Key to All Mythologies

Why does the discourse on love begin with the words of a minor character, Marco of Lombardy, rather than Virgil? Are Virgil's discourses on love and free will more Augustinian or Aristotelian? Is love the only thing in the cosmos that does not diminish as it is shared? Light? What does it mean to say God is Love? Is God love? Is Virgil's schematic approach to these questions an example of the limits of human reason? Is faith what is missing? Is Dante the poet critiquing Virgil, or are we critiquing Dante? Even if you claim to hate God, must you still love God in order to live at all, since whatever you love was created by God, and your love for it is ultimately directed toward God, by your free will (or “free will”) via the object of your love? Because God loves every thing that God created, and free will is the spark of the Divine in you? So – evil?

Some questions discussed in this episode: Can love undo the damage inflicted – to the self and the the community – by envy? Is there a Golden Mean between vice and virtue? Just how Aristotelian was Dante anyway? How does the kind of person you are change the things you can (and cannot) see? What is the distinction between truth and fact? What does Dante means when he speaks of art as an “error” that is not false?

Some questions discussed in this episode: What role does art have to play in the transformation of vice into virtue? What is the connection, if there is one, between the soul of the artist and the beauty of what they create? If virtue is properly presented by the artist, will it always be attractive, and vice always disgusting, to the audience? Why is this the where Dante worries the reader might fall away? Why is this an especially dangerous moment for Dante's vision of the unity of divine justice? Why is the dominant metaphors in theses cantos economic? Does every penitent in purgatory pass through every terrace? Or are the prayers of those on Earth enough to zap you past one or all of the terraces and directly to Heaven? Why is the capstone image of pride the fall of Troy?

We are now through Cato's gate, and into the antechamber, the incorporeal coat-room, the final stage before Purgatory proper. Dante moves among the penitents as they receive their just punishments, and serve their allotted waiting times, before they can slowly make their way up the mountain, and eventually to Heaven. We discuss the delicate interplay of light and darkness, of faith in the unseen and clarity of vision, and of certainty and doubt, which this painstaking crawl of redemption inspires. Bonus thoughts: We also think about what role beauty plays in religious art.

We continue our climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Canto Four begins with a consideration of the meaning of prayer for the process of purgation. God, we are told, cannot hear the prayers of those passing through Purgatory, but their time on the mountain can be shortened by the prayers of the living. We discuss this rather strange piece of doctrine. Given what we learned in Hell about the very precise nature of divine justice, doesn't this violate or circumvent it somehow? Or is this an argument for the God-granted power of the human mind, and the importance of community within Christianity? We also discuss the importance of paying attention. Dante seems to suggest here, in an almost proto-Existentialist way, that certain aspects of reality are revealed through attentiveness that can't be discovered any other way. Does this connect to these Canto's focus on prayer? Finally, we consider again Dante's political commitments. Can his longing after the perfect monarch be squared with his metaphysics? Is it incurably naïve, or are we just being decadent moderns? Is the naivety with him or with us? 

We join Dante and Virgil as they begin their climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Why is Cato, a pagan who lived before Christ and died by suicide, the honored guardian of that mountain? Does he have access to Heaven? If so, why only him and no other “virtuous pagans” (including Virgil)? We also reflect on the tragedy and meaning of Virgil's fate, and what this fate might say about his supposed status as the Divine Comedy's embodiment of human reason. Finally, we talk about Dante's larger plan for the Comedy. What is his grand vision of Christianity and the Christian life? And is this vision meant comfort us, or disturb us?

We arrive at the end of the Inferno, where Satan is frozen in a lake of ice. Dante's Satan is a mechanistic creature, seemingly without agency, personality, or voice. His main function is to sit at the center of Hell, the lowest point in Dante's hierarchical universe, where the flapping of his six wings freezes the landscape around him, and to allow Dante and Virgil to use his body as a ladder to climb up and out of Hell. He is, to say the least, not charming, duplicitous, playful, or mocking. The most life-like thing about him are the tears he continually cries. What is the meaning of these tears? Is Satan expressing sorrow or regret, rage, or pain, some other emotion – or is he just cold. In a poem full of memorable characters and self-aggrandizing monologues, why is Evil's most famous representative a blank – more of an object than a living being. What does this tell us about Dante's sense of Evil and Goodness, and about the many questions of poetry, rhetoric, representation, and power we have discussed throughout the Inferno? Can we conceive of a Satan who spoke his piece and did not emit at least a touch of rebellious glamour?

We are now deep in Hell. Two of the sinners we encounter in canto 29 introduce a new wrinkle to the poem's psychology. They seem to have some degree of self-knowledge about the justice of their punishment, or at least they refer to their own punishment as fitting. What does it mean to have self-knowledge post-damnation? It can't be that sinner's learn once condemned to Hell, can it? Is total self-knowledge equivalent to a complete severing from God's being? Why is forgery a sin punished so deep in the pit? And why is it's contrapasso that the forger is made too heavy to move, and tormented by images of lovely, flowing rivers? We also discuss the meaning of being entertained by the grotesque scenes of torture and demonic slapstick throughout the Inferno. Is the only purpose of these scenes to deliver moral lessons, and could you deliver the lessons without the moral dangers posed by the base entertainments? How does Dante respond to the artistic and rhetorical challenges posed by the obvious fact that it is more fun to think and talk about Hell than about Heaven? Or is this merely a problem for us decadents moderns, and not one for Dante and his contemporary readers who, presumably, had no lack of faith in the very real existence of the afterlife and its fiery punishments?

