles. The latter depicts general human scenes of sailing, fighting, dancing, and ritual, while the former depicts specific moments of Roman history and Roman triumph. What can these differences...

Now that Aeneas and the Trojans have successfully landed in Italy, the narrative switches from one a journey to one of founding and colonizing. As such, Vergil switches from using the Odyssey as the text on which his own epic is structured to using the other great Homeric poet, the Iliad. This switch causes a new set of questions to take center stage. We begin by considering the use of the goddess...

On this week’s episode we discuss Aeneas’ trip to the Dis, the underworld of Roman mythology. There seems to be something a bit obligatory about this trip. Like hosting funeral games, burying fallen warriors, and battling enemy champions, traveling to the underworld is just something epic heroes do in their poems. We consider again in what ways Aeneas is and is not like other epic heroes. Like his...