Latin Poet Ovid: "Metamorphoses" Excerpts on Earth on Fire

 Latin Poet Ovid:  "Metamorphoses" Excerpts on Earth on Fire

Metamorphosis Page

Metamorphoses or Transformations:

The poem Metamorphoses or Transformations is a Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, and is considered his magnum opus.

The poem tells of the history of the world, and of particular interest here is cataclysmic events that focus on major Earth changes with an emphasis on heat and fire.  It describes how everything was burning, including rivers and river banks. Some waterways actually dry up.  Others may boil, perhaps because of radiation, friction from the earth's moving crust, magma coming to the surface, combustible gas and substances burning, and fire rain from above. 

A list will follow the references with descriptions or  up to date names for the locations mentioned.  Bold letters on the cataclysmic events that match other ancient stories of The Binary Solar System Crossing.

*Phaethon may be the name of The Binary Solar System, or may be an asteroid or planetary body such as Wormwood,  used in this story. 

"When the horses feel the reins lying across their backs, after he has thrown them down, they veer off course and run unchecked through unknown regions of the air. Wherever their momentum takes them there they run, lawlessly, striking against the fixed stars in deep space and hurrying the chariot along remote tracks. Now they climb to the heights of heaven, now rush headlong down its precipitous slope, sweeping a course nearer to the earth. 

The Moon, amazed, sees her brother’s horses running below her own, and the boiling clouds smoke. 

The earth bursts into flame, in the highest regions first, opens in deep fissures and all its moisture dries up. The meadows turn white, the trees are consumed with all their leaves, and the scorched corn makes its own destruction. 

But I am bemoaning the lesser things. Great cities are destroyed with all their walls, and the flames reduce whole nations with all their peoples to ashes. The woodlands burn, with the hills. 

Mount Athos 1 is on fire, Cilician Taurus 2 , Tmolus 3 , Oete 4 and Ida 5 , dry now once covered with fountains, and Helicon 6 home of the Muses 7 , and Haemus 8 not yet linked with King Oeagrius’s 9 name. 

Etna 10 blazes with immense redoubled flames, the twin peaks of Parnassus 11, Eryx 12, Cynthus 13, Othrys 14, Rhodope 15 fated at last to lose its snow, Mimas 16 and Dindyma 17, Mycale and Cithaeron 18, ancient in rites. Its chilly climate cannot save Scythia 19. The Caucasus burn, and Ossa 20 along with Pindus 21, and Olympos 22 greater than either, and the lofty Alps and cloud-capped Apennines. 

Then, truly, Phaethon 23 sees the whole earth on fire. He cannot bear the violent heat, and he breathes the air as if from a deep furnace. He feels his chariot glowing white. He can no longer stand the ash and sparks flung out, and is enveloped in dense, hot smoke. He does not know where he is, or where he is going, swept along by the will of the winged horses.

Then Libya became a desert, the heat drying up her moisture. Then the nymphs with disheveled hair wept bitterly for their lakes and fountains. Boeotia 24 searches for Dirces 25 rills, Argos 26 for Amymones27 fountain, Corinth 28 for the Pirenian spring 29 . 

Nor are the rivers safe because of their wide banks. The Don turns to steam in mid-water, and old Peneus 30, and Mysian Caicus 31 and swift-flowing Ismenus 32, Arcadian 33 Erymanthus 34, Xanthus 35 destined to burn again, golden Lycormas 36 and Maeander 37 playing in its watery curves, Thracian38 Melas39 and Laconian40 Eurotas 41. 

Babylonian Euphrates burns. Orontes 42 burns and quick Thermodon 43, Ganges 44, Phasis 45, and Danube 46. Alpheus 47 boils. Spercheoss 48 banks are on fire. The gold that the River Tagus 49 carries is molten with the fires, and the swans for whose singing Maeonias 50 riverbanks are famous, are scorched in Ca¨ysters 51 midst. 

The Nile fled in terror to the ends of the earth, and hid its head that remains hidden. Its seven mouths are empty and dust-filled, seven channels without a stream. The same fate parches the Thracian rivers, Hebrus 52 and Strymon 53, and the western rivers, Rhine, Rhone, Po and the Tiber who had been promised universal power. 

Everywhere the ground breaks apart, light penetrates through the cracks down into Tartarus 54, and terrifies the king of the underworld and his queen. 

The sea contracts and what was a moment ago wide sea is a parched expanse of sand. 

Mountains emerge from the water, and add to the scattered Cyclades 55. 

The fish dive deep, and the dolphins no longer dare to rise arcing above the water, as they have done, into the air. The lifeless bodies of seals float face upwards on the deep. They even say that Nereus 56 himself, and Doris and her daughters drifted through warm caves. Three times Neptune 57 tried to lift his fierce face and arms above the waters. Three times he could not endure the burning air."

Worlds in Collision Excerpts and Commentary:

"The scorched clouds belched forth smoke....

Great cracks yawn everywhere. . . ."

How could the poets have known that a change in the movement of the sun across the firmament must cause a world conflagration, blazing of volcanoes, boiling of rivers, disappearance of seas, birth of deserts, emergence of islands, if the sun never changed its harmonious journey from sunrise to sunset? 

