Essay

Ovid was Roman poet who wrote about love seduction, and most importantly mythological transition. Ovid completed Metamorphoses in 8 AD and remains one of the most popular mythology books today. The set of work includes 15 books of poems, including the one that is going to be discussed, Metamorphoses Book II. Book II of Metamorphoses includes episodes with the main characters of Jupiter, Callisto, Europa and Phaeton. In the case of the eighth story of Metamorphoses Book II the main characters include Minerva, Aglauros, and Mercury. The following will be breaking down and discussing the six parts of structural analysis which are plot, hermeneutics, semic, symbolic, reference, and diagetic. All of these parts of structural analysis combine themselves to help the reader fully understand the story and what the author is trying to present in his work. In the case of The Story of Aglauros, transform'd into a Statue these play an almost imperative role in understanding the poetry by dissecting each part of it to try and understand the authors meaning, and perhaps even the moral or humor behind every line and stanza.
The plot of the story opens up with the opening of Minerva’s feast, in which all of Minerva’s maidens had to come and pay homage to her. During this an evil maiden named Aglauros came to pay homage to her goddess Minerva, but was not true to Minerva’s core values as she had an evil heart. The author even goes as far as to say that Lucifer himself expelled the maiden from the depths of Hell. As Aglauros prepares herself for the festivities Mercury comes in all dressed up in his armor and passes her by. Aglauros catches him and asks what his business here is, and he replied that he was her to marry one of her sisters to make her an aunt. Aglauros knows that as a maiden of Minerva that she nor her sister may marry because they must stay celibate as a maiden of Minerva. But she takes interest in Mercury instead and agrees to help him marry her sister only if he brings Aglauros a gift, probably of money. As a result Minerva becomes deeply upset and sends someone to deal with Aglauros as she did not heed Minerva’s warning of staying out of love’s affairs. Minerva then sends a god to go to the house in which Aglauros sleeps and the god touches her with her thorny and defiled hand and tells her that she has disobeyed Minerva and must pay the price. Aglauros goes to get up after her but finds she cannot as she has started to turn into a statue, in which is the state that she will ultimately end up in and remain in forever.
The semic part of this essay, or the connotation that Ovid is trying to make to real life is that when one decides to deviate from a course that one has already decided and committed to that one must suffer the consequences as a result of their decision whether it is made in poor or good-hearted spirit. In the case of Aglauros, she had already made the decision to remain celibate to Minerva for the rest of herself as a maiden, but had other thoughts as she was jealous of her sister going to get married. Aglauros had already made a promise to stay celibate and after Minerva got word of Aglauros’ plan she warned her of what might happen, but Aglauros decided to ignore Minerva’s warning and as a result suffered the consequence of turning into a statue. Although one will not turn into a statue if they break a promise, they will still ultimately suffer a consequence undoubtedly harm the person who the promise was made to, and perhaps even in the long run even the one who made it. Aglauros also mainly suffered from her own envious heart as she was jealous of her sister’s marriage. This is the main connotation that Ovid is trying to get across. Because of Aglauros ruining the chance of her sister getting married, even after Minerva’s warning, she is turned into a statue so that she cannot meddle in anyone else’s affairs ever again. The lesson in this is that no one should meddle in someone else’s affairs with an envious heart on the mind.
There are very many different examples of Hermeneutics in the poem about Aglauros getting turned into a statue. One such example is when Minerva calls upon another god to take care of Aglauros for her, and the statements are, “She never smiles but when the wretched weep,
She pines and sickens at another's joy.” The parallels in this are very similar to each other in the way that they are both emotions in the beginning of the statement that have an opposite connotation to what a normal person would associate with the reaction. For instance the first line says that she only smiles when the wretched weep, which is different in that most people get upset when other people are sad and the other line says that she gets sick at the notion of another’s joy whereas other people are happy when other people are happy. Ovid takes two total polar opposite emotions and associates them each to a total polar opposite association of reaction. Another example of parallelism in the story is, “In tears all night, In darkness all the day.” In this Ovid is using the opposite of normality only this time for days not emotions. This example is showing that the evil god spent all their time in the darkness and as a result was evil. The use of night with the darkness of day is a sort of oxymoron in that you would have night and light in the day or just night. Without light, though, you would have nothing to compare darkness to, which is what Ovid maybe trying to point out as the evil god spends all their time in the darkness that they know no light. A final example of parallelism is, “Consum'd like ice, that just begins to run, When feebly smitten by the distant sun; Or like unwholsome weeds, that set on fire Are slowly wasted, and in smoke expire.” In this example Ovid is using two illustrations of something dying or going away just as in the story Aglauros dream of marriage leaves her as she turns to stone.