Today we discuss Dante and Virgil's encounter with Ulysses. The Greek hero gives a cavalier and almost rousing account of himself, spit from the flames eternally consuming him deep in the pits of Hell. Dante's Ulysses recounts himself extending his famous wanderings beyond Ithaca, and out to the edge of the world, where God sends a whirlwind to destroy him and his ships. Of his wanderlust he says “not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty towards my aged father, nor the love I owed Penelope, that would have made her glad, could overcome the fervor that was mine to gain experience of the world.” With these words, we as readers must confront a problem we have encountered a few times already in this poem. What, if anything, distinguished the journey of Ulysses from the journey of Dante the pilgrim? And, by implication, what distinguishes Dante Christian epic from his predecessor's pagan ones? Is his all-encompassing humanism a kind of romantic heroism? Or merely fine rhetoric dressing up selfishness and everyday vanity? His speech is brief and its conclusion – as is the conclusion of his voyage – is abrupt and flat. If Dante's purpose with this was to limit the possible spell the always spell-binding Ulysses could cast on the reader, he seems to have failed, since we spend almost our whole conversation weighing the possible meanings of the ancient hero's handful of lines. There may be progress in some human affairs – but there is never any on the Key to All Mythologies.

Today we take up a set of thorny questions surrounding the punishment of hypocrites in the 8th circle of the Inferno. What forms of corruption pollute the human spirit and the human community in especially damaging ways? What are the implications of the ease with which the demons in this circle trick Virgil, supposedly the embodiment of human reason? We also consider the meaning of a strange episode where one of the damned plots to briefly escape from his torments by fleeing the pitchforks of the demons who surround him. Is there playfulness in Hell? The sinners throughout the circles of the Inferno are not will-less, apathetic husks – they still want things, they still have goals, and they still see themselves through Dante's eyes, and try to affect his image of them. What is the meaning of will in a changeless place? Comedy? Poetic freedom? Or a further, subtler form of punishment? All this and more, on this episode of the Key.

Simoniacs, sorcerers , barrators, and their just and fiery punishments. Are their punishments just? And should we rejoice in the punishments of those who are being justly punished? Does it seem that sorcerers are having a worse time of it than the other two categories? Why? Because they aspired to god-like powers? Ah, but who is more impious than one who thinks God shows partiality in His judgements? Puzzlements abound once again. Give it a listen.

Cantos 16, 17, and 18 revolve around interactions with violent sinners from the recent political conflicts in Florence, Dante's home city, and the city from which he was permanently exiled, shortly before he began work on the Comedy. What is the purpose of a poem aspiring to universality being laced with references to particular, local people – people who would have been long forgotten had they not appeared in Dante's poem (as opposed to say, Greek mythic heroes, or Caesars). Why does Hell have such a political quality – especially given how central and inescapable politics is to human life and human goodness, as Dante conceives of them. We also consider how politics relates to love, desire, and human freedom. And the difference between effective rhetoric and lying. And the difference between lying and writing poetry. And if Hell is just the ideal city with all God's grace removed. And if Hell is a political domain or not. And we talk about Francesca again! And there's also more talk about sodomy!

[Special note: The Episode covering Cantos 10, 11, and 12 was lost to history and the fires of Hell/Zoom]. Friends, a periodic warning. This podcast is not about summary, nor content, nor entertainment, nor facts. This podcast aims for aporia. That is, we aim to begin in uncertainty, and to end in paradox, silence, and doubt. And, if nothing else, these aims at least we achieve…. Today we are discussing Cantos 13, 14, and 15 of Dante's and Virgil's continuing descent into Hell. This turns out to be an especially dense reading, covering many thorny topics. What is the difference between suicide – a damnable act – and dying to yourself in order to live in Christ – an act which Dante celebrates? What is Dante's relationship to homosexuality? Clearly he deems it a sin, yet the homosexuals we meet in Hell are among the noblest characters and receive the gentlest treatment of any sinners. What is the relationship between sodomy, usury, and suicide, and between these sins and their (highly allegorical) punishments? As you can tell, it's another fun-filled episode!

In these Cantos Dante continues his journey deeper into Hell, guided by Virgil. They cross the river Styx, where the shades of the wrathful are boiling, and descend into the city of Dis, within which much of the rest of the Inferno will take place. What kind of character is Dante the pilgrim? Is he a hero? A Christian hero? Can a hero need a guide who babies, protects, and reassures him the way Virgil does for Dante? Can a Christian hero revel in the suffering of sinners of the damned in hell, the way Dante does in Canto 7? In a poem always interested in what should be seen and what should not be seen, why does Dante peer into the thickest fog to find his way? Why is an angelic messenger compared to a snake in an epic simile? We also consider Dante the poet's direct address to the reader, as Dante the pilgrim and Virgil pass by Medusa and enter Dis, in Canto 9: “Oh you who have sound intellects, consider the teaching that is hidden behind these strange verses.” Is the interjection meant to just apply to the surrounding images, or to the entire Inferno? If it is meant to apply throughout the poem, why does Dante choose this moment to interject?