The disturbance in the movement of the sun was followed by a period as long as a day, when the sun did not appear at all. 

Ovid continues: "If we are to believe report, one whole day went without the sun. But the burning world gave light." 

A prolonged night in one part of the world must be accompanied by a prolonged day in another part; in Ovid we see the phenomenon related in the Book of Joshua, but from another longitude. This may stimulate surmise as to the geographical origin of the Indo-Iranian or Carian migrants to Greece. The globe changed the inclination of its axis; latitudes changed, too. 

Ovid ends the description of the world catastrophe contained in the story of Phaethon: "Causing all things to shake with her mighty trembling, she [the earth] sank back a little lower than her wonted place." 

References:

Cornell Paper Publication:

"Traditions connected with the pole shift model of the

Pleistocene"

https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.5078

Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky

https://archive.org/details/B-001-014-474

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses

Modern Location Names:

1. A high mountain in Macedonia on a peninsula in the northern Aegean. 
2. A mountain in Cilicia in Asia Minor. 
3. A mountain in Lydia, near the source of the River Ca¨yster. 
4. A mountain range between Aetolia and Thessaly. 
5. One Mount Ida is near Troy. There is a second Mount Ida on Crete. 
6. The mountain in Boeotia near the Gulf of Corinth where the Muses lived. 
7. The nine Muses are the virgin daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory). They are the patronesses of the arts. Clio (History), Melpomene (Tragedy), Thalia (Comedy), Euterpe (Lyric Poetry), Terpsichore (Dance), Calliope (Epic Poetry), Erato (Love Poetry), Urania (Astronomy), and Polyhymnia (Sacred Song). Mount Helicon is hence called Virgineus. 
8. A mountain in Thrace. 
9. Of Oeagrus an ancient king of Thrace. 
10. The volcanic mountain in eastern Sicily. 
11. A mountain in Phocis sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Delphi is at its foot where the oracle of Apollo and his temple were situated. 1
12. A mountain on the north-western tip of Sicily sacred to Venus Aphrodite. 
13. A mountain on the island of Delos sacred to Apollo and Artemis(Diana). 
14. A mountain in Thessaly in Northern Greece. 
15. A mountain in Thrace. 
16. A mountain range in Ionia. 
17. A mountain in Mysia in Asia Minor, sacred to Ceres. 
18. A mountain in Boeotia, near Thebes. 
19. The country of the Scythians of northern Europe and Asia to the north of the Black Sea. Noted for the Sarmatian people, their warrior princesses, and burial mounds in the steppe (kurgans). They were initially horse-riding nomads. See (Herodotus, The Histories). 
20. A mountain in Thessaly in Northern Greece. 
21. A mountain in Thessaly. 
22. A mountain in northern Thessaly supposed to be the home of the gods. 
23. Son of Clymene, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys whose husband was the Ethiopian king Merops. His true father is Sol, the sun-god (Phoebus). 
24. A country in mid-Greece containing Thebes. 
25. A famous spring near Thebes in Boeotia. 
26. The capital of Argolis in the Peloponnese. 
27. A famous spring at Argos. 
28. The city north of Mycenae, on the Isthmus between Attica and the Argolis. 
29. The Pirenian Spring. A famous fountain on the citadel of Corinth sacred to the Muses, where Bellerephon took Pegasus to drink. 
30. A river in Thessaly flowing from Mount Pindus through the valley of Tempe, 
31. A river in Mysia in Asia Minor near Pergamum. 
32. The river and river-god of Boeotia, near Thebes. 
33. A region in the centre of the Peloponnese, the archetypal rural paradise. 
34. A river and mountain in Arcadia. 
35. A river of Troy in Asia Minor 
36. A river in Aetolia. 
37. The Maeander river in Lydia in Asia Minor famous for its wandering course, hence meander. 
38. The country bordering the Black Sea, Propontis and the northeastern Aegean. 
39. A Thracian river. 
40. The area around Sparta. 
41. A river in Laconia in southern Greece. 
42. A river in Syria. 
43. A river of Pontus, the Black Sea region where the Amazons lived. 
44. The sacred river of northern India. 
45. A river in Colchis, in Asia, east of the Black Sea. 
46. The Lower Danube running to the Black Sea. 
47. A river and river-god of Elis in western Greece. Olympia is near the lower reaches of the river. 
48. A river in Thessaly. 
49. The river in Spain and Portugal, reputedly gold bearing. 
50. An ancient name for Lydia. 
51. A river famous for its swans in Lydia in Asia Minor. Ephesus is near its mouth. 
52. The river in Thrace down which Orpheuss head was washed to the sea. 
53. A river in Thrace and Macedonia. 
54. The underworld. The infernal regions ruled by Pluto. 
55. The scattered islands of the southern Aegean off the coast of Greece, forming a broken circle. 
56. A sea-god. The husband of Doris, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and, by her, the father of the fifty Nereids, the mermaids attendant on Thetis. 
57. God of the sea, brother of Pluto and Jupiter.

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