Read the creation story told by Ovid in Metamorphoses, Book I: lines 1-88.
Answer the following questions. Use evidence from the text in your answers.
Question 1
1.
What is an invocation? What is Ovid asking of the gods?
Question 2
2.
How does Ovid describe the world at the beginning?
Question 3
3.
Look up the identity of the following and relate what part they play in the creation story.
1. Titan
2. Phoebe
3. Amphitrite
Question 4
4.
What are the four elements? How were they separated?
Question 5
5.
What shape did the god make the earth? Does it strike you as odd that this fact appears in a poem which was produced around the time of Ovid's exile in 8 CE? What might account for the image of an earth shaped like a sphere showing up here?
Question 6
6.
What are the five zones? How well does this reflect the actual climate zones of the earth as we know it today?
Question 7
7.
What does Ovid mean when he says the winds are like “the discord between brothers”? How does the god solve this problem?
Question 8
8.
What two explanations does Ovid give for the creation of humans?