Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III (trans. Rolfe Humphries)

<p>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 <em>Metamorphoses</em>. 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 about transformation and chance, a new <em>god</em> is unusual. What is the meaning of Bacchus, the beautiful boy who shambles about drunk on wine and transforms sailors into dolphins, and whose followers dismember their own families? What does it mean that he was born from Jove’s thigh? Is he destined to replace Jove as the central god, as Jove replaced his father Saturn? Given that Jove appears drunk on wine in this book, has Bacchus already weakened him, or even possessed him somehow? Why, in a very amoral world, do the Bacchanalian orgies need to be held in secret, deep in the forests? Why not the town square?</p>