This reading was perplexing to me but also made me think. That may sound vague, but don’t worry, we’ll get there. When I first started reading Ovid, I was taken a little aback. I had heard the story of Creation before, but never in text only from a Sunday school teacher or two. As Ovid began to describe how “chaos was given form” and everything was created I was captivated by the methods he used to illustrate all of this while never bringing God into it. I had only heard the story of creation as is told in Genesis (although I did not know that is the book of the Bible it was from until I did this reading because I am not an incredibly devout Catholic). Ovid refers to the gods more as the “general” for lack of a better word, “gods”.
Some of the parts that struck me about Ovid was when the creation of man took place. Man was created to be “more intellectually capable and able to control the other beasts”. Man was made upright. I don’t know exactly how to explain this in an eloquent way, but the way Ovid described man and man’s place in the earth made it seem that man had a sense of entitlement from the beginning. Man was made to be more capable than anything else “of his own divine substance.” As I continued reading and the story progressed, the occurrence of violence and destruction of earth did not come as a surprise to me. I made a note in my CPD that simply states: “Where does the greed come from?” Man from the beginning was made elite to everything around him. So when man began exploiting the natural gifts of the earth and causing disruption it seemed right to me. He was superior so everything around him belonged to him. The gods had to intervene to restore some sort of balance. This text became easier for me to comprehend when I thought about it in comparison to our present world. Man is still greedy and exploits the resources of the world. Although I personally may think the idea of gods is a little far fetched, I do think there are going to be repercussions for man in order to restore balance.
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December 2019
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