Ovid and Marcus Aurelius Comparison: Metamorphoses and Meditations

Ovid's The Metamorphoses and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations provide differing views on a variety of issues, but one of the most notable is that of morality. Ovid's The Metamorphoses is a poem that describes the transformations of people and things into new forms and emphasizes the role of the gods in man's life. Starting with the creation of the world in Book the First, Ovid describes the transformation of the earth from a pure and unsullied "golden age" through a progression of corrupting influences to a "silver age," and then an even more corrupt "brazen age," followed finally by an "iron age." In the golden age, "when Man yet new,/No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:/And, with a native bent, did good pursue./ Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear" (Ovid). Ovid portrays man as essentially good and free from corruption at his creation. The advent of the silver age, however, occurred when "Saturn, banish'd from above,/Was driv'n to Hell, the world was under Jove," an event that brought with it the seasons and the toiling of man and beast (Ovid). Ovid devotes only two lines to the brazen age: "A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,/Not impious yet...." The iron age depicts the ultimate baseness to which man has fallen, giving way to men as hard as steel and whom "truth, modesty, and shame" have forsaken (Ovid). In the place of these virtues came "fraud, avarice, and force," and man began greedily trying to force the bounty from the earth instead of allowing

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Category: Literature - O