Today we continue our journey into Hell, discussing cantos 4-6 of Dante's Inferno. Canto 5 contains one of the most famous monologues in the Inferno, where the Italian countess Francesca da Rimini relates the tale of lust, woe, Romance literature, and murder that ends with her eternal punishment. Her story raises a host of interesting questions about love, free will, passion, reason, and rhetorical persuasion. We spend a good bit of time discussing these thorny problems. However, we begin with Dante's encounter with the great poets in Limbo, a grey field that is not quite Hell, but is nonetheless a very bland and unpleasant place to spend eternity. What sense of history and time is suggested by the existence of Limbo, both for Dante and his age? How and why is Dante linking himself to the great tradition of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid? Can epic poems be religious and didactic, or do they inevitably surpass such aims? How is the poem Dante will write different from the romantic stories that led Francesca into adultery and damnation?

We begin our epic journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, accompanied by Dante the poet, Dante the character created by the poet Dante, with Virgil our guide, and Beatrice our semi-divine benefactor. We spend most of our conversation today trying to orient ourselves in our strange new world. Why was Dante chosen by divine grace to be the one living soul to pass through Hell – and why is Virgil, of all the honored names of the pre-Christian past, his guide? Are the primary goals of this poem theological, aesthetic, ethical, or otherwise? Can such categories even be separated for a work like this, which must rank as the culminating artifact of the high middle-ages, the culminating artifact of European Christendom. But, given that, how do we understand the literalness of Hell as Dante depicts it? Are we intended to think of this as a real place, as real as Florence and Rome? Or more like an allegory or a poetic flight of imagination, or a mystical vision, or something else? Abandon all hope of firm conclusions or easy answers, ye who enter this podcast.

We finish Aristotle's On the Soul, where, near the end of Book III, Aristotle claims, possibly, that there is, maybe, something of the soul, perhaps, which persists beyond death, in theory, and what persists of the soul might be thinking, potentially, or have something to do with thinking, or so they say. Can you think a thing in its being without recourse to any symbols? What kind of thought would this be? If something of the mind is indeed deathless, yet that deathless part is also not imagination, nor will, nor anything to do with language, nor body, nor any particular thought about any particular thing at all, well… what the hell is it then? We try and think through the puzzles of thought that Aristotle leaves in his wake.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, is it being at work sounding, despite the absence of one who is being at work hearing? The answer, obviously, is yes. And the answer is also no. This is Aristotle, after all. Join us as we discuss the Master of Those Who Know on the two-fold nature of hearing and seeing, the perils of explaining how you know that you know without getting caught in an infinite regress, complex relationships the qualities of which are not contained in their component parts, and many other nearly-imponderable wonders.

Another over-stuffed, stimulating conversation on this very captivating, very ancient, shockingly modern text. We first discuss how Aristotle thinks about the relationship between teaching and learning, in light of his claim that the thinking soul is not properly altered (that is, moved) while being taught how to think. It's quite a puzzle! About half-way through we transition to a fascinating conversation about the value of reading “outdated” or “disproved” scientific texts. Can such texts have more than a purely historical interest? Is Aristotle truly outdated? Or does he give us a method for using observation to consider problems that are beyond the proper ken of science? Is any hint of modern, Cartesian skepticism to be found in Aristotle's approach to nature, or does he begin from a fundamentally different place? A place of wonder, rather than a fear of being tricked? As always, you can trust us to leave you less certain than you were before, with more questions than answers. You're welcome.

This is, no doubt, a dense and difficult text, where a lot of deep insights are packed into Aristotle's short arguments. Our conversation is correspondingly slow and careful, but stick with us and you'll be rewarded with a sense of Aristotle's surprisingly fresh way of looking at motion, life, and the world of the senses, which is neither materialist nor spiritual, but something of a third way that avoids the paradoxes of those two extremes.

Here are the opening lines of today's reading, which we parse in great detail: “Since we consider knowledge to be something beautiful and honored, and one sort more so than another, either on account of its precision or because it is about better and more wondrous things, on both these accounts we should with good reason rank the inquiry about the soul among the primary studies. And it seems that acquaintance with it contributes greatly toward all truth and especially toward the truth about nature, since the soul is in some way the governing source of all living things.” If a slow, careful discussion of such dense thoughts appeals to you, then give this one a listen. (You know who you are!) If not, then go about your dreary business.

