On the subject of Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche and mythological fanfiction, I have a sweet spot for another Roman author who lived six generations before him: Ovid (43BC - c.18AD). His Metamorphoses are responsible for popularizing beloved tropes like King Midas’ golden touch, Pygmalion’s statue and Narcissus’ reflection; inspiring some of the best Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as the writings of Melville, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and, of course, Goethe.
The titular leitmotif of Ovid’s opus magnum is transformation: across its fifteen books, his poems describe deities manifesting through form, shapeshifters taking on different appearances out of cunning or despair (depending on whether they are predators or prey), and humans transfiguring into fauna or flora, usually as chastisement for their hubris or release from their agony. Reading the Metamorphoses is a highly aesthetic experience, not just thematically but because of the graceful narrative threads and mise en abymes that Ovid uses to concatenate what would otherwise be a desultory collection of stories. It is impossible for me not to see the Metamorphoses as a precursor of the Arabian Nights, and to transfer onto its author my own affection for Scheherazade.
And yet―
One of these is not like the others
Book 8 retells the myth of Philemon and Baucis, a story-within-a-story narrated by the river god Achelous to his guests, Theseus and Pirithous, on whom I’ve written before. Obnoxious as always, the fratboy duo need to be convinced of the wisdom of the gods, and so Achelous shares with them the tear-jerking tale of Philemon and Baucis and the practice of theoxenia―or how to show good manners when you have gods in your house.
The tale is rather unique in Greek mythology, in that it breaks the trope of gods taking revenge on humans who do not uphold the values of theoxenia. Immediate reference points that come to mind are Tantalus coaxing the gods to eat his son Pelops while hosting a feast in their honor, or Ixion trying to seduce Hera whilst being a guest at Olympus. These stories end with men getting an express ticket to Tartarus to be tortured for eternity, and that’s minor considering that the Trojan War was also triggered by a breach in xenia: it’s not polite for guests to steal their host’s queen, no matter how beautiful she is.
However, Philemon and Baucis lacks the bloodbath and gore of these precedents. The story goes like this: Jupiter and Mercury disguise themselves to test the hospitality of humans. They visit a humble, elderly couple―Philemon and Baucis―who, in turn, are very good hosts and get rewarded by having their home turned into a beautiful temple. When offered an additional wish, the loving couple ask to be allowed to die at the same time so that they never have to be alone without each other. ✨💕🙏💑 #RelationshipGoals
The Problem with Philemon & Baucis
As lovely as this feel-good story is, Philemon and Baucis is the only myth in the Metamorphoses that would not need major editing if it were to be turned into a Disney screenplay. This is a major red flag to me.
Dial down the genocide of the neighbors (turn them into forest animals), add a talking Pegasus for comic relief, make Baucis BIPOC and Mercury LGBTQ+, and the Pixar short film has just written itself. There are no complexities, passions or conflicts to unravel, hence nothing to censure: Philemon and Baucis are as good as people get, and they are rewarded for being so. The end.
The hypothetical impossibility for Disney to dumb this story down any further obviously doesn’t make the myth bad, but it is a letdown in the context of the rest of the Metamorphoses. Ovid is far from being the Shel Silverstein of Roman mythology: the other stories in his work are brutal, and tread the line between moral acquiescence and decadent sensationalism. Without fully endorsing corruption or cruelty, Ovid’s imagery can be quite gruesome and leave a striking impression. For instance, take the description in Book 6 of Philomena’s severed tongue writhing in the floor like a snake searching for her foot. (Her brother-in-law, Tereus, then proceeds to ravish her bleeding body repeatedly). Or how Marsyas―the foolish satyr who dared compete against Apollo―finds himself screaming “Don’t rip me away from myself!” as he is flayed alive for his audacity.
The Metamorphoses indulge in the aesthetic thrill of moral disgust. Ovid manages to make rape, debauchery, pride, anger, despair, penance, and forgiveness all experiences imbued with beauty, and therein lies the greatness of his work.
And yet, with Philemon and Baucis, Ovid inexplicably reverts to Sunday-school basics. The couple whose house is upgraded into a temple and who are, themselves, transformed into trees when they die together; did not need chastisement or salvation. This is the one metamorphosis that tries to beautify something that was already beautiful, and so fails to be aesthetically stimulating next to all the other stories in the book.
The wanton elimination of something beautiful, however, would have been an entirely different game. It would take over eighteen centuries for Goethe to restore meaning to the two-dimensionality of Philemon and Baucis by giving them a brief but significant cameo in his Faust, Part 2. In the fifth and final act, the elderly couple are murdered by Mephistopheles at Faust’s request as part of a land grab, constituting his ultimate act of damnation, one proportionate to the preternatural purity of the victims.
If the story of Faust is one of damnation and redemption, it is only appropriate for Goethe to have thanked Ovid for borrowing his characters, by redeeming their role in literature. That’s good theoxenia.
Coming up next. Our first Look Back / Look Forward, recapping the first year of Applied Mythology and what’s in store for 2023.
And a fun fact. The trope of the intertwined trees immortalizing a couple is revisited centuries later in Arthurian mythology when Tristan and Isolde, the star-crossed lovers, have trees growing out of their graves.