Final two stories, of a brother and sister caught in an incestuous relationship, and one of the many widowed Greeks from the Trojan war. Very different paintings hidden away.
Ovid
How Vertumnus tried to trick Pomona into loving him, then told her a threatening story. Neither worked: it was being himself that won her in the end.
Ovid’s fictional letter made it clear how the legend of Phaon was absurd. Yet it has been painted repeatedly ever since.
Aeneas reaches Latium, where he founds the precursor to Rome, Alba. Only after war with Turnus, and a series of transformations.
Was she abducted, seduced, or seducer? Victim or whore? Ovid’s pair of letters between Helen and Paris raises questions which many artists have tried to tackle.
What happens to men who Circe desires, but refuse her? This one was turning into a woodpecker, his men into wild beasts, and his wife simply vanished into thin air.
Boy meets girl but has to swim a mile in treacherous waters to keep meeting her. When she tells him how she burns with passion, he pushes his luck in the sea.
Ulysses sojourn with Circe, from the Odyssey, as an inset to Virgil’s Aeneid, as retold by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. A first-hand account of transformation.
She saves Theseus’ life by her ingenuity, which wins her marriage to him. But at the first opportunity he abandons her and sails away.
The story of Ulysses’ encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus is told by a survivor from the Odyssey. Superb paintings by Turner, Böcklin, Reni, and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 