The novel concludes with a shocking act of sexual violence against young Tarwater, which propels him back to his home at Powderhead, and back to the grave of old Tarwater. Here, at last, he hears the voice of God speak within him, and he accepts his destiny as prophet of the Lord. The last we see of Tarwater is as he makes his way once again toward the dark city, “where the children of God lay sleeping.” Why was such an act required for Tarwater to accept his fate? Is this book realistic? Or more like a fable, or one of Christ's parables? What kind of relationship to the world does this novel have? A sick, fallen place, awaiting redemption from beyond? What kind of God then is revealed at the end, who chooses the Tarwater's to have the prophetic blood? The God of the Enlightenment, the God of the philosophers, a friendly New Testament God, the frightening God of the Desert Fathers? What kind of God could speak to us in the 20th century? What kind of divine voice could we hear?

This week we are discussing the end of part two, in which the novel confronts us, yet again, with the problem of freedom. Specifically the problem of freedom within the context of a Christian cosmology. Can anyone be said to be free and responsible for their actions, and if so where does that freedom lie? After all, we all have subconscious desires acting in us, we all have dispositions we didn't choose, we have the limits put on us by our time and place, and we have the voices of ancestors hectoring us in our heads. Nevertheless the events of life sometimes build to crises, and how we react to those crises seems to say something essential about us as human beings. Perhaps even leads us to damnation. For the Rayber and Tarwater, their moment of crisis turns on the baptism and drowning of Rayber's mute son Bishop. How they take part in and react to this crises forms the basis of our discussion today, as we attempt to work out what this strange, bleak, claustrophobic, very Catholic, and very Southern novel is telling us about the place of freedom in human life. And more broadly about the possibilities of sin and damnation, and of grace and redemption.

Sometimes, perhaps, it feels to us as if there is meaning in human life, as if our suffering can be redeemed, as if God and the Devil are locked in an eternal struggle for our souls. Other times, it feels to us as if there is no meaning, as if nature and fate are indifferent to our suffering and nothing about it can be redeemed, as if God and the Devil are childish images leftover from our ignorant ancestors. This week we discuss the second half of part two of Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear it Away, which goes straight the heart of such questions by forcing the reader to confront the problem of evil through the suffering and death of innocent children. The perspective of the narrative has switched to Rayber, as he attempts to use his carefully developed worldview of scientific rationality to raise his mute, benighted son Bishop, and to deal with his nephew Tarwater, a boy raised to be an Old Testament prophet by his great-uncle (and Rayber's uncle), old Tarwater, a boy with a worldview intransigently at odds with Rayber's own. Can anything other than mysterious grace redeem suffering? Will that grace ever appear, or has the voice of God gone silent in the modern world? Can love and perfect rationality co-exist in the same heart, or is one always finally forced to choose between them?

What is the place of true silence in human life? Not merely quiet, or even deafness, but the silence which strands you alone with the inner voice, that still, small voice we so often want to ignore, overwhelm, and obliterate. What is the meaning of that voice? And why do we seem so afraid to confront it? We take up these questions on our second of five episodes discussing Flannery O'Connor's novel The Violent Bear it Away. For this episode we read the second half of part one, which continues the story of young Francis Tarwater's journey to meet his uncle Rayber in the city, after his great-uncle Marion Tarwater, who considered himself a prophet in the Old Testament tradition of Jonah, Daniel, and Elijah, has died. The themes of silence and speech resonate throughout this section, and along with them questions of paternity, freedom, and education. Who gets to educate the young and how? What are they teaching them and why? What are the effects of education on those whom it purports to be for? If you go to the best schools and read the best books are you in fact smarter and freer that someone who hasn't, or are you simply a piece of information inside some great, inhuman brain? Are you a free human being, or a piano key to be played?

Francis Tarwater is a teenage boy who has been raised in near-isolation by his great uncle Mason Tarwater somewhere in deepest backwaters of the American South. The elder Tarwater has been preparing the boy to be a prophet of God, in the line of Old Testament prophets like Jonah, Daniel, and Elijah, but Tarwater reacts to his great-uncles death by first getting drunk, and second by burning down their old farmhouse, called Powderhead, with, as far as he knows, old Tarwater's body still inside, unburied, in defiance of the old man's most consistent demand – that the boy bury him in proper, Christian fashion. After starting the fire, Tarwater flees Powderhead for the big city, there to confront his only other living relative, his uncle Rayber, an academic who has empathically rejected Old Tarwater, his beliefs, and his way of life. Today, in the first of a four episode series, we are discussing the first half of the first section of Flannery O'Connor's second and final novel, The Violent Bear it Away. The strange and bleak landscape of the novel asks us many unpleasant. Has God withdrawn from the created World? If so, why? What kind of people are driven or called to be prophets in such a world? What does O'Connor mean by violence? Is there such a thing as sacred violence? Finally, and perhaps most unpleasant of all, Can we ever hope for grace in a world where the voice of God has become so distant and the light of the sun so dim?

