Week 3, Reading Diary B: Ovid's Metamorphosis III

Ovid's Metamorphosis III

Orpheus and Eurydice

This story is about the marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice. After getting married, Eurydice was walking through some grass and was bitten by a snake, and died. Orpheus then went to Persephone to see if he would revive her. He was told that it would work, but he could not look back as they were leaving until a certain point. Of course, Orpheus looked back and she disappeared back to whence she came.

Ganymede and Hyacinthus
In this story a couple of guys, Phoebus and Apollo, get naked, get olive oiled up and start throwing a disc around. Somehow, something went wrong and Hyacinth died. Apparently this is the mythological creation story of the Hyacinth flower. This Greek mythology just gets weirder and weirder the more I read. I still haven't come across anything that just jumps out at me for a story...

Myrrha and Cinyras
Okay, you know when the Greeks think that something is taboo and terrible, it has GOT to be bad. This story is something else. Okay, so there is a man who has a daughter Myrrha. At some point, for some strange reason, she wants to BE with her father and Myrrha falls in love with him. Myrrha then tries to kill herself and the nurse comes in and tries to help her by offering her help. She ends up working out a way for Myrrha to be with Cinyras. As if it wasn't bad enough she wanted her father, she ended up getting pregnant by him. She ended up running away and became a tree...then gave birth to a child...This is one of the weirdest stories I have ever read.

(The Bed of Cinyras, Solis. Source: Wikipedia Commons)

I still have not found anything that made me think of a side story to pull out of either the first or second half. I'm hoping that after some thought, something will work it's way out.