Ways Women are Presented in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Plato’s Symposium

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Comparing and Contrasting the Way Women Are Presented in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Plato’s Symposium
Although Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Plato’s Symposium address the gender politics of their time comprehensively, they represent women in very dissimilar ways. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a collection of legendary and mythological epics written in Latin hexameter written in chronological order from the creation of the world to the murder and deification of Julius Caesar. The numerous stories in the work are tied together by the theme of metamorphoses: Ovid draws on the Greek mythology to cover several themes including jealousy, punishment, lust, and spite. Plato’s Symposium is a philosophical text by Plato that covers numerous subjects including virtue, gender, love, and desire. The Symposium narrates the philosophical speeches of a group of Athenian intellectuals (Socrates, Alcibiades, and Aristophanes) who have converged at a banquet to honor Eros, the god of love and desire. This essay will compare and contrast how women are represented in the two works. It will argue that Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Plato’s Symposium are sexist but while the former paints gender dynamics in a fluid manner the latter paints women as incapable of achieving a “purer” love for philosophical things.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses can be characterized as a misogynistic book given its excessive focus on sexual abuse: the poem discusses at least fifty rapes within the course of the fifteen books and most of the perpetrators go unpunished. Ovid represents women as the victims of lustful gods and men in power. In other instances, the poet represents women as powerful goddesses and beings but tends to focus on their subjective and undesirable qualities such as their maliciousness or vengefulness. For instance, in the first book, Jove (the king of the gods in roman mythology) lusts after Io (a virginal water nymph) and rapes her. Juno (Jove’s wife) avenges herself against Io despite the fact that her dalliance with Jove was against her will in the first place. In the second book, Jove again rapes Calisto and the victim is not only ostracized by Diana but also punished for being attractive enough to make the Roman god desire her. The women in Ovid’s stories are double victims of Jove’s lust and Juno’s wrath: Jove has numerous affairs with deities and mortal women and Juno is always seeking revenge against all women her husband has had affairs with.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses plays women against each other and paints them as not only subordinate to men but also as petty and malicious beings. While Ovid’s focus on the psychology of female actors is somewhat sympathetic, the extent of this atten...