The symbolism in the poem includes the feast in which all of the Maidens gather to celebrate Minerva. Minerva, of course, is the goddess Athena in Greek religion and they celebrated the feasts of their gods to in Greek religion. The Romans, though, celebrated more often, and so often in fact that about one day in four was a celebrated feast with sacrifices and games in honor of the god or goddess in whose name it was celebrated in honor of. The feast of Minerva lasted five days, and all offerings were made by all artists, mechanics and scholars. Games would also be held at the feasts, so these became a very important day or series of days in Roman citizens lives. Another symbol in the story is the aegis which was, as stated in the Iliad, a shield or buckler of Pallas Athena or Zeus and was fashioned by Hephaestus. This is the buckler that Athena would wear when she became angry, which in this case of the story she became angry with Aglauros and put on the buckler. The buckler also linked the gorgon and serpents upon herself which was who was used to kill Aglauros because Medusa, whose powers were transferred to Athena with the buckler, could turn people into stone.
Referential analysis in the story consists of the Temple of Minerva which was built between the Via Labicana and the Aurelian Walls and just inside the Anio Vetus and on Anventine Hill. The architecture consists of Roman secular architecture with some Greek columns. Another piece of architecture is the apartment in which she was staying at during the time at which she was turned into stone. During the Roman period, though, they were called insulas. These insulas were the homes of the plebs, and as a result of urbanization single house homes were scarce on the market and as a result of the scarcity they were very expensive. As a resolution to the problem apartment buildings were built because they could build up when they needed more room. The top floors were the cheapest as they were without running water and other necessities. These were limited to the poorest of the poor and all of the rooms of the apartments overall, were relatively small compared to the apartments of today’s housing market.
The diagetic part of the poem appears as one pattern throughout the poem. The poem expresses a positive tone and then a negative tone, and continues this pattern for the rest of the poem alternating about every other stanza of the poem. The opening stanza has a positive tone as it talks about the opening of the feast of Minerva and everybody is cheerful and enjoying the festivities and this continues for the next two stanzas. Then in the fourth stanza of the poem it talks about the darker part of the poem with it being about the person that Lucifer expelled and was going to the feast of Minerva, and then in the fifth stanza it takes a more positive, heroic approach as it talks about Mercury going to the feast to tell Aglauros that he is going to marry her sister. In the rest of the poem it takes a dark stance as envy takes over Aglauros heart and steers her to ask for a reward before he can marry his sister. This is followed by Athena’s warning and then the transformation into the gorgon to go and turn Aglauros into the statue. This is the pattern that sets the mood throughout the poem.
Without the tools of structural analysis to properly examine a piece of work, one is not able to understand the work full enough to know what the author’s message is. The dissection of the plot of the story allows for the reader to examine what is happening and what the possible message or moral of the story is. The semic part of the story allows for the reader to understand what connotations the author is make to real life and what he’s trying to relate, while the hermeneutic part of the analysis allows for the parallelism of the story to be explored to understand the emotions of the characters and mood of the story. The symbolic part of the analysis allows for the reader to explore the parts of the story which have meaning behind them or that the reader has to understand to completely recognize what is happening in the author’s work. Referential Analysis allows for the reader to understand what is happening in the story just like the symbolism part but only with the explanation of the buildings, and the diagetic part of the story allows for the reader to understand why the author puts the elements of the story where they are just as in the story of Aglauros where there is a positive and dark pattern of the setting. In the case of The Story of Aglauros, transform'd into a Statue these play an almost imperative role in understanding the poetry by dissecting each part of it to try and understand the authors meaning, and perhaps even the moral or humor behind every line and stanza.