Ovid’s Metamorphoses #033/111: “Death and Proserpina”

What this project is about.  

This one is from Book 5.

How long it took to read this (aloud): 14 mins 38 s

What it’s “about”: Yikes – Calliope is telling a story – more rape, abduction, search for the girl, bargaining with death etc. Ovid can be grim…

Words I didn’t know: xx

Quotable quotes: xx 

…The goddess tore 

Her hair and beat her breasts — nor did she know 

Where the child was, but cursed all earthly places 

For lack of pity and ingratitude, 

Saying they had disowned the gift of grain, 

And worst of these the land of Sicily 

Where she had seen the water-drifting ribbon 

That Proserpina wore. With savage hands 

She smashed the crooked ploughs that turned the soil 

And brought dark ruin down on men and cattle; 

She then gave orders to tilled field and lawn 

To blight the seed, betray their duties, and 

Unmake their reputation for rich harvest. 

Crops died almost at birth, from too much sun, 

Or withering rain, even the stars and wind 

Unfavored them; birds ate the fallen seed, 

And weeds and brambles thrived in starving wheat. 

How it lands to my eco-sensibility: Angry gods cause chaos!

Obvious allusions, ways it was used (that I am aware of already) : xx

What I know I didn’t ‘get’: xx

To my knowledge, who’s used it why/how (RACC): xx

Further research questions: xx

Anything else: xx

Andrew Zissos (1999). The Rape of Proserpina in Ovid “Met.” 5.341-661: Internal Audience and Narrative Distortion. Phoenix, Vol. 53, No. 1/2 , pp. 97-113 https://doi.org/10.2307/1088125