Ovid vs. Plato

At the age of 12, I first encountered Homer (in translation, of course – I’m no John Stuart Mill). To my credit, I immediately realized I had no idea what was going on. (To my discredit, I suspect that those who know me best would say the same of me today.)

Judeo-Christianity has its challenges: burning bushes, parting seas, multiplying foodstuffs and my personal favorite, water that tastes, and intoxicates, like musty old vintage wine, 1er cru. 

But compared to Greco-Roman mythology, the Bible reads like a 20^th century tech manual. Gods battling gods at every turn, incarnate everywhere, in humans, animals, plants, and even stones; in the phenomena of echo and reflection; in the rhythms of nature – the sunrise and the seasons; in love itself, and even in the realm of the dead (Hades).  

And what of these gods? Petty, vain, mischievous, jealous, vengeful, sibling rivals… I am no longer 12; I’m many multiples on…and then some. But I’m still baffled by Greco-Roman mythology, or at least I was until I rediscovered Ovid. (I’d read Ovid before and liked him…but that was in Latin class and our focus was on his use of language, not his metaphysics.)

Today I am well described by Ben Johnson as one having “little Latin and no Geek”, but I am still krazy ‘bout kosmology. Who would not wish to understand the metaphysics of Mount Olympus? (Perhaps you, dear reader, to your credit!) 

But as for me, I’m hooked. Of course, my friends and family have organized all the politically correct interventions, but to no avail. Imagine my excitement then when I realized that the key-to-rebecca had existed all along, for almost exactly 2000 years in fact. It was my Rosetta Stone moment. 

Ovid’s Metamorphoses is many things but none more important than the cypher, i.e. the code, needed to unravel the mysteries of Greco-Roman mythology. It is the Cliff’s Notes version of a millennial civilization… except that these Notes come in a spectacular epic poem. 

Like Europe’s A-List violin concerti, the Canon of great epic poems is quite limited: Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, of course, then Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost, and in the middle, acting as a fulcrum, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bridging the gap between two civilizations (Classical and Christian), and in doing so, providing a key to both. As I said, a Rosetta Stone! How does it work?

The turn of the millennium Latin poet built a comprehensive cosmology around the concept of Identity and expressed it in glorious verse. In Metamorphoses, Ovid treats Identity as if it were a cosmic onion. The outermost layer, the skin, is the region we call Form. 

According to Plato, Form (ideas, ideals) is substructural. First, X is a chair, then X is this chair; first X is a man, then X is me. Species > individual. 

In Ovid, Form is infinitely variegated. Its vicissitudes are endless but entirely superficial…and therefore ultimately meaningless. Ovid turns Plato on his head, much the same as Marx did Hegel 1850 years later. In Ovid, Form is superficial, Identity substructural. 

As the outer layers of the cosmic onion are peeled away, we drill ever deeper into the essence of the existent. We are dogged in our expectation of finding a pony at the bottom of this pile of excrement. But we are disappointed every time. Like Prospero, we are left empty handed: 

“Our revels now are ended. These, our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and—like the baseless fabric of this vision— the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on…” - The Tempest (Shakespeare) 

100 years after Ovid but 1500 years before Shakespeare, John of Patmos had a similar ‘revelation’. His vision, which fills most of the final book of the Christian Bible, includes the systematic breaking of 7 seals, reminiscent of the layers of Ovid’s cosmic onion. But when the 7th seal is broken, John, like Shakespeare’s audience and Ovid, gets a stupefying surprise:

Out of the organ grinder’s box pops ‘Jack’, Jean-Paul in fact, Sartre. Not the man himself, of course, but his singular contribution to the Intellectual History of the West, i.e. Le Neant. (Being and Nothingness)

John watched (and listened) as the Lamb broke open each seal in turn. Each brought new and terrifying sights and sounds: a voice like thunder, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Death and Hell itself, the blood of martyrs. 

Then, with the breaking of the sixth seal, “there was a great earthquake, the sun turned as black and dark as sackcloth, and the whole moon became like blood. The stars in the sky fell to Earth like unripe figs shaken loose in a strong wind. Then the sky was divided, like a torn scroll…” (Like the curtain in the Temple at the hour of Christ’s crucifixion.) 

But even this is still just preparation for the great event yet to come, the breaking of the seventh seal, the fulcrum on which Revelation balances. 

Consider the Amen chorus at the end of Handel’s great oratorio, Messiah. Midway through this varied but bombastic summation of the ‘greatest story ever told,’ the orchestra and the chorus suddenly fall silent and stay silent for several measures. This is the pivotal musical moment corresponding to the breaking of the 7th Seal in salvation history as told in Revelation. 

This ‘rest’ in the midst of Handel’s Amen is one of the most profound moments in all of Western music. It links the final chorus of the world’s greatest oratorio with the final book of the Bible. 

So, if Platonic Form is unrelated to identity (per Ovid), what takes its place, what assumes that role? What survives formal changes, no matter how numerous or how profound?

• Sense of Self. According to Ovid, we retain our sense of being ourselves through all our ‘formal’ changes. I am always, ever, and only me, regardless of how I may appear. 

• Memory (Persistence of, Dali). We remember all our prior forms and some of our experiences under each, just as seniors remember events from childhood and middle age. 

• Qualia. Although forms can change utterly in Ovid, basic qualities endure. A ‘beautiful’ girl becomes just as beautiful as a tree, heifer, or spring. 

• Values. In a dramatic affirmation of Transcendent (eternal and universal) Values, central to Judeo-Christian ethics, Ovid’s personalities retain their chosen values throughout their changes in form.

Consider Daphne who begs her father to change her into a tree so she can preserve her chastity from Apollo…who continues to love her, even in her new form: “If you cannot be my wife, you will be my tree,” and everyday he wears her laurel leaves. 

You get the sense that Daphne’s chastity and Apollo’s lust will survive any future changes of form.  

Or Io, changed into a cow by Juno, continuing to follow her family members, hoping for a gentle touch or a handful of grass. Unable to speak, she uses her hoof to write out in the sand the story of her dreadful change.

Later, when she regains her human form, “no trace of heifer is left, except the lovely whiteness of her flesh…And now she is a celebrated goddess, revered by crowds clothed in white linen: Isis.” 

Io has been through it all but her sense of self never waivers, her memories persist throughout and her defining whiteness, acquired as a heifer, continues as a god.   

Identity is not a function of Form, as we’ve imagined at least since Plato; rather, the two are entirely unrelated. True identity lies in (1) our immanent and intuitive sense of self, i.e. consciousness, (2) our unique collection of historical experiences as they persist in Memory, and (3) the transcendental values we apply when judging our World and forming our Subjective Aim.    

Plato can be read as a critical meditation on the Homeric myths. Ovid freed us from the collective anonymity of Plato and prepared us for the intensely personal theology of Jesus.

***

Ovid among the Scythians (painted twice by Eugène Delacroix in 1859 and 1862) imagines the Roman poet Ovid during his exile on the Black Sea, far from the cultured life of Rome.

In the canvas, nomadic Scythians approach the seated poet with curiosity and a mix of reverence and hospitality, set within a vast, windswept steppe of muted blues and ochres.

The work contrasts Ovid’s refined, contemplative presence with the rugged vitality of the Scythian world, creating a poetic meditation on exile, cultural encounter, and the enduring power of art and intellect.