Still Waters Run Deep: Interpretations of the Metamorphoses' Pools

Still Waters Run Deep: Interpretations of the Metamorphoses' Pools

In this paper, I make three observations about an unusual feature of three passages in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The feature in question is the stillness of the pools that figure in the stories of Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Arethusa (Met. 3.407-10, 4.297-301, 5.587-89). These still waters are distinctive in Latin poetry due to their tendency to hinder rather than help the protagonist. Other scholars interpret this stillness as symbolizing purity (Segal 1969) or as aesthetically pleasing (Hinds 2002). I explain the pools' stillness by linking them to the poem's House of Sleep, to the exile poetry's frozen rivers, and to glassmaking and hydraulics.

First, these pools belong to a constellation of stillness imagery culminating in the House of Sleep (Met. 11.592-673). For example, in both the Narcissus episode and the House of Sleep, Ovid presents the stillness and darkness of the places through negation. No fera, pecus, moved ramus, or Phoebus disturbs either. Building on Segal's observation of the lassitude pervading the Met.'s landscapes (1969, 82), I show that characters in both the still pool and the House of Sleep episodes are infected by lethargy, by which they melt into the stillness of their settings. As further evidence that Ovid links his mirror-like pools and House of Sleep, in his descriptions of the swimming Hermaphroditus and Arethusa and the gesturing Morpheus, he incorporates Lucretian language on the exuberant movement of images in both mirrors and dreams. As one example, Arethusa describes her actions in the pool using Lucretius's pairing of iactare and bracchia on images moving in dreams (Met. 5.596, DRN 4.769; see also Bömer 1976).

Second, the still pools of the Met. are analogous to the frozen rivers of Ovid's exile poetry (e.g., Tr. 3.10.25-50). His comparison of the swimming Hermaphroditus to an object encased in glass (Met. 4.353-55) resembles his description of fish moving under the ice (Tr. 3.10.49-50, Pont. 3.1.15-16). Hermaphroditus metaphorically swims under glass, as the fish swim under ice. Not only does Ovid use similar language of these settings, he also thematically associates both with lethargy. Ovid attributes the perpetuus languor he experiences, and which hinders his writing, at least in part to the environment, including its water (Tr. 3.8.24-25).

Third, the Met.’s pools have connections to contemporaneous technological and architectural developments. New methods for creating transparent glass (Stern 2008) may help explain the utter stillness and transparency of the pools—a divergence from the landscape tradition to that point. Glassmaking, unlike metalwork, involves "a true transmutation of materials" (Stern 2008, 521), and therefore symbolizes metamorphosis. Additionally, while the word stagnum in the Met. exclusively denotes natural pools, the word was contemporaneously applied to ostentatious private ponds (e.g., Hor. Carm. 2.15.1-4) and magnificent public pools (e.g., Stagnum Agrippae). Ovid may have staged the melting of characters like Narcissus near natural stagna to implicate the builders of artificial stagna in the stifling of individual expression. By associating perfect stillness with lethargy, sleep, and death, Ovid has given us a metaphor for the socio-political stagnation of late Augustan Rome.