After 14 books and more than 15,000 lines of poetry, we have reached the final book of Ovid's epic, the Metamorphoses. And in the final book we encounter the philosopher Pythagoras, who has the longest and most unusual soliloquy in a poem that has been filled with them. Pythagoras' vision of reality seems to resemble closely Ovid's himself: a world of constant change, in which nothing, neither body, nor city, nor meaning, stays fixed for long. Yet, as we consider the words of Pythagoras, gaps between his account and Ovid's poetry appear, making it obvious that this is not a simple philosophical summation of all that has come before, stated as simply and ponderously as possible, to make sure no reader could miss the point. What, then, is Pythagoras' speech doing here, seeming to be a capstone to this massive, propulsive work? What kinds of explanations are possible in poetry that are not possible in philosophy? Are the poet's aspirations for immortality essential to his writing? If so, how does Ovid hope to keep his own name alive, even beyond the end of Rome and the Roman world? And, given that we are still reading him, how did he succeed?

This book completes the story of Aeneas, as he ventures into the underworld, guided by Sybil. Returning to the human world, Sybil tells Aeneas that she is cursed to age at the normal pace, but not to die – until she eventually becomes only a disembodied voice. Early Roman history begins in book 14, with some of Rome's founding myths, including the deification of Aeneas. Book 14 also relates the especially obscure story of Pomona, the goddess of gardens, and Vertumnus, the god of plants, and his protean, shape-shifting attempts to woo (or seduce, or rape) her. What is the role of the poet within an imperial civilization as vast as Rome? What is proper balance between Nature and Order? Is something like an empire or an emperor required to maintain that balance? What do we want to preserve of ourselves in history? Is the human voice and the written word enough to carry a culture forward through time, or does cultural transmission ultimately rest on political power, even on violence?

Book 13 features monologues from heroes like Ulysses and Ajax, from queens and nymphs like Galatea, and monsters, like Polyphemus. All in all, this book is a potent reminder that human speech has been the primary vehicle driving the action in the Metamorphoses. Polyphemus is an especially interesting case because instead of appearing as a monstrous, shadowy presence on the edge of the world, eating Greeks and bashing ships, he has his own real character, expressed through his (somewhat, possibly) charming song attempting to win the heart of Galatea. While still obviously lacking the rhetorical polish of Ulysses, there can be no doubt his speech has its own unassuming, sincere charm. All of this makes us ask about the place and power of speech in the world of Ovid. How much power does speech have to transform the world? How much power does slippery rhetoric, and even straightforward lying, have to influence our perspective? If we assume speech has significant power, which it seems that Ovid does, do the poets wield that power for good or evil? What do those terms even mean in this universe of constant, churning transformation?

On this episode we are reading Book 11 of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Book 11 opens with the grisly dismemberment of Orpheus, whose severed head floats down the Hebrus River, the waters causing his mouth to still murmur his sad songs mourning the loss of his wife Eurydice, as if the earth itself were mourning for him (or with him). This book also relates the famous story of Midas and his ill-fated wish to turn all he touched to gold, and of the violent king Daedelion, transformed into an equally violent bird. The book ends with the long, tormented soliloquy of queen Alcyone, who failed to prevent her husband, king Ceyx, from sailing to Delphi, and during his voyage, as she had foreseen, he died at sea. Her story ends when, as she is wailing on the beach, mourning Ceyx's death, his body washes ashore. She rushes to kiss his corpse, whereupon they are both transformed into seagulls… What do we owe the dead? How powerfully are the ghosts of the past alive in the present? Can a poet's song of mourning animate or re-animate inert matter? Can any human artifice do this? Is Nature built from human memory, or is all our suffering and all our loss merely absorbed into Nature's ever-changing flux, along with everything else?

Book Ten begins with the familiar story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus, famous bard, uses his songs to re-claim his new bride Eurydice from the Underworld, only to lose her to death once again when he looks back at her too early as they are leaving the land of the dead. The rest of the book is a series of stories told by Orpheus to illustrate, perhaps, the dangers of marriage, and what a world without marriage would be like. Better or worse? We spent most of our time thinking through this question, using the story of Pygmalion, deluded craftsman who fashions an “ivory-girl” for himself, and the story of his granddaughter Myrrah, who lusts after her father Cinyras, with disastrous results. What is the meaning of Orpheus glance back at Eurydice? Why does this glance cause her to die again? Are the stories which follow her second death a series of broadsides against marriage and romantic love? If so, why do the themes of incest, artifice, pederasty appear so prominently within them? Do the gods do us any favors when they make us beautiful, or is physical beauty in fact one of their most subtle and diabolical curses?

On this bonus episode of the Key, we have a very off-the-cuff, very free-ranging discussion of Auden's short poem “The Fall of Rome,” which you can listen to the man himself reading in his great, mid-century baritone here. (Or you can listen to us read it in our nasally, 21st century rasp to start the episode, but it is not as impressive). What is the fall of Rome, as Auden chronicles it? Something that actually happened in history? Something that is happening to the West now? Or something that is always happening – some part of civilization falling away, as another rises?

