Metamorphoses, Book 7
Ovid, Metamorphoses VII
Medea and Jason, Medea's magic and the death of Pelias, Theseus, the plague at Aegina, and Cephalus and Procris. 11 sections, 390 sentences, each with an English translation.
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Book 7 of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the hexameter epic of transformations he had completed by AD 8, is dominated by Medea, the Colchian princess and witch, before moving to Athens and to the island of Aegina.
Medea, torn between duty to her father and love for Jason, debates with herself in a long monologue and decides to help him win the Golden Fleece. In Greece she gathers herbs across the night sky and restores the youth of Jason's old father Aeson, then tricks the daughters of Pelias into killing their father in the belief that she will rejuvenate him too. She escapes in her dragon-drawn chariot, flying across Greece, and at Athens tries to poison the young Theseus before his father Aegeus recognises him. Minos of Crete looks for allies against Athens, but Aeacus, king of Aegina, refuses him. Aeacus then tells the Athenian envoy Cephalus how a plague destroyed his people and how Jupiter repopulated the island by turning ants into men, the Myrmidons. Cephalus in turn tells his own story: his testing of his wife Procris' faithfulness, their reconciliation, the gifts of the hound Laelaps and an unerring javelin, and the hunting accident in which he killed her with it.
Medea's monologue is a famous study of a divided mind, and the plague at Aegina is a deliberate rival to the plague passages of Lucretius and Vergil. The story of Cephalus and Procris is one of Ovid's most moving.
Contents
- Met. 7.1–158Medea's love and the Golden FleeceAnd now the Minyans were cutting through the strait in the Pagasaean ship; Phineus, dragging out a helpless…
- Met. 7.159–237Medea gathers herbs for AesonThe Haemonian mothers and aged fathers bring gifts for their sons' return, and melt heaped incense in the…
- Met. 7.238–296Medea restores Aeson's youthOn arriving she stopped short of the threshold and doors and is covered by the sky alone, and she shuns…
- Met. 7.297–349The daughters of Pelias deceivedAnd so that her tricks might not cease, the Phasian woman feigns a quarrel with her husband and flees as a…
- Met. 7.350–403Medea's flight across GreeceAnd had she not gone off into the air with her winged serpents, she would not have been spared punishment.
- Met. 7.404–452Theseus escapes Medea's poisonAnd now Theseus had come, a son unknown to his father, and by his valour had brought peace to the Isthmus…
- Met. 7.453–551Minos seeks allies; plague strikes AeginaYet (so true is it that no pleasure is unmixed, and some anxiety intrudes upon joys) Aegeus did not enjoy…
- Met. 7.552–633The plague in the cityWith heavier loss the plague reaches the wretched farmers and lords it within the walls of the great city.
- Met. 7.634–660The Myrmidons are bornNight comes on, and sleep takes hold of bodies worn by cares: before my eyes the same oak seemed to be…
- Met. 7.661–758Cephalus tells of ProcrisWith such talk and more they filled the long day.
- Met. 7.759–865Laelaps and the death of ProcrisThe son of Laius had solved by his wit the riddling songs not understood by those before him, and the dark…