94 pages • 3 hours read
OvidMetamorphoses
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 8A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Book 15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 15 Summary: “Numa and the Foundations of Crotona”
A later king named Numa turns his interest to natural science, visiting the city of Crotona. Hercules helped Crotona develop by arranging for the Greek man Myscelus, forced out of his own home, to travel there and build a city.
Book 15 Summary: “The Doctrines of Pythagoras”
In Crotona lives a Samian philosopher named Pythagoras who promotes vegetarianism. He wants people to eat like they did in the Golden Age and associates meat with violence, saying, “Never by slaughter dispossess / souls that are kin and nourish blood with blood! (357). Pythagoras also teaches that all the universe is in constant flux, like the seasons and the earth’s natural features and the rise and fall of cities.
Book 15 Summary: “The Death of Numa”
When Numa dies, his wife, the nymph Egeria, mourns him. Theseus’ son Hippolytus finds her and tries to cheer her up by telling her the story of his tragic life.
Book 15 Summary: “Hippolytus”
Hippolytus’ stepmother Phaedra falls for Hippolytus, but when he rejects her, she convinces Theseus that he raped her. Theseus sends Hippolytus to exile, during which a bull springs out of the sea and kills him. Diana helps Hippolytus regain new life and a new appearance. Now, he says, “one of the lesser gods, / unseen beneath my Mistress’ power divine, / I serve her ministry and tend her shrine” (368). This story does not comfort Egeria, and she cries until she melts into a spring.
Book 15 Summary: “Cipus”
Cipus, a Roman man, miraculously grows horns out of his head. A seer tells Cipus that this means he will be king of Rome, but Cipus does not want to be king. He hides his horns and tells the people of Rome that a horned man is prophesied to ruin Rome. Then he reveals his horns, and they banish him from the city walls. However, they reward him with land for saving the city.
Book 15 Summary: “Aesculapius”
In Latium during a plague, the oracle of Delphi tells the Latins to seek the help of Aesculapius, divine son of Apollo. An envoy travels to Epidaurus to ask for the god, but at first, they say no. The god appears to the envoy in a dream, saying he will take the form of a snake. The next day, he becomes a snake and boards the Roman ship. The Romans bring Aesculapius to the Tiber river, where he settles on an island.
Book 15 Summary: “The Apotheosis of Julius Caesar” and “Epilogue”
Aesculapius may be a god from overseas, but “Caesar is a god / in his own city here” (374). Venus, realizing that the adopted father of emperor Augustus should be divine, had Caesar deified and turned into a star. Now Caesar allows his son’s actions to surpass his own. Ovid hopes that the gods “grant the day dawn far off, a time beyond / our generation, when Augustus’ soul, / leaving the world he rules, to heaven repairs / and there, though taken from us, hears our prayers” (378). In other words, Ovid prays for Augustus to become a god, like Caesar. This concludes the poem, a work which will make Ovid’s name and fame eternal.
Book 15 Analysis
Ovid’s story of Pythagoras takes a uniquely scientific turn for the Metamorphoses. Natural science and philosophy were popular topics in ancient literature, and although much of Ovid’s overall surviving corpus (body of literature) relates to mythology and love, he is said to have written other works of science or philosophy that are now lost. The focus on Pythagoras’ natural science in this last book of the Metamorphoses fits the work’s overall transformative theme as Ovid details Pythagoras’ belief in perpetual flux and transmigration. In terms of flux, Pythagoras believes that all elements, and therefore all aspects of the known universe, are subject to constant change. He says, “nothing retains its form; new shapes from old / Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly / contrives. In all creation, be assured, / there is no death—no death, but only change / and innovation” (359). These changes are metamorphic, in that they represent the root of that word—changing shape, or as Pythagoras puts it, “new shapes from old.” This is important to Pythagoras’ philosophy in how it relates to transmigration, which is the idea that souls leave the body after death and adopt new bodies. Ovid presents transmigration as the reasoning behind what people in antiquity considered Pythagoras’ most unique idea, vegetarianism. To Pythagoras, one should not kill for food because everything alive has a soul, and all souls can move bodies. Thus, Ovid relates in his extensive section on Pythagoras how this philosopher’s beliefs in fact relate to metamorphoses.
By Book 15, Ovid has arrived solidly in Roman territory. Whereas most of the myths of the Metamorphoses are of Greek origin and are set in Greek areas, myths like that of Cipus are both Roman in location and theme. Cipus, whose transformation is growing horns, is predicted to one day become king of Rome. However, he says, “much fairer were it that I spend my days / in banishment than that the Capitol / should see me king!” (369). Cipus knows that he would not be a good king, nor would it be right for him, as a random citizen, to become king. Therefore, he sacrifices his own comforts and wealth, seeking banishment from Rome rather than seeing himself as its ruler. This story serves as an example of pietas, which is Latin for responsibility or duty. Pietas is a hugely important custom and moral obligation for Romans, and therefore the story of Cipus has a particularly Roman moral lesson to it.
Related Titles
By Ovid