Hercules takes center stage in book nine, but we spend most of our time discussing the story of Byblis, who pines for her brother Caunas. Byblis has a long monologue where she weighs the pros and cons of confessing her feelings to her brother, eventually deciding to write them out on a tablet, which Caunas then reads and hurls angrily aside. Byblis, sick with the rejection, is eventually transformed into a fountain. We consider the difference between writing and speaking as means of communication, and the role of writing in the Metamorphoses. Could Byblis have confessed if her only choice had been to speak? Would things have gone better or worse for her (whatever those terms mean here)? We also consider the meaning of the reverse aging of Iolaus, a miracle enacted by the recently deified Hercules. Why does the transformation of a man back into a child upset all the other gods? Jove says that Fate allowed Hercules to rejuvenate Iolus, and that Fate ultimately rules all the gods, himself included. What is the meaning of Fate here? Does it represent some higher natural order? Narrative tradition? The hand of the poet? Or the final, intractable victory of time and decay over all things?

We begin and end with a consideration of the myth of Erysichthon. Herein Erysichthon, a man with no reverence for the gods, mutilates the sacred grove of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. His punishment is to be cursed by Famine, so that no matter how much he consumes, he is never full. His final act, after eating whole forests and rivers, among other things, is to eat himself. For such a rich symbol and story, Erysichthon is almost unknown, compared to figures like Narcissus and Echo, who are features of everyday speech and thought. We try to think through the twists and turns of this story, and relate it the dominant concerns of the Metamorphoses as a whole. We consider again the meaning of piety in the poem, what Proteus has to tell us about poetry, how Icarus relates to ambition, and what difference it makes, if any, that the stories in book VIII are being told to the hero Theseus. Is Ovid using a playful style to mask a careful structure, or is he like the drunken barfly, leaping from one story to the next by any careless association?

In this episode we mainly discuss two complicated love stories: Jason & Medea, and Cephalus & Procris. Both these stories begin with happiness for the lovers, but end with madness, violence, and death. What does this say about the place of love in the Metamorphoses? The overwhelming power of desire is a constant in this poem, but those possessed by desire rarely (never?) come to good ends. There is a sensuousness and a romantic quality to the poetry in the Metamorphoses, but the arcs of the individual characters often involved them being punished, somehow, for their pursuit of their beloveds? Love produced envy and jealousy, even insanity, along with a host of other bad consequences. Yet it also motivates and ennobles human action (and generates poetry). How should we understand this? What does Ovid think about love?

Book VI contains three stories of horrific violence, each somehow more horrific than the last. First, the goddess Athena beats Arachne almost to death with a weaving tool, then transforms her into a spider. Them, Niobe's 14 children are systemically murdered by Apollo and Artemis. Finally, most horribly of all, Tereus rapes and mutilates Philomela, sister to his wife Procne; whereupon Procne murders their son and feeds him to his father Tereus in a stew. As unpleasent as these stories are, they were all common tales in the world of Greek mythology. How does Ovid use them? By bringing out the sheer absurdity of the violence, and by dwelling with some of the psychological forces at play, how are the stories changed? In some sense, does the violence work to sever the story from it's traditional, banal meaning (i.e mortals shouldn't compete with gods)? Could there be a satisfying conclusion to a story like Philomela's, in a world where everything is transformed and nothing lasts? Could there be one in any world? What is the purpose or meaning of piety and devotion in a world where the gods are capable of such savagery? Does Ovid hate nature? Does he see nothing but decay and death, wherever he looks? It may sound bleak, but it's actually one of our most fascinating episodes yet. If you don't want Athena to pluck out your eyes and turn you into a bedbug, then you had better listen up.

In Book V the narrative veers away from Bacchus and tells the story of Perseus, who escapes an angry mob by using the head of Medusa to turn them all to stone. Then we fly with Minerva to visit the Muses, who relate the tale of the human sisters who challenged them to a story-telling contest, lost, and were transformed into magpies as punishment. Is there any connection between all these events? Or are we listening to some elevated version of bar-talk, where one rambling story segues into the next with only the loosest symbolic or emotional attachment? This is one of the many questions we ask ourselves here. We also engage in a long discussion about the voice of the rape-victims – does the story of one such victim, who relates her plight in heart-rending language, reveal the fundamental violence of Ovid's gods in some new way? And we consider the character of the Ovidian world more generally; a world made up of endless stories, without a clear through-line or central theme. Too post-modern for you? Take it up with James Joyce.

We continue to discuss the meaning of the worship of Bacchus among the women of Thebes. The few women who hold out against the new cult are punished for their impertinence by being transformed into bats. What about the stories they tell merits the punishment they receive? Is the Bacchanalian revelry about sexual desire, a more literal desire to possess or merge with another being, chaos overtaking order, an illustration of the fear Rome felt at the possibility of women liberated from household chores, or something else altogether? We also spend some time discussing the central importance of speech, and the power of human speech, to the world of the Metamorphoses. This leads to a very interesting series of digressions about the history of Christianity, Heidegger, modern disenchantment, and evolutionary biology. It's great! Give it a listen.

