Tumblr crosspost (4 October 2020)

[anghraine]

I’m currently 25 pgs into the Metamorphoses, and the gods have managed to be even worse assholes than I expected!

I guess Apollo has some excuse in being struck by Cupid’s arrow, but literally the first thing Jupiter says to Io is:

“Virgin worthy of Jove, clearly destined to make
Some man or other happy in your bed,
You should find some shade over there in the woods”

>_<

Tagged: #yes yes values dissonance but also: the fuck? #also i'm not sure it is /that/ much values dissonance; the introduction argues that the gods are deliberately written as capricious tyrants #in any case jupiter is so relentlessly terrible that it is all the more satisfying that ovid explicitly compares augustus to him