Metamorphoses, Book 5

Book 5 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, his hexameter epic of transformations completed by AD 8, finishes the Perseus story begun in Book 4 and then turns to the Muses and the long song of Calliope about Ceres and her daughter.

At Perseus' wedding to Andromeda, her former betrothed Phineus bursts in with armed followers. A bloody battle follows in the manner of epic, until Perseus, outnumbered, holds up Medusa's head and turns his enemies to stone, Phineus last of all. Minerva then visits the Muses on Helicon, where they tell her how the nine daughters of Pierus challenged them to a singing contest. The Muse Calliope's song is the heart of the book: Dis, the god of the underworld, struck by Cupid's arrow, seizes Proserpina while she gathers flowers in Sicily; the nymph Cyane, who tries to stop him, dissolves into her own pool. Ceres searches the whole earth for her daughter, learns the truth from Arethusa, and pleads with Jupiter, who rules that Proserpina may return, but because she has eaten pomegranate seeds she must spend half the year with her husband. Arethusa tells how she fled the river-god Alpheus, and Ceres sends Triptolemus to spread the gift of grain. The defeated Pierides are turned into magpies.

The rape of Proserpina is one of Ovid's finest narratives, and the contrast with the slaughter at the wedding shows how widely his style can range. The Latin is generally straightforward.