Metamorphoses, Book 3

Book 3 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, his hexameter epic of transformations completed by AD 8, begins the long cycle of stories about Thebes and its royal house, which runs on into Book 4. Ovid tells the myths in the order of the Theban dynasty, from the city's foundation to the coming of Bacchus.

Cadmus, sent out to find his sister Europa, follows a cow to the site of Thebes, kills the serpent of Mars, and on Minerva's advice sows its teeth, from which armed men spring up and fight until only five are left to help him build the city. His grandson Actaeon stumbles on Diana bathing, is turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds. Juno, jealous of Cadmus' daughter Semele, tricks her into asking Jupiter to appear in his full glory, and she is burnt up; Jupiter saves their unborn child, Bacchus. The seer Tiresias, who had lived as both man and woman, settles a dispute between Jupiter and Juno and is blinded by her, receiving the gift of prophecy in compensation. Later in the book King Pentheus defies Bacchus' new worship; a captured follower, Acoetes, tells how the god turned Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins, and Pentheus is torn apart on Mount Cithaeron by his mother and the other women of Thebes. Narcissus and Echo, the other famous story of this book, are in the course.

The book is dark in tone, much concerned with the cruelty of the gods. Actaeon and Pentheus are among Ovid's most admired narratives, and the Latin is clear and dramatic.