Book III contains the story of Narcissus, the beautiful boy who falls in love with own reflection, and then drowns himself because he will never be able to possess the object of his desire. This is easily the most famous image from the entire Metamorphoses. We spend almost no time discussing it. Instead we spend most of the hour discussing the arrival of the “new god” Bacchus. Even in a book about transformation and chance, a new god is unusual. What is the meaning of Bacchus, the beautiful boy who shambles about drunk on wine and transforms sailors into dolphins, and whose followers dismember their own families? What does it mean that he was born from Jove's thigh? Is he destined to replace Jove as the central god, as Jove replaced his father Saturn? Given that Jove appears drunk on wine in this book, has Bacchus already weakened him, or even possessed him somehow? Why, in a very amoral world, do the Bacchanalian orgies need to be held in secret, deep in the forests? Why not the town square?

We again consider the question of Jove and his behavior. Sometimes he behaves like a great and noble king, other times like a petulant child, and other times like an unrepentant rapist and criminal. What are we to make of this? Do Jove's actions have any special moral meaning, or are they simply one more example of a world where everything, very much including morality, is always shifting and uncertain? We also spend a fair bit of time discussing the character of Envy and her meaning in the poem. Why, of all the rape and violence depicted so far, does Envy come in for a special condemnation? Why is the final punishment for the very envious that they are transformed into statues? If you want your past self to envy your future self, break out of your slough of ignorance and listen to this episode of the Key.

We start by trying to establish the terms of the moral universe Ovid depicts. Are the gods meant to be figures of ridicule? Does Ovid take them seriously at all? Are the linked vignettes which comprise the Metamorphoses, for the most part, meant to have the qualities of fables? Lessons? Horror movies? Jokes? Jove brought change and decay into the world by the introduction of seasons. Does this poem, which is after all a poem of change, transformation, and decay, praise him for this or vilify him? Or does Ovid simply report on a world he finds ludicrous, laughable, and sad, without any moral judgements implied one way or another? Is Ovid trying to take the piss out of Vergil? For these questions and many more (but no answers) one must listen to this episode of the Key.

We wrap up our discussion of the Georgics with a lot of talk about the meaning of bees, bee-keeping, and the fact that bees sleep very peacefully at night because they do not have sex. How does this relate to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice? If all your bees die at once, say of the plague, will slaughtering a bull bring them back? Are horse-flies a punishment for excessive human acquisitiveness? Do your humble pod-casters, who are not farmers, in addition to all the other things they are not, illuminate any of this fabulous poem's mysteries, or do they only darken the already obscure? You will have to listen to find out.

Here we begin our two part digression into the Georgics of Vergil. We consider the meaning of the implicit contrast Vergil draws between the solitary life of the farmer and the hectic life of the citizen in Rome. We ask ourselves, “Who is the audience for this poem?” Is Vergil attempting to teach farmers anything? Or is he only attempting to remind Roman soldiers, politicians, and social climbers of things about Nature they may have forgotten? What is the relationship between this poem and the Roman schools of Epicureanism and Stoicism? Finally, we consider the differences between Vergil's relationship to Nature and our own.

We arrive at the final book of Vergil's epic. We consider the meaning of conquest and Roman identity, considering that it is the Trojans, not the Latins, whom Jove decrees will lose their language and identity, despite being the victors in battle. What is it about the synthesis of two losers – the Trojans, defeated by the Greeks, and the the Latins, defeated by the Trojans – which gives rise to the Romans? We continue to consider questions of synthesis. Vergil is attempting to synthesize so many strands of history, myth, tradition, politics, nature, and poetry, can it be any surprise that the final results do not manage to tie everything into a neat bow? Is this fractiousness an artistic failing on Vergil's part, or is it intentional? Is it this very failing which saves his poem from descending to the status of Imperial propaganda? We end with some fascinating general reflections about the epics we have read so far on our quest for the Key. As always, the frustrated listener is encouraged to stick around. The end is the best part.

We spend a lot of our time in this episode discussing the beguiling character of Camilla, a fearsome warrior and virginal acolyte of the goddess Diana. Camilla is represented in Book XI as being a kind of Amazonian princess: primitive, noble, powerful, uncorrupted (shades of Rousseau and the “noble savage” to be sure). However, whatever her qualities, she is ultimately defeated by Aeneas and the Trojans, just like everything else in this poem that has opposed Roman destiny. The odd manner of her death – felled by an ignoble minor character who meets his own end soon after – provides us with many questions. And how can we put Camilla in conversation with Dido, or Lavinia (or Helen of Troy, or Cleopatra), the other female centers of gravity of the Aeneid? We finally return to the larger and more vexing questions about the meaning and role of women in this poem.

Book X is the first book of the Aeneid where battle scenes dominate the narrative. As such, we consider the battlefield conduct of Aeneas in light of the questions we have been discussing throughout our reading of the whole poem. Does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? Or, since his piety is always with him, perhaps it is better to ask, How does Aeneas display piety as he slaughters his enemies? How does Vergil adapt and alter the battlefield scenes from the Iliad, and what are these various adaptations meant to tell us? What to make of the strange moment that ends Aeneas' slaughter? Is this a moment of self-doubt, or merely a moment of general pity for all those he must kill? Finally, we take up the larger question, and central interpretive puzzle of the Aeneid, of how Vergil himself and his epic poem regard warfare and empire-building.

