Metamorphoses, Book 6

Book 6 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the hexameter poem of transformations he had completed by AD 8, continues the theme of mortals who challenge or offend the gods, which runs from the end of Book 5. The story of Arachne, which opens the book, is in the course.

Niobe, queen of Thebes, boasts that her fourteen children make her greater than the goddess Latona, who has only two, and forbids the Theban women to worship her. Latona's children, Apollo and Diana, shoot down all of Niobe's sons and daughters, and Niobe, frozen with grief, becomes a weeping rock. Other stories of divine punishment follow: Lycian peasants who would not let Latona drink from their pool are turned into frogs, and the satyr Marsyas is flayed alive by Apollo after losing a music contest, while Pelops is remembered for his ivory shoulder. The book's longest story is the most terrible in the poem: Tereus, king of Thrace, brings his wife Procne's sister Philomela from Athens, rapes her, cuts out her tongue and imprisons her. Philomela weaves her story into a tapestry and sends it to Procne, who rescues her and takes revenge by serving Tereus the flesh of their son Itys. All three are turned into birds. The book ends with the north wind Boreas carrying off Orithyia, whose sons will sail with the Argonauts.

Tereus and Philomela is one of Ovid's most powerful and disturbing narratives, and it has been retold from Chaucer and Shakespeare onwards. The Latin is clear but intense.