The Metamorphoses of Ovid | Page 7

own gravity. The encircling waters sank to the lowermost place,[10]
and surrounded the solid globe.
[Footnote 4: A rude and undigested mass.--Ver. 7. This is very similar
to the words of the Scriptures, 'And the earth was without form and
void,' Genesis, ch. i. ver. 2.]
[Footnote 5: No Sun.--Ver. 10. Titan. The Sun is so called, on account
of his supposed father, Hyperion, who was one of the Titans. Hyperion
is thought to have been the first who, by assiduous observation,
discovered the course of the Sun, Moon, and other luminaries. By them
he regulated the time for the seasons, and imparted this knowledge to
others. Being thus, as it were, the father of astronomy, he has been
feigned by the poets to have been the father of the Sun and the Moon.]
[Footnote 6: The Moon.--Ver. 11. Phoebe. The Moon is so called from
the Greek +phoibos+, 'shining,' and as being the sister of Phoebus,
Apollo, or the Sun.]
[Footnote 7: Amphitrite.--Ver. 14. She was the daughter of Oceanus
and Doris, and the wife of Neptune, God of the Sea. Being the Goddess
of the Ocean, her name is here used to signify the ocean itself.]
[Footnote 8: Nature.--Ver. 21. 'Natura' is a word often used by the Poet
without any determinate signification, and to its operations are ascribed
all those phenomena which it is found difficult or impossible to explain
upon known and established principles. In the present instance it may
be considered to mean the invisible agency of the Deity in reducing
Chaos into a form of order and consistency. 'Et' is therefore here, as
grammarians term it, an expositive particle; as if the Poet had said,
'Deus sive natura,' 'God, or in other words, nature.']
[Footnote 9: The element of the vaulted heaven.--Ver. 26. This is a
periphrasis, signifying the regions of the firmament or upper air, in

which the sun and stars move; which was supposed to be of the purest
fire and the source of all flame. The heavens are called 'convex,' from
being supposed to assume the same shape as the terrestrial globe which
they surround.]
[Footnote 10: The lowermost place.--Ver. 31. 'Ultima' must not be here
understood in the presence of 'infima,' or as signifying 'last,' or 'lowest,'
in a strict philosophical sense, for that would contradict the account of
the formation of the world given by Hesiod, and which is here closely
followed by Ovid; indeed, it would contradict his own
words,--'Circumfluus humor coercuit solidum orbem.' The meaning
seems to be, that the waters possess the lowest place only in respect to
the earth whereon we tread, and not relatively to the terrestrial globe,
the supposed centre of the system, inasmuch as the external surface of
the earth in some places rises considerably, and leaves the water to
subside in channels.]
EXPLANATION.
The ancient philosophers, unable to comprehend how something could
be produced out of nothing, supposed a matter pre-existent to the Earth
in its present shape, which afterwards received form and order from
some powerful cause. According to them, God was not the Creator, but
the Architect of the universe, in ranging and disposing the elements in
situations most suitable to their respective qualities. This is the Chaos
so often sung of by the poets, and which Hesiod was the first to
mention.
It is clear that this system was but a confused and disfigured tradition
of the creation of the world, as mentioned by Moses; and thus, beneath
these fictions, there lies some faint glimmering of truth. The first two
chapters of the book of Genesis will be found to throw considerable
light on the foundation of this Mythological system of the world's
formation.
Hesiod, the most ancient of the heathen writers who have enlarged
upon this subject, seems to have derived much of his information from
the works of Sanchoniatho, who is supposed to have borrowed his ideas

concerning Chaos from that passage in the second verse of the first
Chapter of
Genesis, which mentions the darkness that was spread over the whole
universe--'and darkness was upon the face of the deep'--for he
expresses himself almost in those words. Sanchoniatho lived before the
Trojan war, and professed to have received his information respecting
the original construction of the world from a priest of 'Jehovah,' named
Jerombaal. He wrote in the Phoenician language; but we have only a
translation of his works, by Philo Judæus, which is by many supposed
to be spurious. It is, however, very probable, that from him the Greeks
borrowed their notions regarding Chaos, which they mingled with
fables of their own invention.
FABLE II. [I.32-88]
After the separation of matter, God gives form and regularity to the
universe; and all other living creatures being produced, Prometheus
moulds earth tempered with water, into a human form,