At the center of Book IX is the night raid of Nisus and Euryalus. Modeled closely on the night raid of Odysseus and Diomedes in the Iliad, the raid here has less military justification and is less successful; yet upon their violent, predictable, and seemingly pointless deaths, Vergil praises Nisus and Euryalus in the highest terms. The meaning of this praise is the central question we discuss in this episode. Why is so much space devoted to the story of these two young, impetuous soldiers and lovers? The first words we hear Nisus speak are “Do the gods inspire this warmth, or make we gods of our desires?” A strikingly modern, introspective question for a Trojan soldier to be asking. Does this unusual question suggest that the tale of these two, beginning here and ending with their bloody, melodramatic slaughter, as Nisus attempts to sacrifice himself to save Euryalus, is meant to be something of a stand-alone tale? Furthermore, how are we to understand that their story sits within two episodes where prudence and calm reason are shown to be superior to raging passions? Finally, while it is easy to see that the night raid in the Iliad is the model for this one, saying just what the relationship between the two raids is supposed to mean turns out to be much trickier. What is Vergil attempting to do with the allusion? As usual, expect more questions than answers on another exciting episode of the Key to All Mythologies.

We spend much of our time on this episode comparing and contrasting the shield that the maker god Vulcan (called Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon) forges for Aeneas with the one he previously forged for Achilles. The latter depicts general human scenes of sailing, fighting, dancing, and ritual, while the former depicts specific moments of Roman history and Roman triumph. What can these differences tell us about the differences between these cultures, and the differences between Roman culture and our own? This leads us to ask a series of larger questions about the nature of Vergil's art. Over and over again in this poem we read prophecies and portents of Rome's future greatness and the ascension of Augustus Caesar to quasi-divine status. Is Vergil, then, essentially a propagandist for the State? Is he beholden to an idea of history which overwhelms him and damages the honesty of his poetic vision? What is history anyway? And what is propaganda? Can you really have one without the other? To learn the absolute, definitive, and final answers to these questions you will have to listen to week's episode of the Key to All Mythologies.

Now that Aeneas and the Trojans have successfully landed in Italy, the narrative switches from one a journey to one of founding and colonizing. As such, Vergil switches from using the Odyssey as the text on which his own epic is structured to using the other great Homeric poet, the Iliad. This switch causes a new set of questions to take center stage. We begin by considering the use of the goddess Juno in Book VII. She has long been the Trojans' antagonist, and here she again intervenes to try and bring them to ruin. She does so, however, while acknowledging that she is ultimately powerless to prevent Aeneas from founding Rome, since this is Jove's will, and in accordance with fate. All she can do is make this founding as difficult and bloody as possible. What is the meaning of Juno's action here? Is she meant to symbolize something about nature or society that resists change, or fate, or imperial power? This leads us to ask a series of larger questions about the meaning of Rome's self-conception as the divinely ordained, glorious, and just rulers of the world. How does the founding myth Vergil is creating for Rome work with – and possibly work against – this grandiose self-conception? And what is the meaning of Love in this book? There is a lot of talk about Love, and home, and hearth, but how those words are being used, and how Vergil understood them, is far from clear.

On this week's episode we discuss Aeneas' trip to the Dis, the underworld of Roman mythology. There seems to be something a bit obligatory about this trip. Like hosting funeral games, burying fallen warriors, and battling enemy champions, traveling to the underworld is just something epic heroes do in their poems. We consider again in what ways Aeneas is and is not like other epic heroes. Like his trip to the underworld, his position at the center of Vergil's epic feels a bit obligatory. He does not stand apart from the crowd in the manner of Achilles. Aeneas is imitable, in ways that Odysseus and Achilles are not. Is this of the nature of his heroism? While in Dis, Aeneas and his father Anchises discuss the future, which leads Anchises to offer another long prophecy of Roman greatness and Roman triumph, culminating in world-dominion under Augustus. However, some strange details cause us to consider to just what degree Vergil intends this prophecy to be taken as an absolute and final pronouncement. For instance, it is possible to construe Apollo's prophecy that all Aeneas' soldiers will reach Italy safely as false (Palinurus, seduced by the god Sleep, falls overboard). Even more strangely, when Aeneas returns to the Earth, he exits the underworld not by the gate of true dreams, but through the gate of false dreams. Very odd indeed. What might these textual mysteries say about Vergil's relationship to the glory of Rome and Augustus, a glory which his poem is meant to celebrate?

On this episode we discuss the meaning of the funeral games Aeneas hosts to honor his father Anchises. The funeral games are a trope of Epic poetry, appearing in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and were obviously rituals of great importance to ancient peoples. We try to think about why this was. Is some quality of Aeneas' leadership displayed here? Is there something distinctly “Roman” about these games, as compared to the games in those other Epics? We also consider the strange scene which ends this book, where the Trojan woman, left to mourn on the beach while the men compete in the funeral games, are driven into a frenzy by the appearance of the goddess Iris, and attempt to burn the ships. Is this more than just another example of the poem's unsubtle linking of women and femininity to irrationality, passion, and chaos?