Tragic pregnancies in Ovid's metamorphoses

The Metamorphoses, written by the Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso in the first century AD, during the Augustan age, is a mythological poem written in hexameter. It's made up of more than two hundred tales starting with primordial chaos and ending with the apotheosis of Caesar and the glorification of Augustus. The legacy of this work, which - according to some scholars - was conceived for a female audience, was enormous and it has been a rich source of inspiration for literary and figurative works for centuries.

In this blog we'll focus on the representation of the female gender in Ovid's Metamorphoses, with a selection of stories related to motherhood.

The birth of Bacchus

To narrate the miraculous birth of the god Bacchus, Ovid writes that Jupiter has fallen in love with Semele (III, 259-315). This angers his wife, Juno. When Juno learns that Semele is pregnant with Jupiter's child, she decides to take revenge. Descending from Olympus, she takes on the appearance of Semele's wet nurse and works to become Semel's friend, until Semele confides in Hera that the father of Semele's child is actually the god Jupiter. Hera, in disguise, plants seeds of doubt in Semele's mind, leading Semele to go to Jupiter and ask for a blessing. Jupiter is only happy to comply with this request, but the blessing Semele asks for is for Jupiter to reveal himself in his full divinity to her, as was suggested to her by Hera. Little does Semele know that mortals cannot live after having seen divinity, and Semele is incinerated by Jupiter's lightning bolts.

Shortly before the death of his beloved, Jupiter extracts his child Bacchus from Semele's belly and sews it into his thigh to bring the pregnancy to term.

The Birth of Hercules

Another story of motherhood is that of Alcmena (IX, 275-305) who gives birth to Hercules after uniting with Jupiter. Once again Juno does everything to hinder the birth.

When Alcmena goes into labour, she loudly invokes Lucina, protector of women in labour. Lucina, however, has been corrupted by Juno, so Lucina clasps her hands together to prevent Alcmena's painful labour to end. The sly maid Galanthis, however, lies and announces that the child has been born. When Lucina hears this, she stands up amazed, undoing her clasped hands, which allows for the labour to finish and the child to actually be born. Realizing the deception, Lucina throws Galanthis to the ground and transforms Galanthis into a weasel. For having helped a woman in labor by using her mouth for a lie, Galanthis would be forced to give birth through her mouth.

The tale of Dryope

Another story linked to motherhood is that of the beautiful Dryope (IX, 324-293), deprived of her virginity by Apollon, who forcefully imposed himself on her. The unfortunate girl married Andraemon who, happy to marry her, fathered a son with her. Unaware of her fate, with her little son in her arms, Dryope went to a lake surrounded by myrtle shrubs to offer flowers to the nymphs. Not far away grew a flowering water lotus tree. Dryope picked some flowers, but drops of blood began to ooze from the cut flowers. Too late the girl realized that she had done a slight to the nymph Lotis, who had turned into a tree as part of a different story.

The nymph's wrath was implacable: in the span of a few moments, she pulled Dryope to where Lotis was standing and transformed her into a lotus plant. With her face not yet changed into a trunk, she sent a last greeting to her sister and her husband who had come to help her, urging them to detach their little son from her branches. She then asked them to entrust him to a nurse, who occasionally took him to play near the tree, teaching him not to pick the flowers from any plants because a goddess could be hidden in each of them.