THE METAMORPHOSES OF PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO
THE METAMORPHOSES OF PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO
THE METAMORPHOSES OF PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO
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FABULA I.<br />
REGIA SOLIS; SOLARIS CURRUS.<br />
A description of the Palace of the Sun. Phaethon arrives at the Palace, and<br />
while admiring every thing that he sees, is discovered by his father, and<br />
acknowledged as his son. As a public proof of his descent, he demands<br />
and obtains the guidance of the solar chariot. Description of the chariot.<br />
EXPLICATIO.<br />
<strong>THE</strong> description which the poet gives of the Palace of the Sun, is con<br />
ceived with much ingenuity, and embellished with great art. The ideas<br />
he has introduced, like the gems and precious stones employed in the<br />
structure of the palace, are not merely splendid and magnificent in<br />
themselves, but are wrought up with skill so consummate, that it may be<br />
said of the production of the poet, as of the architect, " the workmanship<br />
surpassed the material." The temple which Augustus erected to<br />
Apollo, and the Pakce of the Sun, described by Ovid, is a pictorial<br />
representation of the Universe, in which the sea, the earth, and the hea<br />
vens are given with their appurtenances and inhabitants. The Sun him<br />
self, as the great ruler of the system, is appropriately placed upon a<br />
throne in the centre, and surrounded by allegorical personages, denoting<br />
the different portions of time, the hours, days, months, years, seasons, and<br />
ages, determined by his motions and revolutions. It is not a little remark<br />
able, that Josephus considers the tabernacle of the Jews, in like manner,<br />
an " imitation and representation of the UNIVERSE." The two divisions<br />
of the tabernacle, accessible and common, he regarded as denoting the<br />
earth and the sea, which were common to all; the third division, or holy<br />
of holies, as representing heaven, which was inaccessible to men. The<br />
seven lamps he considered the seven planets, and the twelve loaves of<br />
bread, the twelve months of the year. The vails, of four different mate<br />
rials, denoted the four elements; the linen signified the earth, from which<br />
it grew; the purple, the sea, because from the blood of a marine shell<br />
fish ; the blue denoted the air, and the scarlet, fire. The linen of the<br />
high priest's vesture typified the earth; the blue, the sky; its pomegra<br />
nates resembled lightning; its bells imitated thunder. The breast-plate<br />
in the middle of the ephod was the earth; the blue girdle of the priest<br />
vas the ocean that surrounded the earth. The sardonyxes on the priest's<br />
shoulders denoted the sun and mocn; the twelve stones were the twelve<br />
signs of the zodiac. The blue mitre, with the name of God upon it, was<br />
heaven; and the crown of gold denoted the light and splendor in which<br />
God dwelt.<br />
The poet has sustained himself well in the description of the chariot of<br />
the Sun, and of the fiery-footed coursers that wheel it through the immense<br />
of heaven; nor has he succeeded less happily in portraying the fiery<br />
energy and daring of the adventurous youth, and the anxiety and grief<br />
that afflicts the sorrowing father, as he commits tc the hands of his child<br />
the chariot which is to prove his destruction.<br />
126<br />
;EGIA Sotis erat sublimibus alta columnis,<br />
£ Clara micante auro, flammasque imitante pyropo :<br />
Cujus ebur nitidum fastigia summa tegebat :<br />
Argenti bifores radiabant lumine valvse.<br />
M:iteriem superabat opus : nam Mulciber illic<br />
^Equora crelarat medias cingentia terras,<br />
Terrarumque orbem, coslumque quod imminet orbi.<br />
1. fiegia. Some suppose that Ovid, in giving nn account of the<br />
Palace of the Sun, described the temple which was dedicated to Apollo<br />
by Augustus, but it is more agreeable to truth, to suppose, that the<br />
poet, like Phaeihon, " concipit trthtro mente," and drew upon his own<br />
imagination for the principtil part ot the description.<br />
1. Sublimitus columnis: on lofty columns.<br />
2. Alicante auro : with burnished gold. To denote the splendor of<br />
the sun, all the materials of the palace are of the most glittering kind.<br />
2. Pyo/ie. Pliny, in Lib. x\iv. Cap. 8, describes the pyrope as a<br />
mixed metal, composed of three parts of brass and one part of gold.<br />
Propcrtius, also, Lib. iv. Elcg. 11, describes it as a metal:<br />
By others it is considered a gem. The<br />
etymology is tip, fre, and